Afterwards

The pain has gone. It stopped the moment I stepped into the hospital; as if this white-walled building offers me its own skin.

My mother is sitting next to Jenny. I know she won’t have left Addie on his own; a friend or a nurse must be with him. Amidst the shiny hard equipment she looks so gentle in her cotton skirt and Liberty-print blouse. Her hand hovers over Jenny, as yours often does, unable to touch her.

You go up to Sarah, who’s standing a little distance away – giving Mum time with Jen while still fulfilling her obligation to you to protect Jenny. I’m still not sure if she thinks it’s necessary or if she’s just doing it to make you feel better.

‘Hyman wasn’t there,’ you say to her. ‘And his wife would do whatever the bastard asked.’

Then Mum sees you. ‘Is there any more news on Gracie?’ she asks.

‘Not yet,’ you reply. ‘I was meant to have a meeting with her doctors earlier, but I got called away.’ You don’t say you were called away because Jenny’s heart stopped. You haven’t told Mum about the three weeks.

‘They’ve said they might not have time now today,’ you continue.

‘But surely they could make the time?’ Mum says, as if time was one of her tapestries, minutes stitched onto canvas in flower-coloured yarns.

‘Apparently there’s been some awful coach crash, so it’s all hands to the pumps.’

And for one moment this hospital isn’t all about us. There are others too, God knows how many; all that anguish and anxiety compressed into the bricks and glass walls of this one building. I wonder if it leaks out of the windows and roof; if birds fly a little higher overhead as they pass.

Trying to think this to avoid ugly, awful thoughts.

But I suspect you’re thinking them too.

Will any of the coach casualties die? Will any of them be a match for Jenny? How strange that selfless love can make you morally ugly. Wicked even.

‘I’m sure they’ll have the meeting as soon as they can,’ you say.

She nods.

‘Adam’s in the relatives’ room,’ she tells you.

‘I’ll go and see him in a minute. I’d just like a little time with Jen first.’

I go to the relatives’ room. A fan whirrs the heated air.

Addie is huddled close to Mr Hyman, who has his arm around him, reading him a story.

I go cold.

Jenny is on the other side of the room. ‘He saw Granny G and Adam in the cafe,’ she says calmly. ‘He offered to look after Adam, so that Granny G could be with me.’

And Mum would never suspect anything. She’s heard me and Addie praise Mr Hyman countless times.

Over the whirr of the fan, I listen to him reading. At his feet is a bunch of flowers.

‘He told his wife he was going to work on a building site,’ I tell Jenny.

‘Poor bloke. Is that all the work he can get?’

‘He lied to his wife, Jen.’

‘Probably to get away from her.’

She looks at me, and must catch my expression because I see exasperation in hers.

‘I’ve told you about the hate-mailer now. The red paint. You can’t still think it’s Silas.’

‘Could there be a connection?’ I ask, more thinking aloud.

‘No. There is no way that he is anything to do with the hate mail. Quite apart from the fact that he’s just not that kind of person, why would he?’

I also think it’s very unlikely that Silas Hyman is the hate-mailer turned stalker. Even if he had a reason for hate mail, which he doesn’t, an Oxford-educated, highly articulate man doesn’t fit with hate mail and red paint. I simply can’t imagine him cutting out words from a newspaper or a magazine and sticking them onto A4. He’s far too subtle and intelligent for that.

But the fire might be nothing at all to do with the hate-mailer. It could be, as you are so certain, simply revenge by Silas Hyman.

‘He tried talking to Addie,’ Jenny says. ‘But Addie couldn’t say anything back. That’s when he started reading him the Percy Jackson story. Perfect choice, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

You missed most of Addie’s Percy Jackson phase, but he’s a schoolboy who can vanquish evil monsters against impossible odds. Mr Hyman knows that Adam loves Arthurian legends but knights would be too adult, lacking any childlike vulnerability, for him to relate to them now. They wouldn’t offer him any fantasy escape from what is happening. This is a better choice.

I’m disturbed by how well he knows Addie.

Once I liked his physicality, but now I don’t want his arm around our son, and I want him in smart trousers and a jacket, not shorts and a clinging T-shirt.

Mr Hyman. Silas.

Two names. Two men.

Jenny and I were in the sitting room, the night before her English A-level paper. Jenny was in her pyjamas, her hair still wet from the shower.

‘So do you know what Dryden called Shakespeare?’ I asked her.

She shook her head and water flecked the paper I was holding.

‘A Janus poet,’ I told her. ‘Because…?’

‘He was two-faced?’

‘Wore two faces,’ I corrected as she dangled a slipper on one toe. ‘Janus was also the god of gates and doors, beginnings and endings. January is from Janus, because it’s the month which begins the New Year.’

‘I don’t have to be that informed, Mum, really.’

‘But it’s interesting, isn’t it?’

She smiled at me. ‘I can see why it should be,’ she said. ‘And why you went to Cambridge and I’ll be lucky to scrape into anywhere.’

* * *

I watch Silas’s Janus face, so close to Adam’s.

I remember again Maisie’s words at the prize-giving: ‘That man should never have been allowed near our children.’

And I want him to get away from my children. Get away!

Then Mum comes in. She’s again, somehow, forced colour into her cheeks and energy into her voice, that magic smile appearing on her face.

‘Have you had a good story, Addie?’ She turns to Silas Hyman. ‘Thank you for giving me time with my granddaughter.’

‘Of course. It was great to be with Addie.’ He gets up. ‘I’d better be going now.’

Adam looks as if he’ll follow.

‘Daddy will be here in a minute,’ Mum says. ‘So let’s wait here for him, shall we?’

Silas picks up the bunch of flowers and leaves the room. I follow him. The flowers are yellow roses – mean buds that will never open, plastic-wrapped and scentless. He must have got them from the hospital shop because he didn’t have them when Jenny and I followed him earlier.

He presses the button on the door of the ICU ward. A pretty blonde nurse comes to answer it. I see her notice his attractiveness. Or maybe it’s just his vigorous health, which stands out in this place.

The nurse opens the door and explains to him that flowers aren’t allowed because they are an infection risk. There’s a flirtatious tone to her voice but flirting isn’t an infection risk, is it? However inappropriate it seems.

‘For you then,’ he says, smiling at her. She takes the flowers and lets him into ICU.

A smile and flowers.

That simple.

I follow him.