“No,” I say, shrugging the dressing gown back up onto my shoulders. “Not tonight.”
She gives me a quizzical look. “Obviously I can’t force you to come with us, but Istronglyrecommend that you do so. They can give you a much more thorough exam, arrange scans if necessary. Better safe than sorry—especially where head injuries are concerned.”
“I’m not leaving my family alone tonight, not after this.” I gesture vaguely at the cellar door. “And we can’t all five of us go together.”
“Adam?” Jess says gently. She hands me two paracetamol and a glass of water. “She’s right. You really should go to QMC with them, get fully checked out.”
I shake my head, the movement setting off a fresh ripple of pain.
“I’ll call Dom, get him to come over in the morning and take me down there. But I’m not going anywhere right now,while it’s still pitch black outside.” I don’t want to mention the obvious, while Callum and Leah are still in the room: that the intruder might come back. “Besides which, A & E at two o’clock on a Sunday morning will be absolutely wall to wall with crazy drunk people. They will be queueing out of the door and I probably won’t be seen until the morning anyway.”
Farida exchanges a glance with my wife as if to say,What can we do with him?But she begins to pack away her equipment in the green kit bag anyway.
“It’s your decision,” she says with a shrug. “But I would strongly advise you to get yourself to Queen’s, whether it’s busy or not.”
“I will,” I say. “In the morning.”
Jess sees Farida and her colleague to the door, where I can hear them talking in low voices about plenty of rest, painkillers, and a sling for my wrist; about symptoms of deterioration that Jess needs to watch for, aboutnauseaanddizzinessandsensitivity to light.
Gingerly, I stand up and retrieve my phone from the kitchen side. There is a crack on the screen where it hit the cellar floor, a diagonal spiderweb fracture. Seven missed calls from Jess still showing on the display. I had no idea how long I’d been out cold on the cellar floor—no longer than five minutes, Jess had said—but it was more than enough time for the intruder to make their escape. I check the back door to see if it’s been forced or any windows smashed around it. But it looks just the way I left it when I’d gone up to bed a few hours ago. Same for the front door and the patio door, according to the two police officers whose names I’ve already forgotten. My wallet, laptop, and car keys are untouched on the kitchen side.
It’s only after the paramedics have gone, after Leah has taken Callum back up to bed, that Jess lets her brave face slip. Shestands in front of me with her head down, lips pressed together, suddenly on the verge of tears.
I put a hand on her arm. “Hey. What is it?”
She shakes her head, cuffing at her eyes with the sleeve of her dressing gown.
“I thought…” She tails off.
“Tell me,” I say. “It’s OK.”
“I thought you were dead,” she says quietly. “I was calling your phone and I could just about hear it ringing somewhere below me in the house, but it sounded so far away, almost like it was underground. You weren’t picking up and the police still weren’t here; I thought they were never going to come. I kept calling and calling, then I came down into the kitchen, and saw the cellar door was ajar. I switched the lights on and looked down there and I could just see your legs, flat out at the bottom of the stairs. When I got down there you were so pale, there was blood and I thought he’d…”
I put my arms around her. “It’s only a bump on the head. Hurts a bit but I’ve had worse.”
“When?”
“Playing rugby.”
She sniffs. “Liar.”
“OK, maybe not quite this bad, but I’ve had concussions before. I’ll be all right.”
She puts her head against my chest and we stand like that for a moment in the kitchen, the warmth of her body pressed against mine. The pain, everywhere, receding into the background as we hold each other close.
“What if you hadn’t been here?” she says softly. “What if they’d come upstairs, gone into one of the kids’ rooms?”
“But they didn’t,” I say, rubbing her back. “They’re gone now. We’re all right, we’re all OK.”
She looks up at me. “We’renotOK. He might have killed you.”
“I don’t think that was his plan. I think I just surprised him.”
“I don’t understand how you can be so sure about it,” she says finally. She pulls away from the embrace to take a tissue from the box on the kitchen counter, wiping her eyes and nose. “Is this all about that stupid hidden room, the things you found? A burglar comes into our house in the middle of the night but doesn’t take anything?”
“I guess… he didn’t find what he was actually looking for.”
“Why do I feel like you’re still holding something back, Adam?” She leans back against the counter, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. “What is it you’re not telling me? It’s all connected, isn’t it?”
