Split Second (24 page)

‘What’s that got to do with the holiday?’

Emma clutched at her head. ‘The scars on my legs.’ She waved a hand towards her thighs. ‘I can’t wear a swimsuit.’

Laura smiled, gave a little snort. ‘That’s why?’

Emma nodded.

‘Come here,’ Laura said. She hugged Emma. ‘You dozy cow.’ She stood back. ‘Just get a playsuit; you can get quite long ones, like bermudas. Or cycle shorts. No one’ll know.’ She looked at Emma. ‘How long have you been doing it?’

‘Three years.’ Emma thought about pinching herself. Laura hadn’t pushed her away or shrieked with disgust. ‘I’m bulimic as well.’

‘Thought you might be.’

‘Why?’ Emma stared.

‘Couple of things,’ Laura said. ‘My auntie had it.’

Emma felt dizzy. ‘Did she?’

‘She’s all right now. Still frets a bit about her weight, but she’s not chucking up all the time.’

‘And self-harm?’

‘Nah. She never did that. Why do you do it?’

‘I don’t know.’ Emma blew her nose, laughed awkwardly. ‘It helps.’

‘Helps what?’

Emma couldn’t say. The thing too big, too complicated, a shifting shape. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe you should find out,’ Laura said gently.

‘Don’t tell them?’ Emma begged.

‘Course not.’ Laura smiled. ‘You’d better fix your face, you look like a Goth.’

Emma glanced in the mirror; her mascara had run.

‘So the holiday’s on, yeah? We’ll work something out.’

Emma nodded. She felt peculiar. Like there was a bubble billowing in her chest, big and light. She cleaned her face and put on fresh make-up. She checked her purse and worked out she still had enough money to buy Simon a drink if he hadn’t gone yet. Just a drink. She wouldn’t lead him on, but it was nice to talk to him. She could tell him about the holiday, see where he had travelled.

There had been a visit from DC Illingworth in the week after the arrests to go over the details of the prosecution. Conrad Quinn was pleading guilty to wounding Luke and had agreed to testify against the others. They would face charges of murder and attempted murder. The detective stressed that although Quinn’s evidence would be a great help to the prosecution, it did not automatically mean that the others would be found guilty.

Louise thought of the faces in the paper, the smudged images from the CCTV. ‘What about the bus driver?’ she asked. ‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘He’s off sick,’ the officer said, ‘with stress.’ Louise stared at her, didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

* * *

Luke was moved to a high-dependency unit in Fallowfield at the beginning of March. It was closer to Louise’s than the hospital had been, and easier to park.

It was a twilight world, she thought, with several other patients in various states of limited capability. People suspended between life and death, lives riven by sudden, wrenching tragedy. She had no complaints about the staff, and the place didn’t smell, which was always a good sign.

She had further meetings with Dr Liu in the process of sorting out the referral and transfer. Louise shut her ears, her mind, to any talk of decisions about life support. Luke continued to be fed via a tube in his stomach.

Louise borrowed Deanne’s laptop while the kids were visiting their dad (Ruby had taken her machine to drama college) and began to do more research into the condition. Some of the information she came upon was unpalatable, and she avoided the medical sites where the talk was of studies and statistics and averages. Their savage facts made her stomach churn, threatened to snare her in a place of cold despair. Instead she sought out the personal stories of people who had ‘woken up’ against all the odds. The young mother hurt in a car crash who had regained consciousness after four months, the man in the US who’d woken after five years with a single dose of a drug, the child who had come round minutes before her feeding tube was withdrawn. Louise held fast to hope because it was all she had and it was all that sustained her. She didn’t believe in God or prayer or even miracles, though she knew what she was hoping for would be classed as a miracle. She would not give up, she would never give up.

‘What about Luke?’ Dr Liu had asked at the last meeting. ‘What would he want? Would he choose to live like this for the rest of his life?’

Louise thought of him: restless, always moving, climbing, running. Ducking and diving through his short life. Turning cartwheels, handstands in the park. Squealing with delight as Eddie chased him or tickled his tummy. ‘I can’t answer that,’ she said.

‘When you can, you will know what to do,’ the doctor replied. Implying that Louise was selfish. But she was doing this for Luke; he needed more time, more of a chance.

She could not contemplate it. Would not talk about it, even with her closest friends. Deanne asked her one day how long Luke could go on at the nursing home.

‘Indefinitely,’ Louise said.

Deanne’s eyes had clouded and she’d asked, ‘Till he’s old?’ And Louise had heard the revulsion and pity in her voice and said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

She dreamt about it often, dreams where he was hurt and crying and she had him in her arms, carrying him, running for help, her legs burning with cramp, heart slamming in her chest and the terror tearing inside, and then in the dream he would be fine. Just like that. He would be better and at home, just doing something mundane, sprawled on the sofa or sticking a bowl of beans in the microwave, and she’d feel relief like cool water flowing through her, waves of joy. Then she would wake up and the elation would shrivel to fresh disappointment.

She read some of the miracle stories with a pang of unease as the tales of a brother or mother opening their eyes or moving a finger unrolled to describe years of infinitesimally small progress. Even where recovery had been substantial and astonishing, relatives spoke of adjusting to altered personalities, and having to accept that their loved ones would never be the same again. They had gone. There was grief to be borne along with gratitude. So many prospects she shied away from; even as she stubbornly willed his recovery, she would admit no realistic picture of what that might mean: Luke paraplegic and incontinent, drooling; or dumb with depression; or dull and thick with lethargy. I just want him back, was the drumbeat of her hope, my Luke, the same.

The staff at the home told her about support groups she could join, and she smiled and thanked them and said she’d think about it: a tactic she had learnt over the years from some of her clients. Resist and people become persistent, evangelical; promise to consider a change, a new venture, and they’ll let you be.

People still asked after him: Angie and Sian, Omar, her friends, people she barely knew as well, when she ran into them at the supermarket. And sometimes they asked about the court case, in a hopeful sort of way, as though that would somehow make things better.

You’d see that on the television, the victims’ families talking about justice and how it would allow them to move on. Of course she wanted the people who had hurt Luke to be punished – she remembered arguing with Andrew Barnes, and the depth of her rage that he might mess up the police inquiry – but still she didn’t see how that would change anything for her. It was an ordeal to be got through and on the other side things would continue as they were. For her. For Luke. In limbo.

H
e ran into her at the bank one Saturday. A fine June morning with the sky stretched high and blue and the trees in blossom and the local high street thronging with shoppers, some savouring coffees and pastries in the pavement cafés.

Andrew came through the automatic door, his paying-in book in hand, and almost collided with her. ‘Louise.’

She blinked, nodded. A faint colour crept into her cheeks. He sensed her about to move aside and spoke quickly. ‘How are you? How’s Luke?’

‘He’s the same,’ she said. ‘He’s in a residential place now.’

‘Right.’ He couldn’t think what else to say. But he didn’t want to leave it at that. ‘We could get a coffee,’ he suggested.

She drew her head back, preparing to refuse. ‘Half an hour,’ he said. Almost added ‘please’, but that would sound too desperate.

She hesitated, then gave a little shrug.

‘I’ll just pay this in.’ He held his bank book up.

Two mothers with babies in strollers were just leaving a table outside the deli, so they sat there. It was in full sun, and Louise put her sunglasses on. It made it harder for him to see her expression. ‘About before—’ Andrew wanted to apologize for the night he’d gone to Garrington’s house, but she cut him off.

‘It’s all right. No harm done.’

‘Thanks to you.’

‘How have you been?’ she asked.

He puffed out his cheeks, exhaled heavily. ‘Hard to say. Not great.’ His stomach muscles cramped.

‘It’s not something you get over, is it?’ she said. ‘It will always be with you.’

He swallowed, nodded. He was relieved to be interrupted by the waiter taking their order.

‘And Luke,’ he said, when they had chosen their drinks, ‘the place he’s in, it’s okay?’

‘Fine, yeah. The staff are great.’

‘And the chances of him coming round?’

He saw her lips tighten, the muscle in her jaw tense. She raised a hand to her mouth.

‘Sorry,’ he said; he’d put his foot in it.

‘The other day,’ she made a little huffing sound, ‘someone at work I don’t know well, she said how awful it must be for him, trapped like that.’

Andrew groaned in sympathy.

‘How can I know? How can anyone know?’ Louise said. ‘He might be dancing or he might be screaming.’ She pulled a tissue from her bag, dabbed beneath her glasses.

‘Louise . . .’

‘The longer it goes on, the more uncertain I feel.’

‘About what?’

‘Whether I’m right.’ Her voice shook. He waited, attentive, while she lit a cigarette, took a drag. He felt the sun warm on his back and his head, but a chill inside. She smoked some more. ‘I can’t talk about it,’ she said brusquely, lowering her head.

‘Yes you can.’

She looked at him.

Their drinks arrived. He stirred his, waiting until they were alone again. ‘It’s only words,’ he told her.

She turned her head away, looked across the street. He watched a bus rumble past and a sports car with the top down, more cars. At the next table a toddler began to shriek.

‘They say there’s nothing going on, no brain activity. No response to pain. The feeding tube, it keeps him alive. If I . . . stop hoping . . .’ She could barely string a sentence together.

‘But it’s your decision.’

‘How can I choose that?’ she asked him. She shuddered, her shoulders moving.

Tentatively he reached out, touched the back of her hand. He tried to put himself in her situation, imagine it was Jason. Failed. No knowing what he’d do. And Val. Would they even agree? He squeezed her hand, then withdrew his. He saw her arm was tanned, her face too. She was lovely, dark hair, an attractive face: heart-shaped, almond eyes, a dusting of freckles. He wondered what it might be like to hold her, to kiss her.

‘What if he is suffering?’ she asked him.

‘Has anyone suggested that?’

‘No.’

‘They’d be able to tell,’ he said, fragments of his training coming back. ‘Raised cortisol levels, that sort of thing.’

‘They would?’ She stubbed out her cigarette.

‘Yes,’ he reassured her.

She nodded. ‘I didn’t mean to lay it all on you.’ She picked up her drink. Her nails were short, painted a deep crimson.

‘It’s fine. And your daughter?’

‘Ruby. She’s great. She’s going to a performing arts school, over in Liverpool. She loves it.’ She smiled; he felt the warmth of it. Saw the dimples either side of her mouth. ‘She’s doing so well.’

‘Bit of a hike.’

‘She stays during the week.’

‘You’re on your own,’ he said.

Her face seemed to sharpen. Perhaps she had a partner now, or a boyfriend. What did he know?

‘I go to Luke’s most evenings. Watch telly there with him. Ruby’s back at the weekends.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I let her lie in.’

‘The trial,’ he said. ‘We were told the middle of October.’

She nodded. ‘Ruby wants to go.’

‘We’re witnesses, Val and I.’

‘Oh God,’ she said.

He cleared his throat. The toddler wrenched away from his mother and careened into Andrew’s thigh. ‘Hello,’ said Andrew. The child was plump, red-faced, a blob of snot bubbling in one nostril. Andrew recalled the weight of Jason at that age: piggybacking him once his legs got tired, Jason’s hands wrapped around his neck, burbling in Andrew’s ear, his breath sweet and moist. Andrew’s back growing warm and damp where Jason clung to him.

‘Grandad.’ The toddler stopped wailing, stared at Andrew. God, Andrew thought, he’d never be that now. No children in his life. It wasn’t like he could borrow his nephew and niece or suddenly change the family dynamics to play a greater role in their lives.

‘Sorry.’ The mother prised the child away. ‘That’s not your grandad,’ she said to the toddler.

‘Someone asked me if I had any kids the other day, a patient,’ Andrew said, sorrow coursing deep and slow within him. ‘I didn’t know how to answer.’ Jason in his crocodile wellies and Batman suit in the garden, a compass in his hand. Turning slowly, then faster, spinning like the needle, spinning round the world.

Louise sucked in a breath.

‘It’s a beautiful day,’ he said. They were harder – the glorious light and fine blue skies a savage counterpoint to the brooding, choking burden of grief.

‘We’re on to the weather now?’ Louise said wryly.

He laughed.

She checked her watch once more.

‘We could do this again,’ he said. His guts tightened.

She picked up her cigarettes.

‘Just coffee, talk,’ he said.

‘Why?’ She tilted her head. He saw himself reflected in her glasses. His hair was receding.

‘No one else understands,’ he said.

He watched her consider this. A couple sailed past, riding a tandem. Then a car, its windows down, the heavy bass of music pulsing through the air.