Come on, Frank, get a grip!
It must be the music getting to me. I watch as Jack gazes at his wife. Every now and then, he smiles. I think he’s reminiscing. I wish he’d do it aloud; from here, they look like happy memories, and I could use some of them today.
All too soon, Jack sits up straighter, clears his throat, and looking around himself quickly, he picks the speaker off Cassie’s belly and kisses her forehead and strokes her cheek before he leaves us alone again.
I’m trying to replay the music, capture those soaring strings in my head, when Alice draws the curtain back. She’s humming; she must have heard the music as well. She turns my face towards her, the gap in her teeth visible. Small smiles keep escaping; they ripple across her face, and for once I wish they wouldn’t. I need her to be serious, on guard in case she’s here when he comes back.
She looks down at me and out of the corner of my eye I see her smile drop. She moistens my eyes, and the solution runs wet tears down the side of my head towards my temples. It feels wonderful, lately my eyes have been even itchier than usual. I hope I’m not getting an infection.
‘Jonny Parker, Cassie and Jack’s neighbour, has been charged, Frank.’
I know, Alice.
She tells me about a ring that Cassie was wearing, her mum’s ring. She tells me about Jack holding Cassie’s engagement and wedding ring in his hands. I’m not too sure what she’s getting at. Alice has to wear her engagement ring around a chain on her neck to work; there’ll be a similarly perfectly innocent explanation why Cassie wasn’t wearing hers; maybe the turquoise ring suited her New Year’s outfit better. Jack probably brought her wedding rings in because he knew Cassie would want them in hospital with her, a talisman of hope for the future. If Alice knew, if she had any idea that Jonny’s been in here at night, she’d change her tune. I think of my vocal cords lying useless as a tiny shipwreck in the back of my throat, how they and they alone could save Cassie, could save her baby.
I’ve amended my getting-better fantasy recently. I still walk out of the ward, holding Luce’s hand. We still stop at Alice, who hugs me as I thank her with all my being. The difference is, before Luce and I walk home and leave 9B forever, I tell that policewoman about Jonny, about him creeping in here and take him away there and then. No bail, no getting out this time. Cassie, behind her big pregnant belly, smiles thanks at me. Cassie wakes up soon after me and gives birth to a beautiful baby girl and her, Alice, Jack and the little one come and visit me and Luce in our little house in the countryside.
Alice wipes the saline tears away from my face with some cotton and her cautious smile is back as she turns to look at me, her brown eyes sparkling with joy, and I know what she’s going to say before she opens her mouth.
‘I’ve got some more news, Frank. Guess what?’
Tell me, Alice.
‘I’m pregnant!’
That’s wonderful.
‘I’m just a few weeks but I feel good, Frank, I really do. It feels different this time. I really think it’s different.’ Her smile fades only slightly. ‘I’m keeping it quiet though, for now. Just you and my friend Jess know.’
Promise I won’t go blabbing.
She smiles at me again, before she presses her bottom lip against her teeth a couple of times.
What about a doctor, Alice. Shouldn’t you tell a doctor?
But she’s up out of my visitor’s chair. She notes the readings from my machines before I hear another nurse calling her name.
She comes back to me just a few minutes later, the bounce back in her voice as she says, ‘You have a visitor, Frank.’
I don’t let myself think it could be her until I hear the sweetest word, sweeter than any music ever composed: ‘Dad?’
Luce?
‘If you sit in this chair here,’ Alice tells her, ‘and lean in, he’ll be able to see you better.’
Luce!
I hear some scuffle and shuffle as Lucy follows Alice’s direction and then I see her. I see her. Her hair is darker, conker, thick, and bobbed. She blows her fringe off her forehead, just like she did when she was little and feeling nervous. Her skin is still milk-white and flawless. She’s had her nose pierced, a silver ring on her left nostril. She fiddles with it; there’s a red mark where it plunges into her, which looks painful, and I wince, despite myself.
‘Well, Dad,’ Lucy says, smiling nervously. ‘I promised no tattoos but you never said anything about getting my nose pierced.’ She splutters a little laugh as a tear rolls down her face and drops on to the back of my hand. It feels glorious, a cherished, sad little kiss. She wipes another away with a quick hand.
Don’t be sad, my love, don’t be sad. I’m not! I’m so happy you’re here.
‘I’ll be just at the end of the ward if you need me,’ Alice says to Lucy.
Lucy moves her eyes from me to Alice, and nods. She puts her hand over mine, where her tear just fell. Her hand’s warm, healing, and she starts crying in earnest.
‘Sorry, Dad. Sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t do this,’ she says, pointing at her tear-stained face.
You never need to be sorry with me, my love. You know that.
I can see from her face she’s trying to remember Alice’s advice, trying to remember how to talk naturally to me. She looks down briefly, playing with the tissue in her lap. She frowns. I see the little scar in the middle of her forehead where she fell and hit her head when she was a toddler. She looks up, visibly brightening a little. She’s thought of something.
‘I got a kitten, Dad! She’s a rescue. The landlord doesn’t know, of course, but he’s never around and I’ve wanted one since I was what, like six? All my flatmates love her. I’ll show you a photo.’ She carries on talking as she rummages in a bag I can’t see.
‘She’s the sweetest little thing. I’m mad about her. It reminds me of that time we looked after our old neighbour’s cats? You remember that one that crapped in the bath? Mum went crazy. Anyway, here she is. Her name’s Betty.’ Lucy holds a phone screen in front of my eyes. She’s wearing chipped, pink nail varnish. She’s still biting her nails. The screen’s too shiny, I can’t see the photo. All I see is a skeletal face, reflected perfectly back at me, bones barely covered by translucent skin, like a saggy-skinned chicken before it’s cooked. My eyes are sunken in their sockets, as if someone’s taken the soft tissue out with an ice cream baller. I can’t see any hair at all, and a blue tube, like a sick joke tie, pokes out from the lower edge of the image. My eyes are the eyes of a dead fish, filmy and vacant.
Take it away, Lucy, please move it.
But she doesn’t. I’m forced to look at myself, an appalled narcissus as she chatters away about Betty.
‘She’s pretty good but she does shred everything.’ At last she takes the phone away.