‘If you think that’s embarrassing, you’ve got nothing on me. Mine was ‘Rock Your Body’ by Justin Timberlake. I was twelve and I recorded the video of him dancing on VHS tape, so I could perfect the moves.’ Felix shook his hips and pouted in a wayhe knew for certain was more comical than sexy, but when Eve threw back her head and laughed, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anything sexier in his entire life. He had to get the thought out of his head, otherwise she was going to pick up on it and she wouldn’t want to be around him. She’d made it quite clear why she didn’t even want to try moving on from her relationship with Max, so Felix making any kind of move on her, or even acting like he wanted to, would have been as unwelcome as it was inappropriate.
‘I definitely don’t feel quite as bad now.’ Eve was struggling to stop laughing, as they turned into the street where the Chinese restaurant was, when he saw a figure out of the corner of his eye. The woman was staggering along the pavement opposite them, bouncing off the wall and against the lamp post, then back again like a ball bearing in a pinball machine.
‘Is that Sophie?’ He squinted, hoping his eyes and the darkness were deceiving him, and that it wouldn’t turn out to be the woman he and Eve had helped get a place at Domusamare. Her face was half in shadow and he could so easily be wrong, but as he turned to look at Eve and saw her face fall, he knew he wasn’t.
‘I think it is.’ She was already breaking into a run to cross the road and he followed suit, the two of them reaching the woman, who was now unmistakably Sophie, just before her legs gave way and she sank to the ground. Thankfully her descent was much slower than it would have been if they hadn’t been holding onto her.
‘Sophie, it’s Felix and Eden, do you remember who we are?’ He spoke loudly and clearly, and she only gave a single word in response.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you been drinking or taken something?’ It was Eve who asked the question this time, getting a similarly brief response.
‘Yeah.’
‘Can you tell us what you took?’ The words were barely out of Felix’s mouth before Sophie’s head lolled back and she began to convulse, Eve’s training immediately kicking in.
‘Call an ambulance, I’ll keep her head as still as possible until she stops convulsing and then get her into the recovery position. There’s no way of knowing what she’s taken, but whatever it was I bet she took a lot of it.’ Eve’s tone was urgent and she didn’t even look up as she issued the instruction.
‘Okay, but I might need to go back towards where the car’s parked to get a signal, because it’s notoriously patchy here. It might be quicker to ask the restaurant if I can use their phone. Is there anything in particular I should tell the ambulance service?’
‘Go with your gut instinct and say whatever you think you need to, to get them to come out as quickly as possible. You’ll get it right, I trust you.’
Felix broke into a run again, this time in the direction of the Chinese restaurant. He just hoped Eve was right about trusting him, because when it came to her, he wasn’t even sure he trusted himself.
Thankfully the waiting time for the ambulance had been relatively short and within twenty minutes of Felix making the call, Eve and Sophie were on their way to St Piran’s and he was following along in the car. He’d felt guilty at the idea of leaving Eden and Drew without their dinner, but the thought of leaving Eve to face the situation alone had overridden everything else.So even before one of the restaurant staff had kindly offered to drive over and drop the food off at Drew’s place, he’d already decided what decision he was going to make.
He’d made a call to the out-of-hours team at Domusamare on the way to St Piran’s. They confirmed that Sophie was still staying at the hostel and that her son was living with foster carers. So at least they didn’t need to worry about Carter’s safety. Once Felix reached the hospital and parked the car, he headed straight into A&E, where Eve was waiting for him with an update.
‘I found two empty packets of paracetamol and an almost empty bottle of vodka in her bag. There’s no indication that she took anything else, but we can’t be certain until we get the blood results back, or she becomes lucid enough to tell us. She’s still out of it at the moment.’
‘Thank God we found her when we did.’ Felix couldn’t bear the thought of what might have happened otherwise, but there was no look of relief on Eve’s face.
‘The trouble with paracetamol is that it can cause irreparable damage to the liver and sometimes the kidneys, even when a patient survives the initial overdose. We’ve got her on intravenous acetylcysteine, which is usually effective in preventing liver damage if it’s administered within eight hours of the overdose, but there’s no way of knowing when she took the tablets and then there’s the risk of combining them with the alcohol. So she’ll need an IV to top up her fluids too and regulate her blood sugar levels. The treatment will take about twelve hours and she’ll have some blood tests afterwards to see if her liver has been permanently damaged.’
‘Has she got anyone coming in to be with her?’ Even before Eve shook her head, Felix was pretty sure he knew the answer.
‘She wasn’t making any sense, but when I looked on her phone, there was no one obvious; no contact tagged as mum ordad, but I think we already knew that would be the case from the last time she was bought in, didn’t we?’
‘I’ll give the out-of-hours service at Domusamare a call and see if they can suggest anyone, or if they know what might have triggered this.’
‘Thank you.’ Eve reached for his hand and he tried not to think of it as anything more than a reflex action on her part, because allowing himself to believe she might like him as more than a friend was dangerous ground; territory he’d sworn to steer clear of less than an hour ago. It was almost a relief when two seconds later she dropped his hand, as if only just having realised what she’d done.
‘I’ll make the call right now.’ He was already turning away. ‘Are you going to wait with Sophie?’
‘Yes, if she’s got no one else, I don’t want to leave her on her own. No one deserves to be left on their own at a time like this.’ Eve’s tone was light, but suddenly it felt like the comment could have been aimed at him and his decision not to help Meredith the last time she’d called. Eve had said she understood, but that had been before they’d found Sophie, in the grip of her own demons, and there was a good chance that had been enough to change Eve’s opinion. He didn’t have time to worry about that now. They needed to know if anyone at Domusamare could shed any light on the situation, because whatever Eve might feel about the way he’d handled things with Meredith, Felix’s natural instinct was to be there for anyone who needed help, for as long as they were willing to accept it, and he was nowhere near ready to give up yet.
12
Eve had sat by Sophie’s bedside while she waited for Felix to return from talking to the team at Domusamare. It had taken him almost half an hour and she’d spent the time watching the rise and fall of Sophie’s chest, as her vital signs were monitored and the IV fluids and medication were pumped into her body in an attempt to wash out the toxins she’d flooded it with. Even before Felix had returned with an update, she’d known that Sophie’s motivation was to numb herself from the reality of the life she was living; one that was just too painful for her to bear.
‘Sorry it took so long.’ There was a grave expression on Felix’s face when he finally returned. ‘The out-of-hours team wouldn’t share anything with me because of client confidentiality, so I called Henry at home. I know him well enough for him to trust that I needed the information for Sophie’s sake, and he told me that Pippa, Sophie’s social worker, called to see her on Friday and said that visitation with Carter is being suspended until the CPS decide whether or not to proceed with the child neglect case. She’d assumed she would at least be allowed supervised contact, but apparently the contact centres are overloaded and there just isn’t the capacity. Sophie became very distressed at thethought of not seeing Carter for an indefinite period, but her key worker supported her and thought the conversations she’d had with Sophie had helped her to see that the best thing she could do to overturn the decision was to prove she was determined to stay clean this time. But then she had an argument with another resident today, who told her she might as well forget she had a kid as she was never going to see him again and that’s when Sophie left the centre. She’s free to come and go as she wants, as long as she doesn’t break the conditions of her bail, so they couldn’t stop her. That must be when she bought the paracetamol and the vodka.’
‘She just looks so exhausted. I know what happened to Carter was unforgiveable, but when she came in before, hearing about all the stuff she’d been through would have driven anyone to the edge. And she’s so young, she can’t have been more than a teenager herself when she had Carter.’
‘I was fifteen.’ Sophie’s eyes shot open as she spoke and another wave of sadness washed over Eve. Sophie was barely more than a child herself, even now, but Eve knew how easy it was for people to slip through the safety net when they hit eighteen and all the systems that had been in place to support them when they’d been classified as a child suddenly dried up. She’d felt terrifyingly alone when her own mother had died, when Eve was only fourteen. She could still remember those last hours by her mum’s bedside, watching the life drain out of the one person who’d always been able to make her feel loved and safe. Eve’s father had provided a home in a practical sense, but the love had never been there to the same extent. When she’d left to go to university that had been it, as far as her father and stepmother were concerned; their duty done. Eve didn’t want to think what might have become of her if she hadn’t met Max, and had his family to go home to in the holidays. Sophie clearly hadn’t found her safe haven, and when the safety net providedby the state had almost certainly been whipped away from her at the age of eighteen, she’d found herself at the mercy of an unscrupulous landlord and eventually sofa surfing just to keep a roof over hers and Carter’s heads. It was heartbreaking and it was all Eve could do not to cry.
‘Thank God you’re awake, how are you feeling?’ She took the other woman’s hand, wanting to convey that someone cared, even though she knew it didn’t feel that way to Sophie.
