BooksBarbecue
Back A Change of Circumstance Save as PDF
Chapters (67)
  1. Cover
  2. One
  3. Two
  4. Three
  5. Four
  6. Five
  7. Six
  8. Seven
  9. Eight
  10. Nine
  11. Ten
  12. Eleven
  13. Twelve
  14. Thirteen
  15. Fourteen
  16. Fifteen
  17. Sixteen
  18. Seventeen
  19. Eighteen
  20. Nineteen
  21. Twenty
  22. Twenty-One
  23. Twenty-Two
  24. Twenty-Three
  25. Twenty-Four
  26. Twenty-Five
  27. Twenty-Six
  28. Twenty-Seven
  29. Twenty-Eight
  30. Twenty-Nine
  31. Thirty
  32. Thirty-One
  33. Thirty-Two
  34. Thirty-Three
  35. Thirty-Four
  36. Thirty-Five
  37. Thirty-Six
  38. Thirty-Seven
  39. Thirty-Eight
  40. Thirty-Nine
  41. Forty
  42. Forty-One
  43. Forty-Two
  44. Forty-Three
  45. Forty-Four
  46. Forty-Five
  47. Forty-Six
  48. Forty-Seven
  49. Forty-Eight
  50. Forty-Nine
  51. Fifty
  52. Fifty-One
  53. Fifty-Two
  54. Fifty-Three
  55. Fifty-Four
  56. Fifty-Five
  57. Fifty-Six
  58. Fifty-Seven
  59. Fifty-Eight
  60. Fifty-Nine
  61. Sixty
  62. Sixty-One
  63. Sixty-Two
  64. Sixty-Three
  65. Sixty-Four
  66. Sixty-Five
  67. Sixty-Six

‘I have a horrible feeling I’m going to.’ He got up. ‘Have you thought any more of what I said about me moving?’

‘Well, I’ve hardly had time or headspace. I didn’t know my thoughts were urgent.’

Her brother shrugged and went out into the kitchen. He wasn’t going to wait for them to call him.

He hadn’t expected to get much more detail beyond the girl’s name and address.

‘Is it one for us?’

‘Don’t know at this stage, guv, but probably not. Looks like a suicide. Parents are at the hospital.’

‘Can you try and get a report from the HEMS? We need to be told now if they think there’s anything for us.’

‘Will do. I’ll call you. Do you want a bod posted at the house? Nobody’s there at the moment, but apparently a neighbour is keeping an eye.’

‘Have we got someone at the hospital just in case?’

‘We had but she’s had to leave, it’s kicked off big time at the Moon Cat Club, they called for all the backup we can send.’

Thirty-Eight

The emergency area to which Olivia had first been taken was out of bounds to them, once they had seen her briefly and been allowed to kiss her forehead, and the space was already crowded with a frightening number of people, each doing a separate job while working as a team, a consultant calling out instructions among trolleys, wires, poles on wheels, instruments, dials, machines beeping and blinking.

To Greta every word was in a foreign language and the sounds made a terrible, tuneless music.

‘I’m sorry, I have to ask you to leave here now but someone will show you to the relatives’ room.’

Instead, they stood outside in the corridor under the fluorescent lights that drained their faces of all colour and people went quickly past on screeching shoes and then other people, going the other way, and no one noticed them, so that after a few minutes Greta knew that she was invisible, she was not here, not in a hospital corridor, because what she had seen she had not seen and what had happened had not happened. Nothing had happened, there had been no opening of the front door, no seeing a body suspended, the body of Olivia, her daughter, and no screams, no cries, no neighbour, no blue lights, sirens, people in green carrying huge nylon bags, no deafening helicopter right overhead. No phone call to Jeff nor a terrible, unimaginable, lifting, swaying, swooping journey across the sky, no nausea, no weird sensation of landing on the ground and, after that, no Olivia with a mask over her face and pads and wires and tubes attached to her slight body. None of it. Nothing. There had been nothing.

A man walked past quickly, pushing a trolley and tutted them out of the way.