Afterwards

It’s as if she’s slapped you.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘He didn’t speak, Mike. He can’t speak.’

‘But surely he shook his head or…’

‘No. Nothing. There was nothing I could do. I’m so sorry.’

‘Oh Christ. Poor Ads.’ You stand up. ‘How the hell can Baker believe Hyman’s lies?’

‘It can’t have been Silas Hyman who said he saw Adam,’ Sarah says. ‘He’d have got no business being in the school in the first place.’

‘You said already. So he got someone to lie for him.’

‘Mike…’

‘And who the fuck gave him an alibi?’

Sarah doesn’t answer.

‘You know, don’t you?’

You look at her and she finally meets your eye.

‘It was his wife.’

‘I’m going to see them.’

‘I really don’t think-’

‘I don’t give a monkey’s arse what anyone thinks.’

I’ve never heard you snap at her before. She’s upset by it but you don’t notice.

‘Will you stay here? Look after her?’

‘I don’t think you’ll achieve much, Mike.’

You are silent.

‘A friend brought your car from the BBC to the hospital car park,’ she says. ‘The one outside. They’ve paid for an extended stay. Here.’

She hands you a parking chit. As I look at it, I glimpse people standing on the shore of our old life, waving at us with new toothbrushes and parking chits and nightdresses for me and meals left on the doorstep for Mum and Adam.

She takes your seat next to Jenny.

‘There’s been no change since this morning,’ you say. ‘Stable, they said, for the time being.’

When Jenny told me it had hurt her to go outside, I’d worried it had affected her body in some way, but thank God it clearly didn’t.

‘Let me know if there’s anything, right away, anything,’ you say.

‘Of course.’

You leave ICU and I want to tell you that Silas Hyman is right here in the hospital. But maybe seeing his wife without him will be an advantage. Maybe you’ll find out more that way.

And Sarah is with Jenny. Mum is with Adam. Both our children are safe.

* * *

Jenny is outside ICU.

‘Where’s Dad going?’

‘Silas Hyman’s house.’

She turns away from me, so that I can’t see her face.

‘Jen?’

‘If I could remember more about that afternoon then maybe the police wouldn’t blame Addie; you and Dad wouldn’t blame Silas. But I can’t. I can’t remember!’

‘It’s not your fault, sweetheart.’

I touch her on the shoulder but she shakes me off, as if angry with herself for needing comfort.

‘It could be the drugs they’ve given you,’ I say. ‘DI Baker told Aunt Sarah that drugs can affect memory.’

What he’d actually said was, ‘The only time I’ve seen genuine amnesia is when someone is drugged up to the eyeballs…’

‘But the drugs aren’t affecting anything else,’ Jenny says. ‘I can think clearly now, can’t I? I can talk to you.’

‘Who knows what effect they have? And if it’s not the drugs, then there might be another reason. There’s something called retrograde amnesia. At least I think it’s called that.’

I want her not to blame herself; to have a reason she can understand. So I continue, ‘It’s when your brain blocks off access to a traumatic memory so you can’t get it. It can affect the time before and afterwards too.’

Although I’m pretty sure this doesn’t apply to Adam, it might be true of Jen.

‘So it’s like a protective thing?’ she asks.

‘Yes.’

‘But the memory is still there?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Then I’ll just have to be braver.’

I remember the judder of fear going through her when she tried to think back to yesterday afternoon.

‘Not yet, sweetheart, alright? Maybe Aunt Sarah and Dad will find out what happened, without you needing to remember.’

She looks relieved.

‘Is it OK if I go with Dad?’ I ask her.

‘Course. But won’t it hurt you to go outside?’

‘Oh, I’m a tough old bird,’ I say to her; one of Mum’s expressions.

‘Yeah, right. From the person who goes to bed with a cold.’

I leave the hospital with you. My skin is scalded by the warm air and the gravel is shards of glass under my feet, as if the hospital building with its white walls and cool slippery linoleum has been giving me protection and now it’s ripped away.

I grip hold of your hand and although you don’t feel me, you give me comfort.

We reach our car and I see Adam’s books stuffed into the pouch behind the driver’s seat, a lipstick of Jenny’s in the bit meant for a mug, a pair of my boots that need re-heeling on the back seat, like archaeological finds of a long-ago life; shockingly evocative.

We drive away from the hospital.

The pain hits me like blows, so I must focus on something else. But what?

It’s silent in the car. It’s never silent in the car. Either we are chatting, or there’s music playing (blaring if it’s Jenny in charge). Radio 4 if it’s me on my own and I’ve spent too long with eight-year-old boys or teenage girls.

I look at you as you drive. People always warm to you. I wonder about this sometimes. Not that tall, not that handsome, not handsome at all really, what is it that causes this warming thing? When I’ve asked you, you say they’ve just seen you on the telly, they think they know you already.

But I’ve always thought it’s a charismatic, self-assured thing. After all, I didn’t see you on the telly before I fell for you.

You involuntarily reach your left hand across towards the passenger seat to hold mine, as you always do when you drive. ‘One of the advantages of an automatic.’ And for a moment we are driving out to friends for dinner, with you praising sat-navs because we can talk instead of map-read, our bottle of wine rolling around in the boot. Then you move your hand away.

In our silent car, I remember your old familiar voice, warm and deep and confident. The voice you had until yesterday morning.

Until now you’ve always been so happy, in that easygoing, masculine way; sometimes infuriatingly so. It’ll be fine, relax! will be written on your headstone, I’ve sniped. But it’s attractive, that happiness with yourself and the world; looking confidently outwards not anxiously inwards.

‘Always been happy?’ Nanny Voice chides, reminding me that your parents’ car crash was when you were only a little older than Adam is now.