A woman’s face appeared above him, desperate, frantic. He didn’t know whether he was smiling but he felt like he smiled, because she had brown curls of hair, a face like one of da Vinci’s angels. He felt her press something hard against the side of his neck, the sensation unpleasant, smothering.
People had come out of the bookshop perhaps because she turned her head and shouted, ‘Call 911! And get me some ice! From the coffee shop. Get me ice!’ She looked back at him now, into his eyes as she said, ‘Stay with me. What’s your name?’
‘Alex,’ he said, but she didn’t seem to hear him.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Alex.’
This time she heard him and said, ‘Okay Alex, stay with me.’ She was beautiful, and she wanted him to live, like she knew him and he meant something to her, a stranger. ‘Stay with me Alex. I’m gonna get some ice and put it on your neck.’ She looked away and screamed, ‘Where’s that fucking ice?’ He thought he heard someone call back.
He tried to think. This was it. He was about to die and he wanted to think but he couldn’t; the thoughts wouldn’t come. He’d thought for too long anyway, and now that it was happening he felt calm. Maybe that was the way Matt had felt, and the others, maybe Emily Barratt.
He felt a jolt go through him and gasped. His eyes had been open but he hadn’t been able to see anything. Now though, he was looking at the young woman again and she was saying, ‘It’s okay Alex, that’s the ice. I’ve put ice on your neck to try and slow the bleeding. Now you have to stay with me. Stay with me. The ambulance is on its way.’
‘What’s your name?’ He couldn’t hear his own words clearly and neither could she but she knew he’d spoken. She leaned in closer and he said it again.
She leaned away again and said, ‘My name’s Jennifer’. She was crying now and it upset him.
He wanted to tell her to stop, that he wasn’t worth crying over, but he couldn’t, too many words.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, but even that didn’t seem to reach her. It was as if he was lost somewhere deep inside his own body.
‘Stay with me Alex. The ambulance is coming.’ The pitch of her words was escalating each time she used them. He wasn’t staying with her, he was slipping away. He was dying and the only things she had to save him were those words and the ice pressed against his neck, neither of them enough.
He had the sense there was a small crowd around him now but he couldn’t see any of them. All he could see was Jennifer, crying and helplessly determined. And beyond her he could see the wiry branches of a tree, like the blue sky had cracked, shattering, needing only one more blow to bring it crashing in. He wanted to tell her, look Jennifer, look up at how amazing this sky is with the tree against it.
‘The ambulance is coming. Hear it Alex? The ambulance is coming. You’re gonna be okay.’
He felt like he smiled again. He could hear a siren, the first siren he’d heard on this visit and it was calling for him. Natalie had killed him; that thought came at him suddenly, a moment of lucidity. Natalie had killed him, and now she was alone in the photograph, and he hoped Martha wouldn’t say anything, because Natalie was alone and that was enough. If she’d killed him, that was enough.
He heard Jennifer’s voice and the siren growing louder, but it was too late. He’d known it was too late as soon as it had happened. There was no time left to make things right with Kate or tell his family how much he loved them, or to tell Matt that it hadn’t been his fault.
Another burst of lucidity hit him. Matt was dead. They were all dead. His body was being moved, clattering noise, male voices and a young woman crying, wailing. It was Jennifer and this would be her day, that she had tried to save someone and failed. Perhaps it would become part of the rest of her life.
He wanted to tell her to stop crying, and to forget. He wanted to tell her that it was okay for him to die, that he was where he belonged, where he’d belonged for the last ten years, the mistakes of the past erased. And above all, he wanted to tell her what mattered most, that there would be no more dreams.
Part Three
16
They were laughing in the back and Alex started to laugh, too. He wasn’t even sure what they were laughing about, something at the party he supposed, but it was infectious. He laughed and then he looked ahead at the road and said, ‘Where are we going?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Matt. Natalie and Will laughed harder, amused by the possibility of them being lost. ‘Won’t this road take us back to campus?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
Rob leaned forward, and said, ‘Take the next right. That’ll take you onto that long road with all the trees on it, you know, where Sam Collins lives?’
‘I thought he lived in Union Street?’
‘No, he did, but he moved up here during the summer. Anyway, that’ll take us back into the town centre and then we can go back out to campus.’