Adam’s mind.
The place where we’ve met in the middle.
I cling to him and he rhythmically strokes my back.
‘It’s okay,’ he says, but that only makes me cry harder. It isn’t okay. It isn’t okay at all. I try to calm myself. I’ve lost all concept of time, unsure how long I’ve been here. How long I have before I’m back in the Institute with my husband. My husband who can’t talk, laugh, move. Who can’t press me close to his body and whisper my name into my hair. I don’t want to waste a single second.
‘Adam.’ I wriggle backwards so I can see him properly. My fingertips brushing his face, his collarbone, his chest. Tracing the map-shaped birthmark on his arm, reassuring myself he is here, he is real and solid. I search his eyes for a sign that he knows that our meeting is only fleeting, that this is not our reality, but there is nothing.
‘Adam, I…’ What can I say? What should I say? What would be the point of telling him that this version of him, of us, is one his mind has conjured. That his real body lies broken in Alircia, kept alive by machines. I look around the room. The Yankee candle I always burn in the evenings is flickering on top of the drawers. I inhale; instead of the sterile smell of the scanner – bleach and disinfectant – there’s the aroma of lavender. It’s so real. I am incredulous that it isn’t. I tug the corner of the duvet towards my face to wipe my tears; it smells of Comfort fabric softener.
It smells of home.
‘Anna?’
A hint of a frown passes across Adam’s forehead. My throat tightens. Normal, I must act normal.
But I can’t.
For the second time, I wind my arms around his neck and press my body close to his. He hasn’t shaved and his chin scratches against my cheek. Before, I would have complained at this but instead my laughter merges with my sobs until I am hiccupping, not sure what I am feeling.
I am feeling everything.
I pull away from him, giggling.
‘Okay. Tears I could understand, but laughter? Should I be paranoid?’ He adjusts his boxers. ‘Nope, nothing hanging out there. Want to share the joke?’
‘Sorry… I’m just… happy.’ It’s too small a word to describe how utterly joyous it is to be with him at home where everything is so… perfect.
‘Right. Well, happy. Yeah… me too.’ He grins. ‘Still hasn’t sunk in, has it?’
‘Ummm. No?’ For one horrible second I think he is referring to the accident. That would explain his ‘tears I could understand’ remark. While I wait for him to speak, I wipe my eyes with my pyjama sleeve.
‘Not for me either, but the book told me your moods would be up and down. Crying is normal.’
‘The book?’ I’m not following him at all. There’s a book about yacht accidents?
‘Yeah. I know you told me to stop reading it since I told you it said it will take nine months to get your extra weight off, but I know see-sawing emotions are because of your hormones. It’s only to be expected in your condition.’ He smiles as he places a hand on my stomach.
‘In my…’ A movement in my belly knocks the air from my lungs. I place my hand on top of his, my eyes straying down towards my bump.
My bump!
‘That’s all it is, isn’t it, Anna? Hormones.’ His eyes darken as he studies me. ‘Everything’s been better since Alircia, hasn’t it? Or since this little one?’ He gently pats my tummy. I begin to cry again, shifting myself up to sitting so I can reach a tissue and mop up my tears.
‘I’ll go and make you a tea.’ He swings his legs out of bed.
‘No.’ I grasp his wrist, not wanting him to leave me, however momentarily. I remember what Mum wished she’d said to Dad. ‘Adam, I… I would cope okay without you, you know. I’d be okay on my own.’
He turns and studies me. I can’t remember the last time we properly made eye contact; not fleeting glances at each other while we talked about the mundane, but properly drank each other in. In this moment I feel so connected to him, but when he speaks his tone is clipped and I realize I have inadvertently upset him.
‘I know we’ve had a tough few years and the pregnancy isn’t a sticking plaster; we have to work at healing the wound but—’
‘Christ.’ I cut him off. ‘Where did you get that analogy from? The book?’ Automatically I fall into the defensive. Why does he take everything the wrong way?
‘So what if I’ve been reading up? Some of us want our family to work.’
‘I want our family to work!’ I’m crying again. I can’t believe we’re bickering.
‘So what’s all this “I’ll be okay on my own” bollocks?’
‘I just… I don’t know. I just wanted you to know that if anything happened to you… I wouldn’t want you to worry.’
‘Ah. This is antenatal anxiety—’
‘I love that you’ve researched all of this. Really. I’m sorry.’ I take his hand. I don’t know how much longer we have and I don’t want to waste a second.
‘Don’t be. It’s really common. Let me go and make a drink and we’ll have a cuddle.’
‘I don’t want—’
‘It’s okay. I remember you’re off caffeine. I picked up some more chamomile on the way home.’ He unpeels my fingers and I am left alone as his footfall thuds down the stairs. I’m terrified I might never see him again. While I blow my nose, I scan the room. In the corner, the chair heaped with a pile of Adam’s T-shirts. His red Coca-Cola one. His faded brown Oasis tour T-shirt. The sight of my jewellery box causes my fingers to flutter to my neck. I’m wearing my star pendant. The one I’d packed away when Adam and I started going through a bad patch. When I was unable to conceive. I trace the curve of my belly with my fingertips.
I’m pregnant.
I try to gauge how far along I am. Six months? Seven? Eight? It’s impossible to tell. My body feels heavy. I pad over to my drawers and lift out the tissue paper-wrapped parcel. Back in bed I gently unwrap it, lifting out the tiny lemon sleepsuit and the Percy the Parrot cuddly toy.
Adam saunters back into the room in his familiar green tartan pyjamas, carrying two mugs, a packet of chocolate digestives tucked under his elbow, the way he always used to before my love for him turned bitter and cold and I’d bitch about the crumbs in bed. The chocolate stains on the duvet. It’s as though we’ve regressed back to our honeymoon phase but instead we’ve moved forward.
We are having a baby!
My heart sings.
Happily I drape the sleepsuit over my bump while Adam examines Percy the Parrot with joy.
‘I’d almost forgotten about him!’ he exclaims.
‘It seems so long ago since we were first in Alircia,’ I say.
‘It seems so long ago that we were last in Alircia.’ Adam rips open the biscuits and takes one out, biting it in half. Crumbs scatter onto the duvet but I don’t tut and dramatically brush them off. Instead I reach for a biscuit and snap a piece off, placing it on my tongue and letting the chocolate dissolve. ‘We need another holiday! We’ll have to go back once this little one makes his appearance.’
‘His?’ I ask.
‘Or hers. I’m glad we never found out at the scan. What do you say to the three of us on a beach?’
‘I’m in no rush to go back to Alircia.’ If I never see the island again it will be too soon.
‘Why?’ His face falls. ‘It’s our special place. It’s because it was a different sort of break, wasn’t it?’
‘Different? How?’
‘You know. With you being in the first few weeks of pregnancy and me not letting you do anything. No sightseeing. No yacht trips. No coach journeys to tourist attractions. Were you bored?’
The space in my throat constricts. He has created a fiction that kept me safe, him safe, us safe. Our lives carrying on in the way they probably would have done had the yacht accident never have happened.
‘I wasn’t bored,’ I whisper.
‘Good because I have plans for the three of us. I think we should go travelling. Tak
e the trip I’d planned before I met you.’
‘I don’t know. With a baby? Is it safe?’
‘You’re always safe with me, Anna. I’d never let anything happen to you.’
I think about the way he’d twice risked his life to save me. If only he hadn’t gone back to help that elderly woman. His thumb traces my cheekbone. I turn my head to kiss his palm. He smells of coffee and chocolate and Adam.
‘Oh God. You’re not going to cry again, are you? Christ, woman, we’ll never be able to go anywhere because we’ll have spent all our savings on bloody tissues.’
‘No, I’m not going to cry.’ I take a deep breath. ‘We can go anywhere you want to, Adam. Do anything.’
‘You hear that, Percy?’ He lifts the parrot to eye level. ‘A world trip awaits us. In the meantime, Mrs Curtis…’ He waggles his eyebrows and I feel frisson of excitement. A desire to be touched.
‘Yes, Mr Curtis.’
‘I’m going to finish this chapter before we go to sleep.’ He twists around and picks a kindle up from his bedside table.
‘Adam…’ I feel incredibly sad for every mean thing I’ve ever said. Incredibly regretful. ‘Why don’t you read a paperback tonight?’
‘Are you kidding me? You’ve converted me to e-readers now. I love that you fall asleep on me and I don’t have to worry my light is keeping you awake.’ He turns and clicks off his lamp and I do the same. He wriggles an arm under my shoulders and I mould my body around his. By the glow of his kindle I study his face, the movement of his eyes as he scans the page, the twitch of a smile.
It’s a perfect, perfect moment until it’s spoiled by Oliver’s voice, deep and cutting.
‘I’m going to bring you back now, Anna.’ Panic bites. I want to remain in this make-believe world where the accident never happened, where our holiday continued without tragedy, I didn’t lose our baby and everything is as it would have been in the life we almost had.
Ten
I hold Adam’s hand tighter as though I can prevent the glue holding us together from becoming unstuck.
Nine
As though I can somehow prevent Oliver bringing me back.
Eight
Adam.
Seven
Anna?
Six
My lips press against his skin.
Five
I love you, I whisper.
Four
I love you too. He turns back to his book.
Three
Oliver, don’t make me leave him.
Two
Don’t bring me back.
One
The air is cooler as I am brought out of the scanner. The goggles are lifted from my face, the headphones from my ears. I twist my head to see Adam’s motionless body beside me.
I begin to cry.
It takes a few minutes for the dizzying sickness to pass and then I sit up. There’s a throbbing in my head. Blood streaking from my nose and Luis dabs at it with a tissue. Sofia presses a glass of water into my hand and I take a sip.
Oliver tries to be patient but he can’t help firing questions at me I am not yet ready to answer. I want to be alone. To hold the pictures that are fading too fast from my mind and cherish them.
Normal. It was all so normal.
Adam could have been drifting in his consciousness through Belgium, Italy, Thailand. All the places he’d dreamed he’d go. Instead he is at home with me. A child still on the way.
And we are happy. The version of us who are excited and hopeful and preparing to be parents.
On some level, in Adam’s mind, we are together and we are happy.
Chapter Forty-Five
Oliver
Anna is pale. Agitated as she twists the corner of the tissue in her hand into a sharp point before dabbing at the blood still leaking from her nose.
‘We couldn’t see anything on the screen,’ Oliver says again.
‘I’m not making it up,’ Anna insists. ‘I can see how you might think I’d be so desperate to talk to Adam again I might have fabricated it all, but I didn’t. I was back at home and everything was… normal.’
Oliver scratches notes on his pad. Usually he’d type on his laptop but the way his computer had let him down by failing to record the trial had left a desire to go back to basics. Computer readings were often wrong or missing during trials, but it didn’t make it any easier knowing that.
‘If I’d imagined it,’ Anna says, ‘I wouldn’t have imagined it that way. There was a point when we were bickering the way we used to but… I was there. He was there.’ Anna’s expression is so earnest that Oliver believes her. The computer may not have recorded it, but it has worked. Despite his years of research, Oliver is staggered that it has. On the outside he is composed, studiously documenting Anna’s account of her journey, but on the inside he is singing. Dancing. Frothing open the champagne. This is revolutionary. He has built a bridge between the subconscious and the conscious. It really will change lives.
Clem would be so proud of him. She’d also tell him he should be looking after Anna. Oliver feels a pang of shame as he notices the droop of her eyes. The yawn she’s stifling.
‘Do you want to go and have a lie down?’ he asks.
‘Yes, please.’ She stands, her shoulders rounded as she begins to shuffle away. ‘Oliver?’ She turns, their eyes meet and then hers flicker away from his. For a second he is tense. Certain she is going to ask for arrangements to be made for Adam to be flown home. Instead she says, ‘How soon can we repeat this?’ He relaxes.
‘Luis will check Adam over again and you need another physical and to talk to Eva. I want to be certain that there are no delayed reactions and we’ll take it from there, okay?’
‘Okay. But… when?’
‘I’m concerned about your nosebleed, Anna. The throbbing you’ve described in your head.’ Her face shadows. ‘I’m glad you’ve told me your head hurts. It’s important that I know these things. Let’s take it step by step. Get some rest and I’ll come and see you later.’
It is dusk when Oliver taps on Anna’s door.
‘How are you feeling?’
She yawns. ‘Fine. I can’t believe I’ve slept. I saw Sofia before I crashed but I haven’t spoken to Eva yet. Is she still around?’
‘She’s finished for the day. Don’t worry, you can see her in the morning. Join me downstairs for dinner? We can talk.’
‘Give me a sec.’ Anna crosses over to Adam and kisses his lips before moving the coin on his bedside table closer to him.
In the cafeteria, Oliver asks, ‘What’s the coin for?’
‘It’s the coin my grandad used to win my nan’s heart.’ Anna laughs at the expression on Oliver’s face. ‘No really.’ She explains about the jukebox. About the coin passing back and forth between her grandparents and now back and forth between her and Adam. ‘Did you and Clem have any rituals?’
‘No,’ Oliver began. ‘Yes, actually. She used to press a finger against her lips. It was her way of telling me that she loved me when she couldn’t say it. From across a room, that sort of thing.’ Oliver fiddles with the salt pot. ‘It was the last thing she ever did.’
‘Oh, Oliver.’ Anna rubs the top of his arm. ‘You must miss her terribly.’
‘You think you know how you’ll feel when you lose someone you love, but you don’t. You can’t possibly imagine it. She’s everywhere and yet she isn’t here. Her absence makes her more present in a way. That doesn’t make any sense, does it?’ Oliver can recite facts and figures but he has never been good at expressing his emotions.
‘It does. She fills your mind.’
Oliver nods. ‘Yes, that’s it. And I haven’t just lost her but I’ve lost everything else I wanted to be. A father. A grandfather. We hadn’t planned on having kids for another few years but we would have done. Eventually.’
‘A child would be a comfort,’ Anna says.
‘Sorry. That was insensitive of me.’ Oliver is horrified at his thoughtlessness. ‘I know you
’ve suffered a miscarriage recently. Do you want to talk about it?’
Anna scrapes her hair back with both hands before letting it fall free again. ‘There’s not much to say. We’d wanted a baby for such a long time and now…’ She looks sorrowfully at her flat stomach. ‘Now I’m left with that empty, unbearable sadness that I’ll never get to meet them. Him or her. Harry or Charlotte.’
‘I’m so sorry, Anna.’
‘I… I was pregnant today, when I went back. About seven or eight months, I think.’
Oliver processes this for a moment.
‘I didn’t tell you earlier because… it’s personal. My life and yet,’ she shakes her head, ‘it isn’t my life.’ She sweeps her arm around the room. ‘This is my reality unfortunately.’
‘If I could change things for you, I would.’
Their food arrives and the conversation lightens to the tourist attractions on the island. Anna tells him about the lava caves she had visited with Adam when they first met.
‘Have you been?’
‘No,’ Oliver says. ‘I’m a bit all work and no play, I’m afraid.’
‘It was incredible. Each one was a themed room with furniture and everything. All underground. There was even a dance floor.’
‘Ah, now I definitely won’t go. Nobody needs to see me dancing. Clem said I resembled somebody with their finger stuck in a plug socket.’ He makes jerky movements with his arms. ‘Adam thinks he’s Kevin Bacon in Footloose,’ Anna smiles.
‘Stick on the soundtrack and he’ll be up there doing his thing.’
‘I’ve never seen that film,’ Oliver admits.
‘Adam would be horrified to hear that. He’s obsessed with Eighties music and movies.’
They finish eating, lingering over coffee.
‘So…’ Anna looks at him intently. ‘Can we… can I take part in the trial again?’
‘I don’t know, Anna. I should probably take it back to development stage and check everything is safe. Something isn’t right with the computer not recording and then there’s your nosebleed and headache.’
‘How long would that take?’ Anna asks.
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