by Lucy Diamond
Toby’s eyelids twitched, and Josie and Pete both froze as they studied his face. Toby stirred, and opened his eyes. ‘Daddy,’ he said groggily, focusing on Pete’s face. His lips moved in a slight smile.
Pete stepped around to the other side of the bed and ran a forefinger down Toby’s cheek. ‘Hello, mate,’ he said gently. ‘How are you feeling?’
Toby blinked as if he wasn’t sure how to answer.
‘Toby?’ Josie asked. ‘Can you hear me? Can you hear Mummy?’
He rolled his head around on the pillow and stared at her. ‘Yes,’ he said after a moment.
‘Toby, do you remember what happened?’ Josie asked, holding his hand. ‘We’re in the hospital. Do you remember, you were sitting on the sofa and …’
His eyes clouded over, puzzled, and Josie stopped. She’d lost him, she could tell.
‘Don’t badger him,’ Pete said. ‘He’s only just come round.’
‘I’m not badgering him!’ she hissed, furious at Pete’s nerve. She put a hand on Toby’s forehead, which was slightly cooler at last. ‘Do you want a drink or anything, poppet?’
Toby nodded feebly. ‘Yes please.’
‘Good boy. Pete, could you get him some water? There’s a sink in the corner, look.’
Pete stiffened, as if he didn’t like Josie telling him what to do, but he went over to the sink and filled a cup from the tap.
Barbara appeared in the doorway just then. ‘Sam’s fine,’ she said. ‘Having a great time with Emma’s daughter in the sandpit, apparently.’
Josie smiled at her gratefully. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
Barbara gave a little nod. ‘I’ll leave you to it then, shall I?’ she asked. ‘Let me know what the doctors say, won’t you? And if you need any help at all …’
‘Thanks,’ Josie said, coming across the room to her. ‘For everything. You’ve been brilliant, Barbara.’
Barbara folded her arms in front of her chest. ‘Like I say, if there’s anything I can do to help …’
‘Yes,’ Josie said. ‘And I’m sure the boys would love to see you soon. I’ll … I’ll call you and arrange something, shall I?’
Barbara’s face lit up in a rare smile. ‘Oh, would you? I’d really like that. I’ve been worried that …’ Her gaze flicked across to Toby and she lowered her voice. ‘I don’t want to lose touch with my grandsons, Josie. I’ve been so upset at the thought that …’
Josie put a hand on her arm. ‘Well sort something out soon,’ she said. ‘Of course you won’t lose touch with them.’ She swallowed. ‘They adore you.’
Barbara’s chin had gone all puckered, and her eyes were moist. ‘That’s very … That’s very kind of you,’ she said, walking quickly over to Toby, so that Josie could no longer see her face. ‘Bye, sweetie,’ she said, dropping a kiss on his head. ‘You get well for your old nanny, OK?’
‘Nanny,’ Toby said wonderingly, gazing up at her.
‘And Peter …’ Barbara turned to him, the warmth disappearing from her voice. ‘I’ll speak to you soon,’ she said formally.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ he said, stepping towards her, his arms outstretched.
Her mouth tightened as he hugged her. She didn’t hug him back.
Weirder and weirder, thought Josie, trying to stop her eyes boggling at the sight. Barbara taking sides with her, Josie. It was shocking to see such a display of sisterhood, from Barbara of all people. She hardly would have believed it if she hadn’t witnessed it for herself. And all this time Barbara had been worrying about not seeing Toby and Sam!
Josie pushed her hair out of her eyes as she went to sit down by Toby again. She’d never even thought of Barbara’s take on it. How awful, as a grandparent, to think that your precious grandchildren might be taken from your life like that! No wonder she’d been phoning so much. She must have felt vulnerable too.
The door swung shut, and it seemed as if the walls closed in a fraction around them all with Barbara’s departure.
‘Where’s Sam?’ Toby mumbled, staring up at Josie.
‘He’s playing with Clara,’ she replied, trying to sound casual about it. ‘And we’re going to stay with you until the doctor comes and has a look at you, OK? And then hopefully we can go home.’
She was aware of Pete shifting around on the other side of the bed, and felt the anger rise up in her all over again. That’s if Daddy here doesn’t have to rush off on a hot date with his mistress, of course, she added venomously in her head. That’s if good old Daddy can spare us a few minutes of his time!
Pete ruffled Toby’s hair. ‘I’ll go and see what’s happening,’ he said, and made for the door. ‘Want another tea or anything?’ he asked Josie in his politest, best-behaviour voice.
‘No thanks,’ she said dully. She squeezed Toby’s hand as Pete slipped out of the room. ‘Want me to tell you a story while we’re waiting?’
He nodded. The colour was starting to come back into his cheeks, although he still felt clammy. Josie kissed him. ‘Once upon a time,’ she began, and he closed his eyes in satisfaction and snuggled into the pillow, ‘there was a boy called Toby, who had a brother called Sam. And one day, Toby and Sam went down to the beach. And what do you think they saw coming out of the sea?’
She paused, waiting for him to reply, but his deep, even breathing was the only sound. She kissed him again. ‘A magical sea monster who made Toby all better,’ she murmured, stroking his hair. ‘Oh, Tobes,’ she whispered, you are going to get better, aren’t you?’
‘There’s nobody around,’ Pete said after a few minutes, coming back in with a coffee. His face was strained, anxious. Is he asleep? Oh.’ He sat down on the other side of the bed. ‘We need to talk, don’t we?’ he said. It was a statement rather than a question.
Josie nodded. ‘I suppose you’ll want to get your things soon,’ she said. ‘And there’s legal stuff, maintenance payments, what we’re going to do with the house …’ She said it all quickly, so that he didn’t have the chance to get in first with the list. Coming from him, the words would have felt like an attack. Coming from her, they gave her a feeling of control.
Pete passed a hand over his brow. ‘We need to set up some kind of regular arrangement for me to see the boys,’ he said. ‘That’s the most important thing.’
Josie felt nettled, as if he were criticizing her for not having said it herself. ‘Well, of course, that goes without saying,’ she replied irritably.
‘And obviously you can stay in the house for the time being,’ he went on.
‘Very big of you,’ she muttered, feeling ungracious. ‘For the time being’ was very vague. What did he mean by it, exactly? That they could stay in the house until he decided he wanted to sell his share of it?
Pete ignored her remark. ‘Perhaps I could take the boys somewhere this weekend?’ he suggested. ‘Give you a break. And maybe pick up my things too.’
Josie squeezed Toby’s fingers. ‘Well … Let’s see how Toby is, shall we?’ she said after a moment. There was no way she wanted him out of her sight as early as that. No way, after what had just happened.
‘Of course,’ Pete said. ‘I—’
‘Mr and Mrs Winter?’ came a voice just then, and a female doctor came in, tall and rangy, with a clipboard in her hand.
Pete and Josie looked at one another. ‘Yes,’ they replied.
‘For the time being,’ Josie added under her breath.
The doctor examined Toby and announced that he had a nasty-looking ear infection. ‘The spike of high temperature is what probably caused the convulsion,’ she explained. ‘It’s fairly common among young children. The brain can’t cope with the temperature, and basically short-circuits and cuts out.’
‘Oh God,’ Josie said, clutching a hand to her mouth.
‘Most children grow out of it by the age of five,’ the doctor went on. ‘Toby’s four, did you say? It’s very late, actually, to have a first convulsion. Most children we see for this are toddlers. It’s quite likely that he’ll never have
another one, anyway. Or, on the other hand, he may have several more. I’m afraid there’s no way of telling.’
She prescribed a course of antibiotics and gave Josie a leaflet about febrile convulsions. And that was that.
Toby was awake now, and pinker in the cheeks. ‘Can we go home?’ he asked, sitting up. ‘Can I have something to eat? I’m THIS hungry.’
Josie hugged him, suddenly unable to talk. She felt choked with emotion. He was hungry – good. She could feed him, and make him feel better – good. ‘Of course, baby,’ she said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. ‘Let’s go.’
Pete drove them back home and sat with Toby in front of a dinosaur video while Josie raced round to Emma’s to collect Sam.
She got back to find Toby lying on the sofa alone while the sound of the radio floated down from upstairs.
‘Sit here with your brother,’ she instructed Sam through gritted teeth, trying to keep her voice neutral. ‘Shout for me if anything happens to him again.’
Then she ran upstairs to where Pete was in their bedroom, clearing out his wardrobe into sports bags while Radio 5 burbled about the cricket. She’d forgotten his annoying habit of needing the radio on in every room he was in – bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, car – as if he couldn’t bear a single news story to pass him by, even when his own son had just come back from being rushed into hospital. Talk about priorities. Talk about clueless!
She marched over and snapped off the radio. ‘Why did you leave him? Couldn’t you sit with him for two minutes?’ she berated him shrilly. ‘What if it had happened again? You’d have had no idea, would you, being up here, radio blasting out?’
‘Whoa!’ he said, putting up his hands in protest. He’d packed some books, she noticed, seeing gaps on the shelves, and the drawers were sticking out at angles from the chest where he’d emptied out all his socks and boxers. Both wardrobes were open and Josie stiffened as she saw a flash of Rose’s pink baby things spilling out, where he must have knocked them. Clumsy oaf! ‘We don’t have to watch over him day and night! He’s got an ear infection, that’s all!’
She stared at him, hands on her hips. ‘You have no idea, have you?’ she said accusingly. ‘No idea at all! You didn’t see him when it happened,’ she went on, glaring. ‘It was horrible. And I never want to see him like that again.’
‘What, and you think I do?’ he countered, ramming a pile of T-shirts into a holdall. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous!’
Josie shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. And then her face crumpled. ‘I … am … not … ridiculous,’ she spluttered defensively, putting her arms around herself.
‘Oh Jose, come here,’ he said, abandoning his packing and coming over. ‘I’m sorry, I …’
She backed away from him. ‘No, don’t “Oh Jose” me,’ she said bitterly. She glared at him, hating him. ‘Don’t you dare! I’ve just had the worst, scariest time, and you tell me I’m ridiculous?’ She shook her head, daring him to come any closer. ‘You carry on,’ she told him. ‘I’ll go and sit with Toby.’
Downstairs, Sam was staring at Toby with interest when Josie came back in to the living room. ‘I thought you was dead,’ he was saying, looking at his brother as if he were a particularly fascinating museum exhibit. ‘Really and truly dead. Cos you were going like this.’ He lay on the floor and started jerking his arms and legs around on the carpet. ‘And me and Mum were saying—’
‘Sam! Stop it!’ Josie snapped. ‘That’s not funny!’
‘I was only showing—’
‘Well, don’t,’ Josie said. She sighed, feeling as if she might fall apart any minute. Deep breath, come on. Don’t freak them out any more by shouting at them. ‘I’m just going to put the oven on for tea. I’ll be back in one second, all right?’
‘I nearly was dead,’ she heard Toby boasting as she left the room. ‘Very very nearly. And then you would have had to bury me in the garden!’
Josie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as she turned on the oven, then filled the kettle. She leaned against the kitchen worktop as she waited for it to boil, gazing dispiritedly at the sink. The washing-up bowl was dirty. The draining board was smeared and there were pools of cloudy water at the back. The windows needed cleaning …
Out of habit, she looked up as she heard the chittering of the magpie outside. And there, to her disbelief, was a second magpie on the lawn, pecking at something in the grass. Two for joy. Yeah, right.
Yeah, right.
Pete came downstairs ten minutes later with a couple of over-stuffed sports bags. Socks snaked out of the zip of one of them. A paperback book poked out of the top of the other. Josie was watching a Tyrannosaurus Rex tear a smaller dinosaur into bloody shreds on the telly as she sat on the sofa, one arm around each boy.
‘I’ll be off then,’ Pete announced, dropping his bags on the floor and letting his arms dangle by his sides as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. Was he waiting for the boys to rush into his arms for a farewell hug?
Neither boy moved a muscle in response.
‘Say bye to your dad, then,’ Josie ordered them.
‘Bye,’ they droned, eyes still glued to the screen.
‘Cool,’ Sam breathed, as the smaller dinosaur fell limply to the ground and the T-Rex chewed into its side.
‘That is so gross,’ Toby said, his eyes delighted at the bone-crunching noises that ensued.
‘So, boys, do you fancy coming out with me at the weekend?’ Pete said, with a rather forced air of joviality.
No reply.
‘Do I have to switch it off?’ Pete asked. ‘Boys?’
‘Don’t turn it off, this is the best bit!’ Sam protested.
Pete turned to Josie. ‘Shall I pick them up on Sunday morning, say, ten o’clock?’ he asked. ‘It is Father’s Day, after all,’ he added lamely.
‘Sure,’ Josie said sarcastically. ‘Can’t miss Father’s Day, can we?’
Pete hesitated. ‘OK. Take care, then. Ring me if you need me to do anything, yeah?’
Josie nodded, turning back to the screen. The small dinosaur gave one final whimper as the T-Rex crunched through its leg, and then lay still. Josie leaned back wearily as she heard the front door close. Goodbye and good riddance, she thought. He’d been no help at all to her in the hospital. She didn’t need him.
She blinked at the revelation. She didn’t actually need him.
On screen, the T-Rex licked its lips and thundered away, alone.
Chapter Fourteen
A feeling of anxiety settled upon Josie that she couldn’t shake off. It weighed her down, worries constantly goosing her. Was Toby getting another temperature? Was he too hot, too cold, too anything? Was he looking flushed, pale, blotchy? Would it happen all over again?
The responsibility – the sole responsibility – for his health and happiness lay around her neck like a millstone. If he had another convulsion, it was up to Josie to spot it, nobody else. There was no way she could trust any other single person to monitor him with the same fierceness that she could. Pete didn’t even come into it. Not after the Radio 5 clothes-packing episode. It still made Josie clench her fists whenever she thought about that. It was as if Toby and Sam had slipped off his radar now that he’d walked out. And that hurt Josie more than anything, knowing that one day the boys would realize that for themselves, see that they’d plummeted straight down Daddy’s list of priorities like a stone down a well. God. How did a child deal with something like that anyway? It was crappy enough for an adult to discover they weren’t loved as much by another person as they’d thought. But for a kid …
It was all too much. Josie felt as if she couldn’t face the rest of the world any more. It was enough for her to worry about, Toby and Sam being under her own roof just breathing and existing without anything bad happening, let alone venturing out there, in the wider world, with germs just waiting to attack them, cars waiting to knock them over, psychos waiting to steal them away and molest them …
No. None o
f that. She simply would not let that happen.
Instead, Josie ordered in her supermarket shopping online from the safety of the desk in the spare room, and set up the camp-bed in the boys’ bedroom so that she could bunk in with them at night. She told them playgroup was closed for the rest of the week even though that was a complete lie, and joined in every game they thought up so that she could watch over them.
It was as if she’d been bungeed straight back to the newborn days, Josie thought, where she was continually checking her babies were still breathing, still alive. She slept badly on the camp-bed every night, lying there listening to them breathing, unable to fall asleep for fear that she’d miss the last breath. How would she know if Toby had another convulsion in his bed? How would she know?
Each time one of them whimpered or muttered she was bolt upright, wide awake with anxiety, anticipating a dash downstairs to call an ambulance. Then, as they quietened again, she’d lie back, staring up at the ceiling through the velvety darkness, her heartbeat as loud as a clock.
By day, she was washed out and stressed. The shock was slamming through her now. She’d thought he was dying. She’d thought it was all over. Her son, lying there in her arms, dying. It had been so terrifying, so awful. She’d felt so out of control. She could hardly bear to think about what would have happened if—
No. Stop. It hadn’t happened, she had to keep reminding herself. Toby hadn’t died. And luckily, within just a few hits of the penicillin, he was running about, as cheeky and funny as ever, temperature down and staying down. He was fine. Sam was fine. It was only her, Josie, who was finding it hard to pick up the pieces and carry on.
The one and only thing that made her feel better was cleaning the house. God, it had never looked so spotless, not ever. She’d Dustbustered the corners of all the rooms, and wiped down each and every grubby skirting board. She’d scrubbed out the microwave. She’d disinfected the entire bathroom and kitchen. She’d even alphabetized all the books and CDs, and cleaned their shelves.