About Last Night

by Adele Parks

  Anyway, when the announcement did come, Kirsten hadn’t had to act. She was genuinely surprised, you could have knocked her over with a feather. And she was relieved. My God, so relieved. He wasn’t dead. Just in a coma. She’d actually cried for real. People had mistaken her relief for shock and Ellie did make the tea all day. He wasn’t dead. That was brilliant.

  Halfway through the day the excitement and relief began to drain away as Kirsten heard rumours that the police were going to be coming into the office to ask a few people questions. Why? No one here knew what had happened to him, except her of course, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to be saying a word. There were loads of other rumours going around too. Some people said he was still going to die, while others said he was going to live but wouldn’t be able to walk again. Since Kirsten had heard he was in hospital, in a stable but critical condition, she’d thought that he’d wake up by about teatime. Whenever they said ‘stable but critical’ on Grey’s Anatomy, the person always woke up by the end of the episode (suffering from nothing more than a really bad headache). She’d thought that if Jules woke up with nothing worse than a bad headache then everything would be OK. He was unlikely to want to tell anyone what they were doing at the hotel and how his accident came about. He wouldn’t mention her being with him. No one else knew about her. He’d never mentioned her to anyone. That was the point of mistresses, they were invisible, a fact that used to piss her off but it was something she was now grateful for.

  Kirsten kept her head down all day. She finally got round to all that electronic filing which she’d avoided doing since she started her job. She left the office at five on the dot, as usual. Other than the filing and the muttering (not my fault, not my fault), Kirsten behaved as she normally did.

  35

  Mr and Mrs Amstell, Harry, Alfie and Chloe rushed to the door as soon as they heard Pip ring the bell.

  ‘Any news?’ they demanded in a chorus.

  Pip shook her head. ‘Same, no change.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ asked Alfie desperately. ‘He’s not worse.’

  ‘Come into the kitchen and finish your tea, Alfie darling. Where’s Freddie? Go and call him. I think you’ll find him glued to the box,’ said Mrs Amstell to her grandson, saving Pip the difficulty of responding to his question. Pip noticed Mrs Amstell was trembling like a leaf in the wind, even though the house was warm. She glanced at Mr Amstell, he appeared grey and reduced. He put Pip in mind of a rabbit boxed in a cage, anxious and twitching.

  Harry lingered in the hallway, keen to eavesdrop on the adult conversation that was no doubt about to take place between Pip and his grandparents. Alfie was such an idiot, he thought. A total baby. Of course the news ‘no change’ was not good news. Dad was in a coma. They wanted a change.

  Pip noticed Harry skulking and pulled him into a hug; over the top of his head she threw out a half shrug, half grimace at the grandparents. When she released Harry, Pip said, ‘Harry, there are two casserole dishes on the doorstep, will you go and bring them inside?’ She had an idea that it was best to keep the oldest boys occupied.

  ‘More food?’ gasped Mrs Amstell. ‘People are so kind. And so efficient.’ She was unable to hide her surprise. ‘There was a dish on the step when we returned from school. I wasn’t quite sure what it was at first. A bean, lentil and tofu stew, I think.’

  ‘I suppose news has got round fast,’ added Mr Amstell. ‘Shocking things such as this do bring out the best in people.’

  ‘The tofu stew came in a very smart dish and it was boxed in some sort of heat-retaining container, the like of which I’ve never come across,’ added his wife. ‘There was no note. I don’t know who to return it to.’

  ‘Don’t worry. These things have a way of sorting themselves out. The right lady will make herself known when she needs to,’ reassured Pip.

  Mrs Amstell looked relieved and then confessed, ‘We didn’t actually eat the stew.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘No. I’d already promised the children chicken nuggets and chips.’ The grandma looked sheepish. Pip was flattered that someone might think she was the sort of mother who demanded anything more sophisticated from her child’s food than it filled up the belly of said child.

  ‘Things are bad enough without health food,’ muttered Mr Amstell.

  Pip smiled. ‘I’ll take over with the children if you want to get back to the hospital. I think Steph would appreciate seeing you. Julian’s dad might be there by now too.’

  ‘Yes. Good idea. I’d like to talk to the doctors,’ said Mr Amstell. Mrs Amstell ran around the house gathering up bits that might offer some comfort to Steph or be of use to Julian, a bar of chocolate, clean clothes, the book that Steph had by her bed, his iPod and the portable speakers. She put everything into large canvas shopping bags and she tucked a huge cream box under her arm.

  ‘What’s in the box?’ asked Pip.

  ‘It’s their wedding album. I found it on the breakfast bar. They must have been looking at their photos quite recently. Isn’t that touching? They’re such a close couple.’ Mrs Amstell looked momentarily stricken at the thought of how close she believed them to be but Pip was pretty certain that destroying the fantasy wasn’t going to offer much reassurance. ‘I thought Steph might like to have them by her side. I thought it might be comforting.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Pip. So that was how Steph had spent her evening, nothing suspicious, only heartbreaking. Pip clearly imagined exactly why Steph might have been looking at the photos last night. She’d have been looking at them in rage, feeling rejection and regret. What would she feel when her mother presented them to her now? Pip had no idea. What was Steph thinking? There was a chance that Steph might find the photos a comfort or she might hurl them out of the hospital window. Who knew?

  Pip closed the door on Steph’s parents and turned back to the four children. The boys all stared at her with expressions that clearly communicated that they thought she was in charge and could solve things. She was, after all, the adult. Notably, Chloe’s expression was less expecting, more pleading.

  OK. Get with the programme, she instructed herself. She was the adult. She was in charge. Robbie thought she was great. The knowledge somehow helped her to be a bit less pathetic than she was naturally inclined. She could step up to the plate as she’d always imagined. She could be empathetic, patient and practical, it was not too late. But where to start? She should clear away the evidence of chicken nuggets and chips (the debris in the sink and ketchup around the kids’ faces). They had enjoyed arctic roll too, the cardboard wrapping hadn’t been put in the recycling box and vivid yellow drops of vanilla ice cream had dripped on the table and floor. Steph’s parents must have bought that especially because Pip couldn’t imagine such a thing in Steph’s freezer. Steph firmly believed you are what you eat and she didn’t see any of her boys as arctic roll or minced, mechanically separated meat held together with phosphate salts, some chicken skin and antioxidants derived from petroleum. Wednesday night was normally toad-in-the-hole night, with roasted onion gravy and two accompanying vegetables. All ingredients were organic and most were bought at the local farmers’ market. Usually Pip and Chloe loved coming round on a Wednesday even if it meant that they had to abide by the house rule, anyone who didn’t eat all their veg had a choice – no pudding or no TV.

  What would Steph do right now?

  Pip started to stack the dishwasher, and then she wiped down all the surfaces and cleaned the kitchen floor. After that she supervised homework, bathed Freddie and Chloe and sat outside the bathroom while Harry and Alfie took it in turns to bath themselves. She did respect their right to privacy but she was far too nervous to remain downstairs in front of the TV while they managed themselves; what if one of them slipped in the bath? This home already had enough tragedy to deal with. She read stories to the children and tucked them into their beds, or rather the beds they’d opted for tonight – they all piled into Steph and Julian’s bed, except for Chloe, she set
tled into the top bunk in Alfie’s room. Surprisingly, all the children fell asleep almost the moment their heads had hit their pillows. Pip had expected resistance but found resilience.

  It was about 9 p.m. and Pip was just putting a load of washing in the machine when Mr and Mrs Amstell arrived home. Unfortunately, they had not been able to persuade Steph to come home too.

  ‘She’s going to sleep on a camp bed by his side,’ said Mr Amstell.

  ‘Devoted,’ noted Mrs Amstell with a sad smile.

  ‘Demented,’ contradicted her husband. ‘She needs a decent night’s sleep. She won’t be any help to anyone if she gets sick too. She looks bloody awful.’

  It was decided that Pip should stay. There was no point in disturbing Chloe and catching a bus across town at that time of night.

  Pip was grateful to slip between the clean sheets on Alfie’s bottom bunk (they smelt of alpine mountains) and, like the children, despite the turbulence in her mind, she was asleep within moments. She didn’t know what time it was when her mobile started to ring and woke her. She had sent Robbie a text just before she’d nodded off (nothing heavy, just a quick thank you for the lift) so her mobile was right by her bed. She scrabbled around in the dark and swiftly picked it up as she didn’t want the ringtone to wake Chloe.

  ‘Hello,’ she whispered.

  ‘I suppose the truth is he might die,’ said Stephanie. The statement was so shockingly bleak and accurate that Pip didn’t know how to respond. She could hear the tears in Steph’s voice. Glancing at her watch she saw it was three in the morning, the loneliest and most terrifying time. Pip wished she could put her arms around Steph. ‘He might . . .’ Steph paused and searched for the exact word. ‘He might stop. You know? Cease to be.’

  ‘You can’t think like that,’ said Pip as she slipped out of bed and, pulling the duvet around her shoulders, climbed inside Alfie’s toy cupboard. She sat on something plastic and painful but managed not to yell out but instead silently pulled the door behind her, she didn’t want to wake anyone.

  ‘I can’t think any other way. He’s been so busy these past few years. We both have. I’ve focused on the boys. I don’t regret that but I haven’t had much of him recently.’

  Both women were thinking about the other woman, whoever she might be. How much of him had she had? Stephanie had thought she’d been sharing Julian with his work, which wasn’t at all unusual; they even had a name for women with husbands who appeared to be married to their work – corporate widows. ‘Better that than a golf widow,’ Steph had been known to joke with her girlfriends. ‘At least corporate widows get their mortgages paid!’ But truthfully she’d never been happy with the situation, just reconciled. She’d married an ambitious, bright man so a few nights alone with the remote control were to be expected. But since Monday – when she’d discovered that she had not been sharing him with the financial markets, spreadsheets and budgets, that she’d been sharing him with someone else, with flesh and blood – it hurt. It hurt so much. It tore at her from inside.

  ‘I’d thought sharing him was the worst thing in the world but to have none of him, or there to be none of him, it’s inconceivable,’ Steph whispered. ‘I can’t imagine how I’d cope with that.’

  Pip shook her head desolately, lost for words. It struck her as odd that they were here, in the twenty-first century, in the western world, to all intents and purposes at the top of the food chain and yet they were both rendered dumb with shock at the thought of death. Life they had come to understand. Pip had sat in the very same hospital where Julian now lay comatose while Stephanie had pushed out two of her three boys and Stephanie had been at Pip’s bedside throughout Chloe’s birth. Life she understood. That raw and wonderful miracle was explicable, but this thunderous horror – death. They didn’t have a clue.

  ‘It will be OK,’ muttered Pip but she knew her words were pathetic and fallible. What did she know? He might not be. Last year, there had been a mum who Pip used to nod to at the school gate, a smiley woman whom Pip always meant to strike up a conversation with. She never had, the school gate was always so frantic and then Pip noticed the smiley woman’s absence. She asked around and was told she’d died suddenly, on her way to Blockbusters. Here one minute, not the next. Left a husband and two kids. Left a gap. A void. It was an aneurism.

  It was an anathema. Death was an anathema.

  Julian was so full of life. So full of shit, thought Pip not unpleasantly but instead with a weary, matey smile.

  ‘I haven’t had a rehearsal,’ muttered Steph. Her thoughts were nonsequential, her voice was cracked and she was whispering too, so Pip struggled to understand her friend. Pip wondered where she was making the call from. Not a toy cupboard. Maybe the visitors’ room. Pip had been in hospital visitors’ rooms in the past, she hated them. The TV was always blaring no matter what time of day or night it was and invariably it was stuck on a news channel which poured out nothing other than doom and gloom. The furniture was universally drab, brown and shabby, the sort of furniture that had been popular in the 1980s, particularly in former Soviet Union countries. And the occupants? The people who took refuge in these rooms? They were desperate and fearful and they wore their fear and desperation openly. Pip wished Steph was sharing closet space with remote control cars and Lego pieces, no matter how uncomfortable.

  ‘What do you mean, you haven’t had a rehearsal?’

  ‘My mum and dad are still with me.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Of course. But what I mean is I’ve only ever lost my mother-in law and my dog. When Hilary died, the pain I felt was mostly for Julian. After seeing her suffer, I was almost relieved to let her slip away. And other than that, a bloody poodle.’ Stephanie had been devastated by the loss of Sugar. There was still a picture of her on the fireplace and the mutt’s red lead still hung in the garage. ‘I’ve experienced nothing to prepare me,’ she explained.

  ‘Nothing could,’ pointed out Pip.

  Pip had lost grandparents, uncles, cousins, friends, her godmother and, in a different way, her husband. Pip was not a stranger to loss. She’d secretly always envied Stephanie her untainted innocence. Until this week, it had always seemed as though Steph dwelt in a childish, cloud nine paradise, she slipped through life untarnished, not stained and spoilt like Pip felt herself to be. It was as though Stephanie had been treated with a special chemical like her carpets, a stain-resistant spray.

  Suddenly Steph started to sob. She sounded as though she was struggling for breath.

  ‘It will be all right,’ said Pip helplessly. She couldn’t think of anything more pertinent or original.

  ‘No, no, it won’t because you see there’s something else. Something terrible I need to tell you. It’s all my fault.’ Steph was spitting out her words between gasps for air. She mumbled something more but Pip couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying between the howling, sniffing and the gulping.

  ‘Say that again, Steph. I can’t understand you. Count to ten. Take a deep breath. You’re not making sense. It sounds as though you are saying this is all your fault.’

  But Pip realised she was talking to a dead line. Steph had hung up. Pip called her back but her phone was switched off. Steph didn’t want to be reached. Pip was left with nothing other than the austere tones of a disconnected line.

  What did she mean, it was all her fault?

  THURSDAY

  36

  Steph looked closely at her husband’s features as she sometimes liked to do when he was sleeping at home. It was easier to deal with the coma if she thought of it as a deep sleep, rather than what it really was – obliteration. To do this she had to use all her powers of determination to ignore the tube in his windpipe that connected him to a machine that helped him breathe. She would not look at the needle plugged into the vein in his hand, which was joined to the tube which enabled an intravenous drip of medication and food. She ignored the catheter that led to the bag of yellow urine, hanging slackly next to her husband’s
bed.

  Over the years Steph had watched as Julian lost some of his sharpness, some of the indescribable quality that had made him so attractive to her way back when. The sharp, elusive quality had been replaced by a familiar softness which she’d been comfortable with. This morning, she frantically searched his face for the familiarity and the softness but it wasn’t there. It had melted away. She didn’t know this doughy, lifeless face. It didn’t belong to her husband.

  Julian had always been the better sleeper of the two, she was often restless. Night-time was her time to run through to-do lists and to mentally tick off what she’d achieved with her day, her week or month – what she’d achieved with her life. She used to enjoy studying her soundly sleeping husband, as she’d found his obvious contentment and confidence in whatever he had done that day heartening. She used to have absolute faith that her family were on the right track and that he’d keep them all there, somehow; his easy, deep sleeping proved it. Until last May, that was.

  Since May, since Subhash, Steph’s night-time vigils over Julian had become less about marvelling at his sharp bone structure, nor was he a backdrop to her domestic mental arithmetic (clean shoes plus numerous structured activities, plus healthy packed lunch, plus limited screen time equals good mum, tick). No, since May, she’d stare at her husband in an effort to try to anchor herself, to level and calm herself. She’d gaze at the fine lines around Julian’s eyes, the slightly bluish tinge under his eyes, his hairline, his wayward eyebrows – all of which she knew intimately – and she would remind herself that he was a good man, a man who worked hard for her and for their boys, a decent man and her chosen life partner. As she’d stared at her husband, drinking him in, consuming him – in order to remind herself just how lucky she was – she had tried (so very, very hard) to block out Subhash. She’d tried to ignore the feeling that she was just waiting. Waiting until she forgot Subhash. Waiting until she became tired of thinking about him. This thought now doused Steph with an intense, overwhelming feeling of guilt and shame and regret, just as though someone had thrown a bucket of icy water over her.