Five Hundred Miles From You: the brand new, life-affirming, escapist novel of 2020 from the Sunday Times bestselling author Read online

  And then everything happened so fast and there was a twist and a turn of a hideous shape; a thumping noise, horrible, wet and loud, reverberating around her head; something unthinkable following the phone, and the car’s wheels, still moving, still revving, and the even harder, cracking noise as the huge, unthinkable shape hit the ground, lay there, twisted and misshapen. Lissa couldn’t actually believe what she was looking at – it could not, absolutely could not be Kai – and she lifted up her eyes and found herself staring straight into the face of the driver, who was revving his engine while his mouth was drawn back in a snarl, or a leer, or something – something, thought Lissa, that through her incomprehension, through her panic she couldn’t figure out, not at all, as there was screaming, something about ‘staying out of Leaf Field’ – and then the car sped on.

  There was a moment’s silence, then the yelling started – disbelief, fury – and suddenly Lissa found herself clicking into action; found her training propping her up, propelling her forwards.

  ‘I’m a nurse. Move away please – I can help.’

  She expected to have to clear a path, but the other youths started yelling as they bounced upwards, shouting their heads off and dashing in screaming pursuit of the car.

  ‘Dial 999!’ Lissa shouted as she knelt down to examine Kai, pulling her phone out of her pocket. She had no idea if the lads could catch a car, and she was terrified they’d get hit again as there was only one way out of the estate – it would have to double back at some point – but she had to prioritise.

  She looked down at the figure on the pavement, his head sideways on the stone, cigarette ends strewn in the gutter.

  ‘Can you hear me? Can you hear me, sweetheart?’

  He was beautiful; so young. Lissa couldn’t get over it. Not that that mattered; of course it didn’t. It had absolutely nothing to do with it. But as she bent over him, desperately trying to save him while she finally, finally, heard the sirens she’d been waiting for, she couldn’t get over the sheer heart-stopping beauty of the young soft skin, the curve of the neck, the dark hair. He was a child. She couldn’t bear to think of how the family was going to take it. She cursed herself; her best friend had deleted Ezra’s number from her phone, for her own good, so she couldn’t even call him.

  Even when the paramedics arrived, she didn’t stop CPR. She carried on compressing, using the heels of her hands as they joined her, monitoring the oxygen, grabbing the adrenaline to shoot into his heart. She knew the paramedics; they trusted her and brought her along to hospital, Ashkan working with her, Kerry driving like a fiend as the blue lights screamed over the traffic. The overwhelmingly crowded London roads were completely clogged up, too stuffed full with lorries, vans, taxis and motorbikes, everything jammed up so tight they could barely find room to pull over to let an ambulance through.

  The body suddenly contorted, bouncing in the air as Ashkan shouted ‘Clear’, and Lissa had jumped back instinctively, watching it twitch, wondering at the back of her mind if the policewoman back at the crime scene had started the weary business of figuring out who he was, had started the unbearable process of contacting his family.

  Lissa let her training take over completely so she wouldn’t let herself think any more about that, automatically putting the oxygen mask back on the boy’s lips, still blue, injecting another shot of adrenaline and loading another pint of blood above his arm. All of them were desperately hoping he could hold on just until they got there. None of them spoke apart from the basic terms used in the attempt to resuscitate him, and while trying to get more blood into him than was leaving him.

  Attempts to resuscitate are, even with the most extraordinarily advanced equipment in the world, much more unsuccessful than not. People see miracle returns from the dead on TV all the time so they don’t see blood pumping out as fast as it could be pumped in, the lack of response in the pupils every time they’re checked, the artificial twitching and stimulation of the young body, the barked commands and steady listening for independent breath and the hot chaos of it all. The ambulance swerved and howled through the thick London rush hour, only one of many screaming sirens, helicopters, despatches; pain and blood.

  ‘The doctors are going to call it,’ predicted Ashkan, glancing at his watch.

  ‘You can’t,’ said Lissa.

  Ashkan swore. The pointlessness of it. A hit and run that looked deliberate. On a child. He turned away and tuned into the police radio for a bit, then even half smiled.

  ‘They got him,’ he said grimly. ‘The rest of the lads jumped on the car, wouldn’t let it leave. Smashed in his windows. It must have felt like a zombie attack.’

  It didn’t register with Lissa at all.

  ‘Carry on,’ said Lissa fiercely, and redoubled her efforts, hissing into the boy’s ear, ‘More blood! Now! Come on, Kai! Wake up! WAKE UP!’

  They arrived at Guy’s Hospital where the ambulance doors were hurled open without ceremony and two porters and an A&E doctor jumped aboard.

  ‘Move,’ said the young doctor, who looked about nine.

  ‘I’m not finished here,’ said Lissa strongly as she continued to work the oxygen mask, shining light in Kai’s eyes, checking for vitals.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ said the doctor. ‘Let me look at him.’

  ‘I can do it!’ said Lissa. His face. His beautiful face. He was a child, a child asleep; still warm – or was that their efforts? – still sleeping, dreaming, losing his homework, wishing he was a footballer or a rock star.

  ‘Stand back!’

  ‘I CAN DO IT!’

  Lissa didn’t realise she had screamed; didn’t realise everyone had stopped to look at her, as Ashkan pulled her back gently, his face a mask of concern. The junior was already moving in, ignoring her.

  ‘Step back.’

  ‘I just . . .’

  It was unheard of for a nurse to defy a doctor in this way, even if this particular doctor looked like he’d drawn his moustache on with a biro that morning.

  ‘Step back!’

  But she couldn’t. She could only stand as if she had absolutely no idea where she was, her arms reaching out uselessly, muttering ‘Kai . . . Kai . . .’ into thin air, still believing fervently, even as the doctor looked at his watch and shook his head, even as the blood was no longer dripping on the floor but was getting ready to pool, to congeal. The only thread to life was her.

  ‘I can just . . . try one more time . . .’

  ‘Get her out of here,’ the young doctor was muttering as the porters tried to move the body onto the trolley. Several other medics appeared; Lissa recognised them despite her state of shock.

  ‘Is next of kin here?’ yelled one of them, and Lissa watched in horror at the tense, impersonal work of the transplant team.

  ‘He’s not even dead, you vultures,’ she found herself screaming, and Ashkan really did move then, bodily removing her from inside the ambulance as she swore and pulled away. ‘He’s not even . . .’

  ‘I’m calling it,’ said the doctor. ‘Take him to the HDU.’

  This was where they held transplant patients in a twilight world between life and death, just holding on for long enough to get the necessary signatures; to beg and plead that a life taken in vain would not be entirely in vain.

  ‘15.38,’ the doctor said. ‘Can we move it fast?’

  And his voice sounded so very, very weary.

  ‘Hit and run incoming.’

  Lissa collapsed onto the wet pavement and burst into tears, deep racking sobs. She was a professional; had been doing this for four years, had seen road accidents, murders, every kind of horrible thing it was possible to see.

  But it was a boy she knew, whose name was Kai who broke her, at just gone six-thirty, on a totally normal Tuesday.

  Chapter Four

  Ashkan tried to move her again.

  ‘Mate,’ he hissed under his breath. ‘Mate, you have to move. They’re going to haul you into the nutter room.’

  There were no gentle wo
rds among the London Ambulance Service when it came to occupational health and the therapy unit. As far as paramedics were concerned, they were a gang of outlaws; pirates, screaming through the streets on a mission to save. Once you started wobbling the lip about it, like every other bugger would, well then. What was the point of you? Someone had to scrape people off the ground; someone had to hold the line. If you started crying and needing therapy and basket weaving, well, then you were no use. Nobody denied that it was a tough gig. That was the point of it. Paramedic teams relied on each other like little else.

  Lissa was finding it impossible even to get up, even as the rain – when did that start? – was creeping down the collar of her heavy green jacket.

  ‘Everything okay?’ said Dev, the station controller, coming over, his kind face concerned, his glasses up around his bald head – they were always dangling around his neck, in his pockets or wherever he wouldn’t be able to find them as soon as he needed them.

  ‘Fine!’ said Ashkan breezily. Lissa was aware they were there, that they were around, but somehow she couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t really focus on what they were asking of her or why she was sitting on a wet pavement. It was like her body didn’t belong to her at all, that she was somewhere else and everything was going on without her, and the person sitting on the wet pavement didn’t belong to her.

  Dev looked concerned.

  ‘Lissa? Were you on the hit and run?’

  ‘She knew the lad,’ said Ashkan. ‘Bad bloody luck. Bit of a shock.’

  Lissa couldn’t even nod her head to respond. The police took her away for a statement which she gave, blindly. Ashkan waited for her, even though his shift had ended.

  ‘Come on,’ he said gently. ‘Let’s fill you up with tea.’

  He frogmarched her towards the canteen, and Lissa let him, as if her legs were moving without any input from her at all, as if it was someone else.

  The ground-floor canteen was quiet at this time of night. There were on-duty doctors keeping an eye on their bleeps and phones; one poor soul was fast asleep by a pot plant, his head looking uncomfortable on a wicker divider. There was also a clutch of porters playing cards and a few nervous-looking family members, as if they were not sure they were in the right place. The catering staff was gone for the day; it was just vending machines and hideous coffee in plastic cups with plastic stirrers. Ashkan brought back two teas and gave both of them to Lissa, pulling out his own flask of vegetable juice he’d squeezed himself. He took his health extremely seriously and usually headed straight for the gym at the end of his shift. Lissa had always teased him about how vain he was – he spent longer on his black shiny quiff than she did on her spirally curls, which were liable to turn into frizz in the wet, so she just got them out of the way in a tight ponytail. Plus, the fewer things that stood out about her physically, the less abuse she normally had to take from people not quite in their right minds by the time they showed up at A&E.

  Lissa took the tea, feeling it burn her fingers through the thin plastic – Ashkan was fiercely opposed to single-use plastic, so his doing this was a clear sign of how concerned he was. She understood all of this – kind of – from a long, long way away. She could sense how worried he was. But somehow, she just didn’t care. About anything. Because that boy was dead, and nothing mattered, and she felt half-dead herself.

  The harsh strip lights felt purgatorial; the rain-spattered windows showed nothing but them reflected back to them. Lissa wondered, for a second, if they had all died in that ambulance. Her eye was drawn to the door as a bent-over woman entered, her face anxiously scanning everybody in the room. When she saw Lissa, she blinked. She couldn’t have been much older than Lissa; was surely only in her thirties. But the expression on her face as she approached them was that of someone who’d lived a million lives.

  Chapter Five

  The woman was pulling her cardigan round herself, shuddering in the cold wind, the rain spattering from the south.

  ‘Och, hello there, Cormac.’

  ‘Hello there yourself, Mrs Coudrie.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Could you just . . .? I really don’t want to bother the doctor.’

  Cormac turned to Jake.

  ‘Off you go,’ he said. ‘I can get myself home.’

  Jake grimaced.

  ‘Is it wee Islay?’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘Aye, aye, I’ll come along,’ said Jake with the resigned voice of a man who knows that their dream of a lovely foaming pint and possibly a quick flirt with Ginty McGhie has almost certainly just vanished for ever.

  Chapter Six

  Lissa lifted her eyes to the strange woman’s. The lady’s face was drawn with pain.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said.

  It was as if someone was speaking from far away. Lissa managed to blink.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m Kai Mitchell’s mother?’

  She said it so quaveringly, as if she wasn’t completely sure whether she was or not, or whether she could still describe herself as such. Perhaps, Lissa found herself thinking. Perhaps she wasn’t a mother any more. She must be Ezra’s auntie.

  Ashkan jumped up and offered her a chair.

  ‘No,’ she said gravely. ‘No, thank you. I don’t want to sit.’

  She looked around the clinical chilly cafeteria.

  ‘I’m not staying.’

  Ashkan leant over.

  ‘I am so, so sorry for your loss.’

  She held up her hand.

  ‘I’m not. I’m furious.’

  Lissa nodded, something stirring within her.

  ‘Me too,’ she said. Ashkan shot her a warning glance that she ignored. Instead, she stood up.

  ‘I’m furious too.’

  ‘I just wanted to know,’ said the woman. Behind her, at the door, stood a cluster of frightened, upset people; friends and family. Outside, Lissa knew, would be cameras, journalists; the media, desperate to spin another narrative of death.

  In here, in this now silent room, was just a desolate mother.

  ‘You have people helping you?’ said Ashkan, looking over. ‘You won’t be alone?’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ said the woman. ‘Were you with him?’

  Ashkan indicated Lissa. ‘She was with him the most. She did the most.’

  ‘I didn’t do enough,’ said Lissa dully. If she’d been braver . . . If she’d realised the car was going too fast and shouted a warning . . . If she’d paid more attention . . .

  ‘You need to know,’ said Ashkan, for they couldn’t be too careful these days, with lawyers hanging around like carrion crows. ‘We did everything we could. We tried . . .’

  But the woman wasn’t listening to him. She had stepped forward and was taking Lissa’s cold hands.

  ‘You held his hand?’

  Lissa nodded.

  ‘This hand held his hand?’

  ‘We tried,’ said Lissa. And suddenly the two women were weeping in each other’s arms, clinging on to one another. Ashkan was very unhappy. This wasn’t appropriate, not at all. He wasn’t sure what to do.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Lissa sobbed.

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  Lissa desperately wanted to say he had asked for her or said to tell her that he loved her. But she couldn’t.

  ‘He was . . . he was already so unwell,’ she said. The woman nodded.

  ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘I’m glad . . . I’m glad someone was with him.’

  Lissa nodded, wishing she could do more.

  ‘All those people shouting at me,’ said the woman, looking confused. ‘You know, they want to chop him up! They were shouting at me! To chop him up! To cut up the body of my son! Before he’s even cold! To cut bits off him!’

  Ashkan winced. The transplant people were so desperate, so determined, and if Kai had good organs, oh, what a difference they would make to people.

  Lissa seemed to snap out of herself a little then, and she straightened
up.

  ‘What did you say?’ she asked.

  Chapter Seven

  The cottage was nearly identical to the one they’d just left, but furnished in a neutral, modern style, with a wood-burning stove and large prints of the children in black and white on the walls.

  ‘Hello there, Islay,’ Cormac said cheerily. ‘Why aren’t you asleep then?’

  The tweenager was lying on the bed, blue and breathing heavily. Nonetheless, she attempted a grin for Cormac and a slightly flirtatious look for Jake, who was generally a hit with the ladies.

  ‘Ach, you’ve looked better,’ said Cormac, understating the case. The child had severe cardiomyopathy, and absolutely nothing seemed to be helping. The pacemaker was just the latest line in therapies that were failing her.

  ‘I was thinking about maybe taking her in,’ said her mother. They were extremely familiar with the hospital in Inverness.

  ‘Well, let’s have a listen,’ said Cormac, pulling out his stethoscope. ‘Those beta blockers not working on you, Islay?’

  Trying to be helpful, the child shook her head just a fraction. How used to and how tired she was of the constant invasion, the constant questions. She looked so weary. Cormac felt his own heart sink. He’d left the Army to get away from the endless trauma cases, but this, in its own way, was just as difficult. Jake took her blood pressure and frowned.

  ‘Well?’ said Mrs Coudrie.

  ‘I’ll talk to Joan,’ said Jake. ‘This . . .’ He wrote down the number on a piece of paper, but Elspeth Coudrie already knew it by heart. ‘. . . is when we’d blue light. But I think we’ll see what Joan has in her armoury.’