Afterwards

‘Thanks so much.’

‘Sorry. Are so fucking beautiful.’

As if you’d heard me but it’s just a verbal fluke, isn’t it?

‘You had two Chelsea buns,’ you say. You remember that? ‘And I liked it that you ate so much.’

I didn’t want you to guess that I was nervous so I ate to prove that I was cool about this.

‘It rained.’

Lashing against the ditzy little windowpanes, and the sound was wonderful.

‘I’d brought an umbrella.’

You asked if you could walk me home.

‘I knew we’d have to get close.’

I spotted your bike and you looked annoyed that I noticed it.

‘That bloody bike. Should have locked it round the corner.’

You walked me back to Newnham through the rain, pushing your bicycle on the road with one hand, but staying on the pavement next to me with your other hand holding the umbrella.

‘I couldn’t touch you at all.’

The first night we spent together – two weeks later, me not being a coy mistress – we reran our first date, creating our own mythology. But that was years and years ago and we should be talking about our children now. And we both know that. And we will, in a few moments. They are with us all the time. But there is a tiny glimmer of happiness here in the time before them, and we want to hold it a little while longer. Just a little while longer. So I carry on walking next to you through the bitterly cold Fen rain, your stride so much longer than mine, wondering what will happen when we reach Newnham.

But of course I know what happened.

You wanted a second date that very evening, ignoring Marvell completely, and I danced – danced!, an absurd robotic thing that made people stare – the entire way down the second longest corridor in Europe.

The memory pulls me towards you until I reach you right here and now in this room; somehow closer than before. This close to you, I can feel your brave optimism for Jenny go into me; making love with courageous hope.

And as you hold me tightly, I too believe that Jenny will get better.

She will get better.

The curtains are abruptly pulled back and Dr Bailstrom is there.

‘Can you come for the meeting now?’ she asks you.

‘I’ll be back a little later, my darling,’ you say to me; telling Dr Bailstrom that I can hear and understand.

I get to the door of the Dr Bailstrom’s office where the medical staff are waiting and imagine her putting on a black hat before reading out my fate. I think she’d like the dressing-up aspect. But if I have the language to form a sarky sentence about Dr Bailstrom then I’m clearly not a cabbage – why did a cabbage get chosen? – so no need for her to have a black hat.

I am on the ball, switched on, marbles still there, compos mentis. The same Grace I was yesterday. But somehow I’ve become split from myself.

In our conversation when this is over, you’ll tell me that this splitting in two idea is ‘total bollocks, Gracie!’ But that’s because you abseil and bivouac through life rather than learn about it second-hand. Because if you’d read more and climbed up mountains less, you’d know about Cartesian dualism, and ids and egos, and body versus soul. You’d know about a whole strand of literature called ‘the divided self’. Really. So I’ll remind you, as you scoff, of the fairy tales you read Jenny when she was little – princesses dancing in the fairy world every night and frogs really being princes and girls turning into swans. If you’re really unlucky, I’ll start quoting Hamlet: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.’

You’ll hold your hands up, enough! But I’ll ignore you.

The visible world isn’t the only world and the writers of fairy tales and ghost stories, mystics and philosophers, have known that for centuries. Jenny unconscious in her bed and me in mine isn’t who we really are; the only way that it is.

I should join you now.

Instead of imagining a black hat on Dr Bailstrom’s head, I will look at her feet and think of Dorothy’s ruby shoes. You never know, Dr Bailstrom might click hers together and I’ll return to the real world again.

I’m sorry, that was flippant. You know I tend to take the air out of big moments. The thing is, I will be with you and Addie again. Because Jenny is going to get better, so I’ll be free to get back into my body and wake up.

But when I was inside my body I couldn’t do anything. Nothing at all. ‘Banish that thought this minute!’ Nanny Voice says. ‘No houseroom for negativity in here!’ And she’s right. I just wasn’t ready. But I will join you again.

I’ve never seen you look slight before. But in here, outnumbered by doctors, you look hollowed out. Dr Bailstrom doesn’t fully look at you as she speaks.

‘We have run a series of tests, Mike. Many of them are repeats of the ones we did yesterday.’

Is she using your first name to be friendly, or because ‘Mr Covey’ would underline your connection to me, ‘Mrs Covey’, and she’d rather not major on that right now?

‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to start preparing yourself for Grace never regaining consciousness.’

‘No, you’re wrong,’ you say.

Of course she’s wrong! The very fact I know that demonstrates it. And the thinking, feeling part of me will rejoin my body and I will wake up.

‘I know it’s a lot to take in right now,’ Dr Bailstrom continues. ‘But she shows only the basic responses of gagging and breathing. And we don’t think there will be any improvement.’

You shake your head, refusing to allow the information entry.

‘What my colleague is saying,’ interjects an older doctor, ‘is that the damage to your wife’s brain means that she can’t speak or see or hear. Nor can she think or feel. That is what is meant by cognitive function. And she won’t get better. She won’t wake up.’

He’s obviously a graduate from the sock-it-to-them-straight school of medicine. And totally- bloody-wrong school of medicine.

‘What about those new scans?’ you say. ‘People who’d been written off as cabbages were told to imagine playing tennis for yes, and the brain scan then picked it up.’

I’d heard it in one of my Radio 4 car journeys and told you about it as a snippet of interesting information. I’d liked the idea of imagining playing tennis for yes. A smash, I’d imagined, or an ace serve. Such a positive and vigorous yes. I’d wondered if it mattered if you’re useless at tennis and can, in all honesty, only visualise hitting the ball into the net, or pathetically limping it over. Will they think that’s a ‘don’t know’ answer?

‘We will try all the tests there are,’ the doctor says, irked. ‘We have already put her through many. But I need to be honest with you here. The bottom line is that she isn’t going to get better.’

‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ I say. ‘The mother thing.’

‘In simple terms, all our scans show massive and irreparable trauma to her brain.’

‘My son needs me. It’s not just the big stuff; the proving that he’s innocent. In the mornings, I help him design an imaginary shield to put over his heart so it won’t hurt so much if people are mean to him.’

‘Her brain tissue is too damaged to mend.’

‘And some evenings he’ll only be able to get to sleep if he holds my hand.’

‘There’s nothing we can do. I’m sorry.’

‘But all of that could be bullshit, right?’ says a voice in the doorway. For a second I think it’s my nanny voice bossing someone else for a change, though she’s never said bullshit. I turn to see Sarah. I’ve never heard her say bullshit either.

She comes into the room. Behind her is my mother. Both of them have clearly heard the doctors.

‘Dr Sandhu is with Jenny,’ Sarah says to you. ‘He’s promised not to leave her for a second.’

And you no longer look slight because Sarah is with you.