Page 32 of Watching You
Not until the night with the ambulance, the trip to the hospital, waiting on the cold, hard chairs while Karl’s mother was under the knife. Everything changed after that.
Chapter 25
8 June
Christie Salter and Connie Woolwine walked side by side down the stairway to the cells where their presence had been requested by the custody sergeant on duty.
‘Do you know what this is about?’ Connie asked.
‘He wouldn’t say. The custody sergeants here are notoriously tight-lipped and unimpressed. It’s a tough job. They’re the gatekeepers to the drunk, the drugged, the villains and the falsely accused, and I wouldn’t want to be locked up with any of them.’ Salter flinched as they turned a corner and her hand went straight to her abdomen.
‘You okay?’
‘Old wound,’ she said. ‘The scar tissue mended pretty tight. Gets me when I least expect it. I’m fine now but it was touch and go when it happened.’
Connie saw the shadow draw across Salter’s face.
‘What else happened?’ Connie asked.
Salter gave her head a tiny shake that ran down her body as a shiver.
‘Do you mind if we don’t talk about it?’ Salter asked. ‘It’s personal and still painful.’
‘Did you not get therapy?’
‘Counselling, we call it here. And no. Never much saw the point of talking for hours. Time heals, right?’
‘Not at all. Time can sometimes make things substantially worse. And the point about therapy isn’t that you have a chance to talk, it’s that you’re listened to. Otherwise you could just sit and spill it all to the mirror. What happened?’ Connie paused on the landing and stepped back into a concrete corner.
Salter blew out a long breath and stared at her. ‘Everything I heard about you was true, then. You’re unstoppable and intrusive.’
‘And still you don’t really seem to mind. You’re perfectly relaxed, your facial muscles aren’t drawn in at all. You never let your pain affect you. How have you done that?’ Connie asked.
‘I adopted a baby to ease the pain of the one I lost,’ Salter replied quietly.
‘Except it didn’t work like that. You still have all the grief and, on top of that, you have all the exhaustion, tumult and exhilaration. I’m surprised you can even get out of bed in the morning.’ Salter said nothing. ‘There’s a thing I do that freaks people out, which seems to be a theme with me right now. But could I see the scar? It would help if I could touch it.’
Salter frowned at her. ‘We’re in a corridor.’
‘Sometimes it’s best to make yourself utterly, uncomfortably vulnerable. Often that’s the only way to start to heal.’
Salter swore softly beneath her breath, but she was already pulling her T-shirt out of her jeans as she stepped in close to Connie.
They stood, silently, as Connie stared at it before touching it.
‘Someone stabbed me with the broken shard of a potterycat bowl. Are you not going to comment on how red it is? My husband tells me at least once a week that it looks almost like it’s still bleeding,’ Salter said.
‘I can only see in black and white, or shades of grey to be precise,’ Connie said.
Salter paused and cleared her throat. ‘How’s that possible?’
‘Another scar. Mine’s inside my brain.’ She reached out cool but firm fingertips and ran them over Salter’s scar, exploring the map of jagged edges, twists and branches of hurt flesh.
‘You could have asked a surgeon to improve this. It would have helped dramatically. But the pain helps with the guilt, right? You feel like you have no right to be happy when your baby is dead. You’re using your scar like an offering to the gods. If you keep feeling the pain every day, nothing bad will happen to the child you’ve adopted.’
‘I should have listened to Lively. He told me not to let you get inside my head.’ Salter stepped away and pulled her top back down.
‘Do you want to know what you’re actually doing, or do you want to keep hitting an emotional brick wall?’ Connie asked. She rubbed her hands together gently as if she was memorising the scar.
