BooksBarbecue
Back What You Did Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. TITLE PAGE
  2. COPYRIGHT PAGE
  3. CONTENTS
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. Chapter Nine
  14. Chapter Ten
  15. Chapter Eleven
  16. Chapter Twelve
  17. Chapter Thirteen
  18. Chapter Fourteen
  19. Chapter Fifteen
  20. Chapter Sixteen
  21. Chapter Seventeen
  22. Chapter Eighteen
  23. Chapter Nineteen
  24. Chapter Twenty
  25. Chapter Twenty-One
  26. Chapter Twenty-Two
  27. Chapter Twenty-Three
  28. Chapter Twenty-Four
  29. Chapter Twenty-Five
  30. Chapter Twenty-Six
  31. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  32. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  33. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  34. Chapter Thirty
  35. Chapter Thirty-One
  36. Chapter Thirty-Two
  37. Chapter Thirty-Three
  38. Chapter Thirty-Four
  39. Chapter Thirty-Five
  40. Chapter Thirty-Six
  41. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  42. Epilogue
  43. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  44. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

He directed me calmly back to Reception, but then he turned and I saw him dash – sprint, really – to where Mike was. I saw his face change. And I remained standing where I was, unnoticed, as seconds later a whole team rushed out of the cubicle pushing a bed with Mike on it. Someone was holding an IV bag. Someone was on the cart with him, pumping at his chest. And I could see they all were spattered in blood. Mike’s blood, all over the scrubs of the nurse running beside him, calling out codes and numbers, and the person on his chest, and the one with the IV. Mike himself I could barely see. He seemed shrunken, grey, his face settled with the awful stillness of stone. As I watched they swept him away, down the corridor and into the bowels of the hospital. I heard a loud sob, and turned to see Cassie standing behind me, watching her father wheeled away, unconscious.

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

Bill took Cassie home. He said he’d get Benji from school, and feed him too: ‘Though I don’t know what I can make. Does he like soused herring?’ I was so grateful. I was already trying to imagine in my head how I could thank him, and failing. Karen would normally have done these things. It was her who’d come when I was having Benji, when my father finally died and I had to spend a week at my mother’s, when Mike broke his ankle running and I was back and forth to hospital for three days. I wondered where she was and what she was doing. I imagined her in a flat maybe, with the kind of scuffed and bland furniture you found in cheap hotels. We’d helped women get into them from time to time. Now it was someone I knew going through this. I still couldn’t take it in. Karen accusing Mike. Jake stabbing Mike. I remembered the little boy who’d throw his arms round me. I love you, Auntie Ali. The way he’d sat at the table and cried, so quietly, when I told him we were moving away. It was never really the same after that. I saw him running at us, the knife flashing, Cassie in his path. My head was twisted, full of blood and lies and screams. I told myself I just had to get through this. Mike just had to survive, and then we’d sort it all out.

One breath at a time.

DC Devine turned up at some point, still in his suit. He looked neat and fresh, whereas I could smell my own body, sweaty and terrified, a smear of blood on my arm that I hadn’t washed off. I should have told Cassie to take her shirt off and soak it. He sat down beside me in the waiting room. ‘Have you eaten anything today?’