Chapter 6
Early August
Laurie felt the shift inside her appear out of nowhere as it usually did. A bout of panic that pounced on her, as if it had been waiting around a corner with malicious intent. There was no trigger, no pattern, it just happened. Alan was taking his umpteenth call of the day from Sir Basil about the quality of the paper the Daily Trumpet was printed on and if cost cuts could be made. It had no connection to the thoughts which rolled into her brain like a cold, dark fog. She had been surviving between such episodes, plastering on a smile over the cracks, convincing everyone she was fit to be back at work, of course she was. But she wasn’t, not by a long chalk.
She felt the prickle of tears behind her eyes, as painful as if they were full of acid rather than salt. She tried to wipe them away secretly while Alan had his back turned to her, attempting to talk some sense into an old man who had more money than brain cells, but they started to drip out of her eyes as if the tail of one was attached to the head of another. She reached down and fumbled into her bag for a tissue, desperately, because she did not want to be seen as someone who wasn’t coping. She’d hidden it successfully from everyone so far and didn’t want her weakness showing. She’d get through it without having to go to a doctor for anti-depressants, or be referred to a shrink. She didn’t want to turn into her mother who popped Prozac like Smarties and booked in for emergency crisis talks with a therapist if she broke a nail.
Alan turned, saw her trying to dry her eyes with a tissue that was more water than paper.
‘I’ll have to go, Sir Basil. There’s a fire,’ he said and put the phone down.
He crossed to the window that faced out into the main office, twisted the rod that shut the blinds which was a fierce indicator that he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Not even for the four-minute warning of a nuclear blast or an impromptu visit by the queen. No exceptions, message received and understood.
He then passed Laurie a box of ‘man-sized’ tissues.
‘I still have boxes of these un-PC things,’ he said. ‘Blokes have much bigger noses than women anyway so I could never see what all the bloody fuss was about. World’s gone chuffing mad.’
A small laugh escaped her, mingled in with the embarrassment of being so exposed.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, her throat dry.
Alan sat down heavily on his chair which creaked in protest.
‘Ey Laurie, I’ve known for a while you weren’t right, but it wasn’t my place to say. I imagine you’re sick of people asking you if you’re okay, so I thought I’d go against the grain and not probe. Until I felt that I had to – like now.’
‘I’m okay mainly,’ said Laurie. ‘Just every so often this happens. No idea why.’
‘It happens because you came back to work too early and haven’t given yourself enough time to grieve properly.’ Alan stabbed his finger in the direction of his workforce. ‘Even those idiots out there would have had enough perception to tell you that.’
‘I couldn’t just sit there and stare at four walls, Alan. But I don’t fit in anywhere, I can’t find the place where I used to be.’
‘Because it’s gone, lass,’ said Alan, as softly as his gravelly tones could manage. ‘You have to find a new place and that takes time. More than you think. Three steps forward, four steps backward mainly in the beginning. But there will come a point when you find you’re one step in front and you don’t slip back.’
He leaned towards her slightly before speaking again.
‘This stays between you and me. I lost my first wife when I was twenty-one and she was nineteen. We’d only been married a few months when she was struck down with meningitis and it swept her away from me.’
Laurie gave a small gasp. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘No one does. Well, no one outside the inner circle. You never get over it. You just find somewhere to put it. A bit like learning how to walk differently in a shoe that rubs your heel when you’ve only got one pair.’
Laurie nodded, though she couldn’t imagine the ache inside her ever subsiding to a degree where she wasn’t constantly aware of it.
‘My boss at the time sent me home when I turned up for work the next month looking like a bag of crap,’ Alan went on. ‘He told me not to rush trying to get over it and to seek help when I needed it instead of trying to be bloody brave. He was a man with vision who knew a broken mind needed as much care as a broken leg, and he was right, Laurie. Just because you can’t see an injury, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.’
Alan shifted his chair so he could open his drawer and he pulled out a business card. It didn’t have much on it, just the words ‘Molly’s Club’, a local telephone number and the name Molly Jones-Hoyland.
‘I’ve known this woman for years,’ said Alan. ‘I wanted to do a feature on what she does but she’d rather not and I respect that. It’s for people who need some help getting over a grief hurdle. Chat, tea and buns, that sort of thing. It’s free. She’s a good woman. I wish she’d been doing then what she does now when I lost Pam.’
Laurie took the card. ‘Thank you, Alan.’
‘I only found out when I sought help myself just how much I needed it. It’s not my call to lecture anyone, but Molly has been through a lot in her life and yet she’s come up smiling. Jump in and let her work her magic.’
‘I will,’ said Laurie and she meant it. She knew she was stuck and needed help. And a recommendation from Alan was a proper accolade. She’d ring Molly Jones-Hoyland and hope she could fix her broken mind. Her broken life.
Chapter 7
Pete was with Krish in the fire station gym talking about Juice’s rescue the previous day when they heard the alarm. They dumped the weights and moved quickly towards the fire engine, stripping off their sweat-damp T-shirts and grabbing the dry ones they’d left out in case of a situation like this. Andy was striding from the office, Sal close behind him. She jumped into the driver’s side of the cab, Andy in the passenger side; the rest of them piled into the back, changing quickly into their fire kit.
‘RTC, six vehicles reported,’ said Andy, buckling up then checking the precise location of the incident they’d been called to on the MDT screen in front of him – the mobile data terminal. Their station was situated near to the motorway junction; the estimated time of arrival was ten minutes.
Sal sped down the hard shoulder, siren blaring. The traffic tailed back several miles already. The second engine was close behind, she could see it in her side mirror. In front of them smoke plumed upwards marking the site of the crash.
They were first on the scene, before the police, before the ambulance which was more often than not the case. All three lanes of the M1 were blocked, vehicles – more than six – pointing in all directions like bumper cars, all battle-scarred somewhere from contact. Sal braked, Andy jumped out of the cab and directed Jacko, driving the second engine, to park across the carriageway, preventing unauthorised access. Andy’s eyes worked quickly to assess the scene. White smoke from airbags was hanging in the air, mingling with black smoke pouring from a white van lying wounded on its side, tongues of flames seeking their freedom from under the crushed bonnet. A cluster of people were huddled behind the barrier on the hard shoulder but an elderly man was standing by an old red Fiat, talking to the driver through the smashed window.