Sophie's Encore (4 page)

A lump rose in my throat and I had a terrible premonition. Something bad had happened. Something
really
bad had happened. Mum? Dad? Had they been in an accident?

My knees crumpled and I swayed slightly.

“Mrs. Jones?”

I gulped in some air and nodded.

“Mrs. Steve Jones?

I nodded again and tried to swallow my rising panic. What had happened? What had
happened?
My mouth opened to ask the question, but my throat had dried up and no words came out.

The policewoman took my hand and met my gaze. Her voice shook ever so slightly.

“Mrs. Jones, I’m police constable Murphy, and my colleague is WPC Parker. I’m afraid we have some bad news for you. Please…may we come in? It…it would be easier to talk inside.”

My world disintegrated. Someone had died. Someone I loved had died, and I was about to find out who it was. My heart beat in my mouth and my head swam. Irrationally, unfairly, I found myself praying,
please don’t let it be Steve. Please don’t let it be Steve!
Then I realized, with a guilty jolt, that news of Mum or Dad’s death would be just as devastating. I didn’t want to lose anyone.

Already, tears were pouring down my cheeks and I felt faint. I noticed the two policewomen exchanging a look, pointing their eyes at my bump and then at each other, and very gently, WPC Murphy took charge. She touched me on the arm and turned me around so that I could lead the way into the house. On autopilot, I showed the police officers into the lounge and sat down heavily on the sofa. WPC Murphy immediately sat down beside me, close, but not too close, and took my hand.

WPC Parker came into the room a few seconds later, took in the scene and the blaring telly which, I noticed absent-mindedly, was showing images of ambulances and a blown up building, and she abruptly turned it off.

“Mrs. Jones, I’m very sorry to have to tell you that your husband was killed in a terrorist bomb attack in central London this morning.”

I looked at her blankly. Her words entered my brain and skittered around for a little while before they settled into place and made some kind of sense. Involuntarily, I let out a small gasp of relief.

“There must be a mistake. You must have the wrong ID, or something. Steve couldn’t have been killed. He was nowhere near the city center this morning, he works in a hospital in Tooting.” My words tumbled out fast, and I was dizzy with cautious joy. Obviously it was terrible that someone had died—lots of people, probably—but at least it couldn’t have been Steve.

WPC Murphy and WPC Parker traded looks once more. This time, it was WPC Parker who spoke.

“Mrs. Jones, there has been no mistake. Your husband—”

“But there must be! Steve went to work this morning, I know he did, he texted me when he got there!”

WPC Parker swallowed hard. “You’re right. He did go to work this morning. A bomb went off in central London
just before ten a.m. and there were dozens of casualties. The emergency services were on site within minutes but there weren’t enough ambulances and…”

“No, no, no,” I wailed. “You got the wrong man. Steve isn’t a paramedic, he wouldn’t have been there, he doesn’t do ambulance shifts, he works as a nurse in the operating theater. Look, I’ll call him now and…”

WPC Murphy took over again. “Mrs. Jones, your husband responded to the call alongside three other paramedics—”

“But he wasn’t a paramedic!”

Didn’t the woman understand that this detail mattered? Steve couldn’t have been there. It wasn’t his job. Therefore he couldn’t have been killed. If I could only get her to understand…

WPC Murphy kept talking regardless of my objection. “As I was saying Mr. Jones responded to the call alongside three other
paramedics. The crew was short-staffed. A fourth paramedic was needed. Your husband had the right training. He volunteered and took the call.”

“Nooooooooo!” A long, shrill howl of despair filled the room, and it took me a moment to work out that it was mine. My vision blurred and my throat closed up. I struggled to breathe and found myself slumping against the policewoman. Perhaps if I just closed my eyes, this would all go away…

“Parker, call 999. Tell them we have a highly pregnant lady in distress here, do it, now!” WPC Murphy’s voice lifted me out of the blackness and I wondered idly who they were talking about.

“Steve,” I mumbled. “I want Steve!”

Chapter Six

WPC Murphy made as though to put her arm around me but stopped the movement before she made contact. She cleared her throat instead. For a moment, she hesitated but then spoke again.

“Mrs. Jones, I am really sorry but I think it’s best that I tell you what happened, okay?” Her voice was softer now, and the tremor was more distinct.
She’s finding this really difficult,
a detached part of my brain observed.

“Mr. Jones would have arrived at the scene at about twenty minutes past ten. He was assessing a young child with a head wound when another bomb went off…”

“How do you know all this?” I interrupted. “I mean, if he’s really dead, then how do you know when he got there and what he was doing?”

WPC Murphy recoiled at my outburst, but only for a split second. “I know this,” she supplied gently, “because one of the other crew members told us.”

“You mean… you mean Steve died and the others survived?”

In my great terror, I didn’t even notice, then, that I had uttered those words for the first time.
Steve died.
I was too focused on the notion that someone else should have been there and survived.
Not fair,
my brain screamed
. Not fair, not fair, not fair!

“One of the crew members survived. The other three, including your husband, perished alongside another crew. A second bomb went off while they were attending to those injured by the first bomb, and many of the paramedics and victims on scene were killed by falling masonry and debris. We don’t know how many have died, yet, but it’s a terrible, terrible tragedy.”

A terrible, terrible tragedy.
What a terribly inadequate way to sum it up. I lifted my feet onto the sofa and curled up into a small ball. The baby was kicking wildly in my tummy, probably unsettled by the masses of adrenaline sloshing through my body, and bile sat acidly in my throat. The room swam in and out of focus and I only had one thought. If Steve was dead, I wanted to die, too.

“Mrs. Jones? Are you with us?”

WPC Parker knelt in front of me, her face at eye level with mine. Without warning, the bile in my throat demanded out and I threw up, explosively, all over the sofa and the carpet. The heaving wouldn’t stop and the baby kept kicking and kicking. I moaned in terror and pain, my face wet from tears that I hadn’t noticed were still falling, and I wanted Steve.

From a long, long way away I heard the two policewomen talking but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Suddenly more people filled the room, people in familiar green suits, and they were fussing over me, trying to make me better. Surely one of them had to be Steve, if he was on paramedic duty today?

I scrutinized each face hopefully, calling for my husband, but each face turned out to be unfamiliar once it came into focus, and I was alone, alone.

Alone, apart from the baby kicking in my tummy, of course. And Josh, who was still asleep upstairs.

The paramedics fitted me with all sorts of gear, a heart rate monitor for me and one for the baby, an oxygen mask, and they seemed to be getting ready to load me onto a stretcher. Why they wanted to save me if I was just as well ready to die, I couldn’t figure out, but quite abruptly, from out of nowhere, a thought pierced my consciousness.

“You can’t take me away,” I whispered. “Josh is sleeping upstairs. I can’t leave him, he’s only two…”

And then I blanked out.

The paramedics took me to the hospital for a checkup because the baby was showing signs of distress. Josh and I and the bump ended up in St. George’s, the hospital where Steve had worked, and the staff were all in shock. They grieved alongside me and looked after us as if we were family. Within hours, Mum and Dad arrived. Rachel came, too, and she alerted Dan. Everybody was there for me, but still I felt alone.

I stayed in hospital for a few days until it was certain that the baby was all right, and then I was allowed home again until the birth. Mum and Dad looked after Josh in the meantime. They didn’t tell him that his father had died. That was my job, in a quiet moment on the first day I returned home, and it was probably the hardest conversation I ever had in my life. Angels and heaven featured prominently, but I cannot recall exactly what I said.

At my ferocious insistence, Mum and Dad left after a week, right after Steve’s funeral which they had arranged together with Dan. I couldn’t recall anything about the farewell service or the days leading up to it. My memories of that dreadful time resumed with any kind of clarity only at the point when Josh and I had to begin fending for ourselves in the short weeks before Emily’s birth.

Rachel was there for me through it all, of course. And Dan. Dan proved to be a real rock. He just quietly turned up and did stuff, like playing with Josh and making sure Emily’s nursery was ready. He never said much, and he never stayed long, but he was always somehow there. After my due date had come and gone, he more or less moved in, without comment and without asking. He entertained Josh and got the house organized and cooked meals. When my labor started, he rang Rachel and my parents to let them know the baby was coming. When labor had progressed far enough, he took me to the hospital. I didn’t know what he told the nurses but he stayed with me the entire time. Yup, blood, sweat, tears, gore, swearing and all. He was there, holding my hand and holding Emily right after her birth when I was too distraught to even look at her.

After the first few weeks of Emily’s life, when us three Joneses were eventually home alone together…well, as they say, life goes on. I changed nappies and fed my baby and played with my toddler. I grieved, and I went through denial, and despair, and anger. I recalled blank days and black days that somehow merged into weeks and then months. Denial abated. Despair came and went. But anger was a pretty constant companion.

“I hate him,” I muttered weakly. “I’m so cross with him, still.”

“You don’t hate him,” Dan corrected, and I gave a start. How long had I been lost in thoughts?

“You don’t hate him,” Dan repeated and gave me a little nudge. “You know you don’t.” He rocked and soothed me as he had done so many times before. Somewhere deep down, I felt bad for him, too. He was an innocent prisoner of this drama, played out all too frequently. I had weeks, months of being happy, almost forgetful, but sometimes little things would send me over the edge all over again. Neither of us had any answers to my questions, never had, and never would; and I knew I had to stop putting us both through this time and again. Somehow, Dan had become my rock, my constant, the link between a glorious past and this unhappy present.

Dan. What was it that Rach had said a few weeks ago?
Rock star extraordinaire, lead singer of mega rock band Tuscq, erstwhile boyfriend and now godfather to my children
. That about summed it up.

I had known Dan practically all my adult life. We had been engaged once, for about thirty-six hours. He helped me through some minor disasters and was my mate-of-honor at my wedding to Steve. When Steve had asked him in private, and without consulting me, whether Dan would like to be godfather to Josh, Dan had been touched and overjoyed, and accepted readily. He became part of the Jones family, and the following two years were the happiest, most perfect period of my life. We had even crept into Dan’s music, somehow. Dan wrote a very emotional ballad about the miracle of new life that shot to number one all over Europe and in the States, and stayed there for weeks. I had quite a collection of personalized songs, even if most people were unaware of it.

Dan was always there for me. Of course, he still had his other women, his dalliances, although his highly publicized affairs seemed to have petered out of late. He was absent at times, like when he was touring or recording. And naturally, he tried to keep our friendship out of the papers as much as possible. Initially, when he stepped in after Steve’s death and Emily’s birth, when he took Josh to playschool every day for weeks and went shopping for nappies, the press had been all over us. But Dan and his agent had released a statement and refused to answer any further questions, and eventually, the interest in his family-by-proxy let up. Periodically, somebody would snap him in the supermarket with a basket full of groceries or in the park with me and the kids, but by and large, it had become possible for him to do normal things with us without too much disturbance. Frankly, I wasn’t sure how I would have coped without him.

I nodded off in Dan’s arms and was woken by the insistent buzzing of his mobile phone.

“Sorry,” he said softly, “I didn’t mean to wake you.” He struggled to retrieve the phone from his back pocket and held it up to see who had called. The display read,
Jack.
The band manager.

“Shit.” Dan muttered under his breath and listened to his voicemail. I could hear Jack’s agitated voice, although I wasn’t able to make out what he said. Dan sat up and pulled me with him. “Time for bed, methinks. Come on, I’ll tuck you in.”

I let myself be led upstairs like a small child. In my bedroom, Dan plumped the pillows and threw back the duvet. “In you hop, young lady,” he teased, patting the mattress. Instead of obliging, I launched myself into his arms again.