CHAPTER 66
I went into the kitchen a little later, to help Naomi clear some of the debris from the cheese plate she had insisted on bringing out, and the coffee, and the biscuits, and all the other snacks she had somehow conjured up. Kate followed me, and I realised Ginny must have had that chat.

She perched against a work surface and looked at a number of things around the kitchen before bringing her eyes back to mine.

“It’s a long story, Annie, and not a nice one. Ginny spoke to me, and I’ve had a word with Sal…so if you want to know…”

“Whatever it is, if it upsets you, Kate, you can leave it”

Her gaze was on a calendar attached to the fridge, “No, Annie, it needs airing. It will just fester otherwise. Sally and I go back a long, long way, right back to when I first left medical school.”

My mind was adding up the facts frantically. “So, Sally is, you know…does Stewie know?”

She laughed, and there was an edge to it, “So, so wrong, Annie, she’s like you and Naomi, and Steph, so straight you could draw lines with her. No…no, it was her sister I loved, Amy”

She looked away again, and I saw Ginny at the kitchen door, looking concerned. As if she was telepathic, Kate just reached behind her back for the other woman’s hand, and Ginny stepped in to take it.

“I can smell you when you are about, love. I’m just telling her about Amy”

She paused again, and I could see the tears hanging ready to fall. “We saw her in you, you know, it was her we were talking about when we made that promise. No more…She followed Sally into medicine, almost a family trade, you know…and we met at college and she was so beautiful, hair to shame Steph and a smile to melt your heart, and we danced round each other, both of us unsure if the other was singing the same song, and then I got so frustrated and just asked her…and she said that it was the best news she had ever had, and…and it was indeed wonderful.

“She was everything to me, back then. Sounds trite, easy, but it was true. As vital as breathing, as food.”

Ginny was cradling her then, and the tears were no longer hanging but flowing. “It was when their mother went, that’s when it started. She spent a lot of time with the chaplain, but that wasn’t enough, and she decided to go all Pentecostal on me. I could spend hours telling you…but it would be needless pain, and I had enough of that at the time”

I nodded. “And the religion sort of spoiled her view of you?”

“Ha. That was what we thought, and it was some months before we knew the truth, and it wasn’t the religion, but it was, in a way…”

There was a long pause as she gathered herself, Ginny kneading her shoulders and kissing the top of her head. Kate took a shuddering breath.

“We missed the early symptoms, because we all thought she had just got religion after her mum went, and by the time we understood that she wasn’t just praying to her god but actually listening to him speak to her it was too late to do anything other than medicate her. They played with all the usual stuff, the dopamine, the serotonin, and then one day she didn’t show for breakfast at the hospital, and she had gone out of a toilet window.”

Kate looked straight at me. “She missed her god, she missed his little chats, and what we thought of as letting her mind clear itself she saw as keeping her away from her saviour. Yeah, exactly, barking mad, truly she was, and I loved her, and she was gone, and we didn’t know where until her loving god told her that stepping off the platform at Oxford Circus was the quickest way to join him, and she fucked up some poor tube driver for life”

Her knuckles were white where she held Ginny’s hand. “That was what we saw in you, Annie, the same end but just by another route, and you have no idea how much we care about you. No more, we said, and this time we got it right. It’s just…just that every time I see you smile, now, I see Amy’s, and it tears me apart. Can you understand that?”

I went to her and joined the hug with Ginny. “I have Eric, and I know what you are going to say, that she had you, and you failed her, so listen. I may be mad by all sorts of standards, but I know who I am, and I can see who others are. Amy couldn’t, she was lost as soon as she ran off, so love couldn’t be enough, because she couldn’t hear it. I can, I heard your wife every night till I put ear plugs in”

That was almost a chuckle, and then my Kate, so self-controlled in comparison to the extrovert she lived with, my Kate broke down completely as I held her. This was clearly something that had been building for some time, and I felt guilty at the fact that I was the most likely cause of her distress. After a minute or two I realised that Sally was at the door, her face drawn. She cocked her head to one side.

“It would have been her birthday in a fortnight. These things build up their own life, if you let them, just like your own issues, Annie”

She looked at Kate, a softness back in her gaze. “You were so good for her, Katie, you still care, you always did. Nothing to be ashamed of, it’s what makes you such a good doctor. Now, I think it is time to clean some faces before we go back out. Annie, I suggest you look in a mirror, and change your mascara”

I hadn’t even noticed my own tears.

Eventually, we ended up spread across the two houses, Ginny and Kate taking the other spare bedroom at the Woodriuffs’ while Sally and her husband took a room at the Woods’. The others took taxis back, apart from Den and Kirsty, who Steph provided with sleeping bags and a space on the living room floor. It was almost like being students at some drunken sleepover. I lay next to Eric in the dark that night thinking about poor Amy, and of course Eric noticed.

“Penny for them?”

I snuggled into him, smelling him directly, rather than his used clothing.

“Can’t really say, love, just feeling a bit, I don’t know, lost? Lots of stuff going on, and it’s been a big few days, aye, and I am realising how lucky I am. We live in quite a sheltered world, don’t we?”

“What, with your job?”

“Yeah, even with my job, it’s all vicarious, I see the victims but I am raised above it, stood outside it, and sometimes I am so fucking glad of that. What I’ve seen, what I dream about, it all actually happened to other people"

“Only if you think being rammed off your bike happened to somebody else, love.”

“Yeah, but in the end it was a nothing, aye, I got a couple of bumps, and back at work. No, with all the stuff recently, that little girl and all, I am counting some blessings for once rather than just saying “woe is me”, thinking I ought to look to other folk’s worries rather than wallow in my own”

Eric snorted. “You do talk some bollocks at times, Annie. Half your problems have come from spending all your time worrying about everything from your mates to whatever random stranger has just been dragged in spitting snot and tears after meeting Kirsty. You’d given up on you, you were so worried about him or her or them. You deserve some ‘you-time, and there are traditional ways for women to do that”

“Chocolate? Beer? Chocolate and beer?”

“You are perverse, woman. No, I was thinking more traditional stuff. This will sound odd, but perhaps a haircut? Not a bloke thing, just take that mop you’ve been growing and perhaps girlify it a little? I watch you, you know”

“What, stare at my chest? I know”

“No, I watch you in strange places, in public. You are getting there, getting the confidence, relaxing, yeah, but there’s always that little tic when you go somewhere new, or public, where you wobble a bit. Even last night, where everyone knew you”

“All the musicians didn’t”

“They aren’t people, musicians are different. No, I watched you when you went to the ladies’, and there was that hesitation step, that “can I get away with this?” dance, before you went in. I just thought, now Adam is being given his goodbyes, you might want to lift yourself up a bit.”

“All a bit of a cliché, aye? Girl goes to hairdresser’s…”

“And what is wrong with that? I am expecting a letter tomorrow, but as I am not going to be at my place I might just call in and ask directly. If we get you somewhere to do some hedge trimming, I can do the hospital run, and if I have managed to get the job we can continue round the agents again. I am getting sick of commuting down here. Now, can you tell me what was going on with Kate and Sally, or is that something you can’t talk about?”

“Sorry, love, it’s all their business, aye? I’ll tell you if I can, but not just now.”

I slipped down a little and inhaled him, the hairs of his chest tickling my nose. He was right, of course. I did need to think about myself for a bit, but to do that I had to think about the others. I fell asleep, cuddled against him, realising that even after Greg, and Dad, I had still ended up doing what I had dreamed of, still made my way into nursing.