I stared at the tiles on the kitchen wall, seeing the imperfections in the grout between each one. I saw the edges which weren't quite straight. I noticed gouges in the wooden table, bumps beneath the teal table cloth.
I was wounded deeper than I had been for so long, and wounded in a very different way. When my mother and sister were taken it had been like a hammer to the heart, shattering into pieces in a swift blow. This wound, it had two parts. Delia's attack had been the knife that stabbed straight into my heart. This, this was the knife being twisted within the wound, taking every piece of pain I could manage to feel and pulling it from me.
I was aware that there was dampness on my cheeks, aware that meant I was crying, but unable to care. There was no feeling left, I was unable to feel even the slightest of emotions. I was numb. There was no rage, no fear, no melancholy; no feeling.
I was aware that in the room upstairs Nurse Crane was performing an internal exam. I knew that normally the thought of another woman touching Delia should have made me mad, but there was nothing. This had to be done.
I was also aware that in the clinical room Trixie was performing a test on Delia's urine, waiting for it to turn blue over the heat of the small Bunsen burner. I knew that Delia should never have fallen pregnant, that it should have been as much of a miracle as the virgin birth. But this was happening and there was nothing I could do about it, nothing I could do to reverse the time, to turn back the clock.
I sat and thought, thought about how I might have been able to perform a medically safe abortion, I knew how to dilate the cervix, how to use a crochet hook to simply hook the amniotic sac and burst it like popping a balloon.
"Patsy," I jumped a mile when I felt the soft hand land on my shoulder, I twisted quickly, scared that the small hand belonged to Delia. She didn't need to see me upset, to see me worrying about her. The hand, in fact, belonged to Barbara.
"It's positive isn't it- the test?" I asked straight away and I knew the answer by the deep breath that Barbara took. I knew that deep a breath could never mean good news; it was a delaying tactic.
Barbara decided not to say the words at all. Instead she handed me a cigarette and my lighter- she must have taken it from my bedside table. I took it gladly, feeling my hands shake like those of an alcoholic's while I tried to flick the tab on the lighter and get a flame. Once lit I took a long drag, shutting my eyes and trying to let the tobacco do its job, try and relax myself.
"It's like sitting with a father-to-be, waiting on the arrival of his new baby," Barbara chirped, trying to lighten the situation. If only she knew how right she was.
Sitting down, beside me Barbara looked around, looking at the linoleum floors, the kitchen tiles and the Belfast sink. She began to fiddle with her fingers. She sighed at the table cloth, squeezed her hands together and finally, after finding the courage to do so, looking up at me.
"Patsy," she began, speaking the way my aunt had done when she explained puberty to me at age twelve, that patronizing and slightly awkward voice that means the person is going to talk about something they would rather not mention at all. I took another deep breath in, taking as much tobacco into my lungs as I could in one shot.
"Did, has, did Delia have a boyfriend- before the attack?" Now I understood where the hesitation had come from. They thought Delia had done this deliberately, they were blaming her for becoming pregnant.
Now my emotions came back, flying back into my system. Delia couldn't even look at a Penis, the thought of touching one made her feel slightly ill. She could never, and wouldn't ever. Then the doubt set in, did she have someone, had something been going on behind my back? Was she lying to me when she said she loved me, was I a cover story? A game?
No, I knew her better than that, I had seen her squirming in anatomy classes. I had seen her fingers curling back in repulsion when she had been asked to examine a small cyst in training. She couldn't have, she wouldn't have become pregnant just like that. It must have been him, the awful bastard who had attacked my sweet angel.
"No," I snapped, before realising my reaction was too fast, too close to flipping the lid and revealing our façade. "I mean, Delia still gets the giggles looking at a chap, she would never have managed to get that close to one, not yet. She's, she's simply not mature enough yet."
Barbara nodded in understanding, but her knitted eyebrows told a very different story, she was confused, something was bothering her.
"It's just, maybe it was delirium talking, but. Patsy, Delia said, well, her exact words were 'At least the baby will have red hair. I wondered, should we alert Seargent Noakes? Do you think it's a clue."
My blood began to fizz and pop inside me, oh good god, it all made sense, there was only one person there could be, one person who could have been in charge of the attack on Delia. One man who had enough contact with me, and with Delia to have made the connection. It made sense where he had ran to, it made sense that it had all happened in one single day. The death and the attack in the same day had been far from coincidence because Rossette Hamilton had red hair.
