Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
One Year Ago
Leo
Leo feels the blood rush from his face, and he is back there again, at the hospital late that Friday evening three months ago.
He sees the face of the fifteen-year-old boy, Eric, with a rare pelvic sarcoma.
Leo wasn’t his doctor, but he’d been consulting with Ian Halden, who was.
Leo had got a call from Great Ormond Street next door that Eric had deteriorated and had begun bleeding internally.
He’d been rushed to theatre, but no one could get hold of Ian Halden, so Leo had rushed through the covered walkway joining the hospitals and tried to help.
Nobody questioned whether he was authorised to do this surgery; Leo was the expert in sarcomas and he’d consulted on Eric’s case.
He was the only one who could help Eric, save his life.
Leo didn’t have time to wait for authorisation.
This was paediatric surgery, not Leo’s expertise, even though he was highly skilled with adults.
All he had to do was locate the bleed and stabilise.
And by then, Ian Halden would be here to take over.
They’d finally got through to him and he was on the way, but he’d been in Cambridge so it would take him too long to get there.
Leo had been calm, ready to save Eric’s life, but then he saw that the tumour had ruptured.
Panicking for the first time in his career – this wasn’t his patient, and it was a fifteen-year-old child, the smaller body unfamiliar to Leo.
What happened next changed the course of too many lives.
Leo clipped a vessel too close to Eric’s iliac artery, causing a massive haemorrhage.
And despite forty-five minutes of resuscitation, Eric had arrested on the operating table.
When Ian Halden arrived, he told Leo they’d need to document that he’d been there the whole time. Just to be safe. No one in the theatre argued; they were all too exhausted, and everyone knew that Leo had just been trying to save the boy’s life.
Leo didn’t tell anyone that it was his fault for clipping Eric’s artery; he kept that to himself. His report stated that it was a complication due to tumour erosion rather than surgical injury.
But nothing stays hidden for long, and from an electronic audit log, the clinical director found out that Leo had operated on Eric without official authorisation.
Leo was about to lose his job, and everything he’d worked so hard for, until Giles Barton stepped in and convinced the clinical director, a great friend of his, to bury the report.
By then, Leo had got to know Giles well, from Moira being his patient, and he felt a huge debt of gratitude. He wished he’d known it would come with a price. Leo still doesn’t know how Giles convinced the director, but assumes it involved a lot of cash.
Leo reaches for his whiskey. He needs it after reliving the memory of Eric. ‘I’m grateful for everything you did,’ he says, ‘but—’
‘You and Ria aren’t leaving Silverleaf,’ Giles says. ‘There’s too much at stake now. Look, we’re friends, aren’t we?’
‘Friends don’t blackmail each other.’ Leo puts his glass on the coffee table and walks to the window.
‘Don’t be rash about this, Leo. Make the right decision. You have a wonderful career – don’t throw it all away.’ He refills his glass and offers to do the same to Leo’s.
‘No, thanks.’
‘Sorry to say this,’ Giles says, ‘but it would be better for everyone if Ria didn’t regain her memory.’
Leo stares at him, despising his ability to be so detached when Leo is breaking.
‘I spoke to my good friend, a neurologist, and he said it’s very common for people with traumatic head injuries to lose chunks of time.
He said, given the extent of Ria’s injuries, it wouldn’t surprise him if it was permanent. ’
Giles raises his glass. ‘Then everything might just work out okay.’
‘But,’ Leo continues, ‘people have been known to recover their memories, even years later. Just like that.’
Giles sits on the sofa and chews this over.
‘No point worrying about that until it happens. Hopefully it never will. Better for Ria that way. Right. So. We keep this all to ourselves. We’ll tell the neighbours what you’ve already told Ria happened, and we tell them we have to keep quiet about her memory loss, otherwise it could traumatise her.
When she’s out of hospital, take her back to the flat to recover, and then, when she’s ready, you can move back here and Ria will believe you’ve only just moved in. ’
Giles sounds so calculated that Leo recoils. He shouldn’t be surprised that Giles has suggested all of this – not when they both covered up Kimmy’s murder. But still his stomach forms tight knots and nausea bubbles away, even though Leo himself started this cover-up by lying to Ria in hospital.
‘I’ve worked too hard to let Silverleaf become known as the place where a woman was strangled right out there on the green,’ Giles says.
‘People will move out. Can you imagine Eleanor and Georgia wanting to stay here? The house prices will drop. And then who knows what kind of scum will move in? And I’m not giving up the home I built for Moira.
This place was all for her. It was her dream.
She’s with me in this house in spirit, and I won’t leave her behind. ’
Giles has lost the plot, and Leo wants no part of it. He should have told Giles that Ria remembered everything but promised to stay quiet if they moved out of Silverleaf. He silently curses himself for not doing that. Too late now; the seeds have been sown, and now they’re stuck here.
‘I . . . I don’t like this,’ Leo says. ‘I don’t want to lie to my wife. I need to tell her the truth.’
Giles shakes his head. ‘But you’ve already lied to her. The hospital cover-up. That poor kid who died under your knife. Ria will call the police, Leo, and then we’ll both be arrested for hiding Kimmy’s body. Did you hear me, Leo? Both of us. We’re in this together.’
Leo shudders as the memory of that night floods back to him.
He’d just got back from the hospital and, when he’d pulled into their drive, he saw two bodies on the green.
He hadn’t realised one was Ria until he’d got closer.
He’d sunk to the floor and checked her pulse; it was barely detectable. Kimmy, though, was dead.
Giles had come out then, rushing over to them. He’d stood numb for a few moments before he could bring himself to speak. ‘What happened? Did you—’
‘No! This wasn’t me! I just got home and found them!’ Leo said. ‘I’m calling for an ambulance.’
But Giles had stopped him, had convinced Leo to take her to a hospital away from Thursley.
‘And don’t tell the doctors what happened here. Make something up.’
‘Are you joking?’ Leo had protested. ‘I couldn’t lie even if I wanted to – look at her! It’s clear she’s been attacked.’
‘So say it happened somewhere else, anywhere but here. I’ll explain later. And if Ria tells them otherwise when she wakes up, we can figure that out then.’
Leo tried to refuse, but when Giles reminded him that he owed him, he’d realised he had no choice. ‘Go now, Leo. I’ll take care of Kimmy.’
‘Are you calling the police?’ Leo had asked.
‘I wish I could,’ Giles had said. ‘Just go.’
Without a clear plan in his head, he drove Ria to the hospital he usually worked at, all the while checking she was stable. If she didn’t make it, then he’d kill Giles for forcing him to do this.
When he’d got back home the next morning, he went straight to Giles’s, banging on his door. Giles had let him in and told him he needed his help. In the utility room, Kimmy’s body lay, covered with a blanket.
Leo had felt a huge pang of sadness, seeing her like that. He’d liked Kimmy. A lot. And he’d had to push aside the memory of the last time he saw her, how strongly she’d smelled of spring flowers. ‘What the hell?’
‘I need your help, Leo.’
Leo shouldn’t have helped bury her behind his and Ria’s garden, in the clearing surrounded by dense undergrowth.
But the pressure had been mounting, erupting inside him.
He couldn’t risk losing Ria, losing his career.
In that one, fateful moment he had felt he had no choice.
The regret was instantaneous, but it was too late to change anything.
‘I didn’t kill her,’ Leo says to Giles now. He sounds like a whining child.
‘Neither did I,’ Giles says. ‘But I won’t let anyone think that a killer got into Silverleaf Heights.’
‘Have you ever stopped to consider that one of the neighbours did it?’ Feeling cornered always makes Leo want to fight back. ‘One of us is a murderer. And I was at work, so I have an alibi. Where was Xander?’
‘I don’t think we should throw accusations around,’ Giles says. ‘Xander was asleep. Just like everyone else.’
‘I don’t think being in bed alone would stand up in court,’ Leo says.
‘Stop!’ Giles commands. ‘It’s done. There’s nothing we can do for Kimmy now. We have to focus on saving Silverleaf. Protecting ourselves.’
Leo fights the urge to punch him. How can he be so calm?
‘It’s a terrible situation,’ Giles continues, ‘and I get that you don’t want to bring Ria back here.’
‘Someone killed Kimmy and tried to kill Ria! Of course I don’t want to bring her back here.’
‘We can keep her safe,’ Giles says. ‘I’ll up the security. Install cameras over the doors. No one will get away with something like this again.’
‘Don’t you get it, Giles? It could have been someone in Silverleaf!’
‘No chance!’ Giles insists.
‘You can’t know that.’
‘Listen to me – Kimmy was having an affair. Someone outside Silverleaf. Maybe he was the one who killed her.’
Leo stares at him, searching for signs of deceit. Giles has already proved how easily he can lie. But his poker face is hard to read, and Leo is too defeated to question him right now. ‘The police will come to the hospital. I told my colleagues I’d call them.’
Giles stares at him. ‘You’re not going to, though, are you? That would be catastrophic.’