Messy, Wonderful Us

by Catherine Isaac

  It was only later when I had to give a statement that I realised that, while I could remember some of the events leading to the accident with complete clarity, I drew a blank on others. Between those two states was a strange hinterland, in which it felt as though I’d witnessed things through misted glass, unsure of whether I could trust what I thought I’d seen.

  I remember Julia surprising us at the airport and us walking to her car, but only fragments of the drive on the motorway and nothing of how we ended up on the country road where the crash happened. I remember my shame and fear that she would find out about what had happened between Ed and me. But, while I’m certain that she worked something out, I can recollect nothing of what was said about it. And, while the police told me that Julia’s vehicle was stationary when the other car ploughed into her, I simply can’t imagine why that might be.

  Oddly, it’s the details from afterwards that are the most vivid: the low creak of the driver’s door as Julia opened it and crawled out. The agonising waves of pain from deep inside my shoulder and the tufts of Ed’s hair, as his head lolled to one side. When I said his name and he didn’t respond, panic swept through me and I started begging for someone to phone an ambulance. By that stage, the driver of the other car already had. Like Julia, he escaped essentially unhurt. But these pieces of the jigsaw still exist only at the back of my mind, in a place I have to scratch about to reach. I am, by all accounts, an unreliable witness.

  Despite a frustrating lack of detail, every time I think of Julia, hostility bubbles under my skin. This is something I can’t explain, because I’ve never felt that towards her before, no matter what feelings I’ve concealed about Ed. Just because she was at the wheel of the car doesn’t mean it was her fault, though I genuinely can’t imagine why she would’ve brought us to a complete standstill in the middle of a dark country road when weather conditions were so bad.

  Nevertheless, and this is the point I keep reminding myself, she must be devastated by the whole thing. The only real explanation I have for the way I feel whenever I think about her is what happened afterwards, when I tried to go and visit Ed.

  ‘I’m very sorry but visiting to Mr Holt has been restricted to immediate family,’ the nurse told me apologetically.

  ‘Oh, but I’m his oldest friend. I’m sure if they knew it was me—’

  ‘I’m afraid the consultant spoke with Mrs Holt only this afternoon and agreed with her that it was probably for the best.’

  I frowned. ‘His mum said that?’

  ‘Mrs Holt,’ she repeated. ‘His wife.’

  That’s how I knew for certain that Julia found out that something had happened between us in Italy. Under those circumstances, who could blame her for not wanting me there? So I slunk away and stood in the lift, filled with self-loathing, misery and a clear explanation about why she hadn’t responded to any of my texts.

  I am, of course, desperate to see Ed, but I have neither the fight nor the audacity to stand up for my dubious right to visit a man who is someone else’s husband, and isn’t even conscious anyway.

  Instead, I’ve had to rely on Ed’s mother for information about his condition, asking her to write down, word for word, exactly what his neurologist had told her. I’ve spent the last week scouring every published paper I could find about comas, impaired consciousness and cerebral dysfunction. I’m still signed off work, but went in on the bus yesterday, to talk to a colleague from the neurology department, Dr Isobel Franck, with whom Petra goes swimming every Tuesday.

  ‘I need your professional opinion. I know this is difficult, but how likely is it that my friend will live?’ She looked uncomfortable but not surprised by the question. ‘Please.’

  ‘Allie, how would this help you?’ she asked me.

  I couldn’t give her a reason why it would, beyond the fact that my need for answers was burning me up. ‘I just have to know.’

  ‘It’s impossible to be precise.’

  ‘A rough percentage on his chance of survival? Please.’

  Her forehead crumpled. ‘Fifteen. Twenty maybe,’ she said reluctantly. ‘But it’s not—’

  ‘Thank you,’ I leapt in, halting her. ‘I really appreciate it.’

  And I did, truly. Even when I ran out into the rain and wanted to keep on running until my legs couldn’t carry me any further.

  That’s how it’s been since the crash. Sometimes I feel like I’m imploding. Other times, I feel calm and methodical. There’s no question which mode I prefer. And there has been cause for optimism. I found a research paper from London’s Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability that found that nearly a fifth of the patients who eventually woke had been in comas thought to be irreversible. Many remembered being conscious of what was going on around them but being unable to communicate. Ed, I reminded myself, hasn’t been diagnosed with persistent vegetative state, at least not yet. So I do have hope, even if it is a fragile and vitreous force, something I’ve tried to construct for myself without fully feeling it.

  Eventually, the only thing left was entirely unscientific sources of comfort: newspaper websites and stories of people trapped in the intermediate stage between death and recovery before they finally woke. People who spent days, weeks, sometimes years in a similar state. After they regained consciousness, they reported that they’d been able to feel the warmth of their loved one’s hand, hear the inflections of their voice – even something as mundane as the squeeze of a nurse’s tourniquet during a blood-pressure reading. I do know of course that they are the exceptions, the statistical anomalies. For every day that goes by, the likelihood of Ed being among their number drifts further out of reach.

  ‘Okay, sweetheart?’ Dad asks, as rows of semi-detached houses pass in a blur of block paving and neatly trimmed privets.

  ‘Yes, fine,’ I nod. He’s always been a solid driver. Confident and vigilant, without being over-cautious. But I feel uneasy in any vehicle these days, even on a journey as short as this, when the evening is bright and clear. My mind drifts to another matter altogether.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Dad?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why did you take Mum back, after what she’d done?’

  He doesn’t flinch. He’s been expecting this conversation. ‘Because she said she’d made a mistake and that she loved me, Allie.’

  I mustn’t look satisfied with this answer. ‘I could’ve tortured myself forever about whether she deserved to come back. But rightly or wrongly, I chose to believe her. I had no choice. I loved her.’

  I look out of the window again, intending to leave the matter there. But something compels me to speak again. ‘Will you try the online dating again, Dad? For me.’

  He glances over and realises I mean it. ‘You really want me to?’

  ‘I really do,’ I say.

  He grips the steering wheel. ‘Okay then. I’ll give it another go.’

  As we turn the corner into my road, I can see a BMW parked opposite my flat. Dad flicks on the indicator and it’s only as he slows that I see the door open and Julia emerge, long legs first. When she spots me in the passenger seat, she clicks her lock and starts heading towards us. Her expression is bleak. It’s then that I know she could only be here for one thing. Something’s happened to Ed.

  Chapter 78

  Coming face-to-face with Julia for the first time since the accident releases a surge of dread from somewhere inside my gut.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I ask, feeling the dig of my nails into my palms. ‘Is Ed . . . is he still . . . ?’

  ‘He’s alive,’ she replies, with a croak from the back of her throat. ‘He’s still not responding.’

  ‘There’s been no change at all?’

  She shakes her head and her eyes glaze with tears. ‘None.’

  I heard that Julia was discharged from hospital with cuts and bruises a day after the crash and now, though her skin is a little pale, her hair remains glossy and her blue eyes clear and bright.

  ‘Thank you for l
etting me know. How are you?’ I ask, nodding to her bump, as my first thoughts turn to the baby that I’ve prayed every night Ed will live to meet.

  ‘Coping,’ she replies. ‘Just about.’

  In the moments that follow, my mind begins to flicker with half-formed memories.

  Streaming red lights. The hum of the engine. The rhythm of my heart.

  She inhales and glances at my dad. ‘Is there somewhere we could talk, Allie?’

  ‘Oh. Yes, why don’t you come in.’ I turn to Dad. ‘I’ll let you know how my hospital appointment goes.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t need me to come with you, love?’ he asks.

  ‘No, no, it’s fine. They’re just checking it over.’

  Eyes in the rear-view mirror. White knuckles on the steering wheel. The snap of the radio’s off-switch.

  Dad gently pulls me in for a hug. ‘Ring me if you need anything, won’t you?’

  I push open the door to my flat and am struck by how untidy it looks, with a crumpled pile of laundry next to the washing machine and a curling sandwich I couldn’t bring myself to eat left on a plate by the sink. Flowers sent by Petra sit in the murk of days-old water, their petals beginning to drop.

  I invite Julia into the living room and she lowers herself primly onto the edge of the sofa as my heart thrashes and I prepare myself to try and defend the indefensible. Or did I already do that? Yet another thing I can’t remember from the night of the crash.

  ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking while Ed has been in hospital,’ she says.

  I try to detect anger, or sorrow, or any other emotion on her face. But, now we’re inside, her demeanour is businesslike and impossible to decipher. ‘This whole thing has forced me to come to some pretty unpalatable conclusions about my marriage. I’m sitting next to his bedside and playing the part of the dutiful wife. But there’s a problem with that picture . . . isn’t there, Allie?’

  The blare of a horn. Rain slamming against the windscreen. ‘Fucking idiot.’

  I swallow a knot in my throat and I’m gripped by a sickening déjà vu, a rush of shame exactly like the night of the accident. I consider trying to explain that we didn’t actually have sex, but that would involve spelling out what we did do and it doesn’t feel like much of a defence.

  ‘I think we’ve already established that Ed no longer loves me.’ Her voice wavers as she says it. ‘He did once. But that love has dwindled and I don’t know the reason for that. I know I haven’t been perfect, but I don’t think anyone is, are they?’

  ‘Of course not. He never expected you to be.’

  ‘Well,’ she says dismissively, ‘the point is that Ed is in a coma and therefore probably unaware of anything going on around him. But, from what I hear, that’s not necessarily the case. If there’s even the slightest possibility that he is conscious of his surroundings, I’m not deluded enough to think that it’s me he’d want there.’

  She fixes her eyes on me. ‘I know what happened between the two of you, Allie.’

  The flash of headlights. The roar of a horn. ‘Sorry for being quiet or sorry for screwing my husband?’

  ‘I think I’d worked it out before I’d even come to pick you up from the airport.’

  ‘Julia, I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘So you should be. Nevertheless, I need your help.’

  ‘What is it?’

  She takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. ‘Nothing I say or do as I sit next to Ed is having any effect. He just won’t wake up.’ There is exasperation in her voice, like she’s a child who is doing everything she’s been told to do but has failed to be adequately rewarded for it. ‘I know I’d told the medical staff that no one but immediate family should go near him, but now . . . now I think you should go and see him.’

  I blink at her, astonished. ‘Are you . . . sure?’

  ‘Yes. Definitely. He’d want you there.’

  Gathering speed. An impossible question. ‘You piece of shit.’

  I lean back in my chair, silently struggling to make sense of her volte-face. She seems to interpret my reaction as meaning that I don’t want to go.

  ‘Please, Allie,’ she says urgently, leaning forward. ‘If Ed dies, I could be in a great deal of trouble.’

  I frown. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look, it’s by no means cut and dried. I mean, I wasn’t even driving at the time – I’d stopped. From what I hear you don’t remember much so if it goes to court . . .’ She gathers her thoughts. ‘But they are appealing for witnesses and if any of the other drivers come forward from the motorway, it wouldn’t look good. There’s forensic evidence about the position of the car when the accident happened. The other driver, obviously, is trying to blame me, which is ludicrous given that he ploughed into me but . . . the upshot is that, my lawyer says the worst-case scenario could be a death by dangerous driving charge. That carries fourteen years in prison, Allie. Fourteen years.’ A quiver appears in her lower lip. ‘I do not deserve that. I’m not capable of it. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  As I press my palms into the surface of the sofa, the night’s events begin to shuffle into place with an order and clarity that has entirely escaped me until now. How she was like a wild animal behind the wheel. How we screeched across the motorway and ended up on a narrow lane, going faster. How Ed begged her to slow down, but she kept demanding answers, determined to know if ‘something’ had happened, until he finally said yes in an attempt to stop her. And then . . .

  The weight behind a fist. The crunch of bone and flesh. Total disbelief. ‘You punched him,’ I say.

  ‘He deserved it, Allie.’ She says it with such measured composure that it’s clear she’s rehearsed this argument many times. It makes me recall the scar on his forehead, the injury he told everyone he’d got when he was running a half-marathon.

  ‘Had you . . . done that before, Julia?’

  ‘Look,’ she says, holding my gaze fiercely as she leans forward. ‘I love Ed.’

  She says this as if she believes it without a shadow of a doubt. Through a new rush of adrenalin, I wonder whether I believe her myself. After all, love isn’t always a wholesome, selfless force for good. ‘I want him alive for reasons that go beyond keeping myself out of jail, Allie. I love him. You can choose to believe that or not, I don’t care either way. But you must surely see that I had every right to be furious about what he’d done. About what you’d both done.’

  ‘Of course. Absolutely.’

  She leans back, satisfied.

  ‘But you didn’t have the right to assault him,’ I add. ‘You didn’t have the right to drive your car like you did, risking at least three people’s lives, your own baby’s life, and possibly more. You didn’t have the right to cause an accident that’s left Ed fighting for survival.’

  My heart is now beating so hard that it feels as though it’s about to burst out of my chest. Fury begins to build behind her eyes as she responds through gritted teeth.

  ‘You are in no position to lecture me, Allie. Both of you are as bad as each other. Seriously, what kind of man screws another woman when he thinks his wife is expecting their baby?’

  ‘We didn’t screw,’ I plead, but am silenced by a punch of shame. Then something occurs to me. ‘What do you mean thinks?’

  Pink blotches begin to blossom on Julia’s neck. She straightens her back.

  ‘We lost our little girl in the accident, Allie,’ she replies, placing her hand on her abdomen. ‘I asked Ed’s mother not to tell you. It’s a private matter, after all.’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m sorry,’ I mutter, momentarily forgetting my question.

  ‘So am I.’ She takes a tissue from her bag and holds it against her nose. ‘You assume once you’ve sailed past the twelve week point and come out the other side that everything will be fine. That’s one of the reasons I was quite happy to let Ed pack himself off to Italy.’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I repeat.

  But I can feel the knit of
my brow as I replay her sentence: what kind of man screws another woman when he thinks his wife is expecting their baby? Then something else entirely occurs to me. A contradiction. A slip of the tongue. Another casual statement that doesn’t fully add up.

  ‘So, you’d passed the twelve-week mark before we went to Italy?’ I ask carefully.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘I just . . . thought you’d said your first scan was due after Ed came back. I’d understood that they could only be done between eleven and thirteen weeks, that’s all. The check for Down’s Syndrome can’t be performed any later.’

  The sinews in her neck begin to protrude. ‘I . . . I don’t think that’s right.’

  ‘No, it is,’ I reply, standing my ground. ‘My colleague Gill is pregnant and—’

  ‘So I got the dates mixed up,’ she snaps. ‘I’ve had rather a lot on my mind, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ She sits forward, on the offensive again. ‘Listen to me, Allie. I’m not here to discuss this with you. Whether you believe there was a baby in my womb or not is a complete irrelevance to me. It’s nothing to do with you at all.’

  ‘But was there a baby, Julia?’ I ask. She can’t look me in the eye. A tiny bead of sweat appears on her brow and begins to make its way slowly downwards.

  She opens her mouth but closes it again quickly. It’s then that I’m certain: the baby was invented, as much of an illusion as everything else about her.

  ‘Did you make it up to persuade Ed to stay?’ I continue.

  The pale skin on her knuckles stretches as her fists clench into tight balls. There is a part of me that thinks I should be afraid of this woman. I’ve seen what she’s capable of. But I’m not. Not even a bit. On the contrary, I’m pumped with adrenalin.

  ‘What were you going to do as time went on Julia? What were you going to tell him?’ My suspicion is that, in her desperation, her thinking hadn’t got that far. Or perhaps she planned to wait until after his return – after she’d proven to him that they should be together – before the ‘miscarriage’ happened.

  Nevertheless, this is not something she’s prepared to articulate. Instead, she picks up her bag, rises to her feet and glares at me. ‘Just go and visit Ed, will you? And get him to wake the fuck up.’