She opened her eyes in the fogged-up car and looked up. Nothing to see except rain.
For heaven's sake, she was only thinking about Harry because he'd died. It was a casebook example of false memory syndrome. If Erika had a weaker personality, a more malleable mind, then an over-eager therapist could help her fabricate an entire memory about the barbeque and Harry. Next thing she'd be convinced that Harry had been there at the barbeque molesting Ruby or some such nonsense.
She turned the keys in the ignition, indicated and looked over her shoulder at the traffic. She would try Not Pat's idea of 'returning to the scene of the crime'. When she got home she would ask Vid and Tiffany if she could stand alone in their backyard in the rain for a while. That wouldn't sound odd at all. Ha ha. No, the best thing would be if she went over when she knew they were out.
It probably wouldn't help, but it couldn't hurt.
chapter fifty-one
The day of the barbeque
The two blue-uniformed paramedics came into the backyard with the absolute authority of conductors walking onto a stage. They didn't run, but they moved fast, with a rigid calmness.
It was as though the rest of them weren't grown-ups anymore. It was as though they'd all been playing a game, a game where they'd pretended to be in control of their lives, a game where they'd pretended they had interesting professions and healthy bank accounts and families and backyard barbeques, but now a curtain had been pulled briskly aside and the grown-ups had marched in because rules had been broken.
Rules had been very badly broken. The circle of people surrounding Ruby parted automatically so the paramedics could get to her. Ruby mumbled incoherently, terrifyingly. She seemed drowsy and drugged, as if she were coming out of anaesthesia.
The paramedics moved as if in a choreographed dance they'd done many times before. As they examined Ruby with plastic-gloved hands the older man asked rapid questions without looking up, confident that the answers would be provided. He spoke in a voice that was fractionally louder and slower than a normal speaking voice, as if he were speaking to children.
'What happened here?'
'What's her name?'
'And how old is Ruby?'
'When was Ruby last seen?'
'So no one saw her fall? You don't know if she hit her head?'
'Did she have a pulse when she was pulled from the fountain?'
'Are you the parents?'
He looked briefly up at Erika and Oliver as he asked the last question. A reasonable assumption. They were the ones in wet clothes.
'No,' said Sam. 'We are.' He indicated Clementine.
'They rescued her,' said Clementine. It seemed important to get this on the record. 'Our friends. They did CPR. They got her breathing.'
'How long did you perform CPR for?' said the paramedic.
'It would have been about five minutes,' said Oliver. He looked at Erika to confirm.
'At the most,' said Erika.
'We did two rescue breaths for every fifteen compressions,' said Oliver anxiously.
Five minutes? It wasn't possible, thought Clementine. It had been an unbearably long stretch of time.
There was something in Ruby's mouth, a tube in her nose, a mask over her face. She'd been turned into a generic patient. Not their wicked, funny little Ruby.
'Have you got any towels?' asked the younger paramedic. He was using a pair of large, serrated scissors to cut a straight line through Ruby's clothes: her tutu, her long-sleeved T-shirt, unpeeling the layers of clothing to reveal Ruby's tiny white chest.
'Of course.' Vid hurried inside and returned with a stack of beautifully folded white fluffy towels.
'What are you doing?' asked Sam sharply as the paramedic dried Ruby's body firmly and pressed two sticky pads to her chest.
'These are defibrillator pads,' said the paramedic. 'In case she arrests again. We're just preparing for the worst case scenario. It can also give us useful information.'