The Night Ferry (5 page)

I didn’t know Miss Flower wel but I think she got me, you know. A skinny Indian girl with braces and glasses doesn’t take on the school bul y without a good reason. She sat with me in the infirmary as I spat blood into a bowl. Two front teeth had been ripped out of the wire braces and were trapped in the twisted metal.

I had a towel around my neck and another across my lap. I don’t know where they took Donavon. Miss Flower held an ice pack to my mouth.

“You want to tel me why?”

I shook my head.

“Wel , I don’t doubt he deserved it but you wil have to give a reason.”

I didn’t answer.

She sighed. “OK, wel , it can wait. First you need a clean uniform. There might be one in lost property. Let’s clean up before your parents arrive.”

“I want to go back to class,” I lisped.

“First you need to get those teeth fixed, dear.”

Finding an emergency dentist on the NHS normal y meant promising your firstborn to the church but I had family connections. My uncle Sandhu has a dental practice in Ealing. (He’s not real y my uncle, but every older Asian who knew my family was referred to as uncle or aunt.) Uncle Sandhu had fitted my braces “at cost.” Bada was so pleased that he would make me smile for visitors, showing off my teeth.

Mama rang my sister-in-law Nazeem and the two of them caught a minicab to the school. Nazeem had the twins and was pregnant again. I was whisked off to Uncle Sandhu who dismantled my braces and took photographs of my teeth. I looked six years old again and had a lisp.

The next morning was fresh and bright and possessed of an innocence so pristine it made a lie of the previous day. Cate didn’t come to school. She stayed away for two weeks until we broke for the summer holidays. Miss Flower said she had pleurisy.

Sucking on my glued teeth, I went back to my classes. People treated me differently. Something had happened that day. The scales had fal en from my eyes; the earth had rotated the required number of times and I said goodbye to childhood.

Donavon was expel ed from Oaklands. He joined the army, the Parachute Regiment, just in time for Bosnia. Other wars would turn up soon enough. Bradley left during the holidays and became an apprentice boilermaker. I stil see him occasional y, pushing his kids on the swings on Bethnal Green.

Nobody ever mentioned what happened to Cate. Only I knew. I don’t think she even told her parents—certainly not her father. Digital penetration isn’t classified as rape because the law differentiates between a penis and a finger, or fist, or bottle. I don’t think it should, but that’s an argument for fancy defense lawyers.

People were nicer to me after my fight with Donavon. They acknowledged my existence. I was no longer just “the runner” I had a name. One of my teeth took root again. The other turned yel ow and Uncle Sandhu had to replace it with a false one.

During the holidays I had a phone cal from Cate. I don’t know how she found my number.

“I thought maybe you might like to catch a movie.”

“You mean, you and me?”

“We could see
Pretty Woman
. Unless you’ve already seen it. I’ve been three times but I could go again.” She kept talking. I had never heard her sound nervous.

“My mother won’t let me see
Pretty Woman
,” I explained. “She says it’s about a whore.”

I protested that Julia Roberts is a hooker with a heart, which only got me into trouble. Apparently, it was OK for her to use the term “whore” but I wasn’t al owed to say “hooker.” In the end we went to see
Ghost
with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore.

Cate didn’t say anything about Donavon. She was stil beautiful, stil clear-skinned, stil wearing a short skirt. Sitting in the darkness, our shoulders touched and her fingers found mine.

She squeezed my hand. I squeezed hers.

And that was the start of it. Like Siamese twins, we were. Salt and pepper, Miss Flower cal ed us but I preferred “milk and cookies,” which was Mr. Nelson’s description. He was American and taught biology and protested when people said it was the easiest of the science electives.

Through school and then university Cate and I were best friends. I loved her. Not in a sexual way, although I don’t think I understood the difference at fourteen.

Cate claimed she could predict the future. She would map out our paths, which included careers, boyfriends, weddings, husbands and children. She could even make herself miserable by imagining that our friendship would be over one day.

“I have never had a friend like you and I never shal again. Never ever.”

I was embarrassed.

The other thing she said was this: “I am going to have lots of babies because they wil love me and never leave me.” I don’t know why she talked like this. She treated love and friendship like a smal creature trapped in a blizzard, fighting for survival. Maybe she knew something then that I didn’t.

5

Another morning. The sun is shining somewhere. I can see blue sky bunched between buildings and a construction crane etched in charcoal against the light. I cannot say how many days have passed since the accident—four or fourteen. Colors are the same—the air, the trees, the buildings—nothing has changed.

I have been to the hospital every day, avoiding the waiting room and Cate’s family. I sit in the cafeteria or wander the corridors, trying to draw comfort from the technology and the smiles of the staff.

Cate is in a medical y induced coma. Machines are helping her to breathe. According to the hospital bul etin she suffered a perforated lung, a broken back and multiple fractures to both her legs. The back of her skul was pulverized but two operations have stopped the bleeding.

I spoke to the neurosurgeon yesterday. He said the coma was a good thing. Cate’s body had shut down and was trying to repair itself.

“What about brain damage?” I asked him.

He toyed with his stethoscope and wouldn’t look me in the eye. “The human brain is the most perfectly designed piece of equipment in the known universe,” he explained.

“Unfortunately, it is not designed to withstand a ton of metal of high speed.”

“Which means?”

“We classify severe head injury as a coma score of eight or less. Mrs. Beaumont has a score of four. It is a
very
severe head injury.” At eleven o’clock the ICU posts another bul etin. Cate’s condition hasn’t changed. I bump into Jarrod in the cafeteria and we drink coffee and talk about everyday incidental things: jobs and families, the price of eggs, the frailty of modern paper bags. The conversation is punctuated by long pauses as though silence has become part of the language.

“The doctors say she was never pregnant,” he says. “She didn’t
lose
the baby. There was no miscarriage or termination. Mum and Dad are beside themselves. They don’t know what to think.”

“She must have had a reason.”

“Yeah, wel , I can’t think of one.” A trickle of air from the ceiling vents ruffles his hair.

“Do you think Felix knew?”

“I guess. How do you keep a secret like that from your husband?” He glances at his watch. “Have you been to see her?”

“No.”

“Come on.”

Jarrod leads me upstairs to the intensive care unit, along painful y white corridors that al look the same. Only two visitors per patient are al owed in the ICU. Masks must be worn and hands must be scrubbed with disinfectant.

Jarrod isn’t coming with me. “There’s someone already with her,” he says, adding as an afterthought, “She won’t bite.” My stomach drops. It’s too late to back out.

The curtains are open and daylight casts a square on the floor. Mrs. El iot in her wheelchair is trapped in the light like a hologram, her skin as pale and fine as white china.

Cate lies beside her, hostage to a tangle of tubing, plasma bags and stainless steel. Needles are driven into her veins and her head is swathed in bandages. Monitors and machines blink and buzz, reducing her existence to a digital computer game.

I want her to wake now. I want her eyes to open and for her to pluck away the breathing tube like a strand of hair caught in the corner of her mouth.

Wordlessly, Mrs. El iot points to a chair beside the bed. “The last time I watched my daughter sleeping she was eight years old. She had come down with pneumonia. I think she caught it at one of those public swimming pools. Every time she coughed it sounded like someone drowning on dry land.” I reach across the marble sheets and take Cate’s fingers in mine. I can feel her mother’s eyes upon me. A cold scrutiny. She does not want me here.

I remember Mrs. El iot when she could stil walk—a tal , thin woman who always offered Cate her cheek to kiss so as not to smudge her lipstick. She used to be an actress who did mainly TV commercials and was always impeccably made-up, as though perpetual y ready for her close-up. Of course, that was before she suffered a stroke that paralyzed her down her right side. Now one eyelid droops and no amount of makeup can hide the nerve damage around her mouth.

In a whisper, she asks, “Why would she lie about the baby?”

“I don’t know. She was coming to see me. She said she had done something foolish and that someone wanted to take her baby.”

“What baby? She was never pregnant. Never! Now they say her pelvis is so badly shattered that even if she survives she’l never be able to carry a baby.” Something shudders inside me. A déjà vu from another hospital and a different time, when
my
bones were being mended. A price is paid with every surgery.

Mrs. El iot clutches a cushion to her chest. “Why would she do this? Why would she lie to us?”

There is no warmth in her voice, only accusation. She feels betrayed. Embarrassed. What wil she tel the neighbors? I feel like lashing out and defending Cate, who deserves more

than this. Instead I close my eyes and listen to the wind washing over the rooftops and the electronic beeping of the machines.

How did she do it—maintain such a lie for weeks and months? It must have haunted her. A part of me is strangely envious. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted something
that
much, not even Olympic medals. When I missed out on the team for the Sydney Games I cried on the edge of the track but they were tears of frustration rather than disappointment. The girl who took my place
wanted
it more.

I know that I shouldn’t compare Olympic selection with motherhood. Perhaps my opinions are clouded by the medical reality of a patched pelvis and a reinforced spine that can never withstand the trials of pregnancy and labor. Wanting children is a dangerous ambition for me.

Squeezing Cate’s hand, I hope she knows I’m here. For years I wanted her to cal , to be friends again, to need me. And just when it final y happened, she’s been snatched away like a half-finished question. I have to find out what she wanted. I have to understand why.

Euston Traffic Garage is in Drummond Crescent, tucked between Euston Station and the British Library. The spire of Saint Aloysius Church rises above it like a rocket on a launchpad.

The Col ision Investigation Unit is an odd place, a mixture of high-tech gadgetry and old-fashioned garage, with hoists, grease traps and machine tools. This is where they do the vehicular equivalents of autopsies and the process is much the same. Bodies are opened, dismantled, weighed and measured.

The duty officer, a roly-poly sergeant in overal s, peers up from the twisted front end of a car. “Can I help you?” I introduce myself, showing him my badge. “There was a traffic accident on Friday night on Old Bethnal Green Road. A couple were knocked down.”

“Yeah, I looked at that one.” He wipes his hands on a rag and tucks it back into his pocket.

“One of them is a friend of mine.”

“She stil alive?”

“Yes.”

“Lucky.”

“How far are you with the investigation?”

“Finished. Just got to write it up.”

“What do you think happened?”

“Thought it was pretty obvious. Your friend and her husband tried to tackle a minicab.” He doesn’t mean to sound cal ous. It’s just his way. “Maybe the driver could’ve put the brakes on a bit sooner. Sometimes you can be unlucky. Choose the wrong moment to check your mirrors and that fraction of a second comes off your reaction time. Might’ve made a difference.

Might not. We’l never know.”

“So you’re not going to charge him?”

“What with?”

“Dangerous driving, negligence, there must be something.”

“He was licensed, insured, registered and roadworthy—I got nothing on this guy.”

“He was traveling too fast.”

“He says they stepped out in front of him. He couldn’t stop.”

“Did you examine the car?”

“At the scene.”

“Where is it now?”

He sighs. “Let me explain the facts of life to you, Detective Constable. You see that yard out there?” He motions to an open rol er door leading to a wal ed yard. “There are sixty-eight vehicles—every one of them involved in a serious accident. We have thirteen reports due for the coroner, two dozen submissions for criminal trials and I spend half my time in the witness box and the other half up to me elbows in motor oil and blood. There are no
good
traffic accidents but from my point of view the one on Friday night was better than most because it was simple—sad, but simple. They stepped out from between parked cars. The driver couldn’t stop in time. End of story.” The genial curiosity on his face has vanished. “We checked the brakes. We checked his license. We checked his driving record. We checked his blood alcohol. We took a statement at the scene and let the poor guy go home. Sometimes an accident is just an accident. If you have evidence to the contrary, hand it over. Otherwise, I’d appreciate if you let me get on with my job.”