Chapter Twenty-Two
Daniel Bekener @EditorDanB
In the hospital hoping for the best.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Relocation
Sorry, mate, going to be a bit held up. There’s been an accident, we’re just waiting for news now. I’ll be heading back to town soon as we know what’s happening.
Want to ask a quick favour — can you put the word out and see if anyone up this end of the world is hiring editors? I know there’s somewhere in Newcastle — it’s about 40 miles from here to there. I mean, not to spring this on you, but I’m thinking of, maybe, taking some more time up here. There’s this kid, she’s the one who’s been in the accident, and I’ve got quite fond of her. Whatever happens with Winter and that’s not looking good, mate, I mean she’s good for turning the book in — I’ve had a quick read through and I think we could be sitting on a gold mine there — personally though she’s a mess but I might stick around up here anyway. I can still work for Shy Owl, I mean, come on, you don’t need my face around the office, just mail me the stuff! I just think it’s about time I started to think about a future, and here is as good a place as any. I can be down with Beth in a couple of hours on the train if she needs me. Done it a couple of times from here, it’s fine.
I’ll be coming back to sort stuff out, maybe rent out the flat, check in, start the publicity machine up for Winter’s book, and then . . . think I just need a complete change, you know?
Dan
‘We’re just waiting,’ I whispered. ‘Alex and Margaret are in with the doctor now. She’s got to be all right, Daze, she’s got to.’
I glanced quickly over my shoulder to where Dan was sprawled across three plastic chairs in the waiting area. He’d draped his coat over himself and closed his eyes but I had the horrible feeling that he was awake and listening.
‘You have to stay strong, Winnie, you know that. You can’t fall apart now.’
‘I know that. I’m . . . I’m trying, but it’s hard. It’s . . . she’s so little. So frail. All those little bones, like she’s just straws and skin, and it’s not fair , Daze!’
My sister was quiet for a moment. ‘Okay. Okay, yes, it’s hard, she’s a little girl and you are very fond of her and you’re allowed to be upset.’
I blew out a breath that sounded too loud in this unnaturally hushed place. A low table held old copies of women’s magazines, scattered as though bad news had washed over them like a tide. ‘Poor Alex. He’s devastated, and Margaret looks as if she’s aged about forty years.’
‘Yeah, you think it’s hard for you . He’s got it tougher, poor bloke. And what about Dan?’ Daisy sounded wistful. Not sad, exactly, but definitely melancholy. ‘It must bring it all back, his sister being injured and everything. Being in a hospital, waiting for news . . .’
I looked over at Dan again. He’d given up the pretence of sleeping now and swivelled his body so that he slouched on a single chair. He was rubbing the chaos tattoo with the tip of a finger and staring at the wall as though his eyes couldn’t take much more.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It must.’
Talking to Daisy was calming me. She was sympathetic but everything she said was right, even about Daniel.
‘You sound as though you care, Winnie.’ Her tone was light, but I wasn’t fooled. ‘I mean, I don’t want to bring that up when you’re all distressed and stuff but remember. That’s all. Just remember.’
I’d never seen Dan so upset as that night on the bridge. Crying into the wind, leaning over the parapet so I wouldn’t see the tears, but I could hear them in his voice, see the pain in every line of his body as he made me choose. And now that man is sitting nearby, more pain, different pain, dragging at his limbs, pulling at his face as though grief has its own gravity. A shared pain now, not each of you in a separate cell of agony but together in a united agony of suspense and fear. ‘I do. And I wonder if I didn’t—’
A movement down the corridor, an opening door and Dan swung to his feet. ‘Winter,’ he said, softly, ‘they’re coming.’
‘Bye, Daze.’
‘Yes.’
And then Alex and Margaret were coming in. ‘Ap-apparently the n-next few hours are c-c-critical.’ Alex stumbled onto a chair and put his head in his hands. ‘If sh-she comes round, then . . .’ He stopped talking, his words lost not to the stammer but to branching futures.
‘We just have to wait and see.’ Margaret sat next to him and stretched a cautious hand to stroke his shoulder. ‘If she regains consciousness today, then things look hopeful. If not well, we cross that bridge tomorrow.’
‘Why d-didn’t I j-just let her h-have riding l-lessons?’ Alex said to his knees. ‘Wh-what was I s-so s-scared of?’
‘You were just trying to keep her safe,’ I said from across the room. Instinct told me to put my arms around him but he looked as though one person embracing him was enough and anyone else would just tip him over into claustrophobia.
Alex snorted. ‘Y-yeah, and I d-did a cracking j-job of th-that, didn’t I?’ He shook his head. ‘She j-just w-wanted to sh-show the bullies. To t-teach them a l-lesson.’ He started pulling at a loose thread in his dusty shirt. ‘Ch-Christ. I c-couldn’t have s-screwed up more if I’d h-hit her on the h-head myself. El-Ellen w-would have k-killed me.’
‘Well, Ellen isn’t here,’ Margaret said, sharply. ‘And you’ve done a very good job of bringing Scarlet up, so don’t start that nonsense. None of this is anyone’s fault, except possibly those thoroughly nasty children that forced her into sitting on someone else’s horse.’
Alex looked surprised under the general anxiety. ‘D-do you th-think so? I th-thought you th-thought I sp-spoiled Scarl.’
‘Well, you have, but a little bit of spoiling never did anyone any harm. You had piano lessons.’ And suddenly there were tears flooding down Margaret’s cheeks and she wound her arms tightly around her chest, as though trying to stop her heart from bursting out. ‘I can’t lose her too.’ Her posture was rigid but her face had crumbled into ages of worry and loss. ‘I can’t lose her.’
‘M-Mum . . .’
‘It’s not fair! I’ve lost my husband and my daughter already.’ Margaret put her hands up to cover her face. It looked as though she was trying to push the tears back inside her eyes. ‘Why should I lose our little Scarlet too?’ The rigidity was gone now, fear and grief made her slump forward onto Alex’s arm. ‘You’ve done so much, tried so hard, why should you have her taken from you now?’
‘It-it’s all right, Mum.’ Cautiously, as though he was a bit worried that she might bite, Alex scooped his arm around his mother. She seemed smaller, softer, less of a woman-sized package of loss-fuelled energy now, just a terrified grandmother in an out-of-control situation.
‘All you ever did was your best!’ Margaret raised a face that showed a mixture of anger and realisation. She seemed to be facing that moment when child becomes parent, letting Alex comfort her. ‘You are doing your best, and Scarlet . . .’ A moment of choked-off words, as though saying Scarlet’s name had the power to hurl her from us. ‘She’s growing up a fine young lady, which is all due to you.’
Alex sighed a laugh. ‘W-wow. Th-thanks, Mum.’
‘I miss your dad. And Ellen.’
‘I kn-know.’
Margaret stood up, away from Alex’s embrace. ‘Do you know, I seem to be spending a lot of time in hospitals, one way or another, what with the dreadful Mr Park and his dribbly willy problem.’ Although tears still streaked her face and her body shook with emotion, Margaret was back in control of herself. ‘And I have found that they almost always have some kind of coffee machine, so . . .’
Dan stood up. ‘Yeah. I’ll go.’
I might have known he couldn’t sit still in a place like this for very long. Striding about, thinking was Dan’s natural state. ‘I’ll come too.’ The smell of the room was beginning to get to me, that institutionally-clean smell of bleach and fake flowers, and I didn’t know what to say to Alex. There wasn’t much I could say, not with his mother in the room. I wanted to tell him that his email was far more understanding than I had any right to, to tell him that friendship was all I could manage these days. But Dan was waiting in the doorway and I had to leave Alex, head back in his hands, to the somewhat more tender care of his mother.
We found a coffee machine on a corridor and Dan started feeding coins into it.
‘Do you think Scarlet will be all right?’ I asked.
‘God, I hope so.’ He handed me the first cup. ‘Milk and sugar all round, I think. Now is really not the time for anyone to be fussy.’
‘You’re being very . . .’ I saw his face as he looked quickly up from the brown liquid streaming into another polystyrene container. He’d dropped some of the capable, in-charge attitude as soon as we’d left Alex and Margaret behind, and now he looked haunted. ‘It must be awful for you, after . . . after what happened to Beth. All this waiting around in hospitals and stuff.’
He left the full cup sitting in the machine and turned around to face me properly. ‘Yeah?’
‘Daisy said . . .’ I stopped speaking. He’d closed his eyes at the mention of my sister.
‘Daisy said, did she?’ He moved in until he stood so close that the fastenings of his coat knocked against my face as he breathed. ‘And what do you think, hey, Winter? What do you think?’
I looked up into those black eyes, slightly hooded as though he was keeping his real thoughts hidden behind them and didn’t want me to suspect what they might be. And suddenly he was not my editor, not the man who’d thrown my love away over the edge of a bridge in the night because he hadn’t liked what I was telling him, he was just an unhappy man. As though all the images I’d kept of him in my head were gone, broken apart by the misery that he couldn’t conceal; I looked into his eyes and through them to the person beyond. ‘I think . . . what happened to your sister affected you more than you know.’
He smiled. ‘Not quite. Nearly, but not quite. Y’see, Win, what it is, what happened to Beth it affected me more than you know.’
‘Very enigmatic, Daniel.’ The cup was hot between my fingers, the smell of synthetic coffee sour in my nose. ‘Why don’t you just tell me what the hell you are on about?’
He stepped back to push more coins into the machine. That look stayed in his eyes though. ‘Can’t. It might just make you . . . well, let’s just say that your sister comes into things, okay? And I don’t . . . look, let’s leave it, hey? I’m not into pushing that rock up the hill again. I’ll wait until we know more about Scarlet and then I’m heading back to London and that will be that, you need never look at me again, unless I’m on the publicity wagon when it wheels you around town, and even then my offensive presence will be well-diluted by all the PR bods and the hangers-on. Okay? We’re done. You get what you wanted.’
I didn’t notice my hands were shaking until spilled coffee burned its way through my sleeve. ‘But what if that’s not what I want any more?’ I half-whispered, the words almost hidden under the background sounds of a hospital working away behind us, unheeded.
The sudden bang made me jump. Dan had kicked the coffee machine, his forehead resting against the coin slot and his shoulders hunched. ‘This isn’t fucking fair !’ He turned around slowly and raised his head and now his eyes weren’t hiding anything, they were letting tears slide out. ‘Don’t,’ he said, softly. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘Don’t do what?’ I was baffled. It felt . . . it felt as though he was leaving despite himself, despite what he wanted. He’d kissed me, he behaved as though he still cared. And yet, when I said that maybe I did want to go back, here he was telling me that he didn’t ?
‘We’re still where we were.’ Dan straightened and used the sleeve of his coat to wipe his face. ‘Nothing has changed. I want you, Winter, let’s just put that right up there now, front and centre. I want you like I wanted you before. It’s you, always has been. But I can’t deal with the Daisy thing. Every time it looks like there might be hope, like you’ve let it change you, back it comes again and you’re all “I’ve got to talk to Daisy about this”. Y’see . . .’ Now he was in close again, a cup of steaming liquid in each hand. ‘. . . until you admit you can live without her, I can’t be part of anything with you.’
I stared at him. Underneath the relentless fluorescent lights he stood like a shadow. ‘So, you’re still not prepared to make allowances?’ I said, slowly.
‘I thought I could. But I can’t. I want it to be me , Winter. I want you to turn to me when the going gets tough. I want to have all of you, not just the part that you can spare. I want to be the one you call on, I want you to be able to share how you feel with me , rather than . . . Shit. Let’s get back. This isn’t the time or place.’ And balancing three cups between his hands, he stormed past me and back up the corridor to the waiting area.
Where we were met by Light Bulb, who was propped against the doorframe. Inside, Lucy, who’d evidently brought him from the school, was talking earnestly to Alex, but stopped when we came in, and looked embarrassed.
Dan handed round the coffees and the silence between us all wasn’t only the silence of worry. Lucy and Alex kept looking at one another in a kind of deeply miserable way, while Dan and I avoided looking at each other at all.
There was a shard of pain under my ribs whenever I accidentally found myself looking at him out of the corner of my eye; he’d taken his coat off in the oppressive humidity of the hospital air and rolled the sleeves of his dark shirt to the elbows. His lean frame contrasted with Alex’s hard-work muscles, which seemed to be drawing Lucy’s eye like a magnet to iron.
‘Can we see her?’ I said, finally. ‘I mean, aren’t you supposed to talk to people who . . . and Light Bulb should be in there, for when she wakes up, I mean.’
Margaret sighed. ‘I should think so. We came out because the doctors and nurses were fixing up some machines, but they did say we could sit with her when they were finished.’
Nobody moved. It was as though, if we all stayed here in this room, Scarlet was still just ‘asleep’ and as soon as we had to look at her connected to drips and monitors, what had happened would become real. ‘I’m going to just look in on her,’ I said, finally. ‘Take Light Bulb in. Let her know that Bobso and the babies will be all right while she’s here.’
Everyone stared at me. ‘Sh-she’s unconscious,’ Alex said at last. ‘I d-don’t th-think Bobso m-matters at the m-moment.’
‘Bobso matters to her ,’ I said, firmly. ‘And she’ll be worrying.’
‘Shit,’ said Dan, quietly. ‘Win, I don’t think you . . .’
But I didn’t wait to hear the end of what he was saying. I seized Light Bulb around his stick and, carrying him like a floppy, corduroy-headed standard, went in to the room I’d seen Alex and Margaret come out of earlier.