by Emily Elgar
Originally from the Cotswolds, Emily Elgar studied at Edinburgh University and went on to complete the novel writing course at the Faber Academy in 2014. She currently lives in East Sussex with her husband and this is her first novel.
Copyright
Published by Sphere
ISBN: 978-1-4087-0682-4
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Emily Elgar
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Epigraph p.ix © Paulo Coelho 2003
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Sphere
Little, Brown Book Group
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.littlebrown.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
For my sister Amy
Contents
About the Author
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Prologue
1 Alice
2 Frank
3 Cassie
4 Alice
5 Frank
6 Cassie
7 Alice
8 Frank
9 Cassie
10 Alice
11 Frank
12 Cassie
13 Alice
14 Frank
15 Cassie
16 Alice
17 Frank
18 Cassie
19 Alice
20 Frank
21 Cassie
22 Alice
23 Frank
24 Cassie
25 Alice
26 Cassie
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
I would like to start by thanking my brilliant agent, Nelle Andrew, who believed in this book before even I knew I could write it.
Great thanks to the hugely talented Lucy Malagoni at Little, Brown for always going above and beyond; and to the whole Little, Brown team for all their work and dedication.
Thank you to my godfather Tom Shields for his sage advice – ‘Don’t not do something just because it’s a hard thing to do.’
Thank you to my dear friends who always make me laugh and for providing ever-absorbent shoulders; and to the Stonehouse for giving us all shelter over the years.
Great thanks to my wonderful sisters – Laura Pettifer and Catherine Williams – together we’ll always be the Elgar girls.
In deepest gratitude to my incredible parents Edward and Sandy Elgar who have been absolutely unshakeable in their faith in this book and their love for me throughout my life.
Finally, to my dear husband James Legend Linard for being by my side every day. I love you.
At every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss
PAULO COELHO, Eleven Minutes
Prologue
The darkness seems to pull her towards it, holding her in a freezing embrace as she moves down the lane and deeper into the treacle-thick night. The air electrocutes her lungs with each icy inhale, and her legs feel slick, sure of their new direction. She hears the stream bubbling by her side and the branches from the silver birch trees creak over her head like arthritic fingers knitting together.
The moon shines its mottled, kindly face, silvering her path like a fairy godmother; she smiles up at it before it vanishes again behind a fast-moving cloud. She feels entirely of the world; it moves easily along with her, as though some invisible force has, with a small sigh, been released within her, and she’s in step with life. She starts to hum, surprising herself, something made-up, childlike; it’s a nonsense but she doesn’t care and she doesn’t feel ashamed.
Why didn’t she notice before how smooth the world can be?
Her hum turns into a name. She calls out long and light, ‘Maisie!’ She stops and calls louder this time, ‘Maisie!’ She listens. The silence of the night is like a presence itself, taut and endless. Any moment now, there’ll be a scampering in the hedgerow, a sweet snap as Maisie’s nimble paws break delicate twigs. But for now there’s just a thick silence. She chooses not to worry; Maisie will be running in some nearby field, her body tight with adrenalin, nose to the ground, tail wagging, deaf to everything except the cacophony of smells around her. She adjusts her bag on her shoulder, calls again and keeps walking along the familiar pock-marked lane.
The flash of the car lights from behind startles her, like they’re intruding on her private moment and have caught her doing something no one else should see. The car is familiar. She waves, casting shadows on the tarmac, her arms preposterously long.
She breaks into a little run; there’s a passing point ahead, they can stop and talk there. But it’s as though running has caught the car’s attention – exposed some weakness in her – and she feels as if the car lights have locked onto her back with an animalistic ferocity, like the glazed eyes of a wild animal in a trance of instinct, nostrils full of prey. She feels the lights coming faster and faster, galloping towards her. A scream rips from her throat, but the wind whips her voice away, as if it’s needed elsewhere, at another drama. The car growls, so close behind her now.
Her bag falls from her shoulder and her neck whips round as the car bites into her hip. She feels her bones crack as easily as porcelain; the impact makes her spin, an insane pirouette to the edge of the stream. Her feet can’t keep up and she falls back. Thorns shred her useless hands as she clutches the hedgerows for support, but it’s just brambles and loose branches; it doesn’t even slow her down. She hears herself scream, distant, as if it’s coming from someone else far away. Her head sounds like a piece of meat slammed down on a butcher’s table as it hits something hard.
The stream is quite narrow; it fits her well, snug as a coffin. Her heart beats energy around her body with such force she can’t feel anything else. Even the ice water that busily trickles around her, trying to find its new flow with her in the way, doesn’t sting any more. The freezing air smells of wet, rotting things and her breath leaves her in blowsy clouds like small spirits, as if part of her was escaping, dissolving into the night.
She opens her eyes; the sky is still inky with night-time, and raindrops sting her face like tiny wet kisses. The car has finally come to a mechanical panting halt above her.
She places her hand between her thighs and raises it to her eyes. There’s no blood. Thank god, there’s no blood. Maisie, naughty Maisie, barks. She hears footsteps against the tarmac. They pause above her. She wishes they wouldn’t. It’s a relief when they walk away again. Pre-dawn silence seems to cover her, tucking her into her new bed. She feels held by the stream, calm in the silence, and she decides to drift off, just for a while, and when she wakes up, everything will be clear and she’ll feel free again.
1
Alice
I sit down in my usual chair, facing him. His head is turned towards me, patient, waiting for me to begin. I don’t expect a welcome, which is good because he never offers one. He just waits, professional, for me to start talking, which eventually I always do.
‘Hi, Frank – Happy New Year. Hope your Christmas was all right. It’s good to see you.’ I smile at him.
He doesn’t move; his expression doesn’t even flicker.
‘It feels like I’ve been away for ages.’ I look around; his sparse little area is just t
he same. After all the rain, the bright January light from the window is a relief; it catches dust motes floating in the air.
‘Our Christmas was quite fun. Remember I told you David and I went to the New Forest to see my folks? Claire’s moved my mum and dad into the barn they converted, so now her, Martin and the kids have the old house. I thought I wouldn’t mind but it was pretty weird. The house we grew up in but with someone else’s stuff. Anyway, David thought my folks seemed pleased with the set-up and that’s the most important thing, of course.’
The plan had been hatched and carefully executed by my sister, Claire. Younger than me by just eighteen months, Claire decreed it was ridiculous our parents were rattling around in the four-bedroomed Georgian house we grew up in when she and her family were squeezed into a three-bed rental. An annex conversion was designed by my architect husband David and hastily constructed in just six months from the old black-stained barn. My parents gathered up their bird books, their mugs and the old oak table that still has ‘Alice Taylor’ engraved with a compass on the long edge and, in their usual quiet way, shuffled across the drive to their new home. Claire hired a skip for everything else.
Frank waits for me to start talking to him again.
I shift in my seat.
‘The kids were sweet. Harry, Claire’s five-year-old, had head lice recently and realised my name spells A-Lice so he called me ‘Auntie Lice’ or ‘A-Lice’ all Christmas. David thought it was hilarious. I sort of hinted that Martin might want to tell him to stop but either he didn’t get the hint or he couldn’t be bothered to do anything. I never can tell with Martin.’
The jury was still out on my languid, shoulder-shrugging brother-in-law. I thought he was either a quiet genius or not at all bright. David just thinks he’s figured out how to have an easy life, which, if true, makes him a genius in my book, considering he’s married to my sister.
‘Claire and I didn’t piss each other off too much, thankfully, but, oh god, there was one thing on Christmas Day.’ I lean in towards Frank. I can’t tell stories about the kids to most people, so I’m going to enjoy this. ‘I’d just given Harry a bath and went down to the kitchen and caught Claire peeling grapes for Elsa … peeling grapes, for god’s sake! I mean I get it for a baby but a three-year-old? I think Claire knew what I was thinking, and immediately said Elsa wouldn’t eat them with the skin on. David came in though, thank god, and stopped me from having a go at her.’
This last bit wasn’t strictly true; David’s presence stopped a full-blown argument erupting but I hadn’t been able to stop myself from muttering, ‘You are wrapped around her finger’, at the sight of Claire bowed over their new kitchen table, chipping away at the grape skin with her nail while Elsa had sat in her booster seat, kicking the side of the table like a tiny dictator.
Claire had snapped up from her work. ‘What did you say, Ali?’
Elsa had stopped kicking the table to look at me, her cheeks flushed red, rashy, glistening with grape juice. She’d looked affronted by my interruption when she’d had things working so nicely.
‘Oh, come on, Claire. You’re seriously still peeling grapes for her?’
Claire had finished the grape she’d been working on and handed it to Elsa who, without shifting her gaze from me, had snatched it from her mum and steered it greedily into her mouth with her podgy fist.
‘I just want her to have more fruit and this is the only way,’ Claire had said with forced restraint. Elsa had started sucking the grape, trying to get her teeth to grips with its slippery, skinless surface. Claire had taken a swig of wine before saying, ‘Just leave me to it, OK, Alice?’, the subtext being, ‘You don’t have kids, so how could you possibly understand?’ That’s when David had come in, perfectly timed as always, his paper hat torn at the seams, his prematurely grey hair poking out at strange angles. He’d known I had been drunk and tired enough to pursue a petty row.
‘Come on, Alice; come and help your dad and me beat Martin and your mum.’ They’d been playing board games in the sitting room while I’d helped Claire with the kids. David can’t bear rows so I’d sidestepped around Elsa’s seat and had gone to play Trivial Pursuit. As I’d walked away, I’d seen something like a light-green eyeball pop out of Elsa’s little mouth. Later David had stepped on the peeled grape and I’d apologised to Claire and the two of us had laughed at the grape trail David had smeared all over the slate tiles.
It would be at this point in my story that a therapist might ask, ‘And how did your sister’s comment make you feel?’ But not Frank, it’s not his style.
I pressed on. ‘Everything else was fine really. Mum and Dad were sweet and quiet as normal. Still completely obsessed with Harry and Elsa; they love having them so close. I guess it’s like how families used to be: grandparents mucking in, teaching their grandkids things, telling them what it was like when they were children, all that stuff.’ I pause, swallow, unsure how I fit into this wholesome family picture. I wonder if Frank notices how quickly I change the subject.
‘We had Simon, David’s dad, to stay for a few days and then we went to our friends Jess and Tim’s for New Year’s – they’re the local friends I told you about – so it was pretty low-key, more board games and wine.’ I shrug, ‘It was nice.’ A widower for five years, since David’s mum Marjorie died from breast cancer, Simon has found love again with golf. He seems content enough. I can’t think of anything else to say. I sense Frank knows there’s something I’m not telling him, a promise I’ve made that I keep trying to bat away like a persistent fly.
I sit back in the visitor’s chair. Frank hasn’t changed during the break. His cadaverous head rests heavy on the pillow. He is partly obscured by breathing apparatus; his tracheotomy is attached to a great blue plastic tube like an octopus tentacle, which runs cruelly from the middle of his throat. His body is shrivelled, like a line drawing, but his head is as hard and heavy as a marble carving. The respirator and monitor screens behind him click and beep away endless seconds. They seem louder, more intrusive than I remember.
Lucy, Frank’s daughter, once told me he has a broad West Country accent. I love accents. It’s a pity I may never hear him talk. I look down at his face; it’s a tired suggestion of the Frank I’ve seen in photos. Like some over-loved old teddy, his skin is sallow from hospital air and his hair is white and spidery like frayed cotton.
When he was first admitted, two months ago, it was mahogany, like my hair; I remember one of the nurses – Carol maybe – saying we could be brother and sister. Perhaps it was that comment that made me start talking to him like this. Or maybe it was because he’s been here so long and weeks go by without anyone coming to visit, or maybe it’s just because Frank’s such a good listener.
My instinct is that Frank’s more conscious than his brain scans and test results show, but instinct doesn’t count for anything on 9B; everything must be proven by a machine or a graph before anything changes. When Frank was first admitted, talking to him was like talking to an empty box – he was off somewhere; I don’t know where – but now when I sit with him, I can feel his presence. I know he’s listening. Without moving a muscle or saying a word, he comforted me just before Christmas on the anniversary of my first miscarriage. I told him about the first as I cleaned his tracheotomy; I think it surprised us both. Then I told him about the seven that followed. I even told him about the ones David doesn’t know about, my body snuffing out tiny life as efficient and silent as a candle in a jar. I felt better after talking to Frank. I suppose it helps that he can’t move, that I don’t have to watch the familiar struggle to hide the pity I see on most peoples’ faces. I stroke Frank’s downy hair, soft as breath on the back of my hand. This New Year marks the end of trying and the beginning of trying to accept we won’t have our own family. I promised David; I agreed eight years of trying is all we can take. It’s over.
I bite my bottom lip. I mustn’t get into a habit of talking to Frank about myself too much – it’s not fair on him – so I pull my
hand back and look away from Frank. The nurses working over Christmas have wound some purple tinsel around the frame of Frank’s bed, by his feet. I know their intention was good but now it looks a bit silly.
I get up from the chair, grateful for something to do. I pick the Sellotape off the bed frame and unwind the tinsel. I imagine Frank thinking, Thank god for that, and I smile and say, ‘You’re welcome, Frank’, as I drop it in his bin.
Apart from the purple tinsel and a plastic Santa and sleigh with reindeer that look like they’re hiding forked tongues, 9B has got off quite lightly this year. The only other decorations around Frank are a couple of Christmas cards stuck to the side of his bedside table. I leave them for now.
I hear voices at the end of the ward: the other day-shift nurses arriving. I’ve got rounds in five minutes so I say goodbye to Frank and walk down the wide corridor that makes up Ward 9B at St Catherine’s Hospital, or ‘Kate’s’ as everyone calls it. We’re part of the ‘Nines’: the three critical-care wards at Kate’s. 9B is a small High Dependency Unit with four operational bed spaces. All our patients here teeter on their own personal tightrope between life and death. Us nurses share patient care but since he was admitted in November, I always put myself forward to nurse Frank.
My white trainers squeak against the tacky dark green plastic floor as I walk back towards the entrance of the ward, the sound as familiar to me as a kettle boiling. Today, everything seems the same but Christmas has subtly altered the ward somehow; there’s a sense of possibility this morning. There are some new members of staff, fresh diaries and the carpet in the nurses’ room has been cleaned. The smell’s the same though, the air like another presence in the hospital, a humid puff of overly boiled potatoes and hand antiseptic. Visitors find it stifling, but when you work here you get used to it.
I’m on my way to join in the post-holiday chatter that bubbles out of the nurses’ room like foam when Sharma, one of the ward consultants, walks stiffly out of his office, ready for rounds. He looks much older than his forty-seven years, as if Christmas has aged him. He’s even more precise and starched than normal, as though Santa Claus brought him a steamer, a ruler and spray fixer. His small moustache, like his hair, is jet black, shiny and symmetrical. His shoulders are right angles and the three pens in his breast pocket – black, blue and red – rest ready for action. It’s unsettling. How can anyone like him work in a world of piss and vomit? I always feel a little anxious doing rounds with him, as though I’m dirtying him by proxy, talking about bedsores and bowel movements.