Winter in London Without You novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Ninety Days

Locked out of the Chelsea house, Verity sits on the hospital steps until the paramedic offers a free room for ninety days, and then her mother-in-law rings.

The house in Chelsea was lit up when I got there, and my key didn't fit the door.

It was ten past six. The bus had crawled the whole way from Mayfair.

I pushed the key into the lock a third time, in case I had it wrong.

The door opened a few inches on a chain.

The housekeeper looked out at me with her eyes down.

"Mr Wrenfield said I'm to give you this, Mrs Wrenfield," she said.

She passed a holdall through the gap and shut the door.

It held a week of clothes, my passport and the wooden box my mother left me.

Nobody had packed any of it carefully.

I carried it down the steps. A cramp folded me over at the bottom, low and dragging, and I stood with my hand flat on my stomach until it passed.

The nurse had warned me it would keep coming for days.

My body didn't know yet. It was still getting ready for a baby.

I had no friends in London who weren't also his friends.

Three people from the lunch had texted me, all of them kind.

None of them offered a bed.

I rode another bus to the only place I could think of, which was St Mary's.

I didn't go in.

I sat on the wide stone steps by the ambulance bay with the holdall between my feet, and I watched my breath.

I checked my phone out of habit, looking for his name.

Nothing had come.

I waited for the old drop in my stomach, and it didn't come either.

I sat there until I couldn't feel my fingers.

"Verity?"

A man in a green jacket had stopped on the step below me with a rucksack on one shoulder.

It was the paramedic. I knew his Welsh voice from the ceiling of the ambulance.

"Gethin," I said.

"That's right." He sounded surprised I'd remembered. "You can't sit out here. It's two degrees."

"I'm waiting for someone."

I wasn't, and he knew it.

He looked at the holdall, and at my coat, which was brown and stiff to the hem.

"Your husband?" he said.

"No."

He sat down on the step beside me, a polite arm's length away.

"My shift finished at four," he said. "I'm not supposed to be here. I wanted to see you were all right."

"Why would I not be?"

"You said he was busy."

I laughed, and it came out as something else.

Gethin waited until it was over.

"I've got the ground-floor flat in a terrace in Kentish Town," he said. "The flat above mine is empty, and I keep a room in it made up. There's a bed, and a heater that works if you hit it."

"I can't pay you."

"I didn't ask you to."

"I have twelve pounds."

"Then it's a good thing the room's free." He said it flatly, looking at the road. "Ninety days. After that you'll have a job and a plan, or you'll tell me to mind my own business, and I will."

"Why?"

"Because it's cold and you're sitting on a step. I've got one rule. Nobody rescues anybody."

I thought about it for longer than I had thought about anything that day.

I had never had a room that wasn't his.

"All right," I said.

He stood and held out his hand, and it was a strong, dry hand that didn't squeeze.

I took it.

He lifted the holdall onto his shoulder before I could argue and stopped halfway down the steps.

He was looking at my wrist.

The hospital band was still there, white, with my name printed on it and a number.

He didn't say anything about it.

He only nodded once, and turned his face away so I could pull my sleeve down.

We took the Northern line with the holdall wedged between his boots.

I stood the whole way, because sitting hurt. He gave up his seat to a woman with a pushchair and didn't look at me while he did it.

I watched the pushchair and then made myself stop.

At Kentish Town he walked me up a street of tall terraced houses with bins out front.

There was a bakery on the corner that smelled of bread, and I had to stop and hold the railing.

"Stairs are the worst of it," Gethin said, from the step above. "Take them as slowly as you like."

He didn't offer an arm. He just waited, and then went up a step ahead of me every time I did.

The room had a narrow bed with a grey blanket, a lamp, and a heater that he hit once with the flat of his hand.

It rattled, and then it began to tick and warm.

"Kettle's downstairs. I'll bring you something," he said. "I won't knock unless you knock first."

He left a mug of tea on the floor outside the door and went back down.

I sat on the edge of the bed in my coat.

I pushed my sleeve up and looked at the band.

It had my name and my date of birth, and under them a line of numbers: 16+2.

Sixteen weeks and two days.

I had wanted it off me all afternoon, and now I couldn't cut it.

It was the only thing that said she had been real.

I put my thumb over the numbers and sat there until the tea went cold.

My phone rang in my pocket.

It was a number I didn't know.

I almost didn't answer. Then I thought, no, I answer now, I'm done hiding from phones.

"Hello?"

"Is that Verity?"

An older woman's voice, careful and a little out of breath.

"It's Margaret. Alistair's mother," she said. "A woman who was at the lunch gave me your number. She told me you stood up in front of sixty people and said it out loud."

I couldn't speak.

"Please don't hang up, Verity. I need to know if it's true."

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