by Libby Page
Back at the counter, Mona checks her phone for a missed call or text from Hannah, or another message from Poppy, but there is nothing. Instead, she spots an email from the dance company, her new employer. It includes a series of forms she needs to complete and as she scans quickly through them she pauses on one particular page. A small phrase jumps out at her and she stops, suddenly staring at the words ‘emergency contact’. For the past five years, Hannah has been her emergency contact and she remembers with a start the time she had to use her as one.
*
As Mona lands, her ankle buckles underneath her and with a shoot of pain she realises something is very wrong. This is not a usual trip or fall where she can shake it off and continue dancing a few minutes later, this feels different. Very carefully, she lowers herself to a sitting position, careful not to move her ankle too much.
By now the other dancers have stopped and are crowded round her.
They are in a dance studio in South London, learning the routine for an upcoming commercial gig where the group of them will be dancing in the background of an advert. It is a good job – not because she finds the steps particularly inspiring or challenging, but because it pays well and that is so rare. As she thinks it she realises with a drop of her stomach that, from the throbbing coming from her ankle, she won’t be able to do the job any more, meaning she won’t get paid. She curses herself for having tripped. The steps are not hard but they have been practising for five hours already without a break. Last night she worked a late shift at the café and only had three hours sleep before heading to rehearsals.
‘Are you OK?’ asks the choreographer, leaving the front of the studio where he had been watching and coming towards her.
The other dancers shuffle around her, sharing sympathetic noises.
‘Does it hurt a lot?’
‘Someone should get some ice.’
‘This is a dance studio, there isn’t any ice.’
‘Can you put any weight on it?’
Mona shifts, wincing even at the slight movement, and tries to place the ball of her foot on the ground but as soon as her toes touch the floor, a pain so sharp shoots up her foot and ankle that she feels nauseous. Not wanting to let her colleagues see her cry, she bites her lip and shakes her head.
‘Oh, you poor thing,’ says one of the dancers, the others nodding in agreement. It sounds sincere, but Mona knows that they must also all be sighing in relief, grateful that it’s not them who tripped and that they will still get paid for their time.
Another wave of pain rolls through her and she feels suddenly as though she might be sick.
‘I think it’s best if I lie down,’ she says, sinking slowly to the floor, her legs stretched out in front of her.
The choreographer suddenly leaps into action.
‘Yes, of course, don’t move,’ he says. ‘Frankie, can you get Mona some water. Kelly, can you find a jumper or something to make a pillow for her foot. Mona, I’m going to call your emergency contact. Do you know their number or do you want me to look it up on our system?’
‘Yes, Hannah,’ says Mona, her voice woozy and strained with pain, ‘I can call her …’
She moves as if to sit up but feels suddenly dizzy, the slight movement causing another burst of pain.
‘You stay where you are,’ says the choreographer, ‘Just tell me her number and I’ll call her. Then if she can get here soon she can take you to the hospital – I’ll book you both a taxi. If she’s busy one of us will come with you. Is that OK?’
Mona nods gently and closes her eyes. She is aware of a buzz of movement around her, voices blurring as she focuses on the pain and on breathing as steadily as she can. After a few moments hands gently lift her ankle and rest it on something soft. She hears shuffling and the tapping of feet and assumes the other dancers have continued practising either around her or on the other side of the studio. She doesn’t open her eyes to check, instead she squeezes them tightly shut and concentrates on not crying and not being sick.
She is not sure how much time passes, but eventually she hears a door slam and the urgent sound of a voice she recognises.
‘Mona!’
Mona opens her eyes and sees Hannah standing over her, still dressed in her work uniform, her apron tied around her waist. She reaches down for Mona’s hand and Mona takes it.
‘You poor thing,’ says Hannah, her red hair frizzing around her face, her eyes soft with concern.
‘You’ve got ketchup on your face,’ Mona says, because she feels slightly delirious and because she suddenly notices a blob of red on Hannah’s cheek.
‘I came straight from the café,’ Hannah says, wiping her face, ‘Sofia said she’d be fine on her own and I called Stella – she’s going to head over there in a bit too. But now we need to get you to hospital.’
With a lot of effort, Hannah, the choreographer and a couple of the dancers help Mona to her feet. Or foot – she is only able to stand on one leg and half hops, is half carried outside, where an Uber is waiting.
‘Are you sure you two will be OK?’ asks the choreographer as they gently bundle Mona into the car, the driver giving a worried look at Mona’s pale, clammy face. She thinks he is probably more worried about his car than about her, but she feels a little better now after lying down, her ankle still throbbing but her nausea subsiding.
‘We’ll be fine,’ says Hannah, following Mona into the back of the car, ‘Thanks for calling me, I’ve got her now.’
And the car pulls away, the choreographer and dancers watching for a moment before turning and walking back into the studio. Mona doesn’t expect she will see them again.
Hannah holds Mona’s hand throughout the whole journey, not seeming to mind when Mona squeezes suddenly tighter as they go over speed bumps and her foot jogs and throbs.
‘Not long now,’ Hannah keeps saying, and eventually they do arrive.
‘This is A and E?’ asks Hannah as the taxi stops outside the hospital building. She can’t see any signs but the driver nods and points.
‘Yes, yes, A and E,’ he says, ‘This is where I stop. I can’t stop anywhere else.’
Once they are on the pavement, Mona standing on one leg and leaning against the wall, Hannah stops a pedestrian carrying a bunch of flowers and asks if they know where A & E is.
‘It’s round the other side of the building, love,’ he says, pointing and then walking away quickly.
Mona and Hannah look at each other. Under normal circumstances, the other side of the building would be just a short walk away, but on one leg and with her ankle burning with pain it feels suddenly impossible.
‘Right,’ says Hannah.
‘I can hop,’ says Mona determinedly, gritting her teeth. She sets off, hopping awkwardly, Hannah standing close beside her for support. But after just a few paces she is exhausted and has to stop to rest, leaning against the wall of the hospital building. They set off again, but this time she makes it an even shorter distance before having to stop. The pain in her ankle is growing stronger and she feels faint.
‘OK,’ says Hannah, stopping in front of Mona, ‘I’ll have to carry you.’
Mona attempts a laugh but is in so much pain that it comes out as more of a grunt.
‘But you’re the same size as me,’ she says, ‘There’s no way you can carry me.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ says Hannah, turning around and crouching slightly, offering Mona her arms to loop her legs through. Mona is too tired to keep going so reluctantly she lets Hannah lift her slowly into a piggy-back.
Together, they walk a little closer towards A & E. Hannah walks slowly, her breathing heavy. Once they have gone a little way she pauses to rest, before continuing. Mona holds her arms around her friend’s neck.
‘I can see it!’ Hannah says eventually, ‘The sign for A and E, it’s just there.’
She is w
alking even more slowly now, struggling to take even the smallest of steps.
‘I’m going to need to go to A and E too after this,’ she wheezes and suddenly they are both laughing, in spite of the pain they are in.
‘Stop!’ gasps Hannah, ‘I can’t laugh and carry you!’
Slowly, with many stops on the way, tears streaming down both their faces as they laugh and groan and Mona’s foot burns as though it is on fire, they make it to the doors of the accident and emergency department. Hannah sets Mona carefully down on the ground and takes a few deep breaths, her face flushed and damp with sweat.
‘OK, you wait here,’ she says, stretching her back and then walking into the hospital. A few moments later she returns, pushing a wheelchair.
‘Your chariot,’ she says, and Mona flops heavily into the seat. Hannah pushes her through the doors. She stays with her during the two-hour wait, during the consultation and the scan where a doctor tells Mona she has badly sprained her ankle, and together with a newly acquired pair of crutches, they head home again together that evening, Hannah still wearing her café apron. Mona’s ankle might still ache with pain, but she smiles because when she’d needed her, her friend was there. And when she thought she couldn’t go on, Hannah had carried her.
‘Thank you so much,’ she says to Hannah when they arrive home, both of them understanding that it is meant for today but also for so much more.
*
In the café Mona stares at the forms, remembering her injury and the several weeks it took to recover. Throughout it Hannah was incredibly supportive, doing her food shopping for her to save her struggling to the shops and buying frozen peas for her to rest on her ankle to reduce the swelling. When the injury happened, she had been so relieved to hear Hannah’s voice as she lay on the floor in the dance studio and to feel her hand reaching down for hers. Thinking of it now she feels so softened by the memory that she suddenly considers calling Hannah just to hear her voice and to try and work things out. But she hesitates. She thinks back to all the times Hannah has taken their friendship for granted this year and hurt Mona with her carelessness. She remembers the harshness of Hannah’s voice earlier and her failure to be proud of her like Mona so desperately needed her to be. She recalls the slamming of the café door and the customers staring at them in surprise and so her phone stays in her pocket.
She reads the form again, supposing that Poppy will be her new emergency contact. As she thinks this, it is as though something changes and she has just taken one big step away from her life and her home here in London. She feels a shifting, a readjusting of things that both excites and saddens her in equal measures.
Her eyes return to the couple in their sixties who are on their honeymoon. They sit in companionable silence, smiling at one another. Looking beyond them and out the window, Mona spots John the Big Issue seller again. She goes to wave, but he is facing away from her, his eyes fixed on the busy street. She watches for a moment, taking in the details of the view she knows so well and trying to fully comprehend the fact that she will soon be leaving, that her life is changing, until the café door opens again and the demands of drinks to make and orders to pass through to Aleksander return her to the counter, her back to the street and her mind, for now, focused on nothing but the act of making coffee. The crunch and grind of the coffee beans, the cough and splutter of the milk steamer.
5.00 p.m.
Harry
He takes a sip of his coffee and settles into his chair, his fingers linked through Martha’s. It feels strange to see their new wedding bands shining on their fingers – bright and fresh, unlike the ones they used to wear that had both grown dull by the time they met, much like their marriages.
Harry had loved Jennifer, but he didn’t know how to love her the right way to keep her happy. Over time he realised that perhaps it was simply impossible.
When they were first married they lived in a tiny one-bedroom flat in Whitechapel behind the Royal London Hospital. They took showers together in the evening and had breakfast together each morning even though their differing commutes and office start times meant they left the flat an hour apart. They talked about their childhoods and their jobs (they came to know each other’s colleagues as well as if they were family, even though they had never met them) and where they would go on holiday if they had the money, and what they wanted to achieve in their lives and later, what to cook for dinner and whose turn it was to pick up toilet roll and bin bags on the way home.
He couldn’t say exactly when it happened, but things changed. Over time he felt Jennifer drifting away from him, as though she had looked at him one morning and suddenly found his existence an irritation. It started with small remarks, so lightly said that Harry only realised he was allowed to be hurt by them after many years.
‘Is that really what you’re wearing?’ ‘Don’t put that there, you fool.’ ‘You know, my mother told me I shouldn’t marry you.’ (Harry: ‘I thought your mother liked me?’) ‘Do you know that Maggie’s husband just bought her a Tiffany ring? Tiffany! Of course, this bracelet is nice too …’
He had noticed her make the odd cutting remark when they were dating – telling a waitress calmly but clearly exactly what was wrong with their food or speaking to her sister on the phone and telling her that it was time she got her life together. But at the time he hadn’t minded. The food had been bad, her sister had needed pushing to leave home and get on with her life. When they were young, it was Harry whom Jennifer turned to with gentleness when her flashes of anger at the rest of the world subsided. But as the years passed, increasingly he became the sole outlet for her anger. He sometimes thought the irritation seemed to increase with each new son (they stopped at three) and each slightly larger flat, then house, as if their expanding lives were somehow shrinking Jennifer’s affection for him. He often wished they were back in that flat in Whitechapel, which only on looking back did he remember Jennifer complaining about, but which seemed to him their happiest home.
It became hardest to bear when Jennifer involved the children in her criticism of him.
‘Isn’t Daddy silly?’ ‘Daddy’s burnt the toast again, looks like it’s cereal for breakfast today, poppets.’ ‘I’m sorry I married your father – you’d be doing much better at school if I’d married someone smarter.’
At first the children were too young to understand, but as they grew older Harry assumed they chose to ignore it, or that perhaps they thought their family dynamic was normal. Perhaps all fathers were fools. He could understand why the boys might turn away from their mother’s nastier side and instead shelter themselves against the parts of her that were vivacious, and often (with the children, at least) warm-hearted. On Friday nights she bought ice cream and filled three small buckets with sweets for the boys, letting them take it in turns to choose their favourite film. When they were ill she took the day off work and made them beans on toast and jelly and ice cream and read to them until they fell asleep, when she settled herself on the floor by their beds and continued reading to herself, making sure she was there when they woke up. Harry remembers coming home from work one day when Jonathan was off sick and seeing Jennifer sat on the floor looking at their son with such love that Harry locked himself in the ensuite and cried. He felt immediately guilty and ashamed – of course a mother should be devoted to her son. He just hadn’t been looked at like that by her in a very long time, possibly never.
That night he read Jonathan the extra chapter he asked for and hugged him until he squirmed out of his arms and reached for the toy dinosaur at the end of his bed to hold as he fell asleep. Back in their room, Harry kissed Jennifer more fiercely than usual, but her eyes had a faraway look to them. Come back to me, he thought.
Increasingly, Harry felt a constant, numb sort of loneliness when he was at home. He carried it with him to work and knew it made him appear more withdrawn than he would have liked, but it was hard to shake. Most of Harry and J
ennifer’s friends were Jennifer’s really, so even at their dinner parties where he was surrounded by people he felt himself floating separately from them all, watching the conversations and nodding and saying the occasional comment but not truly engaging.
‘Why don’t you make an effort with our friends, Harry?’ said Jennifer.
‘I’m sorry darling, I’m just tired.’
‘Well, next time can you not be tired when we have company. It makes us look incredibly rude.’
Martha and her husband Chris were some of Jennifer’s friends who came over for dinner every now and then. Of all the people they had round, Martha was the one person who could sometimes make Harry laugh like he hadn’t laughed in a long time. But he always felt nervous about it and would quickly withdraw inside himself again, anxious about sparking Jennifer’s anger without meaning to.
Harry’s life had become increasingly unpredictable. Jennifer’s moods seemed to have worsened – her anger was more easily sparked. Perhaps through guilt (he liked to think she felt guilty about the way she treated him, although he couldn’t be sure), she became more lavishly affectionate with the children. There were new bikes and cinema trips ‘Just with Mum and her boys’ and sleepovers with their friends.
One night all three boys were staying with friends and Harry and Jennifer had the house to themselves for the first time in a long time. Jennifer was working late so Harry decided to cook dinner for when she arrived home, hoping the smells of the tacos they used to make together in the Whitechapel flat would soften her, would make her happy. He cooked carefully and cleaned up after himself, wiping the surfaces and loading the dishwasher. He waited for her in the kitchen, reading the paper with a bottle of red wine on the table, letting it breathe.