“Okay.” She shook my shoulder, trying to get me to look at her. “Ivy, your hand. Look at it properly. Not at the ladybugs.”
All around the ladybug doodles there were scratch marks and scars of previous doodles. There was blood too. I had used an ink pen for my latest drawings.
“It doesn’t hurt.” I murmured, realising for the first time what I had done.
“Not yet, but it will if it gets infected. Let me wash it off. Okay?” She was speaking to me softly, as though I were little again. I nodded, unable to reply.
She directed me to stand and pulled me over to her small ensuite. She gently washed my hand clean with soap then dragged me back to the bedroom, prodding me into her desk chair while she fetched out a first aid kid.
“I don’t need that.” I tried to shoo her away, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Don’t be stupid. You do. Now, let me look after you.” She cleaned the grazes with an antiseptic wipe then wrapped the back of my hand with a clean white bandage, tying it neatly into my palm. “All done. See?” She held up my hand. “Cocoa?”
“Yes please.” She knew what I liked.
She returned in just a few minutes with two cups of cocoa and a huge box of chocolate biscuits.
“You look like you’ve been rolling around in the grass, do you realise that?” She pulled a few wayward blades of grass from my hair.
“I erm…” the tears were coming to a stop as I dabbed my face. “I fell asleep in the churchyard.”
“Rosie’s grave?” She waited, seeing me nod ever so slightly. “Right. In the shower. You can borrow some of my clothes. Just try not to get the bandage wet.” I didn’t bother arguing. She was in the capable, mother-hen mode. I loved her for it.
A few minutes later and wearing clean clothes, we were in the bed eating biscuits and cocoa while she soothed me. I still cried every now and then.
“I haven’t cried in years.” I tried to wipe the tears away, relieved I had borrowed one of her facewipes and wiped clean the mascara streaks.
“I never have a problem with crying,” she shrugged. “It’s an outlet for stress. Helps me not to keep things bottled up.”
“Sounds healthy.”
“Maybe so.” She chinked cocoa cups with me. “To a good old cry, cheers!”
I smiled slightly as I sipped the drink. I wanted to tell her. I breathed deeply as I struggled to think how to begin.
“I had told you before she had died, didn’t I?” I asked eventually, picking up another biscuit.
“Yes, but not how.” She munched on her own biscuit.
“My dad…” I breathed deeply again. “He used to own a pub. We had a house next door. Rosie was sixteen, I was twelve. It was a busy night for the pub. Lots of parties. Mum and dad had Rosie working as a waitress. The first time I came down the stairs, I could see she wasn’t herself.”
“In what way?”
“She kept… tipping,” I inclined my head to the side to illustrate. “I didn’t realise she was drunk.”
“Drunk? At sixteen?”
“Mum and dad didn’t realise either. They were both too pre-occupied with running the pub.” I bit into the chocolate bourbon, chewing slowly. “I pointed it out to mum, not realising at the time that it was alcohol that was the problem. Mum brushed it off, said one of the customers had bought her a drink. That was all. Wouldn’t happen again. ‘Go up to bed, Ivy.’ So I did.” I scrunched the remainder of the bourbon in my hand. When it crumbled, Leonora offered me a tissue to pick up the pieces. “I came back a little bit later and things had changed.
“The pub was still very busy, but Rosie was on the stairwell. She had been deposited there. She was hanging her head in her hands, swaying backwards and forwards. She wouldn’t talk to me. She just kept clutching at the hair on her head. I went into the pub to tell mum and dad, but they wouldn’t listen. They were arguing. They wanted to know who had bought Rosie all the alcohol. No one knew. She had never tried alcohol before. We think everyone just kept buying her stuff while my parents’ backs were turned, just enjoying the tipsy teenager. I remember pulling on my mum’s shirt, trying to tell her about Rosie, but she brushed me off. Told me to go back to bed. She had a lot to deal with.
“I didn’t. I went back to Rosie. She was laid out cold.” I stopped for a second, trying to breathe. Leonora found my biscuit-crumb-covered hand and squeezed it tightly. “There was a little bit of vomit on the floor, but not much. They said, she hadn’t been able to vomit properly. If she’d been sick sooner, and not had so much alcohol at once. Ahh… She was convulsing. I called an ambulance.” I sipped the cocoa again; aware how dry my mouth was. I hadn’t told anyone this. Never in such detail.
“My mum and dad were confused when the ambulance showed up. The paramedics burst in, all in a hurry from what I had described. They took me away from her as they worked. Then, they put her in the ambulance.” I shook my head, remembering how long it had taken us to get in the car to follow. “Dad closed up the pub, kicked everyone out, and we followed them to the hospital.”
I remembered sitting in the waiting room. Just sitting, my converse shoes wrapped around the stool legs as I stared at the floor.
“Have you ever noticed how white hospital waiting
