Sarah’s eyes were closed, her face as peaceful as though she was sleeping. Her hand felt heavy and cold, and Murray gently rubbed his thumb against her papery skin. His tears fell unashamedly onto the white hospital blanket, each forming dark spots like the onset of a summer shower.
There were four beds in this section of the ward, all but Sarah’s unoccupied. A nurse hovered discreetly in the corridor, giving him solitude at this most private of moments. Seeing him look up, she came to his side.
‘Take as much time as you need.’
Murray stroked Sarah’s hair. Time. That most precious commodity. How much time had he and Sarah spent together? How many days? How many hours, minutes?
Not enough. It could never be enough.
‘You can talk to her. If you like.’
‘Can she hear me?’ He watched the gentle rise and fall of Sarah’s chest.
‘Jury’s still out on that one.’ The nurse was in her forties, with soft dark eyes and a voice filled with compassion.
Murray followed the tubes and wires that snaked across his wife’s body, to the myriad machines keeping her alive; to the IV drip with its soothing morphine.
They would increase the dose, the consultant had explained. When it was time.
*
The ambulance had taken only minutes, but they were minutes too long. In the days that had followed – in the blur of nurses and consultants and machinery and paperwork – Murray had made himself relive those minutes as though he had been there. As though this had happened to him.
There had been an upturned chair in the kitchen; a broken glass where Sarah had fallen by the sink. The phone, beside her on the tiles. Murray forced the images through, one after another, each one like a blade dragged against his skin.
Nish had begged him to stop. She’d arrived with something foil-wrapped, still hot from the oven, catching Murray in the brief space between hospital visits. She had listened to Murray tell her in agonising detail what no one knew for certain had happened, then she had put her hands around his and cried with him. ‘Why are you torturing yourself like this?’
‘Because I wasn’t there,’ Murray had said.
Nish’s tears left tracks down her cheeks. ‘You couldn’t have prevented this.’
Cerebral aneurysm, the doctor had said.
Coma.
Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.
Then: I’m sorry. There’s nothing more we can do.
She wouldn’t feel anything, they had insisted. It was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do.
Murray opened his mouth, but nothing came out. There was a pain in his chest and he knew his heart was breaking. He looked at the nurse. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Say anything. Talk about the weather. Tell her what you had for breakfast. Have a moan about work.’ She put a hand on Murray’s shoulder, squeezed gently, then took it away. ‘Say whatever’s in your head.’
She moved away to the corner furthest from where Murray sat with Sarah, and began folding blankets and tidying the contents of the metal cupboard beside the empty bed.
Murray looked at his wife. He ran a single finger over her forehead – its worried furrows now smoothed flat – and along the bridge of her nose. He skirted the plastic mask that held the tube in Sarah’s throat, and stroked instead her cheek, her neck. He traced the curve of her ear.
Say whatever’s in your head.
Behind him, the steady burr of machines continued, rhythmic sounds that formed the language of the ICU.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there …’ he began, but the words were sobs and his eyes were streaming and he could no longer see. How much time had they had together? How much time would they have had left, if this hadn’t happened? Murray pictured Sarah on their wedding day, in the yellow dress she had picked in lieu of white. He remembered her joy when they bought their house. As he held Sarah’s limp fingers, he saw instead the nails filled with dirt; her face not pale against a hospital pillow, but flushed from a morning’s gardening.
It hadn’t been enough, but the time they had spent together meant the world to him.
It had been his world.
Their world.
Murray cleared his throat. He looked across at the nurse. ‘I’m ready.’
There was a pause. Murray half hoped she’d say not yet – in an hour or so, perhaps, yet at the same time he knew he couldn’t bear it if she did. More time wouldn’t make this any easier.
She nodded. ‘I’ll get Dr Christie.’
There was no more talking. They removed the tube from Sarah’s throat as gently as if she had been made of glass; pushed away the wheeled machines that had been keeping the beat of a heart too weak to work alone. They promised to be right outside, in the corridor, if they were needed. That he mustn’t feel afraid; he mustn’t feel alone.
And then they left him.
And Murray rested his head on the pillow beside the woman he had loved for half his life. He watched her chest rise and fall with a movement so slight he could barely see it.
Until it wasn’t there at all.
SEVENTY
ANNA
‘Anna! Over here!’
‘How do you feel about your mother’s death?’
Mark puts a hand in the small of my back and steers me across the street, all the while talking to me in a low voice. ‘Don’t make eye contact … keep looking forward … nearly there …’ We reach the pavement and he takes back his hand to tip the pram wheels up and over the kerb.
‘Mr Hemmings – what first attracted you to the millionairess Anna Johnson?’
There is a ripple of laughter.
Mark takes a key from his pocket and unlocks the gates. Someone has tied a cellophaned bunch of flowers to the bars. For Dad? My mother? For me? As Mark slides the gates open – just wide enough for me to push the pram through – a man from the Sun steps in front of us. I know he’s from the Sun because he has told me so, every day for the last seven days, and because he has a dog-eared identity card dangling from the zip of his fleece, as though this hint of professionalism negates the daily harassment.
‘You’re on private property,’ Mark says.
The journalist looks down. One scuffed brown boot is half on the pavement, half on the gravel that covers our driveway. He moves it. Only a few inches, but he is no longer trespassing. He thrusts an iPhone in my face.
‘Just a quick quote, Anna, then all this will go away.’ Behind him stands his sidekick. Two cameras lie like machine guns across the older man’s body, the sagging pockets of his parka stuffed with lenses, flashes, batteries.
‘Leave me alone.’
It’s a mistake. Instantly there’s a rustle of notebooks, another phone. The small crowd of hacks surges forward, taking my broken silence as invitation.
‘A chance to put your side of the story forward.’
‘Anna! This way!’
‘What was your mother like growing up, Anna? Was she violent towards you?’ This last with a raised voice, and now they’re all shouting. All trying to be heard; all desperate for the scoop.
Robert’s front door opens, and he comes down the steps in a pair of leather slippers. He nods briefly to us, but his eyes are fixed on the reporters. ‘Why don’t you just fuck off?’
‘Why don’t you fuck off?’
‘Who is he, anyway?’
‘Nobody.’
It’s enough of a distraction. I shoot Robert a grateful look, feel Mark’s hand on my back again, pushing me forward. The pram wheels crunch on gravel, and then Mark’s pulling the gates closed, turning the key. There are two, three, four flashes.
More photos.
More photos of me looking pale and anxious; more photos of Ella’s pram with a privacy blanket pegged to the hood. More photos of Mark, grimly escorting us in and out of the drive, when necessity demands that we leave the safety of the house.
Only the local paper still has us on the front page (the nationals have already relegated us to page five), with a photograph taken through the railings, as though we were the ones behind bars.
Inside, Mark makes coffee.
They wanted us to stay somewhere else.
‘Just for a few days,’ Detective Sergeant Kennedy said.