He closed the laptop, took a tea bag out of the jar, found a cup, stared at it, then put it down. He fetched his coat and hat and gloves and set off in the darkening light.
Louise
‘Hello.’
It was Andrew Barnes again.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said.
Louise stared at the man. What did he want with them? She hadn’t mentioned his earlier visit to either Ruby or Carl. Didn’t know how to put it. It seemed private somehow, and puzzling.
‘How is he?’ He looked anxious, apprehensive, as though he feared she might send him away.
‘The same,’ she said.
Andrew gestured to his own face, then at Luke. ‘He’s not got the mask.’
‘He’s breathing on his own but nothing else.’
‘But he still might…’
She nodded quickly. ‘Yes, it’s totally unpredictable. They say that the longer time goes on, the less chance there is that people’ll wake up, but it’s still quite early on, really.’ Seven days. Only three since they stopped sedation, she told herself. No time at all.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly.
It felt stupid, him standing across the other side of the room. She pointed to Ruby’s chair. ‘If you want to…’
‘Thanks.’
He didn’t look any better than last time, she thought, and knew she looked worse. She’d caught sight of her reflection in the visitors’ toilets, shocked to see grey in her hair. She had always thought that was a myth. And marks like bruises under her eyes. ‘They asked for pictures,’ she said. ‘The police: before and after.’ The memory was bitter in her mouth. ‘They used them in the appeal.’
He nodded.
She had known immediately which picture of Luke she would give them. Ruby had taken it when they were in Ibiza the summer before last. Luke at the restaurant table, relaxed, smiling. Rush matting and grapevines in the background, a knickerbocker glory with sparklers in front of him – his birthday. They’d teamed up with her mates Fee and Deanne and their kids to go. Deanne had got them a good deal because the apartment was her mum’s timeshare. The cheap flights meant travelling at god-awful hours both ways, but it had been a brilliant week for them all. Louise had worried about Luke; it was not long after he’d been in trouble over the graffiti, and before that the fireworks, and he’d been bunking off school. He was the eldest of the kids in the group but he was really good with the others, and then halfway through the week he’d met a girl from London, a holiday romance. Louise hoped they were taking precautions and said so to Luke, who grimaced. ‘Leave it out, won’t you,’ sounding a bit cockney himself. Louise hadn’t warmed to the girl, who had a habit of smirking at her whenever they met. She was glad when there was no mention of her after they got home.
‘They sent someone in here to take a photo.’ She gestured at Luke. She had sat there feeling furious, though not sure why, as the man had adjusted lights and moved drip stands and used a camera with a huge lens on the front then checked to see what he’d got on his screen.
‘The fight,’ Louise said, a cramp in her guts. ‘What happened?’ Putting together what the police had told her and what had been reported in the news, it was still so patchy. She knew there were three people involved, thought to be in their late teens, two boys and a girl. All white.
‘They think it started on the bus,’ Andrew said. ‘There’s a stop near the house. Jason was coming back from town.’
Had Luke been on the bus? A lurch in her stomach as the possibility struck. Declan said he had gone into town for some Christmas meal with his day-release course. If he had got the number 50 back instead of one of the buses down Wilmslow Road, which he sometimes did, then he could have been on the same bus as Jason. Then what? He’d made some smart comment, stared at them the wrong way? Or they’d homed in on him – a mixed-race kid, someone to taunt, to bully.
‘They didn’t tell you?’ Andrew said.
‘No.’ Why not? She was angry that no one had seen fit to keep her informed.
‘They didn’t give us many details, but they were bothering Luke first, then they all got off, Jason as well.’ He hunched his shoulders over, looked down at his hands. ‘I was in the house,’ he said. ‘By the time I got outside…’ He shook his head. ‘My wife Val, she saw some of it, she called the police. The three of them were…’ He hesitated, swallowed. ‘They were kicking Luke. Jason went for one of them, he managed to pull him off, then as I came out he was pushing the smaller of the boys away. Then they all ran off. We don’t know who used the knife.’