It's a heavy, suffocating sleep, but not dreamless. She encounters murky childhood memories that always end in that alley. Brighter moments that have her reaching for consciousness only to retreat as pain edges in. Snippets of conversation penetrate the fog but she can't distinguish them from her dreams.
"Massive blood loss, but no serious damage to vital organs, thankfully. She's young and very healthy, she'll recover quickly."
"How could we let this happen? Why are you so damned stubborn, Robert?"
"She'll stay with me. She won't be able to manage the stairs in the main house for quite a while."
"No, officer, she's not ready to make any statements yet. We'll let you know when she's lucid."
"There will be some scarring, but we're expecting a full recovery."
When she finally opens her eyes, there is a nurse at her bedside recording her vital signs. Her Gran is on the other side of the bed and her mother is asleep in a chair. In the corner there's a man sitting in a chair by the window. Her heart leaps, but as her vision clears, she sees that it is her dad. Seconds later, her disappointment is replaced by heartbreaking relief and she lets out a sob.
"Dad? What's happened?"
Leeds in late winter is dreary. Gran has some frankly Victorian ideas about convalescence and forces Sally to sit in the garden for at least an hour every day, despite the still chilly air and the stark brown landscape. Her sister stays on for the first week and plays cards with her, childhood games like Go Fish and War. They don't talk about anything serious.
After two weeks, the doctors clear her to live on her own. They decide that the school term is a bust but she'll take courses in the summer. Her father sets her up in a modern building with an elevator and arranges for a house keeper to come in once a week to clean and do the shopping, warning her that this is only until she is given a clean bill of health. The cleaning lady, not the flat.
Within three days she's restless. She hasn't been cleared to work and she has no classes, though she's reading as much as she can. This gives her time to do a lot of thinking. And the one thought that she worries like a bruise is "Where the fuck is Sherlock Holmes?"
He had not shown up at the hospital. Had not written her or called her in Leeds, though he would have surmised in a heartbeat that that was where she would be. No emails. Nothing.
When a police officer shows up at her door and asks her to come with him to the station she assumes she's going to view a lineup, but when she gets there the detective hands her a mugshot. She stares at the hard eyes of the man who'd stabbed her and a wave of nausea overtakes her. The name on the bottom says Dominic Wilby.
"Did you catch him? Did he confess?" They must be sure; they'd have her do a lineup if they weren't. Or maybe they haven't brought him in yet.
The detective sits down across the table from her. "Dominic Wilby's a small time hustler, mostly short cons. We've brought him in for illegal gambling plenty of times. His body was dragged out of the Thames last night. Been there a couple weeks. The water didn't get him, and it looks like whoever did get him worked him over really good."
"He was beaten?"
"And tortured. You're certain it was him? We'd like to close your case but of course we don't want to if the bastard's still out there."
"Yes, it was definitely him," she nods. " I'll make a statement."
"Good."
"Erm, I know this might be weird but, I'm a criminology student and I'd like to see the file? The autopsy especially, when it's finished."
"Well, you're right it's not usual but for you, yeah. You'll have to look at it all here though."
"Of course."
The detective stops in the doorway. "Funny. Wilby's got a rap sheet a mile long but he never really went in for muggings."
"Must have been desperate," Sally says, smiling weakly.
"Must have. I'll get that file for you."
She worries at her questions for a week, always hoping that she will come home and find him sitting in front of her door. Then she finds herself alighting from a taxi in front of his building. Coming here is supremely stupid. But she has to do it. She has to know.
She climbs the stairs and for the first time ever, she doesn't feel as though she can walk in, so she knocks. Gary opens the door and his face lights up. "Sally! Long time no see! Thought you'd vanished! Come in, come in!" He opens the door for her and pads into the lounge where there is a giant water pipe waiting.
"Sorry I only got to see you those couple of times. School's been killer. Sherlock's in his room. Been in there most of the last month. You're just in time, though."
"What?" she asks.
"He's moving tomorrow. Going back to his mum's for the summer and then to school. She managed to get him back into Oxford."
"Oh," is all she can manage.
His door is closed. She manages a weak smile for Gary and goes over to the door. Stands for what seems like ages with her hand on the knob. There is no sound from inside. She opens the door.
The room is bare except for a few boxes and the furnishings. He sits in a chair, in his pose, the one that looks like prayer. She looks at him and decides that before it all has to really end, she will memorize the externally beautiful things about him, like the lank curl that is always falling across his forehead, the elegant slopes of his cheekbones, the musician's hands and that incongruously sensuous mouth.
He opens his eyes, and she is met with a look of inquisitive coldness. There is no flicker of emotion. No evidence that he is reining anything in. He's just gotten rid of it all. He hasn't forgotten her. He's just classified and binned everything about her that makes her real to him. He tilts his head at her.
"Yes?"
"Why didn't you stay with me?" It sounds stupid and whiny and she doesn't care.
"I didn't feel it was necessary. The paramedics were doing what was necessary and I preferred to be questioned by the police on my own terms. I also had some business to attend to. "
"Business?"
"Yes."
"Like murdering Dominic Wilby?"
"Of course not."
"How did you know who that is? Have the police had you identify him?"
"Yes, though I asked to see the body as well. He had a distinctive tattoo on his left hand that wasn't shown in the mug shot. Luckily it was still visible even though the fish had gotten half his armThe bruising pattern on his chest was remarkable."
Sally had seen the photos. Methodical blows to the chest and back with a long, thin object. Burns to the soles of his feet and palms. Cause of death had been strangulation with a garrote.
"Anything else?" he says after a lengthy silence, during which she stared at him, unable to reconcile any part of this person with the skinny, lonely boy she'd met last year.
"So that's it, then?" she says. "We've known each other almost a year, spending most of that time as something a bit more than friends, and then an entire night as a fuck of a lot more than friends, and if we hadn't been attacked we would have come back here and—and—"
"The entire time we've known each other you've made it perfectly clear that you're just fine with casual."
She bounds across the room and lashes out to strike him in the face, just to make him feel something. But he anticipates it and grabs both of her wrists before they can make contact.
He stands up and pulls her to him, holding her hands behind her back. There is a dull ache in her side that will probably be a screaming pain later. She would give anything to be tall enough to head butt him. She wants to make him bleed. She adjusts her leg so that she can knee him in the groin but she can't get leverage because of the position of her arms and her proximity to him. His face betrays nothing but a cool annoyance.
"Are you quite finished?" he says.
"We were friends first. You were my friend."
"Yes and I've decided that's not going to work for me anymore. Are you finished?"
She can only summon the energy to nod.
He releases her slowly and she sits on his bed. The pain in her side ebbs once some of the tension leaves her body, but it still throbs in time with her pulse. He straightens his clothes and returns to his seat. He doesn't say a word but continues to silently appraise her.
"Why didn't you contact me?" she says when her breathing slows.
His gaze does not falter. "I didn't feel it was necessary," he says.
She opens her mouth, a hot retort on the tip of her tongue. She stops. It's futile. He has simply shut the door on her as part of his life. She is dismissed. He will never tell her why. She has known this deep down since she first opened her eyes in hospital, but she was not prepared for the horror of someone actually being capable of doing such a thing. Even when she had been cut off from her parents, she knew that if worse came to worse (which it did) she would be able to go to them. But this level of detachment is something altogether more frightening. She is not erased, but her significance has been. She is just…dismissed. And she knows that when she leaves, there will be no parting salvo from her that will make him think about his actions. There will be no last minute calling of her name followed by an outpouring of emotion. She will simply walk out the door and she will never see him again. And there is a good chance that he will not think of her again.
"Right. I'll be going then. I don't know why I came in the first place." But she does know. It's the same reason that people look at the body at funerals. You have to see a person lifeless before you can start to accept that they're dead.