We were so ashamed of ourselves we stayed upstairs for the rest of the evening, Susanna had said. I swear by the next week you’d forgotten it ever happened. That had had nothing to do with brain damage. My mind—unbroken, back then, wholly and purely itself—had done that.
I felt rotten, not just booze-sick or hash-sick but the all-pervading rottenness of food poisoning or infection, clammy and watery-weak, my whole system revolting. I realized that I couldn’t see very much and after a while that I was on my knees and elbows, forehead pressed to the floor. I breathed slowly and shallowly, waiting to see if I was going to throw up or faint. Some tiny lucid part of me managed to be glad that Melissa wasn’t here to see me like this.
My eyes wouldn’t open. I couldn’t tell whether I was falling asleep or passing out; either one seemed like a blessed mercy. Somehow I managed to grope and clamber my way onto the bed, fingers tangling in the duvet, stomach swinging, before the blackness closed in from every side and I was gone.
Ten
I woke up because the sun was hitting me in the face. I managed to open my eyes a slit: light was pouring in around the edges of the curtains, it was late and it was a gorgeous autumn day. Every individual part of me felt like shit in a different way. I rolled over and groaned into my pillow.
The night before came back piece by piece. All I wanted in the world was to go back to sleep, preferably for weeks or months or forever, but the movement had been too much for me. I made it to the bathroom just in time.
The retching went on long after my stomach was empty. Finally I felt safe enough to stand up, swill out my mouth and splash cold water on my face. My hands were trembling; in the mirror I had the same dopey, blotchy look I had had in the hospital.
I was terrified. Being suspected of murder had been one thing when I believed I was innocent: this wasn’t some cheesy Hollywood drama, I was hardly going to wind up in prison for something I hadn’t done. It was an entirely different thing now that I might be guilty. Rafferty was sharp and experienced and cunning in ways I couldn’t begin to imagine; if I had left any evidence—and how could I not have? eighteen, clueless—he would find it. He could talk circles round me, think circles round me, and I didn’t even know what to try and hide; I had no idea what had happened, why in God’s name I would have done this. It seemed incredible that I could have got away with it for as long as I apparently—possibly? probably?—had.
I desperately needed to think, but my head was pounding much too viciously. I dug through my stuff for my painkillers and swallowed two; I thought about chasing them with a Xanax, but I needed my mind clear, or as clear as I could get it. Then—ignoring the fact that I was still in my snazzy shirt and linen trousers from last night, now smeared with dirt and reeking of sweat and hash—I went downstairs, taking every step gingerly, in search of coffee.
The kitchen was head-splittingly bright; the wall clock said it was past noon. Hugo was at the cooker, in his dressing gown and slippers, keeping an eye on the coffeemaker as it spat cheerily. “Ah,” he said, turning with a smile. He was clearly having a good day, in fact he was clearly in a lot better shape than I was. “The dead arise. So it was a good night, yes?”
I sat down at the table and covered my face with my hands. Coffee had been a bad idea; just the smell was making me feel like I might throw up again.
Hugo laughed. “I was right not to wake you, then. I thought you might need the lie-in. As soon as I heard you moving about, I put the coffee on.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“And I’ve got a surprise for you, once you’re awake enough. Would you eat something? Toast? Scrambled eggs, maybe?”
“Oh God.”
He laughed again. “In a bit, then.” He peered into the coffeemaker, turned off the gas ring and poured me a very large espresso. “There”—shuffling over to me, leaning on his stick, my brain didn’t come up with the idea of going to him until it was too late. “Would Melissa have some? Is she still in bed? Or did she make it to work?”
“She’s gone,” I said.
“My goodness. I’m impressed.” He poured himself the rest of the coffee, carefully, wrist wobbling. “What time did you get to bed?”
I considered just not telling him. He loved Melissa; it would break his heart. I could probably get away with it for a day or two, come up with reasons why she wasn’t home in the evenings—stocktaking, sick mother—and by that time I might have some clue what I was going to do about all of this . . . I didn’t have the energy. “No,” I said. “She’s gone gone. Permanently.”
“What?” Hugo’s head came around sharply and he stared at me. “Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
After a long moment he put down the coffeemaker, added a dash of milk to his cup and brought it to the table. He sat down opposite me—hands folded around the cup, dressing gown falling open to show flannel pajamas buttoned up wrong, unblinking gray eyes magnified by his glasses—and waited.
Once I started talking I couldn’t stop. It all came out, in a jumble—my memory of the night was pretty hazy, dislocated pieces resurfacing out of any order as I talked, but the gist of it came through clearly enough. The only thing I left out was that last step, that final revelation. Probably Hugo—steadily sipping his coffee, saying nothing—would figure it out, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.
“So”—I was babbling, I had said everything at least twice—“that was when they went home, or wherever, right after that? And I thought Melissa would be upstairs, but . . . I tried to ring her, I haven’t tried yet this morning, but now I don’t know if I even should—like obviously I want to fix things, but I mean, I don’t know what’s going to happen but maybe she’s actually better off not being around for it . . .”
I finally managed to shut up. In the immense silence—staring down into my untouched coffee—it dawned on me, too late, what a terrible, shitty thing I had done by throwing all this into Hugo’s lap. He only had a couple of months, couldn’t I have found a way not to fuck them up with my godawful mess? I couldn’t look at him; I was afraid I would see him broken, face stunned and crumpled, tears streaming. I kept my head down and scraped with my thumbnail at a nonexistent stain on the table: soft grayed wood, the place where the grain curved around a dark spot to make a shape like a wide-mouthed cartoon ghost. All the times I’d sat here, toast and jam, geography projects, drunken parties, and now this.
“Right,” Hugo said, putting down his cup with a bang. His voice startled me into looking up: it had the old fullness and authority I remembered from when I was a kid, oak-solid, the voice that had always stopped us in our tracks and put an instant end to our bickering or wrecking. “This has gone far enough.”
I couldn’t say anything. All of a sudden I was humiliatingly close to tears.
“Don’t waste another thought on it. I’ll sort it out.” He leaned a palm on the table and pushed himself to standing. “But first, we both need something to eat. We’re going to have an omelet—yes, yes you are, I know you don’t want it but you’ll thank me afterwards. We are going to enjoy it in peace. And then you’re going to go take a shower, and I’m going to deal with this mess before it gets completely out of hand.”
I knew it couldn’t be done, and yet a part of me couldn’t help believing him. Tall and shadow-faced against the flood of brightness through the windows, hand crooked around his cane, hair straggling on his shoulders and robe flowing, he looked like a figure from a tarot card, dense with omens. I still couldn’t talk. I wiped the heel of my hand across my eyes.
Hugo hobbled to the fridge and started taking things out: eggs, butter, milk. “With ham and cheese, I think, and spinach . . . Probably what you really need is a dirty great fry-up, but we don’t have the materials.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I really am.”