Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twenty-eight.
The next morning brings a multiple major trauma helicoptered in from somewhere south of the city. Three simultaneous emergency surgeries is a good antidote to a physical and emotional hangover; I don’t sit down for eleven hours straight.
I reread her messages with building anxiety. Adenovirus infections tend to be mild, plus he’s in competent hands, but I don’t like it. Alzheimer’s does not have a positive impact on immune function and Dad’s already weak. I try to call her, but she doesn’t pick up.
The first thing I see after ending the call is a notification from my Roof app, reminding me to respond to Johan.
Whenever anyone messages me via Roof, the app sends what feels like a semi-aggressive number of push notifications until I log in and respond. This reminder means Johan must have messaged me earlier. Click to read message, the notification demands.
I make myself stay in my WhatsApps. I read the ones from Robin first, because it would be a betrayal to do anything else.
And for a moment I’m able to give myself over completely to the video of Maeve doing the Macarena backward and Raffy sitting on the toilet, quietly singing songs from Encanto.
Poor Robin, who’s flying the kids over on Monday, sounds distracted and overwhelmed.
We have guests arriving in the Pig Shed the day after tomorrow.
Guiltily I message him back, reminding him that he’ll need to sort that out, too.
Hopefully he’ll be asleep by now; he’ll read my message in the morning when he’s got more energy.
There’s another more recent message from Nicola, to say Dad’s really improved since this morning and they’ve taken him off oxygen. They expect him to recover.
I close my eyes. Thank God.
Only then do I open up the Roof app and read Johan’s message.
He messaged me at 11:03 this morning, just as I scrubbed in to watch one of Yanika’s consultants deal with a bowel obstruction.
I hope you’re not feeling too bad about last night. It was classic Maya. But actually I’m glad it happened—I needed to say what I said. I am truly sorry. You should have been told.
How are you feeling?
—
Back at my flat, Maya reads the message several times. “I spend a lot of time helping my clients forgive themselves,” she says, “but I’m really struggling to do that for myself today. ‘Classic Maya’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.” She looks up at me. “He’s opening a door, isn’t he?”
“Possibly.” I try to ignore the perverse streak of pleasure that flows into parts of me no longer reserved for Johan.
“Are you going to reply?”
I shake my head, but I don’t know if I mean it. Anyone in my situation, still needing answers, would respond. Wouldn’t they?
“You’re going to reply,” my sister says, drinking water from a mug.
“Maybe.” I sit down next to her on the bed and together we watch my words form on the screen.
Thank you, I write. I’m OK. Sort of.
To my surprise, Johan reads the message straight away. He starts typing.
This is not an average week for either of us, Carrie Cole. I’m with you.
I put the phone down. It’s too much, him caring about how I’m feeling. Calling me Carrie Cole.
Another message.
My summer house is free this weekend if you’d like to stay. For free, of course. If you’re anything like me you’ll be in need of some space. I’m on my own with Matteo, otherwise I’d be there myself. But he wants to go to soft play:-/
I take my jumper off and take Maya’s mug from her hand. I need water.
“I don’t think you should reply,” Maya says after a moment. “You need to nip this in the bud.”
I nod. I have a clear choice now: I can either close this down or open it right up. There isn’t a third way.
I love Robin. I truly love him, my dear husband, who, right now, is looking after our twins so that I can be here in Sweden on a clinical attachment that will have no formal bearing on my return to the NHS.
And Johan is not, cannot be, the man I married twelve and a half years ago. Even if some of the old chemistry is still intact, we’ve both changed since then in a very fundamental way.
I get up and walk over to the window. I’ve been in theater all day, I type.
And Dad had a health crisis, although it seems to have passed for now.
It’s been full-on. As it is to be hearing from you.
Everything is out of whack, and for that reason I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking your summer house.
Thanks for checking in, though, and thanks for the offer.
I apologize again for last night and I wish you a happy life.
I press send and show the message to Maya, who pats me gingerly on the back and tells me well done. I stand in the shower for twenty minutes. I make myself eat some of the potato hash left in a pan for me, and I drink plenty of water.
“I’m so sorry I dropped you in all of this,” my sister sighs when I’ve finished my food.
It’s nearly 11 p.m. “This is why I went off to lead the life I lead nowadays, Carrie. I know you and half the world thought I was weird, going in so hard on the alternative thing. But I’m dangerous on my own.
Eagle, Colorado—they grounded me.” She smiles ruefully. “At least, for a while.”
“What do you mean?”
Maya shakes her head. “Not now,” she says, which is the first indication she’s given that something really is up.
I reach for my sister’s hand and we sit together for a moment, united in our shared past, in our very different coping mechanisms. I have to trust she’ll tell me when she’s ready.
She goes off to brush her teeth just as I receive another message from Roof.
I miss you tonight, he’s written. It slides onto my screen in a push notification.
I stare at his words until the screen turns to black. I think back to the time, years ago, when he tried repeatedly to send that very same message from an oil rig in the North Sea.
Maya flushes the toilet in the next room.
After a long, long pause, I unlock my phone and return to my Roof messages, but by the time I get there, he’s deleted it.
I know what he wrote, though. And he can’t take it back.