Someone Who Isn't Me, Danuta Kot [good books to read for adults TXT] 📗

the night as if she’d shouted, ‘Here I am!’ at the top of her voice. She took a left out of the gennel, up the side street away from the main road, and opened the throttle.

No one came after her.

Once she’d put some distance between her and the flat, she stopped, looking round all the time, then she turned towards the town centre, taking the Hull road.

In the distance, she thought she heard the sound of a siren.

The car Dinah had sent? Too late. She was off.

She was going to find Kay.

Chapter 38

Hull

Kay sat in the waiting room. The medics had been treating Poppy for what seemed like forever, but she still had no news. She could tell – even before the speed with which Poppy’s gasping, spasming form had been rushed into resuscitation – that it was touch and go. Poppy’s face had been a mask of blood when they strapped her onto the trolley, and two policemen were needed to subdue her despite her injuries from the broken glass. Against Kay’s expectations, they’d been oddly gentle with the frantic girl, calling her ‘love’, and making light of whatever demons she thought were after her.

Kay gave the paramedics as much information as she could, which wasn’t enough. She had no idea what Poppy had taken. She also gave the police Leesha’s name as far as she knew it, and the photograph of Leesha’s car. She called Dev – who listened without much comment – then drove to the hospital herself.

She’d sat with Poppy for a while, wiping her face with a damp cloth. Poppy looked at her once and her lips moved. ‘What is it?’ Kay leaned in to hear.

‘I didn’t know,’ Poppy whispered. But then her body spasmed into what looked like a fit, and Kay was hurried out, back into the waiting room. She wasn’t family and she wasn’t going to waste their time by arguing. At some point, Dev arrived, and took down the details Kay had to give him. As she told him about Carla’s Place, his face went grey. ‘I’ll get on to the police. We haven’t done what we should for Poppy.’ His gaze met hers. ‘I mean, I haven’t. Are you all right to stay?’

Kay nodded. She felt bad about leaving Milo, but he had food and water. He’d be OK for now. Dev left, promising to come back later. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I can manage on my own if necessary.’

It was after two in the morning. She got herself a cup of coffee and a Kit Kat from the vending machine. The coffee was thin and tasteless, but at least it was hot. She was just finishing the Kit Kat, having abandoned the coffee halfway through, when a woman in a white coat came down the corridor towards her. ‘You’re with the girl who came in with the overdose?’

‘Poppy,’ Kay said.

‘Are you family?’

‘No.’ Kay explained her role as a support worker.

‘Are you in touch with her family? Can you help us contact them?’

‘As far as I know she’s been out of touch with them for over a year. She’s from Barnsley, originally.’

‘We really need to make contact.’

That sounded bad. ‘I’ll contact a colleague, see if we’ve got that information. Or they might have it at the college. How is she?’

The woman sighed. ‘I’ll tell you what I can. She’s very poorly, I’m afraid. We don’t know exactly what she’s taken. We’ve got blood samples but by the time we get the results, the stuff will be out of her system. The panic made her body temperature shoot up – it was forty when she came in. We’ve managed to reverse that, but we’re looking at possible organ damage. And some of these synthetics lodge in the brain. She could be looking at serious neurological impairment. At this stage, we just don’t know.’ She gave Kay a severe look. ‘These are not recreational drugs.’

The woman was tired and needed someone to take her frustration out on, Kay could see that. ‘I know,’ she murmured. ‘I thought I was getting through to Poppy, but she had a setback.’

‘Let’s hope it isn’t a permanent one,’ the woman said with the same severity. She was treating Kay like a fellow professional, albeit one who had failed in her duty. And that was fair enough, because Kay had.

You can’t save them all. Matt’s mantra when things went wrong. It was true. Kay wasn’t responsible for Poppy’s addictions, and she wasn’t responsible for what Poppy had taken tonight, but she wasn’t sure she’d done enough. If she’d tried harder to maintain contact, maybe, just maybe, Poppy would have called her after her arrest, rather than Leesha. ‘Can I see her?’

The medic shook her head. ‘She’s asleep. We’re observing her for now and then we’ll do some more assessments later this morning.’ She smiled, suddenly looking more human. ‘She’d have died if you hadn’t got help for her. Try not to worry. She’s young, she’s healthy enough. She might make a full recovery. I’m not writing her off, not yet.’

But too many people were all too willing to do that, Kay thought as she headed towards the hospital exit. Write off young drug users like Poppy, and write off troubled young women like Becca.

When she came out of A & E into the main waiting room, to her surprise, she saw Dev leaning against the wall reading a book. ‘We’ve got the police at the office,’ he said, sounding tired.

‘For Poppy?’ Kay asked. ‘Tonight?’

‘No. They’ve taken the computers and all the financial records and…’ He shook his head. ‘There’s something big going on and no one’s telling me anything. I can’t…’ He spread his hands in confusion, then seemed to shake the subject off. ‘No doubt someone will tell me something soon. There’s a lot going on we don’t know about. Poppy’s our concern now. How are you?’

For the first time, Kay found herself warming to him. ‘I’m fine.’ She told him what