LITMIR.BIZ

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of the waiting was only just becoming plain to them. Every minute that painfully stretched into an hour had to be waited through.

      ‘Is Dad coming?’

      Jess nodded. Ian’s response had been immediate. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can get a flight.’ He loved Danny, of course.

      At last Beth stood beside the bed. Dispassionately the machines did their work. Then she leaned close so her cheek almost touched his and whispered, ‘Dan. It’s me. It’s Beth, can you hear me?’ When the only response was the sound of the respirator and flickering traces of the monitors she straightened up again.

      Looking across at her mother and aunt she thought for the millionth time how alike they remained, even though they had evolved so differently. They were close in a way that excluded everyone else; in the whole world only Danny was more important to Jess than her sister was. Almost all her life, Beth had understood that with her mother she came a poor third.

      Now she said coolly, ‘Can I talk to him on my own for ten minutes?’

      Jess was going to protest but Lizzie restrained her with a touch on the arm.

      ‘Come with me, Jess. We’ll get a coffee or something.’

      After they had gone Beth sat down on a stool at the bedside. She held Danny’s hand.

      To begin with ‘I’m sorry’ was all she could think of to say.

      It was only recently she had begun to think of her brother as an ally instead of a rival. When they were children Danny had always been quick and handsome and strong. She had been shy and serious, lacking the self-confidence that Danny revelled in. In everything except schoolwork she had been slower and weaker. She had longed fiercely to be his equal, but in Jess’s eyes she never could be. Her mother had shielded her from his mockery and bullying, and defended her against the world, but Beth knew she was never admired the way her brother was.

      ‘Mummy’s girl,’ Danny used to jeer at her.

      But it was the opposite of the truth. Beth was closer to her father, and Jess was eternally seduced by Danny’s bright, careless energy. She forgave her son everything, even though he was often in trouble.

      Beth thought of these things as she held Danny’s hand and tried to convey to him that none of them mattered now.

      After Beth had left home, Danny and she had begun to grow close in a way they had never approached before. It was as if, once their parents’ uncomfortable marriage had ended, the two of them had been set free to like each other without competing. Danny had lately even been down to stay with her in her flat in London. She had taken him to the theatre, and he had taken her clubbing.

      ‘We had a good time, didn’t we?’ she asked him aloud. ‘We can do it again. I won’t complain about techno music if you don’t complain about boring theatrical crap.’

      ‘Can he hear me?’ she asked the nurse.

      ‘We believe all our patients can hear.’

      Beth fixed her eyes on his waxy face. He seemed almost hidden by the tubes and bandages.

      She whispered urgently to him, ‘Come on, Dan. Come back. Don’t leave me alone now, after all, after everything.’

      After examining Danny the consultant took the three women aside.

      ‘I’m afraid he isn’t responding very well,’ he said gravely.

      ‘What does that mean?’ Jess asked.

      ‘His reactions to stimuli are less marked than they were last night. The outlook may not be very bright. I wish I could tell you more, or something different, but for the moment we can only watch him and wait.’

      Jess looked straight into the man’s eyes.

      ‘You are doing everything you can?’

      ‘Everything.’

      Unable to bear the familiar confines of his room any longer, Rob went out into the rain. Exhaustion and hunger, as well as shock, began to make him feel disorientated; he knew that last night he had been under arrest, that today he must go to the police station with a solicitor. There was a duty solicitor available; the police had informed him of that. But some independent instinct made him want to appoint his own legal representative.

      He stood on the corner of the street, measuring in his mind the distance he would have to walk into the centre of town. It was quite a long way. In his head there were repeating images of his van smashed into the bridge, of Danny lying on the verge. All Rob’s tools for work were in the back of the van; what would happen to them? Even as he thought of this he was ashamed that he should consider it worth worrying about.

      He began to walk, pushing himself into a rapid clockwork stride although his body felt disjointed, almost dismembered. An hour later he was waiting in a legal aid solicitor’s reception area. The solicitor’s girl receptionist took one look at him and hurried into a back office.

      A man came out to see Rob. He was young, dressed in a tie and a clean shirt, Hugh Grant hair. A public schoolboy, Rob thought, as the solicitor held out his hand for Rob to shake awkwardly with his left one. He introduced himself as Michael Blake.

      ‘You’d better come and tell me what’s happened,’ he said, showing Rob into an office.

      In a flat monotone Rob described the previous evening and Michael Blake listened without interrupting.

      At the end Rob said, ‘I’m in trouble. How bad is it likely to be?’

      Blake put his head on one side, thinking before he spoke. Rob warmed to him a little.

      ‘It depends partly on what happens to your friend. And on what charges the girls decide to press relating to the earlier part of the evening.’

      Rob nodded tiredly. ‘I’ve got some form,’ he admitted.

      ‘You’d better tell me about it.’

      It had happened in an empty car-park, three years ago. He had been taking a short cut across it on the way to meet a girl. He had been nineteen, Danny’s age. He remembered the exact shade of the summer twilight, the tarmac blotched with oil, cinema and gig posters peeling off a hoarding. There had been three of them sitting on a low wall, a big shaven-headed boy, pink and bristly as a prize pig, school bully grown up, and two of his smaller, feral-looking mates.

      The big one crooned, ‘Look ‘ere, it’s Bits. C’mon, Bitty. What you got in your lunch box, Bits?’ The others laughed and Rob crossed over to them, pushing his face close to the big one.

      ‘Shut the fuck up,’ he said.

      He thought he had grown out of both the nickname and the shame of it. They belonged to the time when he was much younger, when he was being shuttled between the children’s home and foster care. ‘Bits’ referred to the clothes he was dressed in and the food he was fed on, and also to a day when he was hungry and envious of another boy’s packed lunch. ‘Give me a bit,’ he had demanded.

      By the time he was sixteen Rob had become big and tough and independent enough for the old name not to stick any more. To hear it again after so long stripped him down to a discarded version of himself.

      ‘Who are you telling to shut up, Bitty?’

      There had been a fight, in which he came off badly. As he hauled himself out of the car-park Rob heard his attackers laughing. A thick, red pall of anger dropped around him like a curtain, overcoming all restraint. Suffocated by rage, he saw a short length of scaffolding pole in a skip at the roadside and armed himself. He crept in a wide circle back to where the three men were sitting on the wall, drinking canned lager. Then he came out of the shadows and hit the big one on the back of the head with the pole. He went down like a pig in an abbatoir.

      Rob was charged with common assault. He was fined and placed on probation.

      Michael Blake nodded. ‘I think I can understand the provocation,’

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