The Touch of Innocents. Michael Dobbs

here, to Dorset? Perhaps because her grandfather had been born in this part of England, somewhere in the Wessex of Thomas Hardy, but she couldn’t be sure. Even memories of the days immediately after her recovery from coma were fitful and confused.

      Most distressingly, much of the previous couple of years lay scattered like the shards of a mosaic attacked by vandals. Personal things, things of great value. The name of her godson. When she had last been back home. What she had given Benjamin for his birthday. Too much of the short time she had been given with Bella.

      The process of recreating the mosaic was agonizing; she would reach for a piece only to find it had eluded her once more and she was grasping at thin, empty air. Often it was also humiliating. The previous day she had telephoned her producer in Paris, only to discover from his wife that he was no longer her producer. Had she forgotten they’d left both his legs behind on a mountain road above Sarajevo after he’d stepped on a Serbian mine while trying to take a piss, the trembling voice demanded in accusation.

      Then it all came flooding back, the agony, the guilt, the shattered bones and screams, his own brave reasoning that he could have been knocked down crossing the Champs Elysées – a justification that somehow satisfied no one, not his wife, not even those who had shared the risks with him. Some memories she wished could remain hidden.

      One image plagued her mind, lingering in its shadows, refusing to step into the light. She would attack, only for the image to recede deeper into the shadows; she would draw back in exhaustion and it would creep to the edge of the circle of light, tantalizing, mocking. Ghostly. Hollowed eyes. Shrunken lips.

      Aged before its time.

      The girl. With Bella. Always the two together. Inseparable. An image of death.

      They had found a video player for her and every morning one of the nurses with access to satellite TV brought in tapes of the previous day’s WCN coverage. Even though it quickly glued back together much of the missing mosaic – she’d even forgotten who was Vice President, but then, she excused, so had half the American public – it was exhausting for her to watch. It reminded her there was a world out there which was working and warring and getting along perfectly adequately. Without her. The reassurances of her new producer that everything was under control and that she need not worry had precisely the opposite effect; she found it difficult to fight her way through the mist of depression which settled around her.

      They told her it was normal, to be expected, part of the recovery process after brain damage, a frequent side effect of the drugs, but she was not convinced. It was more than the medication. It was the guilt.

      ‘You should call home,’ Weatherup told her. He was sitting on the end of the bed, no longer in ITU but a general recovery room. She needed to share the pain, not lock it up, he encouraged, she needed the support of family. Izzy had insisted that she be the one to break the news to her husband, but wasn’t it time?

      ‘I …’ she had begun, but shrank into the pillows. Something inside was holding her back. Made her uneasy.

      ‘Look, Izzy, I know it must be difficult, but think of what you still have. You have Benjamin. Your family. A fine career. So much to look forward to.’

      Somehow the neurologist’s words didn’t gel.

      ‘Will … will I be able to continue?’

      ‘With a career or motherhood?’ he asked.

      ‘Both.’

      He smiled and reached for her hand. ‘You’re making excellent progress. Just three days out of a coma and you’re reading, watching television, taking an interest, regaining your strength. You’ve nothing to worry about.’

      ‘Doctor.’ She beckoned him to lean closer so she could whisper directly in his ear. ‘Bullshit.’

      He gave her a long, calculating stare. ‘OK, Izzy. If you want the full picture, I think you’re strong enough to take it. The truth is no one can yet be sure. Your brain took an almighty beating inside, and sometimes there are lingering after-effects. Some memories may never return. You’re bound to be emotionally unsettled for a while. It’s possible – not likely, you understand, but possible – you may be susceptible to epilepsy in later life, but we have drugs for that. You might find some areas of your brain don’t want to work as well as they did. We know there is some damage and brain cells don’t repair themselves, but the system has an amazing knack of compensating, finding another way of getting the job done. You’re in excellent physical shape, you’re recovering remarkably well. I can guarantee nothing, but if you were a horse personally I’d back you in the Grand National.’

      ‘If I were a horse you’d already have shot me.’

      ‘You’ll be fine,’ Weatherup insisted, laughing. ‘Climb Mount Everest. Have another ten babies. Just don’t attempt it all at the same time!’

      ‘Mothers don’t always get a choice,’ she replied, but the mist of depression had lifted a fraction.

      ‘Tell me, Izzy. It’s a personal question, do you mind?’ he asked hesitantly. ‘I’ve wondered about it ever since you were admitted. You have a remarkable scar, just …’ He glanced down as though trying to examine himself, suddenly uncomfortable.

      ‘Just here, on my breast.’ She ran her fingers over her nightdress just above her left nipple.

      ‘We had to examine you thoroughly, you understand,’ he explained hurriedly, not wishing to imply that his thoughts were focused on anything other than sound medical practice. Even so, she was a remarkably fine-looking woman …‘A strange injury. We couldn’t decide what it was.’

      ‘Bullet wound. Probably from a nine millimetre Uzi. Badly stitched. My car got shot up in Colombia by a drugs gang I was investigating. The head of the cartel promised me exclusive access for a week assuming I would sleep with him. When I didn’t he took exception, for some reason didn’t want either the tape or me getting to the airport. Wrecked the car but this hole was the only damage they managed to do to me or my crew. If only they were as pathetic with their other business operations.’

      She made it sound matter-of-fact, as if she were reporting on someone else’s problem.

      ‘Good God,’ Weatherup muttered in astonishment, sounding very English. ‘We don’t get too much experience at this hospital with wounds from machine guns.’

      ‘Sub-machine guns,’ she corrected.

      ‘And that’s what you want to go back to? My dear girl, you must be quite crazy. But very brave.’

      ‘Not really. Screwing him would have been brave, but there are parts of me that even my editor doesn’t own. Anyway, I was five months pregnant.’

      ‘More crazy than I thought!’

      ‘Not at all. I used the bump to smuggle out a world exclusive in my knickers and underneath my sanitary wear. The good Catholic border guards just wriggled, far too embarrassed to look closely.’ She smiled, but his words had hurt. Had she been a man the doctor would have been not amazed but enthralled, excited by the challenge, relishing the danger, anxious to hear more. Instead, he had patronized her, unintentionally and nowhere near as badly as she was patronized in her own office, but still a grating reminder that already she was re-entering the world she had left, and all the contradictions and torments it held for her came flooding back.

      Like the missed birthdays and broken promises which she hoped Benjamin was yet too young to understand or be hurt by. The searing pain when he seemed to treat the nanny as more of a mother than her. The games and rhymes she had so much wanted to teach him but which he’d already learned. From someone else.

      The insanity of arriving back from the death camps of civil war scarcely three hours in almost any direction from Charles de Gaulle, in time to wash for Sunday lunch.

      The anxiety when she discovered that from her ‘happy box’ of essential travelling supplies were missing the dozen clean syringes she carried to avoid the infected needles of a war zone, and the blind fit of anger with a