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Then everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-eight
“Alexia! Alexia, can you hear me?”
Sir Edward Manning’s voice sounded very far away. Alexia thought, How strange that he’s using my first name. He never uses my first name. Something serious must have happened.
Opening her eyes, Alexia found her vision was distorted. She could make out Edward’s concerned features, and a sea of other, blurred faces behind him. But everything was lurching, as if they were on a ship on the high seas. She had no idea where she was. The light hurt her eyes, and a wave of nausea combined with a searing pain in her side.
Then the blackness returned and she felt nothing at all.
Henry Whitman spoke grimly into the phone.
“Is she alive?”
“Yes, Prime Minister.”
For a brief, unworthy moment, Henry Whitman felt disappointed.
“He shot her at close range, but somehow the bullet lodged in her rib. They’re operating now, but I understand she’s going to make it. She was incredibly lucky.”
Yes, thought Henry Whitman. She usually is.
“They arrested the man?”
“Yes, sir. Gilbert Drake. A cabbie from North London, no prior record. He was a friend of Sanjay Patel’s, apparently. Gave himself up, no trouble.”
“All right. Keep me informed.”
The prime minister hung up, poured himself a whiskey, and took two long, deep swallows. Gilbert Drake. What kind of an idiot must the man be to have missed at point-blank range? Henry Whitman hoped they locked Drake up and threw away the damned key.
Black became white. White walls, white ceiling, white bed, white light.
Am I dead?
Alexia blinked against the brightness. Slowly reality reasserted itself.
A hospital. The pain in her side was gone, replaced by a warm, fuzzy feeling she hadn’t felt since her teens. Morphine. She looked down. Sure enough, there were the tubes, pumping some unnamed painkiller into her arm.
Suddenly it all came back to her.
The Patel protesters. The clicking cameras. The eyes full of hatred, blazing out at her.
“What happened?”
The words came out so faintly she could barely hear them herself, but they were enough to bring the staff nurse running.
“You were shot, Mrs. De Vere, but you’re going to be fine. Try not to panic.”
Alexia smiled wanly. “I never panic. Will I need an operation?”
“You’ve already had it. Everything went perfectly. Try to rest. I’ll page the surgeon now and he’ll come and explain things.”
The nurse ran out. Almost immediately there was a knock on the door.
“Mummy?”
Roxie looked awful. White as a sheet and with her mascara running all over her face, she had clearly been crying. She wheeled herself over to Alexia’s bedside.
