The City's son

CHAPTER 53

Beth’s overriding impression of the hospital (it was only the second time she’d ever been in one) was that it was squeaky. The wards were filled with high-pitched noises: rubber wheels scraping over lino; children squealing for their parents; machines bleeping all over the place, announcing vital signs at different stages of degradation. It was a little like listening to the birds at sunrise, except the electronic edge made everything threatening.

She paced up and down beside Pen’s bed and then slumped into the vinyl chair and looked at her friend, who resembled a sixth-form art project: a collage of gauze, bandage and plastic wrap. The harsh stink of antiseptic filled the room.

‘They got through to your folks,’ Beth told her. ‘They’re on their way. Apparently your mum’s bringing lamb samosas. I thought they knew you’re a vegetarian?’

A gap in the bandages revealed the brown ovals of two closed eyes. Pen was awake, but she didn’t want to talk.

Beth set her jaw. She wished she’d never left Pen’s side, that they’d discovered the Railwraiths and the streetlamp dancers and the Crane King together: a secret they could have talked about in hushed tones whenever the rest of the world came battering too hard at their door.

Secrets like those were threads that could stitch a friendship back together.

Beth slumped a little lower in her chair, then yanked out a pencil and grabbed an empty sheet from the medical chart hanging beside the bed. Smoothing it out over the back of a dinner tray, she began to sketch.

She’d had no plans to draw anything in particular — she was just scratching an itch — so it was with a faint thrill of shock that she watched Fil’s cocky face emerge from under her pencil. For a second she couldn’t breathe, but she forced the pencil over the page. She felt compelled.

She drew the Son of the Streets exactly as he had been, no portrait-flattery. When it was done, she bit her lip in frustration. What a staggeringly inadequate way bring him back.

‘Beth?’

Beth looked up sharply. Pen didn’t open her eyes. Her voice was dry but surprisingly strong. ‘Will you do me a favour?’

‘Sure, Pen, what do you need?’

‘My compact’s in my jeans — in the back pocket. Can you bring it to me please?’

Beth pulled Pen’s barb-shredded clothes from the bedside unit and dug around for the compact, a slim square of hinged plastic. She held it out to Pen.

‘Open it.’ Her voice remained calm, sterile as the hospital floors. Still she didn’t open her eyes.

Beth felt her heart begin to beat a little quicker. She swallowed hard. ‘Pen — don’t you think you should wait-?’

‘Open it,’ Pen said again, firmly. ‘I’m ready.’

The compact opened with a tiny click, revealing a palette of foundation and a small round mirror.

‘Hold it up for me to see.’

Wordlessly, Beth lifted the mirror. Pen opened her eyes.

For a second, Beth thought, it was as though someone had slipped a knife in between her best friend’s ribs. She could see the slight widening of the eyes, the tension that twisted her face. Pen hissed and gritted her teeth to keep from swearing.

For long seconds, Pen’s gaze roved over the mirror. She lifted her chin, stroking the lines of the bandages, probing the raw wounds underneath with tentative fingers. You could see her tracing the lines of future scars. Her expression, frightened at first, took on a kind of sadness. She looked like she was saying goodbye.

At last, she shut her eyes again. She leaned back onto the bed. ‘Okay,’ she said, a soft whisper. ‘Okay.’

Beth snapped the compact shut with trembling fingers.

‘Pen,’ she began. ‘I’m so, so sorr-’

Pen’s voice was like a whipcrack. ‘Tell me you’re sorry, Elizabeth Bradley, and I will kill you dead.’

Beth blinked in confusion. ‘I never meant to-’

‘I know you didn’t, B, but these cuts are mine. Not yours, not ours, mine, understand?’ Pen’s eyes opened again, revealing a mix of pain and fierce survivor’s pride.

‘I own them. The barbs bit me. You weren’t there and you’ll never understand what it was like, so don’t try, okay?’

Beth pursed her lips and nodded, burning from the rebuke.

‘They’re my scars,’ Pen said, her tone softening a little. ‘I’ll deal.’

As Beth stood, a rich smell of curried lamb and spices drifted into her nostrils.

‘ You. Get away from my daughter.’ A short, angular man with teak-coloured skin parted the curtains around Pen’s bed. A tiny woman in a shawl and hijab followed him, clutching a Tupperware box.

Beth drew sharply away from them. ‘Mr and Mrs Khan.’

Pen’s parent’s actually collided in their haste to reach their daughter’s bedside. Her mother almost collapsed in relief. Her father kissed her forehead and stroked her hair, murmuring something in Urdu that might have been a prayer.

‘It’s all right, child.’ Mr Khan spoke in English now. His voice was tightly controlled, but every second he looked at Pen’s injuries aged his lean face. ‘We can fix this.’

Pen’s mother said nothing as she held her daughter, just wept the tears Beth felt that Pen should be shedding.

Pen, who simply stared at the wall.

‘I know plastic surgeons. There — there is money. We can get you back to-’

‘Shhh.’ To Beth’s astonishment, Pen shushed her father. She continued to stroke her mother’s hijab with light strokes of her fingers, murmuring, ‘It’s all right Mum. I’m all right. I’m alive-’ There was no missing the exultant shimmer in her brown eyes.

‘And I’m free.’