‘How are you feeling now, Mum? You gave us such a scare.’
Sitting on one side of the hospital bed holding her hand, Lily was looking unusually harried: a faint smudge of mascara bruised the skin under one eye and strands of hair poked out from a makeshift bun. Phoebe stood on the other side of the bed, both of them smiling with a forced cheerfulness that made Audrey nervous. From the busy A&E corridor outside the cubicle, she could hear machines beeping, phones ringing, doctors calling out names of medicines, nurses issuing instructions to porters.
Hospital. It was the very last place she wanted to be.
‘Can I get you anything, Gran? A glass of water? Something to eat? I could pop to the shop and see if there’s any of that salted caramel chocolate you like?’
Audrey shook her head. It felt as though someone must have filled it with lead while she was unconscious.
‘You need to eat something, Mum. I know it’s hard when you feel nauseous, but you’ll get terribly weak if your blood sugar’s too low.’
Audrey’s hand moved instinctively to her stomach. It felt permanently bloated in spite of its emptiness, as though someone had blown up a balloon and put it inside her when she wasn’t looking. The last thing she wanted was food.
‘Come on – we must be able to get you something.’
Audrey remained silent, knowing that the only thing she wanted was the one thing no one could give her. She thought about all those hours she had wasted over the years: the boring TV shows she’d watched, the depressing newspaper articles she’d read, the friendships she’d allowed to run miles beyond their course. All those days she’d pottered through life as though she had all the time in the world.
‘You have to eat, Mum. Come on. There must be something you fancy.’
Audrey shook her head again. As she lay under the stiff white hospital sheets, beneath the fluorescent glare of strip lighting and the watchful gaze of her family, she suddenly realised that she’d become the very thing she dreaded: a patient, not a person.
Lily squeezed her hand as if Audrey were a child in need of gentle encouragement, and Audrey suddenly understood that it wasn’t death she feared so much as the process of dying.
‘I should let Jess know I’m here. She’ll be worried if she gets home and I’m not there.’
At the mention of Jess’s name, Audrey felt the atmosphere thicken. Lily stood up and began tucking in sheets that hadn’t come loose, then rearranged the jug of water and plastic cup on the bedside cabinet that were in no need of tidying. Audrey glanced at Phoebe in time to catch her granddaughter’s raised eyebrows and almost imperceptible nod.
Audrey’s thoughts scrambled towards an understanding. Of course Phoebe would have told Mia, and Mia would have told Jess. Which meant that Jess might be on her way to the hospital right now.
Audrey pulled herself up to a sitting position, her head sluggish, her pulse throbbing. For years she had hoped for another meeting between her daughters but not in these circumstances, not in this location. As she tried to imagine the scene that might unfold should Jess arrive, she was hit by a new wave of nausea that rose up through her chest and hung, suspended, in her throat.
‘Why don’t I find a doctor, Mum, and ask when they might have the results of your tests?’
Audrey was about to agree when the cubicle curtain swished back and there, standing on the threshold, was Mia.
Chapter 28
Lily
The cubicle curtain opened to reveal a young woman so strikingly like Phoebe that, for a terrible, dislocating second, Lily thought that somehow she must have given birth to her without even knowing it.
Lily stared at Mia, at a face she had seen many times in photographs at her mum’s house but which she had begun to believe she might never see again in the flesh. So many times she had imagined chance encounters on the tube, in the park, trapped in a lift together. On so many nights she had lain awake envisaging circumstances that would lead her to turn up at Jess’s house and hope that Mia answered the door so she could introduce herself. But none of those scenarios had prepared her for what she would feel when she stood two feet away from a young woman to whom she had always felt indelibly linked even though they had never properly met.
She tried to think of all she wanted to say, tried to remember all the speeches she had prepared over the years in case they met accidentally. But now Mia was standing in front of her, Lily wanted nothing more than to look at her. She felt an immediate sense of attachment to her niece, as though a double helix of DNA stretched between them like an invisible bridge, anchoring them together.
She was aware of needing to do something, say something. But having waited all these years for precisely this moment, she now wasn’t sure what to do with it. She felt like a child on Christmas morning who, after weeks of feverish anticipation, could not bear to open her presents because, once she had, it would all be over.
Lily swallowed hard and willed herself to find the right words. ‘I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to meet you at last. You’re … It’s just so strange seeing you and Phoebe in the same room. Not strange, I don’t mean that – it’s lovely. It’s lovely to finally meet you. And is Jess … is your mum here too?’ Lily heard the tremor in her voice and smiled in the hope of smothering it.
‘Not yet. But she’s on her way.’
Chapter 29
Jess
The soles of her trainers squeaked against the rubber floor as she ran past a sea of anonymous faces, past blue plastic chairs and an empty water dispenser, her forehead pleated in a frown, her cheeks pink with exertion.
At A&E reception, Jess waited at the desk while the receptionist stared at a computer screen, her long red nails tapping percussively at the keyboard.
‘Excuse me? I’m looking for my mother, Audrey Siskin. She was brought in a couple of hours ago in an ambulance. My daughter’s here already, I think.’ Anxiety hung on the sharp edges of Jess’s consonants.
‘If you take a seat I’ll find out where she is.’
‘Can’t I just go through? My daughter must be in there with her. I keep trying to call her mobile but it just goes straight to voicemail.’
‘Jess? Can I help with anything?’
Jess spun around and saw a face she half recognised though for a moment she couldn’t think where from. ‘Ben, isn’t it? What are you doing here?’
‘Your mum was at choir rehearsal when she collapsed. I was the one who called the paramedics. I just wanted to see how she was, make sure everything was OK.’
Jess thrust her hand into her jacket pocket, pulled out her phone and scowled at its empty screen. ‘Do you know where she is? My daughter texted ten minutes ago to say she was with her and she’s OK, but the woman on reception isn’t exactly forthcoming with information.’
‘I don’t know – I’m sorry. But I’m sure she’s fine. She had a brief blackout but only for a few seconds. She’d come round long before the ambulance arrived. She tried very hard to persuade us that she was fine, but both Phoebe and I thought she ought to get checked out.’
Jess’s eyes narrowed. ‘Phoebe’s here? What the hell was she doing at the choir rehearsal?’
‘Rehearsing. She’s in the choir too. Didn’t you know?’
Ben’s words scrambled in Jess’s head, trying to form a meaningful explanation. But however she replayed them, they told the same story: her mum had been heading off to choir rehearsals twice a week for the past five weeks and had not seen fit to tell Jess that Phoebe was going with her.
‘So where is she now? Phoebe? Is she still here?’