Afterwards

when you saw that Addie was safe.’

I remember Maisie outside, comforting the reception teacher, Rowena comforting Adam by the bronze statue of a child, as black smoke was swirled by the wind, dirtying the blue sky.

‘And then you shouted for Jenny and I realised she must be in there. And you ran inside.’ She pauses for a moment, her face pale. ‘But I didn’t go to help you.’ Her voice is staccato with guilt.

But how can she think I blame her? I’m just moved that she thought, even for one moment, of going into a burning building after me.

‘I knew I should help you,’ she continues. ‘Of course I should. But I wasn’t brave enough. So I ran to the fire engines that were still on the bridge instead. Away from the fire. I told them there were people inside. I thought if they knew they’d get there more quickly, that it would be more urgent. And they did. I mean, as soon as I told them, one of the fire engines drove at a parked car and shoved it off the road onto the pavement. And then people parked behind them realised what was happening and got out of their cars and the firemen were shouting that there were people in the school and then we were all pushing cars out of the way. Everyone pushing the cars out of the way so they could get through.’

I can see that her memory is over-spilling into her present, so that it’s happening now in front of her, and she can smell it and hear it – diesel fumes, I imagine, and people shouting and horns going and the smell of fire reaching the bridge.

I want to interrupt her from her reverie, rescue her from it. I want to ask her if Rowena’s alright because I remember seeing her in A &E when I was searching for Jenny. And I remember the suited man talking to the journalists and saying Rowena was in hospital too. But I hadn’t paused to think about her since; anxiety for my own child selfishly pushing out space for anybody else.

But why is Rowena hurt when I saw her safely outside next to the statue with Adam?

Dr Bailstrom arrives on her precipitous red heels and Maisie has to go. I think she leaves reluctantly as if there’s something more she wants to tell me.

* * *

It’s late now and the pull of home is unbearably strong. Own bed. Own house. Own life back again to be lived as usual tomorrow.

You are on the phone to Adam and for a few moments I hang back, as if it’ll be my turn in a minute to speak to him. Then I hurry close to you, listening for his voice.

‘I’m going to spend the night with Mum and Jenny here. But I’ll see you as soon as I can, OK?’

I can just hear him breathing. Short, hurried breaths.

‘OK, Ads?’

Still just breathing, terrified breathing.

‘I need you to be a soldier right now, Addie, please?’

Still he doesn’t speak. And I hear the gap between you, the one that used to make me sad and now frightens me.

‘Good night then. Sleep tight, and send my love to Granny G.’

I have to hug him, right this moment; feel his warm little body and ruffle his soft hair and tell him how much I love him.

‘I’m sure Granny G will bring him to see you tomorrow,’ Jenny says to me, as if reading my thoughts. ‘I’d probably scare him too much, but you look alright.’

You want to spend the night next to me and next to Jenny – splitting yourself in two, to keep watch over both of us.

A nurse tries to persuade you to go to the bed they’ve sorted out for you. She tells you that I am unconscious and therefore unaware of whether you’re with me or not, and that Jenny’s too deeply drugged to be aware of anything either. As the nurse says this, Jenny pulls a silly face at her and I laugh. There’s really a lot of opportunity for bedroom-farce-style comedy here and I think Jenny will try and beat me to it.

The nurse promises you that if my condition or Jenny’s ‘worsens’ they’ll get you immediately.

She’s telling you that neither of us will die without you.

Perhaps I jumped the gun a bit in the potential for comedy.

You still refuse to go to bed.

‘It’s late, Mike,’ your sister says firmly. ‘You’re exhausted. And you need to function properly tomorrow for Jenny’s sake. And for Grace’s.’

I think it’s her advice that you need to function properly tomorrow that decides you – it’s optimistic to go to bed, demonstrating your belief that we will still be alive in the morning.

Jenny and I stay with you next to the single bed they’ve given you in the family room, just by the burns unit. We watch you as you fitfully sleep, your hands tightly tensed.

I think of Adam in his bunk bed.

‘He has several lions among his soft toy menagerie,’ I tell you. ‘But his favourite is Aslan and he needs Aslan to get to sleep. If he’s fallen off the bunk, you have to find him. Sometimes you have to pull the whole bed out because he falls down the side.’

‘Mum?’ Jenny says. ‘Dad’s asleep.’

As if when you’re awake you can hear me. I am touched by this distinction.

‘Anyway,’ she continues. ‘He must know about Aslan.’

‘D’you think?’

‘Of course.’

But I’m not sure you do. Anyway, you think it would be better if Adam grew out of soft toys, now he’s eight. But he’s only just eight.

‘You’ll be able to put Adam to bed yourself soon,’ Jenny says. ‘Find Aslan. All of that.’

I think of holding Adam’s hand in mine as he drifts into sleep. All of that.

‘Yes.’

Because of course I’ll be at home again. I have to be.

‘Is it alright if I go for a walk?’ she asks. ‘I’m feeling a little stir-crazy.’

‘Fine.’

Poor Jenny; an outdoorsy person like you, it’s terrible for her to be cooped up in a hospital.

We’re alone and I look at your sleeping face.

I remember watching you as you slept not long after we’d started going out together and I’d thought of that passage in Middlemarch – I know, not fair! I can quote to you now and there’s not a thing you can do about it! Anyway it’s when the poor heroine realises that in her elderly husband’s head there are just dusty corridors and musty old attics. But in yours I imagined there to be mountains and rivers and prairies – wide- open spaces with wind and sky.

You haven’t yet said you love me. But it’s a given, isn’t it? A taken-as-read thing, as it has been for the last few years. In our early days you’d write it in the steamed-up mirror in the bathroom after you’d shaved, for me to find when I came in later to clean my teeth. You’d phone me, just to tell me. I’d sit down at my computer and you’d have changed the screen saver so that ‘I love you!’ marched across it. You’d never done this to anyone before, and it was as if you needed to keep practising.

I know hearts don’t really store emotion. But there must be some place in us that does. I think it’s a jagged and anxiously spiky place until someone loves you. And then, like pilgrims touching a rough stone with their fingertips, nineteen years of practising wears it smooth.

Someone has just passed the family room. I saw a glimpse in the glass panel in the door; a shadow fleetingly under it. I better just check.

A figure is hurrying along the burns unit corridor. For some reason, I think of that shadowy figure on the edge of the playing field.

He’s going towards Jenny’s side-ward.

He goes in and through the half-open doorway I see his shape bending over her.

I scream, making no sound.

I can see a nurse walking towards Jenny’s room. Her plimsolls squeaking on the linoleum alert the figure to her