The Make

It felt so strange to Gracie, to be sitting here. This was George lying here in bits. And there, across the bed from her, was her mother, Suze. It was surreal. But she’d had to come. She had to be here.

‘Months, days, years?’ she coaxed. ‘What?’

‘Couple of months, she says, although George has never mentioned it. She’s keen.’

‘She must be, she’s calling herself his fiancee.’

Suze’s eyes opened wide with surprise. ‘Is she? Well, that’s a turn-up. Fiancee? Well, then she must be. You’d have thought he would have told me though. But then – you know what George is like.’ Suze’s mouth twisted in bitterness. ‘But no, you don’t, do you? You didn’t bother to keep in touch.’

Gracie stared across at Suze. ‘Excuse me, but it was you who didn’t keep in touch. I wrote to you. A lot, as I remember. That first year after you and Dad split.’

‘No you didn’t.’

‘I did.’

‘Well I never got a bloody thing.’

‘Oh come on.’ Gracie sighed. Her mother had always been a fantasist, embellishing dull reality with drama and excitement. They were so unalike, it was as if she’d been dropped to earth from another planet.

‘I didn’t.’ Suze was glaring a challenge at Gracie now. ‘You never cared about me after you and your dad left. You never gave a shit.’

‘I did. I still do. Or else why would I be here?’

‘Pass,’ sniffed Suze.

‘And while we’re on the subject of not caring, what about when Dad died? What about his funeral? You didn’t come to that. Neither did George or Harry.’

‘Look, I’m not a hypocrite. I couldn’t stand there lamenting the loss of your dad while I still hated him. And, as for Harry and George, I thought it would upset them.’ Suddenly Suze’s eyes were shifty. ‘So I didn’t tell them.’

‘You didn’t . . .’ Gracie’s jaw hit the floor. Her voice raised a notch. ‘You didn’t tell them their father had died?’

‘Can you keep it down?’ said the nurse, hurrying past. ‘They can hear you, you know. Every word, sometimes. So no arguing.’

‘Sorry,’ said Gracie.

She looked at George. Shot a glare at Suze and hissed: ‘So you’re telling me this poor sod’s lying here at death’s door, and he don’t even know his father’s gone?’

‘I couldn’t tell them,’ said Suze, lowering her voice. Her eyes were desperate. ‘They blamed me when he went and took you with him. If I’d told them he’d died . . .’

‘It all comes back to you, don’t it?’ said Gracie, shaking her head. ‘Everything’s about you. As usual.’

Suze made an agitated move with her shoulders. ‘Look, can we skip this now?’

‘Yeah. For now.’

‘You don’t know how hard it’s been,’ whined Suze.

‘Spare me.’

‘Christ, Gracie Doyle. Cold as fucking ice, that’s you. You haven’t changed a bit. You’re just like your dad; all you know is bets and odds and tells. Real life don’t matter.’

That stung.

Gracie drew breath to answer, to snap back a scathing retort, but at that moment one of George’s steadily beeping monitors started emitting a high-pitched whine instead. The nurse was there instantly, pressing a button.

‘Go and wait outside, will you?’ she said quickly.

‘What’s—?’ started Suze.

‘Outside,’ said the nurse, shoving her away.

And suddenly there were other people rushing in, and Gracie and Suze were swept out into the corridor. The people flocking around George’s bed were wheeling machines, attaching paddles to his chest, and finally Gracie and Suze understood what was going on here. George’s heart had stopped beating.

Chapter 19

21 December

‘Oh my Christ! I never want to have to go through anything like that ever again,’ said Suze, collapsing into a chair at the kitchen table when she and Gracie arrived home.

‘Do you think that was our fault?’ asked Gracie, sitting down opposite her mother and exhaling sharply.

Suze looked up. ‘What?’

‘That nurse told us they hear things. People in . . .’ Comas. ‘. . . People out of it. Did he hear us arguing, you think? And it upset him?’

‘No.’ Suze frowned. ‘Jesus. I hope not.’ She sank her head into her hands. ‘Thank God they got him stabilized.’

Gracie nodded. She felt shaky with the aftermath of fear. George’s heart had stopped. George had died. But, somehow, they’d brought him back online again. Saved him. She and her mother had left the hospital an hour after it had happened, both shaken to the core. They could have lost him, right then and there. George – big jovial confident George, so full of life – could have been gone forever.

Gracie raised a trembling hand to her mouth and felt like she might cry again, which she rarely did. Oh, she’d shed tears at her father’s death, shed tears at his graveside, but tears never came easily to her.

Yeah, she was cold.

No, not cold, she corrected herself. Just logical, reasonable. Always looking for answers, weighing up odds.

So what are the odds on George coming out of this, Gracie?

The odds were bad. She didn’t even want to start thinking about it.

‘Jesus,’ she groaned, ‘I need a drink.’

‘That,’ said Suze, levering herself upright with her hands flat on the table – looking like an old, old woman all of a sudden, ‘I can do. Got sherry here, or brandy . . .?’

‘Brandy,’ said Gracie, and watched while her mother went to the cupboard, got out two glasses and a bottle, and came back and threw herself back down into her chair.

Suze slopped the brandy into the glasses. Looked at Gracie. Then she picked up her glass.

‘To George,’ she said. ‘To my darling Georgie.’ Then her eyes filled and she put the glass back down, starting to sob.

‘He’s going to pull through this,’ said Gracie. She looked at her mother, half exasperated, half feeling like joining in and wailing like a banshee too.

‘You don’t know that,’ blubbed Suze.

‘I know George is tough,’ said Gracie.

She looked at her mother’s hand, there on the table. A few wrinkles were on that hand now, a couple of age spots. She hadn’t seen or known her mother in a long time, but those hands were as familiar to her as her own. Families might splinter apart and loyalties might be tested to the limit, but blood ties remained forever strong, and that surprised her.

Tentatively Gracie reached out and put her hand over her mother’s.

‘It’s going to be all right,’ she told Suze firmly.

‘No!’ Now Suze was shaking, crying, shouting. ‘It ain’t going to be all right. George could have died tonight. Someone did this to him, put him in fucking hospital. He might never recover. Never. And Harry. God knows what’s happening to Harry. Where is he, Gracie? What the hell’s happening to our lives?’

Gracie stared at Suze, unable to give her comfort. She was almost relieved when she heard the key in the