At the top of the stairs there was a bathroom and the narrow hallway doubled back leading to two rooms: a kitchen/diner at the back and a bedroom-cum-living-room at the front. There were records everywhere, music papers and piles of books. The place was messy but not dirty. Not damp like mine.
I felt suddenly shy seeing his bed, a mattress on the floor covered in a brightly patterned blanket. And wondered where to sit, what to say.
‘Tea?’ he offered.
I agreed, and he put a tape on and left me. The music was lovers’ rock, similar to the stuff on the sound system at the shebeen. The sofa looked like an antique, an enormous squashy pile of red velvet that I fell back into.
He brought mugs and a plate of biscuits, then bummed another cigarette off me and skinned up. We smoked it, finished the tea. We still hadn’t touched. Was I reading the situation wrong? Only one way to find out. ‘You want to dance?’ I said.
He stood up, reached out a hand and pulled me up. Long, bony fingers, nicotine stains. His hand was cool and dry. He pulled me close so my breasts and belly were pressed against him, angled his hips so there was pressure there. Bump and grind. I closed my eyes, the music swirling through me, passion growing.
As the track faded out, he stopped moving and I opened my eyes. He had a warm, sleepy look on his face and nudged closer to me. We were kissing, slow-kissing, tasting of tea and tobacco and dope. He gave a little groan and broke it off. But I pulled him back, kissed him hard and started to take his clothes off.
He woke me at one-thirty the following afternoon with tea and fried-egg sandwiches, and the Sunday papers. We ate and swapped sections of the newspaper. He started the cryptic crossword, something I never even attempted.
He talked to me about my course and what I was going to do next. ‘Apply for jobs, go wherever I can get something.’ A pang as I said it, thinking that this might just last a few weeks then.
We watched a black-and-white western on television. His reception was rubbish; the picture kept fizzing over. We got high again using my last cigarette and made love.
I had to go. I’d still more to do on my dissertation and I hadn’t been to the launderette yet, either. One of the few places open on a Sunday in Manchester.
Would I see him again? Would he say anything? Did he like me as much as I liked him?
‘You busy Friday?’ he said as I laced up my shoes.
‘No.’ A spurt of pleasure, warm inside.
‘There’s a do on, the West Indian centre. Go for a curry first?’
‘What time?’ Feeling giddy.
‘’Bout eight.’ He named one of the curry houses. He offered to walk me home then, but I said there was no need.
We kissed outside the shop.
It was sunny, sunny and warm. The streets were busy with people going to the park opposite. I grinned all the way home. It could have been hailing stones and hurling lightning. I wouldn’t have minded.
By summer, I’d moved in.
* * *
Wandering into the kitchen, I saw the little girl’s photograph on the front of the paper, dark hair in plaits, a plump face, chubby arms. Dumpy. Overweight. Sucked in the accompanying headline –
TRAGIC GIRL ROAD DEATH
– before I had a chance to censor myself. Felt a rush of heat, of nausea as I understood what I was looking at. ‘What on earth did you buy that for?’ I rounded on Phil.
‘Don’t you want to know what they’re saying about it?’ he said, sounding puzzled, a little irate.
I gave a laugh. ‘No, obviously not.’
Perhaps she was wobbling on that bike, lost her balance, veered too close.
My mind whispering things I’d not dare to voice aloud. Sneaky things. She was wearing a polo shirt; a school photo, perhaps. An uncertainty in the smile.
I moved to go and he caught my wrist. ‘Carmel, we don’t deal with this by pretending it’s not happening. By sticking our heads in the sand.’
‘So we rub our noses in it?’ My voice broke. ‘I can’t . . .’
‘We can’t help Naomi if we’re ignorant, blinkered.’
I looked at him, his frank blue eyes, his beard already growing in. I closed my eyes, wanting to be blinkered; more than that, wanting to be blind and deaf and dumb to all of it.
He hugged me and we stood like that, the heat of him warming through me, his hand moving to stroke my head.
He was right, I knew it intellectually, but my heart was lagging behind, my instincts were off kilter. At work, with any other family, I’d have been saying something similar: face the facts, accept the truth, only then can you act on the situation. Gather all the relevant information, analyse, understand, develop a strategy, a plan.
‘I’ll read it,’ I said quietly. ‘I’d rather not have an audience, though.’
‘Hey,’ he said softly, ‘you sure about that?’
Why was he so fucking understanding? Tears burned at the back of my eyes. I nodded miserably.
When he left the room, I made a cup of tea and sat down at the table. Pulled the newspaper close. Stared at the photo again. Was it recent? Must be. Had she turned nine by then? The smile was small, slightly false, no teeth showing.
I steeled myself to read the article, aware of all the questions crowding in my head, insistent and intrusive:
was she the eldest, the youngest, what was her family like, what was her name, where had she been going on her bike, who broke the news to her mother?
My eyes slid over the type, the two short columns, reading it like some foreign language, trying not to translate it into meaning and empathy and understanding. A barrier around me like a concrete wall, unyielding.
The nine-year-old girl tragically killed in a road accident in Sale yesterday has been named as Lily Vasey. Lily was riding her bike on Mottram Lane near the family home when she was hit by a car. Her parents Simon (37) and Tina (35) and brothers Nicholas (16) and Robin (14) are reported to be devastated. Police are currently investigating the circumstances of the accident. The two occupants of the Honda Civic, a twenty-six-year-old man and a twenty-five-year-old woman, were both injured in the collision and are undergoing treatment at Wythenshawe Hospital. Sgt John Leland of Greater Manchester Police said, ‘This is a tragic incident that has resulted in the death of a young girl and our sympathies are with her family. We would ask anybody who may have witnessed the collision to contact the police.
’
I let out my breath.
A twenty-five-year-old woman.
That was Naomi.
She was the baby, Lily. Two big brothers. An afterthought? A miracle? A mistake?
Nine years old.
At nine, Naomi had been a determined tomboy, refusing to wear girlie clothes, best pals with Anthony at school and Usman down the road. She had a BMX bike and we’d rigged up a basketball hoop on the drive. She liked to show off break-dancing moves and play Tomb Raider on the computer. I’d wondered then if she’d turn out to be a lesbian.
Now I was scared about her waking up, as she came through the pain and physical healing of the operation and the injuries, and remembering it all: the barbecue, the drive home, the split second before impact when it was too late to act. She’d have seen the child, the bicycle, knowing in her bones that it was too late to stop, too late to avoid hitting her. The slow-motion last moments as the car flew closer.
Until she woke, there was this weird limbo, a breathing space. The sudden silence before the storm breaks, before the earth shakes. Though in fact the damage was already done. When Naomi sat up and remembered it all, it would be an aftershock. The rest of us were already experiencing them, on waking, and in between, all those little tremors when the mind and body forgets for a moment and then stumbles over the memory.
The girl’s family – they’d be doing it too, like being at sea among waves the size of houses, each one cresting, slapping the truth at them. And all their nine years’ worth of memories rising up on hind legs like shadows, like ghosts hungry for grief.
I
kept thinking about them, the Vaseys. I said to Phil, before we left to visit Naomi again, ‘They’re waiting for a post-mortem or whatever. Having to bury their little girl.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Out of nowhere,’ I said, ‘out of the blue, bang, and a whole life, a whole life . . .’ There was no other way to say it: Lily and all she encompassed, all she might have become. Destroyed. Gone. ‘I just feel so sorry for them. I can’t imagine . . .’
‘I know,’ he said, his voice close to a whisper.
After we’d been there about half an hour, Naomi opened her eyes and groaned a little, then scowled. ‘Mum?’ My heart swelled up and almost robbed me of speech, but I managed ‘Hello, love.’
Her eyes moved to Phil at the other side of the bed. He set down his paper, half the clues already filled in in the crossword, and reached for her hand. I moved my hand to cup her cheek, very tenderly, fearful of hurting her. ‘Hello,’ I said again. ‘You’re in hospital, there was an accident.’
Phil and I had agreed that we needed to give her the information gradually. She’d be weak and vulnerable. She didn’t say anything; she was still frowning, her eyes creased up. Had she followed what I’d said? ‘You’ve had some operations. They had to remove your spleen and repair damage to your bowel. You’ve broken your collarbone and your ankle. You’ve a punctured lung, too, broken ribs.’
‘Alex?’
I told her how he was. Then she flinched and her eyelids fluttered. ‘Are you in pain?’ I asked her.
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice squeaky. I wanted to give her a drink, she sounded parched, but the nil-by-mouth sign was still there. I offered her a foam lollipop, explaining that she could suck it if she was thirsty, but she gave a slight shake of her head.
‘Okay, I’ll get the nurse,’ I said.
The nurse came and took various readings. Naomi responded to her enquiries in monosyllables and the nurse gave her some pain relief.
I expected Naomi to have questions for us, or at least to share something of the trauma she had been through, but she didn’t speak again. After a while she closed her eyes, and soon her face relaxed and we could see she was sleeping.
We weren’t out of the woods, but I felt a lightness, a lifting of the dread that had shadowed us since first coming to the hospital. She knew us, she could talk. The spectre of brain damage, of finding her incapable, incompetent, receded.
‘An accident,’ she says.
It makes sense. The weakness, the awful pain, the weird dreams.
She tells me how I am hurt, a list of stuff. It’s like a present, this explanation, a gift. I had no clue what was going on, where I was, how messed up I was, but now I’ve got an answer.
An accident. Operations. In hospital.
‘Alex?’
‘He’s okay. Some broken bones, bruises, he’s on the mend,’ Mum says. ‘Concentrate on getting better,’ she adds. How? Maybe I just have to imagine myself all healed, nothing hurting. Back to normal.
I’d like to smile to show her I’m okay, but the simple things are so hard.
Still. I will get better, and go home, and everything will be all right again. I feel weepy for a moment, then sort of calm. Like I’m a little kid and they’re both there so I know everything’s going to be okay.
An accident?
Mum’s talking again, but my head has gone all swimmy and I can’t stay with her. She squeezes my hand and it hurts, but not much compared to everything else.
‘We should eat,’ Phil suggested.
We went to the café and bought lunch, salad and quiche for me, chilli and baked potato for him. I found it hard to swallow even though I was hungry, my stomach still tense.
The canteen was busy with people, most of them older than us, many with sticks or wheelchairs. Ailing but still active, still out in the world. Unlike my mum, whose life existed in the confines of her nursing home and the wilderness of her imagination.
After we’d finished eating, I suggested we get some air. We were waiting for visiting time to start so we could see Alex. We had to walk a bit to escape the smokers dotted around the building’s exits. There are no grounds to enjoy in the complex; it’s carved out of brownfield sites and has grown and sprawled over the years. We sat on a bench with an unlovely view of the car park. The sunlight twinkled and glimmered on the windscreens and the chrome trims.
I watched a car arrive, drive slowly around the parking bay, find it full and make for the next one along.
‘I’ve been thinking about Petey,’ Phil said.
So had I, somewhere in the back of my mind. Petey, our friend who’d been run over and killed. A drunk driver. Though it turned out to be more complicated than that. There were bound to be echoes for us. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know.’
Phil’s phone went – Archie, his assistant, with a problem he couldn’t answer on his own. ‘Tell them we can try and get the parts but it could be costly. They might be better buying a replacement.’ Archie said something, then Phil answered. ‘Better than she was. She’s been awake for a few minutes.’ He sounded exhausted. We both were. Living on adrenalin and air.
A bus trundled past, over the speed bumps, pulled into the stop and disgorged its passengers, who streamed up to the main entrance.
I rang Suzanne.
‘Mum?’
‘She woke up; your dad and I were there. She recognized us, she talked, only a word or two, but it’s really good news.’
‘Oh good,’ she said, but there was a shade of something in her tone that didn’t fit.
‘What?’ Was something wrong with Ollie? Or was the whole thing just too much for Suzanne?
‘The police are here.’
‘Oh God!’
‘I’d better go,’ she said.
I told Phil. ‘They’ll want to talk to all of us, I imagine,’ he said, ‘and Naomi of course.’
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘She’s not fit.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I’m sure the staff won’t allow it until she is.’
I nodded, barely reassured.
The sky was unbroken blue, the sun warm again, but I shivered, cold to my bones.
Alex was in a four-bed room, asleep in a semi-upright position when we reached him. He looked terribly pale, his skin blue-white like skimmed milk. He had a cast on his left arm and one on his right leg. There were bruises like plums on his forehead and his jaw, and cuts peppered his face and hands.