Frances sat up on her stretcher, pushed back her headphones and pulled her eye mask down around her neck.
‘Thank you,’ she said to Delilah, who sat next to her, smiling at her in a way that could be called condescending, as a matter of a fact. ‘That was lovely. Quite an experience. I feel like I learned a great deal. How much do I owe you?’
‘I don’t think you’re done yet,’ said Delilah.
Frances looked around the room.
Lars and Tony were on stretchers next to each other. Tony’s head lolled to one side, his feet splayed in a V shape. Meanwhile, Lars’s profile looked like that of a Grecian god and his feet were neatly crossed at the ankles, as if he were napping on a train while listening to a podcast.
Ben and Jessica were in a corner of the room kissing like young lovers who have just discovered kissing and have all the time in the world. Their hands moved over each other’s bodies with slow, passionate reverence.
‘Goodness,’ said Frances. ‘That looks like fun.’
She continued to survey the room.
Carmel lay on her stretcher, her thick black hair spread like seaweed around her head. She held up her hands and wiggled her fingers as if she were trying to see them through her eye mask.
Napoleon, Heather and Zoe sat in a row with their backs against the wall, like young travellers stranded at an airport. There was a boy sitting in front of them. He stuck his finger up at Zoe.
‘Who is that boy?’ said Frances. ‘The boy without the shirt?’
‘There is no boy,’ said Delilah. She reached for Frances’s headphones.
‘He’s laughing,’ said Frances. She tried and failed to grab at Delilah’s arm to stop her pulling the eye mask back over her eyes. ‘I think I’ll go say hello.’
‘Stay with me, Frances,’ said Delilah.
chapter forty
Heather
Heather focused on her breathing. She was determined to keep a tiny part of her brain safe and sober and in charge of monitoring the effects of the psilocybin and LSD; one brightly lit office window in a dark office tower.
She knew, for example, that in reality her son rotted beneath the earth; he was not really there with them. And yet he seemed so real, and when she reached out to touch his arm, it was his flesh: firm and smooth and tanned. He tanned easily and he was hopeless about putting on sunscreen, even though she nagged.
‘Don’t go, Zach.’ Napoleon jerked upright and reached out his hands.
‘He’s not going, Dad,’ said Zoe. She pointed. ‘He’s still right there.’
‘My boy,’ sobbed Napoleon. His body convulsed. ‘He’s gone.’ His sobs were guttural, uncontrolled. ‘My boy, my boy, my boy.’
‘Stop that,’ said Heather. This was not the place, not the time.
It was the drugs. Not everyone reacted the same way to drugs. Some labouring mothers got plastered on just one whiff of nitrous oxide. Others screamed at Heather that it wasn’t working.
Napoleon had always been susceptible. He couldn’t even cope with coffee. One long black and you’d think he’d taken speed. An over-the-counter painkiller could send him loopy. The only time he ever had a general anaesthetic, which was for a knee reconstruction the year before Zach died, he’d had a bad reaction when he came out of it and scared a poor young nurse to death by supposedly ‘speaking in tongues’ about the Garden of Eden, although it wasn’t clear how she understood what he was saying if he was speaking in tongues. ‘She must be fluent in tongues,’ Zach had said, and Zoe had laughed so much, and there was no greater pleasure in Heather’s life than watching her children make each other laugh.
Watch your husband, she thought. Monitor him. She narrowed her eyes and clenched her jaw to maintain focus, but she felt herself drift hopelessly, inevitably away on a sea of memories.
She is walking down the street pushing her two babies in a big double stroller and every single old lady stops to make a comment and Heather is never going to make it to the shops.
She is a little girl staring at her mother’s stomach wishing she could make a baby grow in there so that she can have a brother or sister but the wishing doesn’t work, wishing never works, and when she grows up she will never have an only child, a lonely only.
She is opening the door of her son’s bedroom because she’s going to do a load of washing and she may as well scrape up some of the layer of clothes on his floor and her whole body resists what she is seeing and she thinks, I’m doing a load of washing, don’t do this, Zach, I want to do laundry, I want to keep this life, please, please let me keep this life, but she hears herself screaming because she knows it’s too late, there is nothing to be done, the life of one second ago is gone.
She is at her son’s funeral and her daughter is delivering a eulogy, and afterwards people keep touching Heather, so much touching, everyone wants to paw at her, it is repulsive, and they are all saying, Oh, you must be so proud, Zoe spoke so beautifully, as if it’s fucking school speech night not her son’s funeral, and can’t you see my daughter is alone now, how can she live without her brother, she never even existed without him, and who cares if she spoke beautifully, she can’t even stand, her father is holding her upright, my daughter can’t even walk.
She is watching Zoe take her first steps at only eleven months, and Zach, who has never even considered such a thing, is shocked, he can hardly believe it, he is sitting on the carpet with his little plump legs stuck out in front of him and he is looking up at his sister with big astonished eyes and you can see he is thinking, What is she DOING? and she and Napoleon are laughing so hard, and maybe wishes do come true because this is family, this is what she never had, never knew, never dreamed, this is a moment so perfect and funny and this is her life now, just a string of perfect, funny moments one after the other, like a string of beads that will go on forever.
Except that it won’t.
She is alone in Zach’s bedroom crying, and she thinks that Napoleon and Zoe are somewhere in the house crying too, all alone crying in separate rooms, and she thinks families are probably meant to grieve together but they aren’t doing it right, and to distract herself she goes through Zach’s drawers for the hundredth time, even though she knows there is nothing to find, no note, no explanation, she knows exactly what she will find – except that this time, she does find something.
She was back.
Napoleon still rocked and sobbed.
Had she been gone for a second or an hour or a year? She didn’t know.
‘How are the Marconi family feeling right now?’ Masha sat in front of them. ‘Could this perhaps be a good opportunity for a family therapy session about your loss?’
Masha had multiple arms and multiple legs but Heather refused to acknowledge her multiple limbs because it was not real, people simply did not have that many limbs. Heather had never once delivered a baby with that many limbs. She was not falling for it.
‘When you say it’s your fault, Napoleon, are you referring to Zach?’ asked Masha, all faux concern.
Heather heard herself hiss, ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’
Heather was a snake with a long forked tongue that could whip from her mouth and pierce Masha’s skin, shooting venom through her veins, poisoning her, the same way Masha had poisoned Heather’s family. ‘Don’t you dare talk about our son! You know nothing about our son.’
‘My fault, my fault, my fault.’ Napoleon banged his head against the wall. He was in danger of concussing himself.
Heather gathered up all her mental strength to focus her mind and crawled around to face Napoleon on her hands and knees. She grabbed his head between her hands. She could feel his ears against her palms, the warmth of his stubbled skin.
‘Listen to me,’ she said in the loud, carrying voice she used to cut through the screams of a woman in labour.
Napoleon’s eyes rolled about, bulging and veined with blood, like a frightened horse.