35
T he hospital had attempted parking charges, and quickly changed its mind when confronted with the evidence that adding parking wardens to areas with limited public transport and ill and stressed-out people was having profound negative effects on the overall health profile of its base, so had reversed its policy lickety-spit.
The new car park, however, was about a kilometre from the actual hospital building, and everyone who worked on site covered their ten thousand steps in corridors alone, so it was still doing them some good.
Unusually, Lish, Janey and Amsan meet up at the same time, closely followed by Owen.
‘Unbelievable,’ he is muttering in the way people do when they pretend they are talking to themselves but they really want you to ask what’s wrong.
‘What’s wrong, Owen?’ says Lish, who is, as usual, the soul of kindness.
‘I don’t get it,’ says Owen, holding up his phone. ‘My fax parts person has just gone out of business.’
‘Is it because faxes are Not a Thing?’ enquires Amsan, not as pleasantly as Lish.
‘That’s weird,’ says Owen. ‘Because they’re how we run this hospital?’ He strokes his tiny beard.
Amsan looks at his black beaten-up Honda, with heavy metal stickers all over it. ‘Do you own that car?’ she says.
‘Yeah,’ says Owen sarcastically. ‘It’s a sweet ride.’
‘Are you single?’
‘Amsan!’ whispers Janey.
‘How’s Essie doing?’ says Lish as they reach the rotating door.
‘Good, I think,’ says Janey. ‘She’s at Lowell’s all the time now.’
Lish wrinkles her nose. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Oh, no, it’s good for her. And she’s still working on the houses – I think if she project manages this successfully they might cut her in on the deal or something.’
‘What is the deal?’ says Lish. ‘I don’t understand.’
Janey shrugs. ‘I think Dwight gives them his money and the properties and they sell them for lots more than he’d get otherwise.’
‘Who to, though?’
‘Investors.’
‘Well, that’s no use, is it? Not to the local community.’
‘It puts money back into the community?’ says Janey, trying to defend Essie. ‘Dwight makes money, and the houses might be for rent . . . ?’
Lish sniffs. ‘Well, I don’t understand business. But I understand we can’t find anywhere in town to move to.’
They want to move so Johnson doesn’t have to drive everywhere and can get about on foot now his recovery is starting in earnest. It does him good to have an incentive to walk about the place.
Also, if she’s in town more, Lish can spend even more time with her children and grandchildren than she already does.
‘She’s heading back to Edinburgh,’ says Janey. ‘She’s got an interview for a part-time job there too. She’s hoping to do both.’
‘There’s no stopping your girl,’ says Lish.
‘Well, that’s true enough,’ says Janey.
‘At least she’s getting on. She’s happy,’ says Lish. ‘You’ve done your job. You were there when she needed you.’
‘I don’t think she appreciated it.’
‘She doesn’t have to. That’s the definition of kids.’
‘I suppose.’
But Janey can’t stop musing on the fights, and the distance, and the misunderstandings, and the heating bill.
And her awful feeling of failure. She’d hoped that this would be the time Essie and she would heal, get over the divorce, the blight on their lives, the thing Essie could not blame her dad for.
Her dad who hadn’t even been over to see her in the past seven weeks.
Another reason why her mood must have been so awful, she told herself.
‘You suppose right,’ says Lish, turning to face her. ‘You did your job. Whatever she was like, whatever place she was in. You’re still “home”, until she can build one of her own. Or build one for some weird hedge fund finance guys, but I don’t really understand all that.’
‘Thanks,’ says Janey. And she means it.
It’s almost eight a.m. She heads off to her Portakabin. Lish goes up for another day in the Brand-New Life trenches. Owen descends to the basement somewhere nobody has ever been, where they think he has a small alcove next to the incinerator.
*
And Essie is so excited to be leaving. Packing for Edinburgh, reading up on the company she’s interviewing for – she is, she knows, behind, and she knows it’s her fault.
She is trying nervously to figure out if she can afford to move back if she gets work with Tris’s firm.
Her dad has not been much use but he has, at least, offered to stump up a deposit on a new room, so that’s something too.
She’s learned a lot from Lowell, she tells Janey.
Project management has been very interesting.
She doesn’t mention Dwight quite so much now.
But everyone can see the houses taking shape next door: the window frames going in, carefully; the wood floor laid that looks like parquet but isn’t really.
It’s clever, Janey has to admit. Verity even comes down the day the sofa arrives – one of the houses is going to be dressed before it’s sold, which means they’ve rented furniture and Verity has chosen most of it.
The sofa is orange and the rugs are burgundy.
Essie was a little doubtful but in fact it turns out to have been a rather excellent choice.
‘This is my house,’ signs Verity, in a way that is crystal clear to everyone what she means.
*
In Janey’s surgery her first patient of the day is speaking slowly, but carefully. She doesn’t have any kind of an accent, but that might well come.
Janey smiles sympathetically.
‘I know,’ she says. ‘I forgot to mention in advance. It’s amazing how many people think it. It seems obvious now.’
Saanvi was a young woman who’d arrived in the UK to work, and gradually worked her way up the waiting list for a cochlear implant.
‘I just thought it would.’
‘I know.’
She is far from unusual. It was just not something that occurred to most hearing people: that she had expected the sun to make a noise.
‘Just the wind, I’m afraid. And the rain.’
‘Snow?’
‘No, that’s one of the things people like about it. It’s completely silent.’
Saanvi thinks this is funny and shakes her head. ‘Still. The sun, though,’ she adds.
‘What sound would it make?’ says Janey. ‘Humming maybe, or singing?’
‘Singing,’ says Saanvi decisively. ‘I love singing.’
Saanvi’s fresh joy in the glories of music has been a wonderful thing, although Janey hopes her music preferences – at the moment, Bonnie Tyler and Meat Loaf – aren’t a dreadful inconvenience to her neighbours.
Janey’s phone flashes. She had been showing a client who was losing their hearing how to get their phone to show notifications without making a noise, and had forgotten to change it back and just got used to it. She ignores it, and it goes again.
‘Someone’s trying to get in touch,’ says Saanvi, whose phone of course does the same thing. Janey can’t believe how improved her speech is.
‘They can wait,’ says Janey. But the flashing doesn’t stop.
‘I am going to listen to all the songs about the sun,’ says Saanvi, getting up.
‘Excellent idea,’ says Janey. ‘Start with George Harrison. The Beatles,’ she adds. ‘Ooh, and Katrina and the Waves. And The Mikado ! And “Sun is Shining and So Are You’’ . . . Okay, I’m going to make you a playlist. It won’t be quite as good as the sun itself singing. But it’ll be something.’
She quickly glances at her phone before calling in her next client. And then her heart stops.
It can’t be true. It can’t be.
But it’s there in black and white: breaking news. The BBC. You can only really believe things when they’re on the BBC.
*
She has missed calls from everyone. Lish has been in touch. Milton too. Everyone who follows the news and knows her well.
But not Essie. Not Essie. Not again. Bloody financial news. What the hell is happening to this country?
*
A boutique Edinburgh investment fund collapsed at close of business yesterday in what insiders are already suggesting may have been a ‘Ponzi scheme’.
*
Janey grabs her glasses, scans the text in a panic, unable to make sense of it in her head.
*
Tristan Morgan, director of the fund known for its huge returns and its hand-picked clientele, was not at home last night as the news began to spread and desperate investors turned up at the office, only to find the doors locked.
*
Janey’s heart is in her mouth. She can’t let down her patients, who have been waiting for months to see her, but she sleepwalks through till morning break at ten, then, unable to face the canteen, sends an emergency WhatsApp to her friends.
As soon as they enter the consulting room, carrying treats, she knows they all know.
And they know she hadn’t been sure. It had never felt right.
She didn’t believe in doing anything with her money that she couldn’t touch and feel or live in or eat.
Which was why, of course, as Essie kept pointing out, she was always poor.
But Essie had accused her of never being proud of her.
So she hadn’t said anything. She’d known deep down something wasn’t right about this, and those boys – so young, although she knew they didn’t look like that to Essie; she thought they were men.
Janey knew they were boys bluffing their way through, showing off, like when Al came home from school at fourteen and said apparently he was the only virgin in the class.
That was what little boys did. And sometimes they invented Facebook or rockets.
But sometimes they just blew everything up.
Lish hugs her. ‘This is Essie’s thing?’
She can only nod, the lump in her throat too big, the blood in her veins running freezing cold.
‘Have you spoken to her?’
‘She already hates me, Lish,’ says Janey suddenly, all of it coming out of her without her even wanting it to, without her wanting to say anything at all.
‘She thinks I’m stupid and slow and to blame for the divorce and a total idiotic waste of space!
And this will just make everything worse!
She’ll blame me for making her live back here or not giving her advice or not knowing about money or .
. . I don’t know. It’s all my fault somehow.
She’ll never speak to me again!’ She screws up her eyes.
‘Oh God, that’s before I even find out what the rest of the village thinks. ’
‘I thought you said it was a town,’ says Milton in his gentle way, and they all look up, surprised, as they realise that’s Milton’s way of trying to make a joke.
‘That’s even more people,’ says Janey, sobbing. She keeps staring at her phone. Nothing.
‘What have you got on the rest of the day?’ says Lish.
‘Community visits.’
‘Just say you’re not well,’ says Lish. ‘They’ll get done. Half the hospital is off sick anyway. Go and find your daughter.’
‘She doesn’t want to talk to me. She won’t even pick up the phone.’
Lish rolls her eyes. ‘She’s your daughter .’