Page 47 of Summer in Sunset Harbour
It was just starting to rain. Josie gulped, her mouth dry. ‘Tiff, it’s me,’ she rasped. ‘I need a vehicle right away.’
‘Mum, you sound terrible. Did you just rob a bank?’
Josie swallowed again. ‘It’s Hilda,’ she said. ‘She’s gone into hospital.’
Tiffany let out a little scream. ‘Where are you now?’
‘Up on the main road. Do you think it would be okay to steal Hilda’s van?’
‘You’re not insured, so give me five minutes to sort something out. Stay right there.’
‘Don’t worry,’Cathy Ubbers said, hammering the launderette van into another blind corner. ‘I know these roads like the back of me hand.’
Josie grabbed Tiffany’s knees in horror as Cathy suddenly let go of the wheel completely. The van swerved across the road with a squeal of the tires. The baseball cap Tiffany had been wearing bounced down into the footwell, Tiffany just managing to swipe it before it got in the way of the brake pedal.
‘What’s these? Oh, the backs of me hands!’
With a wild chortle, Cathy grabbed the wheel again and swung them sharply back into the hedgerow, narrowly missing an oncoming minibus. Josie caught a glimpse of the words Saltash Canoeing Club on the side and a half dozen or so terrified teenage faces pressed against the windows, then they were dipping down a meandering lane beneath overhanging trees.
‘Are you sure this is the way?’ Josie gasped.
‘Shortcut, innit?’ Cathy said. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be there, soon as.’ She slapped Tiffany, sitting between them, on the thigh. ‘So glad you called me, love. Always like to make meself useful. Hil, she’s such an old dear.’
‘Is it much further?’
Cathy grinned. ‘Not if you know all the shortcuts.’
‘I’m guessing you do?’
‘Made half of them up myself, didn’t I? Last time me and Gav were timing, we’d shaved six minutes off the usual route. You know what that means, don’t you? Extra twelve minutes in Primark per shopping trip.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Well, Gav wanted to go up Virgin Megastores, but I said, who buys CDs these days?’
‘It’s a good point,’ Tiffany muttered.
‘A good point,’ Josie echoed.
‘I mean, it’s all streaming, innit? Like that song at number one. It’s all just playlists and stuff, no one’s actually buying it, are they? I mean, a song like that, some guy moaning about his wife, who’d pay money for that? What a plonker—woah, almost missed that tractor, didn’t I?’
Josie found herself pressed against the window, Tiffany leaning against her shoulder. The tractor passed, a blur of green and red, so close that clods of mud sprayed in through Cathy’s open driver’s side window.
‘Watch where you’re going!’ Cathy shouted, picking a sod of muddy grass off the dashboard and tossing it onto the road. ‘Can’t you see we’re ladies?’
Much to Josie’s pleasant surprise, they reached Derriford Hospital some twenty-minutes later without any of them being sick or the car being involved in a head-on collision. Josie told them she wanted to see Hilda alone, so Cathy offered to take Tiffany on a Starbucks run.
‘We’ll get you a Frappuccino,’ she called out of the window as the van pulled away, taking a wide-eyed Tiffany with it. ‘Extra cream. You’ll need it for the shock.’
Josie went into the reception and told the staff Hilda’s name.
‘I’m her best friend,’ she said. ‘I had just arrived at her house when I saw the ambulance. I don’t know what happened.’
The receptionist asked her to wait while she made a phone call. A minute later she put down the phone and looked up at Josie.
‘She’s just having some tests done, but she’ll be in the ward soon so if you want to, you can go over to the department and wait.’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Okay. The receptionist set a hospital map down on the counter and indicated the route Josie needed to take.
‘Here, on the second floor.’
