Just as she thinks they are never going to stop moving, and this pounding in her head will never cease, she begins to hear voices calling in the distance. She knows that they have to go towards them, she longs to be warm and safe, but she will not let go of him again. As Leo slows down and the commotion gets louder, she finds a strength she thought had gone and clings to him with everything she’s got, her fingernails digging into his neck, telling him fiercely not to let her go, not to leave her. The trees above them disappear, rain fires freezing arrows into her eyes, and he stops and loosens his grip on her, passing her over to someone else. He strokes her hair once, then squeezes her hand, and she doesn’t break his gaze, because in his face, before he turns away, she finds things she feared were lost forever.
Only when she can no longer see him does she close her eyes, knowing it’s all over. Finally she realises that everything becomes easier when she just stops resisting.
40
ANYA
There are sirens in the distance. I see blood on Freeman’s T-shirt and Georgia’s face. I am delirious with dread, but I will not falter when I’m so close to reaching her.
Danny gets to them first. He helps Freeman steady Georgia until she’s on the ground, resting in Danny’s lap. Freeman staggers backwards and collapses. The first-aiders crowd around Georgia, while the sirens get louder. I glance back to see the ambulance arriving, the paramedics getting out and starting their own dash up the hill.
I push through the crowd of people. Someone murmurs that she’s breathing but her pulse is low. Panicked voices talk over the top of one another. I’m just thankful she’s alive, although I’m terrified by all the blood on her neck and hands. I’m on my knees in the mud beside her, leaning over my precious child, whose face is so grey, whose body is so still. I am calling her name over and over, trying to rouse her, until she opens her eyes and sees me and my hand finds hers. For a moment there’s only the two of us in this muddy wet field, and the entire balance of my life, the worth of every minute, is held in the hollow space between our palms.
I lean closer to tell her I love her.
And just before she stops breathing, she whispers, ‘Mum.’
41
CALLUM
Three weeks later
Callum checks his watch, and sees it’s gone ten. He opens his wardrobe and considers his choices, picks out a shirt and lays it on the bed. It’s time to get ready.
His thoughts converge on familiar territory. He hadn’t even been there when Georgia stopped breathing on the field, and yet the scene that Anya described to him later has tacked itself to the forefront of his mind: the hushed horror as everyone prayed while the paramedics tried to revive his child; the half-dozen people who helped rush the stretcher back down the hill once they were sure she had taken a few lungfuls of oxygen. Then the struggle to stabilise her in the ambulance, ending in a dash from the emergency bay to theatre, where a stranger drilled a hole in their daughter’s brain, and saved her life.
‘A subdural haematoma,’ the doctor had told them, shaking their hands, while Callum wondered how they could ever repay him.
After Cooper’s mother had collected Zac, Callum and Anya had stayed awake all night, wrapped in one another’s arms, whispering in the dim light beside Georgia’s hospital bed, going over everything, information pamphlets resting on their laps as they veered from reliving the day to discussing Georgia’s recovery, offering long-overdue apologies and promises to try harder, be different, do more.
And among it all, Anya had told him a story about his daughter and one of her teachers that he was still having trouble accepting.
Georgia had woken the next day and quickly established herself as a fighter. As time went by and the initial trauma subsided, the biggest problems became getting her to accept she’d been seriously injured and persuading her to rest.
Callum collects the shirt from the bed and pulls it across his shoulders, beginning to button it up. A lot has happened since the accident. A few things had righted themselves quickly, such as the threatened assault charge from Ingrid Casparini, which had quickly disappeared. Last they heard, Ms Casparini was currently bailed awaiting her own court case for reckless driving and bodily harm. Sophia, meanwhile, has vowed to her parents to stay single for the rest of her life. Liam conveyed this to Callum with a wry smile.
A week after Georgia’s accident, Callum found Mike McCallister’s number and called to thank him for everything he’d done. He was surprised at the emotion in Mike’s voice as he responded.
‘You’re welcome. I’m just glad she’ll be okay. No thanks are needed, though: I won’t ever be able to repay you for saving Hugh.’