Rachel’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. She looked exhausted, with violet smudges under her eyes, her hair caught up in a messy ponytail. “Unfortunately,” she answered with a sigh, “I don’t think there is. But thank you, Claire.”
Chapter seventeen
Rachel
Meghan came in as Claire was leaving, tossing Nathan’s dirty clothes towards the washer with an alarmingly wet splat.
With a sigh Rachel picked them up and shoved them in. “Couldn’t you have put them in the washer?”
“Close enough,” Meghan answered breezily. “What did Claire West want?”
“She made us a meal.”
“A meal?” Meghan raised her eyebrows. “Are we her charity, then?”
“Actually, I think she was just being nice.” Which had felt kind of strange—and nice. Rachel hadn’t had much experience of Claire West taking care of or looking out for her. “Come on,” she said to Meghan. “We need to get going. Mum’s waiting.”
They drove to the hospital in silence, the four of them crammed into the hatchback, Nathan in his car seat behind Rachel, kicking his legs against the back of her seat. Meghan angled the rearview mirror away from Rachel to do her lipstick.
“Seriously, Meghan? I’m driving.”
“Use your wing mirrors. That’s what they’re for.”
“When can I get driving lessons?” Lily asked from the back.
Driving lessons cost about two hundred quid. “I’ll teach you,” Rachel said, and Meghan guffawed.
“Just like you taught me? You lasted all of two lessons.”
“You were impossible.”
“So were you. You grabbed the wheel from me to do a right turn and we ended up on the curb.”
“You practically stripped the gears changing from second to third.”
“I was learning.”
Rachel angled the rearview mirror back towards her. “I’ll teach you, Lily,” she said. “Promise.” Lily didn’t reply, and no one spoke until they’d reached the hospital.
“Why do hospitals always smell?” Meghan asked as they walked through the sliding glass doors.
“Because they’re hospitals,” Rachel answered tartly. It had taken her twenty minutes to find a parking space, and she’d ended up on a grassy verge. She was worried about what the doctors were going to say about her mother and what the prognosis was. She didn’t think she could cope with her mother being even more bedridden and ill. And she was starting to feel bad about not being nicer to Claire this morning.
“I know they do,” Meghan said, “but what is that smell? Cleaning fluid? Medicine? Flesh rotting?”
“All three,” Lily answered, and let out a nervous laugh. Rachel knew they were all tense about their mother, not knowing how to act, what to feel. Last night had been a blur of fear and helplessness; when Lily had come out of the house, her face so pale and shocked, Rachel had run inside, stopping short to see her mother collapsed on the floor of the sitting room, her limbs at weird, awkward angles, her face contorted in a grimace of pain.
Rachel had stood there, frozen for a few seconds, until Andrew came in behind her, calmly took out his phone, and dialed 999.
“I can do that,” Rachel had protested, her voice rising in panic and anger, and Andrew hadn’t bothered to reply.
She had crouched by her mother, wiping a few lank strands of gray hair away from her face. “Mum? Mum, can you hear me?”
Janice had blinked up at her and then tried to speak, but only an animal-sounding groan came out. Fear had clutched at Rachel hard, so she couldn’t speak either. She couldn’t believe this was happening, and just after she’d resigned herself to her mother having thirty or forty years of bedridden existence ahead. She’d been practically wishing her mother dead, and now this....
“An ambulance is coming,” Andrew had said.
Rachel had taken her mother’s limp hand in hers. “I don’t think we should move her.”
