Lizzie leaves me and I silently thank her. She’s like Alice, with her well-tuned heart. I know my dignity is more important to her than her own. I’m facing forward, staring at the empty bed opposite, the heart monitor, IV and other machines, ready and waiting to slide into the new patient’s veins. Caleb went off to a whole orchestra of outraged wails and beeps from his machines, Mary barking at everyone on the ward, following the family orders to ‘do anything’ to keep poor old Caleb ticking. I hear everything that happens on the ward. A side effect, it seems, of being suspended in life is my new supersonic hearing. Like when someone loses a sense, another one becomes more acute, I can hear people talk quietly about ten metres away, at the end of the ward. None of the docs have picked up on it. I’m glad of that; I don’t want any tubes in my ears and worse, I don’t want people getting nervous, self-conscious when they talk. It’s my only entertainment. I never realised quite how much people moan before, about the weather, the neighbours, their children. It’s so petty, so mundane, so exquisite. I love hearing Carol cursing her bunions, or Mary bitching on the phone to some poor mug in India about how she still can’t access online videos. Small mercies.
By afternoon, my eyes have closed. In, out, in, out. I count along with my breathing machine as I listen to the nurses making the final preparations for the new patient, neat little footsteps checking machines, plastic being torn away from sterilised apparatus. In, out, in, out. I never know whether the next breath will come, whether I’ll die here today or whether I’ll be cocooned within myself as months turns to years, each day decomposing a little more, as life clatters on around me. People will fall in love, they’ll go on adventures, they’ll cry and shout, there’ll be wars and long, lazy summer days but I’ll still be here, staring at the grey ceiling, a statue, longing for some wonderful day when my feeling exhausts itself, and I’ll be left with a numbness so complete it’ll sweetly smother any memory of who I once was, who I once thought I could be. If I don’t die soon, my hope is to be relieved of hope, and even though my body may still be pumped, prodded and wiped, my mind will be frozen and Frank will be gone.
3
Cassie
In a way it was a surprise that Jack and Cassie had guests at their wedding at all. Even before they were engaged, they talked late at night, naked and curled around each other like vines, about getting married in Scotland, somewhere wild and new to them both, just the two of them with a couple of strangers as witnesses. But they’d only been together a few weeks then, and when, eight months later, they were on their way back from Paris flushed and newly engaged, they both knew it wouldn’t happen like that.
They both knew it would break Charlotte’s heart if she wasn’t there to see Jack, her only child, marry. So they agreed to a small ceremony and a drinks-only reception in the beautiful old barn conversion behind The Hare, Buscombe village’s best – and only – pub. Which was why Cassie was now being passed from guest to guest like a fragile present, for careful cheek kisses, powdery as moth’s wings. All their guests tell her she looks beautiful, even the ones she’s never met before.
‘You look absolutely radiant,’ they say. ‘Jack’s a lucky man.’
Cassie smooths the tight, ivory, lace dress – which Charlotte insisted she tried on – over her hips and feels an increasingly familiar bubble swell inside her as she replies, ‘Not as lucky as me!’ And she means it; she is lucky. Bloody lucky.
Her eyes skittle around the black-beamed barn, decorated by Charlotte with cheery red-berried holly wreaths, two Christmas trees and hundreds of candles, before they lock on, magnetised to the back of Jack’s dark head. He’s always the tallest person in a room, floating above the canopy of heads as though he’s got more life in him than everyone else. The sight of him – his sure, solid features, his easy smile, the dimple on his left cheek – calms and excites Cassie simultaneously. He bends down to kiss an elderly woman Cassie thinks is his Aunt Torie. She’s clutching on to his hand like a child with a balloon she can’t believe she’s won; she’s left a haze of pink lipstick on his cheek. Aunt Torie looks up at Jack, smiling and coquettish as if she’s back in her own romance from decades ago, but Jack’s not looking at Aunt Torie any more; he’s looking at her, his new wife. She starts moving towards him, and they open their arms to each other, as natural as breath, and Jack kisses her full on the mouth. A camera snaps.
‘Wifey,’ he whispers in a jokey Scottish accent, and she smiles up at him, in rapture that this is who she is now.
‘Husband,’ she says back to him with a little bow of her head.
At home in the Brixton flat where Cassie grew up and where Jack and Cassie have lived together for the last six months, they’ve been calling each other husband and wife for weeks already, trying their new titles on for size. They fit perfectly. He kisses her again before someone ting-tings a spoon against a champagne glass and a hush like a wave washes over the wedding guests as they form a neat semi-circle around Charlotte. Jack and Cassie, holding hands, are gently nudged forward to the front.
Charlotte strokes the side of her blonde bob with her left hand, and her own wedding ring glows like an ember. Cassie has never seen her take it off, even though Mike died over twenty years ago. Theirs was the kind of relationship Cassie’s mum, April, gently told Cassie was make-believe, improbable, a sugary fairy tale for people with sweet heads and hearts. But Charlotte’s ring – its position on her left hand – is proof. April hadn’t been right about everything.
Some guests are still quietly chatting so Charlotte clears her throat to quieten them. Gentle crow’s feet like speech marks punctuate her blue eyes as she smiles at the wedding guests who stand before her, like exotic birds in their best outfits. Jack puts his arm around Cassie. She feels his muscles tense, nervous for his mum. Cassie strokes the back of his hand to calm him.
Charlotte thanks everyone who helped with the wedding, the cousins for the Christmas tree, the local family friends for the wedding cake. The guests keep their eyes fixed on Charlotte, moving only to take blind, occasional sips of champagne. Charlotte pauses for a breath. Cassie stops stroking Jack, her hand clammy suddenly, as Charlotte starts talking again:
‘Finally, I just want to say what a rare union we have witnessed today. The coming together of two exceptional individuals who share an exceptional love. The first time I met my wonderful daughter-in-law’ – a couple of ‘whoops’ from the younger guests – ‘I knew she was special. With the beautiful Cassie by his side, Jack is the happiest he’s ever been. He came to me just a few weeks into their relationship and said, “Things make sense now, Mum. Everything just makes sense”, and I knew my boy had found the love of his life.’
Jack squeezes Cassie’s waist before releasing her so he can clap. Cassie’s holding a champagne glass. It’s in the way and she tries to clap but her hands are clumsy around the glass.
‘Of course,’ Charlotte says, ‘we all know there are two very special people who can’t be with us today.’
The air in the room becomes dense. Cassie feels a familiar lump harden in her throat, too large to swallow. Charlotte looks directly at Cassie, her eyes kind as always, and the lump softens.
‘I know I speak for us all when I say how dearly we would have loved April, Cassie’s remarkable mum, to be here with us. I’m saddened Jack and I never met April. I’ve heard stories of a woman who loved colour, late-night dancing, a woman who laughed easily and loved heartily. Although we can never fill the void in Cassie’s life, I’m certain April would have been pleased that Cassie will forever be part of a family who will love and cherish her. After all, what more could a parent ask than for the happiness of their child?’ Charlotte’s voice wavers a little. ‘Welcome to our family, Cassie. We love you dearly.’