by Eva Woods
‘OK,’ she said, squeezing her eyes shut. ‘I’m ready. It’ll be a relief to get away from this bloody music, to be honest.’
‘I think it’s bodacious,’ said Melissa, wistfully glancing at the phone. ‘We don’t have tunes like that in the afterlife. Anyway, come on. Where we’re going, we don’t need roads! Man, I love that film.’
5 September 1991 (Twenty-six years ago)
The dial, the blur – mad as it seemed, Rosie was getting used to this. Imagine getting used to be being sparko in a hospital bed, while your family bickered over you and your only respite was reliving some of the worst moments of your life. She shuddered at the thought as she opened her eyes. The dial this time had said 5 9 1991. ‘How can I remember the exact dates of these memories?’ she said. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t be able to do that if you asked me.’
‘It’s all in there somewhere,’ Melissa explained. They seemed to be in a playground, on tarmacked ground with hopscotch squares chalked onto it. ‘Everything you’ve ever seen or heard or felt is in your brain. Like those computers you all have now – it’s just about knowing how to retrieve it. Right now your memories are all muddled up and out of their proper places, so this is your brain putting them back in order, trying to make sense of everything.’
‘And this is … our old school.’ Rosie looked about her. She hadn’t thought about this place in years, but the shape of it was disturbingly familiar, as if it had sat in her head all that time, just waiting. The low cream-coloured building, the little garden beside it, the football nets and cheerful brightly coloured monkey bars. Primary school. Where the world made sense, where what mattered most was what you’d brought in your packed lunch and who got top in the weekly spelling test. Rosie had been happy there, hadn’t she? A ginger-haired Mary in the nativity play, the kind of little girl who had sleepovers and invited the whole class to her birthday party. ‘But this isn’t …’
Oh. She remembered now. In the corner of the playground, half-hidden behind the slide, a young Rosie was crouched down, crying hard. That sort of jagged sobbing you do as a child (and as an adult when things are really bad) where it’s like falling down a hill and you can’t draw breath and you’re not sure you’ll actually be able to stop. She was wearing her school uniform, and Rosie could see that her shirt had marker pen on it and her hair was wild and unbrushed. What had happened to that girl in the Christmas memory, so happy and loved?
‘Hello.’ Another little girl was approaching – funny-looking, wearing a school skirt so long it almost skimmed her ankles. Her hair was cropped close to her head like a helmet and she wore thick pink-rimmed NHS specs.
‘That’s me,’ said Melissa.
‘Oh. The short hair, that’s … chic.’
‘I had nits so my mum shaved my head,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Look, I’m going to talk to you. I must have been going out to the loos and seen you crying – remember, we had outdoor ones still at that school.’
‘Hello,’ said Young Melissa again, to Young Rosie. ‘Are you OK?’
‘F-fine,’ stuttered Young Rosie.
‘You’re crying. Do you want me to get Miss Rogers?’
‘No.’
‘OK. Do you want half of my sandwich?’
At this, Young Rosie’s weeping subsided for a moment as she glanced at what Melissa was holding – an uninspiring lump of grey bread with what looked like watercress sticking out. ‘We were doing vegan that year,’ the ghostly Melissa explained. ‘I wasn’t allowed sugar, or dairy, or salt.’
‘No,’ said Young Rosie, turning her nose up. Then, remembering her manners, ‘No thank you.’
‘What’s the matter? Did you fall off the monkey bars? I did that last week.’
‘No.’ Rosie never fell off. She could do the whole thing on one hand, even.
‘Did Jason Bryan call you smelly? He called me smelly this morning.’
‘No.’ Rosie knew, even at seven, that when Jason Bryan pulled her hair and made fun of her Barbie schoolbag, he was really saying something else entirely, and she’d already learned to laugh at him and flick her hair so he’d chase after her during Kiss Tag.
‘What’s the matter then?’
‘I … I …’ Rosie was heaving big sobs. ‘My mummy is … I don’t know.’ She must have been in a bad way to confide in weird Melissa. ‘She’s being weird.’
Melissa nodded wisely. ‘Because of your brother?’
‘I don’t know. Yeah.’
‘She’s very sad, probably. My mummy was very sad when my daddy died, and she didn’t brush my hair or make my lunch for a long time so I had to go and stay with my auntie, but now she’s OK.’
Young Rosie raised her face up from her arms, swollen and red. ‘H-how long? Before she was OK again?’
‘Ooh, I don’t know.’ Melissa seemed to be pondering the nature of time. ‘I think it was maybe from after Christmas until the summertime.’
‘Oh.’ An eternity when you were seven.
‘What about your daddy, Rosie?’
‘He’s always at work. Even at night-times now. Or he goes away on, on, conferences.’ She sounded out the word carefully. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but it was a bad word, because it made her mother cry and lock herself in the room, and her dad stand outside shouting, For Christ’s sake, Alison, someone has to earn the money around here.
Gently, Melissa reached down and patted Rosie with the hand that wasn’t holding the sandwich. ‘It will be OK, Ro-Ro. Can I call you Ro-Ro?’
‘Er … OK.’ There was a noise – a bell ringing, and the beginning of a stampede, scraping chairs and running feet and banging doors.
‘Breaktime,’ said Melissa, in the tones of someone saying execution time.
‘They bullied you,’ said Rosie, remembering now. ‘The other kids. They were mean to you?’ Memories of hiding Melissa’s clothes during swimming, putting a spider in her desk, throwing a ball at her head in the playground … ‘Not them. Me. I bullied you too?’
Melissa shrugged. ‘Sometimes. You were only a kid.’
‘But still, it’s no excuse. Your dad had died! That’s terrible, I’m so sorry. Is he … is he there with you? Like, in the afterlife?’
‘It doesn’t really work that way.’
Was anyone ever going to tell her how it did work? ‘So what’s the point of this memory? You were nice to me? Was I not nice back?’ That would fit with all the other memories she’d seen, a parade of her own bad behaviour.
Younger Rosie had straightened up as the bell rang, wiping her face on the back of her hand. She hissed: ‘Don’t tell anybody I was crying, OK?’ As soon as the first children streamed out the door, Rosie was loping over to them, hair bouncing, smile on her face, only her red eyes hinting that she’d been in such a state before. Melissa was left alone by the monkey bars, with her soggy vegan sandwich and ancient duffel coat. Then, just as Rosie’s heart was sinking, she watched her younger self turn back. ‘Do you want to come to my birthday party, Melissa?’
‘Can I?’ The other girl looked awestruck.
‘Course you can. I’ll get my mummy to phone your mummy. If she’s not sleeping all the time.’
Current Rosie looked on. ‘Did you come?’
‘Oh, no. Mum wouldn’t let me. She had some weird ideas about germs. But we did become friends. Even though you were way more popular than me.’
More memories were slotting into place. Round at Melissa’s house, eating disgusting sugar-free vegan carrot cake, making a den in the back garden with two chairs and a duvet, playing skipping games and learning to ice skate together, hand in hand, on a school trip to the rink … ‘But what happened? Why did we lose touch?’ Had Rosie known her old friend was dead? She must have done, or she wouldn’t be seeing Melissa now. Assuming this was all a product of her disordered brain, of course.
‘I moved away. It happens.’
‘But we could have written, or phoned or …’ Rosie trailed off. She had a feeling it was her fault they’d lost tou
ch, and that she might be seeing that memory again soon too. ‘I’m so sorry, Mel. I wish we’d stayed friends. You were … cool.’
Melissa burst out laughing. ‘I wasn’t cool, I was a weirdo. But that’s OK. None of that matters once you’re gone, you know.’
‘What does matter?’ It suddenly seemed very important that Rosie should know this. ‘Does anything? Or do you just … stop?’
‘It’s the people whose lives you touched – that’s what matters. Who remember you. The difference you made. That’s the only way you live on.’ Melissa looked again at her schoolgirl watch. ‘Come on, Ro-Ro, time to get back.’
Rosie was silent as she shut her eyes, and the playground faded, and the bright lights of the ward fizzled into focus on her lids. The people whose lives you touched. Well, this was it for her, and it seemed she’d fallen out with all of them – her parents, her sister, her estranged friends. And maybe Luke too. Luke. Whatever had happened to him?
Daisy
Rosie’s birthday. Her flat number. The start of her phone number. 1234. 0000. Daisy had tried all the four-number combinations she could think of, and nothing was letting her into the cracked phone. She’d already frozen it four times, and had to admit defeat. She was sure that her sister’s secrets lurked on there, the reason she’d walked in front of that bus, where she’d been going that day. ‘Rosie, what’s your passcode? Can you, like, tap it out or something?’
Her sister didn’t even move an eyelid. Daisy knew that, had she been conscious at all, she’d have knocked the phone right out of her hand. Rosie had always been private. Daisy looked at the wall clock: it was mid-morning already. Time ticking away, and Rosie still in a coma. She was supposed to be delivering a pitch now, on legal issues affecting the UK stationery business. No doubt Mai was handling it with aplomb. She was probably wearing the Jimmy Choo heels she’d got for eighty quid in the sale that time. Daisy never found anything good in the sales, just misshapen jumpers that, when she got home, didn’t fit her at all and which she would keep, unworn, for three years before giving to a charity shop.
Her mother stuck her head into Rosie’s room. Despite the lack of sleep, despite the raw, dry air of the hospital, she still looked flawless, her make-up like a smooth armour. Daisy could feel a cold sore starting up on her own face, and knew she had sandwich crumbs on her jumper. ‘Gary’s here.’ Her mother’s voice dipped on saying her future son-in-law’s name. Approval. Relief. Daisy had chosen well; she would be looked after. So why did Daisy’s own heart falter?
‘Oh, great.’ Unconvincing. ‘He must have got out of work at last.’
‘So good of him, when he’s so busy.’
Daisy found snappy words in her mouth, the kind she usually pushed deep, deep down. ‘He’s a junior consultant working with a company that makes ball bearings, Mum, and my sister’s in a coma. It’s the least he can do.’ He should have come sooner, she thought. Her mother was giving her a strange look.
‘Oh darling. You aren’t—’
But she didn’t get to finish the sentence. Gary rounded the corner, talking loudly into his phone, the edges of his good wool coat flapping. He’d bought it in the January sales – something he was also good at – trying on what seemed like hundreds of different ones, researching price points online, putting everything into a spreadsheet, marching all the way across town to get it a fiver off. When Rosie saw it she’d said he looked like a football manager and after that Gary hadn’t worn it for a week. ‘Yeah, yeah, sorry, mate, I’ll have to finish up now. Bit of an emergency our end. Let’s touch base tomorrow, though, yeah? Thanks, fella.’
Since when had he said things like ‘fella’ and ‘touch base’? Daisy made herself smile as he kissed her cheek.
‘How is she?’ he asked, in hushed tones.
‘Oh, well – no change really. They’ve said we should keep talking to her, though.’ Daisy had been trying, but it was so hard when Rosie didn’t seem to hear her. Her mother was struggling to even try.
Gary stowed his phone in its holster – he actually wore a phone holster – as her mother came out to greet him. ‘Alison. I’m so sorry.’
‘Darling Gary. So good of you to come.’ Her mother melted into tears again. ‘It’s been … Oh, Gary!’
He took charge. ‘Now, now, Alison, I’m sure she’ll be fine. They’ve said there’s still hope, yes? Let me go and find someone who knows what’s going on. Hello. Hello!’ He waved over the young male doctor, as if calling for a waiter. Daisy saw the doctor was in the same white coat with coffee stains as yesterday, now joined by what looked like a smear of jam. At least she hoped it was jam. Hadn’t been home, clearly.
‘I’m Gary Rudley, Rosie’s future brother-in-law. What can you tell us about her condition, please?’ Daisy cringed at the voice he was putting on, the corporate manager voice, the successful-young-man voice. Same one he’d used at the mortgage broker and the bathroom showroom.
The doctor blinked. ‘Not much, sir. She’s in a coma and all we can do is hope her brain wakes up from it.’
‘But isn’t there a treatment? I was reading—’
‘We’ve given her all the treatment we can for now. It’s down to her brain, and it depends how badly injured it is. We should know more in a day or two.’
‘But—’
‘Try talking to her. If she recognises your voice, it might help.’ His tone was polite, but doubtful.
Gary huffed back. ‘Honestly, the NHS is a shambles. Just talk to her – that’s the best they can do?’
‘They’ve saved Rosie’s life,’ Daisy pointed out. ‘And he’s been here all night. Don’t be rude to him, Gary.’
His mouth fell open. ‘I wasn’t being rude.’
‘Darling, you’re just upset,’ her mother chipped in nervously. ‘Let’s not fight. Gary’s very good to come.’
Daisy made herself smile, a crooked unconvincing thing. ‘Why don’t we talk to her like he said?’ Though whether Rosie would want to listen to Gary’s stories about the ball-bearing account, she really didn’t know.
Rosie
‘Oh God,’ she said – though only to herself. ‘Gary’s here.’
No one answered. Melissa had gone again, and she was alone in her bubble of ‘real’, the world outside seen as if through a plastic cover, blurred and muffled. Like zorbing, she thought. Though what was zorbing, and when had she ever done it? Hopefully the muffling effect would keep her soon-to-be brother-in-law (urgh) at some distance, because she wasn’t sure she could handle Gary. Even though she couldn’t grasp the details right now, she was quite certain that her sister’s fiancé was a grade-A bore.
‘So, Rosie,’ he was saying, in a self-consciously caring voice, ‘big day for me today. Would you believe I single-handedly sorted out the entire IT system for Harris and Harris partners? Huge firm, very prestigious. But let me tell you, the servers were an-ti-quated. They were still using Linux. Imagine.’
Rosie had no idea what Linux was. She searched her memory, but something told her she had never known what it was and would never care enough to find out.
‘Goodness, is that an accountant visiting you?’ said Mr Malcolm, materialising in his holey tank top.
‘Oh, hi, Mr M. That’s Gary. He is sort of an accountant. I think. Management consultancy. Means he goes into companies and tells them everything they’re doing wrong, which is perfect for him because he spends his whole life doing that to Daisy too. And to me.’ See, memories. Things slotting back into place. Another aspect of her life that was bad, or disappointing.
‘I suppose you won’t be wanting a Gary memory then, dear.’
‘No. Please, he’s right there. It would be too cruel to see him in my mind as well.’
‘Well, let’s see what we get this time. Are you ready? You have to try and remember more, dear. That’s what will help you wake up.’
Rosie braced herself. Who knew what this memory would be? Tears, shouting, physical injury of some kind, or the overwhelming sense that she
, Rosie Cooke, was just not a very nice person? ‘I’m ready,’ she said. It was still better than listening to Gary talk about servers.
2 June 2012 (Five years ago)
Dial. Blur. 2 6 2012. A date that meant nothing to Rosie. She opened her eyes and found herself in an office. Outside, a hot summer’s day, and inside the torpor lay over people’s backs like a heavy rug. The office was open plan and dingy, with about a dozen people hunched over bog-standard computers that would have been outdated even in 2012 (perhaps they needed to get Gary in). A few fans struggled helplessly with the hot air, pushing it aside without creating much change in the temperature. ‘Well, this place is delightful.’ It had every office cliché – a sink area in the corner where the stacked-up dirty dishes hid the plaintive notes about doing your washing-up, layers of grime on everything, people shutting themselves away under big headphones.
‘You don’t recognise it?’ Mr Malcolm was reading the posters on the noticeboard about turning out lights and remembering to empty the dishwasher, plus one dog-eared jaunty one about coming to the company picnic.
‘Should I?’ Rosie was sure she’d never have been caught dead in such a drab place as this. What she’d seen of her life so far had been sad and often embarrassing, but at least it was dramatic. Not boring. She imagined that was something people might say at her funeral, if she didn’t wake up from this coma. Darling Rosie, at least she was never boring, you know?
‘There you are.’ He pointed to a dark corner of the office, where someone had all but barricaded themselves into a corner desk. Red hair, black trousers and a polyester top with sweat stains. It was Rosie.
‘Oh God.’ Present-day Rosie scrunched up her face. ‘I remember now. I temped here, that summer when I couldn’t get any acting work and I needed some cash … Jesus, it was so dull.’ Back-then Rosie was as apathetic as the rest of them, tapping at her dirty keyboard with all the enthusiasm of someone going to the gallows. She seemed to be working on some kind of spreadsheet, but Rosie had no memory of what the job had been. ‘They sold something – what was it?’