Each of Sarah’s words a razor blade to be swallowed.
Someone had deliberately done this. My God. Deliberately.
‘But why?’ Jenny asked.
At four years old we’d nicknamed her the ‘Why-Why Bird’.
‘But why doesn’t the moon fall on top of us? But why am I a girl not a boy? But why does Mowgli eat ants? But why can’t Grandpa get better? (Answers: Gravity; Genes; They are tangy and nutritious. By the end of the day, worn out: ‘It’s just the way it is, sweetie.’ A tired kind of answer, but an answer.)
There was no answer to the why in this.
‘Do you remember anything, Jen?’ I asked.
‘No. I remember Ivo texting at half past two. But that’s it. I can’t remember anything after that. Nothing.’
Sarah touched you lightly on the arm and you flinched towards her.
‘Whoever did this, I’ll kill them.’
I’d never seen you angry like that before, as if you were fighting for survival. But I was glad of your rage; an emotion that met this information head on and fought back.
‘I need to see Grace now. And then I want you to tell me everything you know. After I’ve seen her. Everything.’
I hurried ahead to my ward, wanting to know before you did what state I was in, as if I could prepare you in some way.
There were tubes and monitors attached to my body now, but I was breathing without any equipment, and I thought that must be a good thing. I was unconscious, yes, but I really looked hardly injured apart from the neatly dressed wound on my head. Maybe it wasn’t so bad.
‘I’ll be outside then,’ Jenny said.
She’s never given us privacy before; never seemed to even consider we might need it. It’s Adam who dashes out of the kitchen when we have a hug and a kiss. ‘Being mushy! Yuck!’ But Jenny’s radar hasn’t detected any embarrassing parental passion. Maybe like most teenagers, she thinks that’s long gone, while they discover it and keep it all for themselves. So I was touched by her.
I waited for you; listening to the sound of trolleys and bleeping machines and the soft foot-fall of nurses in plimsolls; wanting to hear your footsteps, your voice.
The seconds ticked past and I had to be with you. Right now! Please.
And then you were running over the slippery linoleum towards my bed, a nurse pushing a trolley out of your way.
You put your strong arms around my body, holding me tightly against you; the softness of your linen important-meetings-shirt against my creased stiff hospital gown. And for a moment the room smelt of Persil and you, not the hospital.
You kissed me: one kiss on my mouth and then one on each closed eyelid. For a moment, I thought that like a princess in one of Jenny’s old storybooks your three kisses would break the spell and I’d wake up and I’d feel your kiss – your stubble scratchy on my skin by that time of day.
But thirty-nine’s probably a little old to be a sleeping princess.
And maybe a bash on the head isn’t as easy to reverse as a witch’s curse.
Then I remembered – how could I have forgotten, even for three kisses – Jenny outside; waiting for me.
I knew that I mustn’t wake up, mustn’t even try, not yet, because I couldn’t leave her on her own.
You understand that, don’t you? Because if your job as a father is to protect your child, and mend her when she’s broken, my job as a mother is to be there with her.
‘My brave wife,’ you said.
You called me that when I’d just given birth to Jenny. I’d felt so proud then – as if I’d stopped being the usual me and had instead abseiled down from the moon.
But I didn’t deserve it.
‘I didn’t get to her in time,’ I said to you, my voice loud with guilt. ‘I should have realised something was wrong before; I should have got there before.’
But you couldn’t hear me.
We were silent – when have we ever been silent together?
‘What happened?’ you asked me, and your voice cracked a little, as if you were winding back the years to your teenage self. ‘What the hell happened?’
As if understanding could make it better.
I started with the strong, warm breeze at sports day.
Your eyes are closed now, as if you can join me if your eyes are shut too. And I’ve told you everything I know.
But of course you couldn’t hear me.
‘So why do it?’ that bossy nanny voice says to me. ‘Waste of time! Waste of breath!’ A cognitive therapist would send her packing but I’ve got used to her and besides I think it’s good for a mother to have someone bossing her around, so she knows what it’s like.
And she has a point, doesn’t she?
Why talk to you now when you can’t hear me?
Because words are the spoken oxygen between us; the air a marriage breathes. Because we have been talking to each other for nineteen years. Because I would be so lonely if I didn’t talk to you. So no therapist in the world, with whatever logic they brought to bear, could get me to stop.
A woman doctor is coming purposefully towards us. I’m reassured by her being in her fifties; by her air of tired professionalism. Beneath her sensible navy blue skirt she’s wearing high, spiky red shoes. I know, a silly thing to notice. You’re looking at her name badge and rank; the important things. ‘Dr Anna-Maria Bailstrom. Neurologist. Consultant.’
Is it the Anna-Maria in her that wears the red shoes?
‘I thought she would look worse,’ you say to Dr Bailstrom. Neurologist. Consultant. ‘But she’s hardly hurt, is she? And she’s breathing for herself, isn’t she?’
The relief in your voice strings your words together.
‘I’m afraid that her head injury is severe. A firefighter told us that a part of the ceiling had fallen on her.’
There’s tension stringing Dr Bailstrom’s words together.
‘She has unequal pupil reflexes and isn’t responding to stimuli,’ she continues, her voice tight as wire. ‘The MRI, which we will repeat, indicates significant brain damage.’
‘She’ll be alright.’ Your voice is fierce. Your fingers tense around mine. ‘You’re going to be fine, my darling.’
Of course I am! I can quote medieval poetry and tell you about Fra Angelico or Obama’s health reforms and the heroes in Beast Quest books – and how many people can do all that? Even my bossy nanny is still in place, in her element actually. The thinking me isn’t in the body me, but I’m right here, my darling, my mind undamaged.
‘We have to warn you that there’s a likelihood she may never regain consciousness.’
You turn away from her, your body language saying, ‘Bollocks!’
And I think you’re right. I’m pretty sure that if I tried, I’d be able to get back into my body. And then – maybe not right away but soon – I’d wake up again. Regain consciousness, to put it into Dr Bailstrom language.
Dr Bailstrom is now leaving, precipitous on her red spiky heels on the slippery linoleum. She’s probably letting you have some time for it to sink in. Dad, with his GP hat on, was a firm believer in sinking-in time.
I’m talking too much. The problem with being ‘out of body’ is that you don’t need to take a breath for new sentences and so there are no natural physical pauses.
And you’re so quiet. I think you have stopped talking to me altogether. And I am so afraid that I scream at you.
‘Jenny’s been badly hurt, darling,’ you say. And my fear is swept away in compassion for you. You tell me that she’ll get better. You tell me that I’ll get better too. We’ll be ‘right as rain,’ again.
As you talk I look at your arms: strong arms that years ago carried three boxes of my books at a time from the bottom of the student house to my room at the top; that on Tuesday carried Jenny’s new chest of drawers upstairs to her bedroom.
Is your character that strong too? Is it really possible to be as brave as you are now – this resiliently hopeful?
You talk about the holiday we’re going to take when this is ‘all over’.
‘Skye. And we’ll camp. Adam’ll love that. Making a fire and fishing for our supper. Jenny and I can climb the Cuillins. Addie can manage the smallest one now. You can take a whole stack of books and read by a loch. What do you think?’
I think it sounds like a paradise on earth that I never knew was there.
I think that while I have my head in the clouds, you climb a mountain to do it.
As I did earlier at Jenny’s bedside, I cling onto your hope; let myself be carried by it.
I see that Sarah has arrived on the far side of the ward, on her phone. Busy, efficient Sarah. The first time you introduced us I felt I was being interviewed for something I’d inadvertently done wrong. But what? The crime of loving you and plotting to take you away from her? Or, worse, of being fraudulent in my affections and not loving you enough? Or maybe – the one I picked – not being worthy of you; not being as interesting and beautiful and downright remarkable as I should be if I was going to claim her brother and become a part of your clan.
Even before this, I saw myself paddling round a duck pond in a rubber dinghy, while she steered her life on a fast, direct course to a clearly mapped destination. And now here I am, unable to speak or see or move, let alone help you or Jenny or Adam, head partially shaved, in a hideous hospital nightgown – and she’s sailed in, competent and capable, at the helm.
My nanny voice would be a lot happier if I were more like her. You reassured me, touchingly, that you wouldn’t be.
A nurse is with her and I see they’re debating the phone, with Sarah flashing her warrant card, but the nurse is clearly adamant and Sarah leaves again. You spot her as she leaves, but stay with me.
We return to that camping trip to Skye – to arching blue-grey skies and still blue-grey water and huge blue-grey mountains, their soft colours so alike that they are almost indistinguishable from one another; to Jenny and Adam and you and me, softly coloured, not separated from each other. A family.
We leave my ward and Skye, and I see Jenny waiting for me in the corridor.
‘So, what’s happening to you?’ she asks me, her voice anxious.
‘They’re doing scans and what not,’ I say.
She hasn’t been giving us romantic privacy, I realise, but medical privacy; like me staying out of the room now when I take her to the GP’s.
‘And that’s it?’ she asks.
‘So far, yes. Pretty much.’
She doesn’t question me more closely – afraid, I think, to know any more.
‘Aunt Sarah’s in the family room,’ she says. ‘She’s been talking to someone at the police station. It’s funny, but I think she knows I’m here. I mean, she kept kind of glancing around at me. Like she’d caught a glimpse.’
It’ll be sod’s law if the only person who has any real inkling of Jenny and me turns out to be your sister.
It must be late evening now and in the family room, someone – who? – has brought a toothbrush and pyjamas for you and put them neatly at one end of the single bed.
Sarah closes the phone as she sees you.
‘Adam’s at a school-friend’s house,’ Sarah says. ‘Georgina’s on her way from Oxfordshire and will pick him up. I thought it would be best if he was in his own bed tonight and he’s particularly close to Grace’s mum, isn’t he?’
In all of this Sarah has found space and time to think about Adam. Has had the kindness to worry about him. I’ve never been grateful to her before.
But you can’t take Adam on board, not with me and Jenny already weighing you down this heavily.
‘Have you spoken to the police?’ you ask her.
She nods and you wait for her to tell you.
‘We’re taking statements. They’ll keep me fully informed. They know she’s my niece. The fire investigation team are working at the scene of the fire.’
Her voice is police officer, but I see her reach out her hand and that you take it.
‘They’ve said that the fire started in the Art room on the second floor. Because the building was old, it had ceiling, wall and roof voids – basically spaces connecting different rooms and parts of the school – which means that smoke and fire could travel extremely fast. Fire doors and other precautions couldn’t stop its spread. Which is one reason it could overwhelm the whole building as quickly as it could.’
‘And the arson?’ you ask, and I can hear the word cutting at your mouth.
‘It is likely, more than likely, that an accelerant was used, probably white spirit, which causes a distinctive smoke recognised by a firefighter at the scene. As it’s an Art room, you’d expect to have some white spirit, but they think it was a large quantity. The Art teacher says that she keeps the white spirit in a locked cupboard on the right-hand side of the Art room. We think the fire was started in the left-hand corner. A hydrocarbon vapour detector should give us more information tomorrow.’
‘So there’s no doubt?’ you ask.
‘I’m sorry, Mike.’
‘What else?’ you ask. You need to know everything. A man who has to be in full possession of the facts.
‘The fire investigation team have established that the windows on the top floors were all wide open,’ Sarah says. ‘Which is another signifier for arson because it creates a draught, drawing the fire more quickly up through the school; especially given the strong breeze today. The head teacher told us that the windows are never left wide open because of the danger of children falling out.’
‘What else?’ you ask and she understands you need to know.
‘We think that the Art room was deliberately chosen,’ she continues. ‘Not only because there was a chance that the arsonist could get away with it – the use of an accelerant being camouflaged as it were by Art supplies – but because it’s the worst possible place for a fire. The Art teacher has inventoried what materials were kept.
‘There were stacks of paper and craft materials, which meant the fire could take hold easily and spread. There were also different paints and glues, which were toxic and flammable. She’d brought in old wallpaper samples for a collage, which we think were coated in a highly toxic varnish.’
As she describes an inferno of poisonous fumes and choking smoke I think of children making collages of hot-air balloons and papier-mâché dinosaurs.
You nod at her to go on and she sturdily continues.
‘There were also cans of spray mount in the room. When they are exposed to heat the pressure builds and they explode. Vapours from the spray mount can travel long distances along the ground to an ignition source and flash back. Next to the Art room was a small room, little more than a cupboard, where the cleaning materials are kept. They too would have contained combustible and toxic substances.’
She pauses, looking at you; sees how pale you are.
‘Have you eaten anything yet?’
The question irritates you. ‘No, but-’
‘Let’s talk more in the canteen. It’s not far.’
It’s not up for negotiation. When you were younger, did she bribe you to eat then too? A favourite TV programme if you finished your shepherd’s pie?
‘I’ll tell them where you are, just in case,’ she says, preempting any arguments.
I’m glad she’s making you eat.
She goes to tell the staff in my acute neurology ward where you will be; you go to tell the burns unit.
Once you’ve gone, Jenny turns to me.
‘It’s true, what Mrs Healey said about the windows not being left open. Ever since that fire-escape accident, they’re paranoid about children falling and hurting themselves. Mrs Healey goes round herself, checking them all the time.’
She pauses a moment, and I see that she is awkward. Embarrassed even.
‘You know when I went to your bed?’ she says. ‘Before Dad got there?’
‘Yes.’
‘You looked so…’ She falters. But I know what she wants to ask. How come I am so undamaged compared with her?
‘I wasn’t in the building as long as you,’ I say. ‘And I wasn’t so close to the fire. And I had more protection.’
I don’t say that I was in a cotton shirt with sleeves I could pull down and thick denim jeans and socks with trainers, not a short, gauzy skirt and skimpy top and strappy sandals, but she guesses anyway.
‘So I’m the ultimate fashion victim.’
‘I’m not sure I can do gallows humour, Jen.’
‘OK.’
‘Positive and even silly,’ I say. ‘That’s fine. That’s great. And black humour, that’s alright too. But when it becomes gallows – well, that’s my line.’
‘Point taken, Mum.’
We could almost be at our kitchen table.
We follow you into the absurdly named Palms Café; the Formica-topped tables reflecting the overhead striplights.
‘Great atmosphere,’ Jenny says and for a moment I can’t work out if this statement is because of her relentlessly positive attitude, inherited from you, or her sense of humour, which she gets from me. Poor Jen, she can’t be positive or funny without one of us taking the credit for it.
Sarah joins you with a plate of food, which you ignore.
‘Who did this?’ you ask her.
‘We don’t know yet, but we will find out. I promise.’
‘But someone must have seen who it was, surely?’ you say. ‘Someone must have seen.’
She puts her hand on your arm.
‘You must know something,’ you say.
‘Not much.’
‘Do you know what they were doing to Jenny, when I left her just now?’ you ask.
‘Jen, leave, please,’ I say to her, but she doesn’t budge.
‘They were giving her an eye toilet, an eye toilet, for Christ’s sake.’
I feel Jenny stiffen next to me. Sarah’s eyes fill with tears. I’ve never seen her cry.
She hasn’t yet asked how Jenny is. I see her brace herself. I will her not to do it.
‘Have they told you the chances of…?’ she asks, her voice trailing off, unable to continue. Her life is spent questioning people, but she can’t finish this one.
‘She has a less than fifty per cent chance of surviving,’ you say, repeating Dr Sandhu’s words exactly; maybe it’s easier than translating them into your own voice.
I see Sarah pale, literally turn white, and in the colour of her face I see how much she loves Jenny.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Sarah asks you, and her words could be Jenny’s to me.
‘Because she will be alright,’ you say to Sarah, almost angrily. ‘She will get better.’
‘There were only two members of staff, apart from Jenny, who weren’t at sports day,’ she tells you. ‘We think it highly unlikely it was one of them.
‘The school has a gate, which is permanently locked with a code. The secretary buzzes people in via entry phone from her office. No parents or children are told the code; they all have to be buzzed in. Members of staff know it, but they were all out on the playing field at sports day. So we’re probably looking at an outsider.’
‘But how could they get in?’ you ask. You’d wanted a culprit but now you don’t want that person to have access; as if you can change what’s happened if you prove it was impossible.
‘He or she could have slipped in earlier in the day,’ Sarah replies. ‘Possibly behind a legitimate person who was buzzed in. Perhaps blended in somehow and not been noticed if parents thought they were a member of staff and vice versa. Schools are busy places, lots of people coming and going. Or the arsonist may have watched a member of staff key in the code and memorised it and come back while everyone was out at sports day.’
‘Surely you can’t just walk in, though? Surely…’
‘Once someone is through the main gate there’s no more security, the front door isn’t locked and there’s no CCTV or other security device.
‘That’s really all we’ve got so far, Mike. We haven’t yet made it public that it’s arson. But the investigation is urgent; they’re allocating as many people as they can to it. Detective Inspector Baker is running the case. I’ll see if he’ll have a meeting with you but he’s not the most sympathetic of people.’
‘I just want the police to find the person who did this. And then I will hurt him. Hurt him like he’s hurt my family.’