The Hidden Truth, page 23
Sara shot to her feet, hands pressed to her mouth in horror. ‘Is he all right?’
Bernard nodded shakily. ‘Luckily, his flatmate came home unexpectedly and found him unconscious, rang the ambulance.’
‘Pills?’
Bernard shook his head, baffled. ‘No, Carrie said helium. One of those little tank things you use to blow up balloons?’
She frowned. ‘They can kill you?’
Ignoring her question, he demanded, ‘Where the hell are my car keys?’ starting a frantic scrabble in the key tray by the front door, shaking his jacket upside down, tossing cushions into the air.
‘I’ll drive you.’ Sara blew out the candle on the kitchen table, waving her own keys aloft.
For a moment it looked as if he would argue, but his gaze was blank as he followed her, like a child, out of the house and into the cold December night.
Initially, the only voice in the car on the journey north was the mechanical one of Serena-the-satnav: ‘At the roundabout, take the second exit and stay on the A21 …’ As the car sped up the M1, Sara going as fast as she dared – there was no traffic to speak of at this time of night – she heard Bernard’s strained voice beside her. ‘His decision to go to the police …’ He turned to her. ‘Was it that? He couldn’t cope?’ He fell silent. ‘Surely he didn’t mean to do it.’
She didn’t know what to say. Adam wasn’t a child. He must have been aware of the potential consequences. Glancing sideways at him, she saw his eyes were fixed on the road ahead, his face deathly pale, tinged a sickly orange from the overhead motorway lights. ‘This is all my fault,’ he said.
By the time they reached the Nottingham turn-off, Sara was wilting and utterly exhausted, her eyes scratchy, her mouth dry, her hands – clinging, white-knuckled, to the wheel – aching in every joint. In their haste, they hadn’t brought water or snacks and she was desperately thirsty. Bernard had dozed for a while, for which she was grateful: she had no answers for him.
When they finally stumbled, stiff and cold from the long drive, into the medical centre car park, she breathed a sigh of relief that they’d made it, then steeled herself for what lay ahead.
Carrie stood just inside the entrance to the emergency department, clutching a paper cup of machine coffee and talking earnestly to a plump, stocky man with wiry hot-red hair and pale-rimmed spectacles, dressed in a scruffy mustard sweater. She’d obviously been crying, her cheeks blotchy, her eyes glassy. When she saw her father, she burst into tears again and ran into his arms.
The young man introduced himself to Sara. ‘Noah, Adam’s flatmate,’ he said, shaking her hand firmly.
‘You found him?’
He nodded. ‘Had a fight with the girlfriend and came home early, thank God.’
It was busy in the unit – New Year’s Eve drunks, victims of fights, shouts and loud voices, bewildered people propped on trolleys or wandering around holding bloody wads of tissue to cuts and bruises, some just slumped hopelessly on chairs, others passed out from too much alcohol.
Adam, lying on his back on the cubicle gurney, looked drained of colour, almost transparent, the veins in his forehead pulsing blue, an oxygen mask clamped over his mouth and nose. Sara, standing just outside the open curtain, thought he was asleep. But he opened his grey eyes at the touch of his sister’s hand. At first, he seemed not to recognize her, but then he sighed and she saw a solitary tear escape, slowly tracking down towards his ear.
Bernard bent and dropped a kiss on Adam’s cheek. ‘Hey, we’re here, son. It’s going to be OK.’
Adam didn’t respond, just turned his head away.
Sara was aware of a doctor hovering at her elbow. ‘Are you Adam’s mother?’
She shook her head, moved so that he could get past. After a quick check of the monitor attached to the grey plastic peg on Adam’s finger, he touched Bernard’s sleeve. ‘A word?’
Leaving Carrie with Adam, Bernard followed the doctor into the corridor, signalling for Sara to come with him.
‘You son’s going to be all right.’ The doctor – over-neat blond hair and cool blue eyes – reassured them. ‘His pulse is still a bit high, but his blood pressure’s stabilized and his reflexes are good, no neurological damage that we can see. He’s been lucky. His friend acted quickly.’
Bernard nodded. ‘Has he said anything about how it happened?’
‘Noooo.’ The word was drawn out. ‘But he’d inhaled enough gas to render him unconscious. I’m no psychologist, so I can’t comment … He’ll need to be seen by one of the mental-health team before he can be discharged.’
Bernard’s face was still blank with shock. Sara moved a little closer, placing her hand gently on his back.
The doctor was talking again. ‘Helium displaces the oxygen we need to breathe,’ he said. ‘Inhaling gas from a balloon to get a Mickey Mouse voice won’t harm you – in most cases – but breathing directly from a tank could cause asphyxiation in a matter of minutes. I imagine a fifth-year medical student – which I gather your son is – would be aware of that.’
Sara saw Bernard take a deep breath. ‘So what happens now?’
‘He’ll stay in overnight and one of my colleagues will assess him in the morning. If they don’t feel he’s a threat to himself, he can go home.’ He paused. ‘But I would advise you to keep a good eye on him, make sure he gets the appropriate help. It might be tempting to dismiss this as an unfortunate accident, especially if Adam doesn’t want to admit to what he did, but that could be very dangerous.’
Bernard blinked, cleared his throat. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
The doctor nodded briskly. ‘Right, well, they’ll be taking him up to the ward in a minute. You should all go and get some sleep.’
‘No chance,’ Bernard muttered, at the retreating figure. He turned to Sara. ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe it. I’ve gone to such lengths to keep him safe from one disaster, then this happens.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I didn’t see it coming. I should have … but I didn’t.’
She rubbed his back. ‘Let’s just get him home tomorrow and go from there.’
‘You heard the doctor. Did he really do it deliberately?’ he asked softly.
‘We should wait, see what Adam says,’ she replied diplomatically.
They spent what remained of the night in a nearby Holiday Inn. The room was chilly, Sara and Bernard both wired and overtired. Neither slept.
‘Christ, Sara, supposing he’d died?’
She rolled over to face him. Light filtered through the thin blinds. It must be nearly morning. ‘He didn’t die, Bernard. Listen, you’ve only ever tried to do what you thought was best for him.’ She could tell her words were of no comfort, but she didn’t know what else to say.
He closed his eyes and let out a long sigh.
‘And you’ve got the chance now to help him sort himself out.’
Adam looked wan, even paler, if that were possible, than the night before, when they’d picked him up from the medical centre. But at least he had agreed to come home with them for a week or so to recover – a decision his course supervisor had endorsed, so Adam informed them.
‘What did the psychiatrist say?’ Bernard asked anxiously, as they made their way across the car park. Carrie, who’d stayed with Noah at the flat overnight, had brought a bag with Adam’s things and was waiting for them by the Mini.
Adam grunted, gave his sister a cursory hug. He seemed embarrassed.
‘Adam?’ Bernard pressed. ‘How did it go?’
His son held out his hands, palms up, with a cocky grin that rang very false. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? They wouldn’t have let me go if they thought I was some suicidal maniac.’
Nobody laughed.
Carrie hugged him goodbye. ‘Call me,’ she said, her tone flat. She seemed sullen, almost angry with her brother. Sara couldn’t blame her – Adam had frightened them all, however much she must sympathize.
In the car, Adam immediately got out his phone and plugged in his EarPods. He refused to talk on the long journey home, all questions from his father greeted from the back seat with the same dismissive grunts, until Sara put a warning hand on Bernard’s thigh, and he stopped trying to get an answer out of his son.
As they sped south, the pent-up air in the car ricocheted with the unsaid until Sara felt her head would burst.
38
Once home, all of them almost comatose with exhaustion, Adam grabbed his bag and went straight up to his room, banging the door shut behind him. Sara and Bernard stood in the kitchen, at a loss. The debris from supper the night before, the draughts board, the half-empty wine bottle, still littered the surfaces, and both began automatically to clear things away. It was supper time, so Bernard rootled around in the freezer and brought out a shepherd’s pie.
When the meal was ready, he went to call Adam.
‘Don’t try to talk to him about it tonight,’ Sara warned. ‘Leave it till tomorrow.’
Bernard frowned. ‘I’m not going to pussy-foot around him, Sara. I can’t relax until I know what went on last night. If it was a suicide attempt … he’s up there, alone in his room. He needs to tell me, once and for all, what happened. So we know where we are.’
‘The psych team didn’t red flag him …’
Bernard harrumphed. ‘Adam’s smart. He’d know how to pull the wool over their eyes.’
‘True, and I understand how worried you are, but wouldn’t it be better to have a proper talk in the morning, when we’ve all had a good night’s sleep?’
He turned away. ‘Let me deal with this,’ he said peremptorily.
Sara winced at his tone. But she didn’t challenge him. It had been a terrible twenty-four hours. She waited as he went up and knocked on his son’s door, heard a brief exchange, then watched Bernard tread slowly back down the stairs.
‘He says he isn’t hungry,’ he said. ‘And he doesn’t want to talk.’
Sara went to him and put her arms around him. ‘Leave him. He must be feeling fragile and probably not at all well. If he wants something later, he can get it himself.’ She kept her tone light, trying to defuse his anxiety.
Bernard’s lips pursed. He didn’t return her embrace and moved away just fractionally, until she let him go. ‘He’s not just recovering from a bad hangover, Sara. This is serious. I need to know he’s safe.’
She was well aware it was serious, but she knew that whatever she said, it would be the wrong thing. So she served the pie and peas, which they picked at in silence, Bernard finishing off the burgundy from the night before in a few swift gulps. She dreaded what tomorrow would bring; Adam’s presence upstairs felt looming and huge.
Adam sloped downstairs around eleven the following morning. Bernard had barely slept, as Sara had predicted, and had been fizzing around the house since early light. She’d suggested they go for a walk, but he’d turned her down. She suggested he go to the supermarket. He refused tetchily. ‘I want to be here when he wakes up,’ he’d said.
Sara handed Adam a cup of coffee as he sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Can I make you some porridge, an egg?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m OK, thanks.’
Bernard, grasping his own mug in both hands – it was at least his fourth, she calculated – sat down opposite his son. ‘Did you sleep?’
Adam nodded. He seemed oddly calm.
‘Good. So … we need to talk.’
Adam nodded again. Before his father had a chance to go on, he said, ‘I’m really sorry for the other night. It was a stupid accident.’
Bernard eyed him. ‘What sort of an accident? You must know how dangerous that stuff is.’
Adam shrugged. ‘I was … you know, wound up, and I’d had a few too many vodkas. There was this balloon filler thing … I didn’t buy it. I think Noah got it for a party we were having tomorrow … yesterday now, I suppose. And I don’t know … I’m not sure what happened …’ He stopped, biting his lower lip, then reached for the cafetière that Sara had left on the table.
‘You really should eat something,’ she said, thinking of all that caffeine on an empty stomach, then caught Bernard’s frown and said no more.
‘So that’s it?’ Bernard said.
Sighing, Adam replied, ‘What can I say, Dad? I did a really stupid thing and worried you all sick. But I wasn’t trying to kill myself.’ He didn’t look his father in the eye as he spoke.
Bernard, maybe wanting to believe him, nodded as if he did. Sara saw his shoulders relax slightly. ‘OK, well, if that’s what you say happened …’ He took a sip of coffee. ‘Was it the plan to go to the police that wound you up?’
Adam blinked rapidly – he was clearly in a daze – but said nothing.
Bernard went on, ‘I’d made the decision to come with you, before all this. We’ll go together.’
Adam gave an almost imperceptible nod.
Bernard frowned. ‘Did you hear what I just said?’
‘That you’ll come with me and confess,’ Adam said. ‘Great,’ he added unenthusiastically. Sara thought she detected a hint of sarcasm, too.
‘Isn’t that what you wanted?’
After a big breath, and sitting up straighter in his chair, Adam said, ‘Sorry, Dad, can’t seem to focus on anything right now.’
At a loss, Bernard turned his gaze to Sara, but she couldn’t help.
Adam got up. ‘Think I’ll go back to bed for a while.’
When he’d gone, Bernard let out a sigh of frustration.
‘It’ll take a bit of time for him to recover, Bernard. It’s not just the physical thing, it must have been a mental shock to him too, even if it was an accident,’ Sara said. She felt so sorry for them both.
‘Did you believe him, that he was just mucking about?’ Bernard asked, after a moment.
She hesitated. ‘No.’
‘Me neither.’
During the following days, Adam was like a wraith haunting the house. Taking over from his mother, Sara thought, only half in jest. He’d appear unannounced, padding downstairs silently in his bare feet, eat some toast and drink some coffee, then wander back to his room. He didn’t go outside, never dressed beyond his joggers and T-shirt. He hardly spoke, politely rebuffing all their attempts to engage.
‘I don’t know what to do with him, Sara,’ Bernard said, when the end of the holidays loomed and they needed to go back to work. This morning they’d left the house for some privacy and were sitting on a bench, wobbly, weather-beaten and surrounded by brambles. It was a horrible day, drizzly and cold, but they didn’t notice. Most of their conversations inside were conducted these days in low voices, glancing around, nervous Adam might overhear. It’s like having a fretful baby in the house, who won’t sleep, Sara thought. Except the tension was like a fog that refused to lift. ‘He says his course supervisor insists he take a couple of weeks off. But is he really going to go back in this state?’
‘What’s he said about the police?’
‘He wants to go ahead with it as soon as possible.’ Bernard’s tone was dull with resistance.
He got slowly to his feet, gazing out across the grey expanse of sea. She could see the muscle in his cheek tensing, mouth set. She felt they were in different zones now. He didn’t seem really to see her any more. It hurt, but she understood that worry about his son was all-consuming. She just wondered how long it would go on. ‘Don’t you think he needs professional help, Bernard?’ she said, rising too, aware her jeans were damp from the wooden seat.
Bernard didn’t reply – she wasn’t even sure he had registered her suggestion – as he turned and walked away. She hurried to catch up with him, reaching for his hand. He held hers automatically, but didn’t seem conscious of her. After a few moments she eased her hand away.
As they arrived at the house, Bernard stopped short of the glass doors on the terrace and finally turned to her, pulling her roughly into his arms. ‘Oh, God, Sara, I’m so sorry about this. It must be a nightmare for you, getting involved in all my shit. I don’t mean to be so snippy with you … I love you.’ He pulled back, gave her an agonized smile. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’
Leaning against him with cautious relief, she nodded.
‘We mustn’t let this thing with Adam come between us.’
Sara felt his genuine desire not to do so. But, in that moment, she knew it already had.
39
Joe, with his robust good humour and American ski tan – acquired over Christmas spent with Ariel at Lake Placid in the Adirondacks – was like a blast of fresh air gusting through the quiet, sealed, strung-out atmosphere of the cliff house. It was a couple of days before Adam was supposedly returning to Nottingham, barely a fortnight since the incident with the helium tank. To Sara, who’d watched father and son skirting round each other, and knew that nothing had been settled or even discussed, it was out of the question to let Adam go.
‘Bloody hell!’ Joe exclaimed, throwing himself down on one of the sofas and spreading his limbs, waving them about as if he was trying to create a snow angel. ‘I’ve knackered every fucking muscle in my body on those mountains, pretending I was twenty-five again. Those trendy try-hards in their über-cool SnowDrifters made me feel like something the cat dragged in. I had to prove them wrong.’
Bernard was laughing, and Sara felt a spurt of pleasure to see him diverted – for a moment at least. ‘Sounds like you were the try-hard.’
Joe groaned as he accepted the glass of red wine Bernard held out to him. ‘I love Americans in general, but that moneyed New York mob really fancy themselves.’ He lifted his glass to his friend and then to Sara. ‘Cheers! Here’s to you both. And here’s to being home in one piece.’
As they all took sips from their drinks, Joe asked, sotto voce, obviously having been primed earlier by Bernard, ‘Where’s the boy?’
‘I’ll go and tell him you’re here,’ Sara said, putting her drink down. Thank goodness for Joe, she thought, as she climbed the wooden staircase. It would be a relief to have someone else picking up the conversation at supper, and maybe Joe would unlock Adam, where they’d both singularly failed.
