‘I can’t be walking around the castle with someone who has so clearly just done the walk of shame,’ he said.
‘Walk of shame?’ I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice.
‘Not that walk of shame,’ Louisa said, flicking me with her scarf, and grabbed her coat to leave.
‘Take the car,’ he called out. ‘It’ll be easier for you to get back.’
I watched Will’s eyes follow her all the way to the back door.
I would have offered you seven to four just on the basis of that look alone.
He deflated a little after she left. It was as if he had been holding on until both his mum and Louisa had left the annexe. I had been watching him carefully now, and once his smile left his face I realized I didn’t like the look of him. His skin held a faint blotchiness, he had winced twice when he thought no one was looking, and I could see even from here that he had goosebumps. A little alarm bell had started to sound, distant but shrill, inside my head.
‘You feeling okay, Will?’
‘I’m fine. Don’t fuss.’
‘You want to tell me where it hurts?’
He looked a bit resigned then, as if he knew I saw straight through him. We had worked together a long time.
‘Okay. Bit of a headache. And … um … I need my tubes changed. Probably quite sharpish.’
I had transferred him from his chair on to his bed and now I began getting the equipment together. ‘What time did Lou do them this morning?’
‘She didn’t.’ He winced. And he looked a little guilty. ‘Or last night.’
‘What?’
I took his pulse, and grabbed the blood pressure equipment. Sure enough, it was sky high. When I put my hand on his forehead it came away with a faint sheen of sweat. I went for the medicine cabinet, and crushed some vasodilator drugs. I gave them to him in water, making sure he drank every last bit. Then I propped him up, placing his legs over the side of the bed, and I changed his tubes swiftly, watching him all the while.
‘AD?’
‘Yeah. Not your most sensible move, Will.’
Autonomic dysreflexia was pretty much our worst nightmare. It was Will’s body’s massive overreaction against pain, discomfort – or, say, an un-emptied catheter – his damaged nervous system’s vain and misguided attempt to stay in control. It could come out of nowhere and send his body into meltdown. He looked pale, his breathing laboured.
‘How’s your skin?’
‘Bit prickly.’
‘Sight?’
‘Fine.’
‘Aw, man. You think we need help?’
‘Give me ten minutes, Nathan. I’m sure you’ve done everything we need. Give me ten minutes.’
He closed his eyes. I checked his blood pressure again, wondering how long I should leave it before calling an ambulance. AD scared the hell out of me because you never knew which way it was going to go. He had had it once before, when I had first started working with him, and he had ended up in hospital for two days.
‘Really, Nathan. I’ll tell you if I think we’re in trouble.’
He sighed, and I helped him backwards so that he was leaning against his bedhead.
He told me Louisa had been so drunk he hadn’t wanted to risk letting her loose on his equipment. ‘God knows where she might have stuck the ruddy tubes.’ He half laughed as he said it. It had taken Louisa almost half an hour just to get him out of his chair and into bed, he said. They had both ended up on the floor twice. ‘Luckily we were both so drunk by then I don’t think either of us felt a thing.’ She had had the presence of mind to call down to reception, and they had asked a porter to help lift him. ‘Nice chap. I have a vague memory of insisting Louisa give him a fifty-pound tip. I knew she was properly drunk because she agreed to it.’
Will had been afraid when she finally left his room that she wouldn’t actually make it to hers. He’d had visions of her curled up in a little red ball on the stairs.
My own view of Louisa Clark was a little less generous just at that moment. ‘Will, mate, I think maybe next time you should worry a little more about yourself, yeah?’
‘I’m all right, Nathan. I’m fine. Feeling better already.’
I felt his eyes on me as I checked his pulse.
‘Really. It wasn’t her fault.’
His blood pressure was down. His colour was returning to normal in front of me. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding.
We chatted a bit, passing the time while everything settled down, discussing the previous day’s events. He didn’t seem a bit bothered about his ex. He didn’t say much, but for all he was obviously exhausted, he looked okay.
I let go of his wrist. ‘Nice tattoo, by the way.’
He gave me a wry look.
‘Make sure you don’t graduate to an “End by”, yeah?’
Despite the sweats and the pain and the infection, he looked for once like there was something else on his mind other than the thing that consumed him. I couldn’t help thinking that if Mrs Traynor had known this, she might not have kicked off as hard as she did.
We didn’t tell her anything of the lunchtime events – Will made me promise not to – but when Lou came back later that afternoon she was pretty quiet. She looked pale, with her hair washed and pulled back like she was trying to look sensible. I kind of guessed how she felt; sometimes when you get hammered till the small hours you feel pretty good in the morning, but really it’s just because you’re still a bit drunk. That old hangover is just toying with you, working out when to bite. I figured it must have bitten her around lunchtime.
But it became clear after a while that it wasn’t just the hangover troubling her.
Will kept on and on at her about why she was being so quiet, and then she said, ‘Yes, well, I’ve discovered it’s not the most sensible thing to stay out all night when you’ve just moved in with your boyfriend.’
She was smiling as she said it, but it was a forced smile, and Will and I both knew that there must have been some serious words.
I couldn’t really blame the guy. I wouldn’t have wanted my missus staying out all night with some bloke, even if he was a quad. And he hadn’t seen the way Will looked at her.
We didn’t do much that afternoon. Louisa emptied Will’s backpack, revealing every free hotel shampoo, conditioner, miniature sewing kit and shower cap she could lay her hands on. (‘Don’t laugh,’ she said. ‘At those prices, Will paid for a bloody shampoo factory.’) We watched some Japanese animated film which Will said was perfect hangover viewing, and I stuck around – partly because I wanted to keep an eye on his blood pressure and partly, to be honest, because I was being a bit mischievous. I wanted to see his reaction when I announced I was going to keep them both company.