I know I said Auntie Bridge wasn’t allowed in the ambulance, and that’s true, she wasn’t, but the truth is, I didn’t let her come with us. What I mean is, I decided before the paramedics got there that she would not come.

While we waited for the ambulance, I sat by your bedside and stroked your damp hair. We heard the wail of the sirens in the road but we stayed with you, both of us preternaturally still. And what was odd, there in the eye of the storm, you unconscious right in front of me, was that I was suffused with a strange calm. I knew you’d be all right. I don’t know how to explain it any better than that: I knew it. You were breathing, the paramedics were on the way – you would be all right.

I made myself meet your auntie Bridget’s eye.

‘You stay here,’ I said. ‘I’ll go with her.’

And, oh, Rosie, her face creased in confusion, as if she didn’t understand what I was saying.

‘Don’t be daft,’ she said, but her voice shrank with doubt. ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘Please,’ I said. Having her look at me like that, well, it was… it was hard, Rosie. I felt like I was blocking her out. Which I suppose I was.

‘Let me do this, sis,’ was all I could think to say. ‘Let me be useful, for once. Please. I speak their language; I know what to tell them. You can come for us later with the van, save us having to come back in an ambulance, OK?’

She was standing on the other side of your bed. She kicked at the bottom of the bedpost and didn’t meet my eye.

‘If that’s what you want,’ she said, eyes still on the floor.

The sirens grew loud, stopped. The ambulance light came through the front-door window. Through your half-open bedroom door I could see it flashing blue on the hall ceiling. We had a few more seconds. I tried to keep my mind straight.

‘Maybe grab a change of clothes for her?’ I said.

‘Sure. I’ll make some sandwiches or something, yeah? And a flask, in case you end up being there a long time.’

Outside, an ambulance door slammed. Bridge turned away and made for the hallway.

‘Bridge?’

She stopped at the door to your room and looked back at me.

‘We’ll talk about what to do later, OK?’ I said. ‘I won’t call the police is what I’m saying. I won’t say anything until we see where we’re up to.’

She nodded, met my eye. ‘OK.’

‘I’ll text Emily and let her know. Only what she needs to obviously.’

‘Right you are.’

She went to open the front door. Seconds later, the bustle in the hallway, your auntie reappearing, pushed aside then by the brisk-moving high-vis uniforms of the paramedics. I recognised one of them.

‘Ted,’ I said.

‘Hiya,’ he replied, his face a mix of concentration and recognition. ‘Toni, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘This is my daughter, Rosie. We’ve had… she’s taken something.’

Wordlessly, your auntie Bridge left us. There was much more I wanted to say to her, but there was no time.

Ted and the other paramedic, a woman called Sandra or Sandy, I think, put you on a stretcher. I followed them outside, stopped at our front door and called back into the house:

‘Bridge?’

Bridget appeared in the hall and gave me a sad and loving smile. ‘What now, woman?’

I laughed, despite everything, or maybe because of everything. My eyes stung, blurred, and then she was there, her fingertips touching mine.

‘We’ll be all right,’ I whispered.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Go.’

---

I must have answered questions while we were still in the house, must have done that while they were running vital checks, but I have no memory of it. I know they put you on the stretcher in the flat and that by the time I was inside the ambulance, Ted had put an oxygen mask on your face.

The woman went to the front and started the engine while Ted shut the back doors. He asked me all the right questions: what had you taken, how long ago, had you had any alcohol. He hooked you up to a saline drip.

‘So diazepam you say? Just that?’

‘The truth is, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I know she’s taken diazepam – I have that in the house for my back – but she could have taken anything before that, I don’t know how many, or if she’s taken other stuff.’

And there it is, Rosie: the Judas kiss. Ted’s grey-blue eyes staring into mine like judgement itself while I betrayed you. While I let them think you’d taken an overdose. I betrayed you, to save your auntie Bridge, to save myself, but to save you too, my darling. I didn’t know what you’d had, apart from the diazepam that I’d given you, and that was the truth. It was the bottom line. It was what was necessary, all that was necessary, to save your life. I had to be sure they would run all the tests that they would usually run in the case of unknown substance abuse – even if that meant suicide attempt or overdose being written on your medical records. The whole truth was that you had been kidnapped and that your auntie Bridget had killed a man saving you, but the only truth they needed was that you had taken some unknown combination of barbiturates. The rest was irrelevant. I had pushed your auntie away so that I could do that – tell that half-truth. I’ll admit that I didn’t want her to know I’d given you my diazepam, but I swear it was also because I knew she’d give herself up to save you. And that wasn’t necessary. Besides, we needed her more than they needed to know the whole story.

Didn’t we? Didn’t we, Rosie?

You can’t answer, my love. And you couldn’t answer then. You were not able to contradict me and I took advantage, and there’s nothing I can do, nothing I can ever do, to reverse that. All I can do is wait for you to wake up and tell you I’m sorry. And I am sorry, Rosie, my darling girl. I am so sorry.

‘She’ll be all right,’ Ted said, smiling. ‘Might be out of it for a while, but if it’s less than four hours, hepatotoxicity is highly unlikely. They’ll give her a reversal agent, I should think. She’s breathing fine but she’s unconscious, so…’

I nodded. I knew the procedure, knew your liver was at risk. If they found high serum levels, they’d give you acetylcysteine, maybe charcoal or something, I didn’t know exactly which one. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but I feared it might.

‘Tough shift?’ I said.

He checked his watch. ‘Not yet. It will be.’

I smiled, took your hand in mine and held it. We were in the ambulance now, heading for A&E, and I was confident that you were in safe hands. I knew I’d face tough questions once the dust had settled, and I think by then I also knew that the police were inevitable now.

In A&E, the doctor gave you flumazenil. You were unconscious – it’s procedure. They took your bloods, wrote overdose on your notes. I was interviewed by a senior nurse, no one I knew, who asked me if you’d been depressed lately, all that sort of thing. She said that when you woke up she would need to speak to you, and that I would be formally interviewed at that point. I insisted you were fine. I didn’t tell her that I had given you the drugs. I did not say that, not categorically, because by then I was terrified they would take you away from me, that they’d investigate us, that they’d discover what your auntie Bridget had done, and take her away too.

We are a family, Rosie. We are a funny, fucked-up triangle family, and in that moment I didn’t know who was at the base and who was at the top. All I know now is that we have tough questions ahead of us. It will be time, as they say, to face the music.