The doctor who had greeted her explained with cool efficiency, but not unkindly – perhaps taking into consideration that she was obviously pregnant – that Rick’s condition was critical. He had been stabbed in the chest and the neck. Now as Willow stood at the end of the bed Rick lay in, she felt an enormous shift in her emotions. Her eyes blurring with tears, she listened to the beeping of the equipment to which Rick was attached and to the doctor as he described Rick as a hero for going to a stranger’s aid the way he had. ‘He acted selflessly and with such courage,’ the doctor said. ‘There are not many who would do what he did.’
‘No,’ Willow managed to say. ‘It was very brave of him.’
Giving her a long hard look, the doctor said, ‘May I ask how you came by the bruises to your face?’
‘It’s nothing,’ she said self-consciously.
The intensity of the man’s gaze increased. ‘Would you like to talk to someone about it? We have people here in the hospital you could chat to quite informally.’
‘No,’ she said firmly.
Frowning, the doctor then said he would leave her to have some time on her own with Rick. ‘Talk to him as normally as you can,’ he said before going. ‘Hopefully your voice will help bring him back to us.’
‘Is he unconscious?’
‘Yes. He sustained a severe head injury when he was knocked to the ground.But there’s every chance he can hear what’s going on around him.’
Alone, Willow took a cautious step nearer to the bed, irrationally scared that she might wake Rick and that he’d be furious with her for not coming to see him sooner.
Looking down at him, she tried to make sense of what had happened, based on the information she’d been given. Had he found her note and engagement ring and been so angry – or so upset – that he’d rushed outside to his car to drive down to Tilsham to see her? If that was true, then it was her fault that he was lying here with life-threatening injuries. What if he died? What if she had to live with that on her conscience?
The steady rise and fall of his breathing was being maintained by a ventilator via a tube inserted into his mouth. Several large dressings had been applied to his neck and chest, and at various strategic points on his upper body, pads had been placed from which wires led to various monitoring devices. He was also attached to an intravenous drip.
Her own chest tightening as though she too needed help to breathe in the stifling warmth, and her legs shaky with the shock of seeing Rick like this, she thought that only a few hours ago she had been determined to tell him it was over between them. She had planned to stand up to him and say that he was nothing but an abusive bully, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a monster even.
But that couldn’t be who he really was, she thought, taking in his helpless body. Not when he’d tried to do the right thing by helping an elderly woman who was being mugged. There had to be good in him to have done that, surely?
Just as her father, she supposed, hadn’t been entirely bad.
Talk to him as normally as you can, the doctor had said. But what was normal now? What could she possibly say to Rick?
Did you deliberately mark me out as a willing victim, as Martha believes, somebody whom you could manipulate for your own sick pleasure?
Did you deliberately get me pregnant?
Did you ever really love me?
Do you even know what love is?
And was it you who killed Lucy and Simon’s cat?
None of which she actually said aloud. Instead she bent down closer to Rick so that her lips were almost touching his ear.
‘Rick,’ she said, ‘it’s me, Willow. I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can, I just want you to know that I forgive you. And I’m so sorry that this has happened to you because of me.’
The medical staff assured Willow that she would be better off going home and having a proper night’s sleep, for her baby’s sake as much as hers. They promised her that if Rick’s condition changed in any way, they would ring her. She still didn’t have her mobile phone, so Mum provided her contact details.
They were nearly back in Tilsham – Willow couldn’t bear the thought of staying in Rick’s flat, even though it would have been so much more convenient – when she felt a strange tightening in her stomach, followed by a dull ache in her lower back. It happened again when Mum let them in at Anchor House, and once more when she was brushing her teeth before going to bed. But she pushed it from her mind. It was too soon for the baby to arrive. She was still telling herself this when she padded downstairs at three in the morning to make a drink to help her sleep. She was exhausted, physically and mentally, but worrying about Rick meant she just couldn’t relax enough to fall asleep.
Waiting for the kettle to boil, she was suddenly gripped with the severest of pains that made her double up and cry out. When the pain had passed, and catching her breath, she switched off the kettle and decided she had better go back upstairs and break the news to her mother. She felt unnaturally calm. Not at all how she imagined she would feel when she went into labour. Even labour that was seven weeks earlier than it should be. Was this normal? Or should she be panicking?
No, she told herself firmly. Panic was the last thing she or the baby needed. She could do this.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
It was ungenerous of her, she knew, but after what Rick had done to Willow, and might have continued to do if given the chance, Naomi struggled to accept the way he had been hailed a hero.
The attack on Rick, and his subsequent death eight days later, made the national news, and once again there were demands made of the Mayor of London and the Government to put an end to knife crime once and for all. The elderly woman whom Rick had tried to help had been interviewed by the media and with a trembly voice she had said that, had it not been for a stranger’s bravery, for which she would always be grateful, it might well have been she who had died. In every interview she made a point of extending her sincere condolences to Rick’s devastated fiancée and family.
