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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
'A brilliant and darkly compelling thriller, with a genuinely creepy mix of mystery, psychology and murder.' - S. D. Sykes, author of Plague Land 'A dazzling new voice in crime fiction. Taut, twisty and addictive. Martine Bailey is one to watch.' - Louisa Treger, author of Madwoman Five candidates. One job. A killer prepared to murder their way to the top. Salford, 1983. Lorraine Quick is a single mother, a member of a band going nowhere fast, and personnel officer at the grim Memorial Hospital. A new general manager position is being introduced, and Lorraine's recent training in the cutting-edge science of psychometric testing will be pivotal. As the profiles start to emerge, a chilling light is cast on the candidates. When a lethal dose of anaesthetic is deliberately substituted for a flu vaccine, and a second suspicious death quickly follows, it's clear a killer is at work in the hospital. Can Lorraine's personality tests lead her to the murderer?
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3
SHARP SCRATCH
Martine Bailey
5
For everyone who struggles to find their placein a world of cold conformity.6
7
‘Dark, unfeeling and unloving powers determine human destiny.’
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud8
Contents
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Personality tests like the one in this book are designed to measure traits, the habitual patterns of behaviour, thought and emotion that seem to make you ‘you’. Each chapter is headed by a fictional test question intended to reflect that chapter’s theme. I hope you find it entertaining to ask yourself the questions; if you agree with option ‘A.’ you are identifying with that trait’s description written out below it. This is of course not a scientific test: if you agree with a single trait associated with depression or psychopathy, that does not mean you are depressed or a psychopath!
Any credible test would consider the combination and interaction of the different traits you identify with and their measurement on a scale from high to low. The fictional PX60 test in part reflects the thinking back in 1983, whereas today more attention is paid to the demonstration of different traits in a variety of situations – for example, ‘I may be aggressive and loud at a football match but quiet and submissive at work’. Similarly, traits can change over time and our differing cultures, learning and life opportunities all contribute to making us unique individuals.10
Sadism
Instructions
This is a questionnaire concerning your interests, preferences and feelings about a range of things. There is no time limit.
Be as honest and truthful as you can. Don’t give an answer just because it seems to be the right thing to say.
Question 1: If people were more honest, they would admit that torture is interesting.
A. True
B. Uncertain
C. False
High score description (option A.): Cruelty, an intrinsic pleasure in hurting and humiliating others.
My past is confined in a box of steel. Though memories beg for release, I keep them carefully padlocked, deep in the cellar of my mind.
I review an old favourite: The Glen, Salford, 1963. I watch Christie staring out from the top window of Wilkins Boarding House, one of the largest of a street of shabby villas, mostly 12divided into mismatched flats. She is waiting for her landlady, keeping vigil over a road that has few cars, no children, no pets. A coalman’s horse and cart clops along the cobbles to the next house along. He heaves his sacks up the alley, whistling tunelessly, his eyes white in his sooty face.
Next Mrs Wilkins comes hobbling into sight, her spine bent from a life of drudgery. At the front gate she sets down two weighty shopping bags to get her breath back, admiring her smart painted sign: ‘The Wilkins Boarding House – Hot and cold water. Special rates for hospital staff’. Replenished with puff and pride, she disappears up the steps and the front door bangs.
The coalman and his cart disappear. When all is quiet, Christie noiselessly descends to where Mrs Wilkins is brewing tea in the kitchen. The landlady looks up when the door opens. She’s a sinewy, nervy woman, faded at sixty, her myopic eyes magnified behind round NHS spectacles.
‘Oh, hello. Did they let you off early?’
An excuse is made. Then the suspicious little face peers up from the tea caddy.
‘You ’aven’t seen me old carpetbag, ’ave you? Last time I seen it I’m sure it were up on the wardrobe. It’s got all me important papers and that locked up in it.’
Christie dolefully shakes her head, a parody of innocence.
Just then the kettle starts up like a banshee screaming a warning. The landlady rescues it from the flame, and it quiets to fitful sighs. Her big watery eyes catch sight of the bottle filched from the medicine cupboard.
‘Fancy you getting hold of that health tonic from the hospital for me,’ she says, savouring a rare dose of attention. ‘Go on. I could do with giving me feet a rest.’
It’s quite something, Christie’s Treatment Room. There’s even a neat wooden sign on the door like a proper clinic. 13It took time to create it, to arrange the perfect setting for Christie’s most private fantasies. Best of all, she arranged to take the unwanted fittings from the abandoned operating theatres when they knocked half the asylum down. She salvaged some real beauties: a rubber anaesthetic mask, and a set of original glass and steel syringes. Her pride and joy is the antique treatment couch. It’s hard leather, weighty and strong, with the original straps and buckles still taut and secure.
Mrs Wilkins follows her downstairs and through the Treatment Room door like a pet lamb to the slaughter. Suddenly she spots the wax display of a brain beneath a dome of glass.
‘It’s a bit funny down here, in’t it? All this peculiar equipment you’ve gone and got hold of.’
Christie gestures to the couch. Mrs Wilkins clambers up, then lies on her back, pulling her skirt down over thick stockings, preserving her pathetic modesty. Christie rolls up the landlady’s sleeve and bares her withered arm. The patient needs to be quiet. To relax. To do as she is told. Only when Christie starts to bind her arm with the leather strap does she start twitching.
‘Eh, what d’you think you’re doing?’
It’s too late. The large old-fashioned syringe looms above her. Mrs Wilkins’ eyes open so wide, they might pop. The other gloved hand clamps her nose and mouth. When the old bat tries to bite the hand that restrains her, the needle stabs into scrawny flesh. With the release of the syringe comes the thrill as the lethal dose surges into a vein. The old woman writhes helplessly; her glasses tumble to the floor.
She finally comprehends her fate in wide-eyed horror. The whimpering stops. Pupils shrink to pinpricks. Life ends, snuffed out, as a great black veil falls. The sensation is like 14nothing else, better than any sexual thrill, this extinction of another person.
On the floor the spectacles lie twisted, the cracked lenses forever dimmed.
Later, Christie returns to the kitchen with the carpetbag. One by one she removes each document and inspects them. It is mostly rubbish, ancient stuff from the war, faded letters, cheap Christmas cards. A bundle of these are shoved into the fire. Placed to one side is the Last Will and Testament of Mrs Ida Wilkins, which leaves her entire estate to The Methodist Mission for Charity in Africa.
By the light of the crackling fire Christie flattens out the will and begins to practise in a crabby, uneducated hand:
‘I devise and bequeath to my dear friend the property known as The Wilkins Boarding House …’
Radicalism
Question 2: I am frustrated by the routine nature of normal life.
A. True
B. Uncertain
C. False
High score description (option A.): Experimental, open to change, liberal, critical, free-thinking.
Sunday 13th February, 1983
What was she even doing here? Lorraine Quick was already late. And very tired. She had rushed to her mum’s at noon, feeling guilty to be leaving eight-year-old Jasmine for a whole week. The bag of sweets and cheap toys felt like a bribe. Her mum had been rightly offhand with her.
And then that gig. Why had they even bothered? To be bottom of the bill at some run-down pub and circled by a few dozen snarling yobs. The longer they played the angrier the blokes became, clearly aggrieved by a nearly-all-girl band who refused to flirt or giggle or follow their suggestion to ‘get ’em off for the lads’. Lily had thrown back a few cutting retorts but honestly, what was going on? Then the landlord had waved 16Lorraine away when she asked for their fee. Yet again, she’d have to pay for the petrol. And all the oafs around the bar had laughed.
For the last four hours her only company along the long empty stretches of the M6 had been the cassette recording of her band’s last rehearsal. Christ, she felt alone. Things were not going well. Life felt like a battleground. And call it intuition but she sensed that matters were only getting worse. Now, to crown it all, she was lost in the benighted streets of Oxford.
At last her headlamps picked up a wooden board and made out the words ‘Wyndham College closed’. After parking up she wondered if she’d catch any of the course introduction. She tried knocking on the ancient door of the porter’s lodge that skinned her freezing knuckles. Oxford on a Sunday night in February felt like a stronghold of unclimbable walls and padlocked iron gates.
She gave the door a rattling kick for good measure. Still no answer. A few yards away a door opened in the wall and a half-dozen Sloane Ranger types emerged. Lorraine glared at them.
‘How the bloody hell do I get in?’ she called out.
A young guy with floppy hair and a shiny waistcoat mocked her accent, ‘’Ow the bluddy ’ell do a get in?’
Their hoots of laughter seemed to ascend to the city’s spires. Lorraine glowered after them, her fists tightening. At last a light flickered on in the lodge, and she turned to see a uniformed porter’s sour face poking through the window.
‘College members only after six,’ he announced in a ridiculously plummy voice.
She rummaged in her old satchel. True, she was here only for a week’s study leave, but she had as much right as anyone else to pass through this gate.
‘Doctor Lehman’s course. Personality testing.’
‘I should have guessed. A public course. You’re late. Back of the quad.’17
When she found her classroom, the entire roomful of delegates turned to stare at her peroxided hair bunched into a lopsided ponytail, biker jacket, Patti Smith T-shirt and buckled boots. They all wore their corporate best: padded shoulders and kipper ties. Some of the women sported big perms above giant blouse bows.
The course leader, Doctor Lehman, looked more interesting: fiftyish, grey bob, wearing a rainbow-coloured kaftan that might have been Zandra Rhodes. Two hawkish eyes fixed on Lorraine from behind a pair of red-framed spectacles.
‘Ms Quick, I presume. We were just discussing how a negative trait like rule-breaking might reveal itself in lateness, for example.’
Nervous titters broke out around the room. She read the slide projected on the screen: a scale showing degrees of ‘Self-discipline vs Rule-breaking’.
Slipping into a seat Lorraine replied, ‘But didn’t Professor Paston in his 1978 paper show that if we had no rule-breakers we’d all risk becoming – I’m quoting his words – “stagnant and boring”. We’d have no David Bowie. No Jesus Christ.’
The room fell silent. Doctor Lehman’s slightly magnified eyes fixed upon her, revealing amused approval.
‘Well, well. Someone has done the background reading. On that evidence alone I’ll raise your score by at least thirty per cent.’ She clicked a switch and the carousel moved to the next slide.
‘To know thyself is the road to wisdom.’ Aristotle. The aphorism was displayed across the screen beside a portrait bust of the philosopher.
Lorraine hoped this was true. At twenty-six, she still had no idea what she wanted from life. When Doctor Lehman spoke, she concentrated hard on her closing words.
‘You all have an intensive week ahead of you, even before 18we consider your return for the exam in just over three weeks’ time. This course will change you all – and I hope guide you on the path to wisdom. Because your first, most extraordinary subject is … yourself.’
As the initial training days unfolded, it dawned on her that passing the course might demand more than last-minute cramming for an exam. In one group exercise, Doctor Lehman had handed out each person’s scores and asked the whole group to form a line in sequence, from 1 to 100. Lorraine had the most extreme score of 94, so she got to hold a placard labelled ‘Radicalism’, while the guy who scored 22 stood at the other end of the line holding ‘Conservatism’. Doctor Lehman had described those with high scores for Radicalism as analytical and free-thinking, with a strong desire to overthrow current customs. Though feeling like the class weirdo, she was forced to agree with the description; it felt valid, a true reflection of the life she lived.
In her free periods she wandered in the wintry college gardens, surrounded by lichen-clad statues and dead trees. She wanted to hate the place; the Marxist lecturers on her degree would say it symbolised all that was wrong with Thatcher’s Britain. Pulling her purple mohair tight against the cold, she listened to her music on new Walkman headphones. Nico’s doleful Germanic tones pondered which costume to wear to a lifetime of decadent parties. Which indeed? If her future life must be a performance, she felt like an actor pushed on the stage without lines or disguise. Opening her course manual, she quailed at scary-looking equations to prove test reliability and calculate standard deviation.
One evening towards the end of the week, a rumbling organ drew her to the candlelit windows of the chapel. She sat in the shadows, succumbing to sound. The choir’s voices twined and 19untwined, swooped and soared. She didn’t flatter herself that she was much of a musician; she didn’t need to be a virtuoso to play in a post-punk band. But she did have the ear of a musician’s daughter. There is a reason these archaic notes are still played and sung, she mused, echoing across the days for hundreds of years.
Next day she found Blackwell’s bookshop and picked up The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Her daughter would love it and Lorraine was intrigued. Emblazoned across the front was ‘A game book in which YOU become the hero!’Success or failure depended on how well the reader performed in a series of encounters, fights and mazes. It was a personality test, she realised, demanding all the heroic traits of a champion.
Back in her study bedroom overlooking a medieval courtyard, she ruminated over how uncomfortable she felt. She thought about norms and normality, about those people whose scores always placed them at the comfortable centre of the line-up. She guessed they must feel safe – content with their work, their spouses, their futures. She, on the other hand, was generally flung out onto the edges of the group – her brain wired to see things differently, sensitive to mental patterns and hidden possibilities. Whatever it was that made her different, she sensed its value was being utterly wasted in her job.
Sunday 20th February
On the final morning of the course, the group assembled in a classroom laid out in rows of individual desks. She breathed in the warm smell of beeswax polish, feeling scrutinised by the portraits of dozens of stiff-faced scholars. The full battery of PX60 psychometric tests took two hours, and though she enjoyed the quiz-like fun of it, she was now aware of a crafty 20aspect to the process. The questions were not quite what they appeared to be, and some were designed to trip up candidates who lied about themselves. It was called Motivational Distortion or ‘Faking Good’ – the attempt to present yourself as someone more conforming and desirable, someone who would fit in. Doctor Lehman sternly advised them to be true to themselves, answer quickly and state what they honestly believed – or the Motivational Distortion trap would catch them out.
It was late afternoon on Sunday and Lorraine was hanging around for Doctor Lehman’s final feedback appointment of the day. Finding a payphone in a passageway, she dialled the only friend she’d made at work. As well as being the right side of thirty, the medical records officer had immediately struck her as being a relatively sane person considering she was a hospital middle manager. Over snatched tea breaks in the League of Friends café, they had discovered they both had a child at St Michael’s. Rose didn’t want to tell her work colleagues about her son Tim, just as Lorraine kept schtum about Jasmine. In a flurry of heated confidences, they had both agreed that to be labelled a working mum by some of the bigots at work would be career suicide. And their friendship was proving useful, for Tim and Jasmine liked playing together, and had just spent the morning at Rose’s house.
‘Just wanted to say thanks for taking Jasmine and Tim back to my mum’s,’ Lorraine said when Rose picked up the phone. ‘I’ll pay you back in time whenever you like.’
‘Don’t worry. When I left, Tim was having a great time. He’s certainly never baked madeleines before. And I’ve had some actual free time on a Sunday while Phil’s away at his conference.’
Lorraine was about to say goodbye and head for her tutor’s office when Rose suddenly asked in a low tone, ‘You had a bad relationship once, didn’t you? Was he ever unfaithful to you?’21
‘What?’ She was startled. ‘Has Phil been playing around?’
Rose seemed instantly to regret her words. ‘No, well, I was just wondering. Still, what would you do?’
Lorraine pictured naïve Rose, way out of her depth. Hadn’t she got married straight from college? Lorraine hadn’t met him, but Rose talked of Phil as a dullard, a council worker whom she had little time for.
‘You really are too good for this world,’ Lorraine said kindly. ‘If I were you—’ She considered the answer for a second or two and was punished by a violent recollection from her hellish days with Andy. ‘I’d have nothing to do with that person again.’
Suspiciousness
Question 3: I suspect that people who seem friendly to me are sometimes disloyal to me behind my back.
A. True
B. Uncertain
C. False
High score description (option A.): Vigilant, jealous, suspicious, distrustful.
Rose sat in front of the phone for an hour after Lorraine rang off, her thoughts black and bitter. If only Phil would come home, she could pretend everything was normal. Instead, she faced a world that was utterly changed. Obsessively, her thoughts returned to the grim bedroom at 12 Radley Road, its cheap furniture, bald carpet and nylon sheets. And yet, for nearly ten weeks, it had been her secret place, a space in which she had at last been free to express her shameful, secret self.
But now it had all been spoilt. Her lover had made that careless remark about visiting someone called Christie. The name had burnt in her brain, setting off a wildfire chain of anxieties. She had made herself miserable, weeping over imagined slights, fearful of being abandoned, certain of being betrayed.
They had made feverish love just a few hours ago; her body 23was still sticky and sore. Afterwards, she had dozed briefly on the ugly bed and woke to find herself alone, listening to water flowing in the bathroom. She had snatched at the diary from the opposite bedstand. Names, names, and there it was, such an old entry in faded ink. Christie Kerr, Room 7, Wilkins Boarding House, The Glen, Salford. Telephone 061 792 3490.
Rose had tried not to breathe, as water continued gurgling along the pipes. Groping for her handbag, she’d scribbled the details down on the back of a shopping list.
After replacing the diary she’d noticed the heavy bunch of keys and inspected them. Attached was a smaller ring labelled ‘Room 7’ and bearing two keys, a Yale and a mortice. It was the same room number as Christie’s – proof that something was definitely going on. Hurriedly, she’d detached the pair of keys and shoved them deep inside her handbag.
Self-sufficiency
Question 4: It does not bother me if people think I am not a typical person.
A. True
B. Uncertain
C. False
High score description (option A.): Self-sufficient, resourceful, solitary, prefers own decisions.
Lorraine put her concerns about Rose out of her mind as she sank into a velvet chair in the tutor’s office. The psychologist leant forward and examined her through intelligent eyes slightly magnified by her trendy spectacles. ‘So tell me, why are you here on this course?’
Lorraine told the truth. ‘Well, deep down I want to know – who am I? And what should I do with my life?’
Doctor Lehman made a tiny retreating movement, as if this wasn’t quite what she wanted to hear. ‘That is a very big question. And what work do you do?’ she asked, spreading out a glossy PX60 report containing laser-printed charts and graphs. Lorraine pulled closer, aware that her black nail polish had chipped and turned ugly. ‘Arts or creative, surely?’
‘I wish.’ Lorraine explained that the last time she’d been paid 25for anything artistic was for three exhilarating years studying Humanities at university. Now her final grant cheque had been spent, and her songwriting ambitions had left her with nothing but debts for second-hand gear. ‘So now I’m a personnel officer, a job I can’t stand. I’m at a run-down hospital in Salford. And I’m out of my depth. The doctors, the managers, everyone seems like a different species to me.’
Wincing in sympathy, Doctor Lehman pointed her pen nib at a score of 9 out of 10 for Imagination. ‘I doubt a bureaucracy has much call for this level of creativity. My hunch is that your colleagues are conventional, highly practical types who make you feel uncomfortable.’
‘Spot on. But I have a daughter. I’m hoping my work might lead to a better life for her.’
‘I see.’ Frowning, the tutor studied the profile again.
‘So not a great fit between me and my job?’ Lorraine asked. Suddenly this was all turning out far worse than she’d expected.
‘Possibly not.’ Doctor Lehman’s mournful tone suggested a vast understatement.
The session improved as the psychologist expanded on the details of her test results. Her scores in verbal and numerical ability were good – well, more than good. And in the personality feedback Lorraine recognised herself with some surprise at its accuracy: adventurous and unconventional, independent and imaginative, and working best in solitude. If too overwhelmed by outside pressures, she was prone to get anxious.
The tutor picked up her profile again. ‘You do have a secret weapon. You can read people, can’t you? I’m not saying you like what you read or necessarily empathise, but looking at your scores I’d say that beneath this bohemian personalies a shrewd and perceptive individual. You can formulate new and penetrating insights. Tell me, why do you think they are so hostile?’
‘Well. Salford has utterly shit – sorry, horrible health 26problems. Poverty, deprivation, drugs. No one seriously wants to tackle it. Everything feels so fake. Why can’t people just be authentic?’
Doctor Lehman smiled. ‘I hear your radicalism calling. You recall Doctor Faust and his pact with the devil? Most of us trade our better selves for the comforts of money and security. Over time we become our roles, whether administrators, teachers, or dare I say it, psychologists. Try to get past your colleagues’ protective shields and help them make small changes.’
‘And if I can’t? Sometimes I could kill the lot of them.’
Doctor Lehman’s eyebrows lifted as she checked the report. ‘Your stress levels are rather high. Imaginative personalities like yours – the shadow side of your personality can jump out from nowhere.’
The sound of someone entering the room next door made them both look up. Lorraine swung back eagerly towards Doctor Lehman. ‘I have a shadow side?’
‘We all have. The part of us that erupts when we’re not ourselves. To paraphrase Carl Jung, we all carry a shadow. And the less conscious it is, the blacker and denser it becomes. It could be an upright citizen who indulges in secret deviant acts. Or the placid-seeming personality who succumbs to a violent obsession.’
‘That’s disturbing.’ The mirror her tutor was showing her suddenly filled with something ugly. ‘What should I do?’
‘Don’t push it away, Lorraine. Make your shadow your friend. When you feel stuck, tune into your unconscious. Listen to its eerie suggestions.’
‘But I don’t know—’
A loud rat-a-tat at the door broke into her entreaty. ‘Locking up now.’
Lorraine had to stop herself yelling at the man to go jump in the Isis or whatever they called it.
‘We’re just leaving,’ Doctor Lehman called.27
Rapidly, the tutor counted a set of PX60 test booklets and scoresheets and handed them to Lorraine.
‘Here you are. Eight tests for you to use with a variety of personality types. Do have a go at hand-scoring some of them, but you can also fax them and I’ll generate computerised reports. If you need to discuss your interpretations, ring the office and make a phone appointment. It’s all part of the course fee.’
‘And the shadow? Could you just explain that to me?’
With an apologetic smile Doctor Lehman stood up. ‘We can talk about that next time.’ She crossed to the coat stand and began wrapping herself in a snake-like turquoise scarf.
While her tutor’s back was turned Lorraine slumped in frustration; she’d felt on the edge of discovering something at last. Finally reaching down for her satchel, she noticed a stray business card on the carpet. It bore Doctor Lehman’s personal as well as business phone number beside a logo of a small human figure casting a giant shadow. In a flash she palmed it in her hand. She wasn’t exactly sure why, whether it was a glimmer of this intuition the tutor had talked about, but she felt instantly safer once she’d slipped the card inside her pocket.
Callousness
Question 5: I do what I want. Other people’s feelings are of no interest to me.
A. True
B. Uncertain
C. False
High score description (option A.): Lack of empathy, disregard for others’ feelings, showing no remorse or guilt.
The sound of an ancient payphone broke into my delicious reverie. I opened my eyes and there I was, still in the Treatment Room all these years later. It was a long time since I’d heard that house phone ring, a relic of the sixties, tinny and shrill. Christie didn’t seem to be answering it, so I hauled myself through the door to climb the gloomy stairs to the ground floor. In the hallway I eyed the cumbersome black payphone and picked it up.
‘Oh.’ It was Rose, sounding breathless. ‘You’re there, are you? I knew it. You’re at that woman’s house.’
I was profoundly annoyed that she had hunted me down. I was forced to listen to a barrage of cliches: she wasn’t happy. What was Christie to me? Was Christie in the house right now? How dare I betray her like this?
As she bleated on, I silently solved the puzzle of how she 29had found Christie’s number. Earlier that afternoon we’d been at Radley Road. I had been consulting my address book and left the damn thing out while I went to the bathroom.
‘Who is Christie?’
‘Nobody really,’ I said casually. ‘We once shared digs together in the most dreadful guest house.’ Smiling, I moved my gaze from the paint-flaked front door, past a stand of grotesque walking sticks, over the coat stand and its scrum of overcoats yanked up by their necks.
‘And what is she to you now?’
‘Just a part of my past.’
‘Don’t lie! Why are you with her now?’ She started snivelling.
‘She is ill,’ I protested. ‘She never gets out. There are some people who – it would be simply criminal to abandon.’
‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ she wailed. I held the receiver away from my ear. I was not enjoying shivering in that cold hall like a paying lodger.
‘There’s no need to worry,’ I said at last. ‘I’ll see you in the morning when we can talk all this nonsense over.’
There was a long silence. I thought I heard the ghost of a click sounding on the line. I gently set the receiver down and moved to peer up the stairs into the gloom. I could see nothing. The stairway yawned steep, unlit, obscure.
Returning to pick up the receiver, I could hear Rose’s tiny voice still burbling on inside it. There was an unattractive wobble in her vocal cords. She was sorry but it was over. It wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t normal. She had to think about her little boy.
I could guess who was behind this pathetic confrontation and said her name.
‘Lorraine?’ she snapped back. ‘No. Why would I tell her about us? Except to ask her if any of this is remotely normal.’
‘Do you even know what normal means?’ I challenged. 30‘Normal is for bores and cowards. If you carry on like this, I’ll tell that husband of yours all about us. He’ll drop you and keep your precious boy-child for himself.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she shot back. ‘You breathe a word to Phil and I’ll ruin you. I’ve looked up the address. There’s something not quite right about all this, isn’t there?’
‘Come off it, darling. You sound tired. Has that child of yours been wearing you out?’
Silence rang in my ears. When she spoke again she was frantic.
‘My God. Phil’s back. Let’s talk tomorrow.’
‘OK. How about two o’clock?’
‘No, no. I’ve booked a flu jab. First thing? Radley Road at seven-thirty. For the last time.’
I jerked my ear away from the loud bang of the receiver and ugly burr of the dialling tone. Thank God for the frightful Phil’s return, I told myself. I’d had enough of Rose’s tantrums.
A telltale creak sounded from the landing. Halfway up the stairs the gloom gathered so that anything could be waiting there. The electrical wiring needed attention; the house had always been feebly lit.
‘Christie? Come down and show yourself.’
She gave no reply, save for a second groan of the floorboards as she retreated further upstairs. She would detest my being telephoned like this. I waited for a minute or so, goosebumps rising on my neck from the draught whistling in from the gaps around the front door.
It was going to be a stormy night. And Christie was playing games. I returned to the parlour, turned the gas fire up and retrieved the scrapbook. Now that I’d been interrupted by Rose’s nonsense it would be a pleasure, albeit a rare and clandestine one, to review her collection of clippings.
I had once heard that if a medieval man were to travel by time machine to a modern operating theatre, he would 31think himself inside a chamber of horrors. It was a most intelligent remark. Adjust the dial of his time machine to the Victorian age or even the early twentieth century, and the argument grows ever more convincing. Christie’s collection was quite unique: experimental surgery, electrical therapies, extraordinary machines. And photographs too, forming a quite exceptional historical archive. Macabre but fascinating from a professional view. It was an outlet, I suppose, for all those unruly thoughts of hers.
An hour later I set the album down. The silence stretched ever tighter above me. I knew I should leave, sleep in my own bed, and mentally prepare myself for a demanding Monday morning at the hospital. And damn Rose – I now had to get there even earlier to coax her into silence.
In the end I bedded down in the parlour, listening to the upper storeys of empty guest rooms creaking above me as the wind worried the old house, rattling the roof tiles and snapping tree branches against the windows. Christie remained mute but the house was alive with her black thoughts. They thickened the air steadily, like the tide of darkness that swallows the earth in a solar eclipse.
It must have been after two in the morning when I heard her tread approaching at last. She came to me and we talked, two disembodied voices whispering in impenetrable darkness. She slid her hand into mine and it felt childish and so cold, as if she’d just stepped inside from the cold winters of the past. I caressed her pitiful fingers; almost nothing and no one moves me these days, but Christie’s situation is truly sorrowful. And I owe her everything. Her pain spoke to me as Rose’s never could.
‘I heard every word,’ she said. ‘I won’t let that little tart ruin you. I’ll sort it out. We have no choice.’
Warm-heartedness
Question 6: I feel good when I understand other people’s feelings and emotions.
A. True
B. Uncertain
C. False
High score description (option A.): Attentive to others, good-natured, kindly, easy-going.
Monday 21st February
It was Monday morning and Lorraine had to drag herself up and face that god-awful job again. The house had no hot water, so she shocked herself awake with a cold splash before pulling on a nylon blouse salvaged from Oxfam, an old midi-skirt of her mum’s, American Tan tights and scuffed three-inch-heeled court shoes. She clattered down the uncarpeted stairs and clicked on the electric heater’s orange bars. God, the place was dispiriting. After the landlord of her last flat decided to sell up, the chance to rent a condemned house had looked like a clever gamble on Salford’s Regeneration Scheme. As time passed it was feeling like a bad mistake. Each month she wrote to the council about their statutory 33duty to rehouse her. To date no one had bothered to reply.
A blackened cast-iron cooking range dominated the front room, so unwieldy that she rarely had the energy to light a fire. Her own stuff stood around like temporary props: the upright piano and Fender copy guitar; the poster of Rachael, the replicant from Blade Runner; and prints by Escher and Kandinsky. The books from her Humanities degree were arranged on brick and plank shelves, from Kafka’s The Castle to Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, and well-thumbed textbooks: Millett’s Sexual Politics, Barthes’s Mythologies and Berger’s Ways of Seeing.
In contrast, by her armchair lay the new postgrad books she was avoiding: Employment Law, Personnel Policy and Practice and Industrial Relations. It was hardly the heady mix of ideas and inspiration she had enjoyed for three self-indulgent, grant-funded years. Warming her insides with hot tea and jam-smeared toast, she inspected the remains of yesterday’s make-up. Cold cream melted yesterday’s nubs of mascara and eyeshadows of shocking pink and peacock green. Late nights had left dark shadows which she dabbed with Hide and Heal, before brushing on lip gloss and bronze eye shadow. Finally, she tugged a brush through dry bleached hair.
The soaring melody of U2’s ‘New Year’s Day’ faded out and Dave Lee Travis announced the news for Monday 21st February. It was the same old droning resistance to seat belts and alarm at a new coin to replace the trusty green pound note. She switched it off when the announcer gave an update on that freak from the Jobcentre called Nilsen, who had been caught with a flat full of dismembered body parts.
Pulling open the curtains, she started at the reflection of her own ghostly silhouette. Fog. The usual view along Balaclava Street – dilapidated terraces, the skeletal roofless church, the corner shop advertising ‘Ales & Stouts’ – was hidden. She would 34be late for work. She hurtled upstairs in a panic.
Jasmine was a small bump beneath a balding candlewick bedspread, only her profile visible in strings of fair hair. The game book, dice and score-pad were scattered over the bed, witness to the previous night’s efforts to find the correct path through the labyrinthine citadel. Even her daughter’s Star Wars figures in their home-made cardboard spaceship had been abandoned for the puzzle book. The two of them had stayed up far too late, engrossed.
‘It’s all right, Mum.’ Jas’s eyes opened wide. In a few whirlwind minutes Lorraine bundled her out of bed, pulled on her daughter’s clothes and set a piece of toast in her hand before hauling her out to the rusty red Metro. Peering through the misted windscreen, she steered the car slowly, trying to dodge kerbs and bollards and the sheets of flat metal that closed off half the condemned streets.
Jas was rhythmically kicking her foot against the seat. Finally, she twisted around in the passenger seat and stared solemnly up at her.
‘You got my two pounds for the gymnastics trip, Mum?’
She did a quick calculation. No way. It was still five days till payday.
‘Mrs Dearden said it’s got to be today.’ Jas’s voice poked deep into her conscience.
‘Listen, I haven’t got much left till I get paid. Here’s a pound note. I’ll speak to your teacher if you like.’
On the main road the traffic was crawling at less than twenty miles an hour as she edged the Metro into a line of disembodied yellow headlamps. She passed the chained and padlocked entrance to Salford Docks every day, but this morning it looked especially mournful in the mist. With three million unemployed, she tried to convince herself she was one 35of the lucky ones driving to a job.
Clicking her band’s rehearsal tape into the cassette player, the sound of Dale’s jangly guitar riff absorbed her attention as she jerked the car forward in fits and starts. Words bubbled up in her mind and she began to sing, vocalising the melody line she had been struggling with:
‘Finding my way in the dark,
Trying to follow a spark.’
‘That’s not bad, Mum.’
‘Well thank you,’ she answered gravely. This time when she sang Jas joined in:
‘Frightened of moving,
You’re frightened of choosing,
Finding a way in the dark …’
Jas’s voice was just one of the things she loved about her; together their voices harmonised beautifully.
‘Hey, you wanna be in my band?’ Lorraine nudged her.
‘My band, my band, yeah!’ Jas echoed the Gary Glitter tune.
They both giggled for a moment. At the next set of traffic lights Lorraine scribbled down her new chorus on an old envelope.
Guilt returned as she pulled up at the Carneys’ house. It was larger but danker than her own place, its only attraction that it stood opposite St Michael’s Primary. No one answered her hammering at the peeling door, though the malevolent faces of two little Carney boys watched from an upstairs window. Eventually Mrs Carney yelled from the window above, to ‘Just leave ’er in front of th’ telly and I’ll be right down.’
Lorraine steered Jas into the grubby living room. Please, she 36prayed silently, let those empty cans of Special Brew not be Mrs Carney’s. She looked at the foul cat litter tray and food-spattered copy of The Sun. Why the hell did schools not open until ten to nine, far too late for any parent with a normal job? All through her degree Jasmine had been happy and safe at a well-run council nursery. Now schools and their rigid opening times were the bane of her life.
She leant down and kissed her daughter. ‘Honest sweetheart, I’ll ring the council today for a new childminder.’
All along Langworthy Road she wondered how long it might take to find a new minder for Jas. Distracted, she steered into the wrong avenue. Soon she was as lost as the persona in her song, driving in circles up and down short curving streets of identical 1930s semis. The area was familiar and yet the fog cast a deceptive veil; vapour-wreathed side roads disappeared as quickly as she spotted them. The car’s digital clock displayed two minutes to nine. ‘No, no,’ she pleaded to the Fates. ‘I cannot be late.’
A pale figure sprang into view a few yards in front of the feeble headlamps. She hammered both feet down onto the clutch and brake. The car bucked, slithered a few heart-stopping feet, and then stopped only a few inches from the pedestrian.
‘Rose!’ Standing rigid in the road was the hospital’s medical records officer, camouflaged in the kind of beige raincoat only a pensioner should wear. She was staring across the way, her face blank.
Lorraine swung the car over to some railings, clicked off the music and wound down her window.
‘It’s me. You OK? Get in, I’m late and I can’t find the hospital in this blasted fog.’
Rose was still in some sort of daze, staring backwards.
‘I’ll try not to kill you, honest,’ Lorraine shouted good-humouredly. 37‘Come on. I’m going to miss the post meeting.’
Slowly Rose manoeuvred herself into the passenger seat. As she directed Lorraine in monosyllables, the maze of avenues grew familiar.
Lorraine glanced at her colleague, whose honest, girlish face was really rather lovely. Today, however, she appeared flushed and agitated.
‘You all right?’ Lorraine asked quietly.
Rose exhaled wearily, turning to the window.
‘Is it Phil?’
Rose shook her head.
‘Not this flu? You look feverish, love.’
‘I just can’t stand it.’ As she spoke her voice cracked. ‘I’ve got to get away from here.’ She wiped away sudden tears with the back of her hand.
‘Oh, love. Here. I’ve got that hanky you lent me.’
Lorraine pulled the embroidered hanky she’d borrowed out of her pocket.
Rose blew her nose hard and then held the cloth against her seeping eyes.
‘Shall I drive you home?’
Rose shook her head helplessly. ‘No. Phil’s still there. I don’t know what to do.’
‘If you need a break, go to see your GP and get signed off. Things always look different after you’ve had a rest.’
‘No one can help me,’ she whimpered.
‘I bet they can. Come and talk to me, hey?’
She shook her head dismissively but mumbled, ‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me. Oh God, we’re here.’
The bulk of the hospital had come into view on the crest of a hill – a Palladian mansion built of sooty yellow bricks in the philanthropic 1870s. Like a great ark it floated on an ocean of sulphurous fog, wakeful and bustling, rows of jaundiced lights 38showing at every window. Breathing in the bitter air, they climbed the steps to the entrance and stepped onto the main corridor.
A porter was manoeuvring a trolley bearing a patient so cadaverous that his skin was like mottled parchment. They both stepped aside to make way for a lad in torn trousers who limped along on a pair of crutches. Distracted and pale, Rose waved her goodbye with a bitter, ‘Time to plaster my fake smile on.’
Passing through the admin office, Lorraine arrived at the hospital administrator’s oak door, where the post meeting’s muffled voices reached her, sounding aggrieved.
Well, I suppose they can’t kill me, she thought grimly and tried to ease her way inside without making a sound.
Conservatism
Question 7: What this world needs is:
A. To build on the past and what works well
B. Uncertain
C. To create a more advanced and improved future
High score description (option A.): Respecting traditional values, nostalgia, looking to the past and the familiar.
Lorraine tiptoed around the edge of Norman’s office but ruined the effect by dropping her satchel. To her mortification the white bullet of a tampon tumbled out and rolled across the parquet floor. Doctor Strang and Mike McClung both spotted it and looked away. Chasing the object of shame into a corner, Lorraine whisked it into her pocket. God, if only she had the nerve to walk out and drive straight home again.
Norman Pilling, the administrator, was thankfully addressing her with his eyes characteristically closed.
‘Twenty-one minutes past nine. How can you reprimand your colleagues for lateness, Miss Quick, when your own timekeeping is so appalling?’
Suddenly Norman’s watery eyes opened and peered over the top of steel spectacles. Above him hung a portrait of the Queen looking equally disapproving.40
Lorraine could have recited the terms of the Employment Act, that bad weather was a mitigating circumstance for lateness, but had learnt never to answer back. The idea of the post meeting was to empty Norman’s in-tray into his team’s reluctant hands; a game of pass the parcel with the dreariest of forfeits. Now he pushed a bundle of heavy papers in her direction.
‘We were discussing the flu crisis. Be sure all staff avail themselves of the inoculation programme.’
She glanced through the bundle: pay rates for physios, health circulars and the inoculation bulletin. She rapidly scanned the reasons to have a flu jab and a phrase jumped out at her: ‘Prevent your family members from catching flu and missing school or work.’ Now that was surprisingly useful. Tuning back into the administrator’s speechifying, she assumed a pose of rapt attention.
‘Harvey Wright, Salford’s director of personnel, will be speaking at this afternoon’s meeting. He tells me he has extraordinary news.’
Doctor Strang grasped the arms of his chair as if about to launch himself at Norman. ‘Excuse me! What about my agenda item on this idiotic computerisation? I’ve told Rose Cavanagh to come along and brief us on all the disasters waiting to happen.’
Strang was head of general surgery and also the medical director, a man of forty with long hair, scruffy corduroys and scuffed shoes. He was said to be brilliant, but Lorraine only felt his presence as a series of toxic explosions she instinctively shrank away from.
An intense, bearded young man with eyes set too close together broke the silence. ‘The trouble is, Doctor Strang, contractors have already connected the cables. The computer suite is ready and waiting.’41
It was a rare contribution from Mike McClung, chief engineer, the loner of the group.
‘We need to get the medical records loaded,’ chipped in Raj Patel, the chief accountant. ‘Can’t have the ward clerks playing Space Invaders, eh?’
Lorraine made a point of not catching Raj’s impish eye. He had a habit of pulling ridiculous faces that had cost her some excruciating fits of laughter.
‘They may as well play games for all the sense those records make,’ snapped Doctor Strang.
‘Now, now.’ Norman raised a bony hand. ‘A compromise is needed. I see Rose outside. Fetch her, Lorraine.’
Even though she was sitting furthest from the door, Lorraine had to squeeze delicately past the rest of the team. It seemed incredible that only last year she had debated The Female Eunuch in a university tutorial and sworn never to bow and scrape to a man again.
The only other woman in the room, Chief Nurse Felicity Jardine, also remained resolute in blocking Lorraine’s way. Felicity had proved to be no sisterly ally to Lorraine. She had been bemused to find that the chief nurse was considered something of a sex bomb. Her green eyes were habitually amused but the joke was not generally shared with Lorraine. She wore an auburn Bonnie Tyler perm from which large plastic earrings peeped out. All her outfits had a deeply plunging neckline that revealed two cantilevered breasts and a glimpse of lacy bra. It fascinated Lorraine that men appeared half-stunned by her full-frontal approach and generally did as they were told.
Lorraine reached the door and passed Norman’s request on to Rose. ‘Yes, I can do my talk straight after Mr Wright’s presentation,’ Rose said, lingering in the doorway without enthusiasm. ‘Though I am having a flu jab at two o’clock. Or I could cancel it.’42
‘No, if you have an appointment you must keep it.’ Norman was always excessively firm on trivial decisions. ‘You must all set an example. Shall we say two-thirty prompt for your presentation, Rose? Very well, everyone.’
Keen to prevent the childcare disaster of Jasmine catching flu, Lorraine made straight for the phone in the admin office just outside and dialled the flu nurse.
‘A jab for me, please, Sister Ince. No, not pregnant or allergic to eggs. Ten to two. Just before Rose, then.’
Raj gestured to speak next.
‘Just a sec, Sister,’ Lorraine added. ‘Mr Patel wants a jab too. He might be pregnant though.’ She prodded Raj’s ballooning stomach.
The accountant pulled a comically affronted face and took the phone.
From nowhere Rose crept up behind her and said in a voice so quiet that no one else might hear, ‘Got a minute?’
Lorraine followed her a few yards down the corridor towards the boardroom.
‘Can I speak to you later, after all? You are sworn to keep confidences, aren’t you?’ Rose spoke in a breathless undertone. ‘I’ve got to tell someone about what’s going on.’
‘Course. What about after the meeting.’ She touched Rose’s arm.
‘Thanks a million. See you then.’
Rose disappeared and Lorraine followed in her wake. She was surprised to find Doctor Strang and Felicity huddled close behind her back. And there too was Mike McClung, waiting behind them like an abandoned child. For an instant she wondered if they might have overheard Rose’s anguished words.
Erratic Lifestyle
Question 8: I enjoy taking stimulants and doing wild things.
A. Often
B. Occasionally
C. Never
High score description (option A.): Undependability, thrill-seeking, recklessness, impulsivity.
A God Almighty hammering woke Rikki from the rags of a sleep he’d been clutching at. A fearsome voice thundered through the plywood door.
‘Open up! Where’s me fucking scratch, man?’
Rikki clung to the stained mattress, holding his breath.
‘I need five hundred notes off of you, pussy boy.’
Rikki’s arms and legs started shaking. To his horror the door started to move, bending beneath Buda’s fist. Jesus Christ, the door handle was turning. He braced himself for a lethal kicking, his toes squirming into the sheet.
Nothing happened. He swivelled his head around and this time saw his normal bedsit again. For fuck’s sake, the door lock had held tight. He was having the agonies, his eyes were seeing stuff that wasn’t really there.
‘I’ll be back, you little ponce. You better get my cash or say 44goodbye to them drums of yours.’
The footsteps receded. Rikki raised his eyes to the glittering heap of his drum kit. He had to keep hold of it. Pinned above it was a cut-and-paste poster of Electra Complex that he’d torn down after a gig. Course, he wasn’t in the picture himself, being the new and only lad in the band, but they would invite him pretty soon. Finally daring to move, he searched around his mattress but the only pill bottle he could find shook out empty. Just his fucking luck. He was going to have to get hold of some cash to keep his drums safe from Buda. Somehow. Anyhow. But first he needed to straighten up. He wiped warm liquid from his streaming eyes and nose. If he stayed here he’d die, either from a fit of the heebie-jeebies or on the end of Buda’s steel bootcaps. It was time to get up and go. Time to feed his fucking habit.
He was glad of the fog. Rattling along on the bus, the murk felt like a mysterious force concealing his presence from a giant suspicious eye that watched from the sky. He had cadged some downers and smoked some weed with Jerry, so at least the shakes had stopped. Still, he was glad that the fog hid him till he saw the hospital lights glowing yellow.
It was like returning home, that was how he felt as he limped through the double doors onto the main corridor. It was funny how his hip started to kill him just like the old days as he hobbled along the buffed lino, mimicking the downcast faces of genuine patients. The smell of disinfectant hadn’t changed, and never completely stifled the deeper stench of rot. Yet it was a comforting smell, one he knew as well as his own breath. He wondered if he could cadge a free night or two in a nice crisp bed if he kicked up a fuss in Casualty.
Then his luck turned. He was traversing a corridor punctuated by consulting rooms and waiting areas. There was that buzz of collective brainpower; the medics marching about 45looking hugely expert, even the clerical staff self-importantly wheeling trolleys of records about. He spotted a nurse with her back turned to her trolley. It was her drugs trolley, to be exact, a wheeled box of delights loaded up with top-class gear. Rikki stopped at a noticeboard and pretended to read the notices. The dim cow was simpering to a patient in pyjamas. From the corner of his eye he studied the packets and bottles peeping at him a few feet away. Come and get us, ready or not, they seemed to say.
He began walking, keeping his head down as he checked the time on his watch. A moment later he was directly beside the drug cart and in a flash had reached inside and transferred a big brown bottle and a plastic carton to the inside of his camouflage jacket. Keep walking mate, he told himself. Nice and steady does it.
In the gents he inspected his haul. Not bad. A carton of sleepers and sixteen dreamers. He leant back against the wall, slipped a few gritty morphine tabs into his mouth and swallowed their bitterness with saliva. He was feeling better already.
He found the canteen and had a cup of tea with piles of sugar, enjoying the school dinner clatter and wonky trays. It was as if a benevolent authority was keeping everyone comfortable, cooking their food and washing their dishes. Lighting a fag, he observed the staff closely, remembering that navy trousers meant physios, maroon was X-ray, green meant Occupational Health. The nursing sisters wore neat navy dresses and the ordinary nurses pale blue with those plasticky white hats. It was all coming back to him. He scanned the room for pharmacists but couldn’t pick them out from the medics and lab technicians. He’d have to get close enough to read those name badges.
It was hours till he had to get going for band practice. He picked up a copy of The Sun, and after that, a staff newsletter. 46He skimmed over charity donations, a fun run, plans for a new computer suite. His eyes strayed over an article about a new X-ray machine for Occupational Health. Beneath a blotchy photo was a caption. And names: Norman Pilling, Unit Administrator; Doctor Victor Strang, Medical Director; Mr Harvey Wright, Director of Personnel; Felicity Jardine, Chief Nurse; Mike McClung, Chief Engineer; Raj Patel, Chief Accountant; Sister Ince, Infection Control Nurse.
As he read, he was startled by that name he hadn’t seen in years. He stared at it and the job title beside it. It couldn’t be. But it was. The picture was one of those poor reprographed jobs, so all you could see were over-inked outlines on the cheap paper. He hunched over the table, hiding his face in his palms.
Disturbing scenes played in his head from when he had been eight years old. Of being alone. Unable to move. Staring into a mirror. His legs were fixed tight inside a contraption. It was like a scene from The Omen or something. He’d struggled and twisted, desperate to be free. He wanted to be himself again, at home, running and jumping and kicking a ball. He had looked up into the mirror again. His little boy eyes were bulging, his skin was shiny. He was scared. If he didn’t get free, he might stay like that for ever.
‘Give us a bit of room, mate!’ A patient in a wheelchair knocked into him, trying to get past with a loaded tray.
Rikki jerked backwards. He was struggling to take it in, that Diggers, the nickname everyone on the whole ward had used, worked here. That very special person who had got so close to him as a child. He remembered Diggers’ hand, professionally slick in a latex glove, stroking his face.
I’ve found you, he muttered to himself. Looking pretty well set up these days. I wonder if you still think about me? Well, I haven’t forgotten you, my friend.47
A couple of nurses at the next table were staring at him, speaking with lowered voices. So what if he looked like a loony, mumbling to himself? Reopening the newsletter, he looked for any more mentions of Diggers but found none. Finally, he reached the vacancies page at the back.
Wanted – General Porter
Must be flexible for variable shifts. Good rate of pay and overtime.
Closing date: Monday 21st February.
Apply to Lorraine Quick, Unit Personnel Department.
Just after eleven, Lorraine stretched her tense shoulders and looked up from the last of a series of difficult phone calls. Her assistant Edith’s earwigging presence meant she hadn’t yet rung the council about a new childminder. On an impulse she decided to head for the empty boardroom with her neglected paperwork and tackle it in peace.
All was silent on the admin corridor as Lorraine passed the closed flu clinic door. A handwritten sign announcing ‘Staff Flu Jabs. Take a seat and wait’ had been taped to the door. Underneath was scrawled ‘Back Soon’. Simply reading the words produced queasiness in Lorraine’s gut. Then she was past it. The important thing was to banish the flu jab from her mind.
The thick-carpeted boardroom was her favourite part of the hospital. Traces of Victorian Gothic remained: star-spangled lamps and heavy brass door furniture. It was magnificent but also rather sad. She settled down beneath a lovely old plaque displaying the motto ‘Caring Walls for Those in Need’. It was a shame about the ugly posters sellotaped over the oak panelling: ‘Rabies: Don’t hesitate. Shoot!’ and NUPE’s demand for a ‘12% Pay Rise for All Staff.’
She found the phone and dialled 9 for an outside line.48
‘Is that Child Services? I need a list of childminders.’ While she waited she chewed on a dried-up sandwich left over from an early morning meeting.
‘Gone to dinner? So how long do you get for dinner at the council?’
She crashed down the phone and began to scrutinise the applications for the junior doctors’ rotation scheme. In the blissful silence she even dared to congratulate herself on arranging her day rather well. After Harvey arrived she need only sit back through a few presentations before her chat with Rose. For a moment she recalled Rose’s talk of resignation, her high emotion, her need to confide. It had to be that trouble with Phil. Whatever it was, she would try to be a decent friend. Then she could finally head home.
Rikki hadn’t even twigged that this was Lorraine’s hospital. Jesus. Another one who’d got a fancy job title, another lucky bugger who’d had everything dropped in their lap. Lighting another fag, he leant back, feeling the morphine envelop him like a comfort blanket. When he felt like this, he could do anything.
