Love You Dead

72 Tuesday 10 March

Always an anxious flyer, at 7 a.m. the following morning Roy Grace buckled himself into his seat next to Cleo, who was by the window, near the back of the packed British Airways flight to Munich. He felt even more nervous than usual. A swarm of butterflies was going berserk in his stomach. He had taken a day’s leave — which was fine, he was well in credit.

He reached out his left hand and gripped Cleo’s. The aisle seat to his right was, so far, empty.

Breaking the news to Cleo had been far from easy. She was furious that he hadn’t trusted her to be all right with it, and instead had lied to her. She initially questioned what this meant for them long term — what else had he lied to her about in the past, and would he lie to her again in the future? They’d talked it over and over, late into the night, and he admitted he’d made the wrong call, because he’d been scared of losing her.

The fact that he asked her to come with him to see Sandy helped eventually to bring them to an understanding. Cleo could see that Roy really wanted them to confront this whole issue together.

They didn’t talk much during the flight, each immersed in their own thoughts.

Normally Cleo did not wear much make-up, and Roy liked that, she didn’t need to. But today she had more on than normal. As if she might have been trying to compete with Sandy, he wondered. Not that she needed to have any fears.

As the plane touched down on the runway at Munich Airport, they held each other’s hands tightly.

‘I’m really nervous,’ she said.

‘Listen, I love you. There’s nothing Sandy might say that could change anything between us. I wanted you to come with me to show her — let her see for herself — that we’re a unit. You’re my wife, and nothing’s ever going to change that. You’re Cleo Grace. Right?’

She smiled, thinly.

Grace tried to consider all that was happening at work, but he couldn’t. He just kept coming back to just what was going to happen when he entered the Klinikum Schwabing with Cleo, and saw Sandy.

There could be no pretence that it was not her any more.

How the hell was he going to feel?

He again tried to switch his thoughts back to Crisp, and to the victims of the snake venom, but it was impossible. Just one thing occupied his mind right now.

Sandy.

Less than an hour later they were hurtling down the autobahn in Marcel Kullen’s white Volkswagen Scirocco sports car, Cleo, knees against her chin in the rear, Roy, his seat forward as far as it would go, inches from the glove compartment.

Kullen was good-looking, with wavy black hair and a voice perpetually filled with humour. Much of the journey into Munich was taken up with Cleo quizzing Kullen on how he knew Roy, and about his life, his wife and kids, and what had made him become a policeman.

Roy sat in silence, grateful for Cleo’s wonderfully inquisitive mind, listening to the conversation that was going on between them in the background. Meanwhile, his nerves were tightening the nearer they got.

Was he making a massive mistake?

The car slowed and halted. He looked out of his window and saw the building he recognized. It looked like a cross between a hospital and a monastery. A beige brick facade with a crimson-tiled roof punctuated with gabled windows and a portico of three arches.

Klinikum Schwabing, München.

Panic momentarily gripped him. He took several deep breaths. Was he making the worst mistake of his life? Should he tell Marcel to turn the car round and head back to the airport?

But instead, silent as an automaton, he unbuckled his seat belt, climbed out, helped Cleo to tilt the rear seat forward and took her hand as she wormed her way out.

Kullen told them he would wait for them here.

A few minutes later, after signing the visitors’ register, Roy and Cleo were met by a very businesslike woman with iron-grey hair, who introduced herself as the ward manager. She led them along a network of corridors that were vaguely familiar to him from his previous visit here, in January, then up in a lift.

His nerves began to jangle again. Cleo gripped his hand, hard.

‘Are you sure about this, my darling?’ he asked her for about the tenth time.

‘Yes.’

He could smell disinfectant as the doors opened. A man, his shrivelled face the colour of chalk, was wheeled past them on a trolley as they stepped out into the orange-painted corridor. There was a row of hard chairs on either side, a snacks vending machine and several picture frames on the wall with staff portraits of doctors and nurses with their names beneath.

His heart was thudding. Here again. It all felt so familiar. A man hurried past them in blue scrubs and yellow Crocs and went into the alcove where there was a drinks vending machine.

Shit.

This was Groundhog Day.

The woman with the iron-grey hair had told him that the patient, Sandy, had been conscious intermittently during the past few days, with moments of lucidity.

He glanced at Cleo. She was conservatively dressed, in a plain navy coat over a black sweater, blue jeans and knee-high suede boots, with the large, dark blue Mulberry handbag he had bought her — for an insane price last Christmas — over her shoulder.

She looked back at him. An expression he could not read.

They followed the woman through double doors into the Intensive Care Unit, breathing in the sterile smells as they passed rows of beds, each with a patient surrounded by a bank of monitors, and screened off on either side by pale green curtains. Turning a corner, they entered a small, private room.

Inside lay a woman with short brown hair, in a blue and white spotted gown, connected to a forest of drip lines, in a bed with its sides up like the bars of a cage.

Sandy.

He looked at Cleo again. Her face had paled.

He stepped forward. ‘Sandy?’ he said.

There was no reaction.

‘It’s Roy,’ he said, more calmly than he felt. He waited some moments, but still there was no reaction. ‘I’m so sorry — about your accident.’ His voice choked, as he became increasingly emotional. ‘I’m so sorry. I–I don’t know — I don’t really know what to say. I’ve moved on. I have my new wife, Cleo, with me. She wanted to meet you.’

He turned away, clutched Cleo in his arms, holding her tight.

Behind him, unseen by either of them, Sandy’s eyes opened briefly, flickered, then closed.

He composed himself, then leaned down and touched Sandy on her forehead. ‘I–I can’t believe it’s you. It’s really you. After all this time.’

Then, holding hands tightly, Cleo and Roy stood, watching her.

Sandy remained silent. Breathing rhythmically.

‘Sandy?’ he said. ‘Can you hear me? It’s Roy.’

There was no reaction from her for some moments, then suddenly she opened her eyes wide, startling them. She looked at Roy then stared hard at Cleo.

‘So you’re Cleo?’ she said. ‘You’re the woman he’s married?’

Cleo smiled awkwardly. There was a nervous pitch to her voice as she answered. ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

Sandy’s eyes narrowed into a glare. ‘Good luck,’ she said, acidly. Then her eyes closed.

A nurse came in, saying she had to change some of the patient’s dressings and administer her medication, and would they mind stepping outside for a few minutes. They could get themselves water or coffee, if they liked, just down the corridor outside the ward.