by Lulu Taylor
She knew it was true and yet it was so utterly incredible that the knowledge left her numb. As she lay in her hospital bed, stunned and immobile, her leg now heavy with plaster, pictures of Will riffled through her mind: he was standing in the kitchen in his old grey T-shirt, turning to laugh as he poured out coffee; he was heading into the sea in Dorset, Carrie clinging on to his hand as she raced along beside him; he was jiggling Joe on his lap and singing a song to him, making him chortle; he was kissing the children just before they went to sleep. She knew he hadn’t been that Will for quite a while, but even so, how could he possibly want to orphan them, abandon them? How could he imagine leaving them? How could he take her away too? Hot tears leaked from the outer corners of her eyes to be absorbed by the thick white bandages that encased her head.
But I’m still here, she thought. All she knew was that she had to survive.
At first she didn’t even wonder what had happened to Will. No one told her anything. She assumed that he was dead – they’d obviously been in a traumatic crash of enormous impact; he must surely have been killed. She didn’t care, she realised. She hoped he was dead, so that she would never have to face him, look him in the eye, say something to him. Dead or alive, though, he stalked her dreams, trying to get her attention, shout at her, while she ran away as fast as she could, only to come face to face with him around some corner. Sometimes he was trying to get to the children to kill them, and her dream would take her on a desperate, dreadful journey to stop him.
She’d wake, tearful, breathless and panting, and find herself in the relative silence of the night-time ward, trying to recover from the panic. Nausea swirled around her stomach and she almost longed for the release of vomiting. Everything in her was revolted by Will now.
On the first morning, she’d woken to find her brother sitting at her bedside, hunched over with his hands clasped tightly together, his eyes reddened.
‘Em? Em?’ he’d said huskily, his voice shaking a little. ‘Em, are you okay?’
She’d groaned. Speech hadn’t come. Her tongue had been too thickened, her jaw restricted by the bandage wound tightly round her skull. Besides, every tiny movement hurt, and as her brain was moving sluggishly, she couldn’t seem to get her thoughts from her mind to her mouth.
‘Oh God, I can’t believe this.’ Tom blinked hard, his lips tightening. ‘Christ, Em, what happened? You were both nearly killed. Was Will driving too fast? That bloody car of his, I knew it was a deathtrap.’
She’d wanted to shout, He did it on purpose, he tried to kill me! But only another groan came out.
‘You’re all right,’ he said, reaching out and taking her hand. He squeezed it gently. ‘You’ve been amazingly lucky. You’ve broken your leg just above the ankle, and you’re a mass of cuts and bruises, and . . .’ His eyes flickered up over her face and she knew he was looking at the bandages swaddling her head. He looked away from them quickly and smiled at her. ‘And a few other gashes here and there, but you’re going to be fine.’
Fine? Fine seemed an unimaginable condition that might be achieved in some future so remote it was hardly worth considering. All she could do right now was exist from moment to moment, considering in turn the bits of her that hurt or ached or tingled or itched, and wondering how she could endure it.
God, I’m thirsty, she realised. She had been continually thirsty since she had arrived in this place. The little cups of water they gave her to wash down pills were tormentingly small. Despite the dryness of her mouth, there was one word that she managed to force out through her swollen lips. It came out thick and husky.
‘Children,’ she whispered. ‘Children.’
Tom’s grasp tightened around her fingers. ‘Don’t worry, they’re okay. They’re completely fine. They went to Polly’s last night. She can keep them for a bit. I’ll move in and look after them if you need me to.’
In a distant part of her brain, a voice was piping up with problems. Polly couldn’t be expected to look after the children for long; she had three of her own, one of them a small baby. Tom could move in, but how would he know the children’s routine? He was a single man with no real experience of small children. How could it possibly work? But her brain refused to let her care. It knew her limitations, it seemed. It told her that there was nothing she could do but lie here and attempt to recover her strength. As a kind of recompense, it offered another word.
‘Diana, she whispered. Will’s mother would know how to look after the children. She had taken them for weekend stays and knew what they needed.
Tom nodded. ‘She’s here. She’s with Will at the moment. I’ll talk to her as well. I’m sure we can sort out the children between us. You mustn’t worry, Em, we’ll take care of everything.’
She wished it could be so easily solved, this terrible mess she’d woken and found herself in. But between Polly, Diana and Tom, she had to trust that the children would be looked after.
‘Shall I bring them in to see you?’ Tom asked earnestly.
She shook her head as well as she could, a movement that turned out to be tiny, barely more than a shift. She longed for them but she didn’t want them to see her like this, it would frighten them.
‘Maybe another day soon,’ Tom said, understanding. ‘You have to rest. You must sleep and concentrate on healing.’
She sighed. A moment later she slipped into sleep and when she woke again from another racing nightmare, she was alone. It was then that she remembered Tom’s words – You were both nearly killed . . . Diana is with Will – and realised with horror what they meant.
She began to shake and a violent sickness swept through her.
Oh Christ. Will’s alive.
Now here she was standing in front of him, watching his chest rise and fall, obedient to the commands of the machine keeping him in existence, as he occupied the strange half-world between life and death.
Rita carried on her checks, recording the results on Will’s notes. Emily stared hard at the face just visible beneath the tubing, the mask and the bandages.
All I hope is that I never have to see you again in my life.
‘Mrs Conway?’
The consultant smiled down at her. His little flock of medical students hovered behind him, peering over his shoulder with earnest expressions.
She turned to look at him. She’d been in hospital for a lifetime, or so it felt. How long is it? A month? It was something like that. Or perhaps it was just a few weeks.
‘We are going to discharge you today. You can go home.’ He smiled at her with jollity, as though this meant she was completely restored to health, the same Emily as the one before she had arrived here.
‘That’s good,’ she said blankly. Home? She wanted to go home, of course, but here at least she was safe. No one had tried to make her do anything impossible, or tell her things she was too frightened to hear. At home, she would have to start facing life again. It would be her job to piece together the fragments of the existence that had been shattered by Will. She was afraid.
The consultant nodded. ‘You’ll be seen as an outpatient for your leg . . .’ Eight weeks in plaster at least, they said, then physio to rebuild its strength. ‘And as for the facial wounds, they’re healing very nicely.’ He nodded with satisfaction. ‘Very nicely indeed. You’re lucky that Mr Watkins is such a competent plastic surgeon.’
She already knew that something awful lay underneath the bandages down the left side of her face. The thick swaddling had gradually reduced to bulky bandages and was now a dressing taped from the side of her skull down past her ear to the curve of her jaw. It had been lifted and inspected only by medical staff. By the time she was standing in front of the mirror in the loos, it had been covered again, the clean snowy white outer covering making whatever was underneath look benign, almost innocent. When her friends had come in, they’d studiously avoided talking too much about the injury to her face, accepting it when she said, ‘Oh, a bit of a cut, apparently. It’ll be fine.’ She didn’t mentio
n the plastic surgeon’s work, or the intricate cleaning and checking that went on when the nurses uncovered it, or the antibiotics she was on.
‘You’re so lucky!’ they said almost admiringly. ‘It could have been so much worse. Fancy getting out of a crash like that with some minor cuts and a broken leg!’
Then they remembered Will and clutched her hand, offering all their help and support and anything, anything they could do.
She said they were very kind and of course she would ask.
But what can they do?
Besides, it was her dirty secret that if she had her way, Will wouldn’t be lying upstairs being kept alive in a peaceful painless sleep. He’d be dead.
When they’d asked what happened that night, she said she couldn’t remember. The police had come to interview her about the accident, and the insurers had sent an assessor to talk to her as well, and she’d said the same thing: that she had a complete memory blank. They all seemed to understand and accept this, and no one pushed her on it. She didn’t know why she couldn’t tell anyone the truth, except that she felt ashamed of it – perhaps for not being able to stop him, perhaps because only a monster would do such a thing, and how had she not known that’s what he was?
Maybe when she got home, discovered whatever was waiting for her – letters, phone messages – she might be able to start admitting the awful, shaming, stupid, cruel thing that had happened to them, not by accident but by terrible and malicious design. But at the moment it was such a sickeningly awful reflection on Will and by extension on her, that she couldn’t bring herself to imagine telling anyone. It would make her look at all sorts of other things she had hidden from herself.
‘When do I go?’ she asked at last.
‘We’ll start discharge right away,’ the doctor said, ‘and I’ll pass you on to the very competent care of the outpatients’ department. You should be able to leave this afternoon.’
This afternoon? She longed to be in her own space again, with her own bed and bathroom, to have the ability to make a cup of decent tea when she wanted one. She’d craved the presence of the children, their sweet scent and the comfort of their cosy room. But . . . The fear gripped her again. I’m afraid.
‘I’m sure you’ll be pleased to go home,’ said the consultant. ‘You’ll need to arrange for someone to collect you, though. Will that be a problem?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Good. Then goodbye, Mrs Conway, and all the best for your continued recovery.’ He turned to go, his brood of students following obediently.
‘Doctor . . .’
He swung back, peering at her over his glasses. ‘Yes?’
‘I . . . I . . .’ She swallowed. ‘My . . . husband. How is he?’
The smiled faded, his expression became grave. ‘Much the same, I believe. But you’ll need to talk to the staff in intensive care about that.’
Tom came to get her at four o’clock, driving his small white van. Emily limped on her crutches through the wide hospital corridors with their signs to the many departments every few paces. Some of the nurses stopped to say goodbye and good luck, but on the whole, she left unnoticed, feeling as though her trauma was just one small story in this vast house of human sorrow.
The van made slow progress on the way back to the house. Christmas had come and gone in her absence, and the decorations had been taken down. She was grateful to Tom for not talking too much as she absorbed the strange sensation of being out in the world again. She felt unanchored, cut loose, afraid that if she wasn’t careful, she could spiral up and out of the car and away over the London sky. It was such a curious feeling – knowing that she was going home after leaving weeks before, thinking she was going to a party.
‘Diana’s going to bring the children back later,’ Tom said conversationally. ‘And I’m going to stay with you for a while. No arguments.’
‘Okay,’ Emily agreed, relieved. She didn’t want any kind of argument. She could only take kindness at the moment.
‘Polly’s going to look in too. Apparently your freezer is full to bursting with stews and lasagnes. The girls have all been busy.’
‘That’s nice,’ she said. The thought of the fridge packed with homely, comforting food was a balance to the fear she felt of whatever was lying on the mat.
Tom slid his gaze across to her as he drove. ‘You okay?’
She nodded. Of course she wasn’t okay. But she was alive and she was going home to the children. That was all that mattered right now.
Tom parked in front of the house. From the outside it looked just the same, perhaps a little abandoned, with no sign of life behind the windows. The burglar alarm was off. No one could have set it since they’d left that night. She felt a sudden feverish hope that there had been a break-in and everything inside had been taken, so that she could consider the past utterly wiped out and she would be free to start again with the children. Then she felt just as severe a panic that it might have been, and she’d be left stripped bare of her entire life.
Oh God, I have no idea what I want. Why has everything become so terrible? Why the hell did this have to happen?
The picture of Will on his bed rose before her eyes again and she felt the same murderous rage, the desire to yank out the tubes and then pick something up and begin to pound it down on his head and . . .
She gasped for breath under the onslaught of her rage, trying to damp it down and hide the dread cramping her chest as Tom got her keys from the plastic bag that contained all her possessions. The evening purse she’d had on the night of the crash had vanished along with her dress and shoes. Polly had brought in the clothes she was wearing. Tom came round to her side and helped her get out of the car. She moved slowly, manoeuvring her plastered leg and taking the crutches from Tom. She watched apprehensively as he went ahead down the path and unlocked the house. The front door swung open but the mat was clear of post, just littered with a few circulars. As she limped inside behind him, her gaze flew to the hall table and there it was: a neat pile of unopened envelopes. The coloured ones were probably get-well and sympathy cards, but there were enough manila and white window-fronted ones to make her feel sick and shaky.
Ignore them for now. They’ll wait a bit longer.
The house had a musty chill from being unoccupied. Tom went about switching on lights and the heating, and getting the kettle on so that they could make some coffee while Emily was mute, overwhelmed by the force of the emotions racing through her as she looked at all the familiar things in their places, all blamelessly normal and somehow touchingly unaware that everything had changed.
When they had their coffee and were sitting at the kitchen table, Emily’s crutches propped against a chair, Tom tried to keep the atmosphere as jolly as possible but eventually he paused and said gently, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
She gazed at him. He was her junior by four years but they’d always been close. They looked alike, people said, though she couldn’t see it. Tom was good-looking, with bright blue eyes, regular features in a well-shaped face and a slightly pointed chin. His sandy hair was short and untidy, and he wore dark stubble speckled with sandy patches. She felt that they’d been closer since their parents had died, now that it was just the two of them left, but of course it had been hard lately to see him often when she had the children and the busyness of daily life to negotiate. She felt a rush of gratitude that he was here for her now. ‘You mean talk about the accident?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ An expression of worry crossed his face. ‘You’ve hardly spoken about it . . . about what happened. You’ve hardly mentioned the fact that Will is . . . so ill.’
She stared back at him. Inside her head, a flurry of words began, a breathless explanation that felt as though it would never stop. But she couldn’t begin to get the torrent to her lips. I can’t tell him. I can’t tell anyone. I’ve already lost enough. I can’t have them all knowing the truth.
Tom looked down into his mug. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t
press you. You’re probably still in shock. It’s such a huge thing to happen to you. But I’m worried. I won’t lie about that.’ He looked back up at her, sorrow in his eyes. ‘It’s brought back such awful memories, Em . . . of when Mum and Dad died. Their accident. I thought I’d lost you too.’
‘I know. I’m so sorry to put you through that.’ She bit her lip. She’d guessed how awful it must have been for him, to think his sister might die in the same senseless way their parents had been killed. ‘But I’m still here.’
‘You’re not yourself, though I suppose that’s hardly surprising. I thought it might help to talk a bit, that’s all. You haven’t said a word about how you feel.’
Emily wrapped her chilly fingers around the hot mug, relishing the sting of heat. That was another thing. She’d been constantly cold since the accident. She was thinner, perhaps that was why. But this tingling chill in her hands and feet was frequently there, banished only when she finally managed to sleep. She longed for a hot bath to soothe and comfort her, but with this plaster on her leg, it was impossible.
She knew she had to speak. She wanted to tell Tom what was wrong but she felt an impassable barrier between the words in her head and her mouth. She couldn’t tell him, or anyone, the truth about the crash. There was a darkness around it that she couldn’t bear to look into herself, let alone speak about. She opened her mouth and let her thoughts emerge as they wanted. ‘Diana came to see me yesterday,’ she said.
Tom glanced up, glad that she had initiated something. ‘Yes? What did she say?’
‘It wasn’t the first time she came. She visited me just after the accident. She didn’t say much then – just held my hand and said, “I’m sorry”.’
‘We’re all sorry,’ Tom replied earnestly. ‘More than you can know.’
‘No, not like that. She wasn’t saying that she sympathised. She was apologising.’
‘Apologising?’ Tom frowned. ‘For what?’
‘The accident.’
‘Why should she apologise for it? She wasn’t to blame.’