by Jill Mansell
‘Sorry about the glitter,’ Ellie told the nurse when she came back to do his vital signs.
‘It doesn’t matter a bit. We’ll just wipe it off with some damp cotton wool, shall we, so it doesn’t get into his eyes. Now, do you want me to see if we’ve got some spare clothes you can change into, or can you call a friend to bring something in?’
It still felt like the middle of the night, but the clock on the wall showed it was nine thirty. And it was light outside. With a jolt, Ellie realized she was supposed to be at work. Out in the real world, life was carrying on as if nothing had happened.
‘Um, I’ll call a friend.’
Outside again, she rang work. Paula answered the phone and let out a squeal of mock indignation. ‘You lazy bum, I had way more to drink than you last night and I managed to get in here on time!’
‘Oh, Paula, I’m at the hospital and I need you to h-help me…’
***
Hollow-eyed with lack of sleep and gripped with grief, Ellie stayed at Jamie’s bedside. The chemical antiseptic smell of the ward seeped into her skin. Doctors came and went. Various medical tests were carried out. Paula arrived in a taxi and floods of horrified tears, with a change of clothes and toiletries, and a hastily purchased Get Well card for Jamie signed by everyone at work. Not allowed into the unit, she clutched Ellie’s hands and kept sobbing, ‘You poor thing, I can’t believe it,’ and, ‘He’s going to be all right though, isn’t he?I mean, he’s not going to die?’
Numbly, Ellie submitted to the hugs. It was a relief when Paula finally unpeeled herself and left. All she wanted was to get back to Jamie and listen to the bips.
More hours passed, then the nurse came and told her that Todd was outside. This time, in lieu of family and because he was Jamie’s oldest and closest friend, the nurses agreed to let him on to the ward.
Ellie’s stomach clenched at the sight of Todd as he made his way over to the bed. There were cuts and bruises on his head and hands; kept in overnight for observation, he was limping but otherwise OK. He put his arms around her but she felt herself shrink away. She didn’t want to be touched and hugged; her skin was too sensitive. It was like having the flu, when it hurt to even brush your hair. How could two people be in the same car, in the same car crash, and one of them escape with scarcely any injuries at all?
It was unfair. So unfair. Fond though she was of Todd, what had he ever done to get off practically scot-free? Why did it have to be Jamie lying unconscious in the bed? Not that she could say this out loud, it wouldn’t be polite and it might hurt Todd’s feelings. Anyway, that was the thing about life and fate; it never was fair. Horrific things happened to good people and brilliant things happened to bad ones.
And it wasn’t as if Todd was even bad. It was just that out of the two of them, he wasn’t the one she loved with all her heart.
But he did love Jamie. Sitting back down, Ellie watched him move across to the bed and rest a hand on Jamie’s bare shoulder. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he gazed, ashen-faced, at his best friend.
Bip. Bip. Bip.
Bip. Bip.
Bippppppppppppppppppp…
‘Oh God, what’s happening? No no no—’
‘Don’t panic.’ The nurse bustled over, reclipped the electrode lead that had popped off when Todd’s sleeve had brushed Jamie’s clavicle. ‘There you go,’ she said as the regular bips resumed. ‘All fixed.’
‘Sorry.’ Visibly shaken, Todd backed away from the bed and wiped a slick of perspiration from his upper lip.
When the nurse had left them alone again, Ellie said, ‘How did it happen?’
‘I don’t know.’ A helpless shrug. ‘We weren’t going too fast. The car just took a bend and went into a skid. It was like slow motion, but kind of speeded up at the same time. I said, “Oh shit,” and Jamie said, “Oh fuck.”’ His knuckles turning white with the effort of holding back the tears, Todd said, ‘We didn’t even know there was ice on the road until it was too late.’ His voice broke. ‘And then we just… went.’
***
Todd had left. More tests were carried out. Jamie’s bruises grew bluer. Night came and so did Jamie’s father; calling the unit, Tony informed them that he had just landed at Heathrow and was on his way to the hospital. The nurse who spoke to him recognized his voice and put two and two together. Within minutes, word had spread that Jamie was the son of Tony Weston… you know, the actor. Behind the professional exteriors, excitement grew. Watching them, hoping against hope, Ellie wondered if this meant they would somehow make more of an effort to help Jamie recover. Because if all they needed was an incentive to try harder, maybe she should offer them cash.
Then a vivid mental image sprang into her mind and she smiled, just fractionally, at the thought of explaining that to Jamie when he arrived home, gazed in disbelief at the bank statement, and demanded to know why she’d emptied their joint account.
Forty minutes later, Tony appeared. In his midfifties, tanned, and handsome, he was immediately recognizable to the staff as the respected actor who had moved to America and made his name as the quintessential upper-class Englishman, despite having been born and raised in a two-up two-down on a council estate in Basingstoke. If everyone else on the unit was discreetly thrilled to be seeing him in the flesh, Ellie felt only relief. She no longer had to be the one in charge. Jamie’s dad was here and he was a proper grown-up. Tears of exhaustion leaked out of her eyes as he hugged her.
‘Oh, sweetheart.’ It was all Tony said, all he needed to say. He smelled of airplanes and coffee and expensively laundered shirts; he was also unshaven. Turning his attention to Jamie, he gazed at him in silence and seemed to vibrate with pain. Finally he murmured, ‘Oh, my baby boy,’ and his voice cracked with grief.
The doctor materialized within minutes and introduced himself. Ellie watched him carry out the various neurological tests the doctors had been performing at regular intervals since Jamie’s arrival in the unit. She studied the expression on the man’s face, searching for clues, waiting for him to stop looking so grim and break into a smile of relief before turning to them and saying, ‘He’s really on the mend now, give him another couple of hours and then he’ll start waking up.’
Go on, say it.
Please, just say it.
The smile didn’t happen. She and Tony sat together in silence at Jamie’s bedside and watched the still-serious doctor write something in the hospital notes. Finally he turned to face them and Ellie felt as if her chair had been abruptly pulled away. A great rushing sound filled her ears; was this nature’s way of drowning out the words she already knew she didn’t want to hear?
The rushing sound was loud, but sadly not loud enough to do that. Fear coagulated like cement in her chest. Next to her, Tony was shaking his head slightly but the rest of his body had turned to stone. One of the senior nurses came to stand close to them, a sympathetic look on her face.
Don’t do this, please don’t say it, Jamie might hear you…
‘I’m so very sorry,’ the doctor said, ‘but the tests that have been performed are conclusive. There is no remaining cerebral function.’ He paused. ‘Do you understand what that means?’
No, no, nooooooo…
‘You’re telling us his brain is dead.’ There was a world of agony in Tony’s words. ‘He’s gone. My boy’s gone.’
The doctor inclined his head in somber agreement. ‘I’m afraid he has.’
Chapter 3
Fifteen months later
‘Look, are you sure you don’t fancy the cinema?’ It was Friday, it was five o’clock, and Paula was clearing the debris from her office desk, cramming makeup back into her oversized handbag, along with her work shoes, a half-full bottle of Fanta, and a packet of Kettle chips to keep her going on the bus home. ‘Because if you want to come along, honestly, that’d be great, we’d love to have you with us.’
Ellie was touched; it was like two balloons inviting a hedgehog along on their night out. Two newly-in-love balloons on
their romantic night out, at that. It was thoughtful of Paula to make the offer but she wouldn’t dream of taking her up on it. Paula and Dan had only been seeing each other for three weeks and Paula was doing her best to pretend she wasn’t completely crazy about him, but it was obvious that she was besotted. It was yet another of the alleged ‘secrets’ she, Ellie, was supposed to be unaware of in order to spare both everyone else’s feelings and her own.
‘Thanks, but I’m fine. I want to get to B&Q and pick up the wallpaper I ordered.’ Did that sound boring? Oh well, never mind, dull but true.
Paula paused and gave her the sympathetic look she’d come to know so well. Then she said brightly, ‘Well, that’ll be nice, won’t it? When it’s done, I mean. Is this for the living room?’
Ellie nodded. There was black mold growing on the living room walls. Since scrubbing it off and painting over it hadn’t worked, covering the whole lot with wallpaper appeared to be the next logical step.
‘Well, look, if you want some help with that tomorrow, me and Dan could come over and give you a hand if you like. I mean, I’ve never done any wallpapering before, but it can’t be too hard, can it?’
Eek, Paula had enough trouble putting her lipstick on straight.
‘You’re all right, I can manage it myself.’ Grateful for the offer, Ellie slung her bag over her shoulder and gave her a hug. ‘Anyway, I won’t be doing any tomorrow. Tony’s over for a few days and he’s taking me out to lunch.’
‘He is? Oh, that’s great.’ Relieved to have been let off the hook, Paula said with enthusiasm, ‘You lucky thing!’ Then she winced and clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘God, sorry. I’m so stupid!’
It had happened dozens of times. Maybe hundreds. No matter how often Ellie told her to stop worrying about it and apologizing, Paula kept right on doing it. At work, everyone did; it was a kind of Pavlovian reaction they couldn’t control.
‘Anyway, I am lucky. We’re meeting at the Ivy.‘
‘Wow.’
‘Meeting at the Ivy, eating at McDonald’s.’
Paula’s eyes widened. ‘Really?’
So sweet, so well-meaning, so easy to tease. ‘No, not really.’ Ellie relented with a smile. ‘We’ll probably have lunch at the Ivy too.’
***
‘Bloody… bloody… bloody useless sodding stuff…’ By midnight Ellie was ready to murder the wallpaper. Hanging on to the stepladder and jabbing wildly at the top right-hand corner of the length she’d been battling to hang for the last forty minutes, she had no hands free to prevent the adjoining section from unpeeling itself and rolling down the wall.
‘Right, that’s it, I’ve had enough of you!’ Letting out a shriek she launched herself at the first bit, missed, and gave the pasted wall a slap that made her palm sting. OK, now the wallpaper had made her so mad she was turning into Basil Fawlty. Time to stop. It wasn’t her fault; she’d just been sold unhangable wallpaper or non-stick wallpaper or something. OK, let it all fall down if that’s what it wanted to do. Leave it, just step away from the carnage and get a Kit Kat out of the fridge instead.
Returning from the kitchen, Ellie turned her back on the desperate scene—it had all unpeeled itself now—and threw herself down on the sofa. She unwrapped the Kit Kat and began flicking through the TV channels. Ooh, lovely, Sleepless in Seattle, how long had it been on?
Then Jamie came into the living room and joined her on the sofa. He was wearing his old jeans and the pink shirt he’d refused to put on for his school reunion. He wore it a lot these days. Ellie loved to see him in it and she’d been right about the color; it was great on him. She knew what suited Jamie better than he did.
‘Great job with the wallpapering.’ He grinned at her, sitting sideways with one leg hooked beneath the other and his bare foot inches from her knee.
‘I know. I’m brilliant.’ Ellie took in every detail of his face, the sparkling blue eyes, the sun-streaked blond hair, the golden tan.
‘You should turn professional. People would pay a lot of money to have their homes decorated like this. You know what this is, don’t you?’ Jamie nodded seriously, indicating the bare walls, the crumpled, fallen-down paper. ‘It’s postmodern shabby chic.’
‘If you’d bothered to give me a hand I might have had more luck,’ said Ellie.
‘Ah, but it’s so much more fun watching you try to do it yourself.’
‘You mean you’re too lazy to help.’
He smiled sadly at her. ‘Oh, sweetheart, I would if I could. You know that.’
Ellie felt the familiar prickle of heat behind her eyes. Of course she knew that. They’d worked so hard together to make this flat their own. And she wasn’t going to cry. ‘OK, that’s enough, you can go now. I’m going to watch this film.’
He turned his head, gazed at the TV screen with suspicion. As well he might. ‘Is it a slushy girlie film?’
He knew her so well. Ellie nodded. ‘Oh yes.’
Jamie held up his hands in horror; sci-fi and war movies were more his thing. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Bye, gorgeous.’
‘Bye.’
But the film wasn’t able to hold her attention tonight. After ten minutes, unable to settle into it, Ellie switched off the TV. She could get Jamie back, but she wouldn’t. It was starting to concern her, just slightly, that it wasn’t quite normal to be doing what she’d been doing for the last year. Because Jamie wasn’t here anymore. And he wasn’t a ghost either. All she did was conjure up a mental image of him in her mind, talk to him, and have him talk back as if he were real. At school, her teachers had forever been telling her that she had a vivid imagination. Well, they’d been right. And now she was putting it to good use. Because imagining that Jamie was still around, she had discovered, was actually a really comforting thing to do. Like thumb-sucking or clutching a manky old security blanket, it just made her feel… better. At least, it did while she was actually doing it. Sometimes, afterwards, it made her feel worse, bereft and alone and sadder than ever. But most of the time it was good. If Jamie could appear as a real ghost… well, obviously that would be fantastic, but so far it hadn’t happened; he hadn’t obliged in that respect and she didn’t believe in ghosts anyway. Besides, this way she could be in charge of his clothes. If she wanted Jamie to wear a dinner jacket or a tutu there wasn’t a thing he could do about it besides complain bitterly.
Ellie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand; sometimes she didn’t realize she’d been crying until the tears slid off her chin and dripped down her neck. She missed Jamie so much she sometimes wondered how she’d managed to carry on, but it had been fifteen months now, and one way or another she had. Maybe she was going a bit batty, conjuring Jamie up and having imaginary conversations with him, but it was her coping mechanism and she wasn’t ready to give it up yet.
***
Ellie always looked forward to her lunches with Jamie’s dad when he came over to England. They had each lost the most important person in their lives and their meetings could so easily have been morbid, but Tony never allowed that to happen. Obviously the grief was still there but, in public at least, it wasn’t dwelt on. Instead, they talked about Jamie, celebrating his memory and recalling happier times. They laughed a lot, ate well, generally ended up sinking a couple of bottles of the kind of wine she’d never dream of buying herself, and ended up coming away with precious snippets of information they hadn’t known before about the boy they’d both loved.
This was the best bit; it was like discovering buried treasure. Today, amid the busy, buzzy atmosphere of the Ivy, Tony had already regaled her with the story of Jamie’s sixth birthday party, when one of the young girls had demanded a kiss in return for giving him his present and Jamie, utterly horrified, had promptly handed the still-wrapped gift back.
‘He was never that wild about social kissing.’ Ellie grinned, the tale triggering a memory of her own. ‘The first time he met the girls from work, one of them gave him a kiss on the cheek at the end of the evening, and you should h
ave seen the look on his face. You’d think she’d licked him.’ She demonstrated Jamie’s reaction at the time, the way he’d grimaced and shrunk back. Then she spluttered with laughter, realizing that the waiter attempting to top up their wine glasses thought she was pulling a face and leaning away from him.
‘Speaking of which, anything happening in that direction?’
It wasn’t the first time Tony had broached the subject. He raised his eyebrows, nodding meaningfully to indicate that he was talking about her. Specifically, had she kissed or been kissed by another man yet? ‘No, no. Nothing.’ Ellie shook her head. ‘It’ll happen.’ His smile was reassuring. ‘Sooner or later.’ Later, then. She wasn’t remotely ready for anything like that. Just the thought of it made her feel sick. Apart from anything else, what if Jamie was watching her from somewhere, like through celestial CCTV? What if he didn’t approve?
Ellie dipped a tiger prawn in hollandaise. Not believing in ghosts was one thing, but heaven was another matter. You could never rule out the possibility that they were up there, looking down. Aloud she said, ‘I know. But not yet.’
Timing was Tony’s forte. Effortlessly changing the subject, he took an appreciative sip of white wine—the bottle had cost eighty-five pounds!—and said, ‘How’s the flat? Did those noisy neighbors of yours move out?’
‘Oh yes. Two weeks ago, thank God.’ She smiled and didn’t elaborate; he didn’t need to know that the replacements were shaping up to be a hundred times worse. The last family had played Eminem pretty loudly, quite often. The new lot made them look like rank amateurs. In the last fortnight there had been half a dozen major fights, the police had been round most nights, and the family’s dogs barked nonstop. Worst of all, Eminem had been replaced by Celine Dion and Josh Groban.