Afterwards

me.

‘We are keeping her heavily sedated so that she won’t feel any pain,’ Dr Sandhu continued. ‘And we are breathing for her with a ventilator. We have a highly specialist team here who will be doing everything possible for her.’

‘I want to see her now,’ you said in a voice I didn’t recognise.

* * *

I stood close against you as we looked at her.

We used to do that when she was small, after coming in from a party. We’d go to her room and stand and watch her as she slept – soft pink feet sticking out of her cotton nightie, silky hair across her stretched-out arms, which were yet to reach beyond her head. We made her, we’d think. Together we somehow created this amazing child. Chocolate moments, you called them, to make up for broken nights and exhaustion and battles over broccoli. Then we’d each separately give her a hug or a kiss, and feeling – I admit it – smugly proud, we’d go into our own room.

I was glad, for your sake, that her face was covered in dressings now. Just her swollen eyelids and damaged mouth visible. Her burnt limbs were encased in some kind of plastic.

As we looked at her, Dr Sandhu’s sentence coiled inside us like a viper. ‘She has a less than fifty per cent chance of surviving.’

Then you made yourself stand tall and your voice was strong.

‘Everything is going to be alright, Jen. I promise. You’re going to get better.’

A pledge. Because as her father your job is to protect her; and when that’s failed you make everything better.

Then Dr Sandhu explained about the intravenous lines and the monitors and the dressings and, although he didn’t intend this, it quickly became clear that if she got better it would be because of him, not you.

But you don’t take that lying down. You don’t just hand over power over your daughter. So you asked questions. What did this tube do exactly? That one? Why use this? You were learning the lingo, the techniques. This was your daughter’s world now, so it was yours and you would learn its rules; master it. The man who stripped down a car engine at sixteen and then rebuilt it following a manual – a man who likes to know exactly what he’s putting his trust in.

At sixteen I would have been reading George Eliot; as equally useless now as a car engine manual.

‘How badly will she be scarred?’ you asked.

And your optimism was glorious! Your courage in the face of it all was marvellous. I knew you didn’t give a monkey’s arse about how she looked compared to whether she lived. Your question was to show your belief that she will live; that the issue of scarring is a real one because one day she will – will – face the outside world again.

You’ve always been the optimist, me the pessimist (pragmatist, I’d correct). But now your optimism was a lifebuoy and I was clinging to it.

Dr Sandhu, a kind man, didn’t mention your question’s hopefulness when he replied.

‘She has suffered second-degree partial thickness burns. This type of burn can be either superficial, which means the blood supply is intact and the skin will heal, or deep, which inevitably means scarring. Unfortunately it takes several days before the burns reveal which type they are.’

A nurse came up. ‘We’re arranging a family room for you to stay in tonight. Your wife has been brought back to the acute neurology ward, which is just across the corridor.’

‘Can I see my wife now?’

‘I’ll take you there.’

Jenny was waiting for me in the corridor. ‘Well…?’

‘You’re going to be fine. A long haul ahead, but you’re going to be fine.’

Still holding tightly to your optimism. I couldn’t bear to have told her what Dr Sandhu said.

‘They don’t yet know about scarring,’ I continued. ‘If they’re the kind of burns that leave a scar.’

‘But they might not?’ she asked, her voice hopeful.

‘No.’

‘I thought I was going to look like that permanently.’ She sounded almost euphoric. ‘Well, maybe not quite as bad as that, like a Halloween mask, but something like that. But I really might not at all?’

‘That’s what the consultant said.’

Relief shone out of her face; made her luminous.

Looking at me, she didn’t see you come out of the burns unit. You turned your face to the wall and then your hands slammed onto it, as if you could expel what you’d seen and heard. And I knew then how hard-won your hopefulness was; the bravery and effort it took. Jenny hadn’t seen.

We heard footsteps pounding down the corridor.

Your sister was hurtling towards you, her police officer’s radio hissing at her side.

I instantly felt inadequate. If Pavlov’s dog had had a sister-in-law like Sarah it would be a recognised emotional reflex. I know. Unfair. But spiky emotion makes me feel a little more resilient. Besides, it’s not that surprising, is it? The most important woman in your life from the age of ten till you met me; a sister-in-law/mother-in-law rolled into one; little wonder I feel intimidated by her.

Her voice was breathless.

‘I was in Barnes, doing a joint thing with their drugs- Oh for God’s sake it doesn’t matter where I was, does it? I’m so sorry, Mikey.’

That old childish name that she uses for you. But when was the last time?

She put her arm around you, held you tightly.

For a little while she didn’t say anything. I saw her face stiffen, hardening herself to tell you.

‘It was arson.’

5

Each of Sarah’s words a razor blade to be swallowed.

Someone had deliberately done this. My God. Deliberately.

‘But why?’ Jenny asked.

At four years old we’d nicknamed her the ‘Why-Why Bird’.

‘But why doesn’t the moon fall on top of us? But why am I a girl not a boy? But why does Mowgli eat ants? But why can’t Grandpa get better? (Answers: Gravity; Genes; They are tangy and nutritious. By the end of the day, worn out: ‘It’s just the way it is, sweetie.’ A tired kind of answer, but an answer.)

There was no answer to the why in this.

‘Do you remember anything, Jen?’ I asked.

‘No. I remember Ivo texting at half past two. But that’s it. I can’t remember anything after that. Nothing.’

Sarah touched you lightly on the arm and you flinched towards her.

‘Whoever did this, I’ll kill them.’

I’d never seen you angry like that before, as if you were fighting for survival. But I was glad of your rage; an emotion that met this information head on and fought back.

‘I need to see Grace now. And then I want you to tell me everything you know. After I’ve seen her. Everything.’

I hurried ahead to my ward, wanting to know before you did what state I was in, as if I could prepare you in some way.

There were tubes and monitors attached to my body now, but I was breathing without any equipment, and I thought that must be a good thing. I was unconscious, yes, but I really looked hardly injured apart from the neatly dressed wound on my head. Maybe it wasn’t so bad.