Dead Tomorrow

series of speed humps. After a short distance Lynn saw a golf course to their left and a large lake. Ahead were the Downs, and she could make out the cluster of trees that formed Chanctonbury Ring.
    Caitlin was silent, her eyes closed, listening to music on her iPod, or asleep. Lynn, sitting in funereal silence, did not want to wake her until the last moment, hoping sleep might help conserve her strength.
    God, please let me have made the right decision , she prayed silently.
    It had been OK until the police officers’ visit this morning. She had known until then that she was doing the right thing, but now she didn’t know what the right thing was any more.
    Finally, jerked by a speed hump, Caitlin’s eyes opened and she stared around, bewildered.
    ‘What are you listening to, darling?’ Lynn asked.
    Caitlin did not hear her.
    Lynn stared at her daughter with such affection she thought her heart would burst. Stared atthe bilious yellow colour of her skin and her eyes. She looked so damn frail and vulnerable.
    Stay strong, darling. Just for a little while longer. Just a few more hours and then everything is going to be fine .
    She looked through the windscreen for some moments at the place looming up ahead, a big, ugly, stately pile of a house. The central part looked, to Lynn, as if it was Victorian Gothic, but there were a number of modern annexes and outbuildings, some sympathetic to the style, others just bland, modern prefabs. She saw a circular driveway ahead, lined with cars, flanked by a car park on either side, but the driver turned off at a sign marked PRIVATE , drove through an archway along the side of the house and into a large rear courtyard, bounded on one side by what she presumed had once been the mews stables and on another by a row of ugly lock-up garages.
    They pulled to a halt beside an unpretentious back entrance. Before Lynn had climbed out of the Mercedes, a massive beefcake of a woman emerged from the door, wearing a white nurse’s tunic and gym shoes.
    Grigore sprang around to open Caitlin’s door, but, with considerable effort, she slid over to her mother’s side, following her out unaided.
    ‘Mrs Lynn Beckett, Miss Caitlin Beckett?’ The woman’s formal voice and broken English accent made it sound like an interrogation.
    Lynn nodded meekly, holding an arm around her daughter, and read the woman’s name tag: Draguta.
    She looked like a dragon, she thought.
    ‘You will follow me, please.’
    ‘I bring your bags,’ Grigore said.
    Lynn gripped Caitlin’s hand as they followed the woman along a wide corridor with white tiledwalls which smelled strongly of disinfectant, passing several closed doors. Then the woman stopped at a locked door at the end and punched in a security code.
    They walked through into a carpeted area, with pale grey painted walls, which had the feel of an office suite, then the woman stopped at a door and knocked.
    A female voice from the other side called out, ‘ Reinkommen! ’
    Lynn and Caitlin were ushered into a large, plush office, and the nurse closed the door behind them. Marlene Hartmann rose up from behind a bare desk to greet them. Behind her was a window giving a panoramic view across towards the Downs.
    ‘ Gut! You are here! I hope you had a pleasant journey–please sit down.’ She pointed to the two armchairs in front of the desk.
    ‘We had an interesting journey,’ Lynn said, a hard knot in her stomach and her throat feeling so tight she could barely get the words out. Her legs were shaking.
    ‘ Ja. We have problems.’ Marlene Hartmann nodded seriously. ‘But I have never let a customer down.’ She smiled at Caitlin. ‘All is good, mein Liebling ?’
    ‘I’d quite like the surgeon to have Feist playing during the operation. Do you think he’d sort of like do that?’ Caitlin asked quietly.
    She sat, scratching her left ankle, hunched up on the chair.
    ‘Feist?’ The woman frowned. ‘What is Feist?’
    ‘She’s cool. A singer.’
    Now she started scratching her distended stomach.
    The German womanshrugged. ‘OK, sure, we can ask. I don’t know.’
    ‘There’s kind of like one other thing I want to know,’ Caitlin said.
    Lynn stared at her in alarm. She seemed to be having breathing difficulties when she spoke.
    ‘Tell me?’
    ‘This liver I’m getting–who is it coming from?’
    Without any flicker of hesitation, the woman responded, ‘From a poor little girl about your age who was killed in car accident