Part One Hundred And Sixty
Friday, the twenty-ninth day of July, was to prove the beginning of Karen's longest, most horrific nightmare. The rape, what had happened with Ritchie, they wouldn't even come close. She and George had been out for a meal, neither of them feeling like cooking after a hard week at work. Karen was driving, with the top down, as the evening was very warm, a light breeze blowing around them. George yawned luxuriously, anticipating nothing more strenuous than some utterly blissful lovemaking once they reached Karen's flat. But when the insistent tone of Karen's mobile broke in on their mutual contemplation, it seemed to irrevocably shatter their peace. "If that's Larkhall, they can cope without me," Karen said, lowering the roof back into place to cut out the noise of the traffic. "It's not," George told her, glancing at the screen of the mobile. "It's Helen." "Hello," Karen said with a smile, leaving the phone on hands free as she was driving. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" "Are you in the car?" Helen asked without any further greeting. "Yes," Karen replied, hearing an undertone of enormous weight in Helen's voice. "Will you pull over for a minute? I've got something to tell you." Karen couldn't be certain, but she thought she could hear the threat of tears. "The phone's on hands free," She told Helen. "So as long as whatever it is can be said in front of George, go ahead." "Karen!" Helen snapped exasperatedly. "Will you listen to me for once in your bloody life, and get off the road!" The command was given in Helen's broadest accent, it always being far more defined when she was angry. Turning off the road they were on into a side street, Karen switched off the engine. "What's happened?" She asked, taking the phone off hands free. Helen didn't know where to begin. How on earth do you give a mother such a piece of news as this one? "Sweetheart, I'm sorry for shouting at you," She began, "But I don't think you should be behind the wheel of a car, to hear what I'm about to tell you." Helen hesitated at this point. "How long is it," She asked carefully. "Since you last spoke to Ross?" Karen's eyes widened in astonishment. What could Helen have to tell her that had anything to do with Ross? "A couple of months ago. Why?" "And how was he when you spoke to him?" "Belligerent and aggressive, because I refused to give him money, until he started sorting himself out. But again, why?" "So, he didn't tell you anything about what he'd been up to lately?" "Helen, what does my son have to do with whatever you want to tell me?" Karen cut straight to the point. "For the last four months, he's been a patient of mine." "Go on," Karen invited, knowing there was a lot more to this than her son having sought any form of psychotherapy. "Karen, he came to me, not for psychotherapy, but for help with drug addiction." "So," Karen said in dawning realisation. "That's what his behaviour over the last few months has been about. In a funny kind of way, it makes sense. But if he's been coming to you for four months, I'll assume it hasn't so far been successful?" "No, not as such," Helen said evasively, seeing the point of no return creeping nearer and nearer like a treacherous tide. "Did you have to make him an in-patient? Is that why I haven't heard from him in over two months?" "Yes. He asked for it, because he knew he couldn't stay away from it if he didn't." "Why the bloody hell didn't he tell me?" Karen demanded in total despair. "I don't know," Helen replied somberly, knowing that she did, but thinking that this wasn't the time for it. "Helen, why are you telling me all this now?" Karen asked, a sneaking, terrible suspicion beginning to inch its way into her mind. "Sweetheart, I don't know how to tell you this," Helen said, the tears rising to her eyes. "I don't care how you say it," Karen told her almost desperately. "Just tell me!" "Ross, killed himself, about an hour ago." Karen felt like something had kicked her very forcefully in the chest, pushing all the breath out of her, and making it almost impossible for her to draw another one. When George saw the colour drain from Karen's face, she knew that something terrible had happened. "How?" Was all Karen found herself able to ask. "He cut his wrist," Helen told her, both of them knowing just what a painful, drawn out way to die this was. Karen couldn't say any more, she couldn't bring herself to even contemplate any other detail. "Sweetheart, talk to me," Helen pleaded with her, but Karen couldn't. Switching the phone off, she put it back into its slot on the dashboard. But when she reached to start the car again, George stopped her, taking Karen's hand in hers. "Darling, what's happened?" She asked, seeing no sign of a return of colour to Karen's cheeks. Karen opened her mouth to tell her, but the words simply wouldn't come. How could she say it? How could she sit here, and tell George that Ross was dead, that he had died by his own hand? She tried several times to get the words out, but not a single sound would pass her lips. When she again reached for the ignition key, George said, "I'll drive." Karen couldn't argue with her, so she got out of the car and they swapped places. George moved the seat forward to accommodate her shorter legs, and drove them towards Karen's flat, wondering what on earth had taken place to give Karen the look of a ghost.
Karen didn't say a word as they mounted the stairs, but when they reached her lounge, she did something that George at first found peculiar, but held greater significance later on. Karen picked up the nearest picture of Ross from the sideboard, one of him at eighteen, looking healthy, exuberant, and very alive. She sat down on the sofa, cradling the picture between her two hands, gazing with an expression of pure pain at his face. Seeing that she wasn't going to be enlightened any time soon, George made them some coffee. But when she put a mug down on the table next to Karen, it was barely given a glance. "Darling, please talk to me," George said gently, trying to break in on Karen's all too evident misery. But Karen didn't seem to notice that she'd even spoken. Gently turning Karen's face towards her, George was shocked to see the almost total lack of expression. Karen's eyes looked haunted, dead, as if all the happiness had suddenly gone out of her world. Knowing that Karen wouldn't take any notice of what she might say, George picked up the phone and called the man she always turned to in a crisis.
John was sitting on the balcony that adorned his rooms in the digs, drinking a glass of wine and listening to some soft classical music. Jo was away this week at a conference, so he was at something of a loose end. When his mobile rang, showing Karen's number on its screen he answered it with, "Hello, this is a nice surprise." "It's George," She told him, before he could say anything else in that flirtatious drawl of his. "Are you busy, because I need you to come over." "What's happened?" He asked, her tone of extreme seriousness bringing him back down to earth. "I don't know, that's the point. We'd been out for a meal, and were on the way back here, when Karen got a call from Helen, who told her something terrible. I think it was something about Ross." John took in a slow, deep breath. So, that day had finally come, had it, that day when Karen would discover what he and Helen had kept from her for far too long. "But you don't know exactly what Helen did say to her?" "No, but she seems to have gone into some kind of emotional shock. I think you might be the only one who can pull her out of it." "You place too much faith in me, George," He said somberly, because George didn't know the half of it. "I'll be right over."
Switching off his stereo, John was down the stairs and in the car within what felt like seconds. As he drove across London, he punched in Helen's number, because he needed to be put in the picture before he got to Karen's. "It's John Deed," He said when she answered. "Where are you?" She asked, and he could tell that she'd been crying. "On my way to Karen's. George says she's gone into emotional shock, but that she doesn't know why. I thought you might be able to tell me." "Ross is dead," Helen told him bleakly. "He cut his wrist, and there wasn't a bloody thing anyone could do about it." "Oh, God," John said very quietly. Helen laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, yeah, we could have done with a look in from him." "When did this happen?" "Nearly two hours ago. I got a call from the night staff at the clinic when they couldn't resuscitate him. Karen was always listed as his next of kin, but I'd left strict instructions that only I was to be the one to inform her, if ever that became necessary." "Well, thank God for small mercies," John said, hearing the threat of slightly hysterical rambling in Helen's words. "Do you realise," Helen continued. "That if just once, either you or I had chosen to do what was morally right, rather than what was legally right, this might never have happened?" "You can't think like that," John insisted, trying to calm her down but knowing that she was right. "Don't you feel any guilt, Judge?" She demanded. "Don't you think that maybe this time, the law didn't know best? Because I can tell you that I sure as hell do." "Yes, I do feel guilty," John retorted hotly. "Because I know exactly what she's going through. But wishing we could turn the clock back isn't going to help Karen, and it isn't going to help either you or me. How much does she know?" "She knows that Ross had been coming to see me for four months, and that he'd been an in-patient for the last two. She doesn't know that you knew about it, but we both know that she'll have to some time. This hiding things from her that she needs to know, ends whenever she begins to want answers, and that's not negotiable." "Is someone with you?" John asked, wanting to make sure that Helen would be all right as well. "Nikki's here, waiting for me to explain everything to her. It's not just Karen who's been kept in the dark all this time." "Well, just, just take care of yourself," He said quietly, the fact that he'd been the one to insist she kept it to herself, ever uppermost in his mind.
When George heard John's car arrive, she briefly left Karen to go downstairs and let him in. "How is she?" John asked, walking up to her. "Still not talking, still barely acknowledging her own existence." "I think I ought to fill you in, before we go back upstairs. I talked to Helen on my way here. Ross is dead. He's been one of Helen's drug rehab patients for a while now, but because of the law surrounding patient confidentiality, she couldn't tell Karen. He's been an in-patient at the clinic where Helen works for the last two months. George, he killed himself." "No," She said, the tears immediately rising to her eyes. "How could he do that to her?" "I don't know. But what we've got to do now is to first of all make her start talking again, and then just to be there for her, because this isn't going to get better." When they returned upstairs, Karen was exactly where George had left her, still gazing into space and still holding Ross's picture. John moved to sit down next to her, putting his right arm around her shoulders, and gently trying to remove the picture frame from her hands. Her grip tightened on the wooden frame, but John was determined to remove the immediate focus of her attention. "Let go," He told her quietly, and when she did, he put the picture down on the side table out of her line of vision. "I talked to Helen," He continued gently. "She told me about Ross. I'm so, so sorry," He finished, softly stroking one of her hands that lay empty in her lap. He saw the briefest of flickers in her eyes, and knew that he was getting somewhere. George was sitting in a chair off to the side, watching John desperately try to work his magic on Karen. "I'd like you to talk to me," John cajoled. "Just to prove to me that you're still here." George winced, but she knew that hitting her with a remark like that was the only way forward. Karen focussed on him, her eyes briefly losing their mask, to show the depth of the hurt beneath. "Do you have any idea how much I wish I wasn't?" She answered bleakly, making John inwardly breathe a sigh of relief that it had taken such a short time. "Tell me," He invited, not willing to let her slide back into her hiding place. But she shook her head. "You'd have me sectioned if I did," She said, without a single fragment of humour in her tone. Then, turning her gaze on George, she added, "Sorry if I frightened you." "Oh, darling," George said, unable to keep her tears at bay any longer. "You don't have to be sorry." She moved to sit on Karen's other side, her arms going round her to offer any comfort she could. "I don't know how to deal with this," Karen said eventually, feeling an immense amount of support coming from both of them. "Well, hiding, and keeping it all in here," Said John, briefly touching her cheek. "Certainly isn't the way." "It's not quite that easy, John," She said carefully. "If I am to go on functioning, inside is precisely where everything I feel needs to stay." "And what do you suppose that will achieve?" John asked despairingly. "Karen, I am not letting you end up like..." He stopped, knowing he'd gone too far. "...Like my son?" Karen finished for him. "I'm already there, John, so however I choose to pull myself out, is well and truly my decision." "Not even you can argue with that, John," George said fondly, trying to break the ice. "Did Helen say anything else I need to know?" Karen asked him, grateful for George's smoothing of ruffled feathers. "She needs you to go and identify him some time tomorrow, if you feel up to it." "It'll probably be the most peaceful I've seen him in a long time," Karen said darkly. "When did you last see him?" John asked, bypassing the almost macabre quality of Karen's remark. "Towards the end of March, but I spoke to him at the end of May. He always wanted money, and now I know what for. Maybe I should have been more insistent about knowing what it was for. Maybe if I had, he would have told me about going into rehab, and..." She stopped, entirely unable to finish the chain of self-blame. "Karen, doing the what-ifs, isn't going to get you anywhere," George insisted. "You told me the same at Lauren's trial," Karen reminded her. "Yes, I probably did. I meant it then, and I mean it now. It really won't do you any good. I did years of what-ifs, and all it achieved was to make me wish I'd never existed. I know it's easier said than done, but please try not to do it." John listened to George's words, and heard a level of sincerity and affection in them that he'd never heard her bestow on anyone else. He was proud of her that night, proud of how strong she could be for someone else, if not for herself.
A good while later, when Karen decided to go to bed, she asked both John and George to stay. So, whilst George snuggled up next to Karen, trying to take some of her fears of the night away, John dug a spare duvet and pillow out of the airing cupboard, and lay on the sofa, watching News 24 with the sound turned down. How on earth was he going to tell her that he'd known all about Ross's drug addiction since round about the last time Karen had spoken to her son? The weight of the coming confession settled on his heart, making him wish he'd gone with his original conviction, and not taken his ex-father-in-law's advice. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was nearly one thirty, but he couldn't sleep. So, it seemed, neither could someone else. He looked up as Karen's bedroom door opened, and saw George emerge into the light cast by the TV screen. "Couldn't you sleep either," He said as she came over to him. "No, not really." "What about Karen?" "I gave her one of my knock-out pills." "Probably the best thing under the circumstances," He said, lifting a hand to cover a yawn. "Can I have a cuddle?" She asked, feeling a little guilty for asking. "You don't need to ask," He told her affectionately, lifting the duvet so that she could slide in next to him. "How do I help her through this, John?" She asked as their legs entwined, and their arms went around each other. "You're doing pretty well already," He said, gently kissing her. "But I think all any of us can do, is to take one day at a time. She's going to find this the most difficult hurdle of her life." "I just feel useless," George said with tears in her eyes. "No, you're not," He told her softly. He held her against his strong, hard chest, until her long, blonde eyelashes began to drift down onto her cheeks. Gently kissing her awake, he urged her to go back to bed, leaving him with his thoughts and most of all, his regrets.