Alice was a tiny bundle in a bed in the middle of intensive care, a mass of bandages and wires and bruised flesh. There was barely a bit of her Sarah recognised. Even her voice was just a croak.
Sarah didn’t want to say much. She didn’t want drama. She didn’t really do drama. The confrontation in the waiting room was as high as her voice had been raised for years. She was the epitome of calm, brought up to be serene and gracious.
She held Alice’s little paw, the one without the cannula, and stroked it gently.
‘Poor sweetheart,’ she whispered.
‘How bad is it?’ asked Alice. ‘I can’t move anything and my head hurts. I can’t think.’
‘You’ve bashed your poor leg up a bit,’ said Sarah. ‘They’ll need to pin it back together.’
She swallowed. She couldn’t look at Alice’s face. She couldn’t say anything about her face. Not yet.
‘We’ll have to cancel, won’t we? The wedding?’ Alice’s voice was a quaver.
Sarah looked at the floor. Something inside her said yes. That would be the answer to everything. Cancel the wedding. She had a bad feeling about it. About Hugh. But she didn’t want to upset Alice by agreeing, because it would imply that things were terribly serious. Which indeed they may well be, but Alice had been through enough already. She needed soothing.
‘We don’t have to worry about that at the moment. It’s a long way off.’
She suddenly felt drained, and incredibly emotional. She didn’t want to cry in front of Alice.
‘What happened, darling?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. There were loads of us. In the pub …’
‘Was Dillon there?’
‘Dillon?’ Alice was trying hard to recollect the events. ‘Maybe.’
‘Did he and Hugh have a row?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Only Hugh seems to think they did.’
Alice shook her head. ‘I can remember the J?ger train …’
Sarah wasn’t going to push it. She didn’t want Alice distressed.
‘Would you like to see Daddy?’
‘Yes, please. I’m sorry, Mummy.’
‘Sorry? What on earth are you sorry for?’
She could see Alice struggling with a thought, a memory.
‘I don’t know,’ answered Alice, and her eyes filled up with tears.
It was eight o’clock before Sarah and Ralph got back to Peasebrook Manor from the hospital. The nurse had insisted they go in the end; had assured them repeatedly that Alice would be comfortable, and that they would end up being a nuisance if they stayed any longer.
Hugh had gone to stay with a friend. He had sensed, quite rightly, that he was best out of Sarah’s line of fire for the time being.
Sarah sank down into her chair at the kitchen table. Yesterday morning seemed a lifetime away, when she had sat here preparing for Julius’s memorial. You never knew what lay ahead.
‘Shall I make scramblers?’ asked Ralph. She shook her head. She couldn’t bear the thought of food. ‘You’ve got to eat.’
‘Not now. Honestly. I’m beyond it.’
‘Tea.’ He grabbed the kettle and put it on the Aga. ‘That hospital tea was definitely made from scrapings off the factory floor.’
How could he be so jovial?
She stared at the dresser on the wall opposite. She could see Alice’s Noddy egg cup. It had been hers when she was small: a Noddy cup with a little blue felt hat with a bell on, to keep the egg warm. She thought about all the boiled eggs she’d made her daughter.
She could feel it coming. The grief. It was gathering speed, and was going to smash into her any moment. And this time, she didn’t have to brace herself to withstand it. This time, she could let it engulf her. She’d been through every emotion today. Shock. Fear. Anger. Fury. Worry. Relief. Then more worry, doubt, fear, anxiety … There was only so much you could take.
And being at the hospital had reminded her. Of the day she had said goodbye to Julius at the cottage hospital. It was two weeks before he had finally slipped away. She’d been in to see him; brought him the new Ian Rankin, which she was going to read to him because his eyes kept going blurry and he couldn’t concentrate.
She hadn’t been prepared for him telling her he didn’t want her to come in to see him again.
‘I feel OK today. But I know it’s just a temporary respite. Tomorrow I might be out of it. Or gone altogether. I want us to quit while we are ahead. I don’t want you here when I don’t know you are there. I don’t want you to watch me die. I want to say goodbye to you while I am still me. A pretty ropey version of me.’ He managed a self-deprecating smile. He was thin; his skin had an awful pallor; his hair was wispy. ‘But me.’
‘You can’t ask me to do that,’ she had whispered, appalled. She stroked his cheek. She loved every bone in his poor failing body.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to argue about it. It’s for the best.’