Sue for Mercy - Veronica Heley Page 0,4

of concussion, apparently. Sometimes you don’t remember what happened just before you got hit on the head. Sometimes you forget just a few minutes, sometimes a few hours. They say the memory usually returns after a while. I seem to have forgotten three days. Tell me, though — is the car badly damaged?”

“The MGB is yours? One wing crumpled against a wall. It’s not bad. I suppose the police will have towed it away and you’ll have to ask them to let you have it back.”

His mouth and eyes contracted. “Drunk in charge. Of course.”

“But you weren’t...”

“Technically, I was.”

He’d slipped up, there. If he knew he hadn’t been driving, then he wasn’t suffering from amnesia, and he did know what he’d been doing since last Friday night. I hesitated, and then decided he wasn’t well enough for me to press the matter.

His eyelids were shut. I sat back in my chair and looked around. There was a pleasant hum of voices in the ward, men and women chatting and arguing and ribbing each other. A huge television set was precariously perched on a shelf across the far corner of the ward, and there were stiff vases of flowers set on tables spaced at intervals down the middle of the room. I looked at my watch and wondered if I had time for a cup of coffee and a couple of doughnuts at the Institute if I left straight away. On the other hand, it was pleasant to sit beside such a very good-looking man as his sole visitor. Anyone glancing down the ward casually — just scanning the beds — would think that I had a right to be there, and that we knew each other. The idea didn’t displease me.

I studied him. He was older than I had thought at first, maybe twenty-eight or nine. His eyes flickered open and remained at half mast. I indicated the basket of fruit, still in its red cellophane wrapping.

“Did your landlady bring that in for you?”

Vivacity returned to his face and voice for a moment. “Mrs. Burroughs’s nickname is The Adding Machine. She believes in three references, a month’s rent in advance, no smoking, drinking or visitors of the opposite sex, and that Charity Begins at Home. I’ll probably have to clear out and find somewhere else to live after this.”

“But you’ll need one or two things while you’re in here.” Someone had shaved him, but he wore hospital pyjamas. “What about pyjamas, shaving things... surely she must...?”

“I doubt it. My boss, Mr. Brenner, would get them for me, but he left today for the Aegean. He couldn’t delay his departure, and he’ll be away a minimum of two weeks, maybe longer.”

“I’ll get them for you,” I said, and then flushed, realising how I’d risked a snub.

“Would you?” He wasn’t going to snub me; he was surprised, but delighted. “No — why should you?”

“I don’t mind. That is — if it’s not too far away, and your landlady wouldn’t mind?”

“Egerton Gardens, Number 10. Just off the Common. She’s always there in the evenings, but if you were to phone first...”

“All right, then. I’ll do it!” What a pleasure it was to do something for someone else! He was smiling, too, as his eyelids quivered shut again.

“You did say your name was Sue, didn’t you? Mine’s Charles — Charles Ashton. Remind me to thank you properly some time for saving my life twice over.”

“Oh, that!” I don’t think he heard me. His eyelids were fast shut. There was a slight mark at the corner of his mouth, but otherwise his face hadn’t been touched. I wondered why. I shifted in my seat, and at once his eyelids jumped. It was only half past seven, and it would take me just five minutes to get to the Institute for my evening class. I made myself comfortable in my chair.

A young woman across the ward leaned over and embraced a patient; he held her tightly and returned her kiss. She straightened up, laughing and pushed her hair back into place, glancing around with a half-guilty, half-satisfied expression to see if anyone had noticed. She caught my eye on her. I looked down, thinking how embarrassed I would have felt if I had been caught kissing someone in public like that, and then remembered that two years ago I had thought nothing of greeting Rob in just such a way. Why not? We’d spoken of marriage, we’d made love... and then I’d missed a period and