Afterwards

‘When we saw Donald White with Maisie and Rowena, do you remember smelling something?’

Because I remember now the smell of Donald’s aftershave and cigarettes.

‘Perhaps. Yes,’ Jenny replies.

‘Do you think that’s why you heard the fire alarm?’ I ask.

‘My mad person’s tinnitus? It’s possible, I suppose. I didn’t really analyse it.’

I hear a child screaming.

Adam.

I jerk my head around. He isn’t here.

‘No! She’s not dead. She’s not!’

Too small a voice for such huge words.

I run to him.

He’s hunched over my bed, silent. He’d never cried out his grief but I’d heard him. Mum’s arms are around him.

‘I’m here!’ I say to him. ‘Right here. No one knows that yet but they will. And I’ll wake up, my sweetie! Of course I will! I’m giving you a kiss and you can’t feel it, but I’m here. Kissing you now.’

I have no voice.

Screaming in a nightmare, making no sound.

I force myself into my body but my vocal cords are still snapped and useless and my eyelids still welded shut. I try with all my might to touch him, but my arms are beams of impossible weight. In this black, vile, inert place, there is nothing I can do to reach him.

And out there he’s in a dark angry ocean, drowning.

Panicking, I’m breathing more quickly. I try to slow my breathing and I can! I take breaths quickly, in and out, in and out – and then deliberately slowly – surely Mum will realise I’m trying to communicate! Adam too!

I can do something! Maybe this means we won’t need to wait for years for me to wake up!

As I take deliberate slow deep breaths I think of blowing up Adam’s orange armbands before he could swim, tight around his thin white arms, and how he’d bobbed happily in the water, not feeling any fear; my breath keeping him safe.

I slip out of my body – surely Mum will be calling to a doctor, pointing out this signal from me that I am in here and Adam won’t be crying any more.

But Mum is with Adam at my bedside, her face white as she tries to comfort him as he cries. Maybe I should feel angry with her. But it’s tearing her apart and I know the courage it took.

Addie pulls away from her and runs. She goes after him and grabs him and they tussle. He goes limp and she puts her arms around him, like a body cushion against excruciating pain. She half carries him out of the ward and I go with them.

His face looks so pale, bruised shadows under his eyes. He’s withdrawn even further into himself as if his whole body is now mute. I put my arms tightly around him.

‘Next Hallowe’en, Mum, I’m going to have a bath in invisible ink! Then I’ll be invisible.’

‘I don’t think it works that way.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well…’

‘I’ll have a glove. So that they know someone’s there. I mean, otherwise, how will I get any sweets?’

Hallowe’en was four months away still. He’d have supplanted this idea with a new one by then.

‘Good idea, the glove.’

‘Yup.’

He can’t see or feel my arms around him.

I will wake up. One day I will wake up.

It’s dusk now. Through the glass wall abutting the garden, most of the wards are in half-light. In one of the rooms, through the uncurtained window, I see a child in bed, just a shape, with small arms. Another big shape, which I make out to be his father, smooths the child’s hair and then waits. The small shape in the bed grows motionless as the child falls into sleep. The father is just standing there now, rigidly upright and alone, flapping his arms up and down, up and down, up and down as if he can fly them both away.

19

Around us, on all four sides, flickering electric lights are coming on in the windows; a man-made hospital dawn two hours after the outside natural one.

It seems impossible that only the day before yesterday I was putting frozen pain au chocolat into the oven. As if there’s been an earthquake in time, with the fire separating the tectonic plates of our past and present irrevocably. A little high falutin’, sorry, but who else can I tell? Poor Jen would probably think I was prepping her for an A-level retake in something.

As soon as I see your face, I know that no heart has been found for her. I go close to you and you tell me that there’s time! It’s still going to be alright! Not to be defeatist! She will get better. Of course she will. You don’t need to speak for me to hear your burly tough optimism. Because although we no longer have a solar plexus love, we have the married kind, which means that your voice – you – are inside my mind.

Sarah arrives, her clothes crumpled, no make-up. She was doing shifts at Jenny’s bedside with you last night.

‘I got through to Ivo,’ she says. ‘He’s trying to get a standby flight.’

You just nod.

You knew about this, Mike? You must have done for Sarah to have his number. And you thought this was OK? My voice clearly isn’t in your head, because this is a terrible idea. Or perhaps my voice is in your head and you just ignored me. Yes, I’m cross. Of course I’m bloody cross!

Has Sarah told him what she looks like now?

Can anyone describe Jenny’s face and body now?

Last Saturday they went to Chiswick House Park together. ‘What did you do?’ I’d asked her that evening, thinking they’d gone to the cafe, or had a picnic, maybe read. When she didn’t answer, I’d imagined all sorts of canoodling. Finally, a little embarrassed, she’d told me – they’d just looked at one another; the long sunny hours spent staring at each other’s faces.

Maybe if you’d known about how they spent their afternoon, you’d have known it wasn’t a good idea.

Because what will he think when he looks at her now?

And how can she bear his rejection?

I’m sorry. You think she’s unconscious and will be totally unaware of him. You’ve no idea how badly she may be hurt by this.

Crossness and apologies. As in our old life together, our children pull us apart as frequently as they unite us; causing tensions we had no idea about when we married – although at the moment I’m the only one who’s aware of them.

Sarah outlines her plan for the day – talking to Rowena and then going to the police station – but you are going to stay put; your only mission is to guard Jenny. Despite the multitude of medical staff in ICU, you’re not going to leave your post.

In the corridor Jenny is beaming.

‘He’s going to get a standby flight. Aunt Sarah phoned him.’