The Lives We Touch

by Eva Woods

  ‘What’s going to happen now, Grandma?’

  ‘Another memory, love.’

  Of course. She couldn’t face another bad one, reliving a day she’d done something bad, or hurt someone. Slept with someone’s husband, even. This was the kind of person she was. Gritty tears were in her eyes. In the real world, a nurse moved around her body, sponging and hooking and checking and emptying. The tears were wiped away like so much discharge. ‘Grandma – what’s this for? What’s it going to achieve? If I wanted to … if I didn’t want to be here any more, and I walked in front of that bus, why did my brain try to bring me back? Why not just … let me go, when I was dying there in A and E?’

  ‘The body always wants to survive, love. No matter what. During the war, your great-uncle Colin, that was my brother, he was in the Japanese camps. It were a hard life and no mistake. Starving, halfway between life and death – he came back just skin and bone. But he didn’t give up.’

  Rosie said nothing. It made her feel even worse for being mired in her own petty problems, to hear about people who’d had Nazis and bombs and starvation to battle with. ‘So why these memories? What’s the point of them?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know, love. There’s something you have to figure out for yourself. But you need to be quick about it.’

  Rosie sighed. Maybe she was expecting too much from projections of her own disturbed mind. ‘So there’s no way out, unless I relive them?’

  ‘That’s right, love. Ready?’

  ‘I don’t think I have a choice.’ Assuming, of course, she wanted to wake up. Assuming she hadn’t stepped in front of that bus on purpose, wanting to end it all, fade peacefully away like her ghostly visitors had described. The truth was, Rosie didn’t know. She braced herself as another memory approached. 2 10 1999. The dial, the noise, the blur. Time to lose herself again.

  2 October 1999 (Eighteen years ago)

  ‘What’s that you’re doing there?’

  Teenage Rosie – fifteen going on forty – scowled at her grandma from behind a full face of make-up. ‘I’m going out.’

  In this memory, her grandma must have been about seventy. Not even that old, Rosie realised now, looking on as her adult self, but back then she’d seemed ancient, an old woman with grey hair and a twinset. Grandma wore a lemon cardigan draped over her shoulders, and in the living room behind her the TV was playing Fifteen to One. ‘You’re not going out, love, it’s nearly dinnertime.’

  Teenage Rosie had been trying to sneak out of the house, although it was almost dark outside. She folded her arms. ‘I’m allowed to normally.’

  ‘Are you? You won’t mind if I ring your mum and check then, will you?’ Grandma said easily. She’d raised two children herself; she was immune to teenage aggression.

  ‘When was this?’ said Now Rosie to Now Grandma – or Dead Grandma or whatever she was, who was pottering around the hallway with interest. ‘How come you’re staying?’

  ‘Look, I wonder what happened to that twinset when I went. Plenty of good wear left in it. It was after your dad left, love. Your mum wasn’t coping too well, so she went to your Auntie Susan’s, remember?’

  Poor Mum. Poor Carole, too, to put up with years of crumbs from their table, meeting in shabby hotels off the motorway. Rosie realised this was the first time she’d ever felt sorry for Carole. She remembered herself in that hotel room with Luke, the shame and fear of it all.

  ‘I came down to mind you and your sister. She was never any trouble, of course. It was all you.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, perfect little Daisy.’ Through the open kitchen door, Daisy could be seen doing her homework at the table, in her grey school uniform. The good sister. Whereas Rosie, in her ripped black jeans and crayon-like eyeliner, hadn’t done any homework at all and was planning to rendezvous in the park with some rather dodgy young men. This was after she’d fallen out with Angie, after she’d taken up with Bryn, after she’d ditched the school play because he didn’t like her acting. The point where her life went one way instead of another, where it began to unravel.

  ‘You can’t make me stay in,’ Past Rosie was now saying to her grandmother. ‘What are you going to do, lock me up?’

  Daisy was only pretending to do her homework. She looked up at that, biting her lip, worried.

  ‘Rosie, pet,’ said Past Grandma wearily, ‘there’s no need for this. I’m doing bangers and mash for tea, you love that.’

  ‘I’m vegetarian now.’

  ‘Well, Daisy and I got a nice film out of the video shop. Circle of Friends. You love that.’

  ‘Boring. Why won’t you just let me out!’

  Grandma sighed deeply, admitting defeat. ‘Be back by six.’

  ‘Or what?’ Present Rosie was mortified. How could she have been so rude to her sweet, wise grandmother?

  ‘Or I’ll come down to fetch you myself in my dressing gown and curlers.’

  Checkmate. Rosie and her grandmother stared each other down in the hallway. Daisy listened from the kitchen, tense.

  ‘Six o’clock.’

  ‘Fine. God, this family.’ Teen Rosie went out, slamming the door so the pictures in the hallway rattled.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to her ghostly grandma now. ‘I was awful. I don’t know why.’

  ‘You were young, pet. Young and angry. I wish you’d stayed home, though. That boy was no good for you.’

  ‘Was it Bryn?’

  Grandma nudged her. ‘Follow and see.’

  A blink, and she was on the street, walking behind her past self on the way to the park down the road. Teen Rosie stopped to apply yet more make-up from a small Boots 17 compact, then spray herself all over with Impulse O2. The synthetic sweetness gave Now Rosie a complicated feeling: part nostalgia, part sadness. Maybe nostalgia was always part sadness, always for something lost that you could never get back. The girl she used to be pushed open the small gate to the children’s play park, now deserted, the shadows lengthening. Three boys sat around the slide, passing a bottle back and forth in a brown paper bag. White Lightning. Rosie ambled over, her eyes fixed somewhere beyond them at the swings, as if that was her intended destination. ‘Hiya,’ she said nonchalantly.

  None of the boys answered for a moment, eyeing her like lazy lions would a gazelle. ‘Ro,’ said one of them laconically. It was Bryn. Even in the dark, even in his parka and with his curtains haircut, he was dazzling. Hot blue eyes and cheekbones cut with a microplane. Not that anyone in 1999 knew what a microplane was.

  Rosie sat down on the grass, arranging her hoody under her. She must have been freezing, but not wearing a coat was somehow seen as alluring back then. ‘Can I’ve some?’ she asked nonchalantly.

  Bryn passed the bottle, watching as she swigged it, trying not to gag. The boys went back to whatever they’d been talking about, which seemed to involve laughing and calling each other ‘well gay’. Slowly, subtly, Rosie and Bryn drew away from the other two. The tension vibrating off Rosie was almost tangible. She wanted this boy to touch her, talk to her, own her, pay her attention. She’d do almost anything to get that. For just a crumb of affection. A pattern that was all too familiar from most of her relationships with men since. Either she desperately wanted what she couldn’t have or she didn’t want the person who wanted her. Stupid.

  ‘Grandma …’ she began.

  ‘Don’t worry, love, seen it all before.’

  Rosie still blushed for her past self. What an idiot she’d been, hanging around cold dark parks with dodgy boys instead of staying at home in her safe warm house with Wagon Wheels and ER on the TV.

  ‘Oi.’ Bryn jerked his head at his two minions. ‘Give us a minute, boys.’ Obediently they left, with a snickering noise that Rosie remembered had made her feel excited and afraid all at once. ‘C’mere.’ He turned to Rosie, and took her hand, abandoning the bottle. She remembered she’d looked back at it, wondering if she should pick it up. Kids would play there in the morning, they might get hurt. But instead she just followed hi
m blindly to the dark area under the trees, where you couldn’t be seen from the road. And suddenly she remembered why this memory was so potent.

  ‘Pretend I’m not here,’ Grandma whispered. ‘I’m not, you know. I’m dead these years and years.’

  ‘I know, but … God.’ No one wanted their grandma to see them losing their virginity under a bush in a playpark.

  ‘Suppose it’s too much to ask if you were being careful?’

  ‘If you know everything I know, you’ll already know I wasn’t.’

  ‘Eeeee,’ said Grandma. ‘That was right foolish, our Rosie.’

  It was more than that. It was criminally stupid. From the bushes came rustlings, and unzippings, and heavy breathing, all moving far too fast to something that Past Rosie now wasn’t sure she’d wanted – was she even ready? She wasn’t even sixteen, it was against the law! – but then it was too late and there was a stifled yelp. It had hurt. She remembered it had hurt a lot.

  ‘Oh deary me,’ said Grandma.

  The whole thing took about five minutes, and then Bryn was lighting a fag, and starting for home, leaving Rosie still with her jeans half-off. ‘See ya,’ he said.

  ‘But …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Um …’ Rosie hadn’t known what to say. They’d had sex. He’d taken her virginity. Now he was just walking off, without even looking at her.

  In the orange streetlight, his face was pale and cruel as carved marble. ‘You’re welcome.’ That was what he’d said after doing that to her. You’re welcome. Then he was gone.

  Rosie watched her past self, a girl alone in the dark, struggling to pull up her jeans and underwear, wincing at the pain. Seeing blood and grass on her thighs, wondering how she would hide it from her grandma, who noticed a bit more than her parents seemed to. Biting her lip and trying not to cry. Realising she couldn’t even tell Angie about this, her first time, as they weren’t speaking. Getting to her feet, walking stiffly, and throwing her head back high. She wasn’t going to show her grandmother that she’d been right, that boy was no good. The difference in how he’d been for months – Rosie baby, you’re so special, I just want to spend all my time with you instead of you always being at rehearsals – was marked. He’d walked off. He’d just walked off. She couldn’t take it in. So that meant … she was one of those stupid girls who believed a guy when he said he loved her?

  Over the next two weeks, Rosie knew, she’d wait obsessively by the phone, doing her homework on the stairs in case it rang, and she’d hover by the bus stop and the park, but Bryn would never contact her again, and when they passed once on the high street, his arm round the neck of a giggling blonde girl, he would look right through her as if she didn’t even exist. If only she’d said this or that, not said this, not said that. It would torment her, and her grades would slip even more, and the rows with her parents intensify, while at the same time Daisy seemed to get smaller and quieter, taking up as little space as possible compared to her loud, difficult sister. Then she’d realise her period was late, and have to sneak into Boots and buy a test, and one of her mum’s friends had been in there trying on perfume, and then she’d had to wee on the stick in the shopping centre toilets with an old woman outside banging on the door telling her to hurry up. What a mess she’d made.

  ‘I should have listened to you, Grandma,’ she said to the shadowy figure.

  ‘Aye, grandmas always know best. But young people have to make mistakes. That’s life.’

  They watched as Teen Rosie walked off, arms wrapped round herself against the dark and cold, tears already turned icy on her face.

  Daisy

  She found Gary in the lobby of the hospital, phone in hand, and the rage broke inside her. All her fear and anger at Rosie being stuck here, her mother’s unhappiness, Petey, all of it, came spurting out like a volcano.

  Gary said, ‘There you are. I’m off to work now. Could you pick up some soy milk on your way home? Oh and don’t forget to look at the wedding playlist I sent over. We need to decide on “jazzy funk” or “funky jazz” for the drinks reception.’

  Daisy spat, ‘Why didn’t you tell me Rosie called?’

  He froze for a moment. ‘What?’

  ‘The morning of the accident. She rang me, didn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, er, I don’t know.’

  ‘There’s a missed call in my list.’ Daisy brandished her own phone and Rosie’s, one in each hand. ‘Look. A call from her phone to mine, only I never saw it on the screen. Why’s that?’

  ‘God, how should I know? You probably just didn’t notice it.’

  ‘Because it wasn’t there. I haven’t spoken to Rosie in months; don’t you think I’d have noticed if I suddenly had a call from her?’

  Gary sighed. She saw him roll his eyes, just a fraction, and her blood boiled over like an unattended pan on the stove. ‘Oh, Daise. All she does is upset you. You had a big day ahead, you were already late, and you know what she’s like. She’ll have been up all night at some club, probably ringing up to have another drunken go at you. I didn’t want that for you. I’d have told you about it that evening, when you weren’t so stressed.’

  Daisy just stared at him, speechless. ‘You … my God. You don’t get to make those decisions for me, Gary!’

  ‘Why not? I’ll be your husband soon. I’m entitled to have a say over who we let into our lives.’

  ‘She’s my sister.’

  ‘Your sister who ruined our party and embarrassed me in front of Mr Cardew. How do you think that made me feel? I could hardly look him in the eye the next day.’

  ‘FUCK MR FUCKING CARDEW,’ Daisy yelled, months of frustration bursting out of her, the long hours of waiting in hospital, the sleepless night in her old bedroom, shivering in her mother’s unheated house and asking herself every five minutes: Was Rosie trying to kill herself?

  Gary’s face looked almost comically shocked. ‘Daisy! Don’t swear like that!’

  ‘Why not? My sister’s in a coma, why shouldn’t I swear?’

  ‘At me, your fiancé, who’s only ever helped you and looked after you and—’

  ‘I don’t NEED LOOKING AFTER!’ She didn’t know where this voice was coming from, loud and enraged and so full of force Gary actually stepped back. ‘Jesus Christ, do you hear yourself? It’s not your business to interfere between me and my sister. She tried to ring me, and I didn’t pick up, and next thing she’s under a bus? What do you think that means, Gary?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘Yeah, well, thanks very much, you twat. You might have just killed her.’

  ‘Daisy!’

  ‘Why don’t you just fuck off, Gary? Go on, get back to your precious spreadsheets and office bantz and tea rota. Rosie doesn’t need you here and neither do I.’

  And she turned and left him standing there, in his stupid suit, his stupid face mugging like a stupid goldfish.

  Rosie

  You saw a lot of things when you weren’t technically conscious. Like the two young doctors, the way they bantered and bounced off each other, but also the way her tense shoulders relaxed when he came into the room, the way his eyes sought her out when she passed down the corridor outside, ponytail swinging. Like the way Gary and her sister always stood with a gap between them, and Gary never touched her or comforted her. The way he always angled his body to face whoever was speaking, something he’d probably learned in a wanky business skills workshop. The way, when she thought no one was watching, Daisy’s face collapsed into little frowns and grimaces. The way her mother’s face stiffened when their father arrived with Scarlett, a mask of disapproval hiding her real feeling – sadness. Jealousy. Rosie wished she could have caught at her mother’s hand, said, Mum, there’s so much life left to you still, and you’ve got two daughters, and there’s places to go and things to see and so much, just so much there for you.

  But who was she to talk? She’d had so much as well and she’d spent years festering in her horrible flat, stewing in guilt and jealousy. May
be it was one of the curses of being human, that you could only realise what you had when you were in danger of losing it. The simple gift of being able to move your arms and legs, speak, open your eyes on command, dress yourself. Of being able to pick up the phone and tell people you were sorry, you’d messed up, beg for forgiveness. Feel the fresh air on your face. Turn over in bed. How could she have felt grateful for these things, when she’d never realised they could be taken away from her? And now she might never get them back. Day three. And she still couldn’t speak or move or do anything on demand.

  The young doctors had come into the room again. ‘Hello, Rosie,’ said the boy, leaning up to check her IV. The girl doctor squinted at Rosie.

  ‘Do you think she can hear you?’

  I can, I can! Please look, please see that I’m in here.

  ‘There’s a chance. She’s GSC six, that’s not awful.’ Glasgow Coma Scale, it stood for. Rosie wished she had researched what it meant before all this.

  ‘It’s not great either. It’s just … sometimes I wonder what the point is. The ones who are really far gone, you know. The brain injuries. The people they bring in from the nursing home who don’t even know who they are, let alone why we’re sticking tubes down their throat. It seems cruel.’

  He watched her as she checked Rosie’s read-outs, and he gently adjusted the sheets on the bed. ‘Sometimes we have to hurt them to help them. You learn that on day one of med school.’

  ‘But what if they’d rather we didn’t? What if we just … let people go?’

  He frowned. ‘Zara! You’re saying you’d help someone … end things?’

  ‘Maybe. If they wanted me to. Let’s be honest, the most likely thing is she was trying to kill herself anyway. Who are we to keep her here, if she doesn’t want it?’