Should I see the GP about the burning pain in my chest? I’m on medication already for high cholesterol. Someone mentioned the GP, Tony or Kay, I can’t remember now. For tranquillizers or sleeping pills. The poker. A dozen blows. Twins. Like the whirring in my ears, the images, the details tumble around.
This was Lizzie’s room.
The place where she had her cot, though her incessant crying meant that for much of the first year she slept in with me while Tony managed on a mattress on the floor in here. When she was walking and talking, the crying eased and we moved her into this room. She outgrew the cot, had a child’s bed. Then came bunk beds and sleepovers, posters on the walls and a desk for homework. So fast. It all went so fast.
The room has changed now: once Lizzie moved out for uni, I did it up. Started taking temporary lodgers, actors up for work at the Lowry or the Royal Exchange, Contact or the Palace. There’s a small TV and DVD in here for the lodgers. If we get on well, we watch some programmes together on the big set downstairs. Having the company is nice, and when I have the place to myself again, I enjoy the freedom. It helps pay the bills, and I’ve met some lovely people over the years, only one or two idiots. I also get to see an awful lot of theatre.
‘DI Ferguson wants to meet you,’ Kay tells us. ‘She is leading the investigation. Will this afternoon be all right? What about Tony?’
‘I’ll check with him,’ I say.
‘Have you had anything to eat?’ she asks.
‘I can’t face it.’
‘Some soup,’ she suggests. ‘Your friend Bea called while you were resting. She brought some leek and potato. And a French stick.’
‘I need to ring her.’
‘She said she’ll come round tonight unless you text her,’ Kay says.
‘Where are the others?’
‘They’ve taken Florence to the library.’
‘The library?’
‘That all right?’ Kay says. ‘They asked her where she’d like to go and that’s what she said.’
It makes sense. Somewhere familiar, safe, welcoming. The staff know Florence through me, and Jack takes her to the story sessions and the events we have there. I’m about to reply, to tell Kay something about the library and my lifelong job there, when the pain in my chest ratchets up several notches and my head swims. I put out my hand but there’s nothing there to hold on to, and I feel myself swooning, falling back, my bones gone to water.
The GP, someone from my practice I’d never met, listens to my heart and takes my blood pressure. He knows the situation and advises me to try and eat, little and often, and increase my fluid intake. He thinks I’m dehydrated as well as suffering from shock and stress. ‘Your heart sounds fine, no arrhythmia; your blood pressure is high, but that’s to be expected. I’m not unduly worried.’ Doctor speak.
