Silas Nash book 1: Hush Hush Honeysuckle: Chapter 20

Jessica was sick of answering the door. And that was only when she was sure it wasn’t the press. She despised them. They were devious and would do anything to get a picture inside her parents’ house. When they couldn’t, images of the family grief would do, or the garden shed through the window, though who would be interested in her father’s potting she had no idea. They photographed the contents of her parent’s dustbin, and one unscrupulous reporter came carrying an empty casserole dish to gain entry.

‘You must want the world to hear your story,’ the reporter said when she’d conned her way in.

‘Would you like a cup of tea, dear? I’m just waiting for my daughter to come home with milk,’ her mum had said to the reporter.

Jess had come back from the shop—they’d been drinking black tea for hours because it was preferable to trying to get through the reporters—and she couldn’t stand it any longer and decided to run the gauntlet in a black hoodie pulled down over her face.

‘Get out of my parents’ house. Now. This is intrusion and harassment, and if you aren’t out of this house in five seconds, I’m calling the police.’

The woman left, and Jess screamed down the path, ‘Parasite,’ to a strobe of camera flashes. Her parents were getting older now, and they were less able to cope with all this drama on top of their grief than younger parents might be. They had been GPs and waited for years until both careers were well established before having children. Since retirement, Jess said they were Those People that had no idea what to do with themselves. And she’d seen her mum’s intellect dimming every day like a printer running out of ink. Losing Paige had changed them into old people overnight, and it seemed all her mum was good for was making tea and her dad drinking it.

Somebody else was coming to the door. A smart lady in her forties who made her look dowdy in her two-day-worn lounge wear. But smart or not, Jess was ready for her. The fact that they still had the audacity to bother them appalled her.

She knocked.

‘Go away.’

‘I’m not the press.’

‘I don’t care. Our lives are not for sale.’

The lady posted a piece of paper through the letterbox and waited. Give me five minutes of your time. If you want me to go, I will, and I’ll have done my duty and won’t bother you again. I need you to listen. Yesterday morning you sat on Paige’s bed. You held her crystal pendant and asked her to give you the answers. She has given me the evidence you need. Speak to Silas. Ask him about Paige’s name badge. He has it.

‘Go away. I don’t know anybody called Silas.’

‘He was there when Paige was found.’

‘There were only policemen, and I don’t think any of them were called Silas.’

‘My number’s on the bottom. I know you’re grieving. Call me if you want answers.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Amanda Keys.’

‘If you aren’t the press, are you the police?’

‘No, but I can help you find Paige’s murderer. I’ll wait to hear from you.’

‘You can piss off with the rest of the parasites.’

Jess saw Keys turn away in the frosted glass that made her look like one of the aliens out of Close Encounters. She opened the door, and the cameras outside the gate went wild.

She was right. Jess had been sitting on Paige’s bed. She had spoken those exact words to her. Nobody could have known that. The curtains were closed, and it was between her and her sister.

‘Wait. You’d better come in, but if this is a trick like the last one. I’ll call the police.’

Amanda Keys followed her inside, and Jess showed her to one end of the sofa. Hilary went to make tea. ‘Don’t fuss, Mum,’ Jess said, but she wanted her out of the way while she spoke to the woman. ‘You make a start on dinner, and then I’ll come and join you.’

‘Does she know anything about Paige? Please don’t shut me out, Jessica. I need to know everything too,’ Mum said.

‘I know you do, Mum, but let me deal with this. I promise I won’t exclude you.’ They waited for her to leave the room.

‘My parents are fragile. I won’t have them upset any more than they already are. They need to be left alone to grieve their daughter.’

‘I know they’re fragile, love. That’s part of the reason why I’m here, but it wasn’t something that I could write on a piece of paper and slip through the door.’

‘I still don’t know who you are. What do you want?’

‘I’m a psychic, but please hear me out. I promise I can help you. I don’t want anything. I just want to help.’

‘This is preposterous. I think you’d better leave.’ Jess stood up and spread her arms to indicate that the other woman should get up too.

‘It’s your dad, Jess. You need to be with him tonight.’

‘Don’t you come in here spouting your gibberish. How dare you.’

‘You mustn’t go home tonight, Jess. Your dad’s going to have a heart attack, and you being here to help is the difference between him getting through it or not.’

Jess didn’t shout at her. She was beyond that. Her anger felt as though it had risen from the tips of her toes and travelled through every nerve ending in her body. It was so strong that it took away her need to shout and curse. She spoke in a voice that she held in chains in case it broke free.

‘Get out of this house.’

‘Call me. I only mean well.’

She closed the front door behind the woman, and Hilary came along the hall with the tea tray. ‘Oh, has she gone, love? What did she want? She had a lovely coat, didn’t she? Cashmere. You don’t see that so often these days. Quality.’ Jess had the uncharitable thought that she got it from ripping off the elderly and the gullible. Thank God she was here to protect her parents.

‘It’s all right, Mum. It was nothing.’

Jess sat on the sofa and realised that she was shaking. There was no way she could hold a teacup, and over the last week, she was surprised she hadn’t drowned in her mother’s weak tea. She didn’t even like tea that much but drank it for something to do.

‘Is Dad upstairs?’

‘No. He’s in the study, I think. He’s been reading a lot this week. He was trying to escape it all. I can’t concentrate and end up reading the same line ten times before it sinks in. We all do it differently.’ Hilary dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

‘Back in a minute.’

Jess had the overwhelming urge to go and check on her dad. Colin was the fittest old man she knew. Damn that bloody woman for scaring her.

She knocked on the study door and went in.

‘Hey, Dad. You okay?’

He’d been crying too. It was a house of total sadness. Where before it had been a house of memories, now grief lurked in every corner and clung to every dust node.

‘I’m fine, darling. Just catching up on some reading, seeing as I can’t get in my garden for the vultures outside. What about you?’

‘Listen, will it be okay if I stay here tonight? I can’t face the drive back to Barrow and don’t want to sit at home by myself.’

‘You may be all grown up and tell me off on a daily basis when you’re mother hasn’t beaten you to it, but you’re still my little girl, Jess. This is still your home.’ He was about to cry, and Jess knew he was thinking about his other little girl.

‘Come on, Dad. Come with me to the kitchen, and we’ll see how dinner’s getting on.’

‘What are we having?’

‘Steak pie, mash and green beans.’

‘Lovely. I’m starving. Fancy a game of chess afterwards? We haven’t played for ages,’ Colin said.

‘You bet.’

With the psychic’s stupid words in her head, Jess watched him throughout dinner. They were all subdued because there was still that empty seat at the table. But he seemed as healthy as usual. He had more pie and a glass of wine. He moaned about the investigation and then about the press and how his garden was suffering because of them being virtually camped on their doorstep. They were all cooped up, and it was getting to them.

‘I just want to go for a walk on the cliffs. It’s a lovely November evening, and we aren’t going to get many more nights like this before it gets too cold.’

‘You know what?’ Hilary said. ‘We haven’t been out of this house since we lost her. Let’s do it. Let’s push past the scoundrels and go, and if they want to follow us, they’re welcome. We’ll see how we feel, and if we can face the sympathy, we’ll even stop in Heysham for a drink before we come back.’

‘No.’ Jess said. The word was sharp. ‘No, let’s stay in. I don’t want to go out tonight. Maybe tomorrow? Can we just stay in and have a game of chess and then watch Strictly? Please, Dad.’ That bloody woman had turned Jess into a bag of nerves with her stupidity.

‘Of course, we can, but we have to face the neighbours sometime. Chess and dancing it is, but nobody waltzes like your mum and me. Isn’t that right, Hill? I might just get you up and show our Jessica what her old fogies are made of.’ He winked at Hilary. Jess was hedging her bets and kicked herself for suggesting Strictly and giving her dad the idea of dancing. She wondered how long she could make a game of chess last. He couldn’t go out walking. They must not dance. Cocoa and bed were what they needed, but most old people die in their sleep. Jess wasn’t going to sleep a wink that night, listening for every sound.

This was ridiculous. It was the biggest load of bollocks she’d ever heard, and she was furious with Amanda Keys. But when somebody tells you your parent is going to die, tells you when, and gives you the means to stop it, she had no choice. She knew her dad was going to live to see the morning—but what if he didn’t?

At half past ten, Colin stood up from the chessboard. They had played the best of three, one game each and a decider to Colin. He stretched his back and whistled as he went to the kitchen to get a glass of water to take to bed.

Jess was putting the pieces away when she heard the glass break. She ran to the kitchen in time to see her dad hanging onto the unit, clutching his chest. He fell to the floor before Jess got to him.

Hilary was already in bed, or at least in the bathroom, putting her face cream on. Jess had left her phone in the lounge where they’d been playing chess.

‘Mum, ring an ambulance. Mother. Mum. Mother help.’

He fell on the floor, clutching his chest and moaning. He was awake, so needed a steady flow of oxygen. A brown paper bag.

Oh god.

Oh god.

A bread bag. It wasn’t brown, and it wasn’t paper, but it would have to do. Her dad was fourteen stone to her nine. She wrestled him into a sitting position while he moaned.

‘Hang on, Dad. It’s okay. Just hang on.’ Jess was more frightened than she’d ever known, and the bloody bag had anti-suffocation holes, so wouldn’t expand when her dad breathed in it.

‘Mum.’

Hilary stood in the kitchen doorway and gasped. Her hand went to her mouth, and she had some green gunk over her face. Surely she didn’t sleep in that stuff. ‘Your phone, Mum. Where’s your phone? Get mine from the lounge. It’s on the arm of the chair.’

She sobbed, ‘I’ll go and find it. Is he all right?’

‘Call for an ambulance. Now. Mum.’

Hilary went, and Jessica put her hand around the neck of the bag even though it was a useless prop.

‘Dad, breathe into this. It’ll help. The ambulance is coming.’ She heard her mum’s voice in the hall. ‘Breathe in, Dad. And out. In. And out.’

Colin’s eyes rolled into the back of his head until only the whites were showing. He’d lost consciousness.

Jess didn’t have time to piss about being gentle. Her Dad was dying in front of her. She pulled him by the legs until he slid down the wall and lay prone on the floor. She winced when she heard his head hit the laminate, but it wasn’t as bad as she’d expected.

She knelt beside him and rammed two fingers into his mouth, sweeping them over his tongue and pushing it down to check that his airway was clear. It was. She put her ear to his chest. There was no rise and fall. She held her cheek to his mouth and desperately wanted him to kiss her cheek the way he had a million times before. There was no breath and no kiss.

‘Come on, Dad. Breathe, damn you.’

Nothing. Her Dad wasn’t breathing. He was dead.

She put one hand on the back of his head and the other under his chin and tilted his neck back, pointing his chin forward to open his airway.

‘Dad, people are coming to help you. You can’t leave me now. We need you.’

Jess interlaced her fingers, felt the V of his sternum where his ribcage joined and moved to the soft area two fingers down. She put the heel of her hand into that hollow and knelt up straight so that her wrist, elbows and shoulders were in a straight line with her upper body directly over her arms. And then she pressed, with short, intense movements, as she filled his lungs with air.

She’d recently retaken her first aid certificate and remembered that you don’t have to do respirations and all modern CPR requires is the compressions. She hoped modern CPR was as effective as the old-fashioned kind. It was thirty compressions to two respirations, but she used the respiration time to pause before the next thirty. She wasn’t going to think about the song, but she heard herself singing, ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive, staying alive, in her head, and if nothing else, it helped to calm her. It was tiring, and she knew she had to keep it up until the first responders brought a defibrillator. She didn’t know if she had the stamina to keep going.

And then she saw her mum knitting her hands and crying in the doorway, and she knew that she did.

‘Make a cup of tea, Mum,’ she managed to rasp, and Hilary ran down the corridor for the want of something to do.

It felt like forever, but in reality, the ambulance arrived within five minutes. A lady in a green jumpsuit came in, waited for the pause and then put her hands where Jess’s had been while the other paramedic set up the defibrillator.

‘Good job. You might have just saved your father’s life.

Jess slumped in a heap into her mother’s arms and sobbed.

Mum was good for making tea—and for making everything better.

‘He’s back. We’re going to get him into the ambulance, and we’ll have him at the hospital in no time.’

‘Thank God,’ Hilary said.

Jess’s mum went in the ambulance with them, and as only one person was allowed, Jess said she’d follow in her car. She’d rather have travelled with her dad because she was worried that he might have another attack and die on the way. Her mum would crumble and couldn’t take any more grief. As she grabbed her coat, she realised that if grief was coming, he was going to get her, and she wasn’t big enough to protect Hilary from that. As an afterthought, she picked up the piece of crumpled paper that Amanda Keys had put through the letterbox with her phone number on it.

‘Poorly but stable,’ the cardiologist said. That was what they always said. To Jess, poorly was having a second bowl of Tiramisu and making yourself feel sick—that was poorly. Her dad was in intensive care, and a tube was breathing for him. They’d put him into a temporary coma to give his body a rest, they said. Jess equated a coma with being one step away from death. Sitting up in bed and eating the disgusting hospital jelly was stable but poorly.

She just wanted her dad.

When he was settled, and there was nothing else they could do but sit, she excused herself and told Hilary she was going to get them a coffee.

She straightened out the paper and rang the number. She didn’t know if she should blame this woman for what had happened to her dad. That was ridiculous, but it was as though by predicting it, she’d willed it to happen. Jess was furious. She didn’t ask who she was talking to or give her name. She went straight in with the only part of this craziness that she had any interest in. Amanda Keys could play voodoo dolls all she liked, but not with Jess’s family.

‘Is he going to die?’

‘No. He’ll be fine.’

Jess hung up before the psychic could say any more.

Bitch.