Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
NICK
Nick’s throat was raw from yelling so loudly, but the music was still thumping away, and the passage wasn’t the busiest of thoroughfares, not when there was so much going on in the main hall. His first instinct had been to reach for his phone to call Travis, but his pockets were empty – he’d left his damn phone in the store cupboard while he was rummaging for tools. His hands felt sore from hammering on the door, which, due to the handle falling off, was locked tight. With trembling, freezing fingers, he’d tried to screw the handle back on, but it wouldn’t stay – in his panic to remove it in the first place, he must have damaged some of the workings.
They’d been in there for more than ten minutes now, and Ruby’s lips had a tinge of blue about them that Nick didn’t like at all. He’d bundled her into his suit jacket, cursing that it wasn’t the season for a warmer coat, and poured out the contents of some large boxes, feeling ludicrous as he packed the cardboard around her. Anything to try to keep her warm.
What the hell had possessed somebody to shut the door on them? To be fair, nobody would have expected a man and his little daughter to be hanging out in a walk-in freezer, but couldn’t they have had a cursory glance? When the door had clanged shut, he’d leaped immediately to bang on the door to alert them, but they must have been in a hurry, as they hadn’t seemed to have heard.
‘Ruby darlin’, we’ll be out in just a minute,’ he said with way more confidence than he felt. Her eyes were shiny, and she nodded just once, her little face framed by cardboard.
‘I know, Daddy. It’s alright.’ Her voice was tiny and shook a little, maybe from the cold or from the fear she was trying to hide.
It set off a bolt of fury at his helplessness, and he looked around for the twentieth time to see if there was anything, anything at all, that he could use to get them out of there. There was nothing but boxes upon boxes of frozen food, and feeling slightly insane, he wondered how effective a big bit of frozen meat might be at battering the door down. But then he realised he could try something else with the screwdriver. He’d been the one who’d built those storage shelves, a few years ago, and he’d wager that as long as the screws weren’t too rusty, they’d come apart easily enough.
Quickly, he cleared a set of shelves of boxes and set to work dismantling the rectangular metal struts that held the horizontal shelves together. Wielding one, with the fierceness of a character from The Walking Dead facing an approaching zombie, he went to the door and began wedging it into the frame with all his might.
It wasn’t budging, but then he heard Ruby start to whimper behind him, and he pushed even harder. He would get them out of there even if it killed him.
He heaved and thrust at the metal, levering it back and forth until he felt the slender edge slip in between the junction of the door and frame. It stuck there, and he stood back a few paces then raised his leg, booting it as hard as he could, hearing the satisfying crack of the door frame giving way. He was so elated by the rush of warm air that he felt almost nothing as the metal pushed up his trouser leg and gouged a long, deep cut along his inner calf.
He turned to Ruby and picked her up, carrying her out of the frigid cavern to find Callie and Laura running into the corridor.
‘Oh my God, Ruby!’ Callie screamed, grabbing her from Nick’s arms, allowing him to stagger on his wounded leg. He bent down, completely out of breath, and braced his hands on his knees, wheezing. ‘What the hell happened?’ she asked, patting Ruby down for injuries and stroking her hair.
‘She got locked in the freezer,’ panted Nick. ‘Then I did too…’
‘Where’s that blood coming from?’ Laura asked, pointing to the drips and splatters on the corridor floor.
‘Me. I think,’ said Nick as the walls of the corridor started to tilt, and he fell to his knees.
The nurse in A&E gave Nick a strange look as she stitched and bandaged his injured leg. ‘Have I seen you here before?’ she asked.
She had, indeed, seen Nick here before, when he’d been here with the seafood allergy, but he was too mortified to admit it. ‘I must just have one of those faces,’ he said, wondering how after years of generally good health, he’d managed to end up in A&E for the second time in just a few weeks.
Almost as mortifying was the journey here, after which he and Ruby had been hurried off to separate cubicles, leaving him alone to reflect on it. He’d barely hit the deck when Justin had wandered into the corridor, jingling his car keys. He’d been there to collect Callie, Ruby and Laura, and his eyes had grown wide at the chaotic sight of them all.
It had been the sight of, rather than the actually fairly minimal loss of blood that had given Nick a bit of a turn, but as soon as he’d seen Justin, he’d scrambled to get up. Justin had hooked his elbow and tried to help, asking, ‘You alright, mate?’
Nick had flinched at the overfamiliarity but had been forced, without Travis or his mother in sight, to accept a lift in Justin’s car, while Ruby was sandwiched in the back, having been divested of her cardboard packaging but still wearing Nick’s suit jacket. There had been silence, except for Callie murmuring soothingly to Ruby and the occasional click of the indicator switch.
Nick’s jacket made a reappearance through the cubicle curtains, on the arm of Callie.
‘Knock, knock,’ she said quietly, shouldering meekly through and placing his jacket on the back of a nearby chair. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m fine. More importantly, how’s Ruby?’
‘She’s absolutely fine. All warmed up, no harm done, and already getting excited about telling her friends about her adventure.’
‘Well, that’s a relief.’
‘Thanks to you.’
Nick winced. ‘If I’d been quicker to get her out before someone closed the door…’
‘You got her out anyway, didn’t you? And mangled your leg in the process. You must have been like a wild animal.’
Nick didn’t feel like a wild animal right then. A wounded animal with a sore leg maybe, but all the fight had gone out of him, so he just nodded.
Callie’s face was hard to read. It looked as if she was finding herself hard to read, if anything.
‘You love her. I never doubted that, you know,’ she said softly. He went to reply, but she held up a hand. ‘Let me finish. I know I’ve been protective of her…’
He listened, not daring to speak.
‘… but today has reminded me that she’s just as much yours as she is mine. If it had been me in there, the mothering instinct would have come out like a tiger too. I’d have beat my hands bloody on that door. So I can see now that it runs just as deep for you, and I… I haven’t considered that enough. I’m not saying… I don’t know what I’m saying. But maybe, when I’ve calmed down a bit, we need to have a talk.’
Nick’s eyes flickered up to hers, and he saw that through the fatigue, there was the tiniest bit of warmth.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’d like that.’
She nodded, her lips a straight line. ‘Okay then. I have to go. But one more thing. It was Justin who helped me make sense of today. He told me how hard it would have been to smash open that lock. Real “lifting a car to save someone’s life” stuff. And it was him who told me to tell you so.’ And she slipped out between the curtains.
Not long after, Ruby popped in to say goodbye and give him a hug, and Travis texted to say he was coming to collect him. He was just pulling his blood-stained trousers up his tender leg when Travis appeared in the A&E corridor, tie rakishly undone.
‘I feel like I should get a parking pass for this hospital, big brother,’ he said. ‘Are there going to be any events at the Kitchen that you don’t get blue-lighted out of?’
‘Very funny,’ said Nick, getting up to test his leg. It was sore to stand on, but he wouldn’t be in need of crutches. ‘I’m fine, by the way – thanks for asking.’
‘Good. Now can we get back home? Our mother’s already started on the gin and Dubonnets, and I’m worried she’ll drink enough to break my no-smoking policy. I don’t want customers returning clothes that smell like they’ve been rubbed around an ashtray.’
Nick sighed. All he needed was a shower with a bin bag over his stitches, and bed, but he now remembered he’d need to catch up with his mam. He wasn’t sure he had the energy for chit-chat, never mind the looming conversation about Richard Keyes. He followed Travis out of the A&E department and into the main lobby of the hospital, wincing as he went.
Travis turned back and saw that Nick’s pace had slowed. ‘Look, stay here, and I’ll bring the van over. I’ve parked miles away.’
Nick gratefully accepted, feeling a deeper throb setting in, and wandered over to near the lifts, looking at the various posters about incontinence, counselling and how to wash your hands. He turned around and someone caught his eye. A man walking from the lifts, looking at his phone, dressed in trendy sportswear. Nick recognised him – it was the guy Laura had been with in the bistro in Newcastle: her new boyfriend.
He was blandly scrolling, then he glanced up and around, as if he was waiting for someone. Had he come to pick up Laura? Their eyes met, and Nick held his gaze, remembering just as the guy gave him a funny look that he would have no clue who he was.
‘Alright, mate?’ Nick said, feeling obliged to explain himself. ‘Sorry, you don’t know me. We just have a mutual friend. Your girlfriend actually.’
The man looked him up and down. ‘Right. I don’t think we’ve met. Have we?’
‘No. We haven’t. God, sorry, this is coming across weird. I know your face – I saw you two out in Newcastle – so I put two and two together.’
‘Yeah. I’m Alex.’
He held out his hand, narrowing his eyes, and Nick wished he hadn’t said anything and just walked past. This guy didn’t seem the friendliest, but Nick took his hand anyway. ‘I’m Nick.’
There followed a very firm handshake, and at the same time, the lift doors pinged behind them. The doors opened, and Nick stared in disbelief.
Wren walked towards them, her mouth hanging open in surprise. ‘Nick?’ she breathed. ‘What are you…?’
‘ Wren ? I can’t believe…’
Laura’s boyfriend’s eyes flitted between them, his brow furrowed. ‘So how do you two know each other?’
‘Sorry, mate,’ started Nick, although Wren had opened her mouth to reply too. ‘Weird coincidence. This is Wren – we met on holiday in Italy, just last week. Wren, this is Alex.’
Alex and Wren’s mouths snapped shut.
Nobody spoke for a second, and Nick felt the uncomfortable urge to fill the awkward silence. ‘I mean, Wren… wow. I can’t believe it. What are the chances?’
Alex glared at him. ‘Is this what you meant then, pal? That you’re friends with my girlfriend?’
Nick blinked. What was he going on about? ‘Um, I was talking about Laura…’ And almost as the last syllable left his mouth, the penny dropped. Wren and this Alex were standing surprisingly close together for strangers, and the look of horror on both their faces said volumes.
Wren wheeled around to face Alex, her face turning from thunder to rainclouds. Nick just stood there mutely, in shock.
‘You fucking bastard,’ she said to Alex, her voice like ice. And then she turned away and walked off without looking back.
‘Nice one, you daft prick,’ said Alex to Nick, following after her.