Lost by Michael Robotham Page B

feeling.”
    “Yes.”
    “And right from the outset you noticed Howard. What was it about him?”
    “He was taking photographs. Everyone else in the building was searching for Mickey but he went back to get his camera. He said he wanted to have a record.”
    “A record?”
    “Of al the excitement.”
    “Why?”
    “So he could remember it.”

    5
    By the time I get back to the hospital it's almost dark. The whole place has a sour smel like the dead air in closed-up rooms. I have missed a physiotherapy session and Maggie is waiting to change my bandages.
    “Somebody took some pil s from the pharmacy cart yesterday,” she says, cutting the last of the bandages. “It was a bottle of morphine capsules. My friend is in trouble. They think it's her fault.”
    Maggie isn't accusing me but I know there's a subtext. “We're hoping the capsules might turn up. Maybe they were misplaced.” She withdraws, walking backward, the tray with bandages and scissors held before her.
    “I hope your friend doesn't get into too much trouble,” I say.
    Maggie nods, turns and is gone without a sound.
    Lying back, I listen to the carts and gurneys rattling to distant rooms and someone waking from a nightmare with a scream. Four times during the evening I try to phone Rachel Carlyle. She's stil not home. Ali has promised to run her name and vehicle through the Police National Computer.
    There's nobody in the corridor outside my room. Maybe the weasels from the ACG have grown tired of watching me.
    At 9:00 p.m. I cal my mother at Vil awood Lodge. She takes a long while to answer the phone.
    “Were you sleeping?” I ask.
    “I was watching TV.” I can hear it buzzing in the background. “Why haven't you come to see me?”
    “I'm in the hospital.”
    “What's wrong with you?”
    “I hurt my leg, but I'm going to be fine.”
    “Wel if it's not serious you should come to see me.”
    “The doctors say I have to be here for another week or so.”
    “Do the twins know?”
    “I didn't want to bother them.”
    “Claire sent me a postcard from New York. She went to Martha's Vineyard last weekend. And she said Michael might be doing a yacht transfer to Newport, Rhode Island. They can catch up with each other.”
    “That's nice.”
    “You should cal them.”
    “Yes.”
    I ask her a few more questions, trying to make conversation, but she isn't concentrating on anything except the TV. Suddenly, she starts sniffling. It feels like her nose is right in my ear.
    “Good night, Daj.” That's what I cal her.
    “Wait!” She presses her mouth to the phone. “Yanko, come and see me.”
    “I wil . Soon.”
    I wait until she hangs up. Then I hold the receiver and contemplate cal ing the twins—just to make sure they're OK. It's the same cal I always imagine making but never do.
    I imagine Claire saying, “Hi, Dad, how are you doing? Did you get that book I sent you? No, it's not a diet book; it's about lifestyle . . . cleansing your liver, purging toxins . . .” Then she invites me around for a vegetarian dinner that wil purge more toxins and clear entire rooms.
    I also imagine cal ing Michael. We'l get together for a beer, swapping jokes and talking footbal like a normal father and son. Only there is nothing normal about any of this. I'm imagining someone else's life. Neither of my children would waste a phone conversation, let alone an evening, on their father.
    I love my children fit to bust—I just don't understand them. As babies they were fine, but then they turned into teenagers who drove too fast, played music too loud and treated me like some fascist conspirator because I worked for the Metropolitan Police. Loving children is easy. Keeping them is hard.

    I fal asleep watching a vacation program on TV. The last thing I remember is seeing a woman with a permanent smile drop her sarong and dive into a pool.

    Some time later the pain wakes me. There's a lethal swiftness in the air, like the vortex left behind by a passenger jet.