by Ben Adams
I shared these thoughts with Imogen. She smiled but needed more convincing. ‘I saw the way you were looking at her earlier. I know what you must be thinking. Amy isn’t looking her best at the moment and she is probably not going to regain the sight in her eye. Are you really going to stand by her? Are you going to be there for her when she’s looking in the mirror and sobbing? Are you going to help her with Lucy? Are you going to help her through the nightmares about the accident? What I am asking you, Graham, is do you love my daughter as much as I do?’
I hesitated before answering. It isn’t that I am worried about commitment. I’m not. It isn’t that I don’t love Amy. I do. Do I? I do. Yes, I do. I love Amy. I am in love with her. I am, though, still trying to get my head around the looks thing and any other long-term damage that Amy might have suffered. My ex would tell you that I am a rubbish nursemaid. And to be fair, on this point she would be right. She always took on that role in our marital home.
Imogen seized upon my hesitation. ‘If you aren’t sure, Graham, then just leave us in peace. Go now. Let me support my daughter. She has been hurt before by Stuart, she is physically hurting now and I don’t want her to have to go through anything else that upsets her.’
Amy’s mum sat there, staring intently at me, almost challenging me to get up and walk out of her daughter’s life. I didn’t go. I remained firmly planted to my seat and ate the rest of my sandwich in silence.
Imogen and I continued to interact as the afternoon wore on. She isn’t giving me the cold shoulder or anything like that but she is quite a formidable woman. She knows I am wrestling with my emotions. She has made it clear that she doesn’t want any half-arsed commitment. She wants me to either get with the programme or get lost.
I need to sort my head out.
Friday 12th September
Exactly a week after the accident, the doctors have confirmed that Amy will never be able to see out of her left eye again. They spelt out all the technical details but we couldn’t take them in. They have told us that all they can do is perform cosmetic surgery that will reduce the visual impact of Amy’s injuries to her eye and eye socket. In other words they can improve what her eye looks like but not what it looks at.
Over the last day or two, Amy has begun to grasp the significance of this news. This afternoon, after the doctors had left us to ourselves, she reeled off a list of things she wouldn’t be able to do again. Uppermost on Amy’s mind was driving, followed closely by skiing. She seems such a capable person. The thought of not being able to do things, of being clumsy and needing help, terrifies her. Imogen told me she had never seen Amy so down before.
I took Jack and Sean out for a pizza this evening. I haven’t seen much of Sean lately. He is having his plaster removed on Monday. I gave them both an update on Amy’s condition. When I told them about Amy’s eye, Sean put his hand over his left eye and looked around.
‘You can still see everything with one eye, dad. You just have to look a bit harder.’ I hadn’t really thought of it like that. It isn’t as though Amy will only be able to see half as much now as she could before the accident. Still, it will take some getting used to.
It has been a long week.
Sunday 14th September
Now I know that Amy will be around on this earth for some time to come, normal life is gradually beginning to force its way back in to my consciousness again. I have stopped resenting the traffic lights changing colour. I no longer mind everyone else carrying on their business as usual. As a case in point, I went clothes shopping today. My new job starts tomorrow. It wouldn’t make a good first impression if I turned up for my first day in my slightly shiny-kneed, dog-hair-impregnated trousers and my faded-under-the-arms shirts.
Going back to work will be a challenge. It will be hard for me to concentrate on anything other than Amy. After a couple of months spent not working, the early mornings will also be a shock to the system. So will the need to actually do some work when I am there. On the positive side, assuming the job can hold my interest for longer than five minutes, it will be another goal ticked off my list.
Talking of my list, it is my birthday in just under two weeks’ time. When I went to visit Amy this afternoon, she came up with an off the wall idea for a party. Apparently Lucy’s birthday is three days before mine. Although I didn’t know any of this until today, the intention had been for Lucy to have a few friends to stay on Friday night for a disco at their house. Amy obviously doesn’t want that to happen while she is in hospital, so she has suggested that Lucy postpones her party for a week. When I pointed out that this would mean Lucy’s party would clash with mine, Amy suggested that we have a joint party, or maybe adults in one room with 1980s music and kids in another with modern noise.
Now call me boring and unimaginative but this idea doesn’t fill me with joy. When Amy went off to do some physio I jotted down a list of things wrong with her suggestion:
Mixing Dave, Ray, Bryan and even Hills and Donna with teenage girls probably isn’t the best idea.
There will be alcohol at the party.
Amy’s immaculate house will get trashed – by my mates as much as the children.
There is a distinct possibility that Amy will still be in hospital on my birthday. What will happen to the party then?
What will happen if Amy and I split up over the next week or so? I still haven’t managed to have a conversation with her about the future.
What fifteen-year-old would want a bunch of uncool, mostly lecherous adults at their party?
There will be bad language flying around. The children might get embarrassed.
It’s just a bloody stupid idea, OK?
When Amy got back from shuffling up and down the corridor with her physio, she asked me what I thought of the idea.
‘Let’s do it,’ I replied, not having the backbone to say no. At least a joint party ties me to Amy for at least another fortnight.
Monday 15th September
I am now a contributing member of society again. My first day in my new job has passed with not too much drama. I didn’t realise how nervous being the new boy in town would make me feel. I was pretty lonely as I walked into a building I didn’t know, filled with people I didn’t know, talking a language I didn’t know.
Apparently it is my job to make sure that my council does better than other councils. I have to monitor and improve things like GCSE results, the percentage of fat children and teenage pregnancy levels. When I say I have to improve teenage pregnancy levels, that means I have to reduce them, not increase them. Note to self: make the kids study harder, feed them more salad and hand out condoms at this joint birthday party. Everyone has to do their bit.
I have already started writing a ‘to do list’ in my new job:
Learn how to use the coffee machine
Memorise at least five people’s names each day
Learn at least five new three-letter acronyms each day. FFS.
Google the difference between a ‘councillor’ and an ‘officer’
Ask the man sitting opposite me why he bashes the keyboard so hard when he types. He must be really angry.
And while I am at it, ask him why he insists on wearing those ridiculous-looking braces.
After work I made the daily trek to the hospital. Although Amy is getting headaches and is still dizzy when moving around, the doctors continue to be pleased with her recovery.
I had intended to talk to her tonight about our future. The conversation we had at the pizza place in Wimbledon before her accident seems like a lifetime ago now. I am aching to know where I stand.
As I walked on to the ward, she was sitting on her bed with her head in her hands.
‘Hello gorgeous,’ I said by way of greeting. Amy looked up. She had been crying.
‘I have just looked in the mirror. Don’t give me that crap about being gorgeous. I’m a bloody one-eyed mess covered in scratches and bruises,’ she responded angrily.
‘At least you can see out of one ey
e then,’ I said, trying to be funny. And failing. Spectacularly. Sometimes my mouth works ahead of my brain. I say things that no sane, considered, reasonable, decent, respectful, civil person would say. As soon as the words had spilled out of my mouth I felt crestfallen. I wanted to grab them and pull them back from mid-air and shove them back down my throat. I wanted to press rewind, back out of Amy’s room, walk back in again and start over. But it was too late.
‘You’re fucking hilarious aren’t you Graham. It is alright for you. You aren’t the one that got thrown over the bonnet of a car going at thirty miles an hour and landed on your head. You aren’t the one that has to live with one eye. You aren’t the one who just walked straight in to a hospital trolley on the way to the toilet because it was on my left hand side and I didn’t even see it. You aren’t the one that looks like something out of a fucking horror movie.’ By the end of her outburst the tears were flowing again.
I sat on the edge of her bed and tried to give her a hug. She pushed me away.
‘I think you had better go,’ Imogen said from behind me.
After my performance tonight, I have a better idea where I stand with Amy. Out in the cold.
I need a beer. Dave’s mum is not good so he couldn’t join me. Ray didn’t let me down though. I am meeting him in the Morden Brook at 8 o’clock. It could be a long night.
Tuesday 16th September
The best thing about my new job is that I can walk to work in five minutes. No more crowded, germ-infested Northern line trips for me. The five minute journey was particularly good news today because my hangover made getting up early this morning a physical impossibility.
Ray and I weren’t exactly a barrel of laughs in the pub last night. Firstly we raised a glass to Dave’s mum, Mrs F, who is slowly losing her battle with cancer. We then moved on to dissect my ongoing woes. I filled Ray in on Amy’s condition. He had heard some of it from his brother. Stuart hasn’t been at the hospital for the last few days though so Ray wouldn’t have heard it all. When I mentioned Stuart’s absence to Ray, he confessed that ‘the dragon’, presumably meaning Imogen, had warned him off. I had guessed as much.
‘I saw Stu yesterday,’ Ray admitted. ‘He is beating himself up about the accident.’
‘Why’s he beating himself up about it? What’s it got to do with him?’
‘Amy was feeling ill and asked him if he would drop Lucy off at her house on that Friday night. Stu said no because he was watching some film on the telly. Amy ended up getting her brains smashed in.’
Stuart blames himself for causing the accident. Well, if it is any consolation to him, he isn’t alone. I now blame him too.
Ray went on to tell me that his brother had asked him about me. I am not surprised. I had wanted to know about my ex’s partner when I had thought he would be spending time with my children. ‘What did you tell him?’ I asked.
‘Not a lot,’ Ray said, ‘only that you are a paedophile, money-grabbing git who is prone to a bit of domestic violence from time to time.’
‘You’re an arse.’
‘Don’t worry, he was more concerned when I told him you were a Chelsea fan.’
I told Ray that his brother probably needn’t worry about me anyway because I was doing a pretty good job of ballsing up my relationship with Amy without any interference from him. When Ray asked how, I repeated my crass line to Amy about her at least being able to see how bad she looks.
‘You complete twat,’ Ray observed. ‘That sort of comment is going to take one hell of a bunch of flowers to put right.’
Wednesday 17th September
The police are still looking for the driver who ran Amy down. I know this because my ex phoned me at work. ‘I have just been questioned about your woman’s accident,’ she told me as an opening line. She wasn’t happy, and I couldn’t say I blamed her. It seems as though they are still pursuing the theory that whoever knocked Amy flying did it deliberately. They asked her similar questions to those they had asked me. But with my ex they delved deeper in to her possible motives for wanting to run Amy down.
‘They asked me why we split up. They asked what I thought of your relationship with Amy. They even knew about Jack and his girlfriend. For fuck’s sake Graham, I don’t need this right now,’ my ex told me.
I could have said something along the lines of ‘What, they think you tried to kill my girlfriend?’ or ‘They think you ran over your son’s girlfriend’s mother?’ but I was in an open plan office surrounded by new work colleagues so I opted to stay silent.
Eventually my ex ran out of steam and hung up on me. I hadn’t ever contemplated the possibility of the police wanting to talk to my ex about the hit and run. I suppose on paper she might make a good candidate to talk to. Someone on the outside might think she has got a motive. But I know my ex. She might be ever so slightly unhinged from time to time but she wouldn’t do something like this. She doesn’t care enough about me to be that jealous of Amy. Even if she did, she wouldn’t put her life as the mother of our children at risk by doing something so stupid.
Over my medicinal last Scotch of the evening I caught myself wondering what Amy would think if she knew my ex was being interviewed by the police. When I met her on the night of her accident she was complaining about my ex’s interference in our lives. This news could be the final nail in the coffin of our relationship.
Thursday 18th September
Until tonight I hadn’t seen Amy since Monday night. I haven’t been for the last couple of days because I wasn’t sure I would be welcome. I wasn’t sure I would be welcome today either but I couldn’t stand not seeing her. I phoned Amy’s mother to see what she recommended I do. Amy is having her broken eye removed tomorrow and, naturally, she is really down in the dumps about her looks. She doesn’t want anyone to see her. Imogen advised me not to visit. After thinking long and hard about it, I ignored Imogen’s advice and went anyway. I wish I could learn to listen.
Ray would be pleased to know that the bunch of flowers I took with me was the biggest I could carry.
I got to the hospital just as Amy was eating her evening meal. Although she still wore a patch over her left eye, she looked stunning. There may well still be some permanent scarring but her bruising and scratches have faded a lot in the last couple of days.
But it was her hair that nearly took my breath away. To be frank, it had looked a total mess after the accident. The surgeons had cut large chunks of her beautiful auburn locks away to allow the emergency brain surgery to be undertaken without impediment. Since the last time I saw her, someone has managed to cut and restyle it. It’s a lot shorter now. I think they call it a pixie cut. No one who looked at Amy’s hair now would have an inkling of the state it was in a week ago.
With her left eye out of action, Amy didn’t notice me standing in the doorway. She was struggling to eat her dinner. She couldn’t get her peas on to her fork and then in to her mouth. I guess your co-ordination is affected if you lose an eye.
I was a bit embarrassed. I thought about backing out quickly and quietly and coming back when she had finished but I didn’t act quickly enough. Just as I was creeping out of the door, Amy noticed me.
‘Graham, I told mum to tell you not to come,’ she said. Hello Graham, nice to see you.
‘Your mum did tell me but I ignored her,’ I said. ‘I miss you.’
Amy dropped her knife and fork and banged her plate down on to her tray. She was miserable and nothing I did seemed to help. In fact everything I did seemed to have the opposite effect. We ended up having one of those big discussions that can shape a relationship. One where the participants get carried away and say things they hadn’t intended to say.
‘What can I do to help you?’ I asked. I went to pick up her fork.
‘Oh for god’s sake Graham, I don’t need you feeding me. I am not a useless toddler, you know.’
‘I didn’t say you were. I just want to be there for you.’ I put the fork back on the tray and placed the tray on the
end of the bed out of the way.
‘The last thing I want is you fussing over me but secretly feeling sorry for yourself. I don’t need a nurse.’
‘I’m a crap nurse anyway. I want to be your lover.’
‘Oh Graham, I am having my eye removed tomorrow. I can’t look beyond my operation. Can’t we do this some other time?’
Amy’s ophthalmologist walked in at that point. His timing couldn’t have been better because had he not chosen that moment to enter, I was about to point out the irony in Amy’s previous words. He saved me from myself. He came to talk her through what they planned to do in tomorrow’s operation. Like me, he didn’t get off to a very good start.
‘It’s a fairly routine procedure. I have done quite a few of these over the years,’ he announced.
‘It may be routine to you but having my eye removed isn’t routine to me,’ Amy chastised him.
The doctor should have quit while he was behind, but instead he came back with a second quip, ‘Don’t worry about a thing, you’re in safe hands. We’ll make sure we get the right eye. When I say the right eye I obviously mean the left eye. Or is it the right?’
I honestly thought Amy was going to punch him. Instead she expressed her hope that his surgical skills are better than his bedside manner and sent him on his way with a flea in his ear.