‘Your definition of “fine” is a more than fifty per cent chance of dying?’ Jenny asks, and I hear a tone in her voice that sounds like teasing, but surely she can’t be?
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t want to look at myself but I do want to know what’s happening. I need the truth, OK? If I ask for it, it means I can take it.’
I nod and pause a moment, chastened.
‘The scarring,’ I say. ‘What I told you about that, it was the truth.’
I see her relief.
‘I will be alright,’ she says. ‘Like Dad said, I know I will. And so will you. We will get better.’
I used to worry about her optimism, thinking she hid behind it instead of facing things.
‘In a way it’s a good thing, Mum,’ she’d said about flunking her A levels. ‘Better to realise I’m not cut out for university now, than three years and a large overdraft too late.’
‘Of course we will get better,’ I say to her.
Further along the corridor, we spot Tara coming towards you. I remember seeing her earlier, in the melee of press. Now she’s tracked you here. Jenny has also noticed her.
‘Isn’t she the one who thinks the Richmond Post is the Washington Post?’ Jenny asks, remembering our joke.
‘That’s the one.’
She reaches you, and you look at her, perplexed.
‘Michael…?’ she says, using her purring voice.
Men are usually hoodwinked by Tara’s girlish rosy face, slender body and pretty glossy hair, but not a man whose wife is unconscious and daughter critically ill. You shy away from her, trying to place her. Sarah joins you.
‘She was asking me about Silas Hyman earlier,’ you tell Sarah.
‘Do you know her?’
‘No.’
‘I’m a friend of Grace’s,’ Tara calmly butts in.
‘I doubt it,’ you snap.
‘Well, more a colleague. I work with Grace at the Richmond Post.’
‘So a journalist,’ Sarah says. ‘Time to go.’
Tara’s not going to budge. Sarah flashes her warrant card.
‘Detective Sergeant McBride,’ Tara reads, looking smug. ‘So the police are involved. I presume that this teacher, Silas Hyman, is a line of enquiry you’ll be taking?’
‘Out. Now,’ Sarah says in her uniform-and-truncheon voice.
Jenny and I watch as she virtually manhandles Tara towards the lifts.
‘She’s fantastic, isn’t she?’ Jenny says and I nod, not graciously.
‘She was wrong though earlier,’ Jenny says. ‘Or at least Mrs Healey was when she told her about the code on the gate. You know, that people don’t know it? Some of the parents do. I’ve seen them letting themselves in when Annette takes too long answering the buzzer. And a few of the children know it too, though they’re not meant to.’
I don’t know the code, but then I’m not pally with the in-the-know kind of mothers.
‘So a parent could have come in,’ I say.
‘All the parents were at sports day.’
‘Perhaps someone left.’
I try to think back to this afternoon. Did I see something and not realise?
The first thing I remember is cheering on Adam in the opening sprint, his face anxious and intent, his spindly legs going as fast as he could make them, desperate not to let down the Green Team. I was worrying about him coming last and you not being there and Jen’s retakes; not seeing the huge truth that we were all alive and healthy and undamaged. Because if I had, I’d have been sprinting around that field, cheering till my voice was hoarse at how fantastic and miraculous our lives were. A blue-skies and green-grass and white-lines life; expansive and ordered and complete.
But I must focus. Focus.
I can remember a group of parents from Adam’s class asking me if I’d go in for the mothers’ race.
‘Oh go on, Grace! You’re always a sport!’
‘Yeah, a slow sport,’ I replied.
I look again at their smiling faces. Did one of them, shortly afterwards, leave for the school? Perhaps he or she had left a container of white spirit in the boot of their car. A lighter slipped into a pocket. But surely their smiles were just too relaxed and genuine to be hiding some wicked intention?
A little while later, and Adam hurried up to tell me he was going to get his cake right now! Rowena had to collect the medals from school so she was going with him. And as he left with her, I thought how grown-up she looked now in her linen trousers and crisp white blouse; that it hardly seemed a minute since she was a little elfin girl with Jenny.
I’m sorry, not relevant at all. I have to look harder.
I turn away from Adam and Rowena, swinging my focus to the right then to the left, but memory can’t be replayed that way and nothing comes into focus.
But at the time I did check round the playing field, a broad sweep from one end to the other, looking for Jenny. Maybe if I concentrate on that memory I will see something significant.
She’ll be so bored, I was thinking as I scanned the playing field. Up in the sick-room on her own. Surely she’ll leave her shift early.
A figure at the edge of the playing field, half obscured by the border of chest-high azalea bushes.
The figure is still and its stillness has attracted my attention.
But I only looked long enough to know it wasn’t Jenny. Now I try to go closer, but I can’t get any more detail. Just a shadowy figure on the edge of the field; the memory yielding nothing more.
The figure haunts me. I imagine him going into classrooms at the top of the school and opening windows wide; I imagine the children’s drawings pegged onto strings across the classrooms flapping hard in the breeze.
Back on the playing field, Maisie came to find Rowena and I told her she was at school. I remember watching Maisie as she left the playing field. And something snags at my memory. Something else I saw on the outskirts of the playing field that I noted at the time; that means something. But it is slipping from my grasp and the harder I try and pull at it, the more it frays away.
But there’s no point tugging at it. Because by this point the arsonist had already opened the windows and poured out the white spirit and positioned the cans of spray mount. And soon the strong godsent breeze will be sucking the fire up to the third floor.
The PE teacher blows his whistle and in a minute, not quite yet, but soon, I will see the black smoke, thick black smoke like a bonfire.
Soon I will start running.
‘Mum?’
Jenny’s worried voice brings me back into the brightly lit hospital corridor.
‘I’ve been trying to remember,’ she says. ‘You know, if I saw someone or something, but when I try and think about the fire I can’t…’
She breaks off, shaking. I hold her hand.
‘It’s OK when I think about being in the medical room,’ she continues. ‘Ivo and I were texting each other. I told you that, didn’t I? The last one I sent was at two thirty. I know the time then, because it was nine thirty in the morning in Barbados and he said he was just getting up. But then… it’s like I can’t think any more, I can only feel. Just feel.’
A judder of fear or pain goes through her.
‘You don’t need to think back,’ I say to her. ‘Aunty Sarah’s crew will find out what happened.’
I don’t tell her about my shadowy figure half glimpsed on the edge of the playing field, because he really doesn’t amount to very much, does he?
‘I was worried you’d be bored up there,’ I say to her lightly. ‘I should have known you and Ivo would be texting.’
Put together, they must have texted the equivalent of War and Peace by now.
When I was her age, boys didn’t say much to girls, let alone write, but mobiles have upped their game. Some must find it pressurising, but I think it appeals to Ivo to send love sonnets and romantic haikus through the airwaves.
But it’s only me who thinks Ivo’s texted poetry a little bit effeminate; while you are – surprisingly to me – firmly on his side.
Jenny’s gone off to be with you, while I ‘pop to my ward to get an update on how I’m doing’ – as if I’m nipping down to Budgens for an Evening Standard.
Maisie is sitting by my bed, holding my hand, talking to me, and I’m moved that she thinks I can hear too.
‘And Jen-Jen’s going to be alright,’ she says. ‘Of course she is.’
Jen-Jen; that name we used for her when she was little, and sometimes slips out by accident even now.
‘She’s going to be just fine! You’ll see. And so are you. Look at you, Gracie. You don’t look too bad at all. You’re all going to be alright.’
I feel her comforting warmth and another vivid memory of sports day flashes into my mind. Not a detective one, but one that comforts me and I’ll allow myself to play it for a moment; a paracetamol for my aching mind.
Maisie was hurrying across the bright green grass, in her FUN shirt, stepping over the painted white lines, delphinium blue sky above.
‘Gracie…’ she said, giving me a hug, a proper bear-hug kind, none of this air-kissing.
‘I’ve come to give Rowena a lift home,’ she said, beaming. ‘She texted me a little while ago, said the tubes were up the spout. So Chauffeur-Mum to the fore!’
I told her that Rowena had gone to get the medals from school and that Addie was getting his cake; an M &S chocolate tray-bake we’d turned into a World War One trench scene.
‘Fantastic!’ she said, laughing.
Maisie, my surprising kindred spirit. Our daughters, those chalk-and-cheese little girls, never became friends but Maisie and I did. We’d meet on our own and share small details of our children’s lives: Rowena’s tears when she didn’t make the netball team and Maisie offering Mr Cobin new team outfits or sex if he’d make Rowena wing attack – and having to explain the second offer was a joke! Rowena’s horror when her big teeth came through and demanding the dentist give her small ones again; exchanged like a gift with my dentist story of Jenny refusing to eat or smile when she got a brace until we found a make that was bright blue.
And it was Maisie I turned to when I started my third miscarriage at Jenny’s seventh birthday party, when you were away filming.
‘Listen to me, kiddly-winks! Jenny’s mummy has to go and visit Father Christmas now – yes, it is three months early! – but he needs advance warning of REALLY GOOD children – and because you’ve all been so FANTASTIC this afternoon she wants to make sure you’ll all get an extra special present in your stocking.’
Aside to me. ‘Materialism and Father Christmas, usually works.
‘So it’ll be me now doing musical bumps, alright? Everyone ready?!’
And it was alright. And nobody knew. And she kept twenty children entertained while I went to hospital; had Jenny to stay that night.
Three years later, she waited for those twelve weeks with me till Adam was safely inside and likely to go to term. Like our family, she understood how deeply precious Adam is to us; our hard-won baby.
And now she’s sitting next to me, my old friend, crying. She cries all the time – ‘Stupidly soppy!’ she’d say at carol services – but these are painful tears. She tightens her grip on my hand.
‘It’s my fault,’ she says. ‘I was inside, going to the loo, when the fire alarm went off. But I didn’t know Jenny was in the building. I didn’t know to call for her. I just went looking for Rowena and Adam. But they were fine, outside in no time.’
At sports day I’d told her Adam and Rowena were at the school. If I’d said, ‘And Jenny,’ she’d have called for her too, made sure she was out before the fire took hold.
Two words.
But instead I’d wittered on about Adam’s cake.
Her voice is a whisper. ‘Then I saw you running towards school. And I knew how relieved you were going to be when you saw that Addie was safe.’
I remember Maisie outside, comforting the reception teacher, Rowena comforting Adam by the bronze statue of a child, as black smoke was swirled by the wind, dirtying the blue sky.
‘And then you shouted for Jenny and I realised she must be in there. And you ran inside.’ She pauses for a moment, her face pale. ‘But I didn’t go to help you.’ Her voice is staccato with guilt.
But how can she think I blame her? I’m just moved that she thought, even for one moment, of going into a burning building after me.
‘I knew I should help you,’ she continues. ‘Of course I should. But I wasn’t brave enough. So I ran to the fire engines that were still on the bridge instead. Away from the fire. I told them there were people inside. I thought if they knew they’d get there more quickly, that it would be more urgent. And they did. I mean, as soon as I told them, one of the fire engines drove at a parked car and shoved it off the road onto the pavement. And then people parked behind them realised what was happening and got out of their cars and the firemen were shouting that there were people in the school and then we were all pushing cars out of the way. Everyone pushing the cars out of the way so they could get through.’
I can see that her memory is over-spilling into her present, so that it’s happening now in front of her, and she can smell it and hear it – diesel fumes, I imagine, and people shouting and horns going and the smell of fire reaching the bridge.
I want to interrupt her from her reverie, rescue her from it. I want to ask her if Rowena’s alright because I remember seeing her in A &E when I was searching for Jenny. And I remember the suited man talking to the journalists and saying Rowena was in hospital too. But I hadn’t paused to think about her since; anxiety for my own child selfishly pushing out space for anybody else.
But why is Rowena hurt when I saw her safely outside next to the statue with Adam?
Dr Bailstrom arrives on her precipitous red heels and Maisie has to go. I think she leaves reluctantly as if there’s something more she wants to tell me.
It’s late now and the pull of home is unbearably strong. Own bed. Own house. Own life back again to be lived as usual tomorrow.
You are on the phone to Adam and for a few moments I hang back, as if it’ll be my turn in a minute to speak to him. Then I hurry close to you, listening for his voice.
‘I’m going to spend the night with Mum and Jenny here. But I’ll see you as soon as I can, OK?’
I can just hear him breathing. Short, hurried breaths.
‘OK, Ads?’
Still just breathing, terrified breathing.
‘I need you to be a soldier right now, Addie, please?’
Still he doesn’t speak. And I hear the gap between you, the one that used to make me sad and now frightens me.
‘Good night then. Sleep tight, and send my love to Granny G.’
I have to hug him, right this moment; feel his warm little body and ruffle his soft hair and tell him how much I love him.
‘I’m sure Granny G will bring him to see you tomorrow,’ Jenny says to me, as if reading my thoughts. ‘I’d probably scare him too much, but you look alright.’
You want to spend the night next to me and next to Jenny – splitting yourself in two, to keep watch over both of us.
A nurse tries to persuade you to go to the bed they’ve sorted out for you. She tells you that I am unconscious and therefore unaware of whether you’re with me or not, and that Jenny’s too deeply drugged to be aware of anything either. As the nurse says this, Jenny pulls a silly face at her and I laugh. There’s really a lot of opportunity for bedroom-farce-style comedy here and I think Jenny will try and beat me to it.
The nurse promises you that if my condition or Jenny’s ‘worsens’ they’ll get you immediately.
She’s telling you that neither of us will die without you.
Perhaps I jumped the gun a bit in the potential for comedy.
You still refuse to go to bed.
‘It’s late, Mike,’ your sister says firmly. ‘You’re exhausted. And you need to function properly tomorrow for Jenny’s sake. And for Grace’s.’
I think it’s her advice that you need to function properly tomorrow that decides you – it’s optimistic to go to bed, demonstrating your belief that we will still be alive in the morning.
Jenny and I stay with you next to the single bed they’ve given you in the family room, just by the burns unit. We watch you as you fitfully sleep, your hands tightly tensed.
I think of Adam in his bunk bed.
‘He has several lions among his soft toy menagerie,’ I tell you. ‘But his favourite is Aslan and he needs Aslan to get to sleep. If he’s fallen off the bunk, you have to find him. Sometimes you have to pull the whole bed out because he falls down the side.’
‘Mum?’ Jenny says. ‘Dad’s asleep.’
As if when you’re awake you can hear me. I am touched by this distinction.
‘Anyway,’ she continues. ‘He must know about Aslan.’
‘D’you think?’
‘Of course.’
But I’m not sure you do. Anyway, you think it would be better if Adam grew out of soft toys, now he’s eight. But he’s only just eight.
‘You’ll be able to put Adam to bed yourself soon,’ Jenny says. ‘Find Aslan. All of that.’
I think of holding Adam’s hand in mine as he drifts into sleep. All of that.
‘Yes.’
Because of course I’ll be at home again. I have to be.
‘Is it alright if I go for a walk?’ she asks. ‘I’m feeling a little stir-crazy.’
‘Fine.’
Poor Jenny; an outdoorsy person like you, it’s terrible for her to be cooped up in a hospital.
We’re alone and I look at your sleeping face.
I remember watching you as you slept not long after we’d started going out together and I’d thought of that passage in Middlemarch – I know, not fair! I can quote to you now and there’s not a thing you can do about it! Anyway it’s when the poor heroine realises that in her elderly husband’s head there are just dusty corridors and musty old attics. But in yours I imagined there to be mountains and rivers and prairies – wide-open spaces with wind and sky.
You haven’t yet said you love me. But it’s a given, isn’t it? A taken-as-read thing, as it has been for the last few years. In our early days you’d write it in the steamed-up mirror in the bathroom after you’d shaved, for me to find when I came in later to clean my teeth. You’d phone me, just to tell me. I’d sit down at my computer and you’d have changed the screen saver so that ‘I love you!’ marched across it. You’d never done this to anyone before, and it was as if you needed to keep practising.
I know hearts don’t really store emotion. But there must be some place in us that does. I think it’s a jagged and anxiously spiky place until someone loves you. And then, like pilgrims touching a rough stone with their fingertips, nineteen years of practising wears it smooth.
Someone has just passed the family room. I saw a glimpse in the glass panel in the door; a shadow fleetingly under it. I better just check.
A figure is hurrying along the burns unit corridor. For some reason, I think of that shadowy figure on the edge of the playing field.
He’s going towards Jenny’s side-ward.
He goes in and through the half-open doorway I see his shape bending over her.
I scream, making no sound.
I can see a nurse walking towards Jenny’s room. Her plimsolls squeaking on the linoleum alert the figure to her presence and he slips away.
The nurse is checking Jenny now. I can’t see anything different at all, not that I’d know what all the monitors are telling us, but to me it looks no different. But the nurse in the squeaky plimsolls is checking a piece of Jenny’s equipment.
Out in the corridor, the figure has disappeared.
I didn’t get close enough to see his face, just an outline in a long, dark blue coat. But the door to the burns unit is locked, so he must have been authorised to be in here. He must be a doctor, perhaps a nurse, probably going off shift, which is why he wasn’t wearing a white coat or nurse’s uniform, but an overcoat. Maybe he just wanted to check on Jenny before going home.
I see Jenny returning and I smile at her.
But I feel afraid.
Because who wears a long dark overcoat in the middle of July?