Sid frowned. He would have to get into it by impersonating one of the chat members. Not impossible. He had a text file of hundreds of thousands of common passwords. He ran an automated spam attack on the forum that tried every password in combination with each of the usernames, and he was in.
The chat participants presented as nerdy medieval academics who were spooked and obsessed with ensuring their privacy. Sid allowed himself a small smile at that—clearly, none of them had IT expertise or they’d have been way more careful—but it soon faded when he found a mention of Folio 9 and of Alice Trevelyan in the same sentence, followed by the killer line:
I have definitive proof that Folio 9 was forged.
He stared at it. If true, this could be devastating for Anya.If.The skin on the back of his neck crawled. He wanted to know more, but that was all it said.
He spent hours searching, typing in combinations of his search terms, but nothing else came up. It was almost midnight when he walked home to grab his passport and a few hours’ sleep before getting a taxi to the airport.
Outside, the deep darkness beyond the campus lights spooked him. He took the main road into town, then walked up North Street.He knew he was close to the cottage when he passed beneath the tower of St. Salvator’s Chapel. A rowdy group of students walked toward him, on the other side of the road, drinking beer and sharing boxes of fish and chips.
At first, he was grateful to have company on the quiet streets, then he did a double take, his brain telling him urgently that one of the women he’d seen on the footpath with Paul was part of the group. He stared, unsure now, unable to identify her from behind, but also certain he was right. He could have been. The group had just passed a narrow alleyway that she could have disappeared into. She could even be standing in the shadows and watching from there, right now.
He hesitated, wondering if he should check, then shuddered involuntarily, as if someone had walked over his grave. He was too spooked to chase anyone down a dark alleyway, and he had a flight to catch in a few hours’ time. He hurried to the top of North Street and cut toward the Scores. He knew he wouldn’t sleep, but he couldn’t wait to be out of town and with Anya.
Anya
I woke at six the next morning, sitting bolt upright, my skin slick with sweat and my jaw aching with tension.
Magnus and his London home had appeared in my nightmare: his face looming, then dissolving and reforming as the de Kooning oil of the obliterated woman I’d seen on the wall of his London house, the thick paint twitching, then writhing, becoming a backdrop to my mother’s painful death. Horrific.
I found a message from Sid on my phone.
On my way to the airport landing in Bristol around 10. I’ll come straight to the hospital.
I couldn’t wait to see him.
I was still expecting a reply from Diana and was surprised she hadn’t responded yet. I checked that the message I’d sent her last night had gone through:I had to miss my flight back to Scotland. Mum is very unwell, so I’m home, and will be needed here for a few more days. I’ll be back as soon as possible.
It said the message had been delivered. Maybe she wasn’t awake yet, or maybe she was punishing me. I had no mental bandwidth free to think about it.
Viv was already in the kitchen when I went down, ready to go. I drove us in Mum’s car. We barely talked on the journey. We never had much to say to each other when it was just the two of us, but the silence was comfortable enough.
Mum had improved a little, the antibiotics doing their work. The nurse was propping her up when we arrived. She told me Mum had had some episodes of rigor overnight.
“It’s the worst, darling,” Mum said. “You feel so cold, but they take the blankets off you.”
“That’s because you’d overheat dangerously otherwise,” the nurse said. She was taking Mum’s blood pressure. I watched the cuff squeeze Mum’s too-thin arm. She’d been through so much already. Too much.
“We’ve brought you some pajamas and some other bits,” I said. “Viv packed a bag for you.”
“That’s lovely. I’ll change later. I’m a little tired now.” Her voice tapered off.
“She’s going to need a lot of rest,” the nurse said. She hooked up a new transfusion of antibiotics and ibuprofen. Mum shut her eyes. The nurse left the cubicle and pulled the curtain shut, and I let Mum doze while I unpacked the things we’d brought for her and set them up as nicely as I could in the cramped cubicle. A phone charger, Kindle, ChapStick, some snacks, spare underwear and nightwear, acardigan. If they kept her in longer, we’d bring more stuff. It was a routine we knew well by now.
I sat beside Mum. Me on one side, Viv on the other. It was chatty on the ward; visitors gathered around the other beds, but we were mostly quiet. I drew Mum’s curtain so we were shielded from the room but could enjoy the daylight from the window beside her bed. I found some comfort in watching the peaceful rise and fall of her chest. Her body seemed less stressed than it had last night. It gave me a little hope.
I don’t know how long I’d been there when Sid peeked through the curtains gently and said, “Knock, knock.” Mum’s eyes fluttered open. He’d bought a bar of her favorite chocolate. “For when you feel well enough,” he said.
“Thank you, dear Sid. What are you even doing here?” she chided him, but she squeezed his hand affectionately. He found another chair and put it beside mine. Viv offered to fetch us drinks from the café. Sid tried talking to Mum, but she fell asleep again, this time with her mouth open. It made her look older than her years.
We sat for a while before he whispered, “She doesn’t look great.”
I didn’t want to hear it. I never wanted to hear it from anyone else when she wasn’t doing so well, even though I always knew. “She’s a lot better than last night.”
“Is she out of danger?”
“They say she’s going in the right direction. Apparently the first twenty-four hours is crucial.”
