A Year and a Day

by Isabelle Broom

  There was a harsh rasping sound in her ears, and Sophie realised with bewildered alarm that it was coming from her. She was gasping for breath and gripped the wall tighter, her fingernails bending as she drove them hard into the wet stone. Black spots began to merge with the relentlessly falling snow, and she was aware of a tight sensation in her chest.

  ‘Sophie, are you okay?’

  A different voice this time, a man, someone she knew.

  ‘I can’t …’ she began, but there was no air to inflate her words, and they lay limp and useless in her throat.

  She was aware of movement, of people approaching her, and she lurched forward and leaned right over the side of the wall, the bile burning the inside of her mouth as she heaved and spluttered.

  ‘Sophie, let me help you.’

  She looked up as the blond figure finally stepped towards her, felt the surge of love rattle its way through her, and got ready to throw herself into Robin’s arms. But no. This man was not Robin.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ She shrank away from him, her voice restored by the shock of seeing him. He hesitated for a moment, then moved forward again, but Sophie was too quick for him. In just three swift movements she was standing up on the wall of the bridge, a single step between herself and the inky blackness below.

  A woman started crying, and Sophie saw Hope emerge through the snow, her hands outstretched and her face painted with fear.

  ‘Please come down from there,’ she whispered. ‘You don’t have to do this, love.’

  Sophie blinked in response, and looked down again to where Toby was still standing, his eyes focused on her.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, her voice immediately cracking into a sob. ‘I can’t do it any more.’

  Toby was crying now as he stared up at her. He looked so much like his younger brother, with his hair curling around his ears and his square jaw rigid. Sophie wanted to love him for it, but all she could feel was hatred that it was he and not Robin who had lived.

  ‘We’ll all help you,’ Hope said now, her voice pleading. ‘Come down from there and let us look after you.’

  Sophie’s legs were trembling. She felt so tired, so unbelievably tired. She wanted this to be over now. It was time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, not at the assembled group below her but into the air, so that her words might travel home and find her parents, her friends, those who would be angry with her for leaving them.

  She took one more final breath, and stepped off the wall.

  47

  It all happened in what felt like a few seconds.

  One moment Sophie was there in front of her on the edge of the wall, her tiny trembling form so like that of a baby bird, her eyes huge and frightened, and the next she was whipped out of the air by a pair of quick, strong arms. Ollie’s arms.

  Hope hadn’t noticed him move silently around the bridge, but in the moments before Sophie went to jump, she saw him creeping soundlessly back towards them, his eyes never leaving the figure up on the wall.

  Toby let out a roar at the same time as Ollie propelled himself up off the ground and into the empty air, snatching Sophie as she fell and staggering backwards on the cobbles. Beside Hope, Megan gasped out loud then immediately began to cry.

  Reaching wordlessly for Annette’s hand, Hope used the other to wipe away her own tears. Her heart was hammering against her chest, and she shivered violently. Ollie had put Sophie down, but kept his arms wrapped tightly around her, his mouth moving constantly as he soothed and reassured. Again she heard Megan’s gentle weeping.

  Sophie had fallen silent, her eyes wide and unblinking, and Hope watched as a stricken Toby moved towards her, beckoning her into his own arms, desperate to comfort her. There was a beat of silence as Sophie looked at him, and then she began to scream.

  Unable to bear the sight of her anguish, Hope looked up instead at the sorrowful faces peering down at them through the gloom. The statues were motionless, their expressions forever pensive, carved as they were from stone but exuding such a sense of pity.

  Sophie was still screaming. Long, drawn-out wails of utter despair and unimaginable pain. Hope felt as if her heart was splintering, and helplessness engulfed her. Agitated and disturbed, she clung to Annette, each leaning on the other for support. Megan had curled herself into a small, tight ball and was propped up against the wall, her cheeks wet and her hands clasped over her ears.

  Hope could see that Ollie was beginning to struggle, too, his composure cracking as Sophie’s anguished body rocked back and forth against him, her rasping cries bulldozing the silence with wretchedness.

  ‘ROBIN!’ she screamed, over and over, spittle flying from her mouth as her shouts turned into howls of misery.

  Ollie let her continue until her words became whimpers, never releasing his grip. His glasses had fallen off and were lying in the snow by his feet, his woolly hat askew and his face flushed. Toby was kneeling in front of them, his hands still reaching out ready to catch Sophie, his face contorted with distress.

  ‘Where is he?’ Sophie suddenly cried. ‘Where has he gone?’

  Toby failed to disguise his own muffled sobs as he replied.

  ‘I don’t know, Soph. I don’t know where he is.’

  Sophie wailed again, her eyes closed and her mouth open. ‘No,’ she repeated, taking the word and drawing it out. And then again, over and over, ‘I can’t. I can’t do it.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Toby stuttered. ‘I wish it had been me. I wish every day that I could take his place.’

  Hope allowed herself to imagine how she would feel if Annette ever got ill. How she would do anything she could to take away the pain, to have it all for herself. Death was one thing, grief quite another. While one was so final and so certain, the other was a deadlier sort of enemy. Grief would lurk in the background, waiting to pounce; it would snatch you by the throat and leave you breathless. That burning sense of indignation, of something happening that was too horrible to fathom. Death became merely a kindly cousin to the raw, relentless and all-consuming emotion of grief.

  ‘It hurts so much.’ Sophie was sobbing. ‘I can’t bear it. I can’t bear the pain. I can’t.’

  ‘I know it hurts,’ Toby said, reaching out to touch her. ‘It hurts me, too. I can’t breathe with the pain of it sometimes.’

  ‘I don’t want to live without him.’ She sounded so sure that Hope actually jerked as if she’d been struck.

  Hope’s eyes travelled to where Megan was still sitting against the wall, her head now against her knees, her arms wrapped around her legs. She hadn’t spoken a word since Ollie had run away from the square and led them all here, and Hope wondered what was going through her mind. Was she, too, remembering an echo of a long-buried grief of her own? She thought about what Ollie had said back in the bar, and how matter-of-fact he’d been when discussing his feelings for her. It felt like it had happened a lifetime ago.

  ‘I know you don’t,’ Toby was telling Sophie, her hand now in his. ‘But you must. You have to – you have to do it for Robin. He wouldn’t want you to give up on life, you know he wouldn’t.’

  Sophie opened her huge eyes even wider. The snow was at last beginning to disperse, and Hope could see the redness around her pupils.

  ‘I know,’ she said at last, quietly, nodding her head up and down against Ollie’s chest. ‘But I don’t work without him. There’s a part of me missing. I feel …’ She searched for the word. ‘I feel hopeless.’

  She started to weep again as she said it, her own realisation catching her off guard. Grief wasn’t hiding away on this bridge, on this night – it was dancing around them all with glee, rubbing its hands together at the promise of such a unified banquet of agony.

  Very slowly, Ollie lifted up his arms and let Toby take his place on the wet ground. Sophie was hesitant at first, but then she wrapped her arms around Toby’s back, her fingers entwined, and the two of them wept as they clung to one another.

  Ollie stood and paus
ed for a moment, looking first at Hope and Annette, and then towards Megan. He looked exhausted, and Hope watched as Megan shuffled to her feet and the two of them stared across at each other. Megan opened her mouth as if to speak, but Ollie shook his head, silencing her. There was nothing any of them could say, Hope thought. All they could do was be here for Sophie and for Toby, and be here for each other, too.

  Looking up as the last of the flakes floated silently around them, Hope’s eyes found the yellow pebble of the moon. How small they must all look from up there – how tiny and insignificant against the colourful tapestry of the ever-moving world. But this moment was anything but small, and nowhere close to being insignificant. They had all come to Prague wishing for answers, and the city had granted them in the only way it knew how – by bringing them together.

  48

  Megan couldn’t remember ever feeling so cold.

  Her fingers throbbed inside her gloves and her feet felt fragile in her boots, as if the slightest touch would cause them to shatter. Hunched against the wall on the bridge, she had been shivering, but now that they were on the move again, the shaking had been replaced by a numbness. The cold had got right into her bones and was freezing her now from the inside out, making her hunch over as she walked, her shoulders pulled up and her back aching.

  Ollie was ahead of her, maintaining a discreet distance from Toby, who had Sophie in his arms. Hope and Annette walked just behind her, their arms wrapped around each other and their expressions stilled by the enormity of what they had all just witnessed. Megan kept replaying the moment over and over in her mind – how Ollie had caught Sophie as she jumped, and how awful it had felt for that split second when she feared that he may go over the side of the bridge, too. Losing Ollie was as abhorrent a thought to her now as any had ever been, and she couldn’t believe how utterly stupid and short-sighted she’d been.

  She felt a deep twisting in her stomach as she thought about Sophie, hearing the sound of those anguished wails replaying in her mind. She could only begin to guess at the pain the poor girl was going through, but in a strange way she was oddly grateful that she had been there to witness it. Sophie loved Robin more than anything, more than even herself, and she had lost him. How could Megan push Ollie out of her life, when he was right here, ready to be with her? How could she be so ignorant as to think that anything was more important than the love she now knew, without a flicker of a doubt, she felt for him?

  She had almost told him back on the bridge; she had opened her mouth to tell him, to say, ‘I love you.’ But he had stopped her; he had shaken his head – and he was right, it wasn’t the right moment. But surely any moment is a good moment when you’re telling someone that you love them. Didn’t everyone want to hear that? Even if you didn’t love someone yourself, it was still a good thing to hear, wasn’t it?

  She knew Ollie loved her, even if she hadn’t let him say it up in the park all those hours ago – and now, finally, she had worked her way through the chapters of confusion, fear and uncertainty, and reached the same page as him. If Sophie had taught her anything, it was that every moment is precious, and Megan wanted all her moments from now on to be with Ollie.

  The hotel receptionist made a huge fuss of them as soon as they got back, calling someone down to fix them all a hot drink, conjure up blankets and bring out a platter of sandwiches. It was a kind gesture, but none of them could face food, and Megan felt her stomach churn as she stared hard at a thick piece of ham between two roughly cut slices of brown bread. Sophie was still curled up against Toby, her eyes closed and her cheeks wet from the tears that never seemed to stop. Megan wished she could do or say something to alleviate even a tiny bit of her pain, but she knew there was nothing worthy she could contribute.

  Hope clutched a cup of hot wine with both her hands. She looked lost in thought, and Megan caught Annette’s eye as they both stared at her. She still had no idea what had happened to Charlie, but she didn’t feel able to ask. The room stayed quiet, unsaid words suffocating the empty spaces between them all.

  ‘Shall we go up to bed?’

  Annette spoke first, making everyone except Sophie jolt with surprise.

  Toby nodded. ‘I think she’s asleep,’ he whispered, inclining his head towards Sophie.

  ‘I’ll show you where her room is,’ Ollie offered, keeping his voice low. ‘Reception will have a spare key, I’m sure.’

  He turned before leaving the room, glancing at Megan.

  ‘I’ll meet you upstairs,’ she told him.

  Hope drank the last of her wine and stood up.

  ‘Shall we try for breakfast in the morning?’ she asked. ‘What time is your flight?’

  ‘We have to leave by ten,’ Megan told her, thinking as she did so how strange it was to be having a normal conversation again, as if the events of the past few hours had never happened, and all their lives had not been irretrievably altered.

  Hope nodded. ‘We’re off at lunchtime – but I’ll make sure I’m down here by nine.’

  They took the stairs together, and when Hope reached the first floor she pulled Megan into a hug.

  ‘Take care,’ she said, her thumb brushing Megan’s cheek. ‘And take care of Ollie, too.’

  Megan nodded. ‘I will.’

  Once in the room, she hung up her damp coat and peeled off her jeans, tossing them on top of her suitcase and reaching for her pyjamas. She’d ended up packing the least attractive pair she could find, which were made from a fleecy material and covered in pictures of snowmen. It seemed so absurd to her now that she had been trying to repel Ollie – and even more absurd that she’d believed a pair of festive pyjama bottoms would make the slightest bit of difference in how he felt about her.

  Her hair was so matted and bedraggled that she couldn’t face even running a comb through it, so instead she scooped it up into a bun, washing off the streaks of mascara from her tear-stained cheeks and cleaning her teeth. She’d just got under the covers when the door opened and Ollie came in. His glasses steamed up almost immediately thanks to the heat coming from the radiator, and he took them off, rubbing the inner corners of his eyes with a thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  He looked up, seeming to see her for the first time, but he didn’t smile.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What you did, on the bridge,’ she began, watching as he took off his coat and threw it over the back of a chair. ‘You were amazing out there tonight – a real hero.’

  Ollie let out a non-committal grunt.

  ‘Don’t be so modest,’ she chided. ‘You saved Sophie’s life – we all saw it.’

  He shrugged. ‘I was just the closest. Any of us would have done the same thing.’

  She shook her head. ‘I think you’re wrong. You were the only one really thinking out there tonight. If it had been just me, she would probably have gone over the side.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ He sounded weary, and Megan frowned. ‘She’s safe now,’ he continued. ‘That’s all that matters for now.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s okay, though,’ Megan couldn’t help but remark. ‘I don’t think she’ll be okay for a very long time.’

  Ollie rubbed at his eyes again, refusing to look at her. ‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘But she’s still here, she’s still alive. Where there is life, there’s hope – and I know Toby will look after her. I was just chatting to him a bit upstairs, and his whole family adores Sophie. All the stuff she told us about her and Robin, it was all true.’

  ‘Just not the part about him still being alive.’

  She knew it sounded cold, but she meant it to be sympathetic. Ollie looked at her, his expression unreadable.

  ‘Yes. Just not that part.’

  He went into the bathroom and shut the door, and Megan heard the sound of the shower running, then the toilet flushing, of Ollie spitting toothpaste then mouthwash into the basin. When he emerged, his hair was wet and flat against his head, and she could smell peppermin
t. Instead of the usual boxer shorts he always wore to bed, Ollie had put on a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

  ‘Why are you dressed?’ she asked, aware of a creeping feeling of unease.

  ‘I’m going to go down and sleep in the bar,’ he told her, again avoiding her eyes.

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘I just need to be on my own.’ He selected a jumper from his suitcase and pulled it over his head. Megan watched him, noticing as she did so that he’d tossed the flowers he’d bought her that morning into the bin. ‘I’m not sure if I’ll be able to sleep at all anyway,’ he went on. ‘Not with everything that’s happened.’

  ‘Please don’t.’ Megan could hear the fear in her own voice, and Ollie looked at her, surprised.

  ‘You want me to stay here with you?’ he guessed. ‘Comfort you? Look after you?’

  ‘I want—’ She stopped, suddenly unable to finish. He seemed so angry with her still.

  ‘That’s just it, though, isn’t it?’ he said, folding his arms. ‘It’s always about what you want.’

  She hadn’t expected this.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she started, but he interrupted her.

  ‘You’re always saying that,’ he said. ‘But do you actually know what it means? Have you ever actually felt sorry for the way you’ve treated me?’

  ‘You know I have!’

  ‘Do I?’

  Megan pulled the covers up until they were right under her chin, a makeshift shield against the resentment he was throwing her way.

  ‘I can’t do this any longer,’ he said, looking more upset than angry now. ‘We all saw what heartbreak can do to a person tonight – I don’t want to put myself through any more of this pain and bullshit.’

  ‘I don’t either,’ she cried. What she meant was that she wanted to stop playing games and be with him properly – but Ollie flinched at her words.