Afterwards

day after day, as I fed her from my breasts. It was dark the February she was born and as spring turned to summer it brought increased clarity in how I knew her.

For nine months, I’d had her heart beating inside my body; two heartbeats for every one of mine.

How could I not know it was her?

I turned to leave the room.

I saw sandals on the appallingly damaged person on the bed. The sandals with sparkly gems that I’d got her from Russell & Bromley as an absurdly early and out-of-season Christmas present.

Lots of people have those kind of sandals, lots and lots; they must manufacture thousands of them. It doesn’t mean it’s Jenny. It can’t mean it’s Jenny. Please.

Her blonde glinting hair was charred, her face swollen and horribly burnt. Two doctors were talking about percentage of BSA and I realised they were discussing the percentage of her body that was burnt. Twenty-five per cent.

‘Jenny?’ I shouted. But she didn’t open her eyes. Was she deaf to me too? Or was she unconscious? I hoped that she was, because her pain would be unbearable.

I left the room, just for a moment. A drowning person coming up for one gulp of air before going back into that depth of compassion as I looked at her. I stood in the corridor and closed my eyes.

‘Mum?’

I’d know her voice anywhere.

I looked down at a girl crouched in the corridor, her arms around her knees.

The girl I’d recognise among a thousand faces.

My second heartbeat.

I put my arms around her.

‘What are we, Mum?’

‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’

It may seem strange, but I didn’t even really wonder. The fire had burnt away everything I once thought of as normal. Nothing made sense any more.

A trolley with Jenny’s body on it was wheeled past us; surrounded by medical staff. They’d covered her up using a sheet like a tent so the fabric wouldn’t touch her burns.

Beside me I felt her flinch.

‘Did you see your body?’ I asked. ‘Before they covered it, I mean.’

I’d tried to let out the words delicately but they fell with a clump on the floor, forming a boorish, brutal question.

‘Yeah, I did. “Return of the living dead” kind of summarises it, doesn’t it?’

‘Jen, sweetheart-’

‘This morning I was worried about blackheads on my nose. Blackheads. How ridiculous is that, Mum?’

I tried to comfort her, but she shook her head. She wanted me to ignore her tears and believe the act she was putting on. Needed me to. The one where she is still funny, lively, buoyant Jenny.

A doctor was talking to a nurse as they passed us.

‘The dad’s on his way, poor bloke.’

We hurried to find you.

4

The large hospital atrium was crowded with press. Your TV fame from presenting the ‘Hostile Environments’ series had attracted them. ‘Not fame, Gracie,’ you’d corrected me once. ‘Familiarity. Like a tin of baked beans.’

A smartly dressed man arrived and the people who’d been buzzing around with cameras and microphones moved towards him. I wondered if Jenny also felt vulnerable and exposed in this swarm of people, but if she did, she gave no sign of it. She’s always shared your courage.

‘This will just be a brief statement,’ the suited man said, looking annoyed at their presence. ‘Grace and Jennifer Covey were admitted at four fifteen this afternoon with serious injuries. They are now being treated for those injuries in our specialist units. Rowena White was also admitted suffering from minor burns and smoke inhalation. At this point we have no further information. I’d be grateful if you would now wait outside the hospital rather than here.’

‘How did the fire start?’ a journalist asked the suited man.

‘That’s a question for the police, not us. Now if you’ll excuse me.’

They carried on shouting out their questions, but we were looking out of the glass wall of the atrium for you. I’d been looking for our Prius and it was Jenny who spotted you first.

‘He’s here.’

You were getting out of an unfamiliar car. The BBC must have driven you in one of theirs.

Sometimes looking at your face is like looking in the mirror – so familiar it’s become a part of me. But there was a mask of anxiety covering your usual face, making it strange. I hadn’t realised that you are nearly always smiling.

You came into the hospital, and it was all wrong seeing you here in this hectic, frightening, sanitised place. You are in the kitchen getting a bottle of wine out of the fridge or in the garden waging a new offensive against snails, or driving out to dinner, me next to you, bemoaning traffic jams and praising sat-navs. You belong next to me on the sofa and on the right-hand side of our bed, moving slowly in the night towards mine. Even your appearances on TV in a jungle on the other side of the world are watched by me and the children on our family squashy sofa; the foreign mediated through the familiar.

You didn’t belong here.

Jenny ran to you and put her arms around you, but you didn’t know she was there and hurried on, half running up to the reception desk, your stride jerky with shock.

‘My wife and daughter are here, Grace and Jenny Covey.’

For a moment the receptionist reacted, she must have seen you on the telly, and then she looked at you with sympathy.

‘I’ll bleep Dr Gawande, and he’ll come to get you straight away.’

Your fingers drummed on the counter, your eyes flicking around; a cornered animal.

The journalists hadn’t yet spotted you. Maybe that mask over your old face had foxed them. Then Tara, my ghastly colleague at the Richmond Post, made a beeline towards you. As she reached you she smiled. Smiled.

‘Tara Connor. I know your wife.’

You ignored her, scanning the room and seeing a young doctor hastening towards you.

‘Dr Gawande?’ you said.

‘Yes.’

‘How are they?’ Your quiet voice was screaming.

Other journalists had seen you now and were coming towards you.

‘The consultants will be able to give you a fuller picture,’ Dr Gawande said. ‘Your wife has been taken to have an MRI scan and will then return to our acute neurology ward. Your daughter has been taken to our burns unit.’

‘I want to see them.’

‘Of course. I’ll take you to your daughter first. You can see your wife as soon as she’s finished her MRI, which will be in about twenty minutes.’

As you left the foyer with the young doctor, journalists hung back a little, demonstrating unexpected compassion. But Tara brazenly followed.

‘What do you think about Silas Hyman?’ she asked you.

For one moment you turned to her, registering her question, and then you walked quickly on.