Sue for Mercy - Veronica Heley Page 0,5

he feared I was pregnant. By the time the trouble had been traced to some pills I’d been taking for slimming purposes, he’d turned his eyes elsewhere. I didn’t particularly want to think about him. I wished I hadn’t come.

Automatically my hand moved to the box of chocolates on the bed, and in passing touched Charles’ hand. It was almost accidental, but not quite. I think I’d wanted to show the girl across the ward that she was not the only one to be able to lay claim to a man. I took my hand away, and was amazed to see Charles open his own hand, and leave it there, palm uppermost on the coverlet. I stared at it, wondering if he meant some insult by the gesture, and then placed my hand squarely on his, feeling that it served me right if he did. His fingers folded firmly over mine. His hand was too warm; he would be running a temperature, no doubt. Probably didn’t even know what he was doing. Nevertheless, I didn’t attempt to remove my hand.

My eyes went to the basket of fruit once more, and I wondered if his girlfriend had sent it to him. He was accepting me as a substitute for her, no doubt. I started on a sigh, and then controlled it so as not to disturb him. The odd thing was that now everyone could see that I, plain Sue was holding the hand of an exceedingly good-looking man, I didn’t feel the need to look around and check that they had registered the fact. I was quite content to sit there and look at Charles and at our linked hands, and just occasionally, at my watch.

“We used to call her Black-eyed Susan,” he said conversationally, without warning. His eyes were still closed, but he was talking to me and not to himself. “And then, when she’d lost most of her paint we used to call her just Sue. She was David’s doll, really, that he bought in a jumble sale, but he didn’t mind us joining in his games. She was the Princess who had to be rescued from the Dragon, and the Lady of Shalott when we played down by the river, and Maid Marian and even Peter Pan when David made a harness for her so that she could fly. Ronald said she was better than a girl to play with, because she didn’t answer back.”

“All boys?” I prompted. “No girls?”

“Three boys — David’s the eldest, then Ronald and me. No girls. Poor Dad — he did so want a girl. But Mother wouldn’t have liked girls, not really.”

I made a note of that fact that he called his mother “Mother”, and his father “Dad”. Interesting. There was a reddened band of skin round his wrist that was interesting, too. He fell silent, and I thought he’d gone to sleep. The hands of my watch crept round far too fast. At five to eight I stood up with some reluctance, and withdrew my hand. His head had slanted towards me on the pillow. I thought he’d dozed off, but when I moved, he jerked his eyelids open again.

“I must go,” I said. “But I’ll come back and bring those things for you tomorrow.”

He nodded fractionally and I left, quite forgetting my box of chocolates. I stopped on the way out to check on the visiting hours for the following day. I was going to be late for my evening class, but who cared?

*

Bessie could hardly wait for the lunch hour to receive my report, and was annoyed that I said I had to rush my food.

“Got to dash to collect my winter coat,” I explained, refusing a pudding. “So that I can go to his landlady’s before I go to see him again.” I told her the story he’d given me, and was amused to see that she accepted his explanation of temporary amnesia.

“It must have been one helluva party,” she mused. “I expect they all got tight, tried to do something silly, this lad of yours got hurt, they panicked, and were taking him home when the car crashed and they left him for someone else to pick up.”

“He’s not that young,” I said, scraping my plate. “Late twenties? A bit late for that sort of wild party. And he’s got red marks round his wrists as if he’d been tied up at some point. I didn’t notice them when I found him, but I looked specially