Chapter Forty-Three
The dark head moved and Emerald gave a low moan.
She was alive. Rose released a shaky breath, only now willing to admit how much she had feared the worst.
Emerald opened her eyes and then blinked before saying flatly, ‘Oh, it’s you.’
‘Don’t move,’ Rose warned her. ‘Just stay where you are whilst I go and get help.’
‘No.’
Rose could hear fear as well as arrogance in her voice as Emerald looked down the road. Fearing that the E type and its driver might come back?
Rose’s lips compressed. She could guess who the driver was. Everyone knew about Emerald’s affair with the supposedly reformed East End gangster.
‘I’m all right,’ Emerald told Rose as she tried to struggle to her feet and had to stop, collapsing back on her knees when nausea from the pain overwhelmed her.
‘Emerald,’ Rose protested, automatically going to her aid and putting her arms round her to support her.
‘Just get me a taxi, will you, so that I can get home. I’ll be all right once I’m there.’
‘You need to see a doctor. You could have broken something…’
Emerald shook her head. ‘I’m fine. It was nothing. Just a bit of a…misunderstanding. Help me up,’ she commanded, clinging to Rose’s arm as she gave in and helped her to her feet.
Rose was relieved in a way that Emerald could be so demanding and, well, so very Emerald. For a moment, seeing her there lying in the gutter, she’d been really afraid.
Now, though, that Emerald was on her feet, clutching Rose’s
jacket around her ripped dress, Rose was appalled to see her split lip and the cut on the side of her face. And for all that Emerald might say she was all right and had managed to stand up she was still doubled over, the only colour in her face coming from the bloodstains on her skin.
Rose came to a swift decision. ‘I’ll take you,’ she told her. ‘I’ve got the Mini round the corner.’
She was still supporting Emerald, and she could feel the sag of relief from her body, far more telling than any words.
Once they were in the car, Emerald leaned back in the passenger seat, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow, quite obviously in no state to make conversation, ask questions or give orders.
Rose didn’t care what Emerald said, her cousin needed urgent medical attention, and that was exactly what she was going to get. She set off west as fast as she dared.
It was only when she heard the screech of an ambulance siren that Emerald opened her eyes, but by then it was too late. Rose had parked the Mini right outside the entrance to the casualty department.
A uniformed hospital porter was bearing down on them.
‘You can’t park here,’ he began as Rose wound down the window.
‘It’s my cousin. She’s…she’s had an accident–a–a fall–and I’m dreadfully worried about her.’
The porter looked at Emerald and then grunted. ‘Stay there. I’ll bring you a wheelchair.’
‘I told you to take me home,’ Emerald hissed furiously to Rose once he had gone.
‘And I told you that you needed medical attention,’ Rose fired back, amazed to realise how easy she was finding it to hold her own with Emerald after all this time.
The porter had returned with a wheelchair and a medical orderly, the two of them expertly getting Emerald out of the car and into the wheelchair, ignoring her protests.
As soon as she had seen them safely wheeling Emerald into the hospital, Rose restarted the Mini. There was nothing for her to stay for now was there? Emerald was perfectly capable of sorting herself out and wasn’t going to want or need her around. And besides, why should she put herself out even more for someone who had always treated her so badly?
The orderly wheeled Emerald into casualty. Lighting up a cigarette, he told her off-handedly, ‘You’re going to have a long wait with it being a Saturday. Place is full of them mods and rockers wot was having a bit of a ruckus on the Edgware Road earlier. Your old man had a go at you, ‘as he? Given you a fair old pastin’, by the looks of it.’