Chapter 48
SUNDAY
The paramedic is shining a light in my eyes.
I do what she tells me, following the movement of the penlight as it swings from left to right and back again.
I’m on a kitchen chair, dressing gown bunched at my waist for an examination of the cuts and bruises on my forearms, the sprain of my left wrist, bruising to my chest and angry red abrasions to the skin on my back.
Her main concern, however, is the head injury.
The pain at the back of my skull is a furious, relentless throb that feels as if something is ready to burst. I can remember falling backward—being kicked backward—down the cellar steps, the sick sensation of being in mid-air with nothing to break my fall, nothing to grab onto, a brief explosion of pain as I hit the solid brick floor and then…
nothing. Opening my eyes to agonizing bright light, dirt and blood sticky against my cheek, all the pain in the world radiating in hot red waves from the back of my head.
Jess’s desperate voice cutting through everything as she knelt beside me.
There had been no sign of the masked intruder by the time she ventured downstairs, turning on lights and calling my name as she went. Just me, knocked out cold and flat on my back in the cellar. Slowly coming to as she said my name over and over, feeling as if I’d been clubbed with a cricket bat.
The police have already been and gone, two harassed-looking officers arriving in a blur of blue lights and crackling radios, checking the house and garden for signs that anyone was still lurking around.
The paramedics were only cleared to come in once the police had told them it was safe to do so, before the officers had been called away again to some kind of incident in the city center.
One of their colleagues from the day shift would return in the next forty-eight hours, they said, to take a statement.
In lieu of a police car outside the house, Jess had switched on every single light downstairs—all the rooms ablaze as if illumination alone might frighten away a return visit from the night-time attacker.
Callum stares at the two paramedics, working steadily in their green jumpsuits, as if they are aliens arrived from another planet.
Leah sits at the kitchen table beside him, her forehead creased with concern.
She was so surprised to be woken that she even forgot to bring her phone downstairs with her.
Weirdly, Daisy is the only one of us who seems to have slept through it all; through the arrival and departure of the police; the paramedics hefting their bulky treatment bags into the kitchen; the kettle boiling as Jess made cups of tea, coffee, and hot chocolate for everyone.
The paramedic, whose name is Farida, switches off her penlight and stows it in a pocket of her equipment vest.
“Adam?” she says, moving a blue-gloved hand carefully over the side of my head. “What day is it today?”
“Err… Saturday.” I glance up at the calendar on the fridge, the movement sending more sharp skewers of agony through my head. “No. Wait. No, it’s Sunday. Must be Sunday morning now.”
Her colleague is behind me, cleaning the head wound with a brisk efficiency and apologizing each time I tense with pain. He winds overlapping strips of bandage over the wound like a headband, securing it with medical tape.
When he’s finished with the dressing, Farida checks the other side of my head, applying gentle pressure with her fingertips. “And what’s the name of the street where you live?”
I blink, groping for the right answer. “Regency… Place.”
She feels behind my ears, looking—I assume—for injury sites other than the gash at the back of my head. Finally, she lowers her hands and sits back in the chair.
“You’ve had a pretty nasty bang on the head, Adam.
I’ve given you a preliminary examination and we’ve dressed the external wound but I’d like to get you properly checked at Queen’s Medical Centre, all right?
So if you want to take a minute to get a few clothes, something to wear on your feet, and we’ll take you down—”
“No,” I say, shrugging the dressing gown back up onto my shoulders. “Not tonight.”
She gives me a quizzical look. “Obviously I can’t force you to come with us, but I strongly recommend that you do so. They can give you a much more thorough exam, arrange scans if necessary. Better safe than sorry—especially where head injuries are concerned.”
“I’m not leaving my family alone tonight, not after this.” I gesture vaguely at the cellar door. “And we can’t all five of us go together.”
“Adam?” Jess says gently. She hands me two paracetamol and a glass of water. “She’s right. You really should go to QMC with them, get fully checked out.”
I shake my head, the movement setting off a fresh ripple of pain.
“I’ll call Dom, get him to come over in the morning and take me down there.
But I’m not going anywhere right now, while it’s still pitch black outside.
” I don’t want to mention the obvious, while Callum and Leah are still in the room: that the intruder might come back.
“Besides which, A about symptoms of deterioration that Jess needs to watch for, about nausea and dizziness and sensitivity to light.
Gingerly, I stand up and retrieve my phone from the kitchen side.
There is a crack on the screen where it hit the cellar floor, a diagonal spiderweb fracture.
Seven missed calls from Jess still showing on the display.
I had no idea how long I’d been out cold on the cellar floor—no longer than five minutes, Jess had said—but it was more than enough time for the intruder to make their escape.
I check the back door to see if it’s been forced or any windows smashed around it.
But it looks just the way I left it when I’d gone up to bed a few hours ago.
Same for the front door and the patio door, according to the two police officers whose names I’ve already forgotten.
My wallet, laptop, and car keys are untouched on the kitchen side.
It’s only after the paramedics have gone, after Leah has taken Callum back up to bed, that Jess lets her brave face slip. She stands in front of me with her head down, lips pressed together, suddenly on the verge of tears.
I put a hand on her arm. “Hey. What is it?”
She shakes her head, cuffing at her eyes with the sleeve of her dressing gown.
“I thought…” She tails off.
“Tell me,” I say. “It’s OK.”
“I thought you were dead,” she says quietly.
“I was calling your phone and I could just about hear it ringing somewhere below me in the house, but it sounded so far away, almost like it was underground. You weren’t picking up and the police still weren’t here; I thought they were never going to come.
I kept calling and calling, then I came down into the kitchen, and saw the cellar door was ajar.
I switched the lights on and looked down there and I could just see your legs, flat out at the bottom of the stairs.
When I got down there you were so pale, there was blood and I thought he’d… ”
I put my arms around her. “It’s only a bump on the head. Hurts a bit but I’ve had worse.”
“When?”
“Playing rugby.”
She sniffs. “Liar.”
“OK, maybe not quite this bad, but I’ve had concussions before. I’ll be all right.”
She puts her head against my chest and we stand like that for a moment in the kitchen, the warmth of her body pressed against mine. The pain, everywhere, receding into the background as we hold each other close.
“What if you hadn’t been here?” she says softly. “What if they’d come upstairs, gone into one of the kids’ rooms?”
“But they didn’t,” I say, rubbing her back. “They’re gone now. We’re all right, we’re all OK.”
She looks up at me. “We’re not OK. He might have killed you.”
“I don’t think that was his plan. I think I just surprised him.”
“I don’t understand how you can be so sure about it,” she says finally.
She pulls away from the embrace to take a tissue from the box on the kitchen counter, wiping her eyes and nose.
“Is this all about that stupid hidden room, the things you found? A burglar comes into our house in the middle of the night but doesn’t take anything? ”
“I guess… he didn’t find what he was actually looking for.”
“Why do I feel like you’re still holding something back, Adam?” She leans back against the counter, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. “What is it you’re not telling me? It’s all connected, isn’t it?”
I look at my wife, at her beautiful face, eyes red-rimmed from crying. The one person in the world I was closest to, who knew me better than anyone, and I had kept things from her. I had not told her the whole truth. But she deserved more than this; she deserved to know all of it.
“Yes,” I say. “I think it is.”