Chapter Twenty-Eight
James felt as if his insides had been turned to stone.
He held Tamzin in his arms. Not the happier Tamzin that he was daring to get used to but a gasping, keening, grey-faced Tamzin whose arms and legs jerked out of control.
Her wails of anguish, ‘ No ! No ! No !’ were choking her. Crowing for breath, she ripped sobs out from the pit of her stomach.
James tried to hold her tightly, to keep her tipping into hysteria. ‘I’m here, Tamz.’ But her frantically pedalling legs trampled his toes and drew lines of fire down his shins.
Two nurses encouraged her back down the corridor, voices soothing. ‘Let’s get you to the relative’s room, dear. You’ll be better, there.’
It was ineffective.
Tamzin was in some private agony zone and seemed quite unable to control her pumping legs.
And then, like an answer to a prayer, Diane was racing up the corridor towards them, compassion all over her face. ‘James?’
Tamzin yanked herself free and threw herself at Diane. ‘Diane! Oh, Diane. Mummy died . Right there in front of us. She began to gasp and panic and Dad pressed the red button and people raced in and they were trying to help but she just gasped and gasped. And then she stopped.’ Her voice spiralled. ‘She stopped breathing !’
Diane cradled the shuddering body, her horrified eyes seeking James’s. Dumbly, he nodded. Stroking Tamzin’s back, Diane murmured, ‘Oh, darling.’
With her other hand she reached out to James.
Helplessly, he let her arm slide around him. But the bad stuff didn’t go away. It was like the sweating, terrifying kind of nightmare when a family member is torn away by the slavering fangs of a monster. This time the monster was death and there would be no grateful awakening.
Diane helped him haul Tamzin along to the relative’s room and a doctor came and gave her something to calm her. James held her, repeating endlessly, ‘I’m here. I’m here, Tamzin.’ Eventually, she slumped, her head on his shoulder, quieting in the protective circle of his arms.
James began to shake as awful reality sank in, the images of the last few minutes hanging ghastly before his eyes. Valerie’s strange colour. The life draining from her face. She had always been so alive, so animated, her eyes alight with laughter or gleaming in scorn. But never as they were now — with no expression.
He thrust away the image of what he’d just witnessed, letting his tendency for logic and control carry him into action. ‘I must tell Natalia and Alice, and Harold. Be with them.’
Diane was seated on his other side. He could feel her hand, firm on his arm. ‘Do you want to leave Tamzin with me? You could break the news, gather everyone at your house, then I’ll bring her along. Just give me a few minutes to tell the nurses so that when Bryony comes—’ She halted, suddenly. ‘Oh, no. Gareth.’
They stared at each another bleakly. Diane grimaced. ‘I’ll have to tell him. Stay with him.’
She helped James down to the car with Tamzin sleepwalking between them, James half-carrying her. She weighed no more than a child. Diane took his keys and opened the car door and they loaded her into the front seat and fastened the seat belt.
The car door shut, Diane put her hand on James’s forearm. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes.’ His voice was a croak. Nausea waited in his throat.
‘If you want to talk, ring me.’
For an instant, normality stirred. ‘Could I?’
‘Of course. Of course . Don’t be the strong one all alone. Everyone will need you. It’s OK for you to need somebody.’ Her eyes shone with sympathy.
He managed, ‘Thank you.’
* * *
Diane made her way slowly back upstairs to tell her husband that his sister was dead.
Gareth went a brilliant, startling white, a contrast to the rainbow face he’d sported until recently. ‘But I was going to visit her tomorrow. Tomorrow. They were going to put me in a chair and let me see her. She was nearly better. Wasn’t she nearly better? She was going home, like me.’
Shoving all the hurts and frictions aside, Diane took his hand. ‘I know. It was a complete shock. James and Tamzin were with her and called the crash team but it was so quick.’
‘How could she die? She was never in danger from her injuries.’
‘James assumed it was her heart but the team are talking about pulmonary embolism — a blood clot that went to her lungs.’
‘But she was nearly better.’
‘I know.’
Presently, Bryony crept in to give her father a huge hug. ‘Dad, the nurse told me. Poor Valerie! Dad, poor you. And Pops and Tamzin and everyone.’ She put her head down on her father’s chest and began to cry.
Diane didn’t feel she could leave Gareth until well on in the evening but did have to take Bryony home in the end, promising Gareth that she’d be back in the morning and that they’d talk to the doctor then about getting Gareth to the funeral. ‘I must get to the funeral,’ he kept saying. ‘I’ve got to be there.’ Fixating on it, where it would be and when it would be and how he’d manage.
Diane drove home in a dream, Bryony beside her, dazed into silence, apart from the occasional, ‘I so can’t believe it. Poor Dad! Poor Tamzin. Poor, poor Pops, he was so happy this afternoon.’
And Diane’s automatic, practical, ‘We’ll have to help everybody as much as we can.’
She didn’t think she’d sleep but she climbed into her new bed in her new bedroom to watch mindless TV for a while. Bryony padded in, her big spotted T-shirt making her look about twelve — if not for the bump of the baby. She perched cross-legged on Diane’s bed. ‘I’ve got something to tell you. It’s been such a weird day.’ Her eyes looked very big in her pale face.
Diane reached up to tug a curl. ‘We’re going through a weird time, aren’t we? Poor Valerie, Dad in hospital, you going to be a mum, me to be a grandmother — I haven’t got my head round that, by the way.’
‘There’s something else for you to get your head round.’ Bryony looked sheepish, almost embarrassed. She hesitated. ‘Pops told me today that all his grandchildren come into some money when they’re twenty-one. He set up a trust, or something.’
Diane felt a smile spread across her face. ‘Does that mean that you’ll get a bit of money on your birthday? He’s such a sweetheart.’
Bryony looked awed. ‘I get forty thousand pounds.’