by Eva Woods
“Oh.” Her sister, in love with a married man.
“Anyway. Later on he and I were having some...problems, and something did happen between them, and I found out, it all got messy, he promised to cut off contact so we could make it work, and that was that. Then the other week she turned up at the house. I think she got the wrong end of the stick—Luke and I were already splitting up at that point, only living together for the sake of our kid, but Rosie—well, she ran off. She was really upset.” Our kid. Luke was not only married but had a child.
“So...she doesn’t know you’ve split up?”
“I don’t know. I...it was kind of my fault, to be honest. Someone from my past, a guy, came to work in London. Someone I thought I’d never see again. He’s...well, he’s the father of my kid. I didn’t know, I swear, not for sure, but...he is. So Luke and I...it’s over. But it’s fine. I’m fine.” She probably was, Daisy thought. Ella seemed like a tough little nut, shiny, resilient. Not like Rosie at all.
“She didn’t try to contact you?”
“Rosie? Not as far as I know. We only met a few times. At my engagement drinks, my wedding, a random dinner party and when I found her in my house.” Ella’s full mouth twisted in a parody of a smile. “So, I don’t think we’d have had much to talk about. She wouldn’t have my number or anything.”
“Right.” So Rosie had not got as far as contacting Ella, or perhaps she’d chickened out. Did that mean she’d not been in touch with Luke either? There was nothing on the phone to suggest she’d called him. Just his name in her dying mouth.
Ella stirred, picked up her smart leather bag. “I have to go. Sorry, Daisy.” Outside, Daisy could see a man waiting for her, in an expensive navy coat. He was holding a little boy by the hand. Seeing them together—same nose, same dark straight fringe—it was clear this man was the father of the child. Not Luke. How confusing. “I’m sorry about your sister. I don’t wish her ill, despite everything. Luke and I...like I said, it was a mistake. We were too young, and I don’t think he ever got over her leaving like that. Plus there was the baby and everything. But I’m not sure I can tell you anything that will help.”
“No. Thank you anyway.” Ella was gone, leaving her tea untouched, and Daisy looked around the too-bright café, realizing it was dark outside, the third day of Rosie’s coma almost running out, and she was still no closer to any answers.
Rosie
It was late now. Dark. She could hear rain pattering ineffectually against the high shatterproof window of her room, though she still could not turn her head to look. Her neck was still in a brace. Her leg in a cast. The catheter and drip still regulating her, in and out, in and out. She could see her parents by her bed, their heads bowed, faces anxious. Saying nothing, because nothing would help. Waiting.
Rosie had read stories of people who lay in comas for years, decades even. How could you possibly live for years in your broken body, awake and alert but unmoving? How could anyone survive that?
But she knew that people could survive anything, carry around backbreaking loads for years. It was the curse as much as the gift of being human. Had she finally broken under hers? Was that why she was here?
“Hello?” she tried, knowing she made no sound in the world. Her lips were still frozen. Who would come to her next? Darryl, Melissa, Mr. Malcolm, Grandma...she had known these people were gone. That was why she saw them here, ghostly, dead. Too late for her apologies, too late for everything. They were only symbols, of all the things she’d loved and let go. Her family, her friends, her career. All the random people whose lives had intersected with hers, the butterfly-wing impact she’d had in her thirty-three years. It made sense that, in its fractured state, her brain would conjure them up as her guides to dying. Because she almost had. She had touched it, and pulled away, back into this confusing world of lights and beeps and gentle firm hands on her slack flesh. She had not died in the accident. But she still might. Her brain was trying to come to terms with that. The idea that everything inside it—every memory, every face, every smell and sight and sound—would be going with her, and all she’d leave behind would be people’s memories of her. That was what it meant to be dead.
“I understand now,” she tried. “I know you’re not real but I...I’m lonely. Can someone come?”
Silence. Just the rain on the window, the slow rise and beep of her machines. Tethering her down to the earth, when otherwise she might gently float away. But then, Rosie got the sense she was not alone. It was a strange feeling. Comforting and exciting and scary all at once. Not a ghost, no. But it was hard to believe these were just hallucinations. She blinked her dry eyes—those worked, at least—and stared into the pool of light at the bottom of her bed. Someone was standing there. A child. Scarlett, maybe. But no, Scarlett was older, and real and noisy and breathing, like she could now see the living always were, blundering about, while the dead stood quietly, watching. It was all they could do.
This child was a little boy. A toddler, really, only just standing up on his own, wide-legged and stocky. He was dressed in jeans and a Transformers sweatshirt, the kind kids wore in the early nineties, when this boy had last been alive. Rosie felt it all rush through her veins, along with the saline and painkillers and God knows what else they were pumping into her. Love. Terror. Guilt. “Petey,” she whispered.
Petey said nothing back. He had never learned to talk, of course, not properly. He’d not even been two when he died. She could see in him her father’s blue eyes, her mother’s gingery hair, same as her own. His clear, unblemished skin. Her little brother. Finally returned to her. “I knew you would,” she said. “I knew you’d come back.”
3 April 1991 (Twenty-six years ago)
Rosie opened her eyes onto the past. Immediately her heart began to race and her breath came shallow and ragged in her chest. She knew this memory. She’d relived it over and over. If only it had been different. If only she could go back, do it over again, change things. And now she knew she could not, that this wasn’t possible, she just had to stand here and watch it unfold. The very worst moment of all the bad moments that made up her life.
In the start of the memory, it was a good day, the first breath of summer in the air, warm enough to roll up your jeans and take off your jumper. Rosie knew the place. A park near their house in Devon, where they’d gone often as children. Before. Never after. Grass, and trees to hide behind, a van selling ice creams. And a stream, running along in a hollow just yards away.
There she was, in her favorite Danger Mouse top and her trainers with flowers on. There was Daisy, only three, cute and chubby still, her hair in pigtails, trying to make a chain of her namesake flower with her fat fingers. On a striped rug, their mother. It was a shock to see her once again, to realize how changed she had been by what happened next. Back then—before—she was a young woman, younger than Rosie was now. Her red hair was tied back with a wide yellow band, and she wore an embroidered sweatshirt and shorts. How pretty she was. Her legs were long and slim, her eyes laughing. Toddling about her—he’d only just learned to walk—was her youngest child. Peter. Petey, they all called him, since Daisy couldn’t quite pronounce his name. A family of three children, all beautiful, all perfect. A loving husband who couldn’t wait to race back from work to see them all, a warm and welcoming house, her youth, her health. In that moment, Alison Cooke must have thought she had it all.
Don’t get up, Mum. Please just stay.
But as Rosie watched, her mother did get to her feet, dusting grass off her white shorts. “I need the loo, Rosie, will you watch them just for a second?” Of course—she’d had three babies. Sometimes she just had to go, and there were public loos over by the gates. She could have taken the children with her, but they were happy, playing on the grass, and she didn’t want to move them. She would only be a minute. Rosie knew her mother had also replayed this moment over and over, torturing herself, wishing she’d just held it in
or gathered them all up and marched them home. Not let them out of her sight. But it was 1991. People left their kids then. And Rosie, though she was only young, was a responsible girl.
Rosie did not quite remember what happened next. She’d never been able to. Had she taken it in, her mother telling her to watch Petey, or had she been engrossed in her own world, like her teachers always said at parents’ evening? Imagining herself on a stage, in the spotlight, everyone clapping. The dresses she would wear when she was grown up. The amazing flat she’d live in, just like in Pretty Woman, that nice film about the beautiful lady she’d seen five minutes of at her friend’s house, which Mummy had said was “highly unsuitable” (Rosie wasn’t sure why). The boy she might marry, one day, who would look a bit like Scott from Neighbours. She’d been daydreaming, helping Daisy poke holes in the stems of daisies, their fingers green and sticky, and she didn’t know how long it had been before she’d thought to look up at Petey. He could hardly even walk. If you left him for a moment, he’d normally be right there when you came back.
But Young Rosie looked up, and her childhood ended, and the rest of her life was forever changed. Because Petey was gone. The next few seconds passed in a sweaty blur. She stood up, looking around in confusion. Where was he? Should she leave Daisy, who wouldn’t be moved when she was enjoying something, and run after him? What if Daisy ran off too? Then her mother was racing across the grass, shrieking, and Rosie’s eyes turned to the stream just a short walk, just a toddle, away and...
Now Rosie struggled again. The memory was fracturing around her. She didn’t want to relive this. She didn’t want this to have happened. “Please, Petey. I don’t want to... I’m sorry! I’m sorry I didn’t watch you. I was...I was only little but it’s no excuse. Oh God. I’m so sorry. Please don’t make me watch it again.”
Something was happening. Her chest was burning, she couldn’t breathe. Her dream body felt heavy, aching with pain, like her real body. The green grass, the bright day, her mother’s screams, it was all dissolving. She looked down and Petey was no longer at her side. The real one or the one in her memory. Gone. The last time she’d ever seen him. “Please,” she said, but she didn’t know who to, and she was wrenched into the light.
Daisy
Routine was a strange thing. For three years now, Daisy had walked up the stairs to her office every single day at 8:00 a.m., keyed in the code to the door, walked past Reception to her desk. But somehow, today, going in so late, in her jeans and trainers, she saw it all with fresh eyes. The dust on the computer screens, the way her colleagues hunched, bleary-eyed at their desks. Mai trying to retouch her makeup without anyone seeing—she’d likely been here all night again. The stale recycled air, the hermetically sealed windows over a city she never got to experience, the strip lighting. Why had she spent so much of her life here?
“Daisy!” Maura was beckoning from her office. She wore a black Prada suit and heels so high they made her knees buckle. Two other people were there too, a rectangular middle-aged woman and a slightly younger, almost spherical guy. New clients, Daisy assumed. “There you are! This is Anthea and Derek from Flush With Success. They make loo seats. Very exciting.”
“Right, hi. I’m sorry I wasn’t here, I’ve been dealing with a family emergency.”
Maura forced a caring expression onto her immobile face. “That’s right, how is...?”
“Rosie. She’s... I don’t know.”
“We used to have a Rosie with us, didn’t we, Derek?” said the rectangular woman. “Terribly flighty girl, didn’t last five minutes. Rather left us in the lurch. Still, it showed me what I could accomplish by myself. Now I run the company, and Derek here’s my partner. In more ways than one.” She brandished her left hand, wedding ring sparkling. “Probably not the same Rosie though.”
“No. Maura, can I...” Daisy beckoned to her boss, who came out and shut the glass door behind her. Instantly her frozen smile melted.
“Where the hell have you been? I was about to send out a search party.”
“I’m sorry. I was...it’s been a strange day. I had things to do.”
“Yes, well, I need you here. Mai’s lost the report on the server. Can you redo it?”
Daisy blinked. “My sister’s in a coma. I haven’t been thinking about the report.”
Maura frowned, deep furrows appearing in her Botoxed forehead. There was no facial toxin powerful enough to compete with the stress of this place. “I’m afraid that’s not good enough, Daisy. The report is your job.”
“But...it’s a family emergency!”
“Yes, and I gave you two days off for it, and she’s not dying, is she?”
“Well, we hope not but...”
“Exactly. There are limits to how much slack I can cut you. I was back in here myself the day after I had the twins.”
Yes, and you almost passed out in a meeting with a light bulb manufacturer. Suddenly Daisy saw herself in ten years’ time, in Maura’s place. Not having slept properly in decades; seeing her kids, if she found time to have any, for half an hour each night. Commuting, eating Pret sandwiches at her desk, sucking up to rich tossers who wanted her to sort out the mess they’d made with their greed and carelessness. Daisy drew in a deep breath, from the very soles of her (sensible, flat) shoes to the top of her head. “I can’t do this,” she heard herself say.
Maura was already on her phone, checking emails, not a second to spare. “The report? You must remember some of what you wrote.”
“Not the stupid report...any of this. My sister almost died, Maura. She still might not wake up, or be able to walk or talk or...”
Maura massaged her temples. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I need that report, and it’s your job to provide it. I don’t think I’m asking too much here, Daisy.”
“It’s not my job.”
“What? Of course it is!”
“No, it’s not because...” Daisy took off the lanyard with her security pass. “I quit, Maura.”
Finally some expression came to Maura’s motionless face. “You can’t quit! People don’t quit! If you’ve got another job lined up you still need to work your notice, do a handover...”
“I don’t have another job lined up.”
“Well you won’t get a reference if you walk out now. You’ll be finished in law.”
“I...” She should care. She’d studied for years for this, gone to law school, clawed her way up, practically slept at the office. Her entire life, the wedding, the house, the astronomical mortgage, was based around keeping this job. It was terror of losing it all that got her up at six every day, sent her trotting to the packed tube in painful shoes, kept her here long past dark every night. But Rosie had almost died. And that was all Daisy could think of. That if she spent any more time here, she might die too. “I...I’m sorry, Maura. Bye.”
Rosie
Back in the room. Rosie had a glimpse of the bright hospital room around her, and her mother’s face, older and lined in fear, hovering in the background, then suddenly she was choking, a line of burning pain down her throat into her lungs. Help. Help! I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe! The pain spread around her neck and shoulders, choking her in a band of red-hot agony. A small detached part of her thought: well, this is interesting, this is the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. Worse than knocking out my tooth on my roller skates (when was that?). Worse than chopping my finger off that time. Worse than losing Luke...
But she didn’t have time to dwell on that, because she was dying. She couldn’t breathe and she was going to die. She could see her mother’s mouth open, screaming, but not hear any sound, and then a team was through the door with a crash cart, paddles and latex gloves and lots of controlled, directed panic. The last thing Rosie saw before she blacked out was the ceiling above her, its damp stains like the drifting continents of the world.
Daisy
Daisy s
aw Adam right away as she tinkled open the door of the café, with its old-fashioned bell. He was clearing up for the day, humming along to the radio, which was playing a Bruno Mars song. There was something so neat about him, from the tips of his blue Converse to the top of his shiny black head. Not tall, but if they were standing opposite each other he’d have a few inches on her... Hastily, she switched the thought off, as he came toward her. He was always moving, drumming his fingers, whipping dishes away, foaming milk. This boss of his ought to know what an asset he had.
He saw her. “Hey! I hoped you’d come back. I kept you the last slice of Battenburg.”
“Oh! Thank you.” How kind he was, she thought, taking the brown paper bag.
“Any luck?”
“Well. Depends what you mean by luck.” She thought of the whole jumbled mass of clues. Rosie, calling everyone she knew. Rosie, out in the early morning light, scarcely dressed. Rosie, her affair with Luke, the secrets she kept from her family. Stepping in front of that bus. “I think, maybe...she was trying to...that she did do it. What we thought.” As she said it, unable to speak the actual word, tears rose up in her throat in a gasping sob. “Oh! I can’t... I just can’t take it in. But her life was such a mess, and no one was there for her, and the bus...they saw her walk in front...and... I think we have to accept it. Oh God, I just keep thinking what I could have done differently. Taken her call. Rung her. Or just anything really, anything at all.”
Adam looked at her so kindly it broke her heart further. “We’re not responsible for other people’s lives, Daisy. Only our own. I know it hurts, finding out all of this, but Rosie was on her own path. You can’t know what was in her heart.”
She wiped her face, trying to get herself under control. “Maybe. Anyway, I don’t know what will happen now. If she wakes up, I guess we have to try to help her, as much as we can. Sort this mess out. If we even can.” She looked at her watch. “It’s late. I better go back. I just wanted to say thank you. You’ve helped me get through these few days. It would have been hell otherwise. I hope your boss knows they’re lucky to have you.”