The Girlfriend

‘Is that a hospital?’ she asked, but they didn’t answer – too preoccupied or they just didn’t hear – and the sirens started up again as they took him up the hill and towards the helicopter.

She still hadn’t moved when she saw it rise up into the air, and she didn’t know if it was because she had stood there a long time or if the ambulance had been extremely quick. But the sight of him being taken away, and the noise of the blades fading into the sky, emphasized the shocked silence on the ground. She shivered, suddenly freezing cold.

‘Where is it?’ she said, meaning the hospital.

‘We’ll give you a lift, or you can follow us in your car,’ said Gareth.

She suddenly realized she still had to change and the idea of being delayed a minute more panicked her into action. She started to run back up the hill.





TWENTY-ONE


Saturday 23 August


Later, Laura would not remember it as being her birthday (although she’d never have another one without brushing up against that wild terror, a sensation of stopping breathing, of panicked, unasked questions and an overwhelming, animalistic need to be with him), but she would remember it by the smell of roses. A scent that she loved but that would soon have the power to plummet her into a dark place. Stooped in the garden, near the fence, she’d been pruning the dead heads to make way for new blooms when the phone rang. She distractedly picked it up, still snipping away with the secateurs.

‘Hello. Can I speak with Mrs Cavendish, please?’

She remembered being mildly irritated, half expecting some marketing company who’d got hold of her number or the dentist calling to remind her of an annual check-up.

‘Mrs Cavendish speaking.’

The voice paused a millisecond and in that moment it got her attention.

‘Mrs Cavendish, I am a nurse, Nurse Hadley from Wrexham Maelor Hospital in Wales. I’m afraid I have some bad news about your son.’





TWENTY-TWO


Saturday 23 August


The journey to Wales was agonizing. Every traffic light, every car hogging the fast lane, not getting out of their way. Every time the autocratic motorway speed signs flashed at them to slow to sixty, or to forty miles an hour, she would move restlessly, angrily in her seat. The physical pull to be next to Daniel was so strong that if they weren’t going as fast as possible, her body started to move itself, as if to make up for it. All the while, Howard sat beside her, driving, a pained expression on his face. She’d had to call him at the golf course and to his due he’d answered immediately (she never rang, preferring to leave him to it, knowing she was all but excluded from that side of his life), so perhaps he’d known something was wrong. While he was driving back to her, she threw a few essentials – toothpaste, change of clothes for them both – into a bag, then sat on the hall chair when she wasn’t pacing frustratedly. She rushed out as soon as she heard the car pull up outside, and he didn’t even have time to switch off the engine before they were back on the road.

The first few minutes of the journey were spent repeating over and over what the nurse had told her, which was very little: ‘Your son is unconscious after falling from a raft in a white-water-rafting accident.’ He was currently ‘in surgery’, but she couldn’t or, more to the point, wouldn’t give any details of why or what but instead asked them to get there ‘as soon as they safely could’. When Laura had pressed for details, anything to try and make sense of it all, Nurse Hadley had repeatedly answered with the same thing – ‘It’s better that you speak to a doctor when you get here’ – and although Laura understood why, she’d felt a deep hatred for her at one point, so desperate was she for clarity and reassurance.

‘He’s obviously hit his head,’ said Howard.

‘You think so?’ said Laura. Although deep down she believed the same thing, she just didn’t want to admit it.

He nodded.

‘And the surgery?’ Laura’s voice tremored.

Howard didn’t say anything at first, as they both knew that whichever way you looked at it, it was bad. ‘We don’t know yet,’ he said gently.

Laura saw him glance at the sat nav again and shared his anxiety about the time. Two hours to go, with an estimated arrival time of 5.07 p.m. She looked at her watch. Two hours from now would make their arrival time 5.05 p.m.; she could be with Daniel a whole two minutes earlier, she thought, before realizing what a ridiculous notion that was. Two hours was two hours; her watch was just a bit slow. They said the accident had happened at a quarter past ten that morning and so Daniel would have been almost the entire day without his family by the time they arrived. Thinking this made her almost shake with a sense of neglect. What if he was waiting for her, for someone to hold his hand? What if the presence of her or Howard at the hospital made a difference to his surgery? Howard, in a rare moment of tenderness, rested a hand on hers.

‘He’s in the best place and they’ll be looking after him. And they’ll call. They’ll call,’ he emphasized, meaning with good or bad news. Anything significant.

It was at this point that Laura realized he wasn’t dressed in his golf clothes, which meant that he’d either changed after she rung him – highly unlikely considering the urgency – or he hadn’t been at golf at all. She didn’t answer, just squeezed his thumb, an acknowledgement she’d heard.

They were led into a small room, a consultation room, which Laura sensed had been used to tell a lot of people bad news, to ask them to make difficult decisions, maybe occasionally even to impart something joyful. The room felt burdened. She and Howard stared at the walls, the posters about sanitization, the helplines and, surprisingly, the vase of fresh flowers on the table. They were waiting in silence for the doctor to come and speak to them, having exhausted what little they could squeeze out of what they already knew.

There had been no sign of Cherry.

The door opened and Laura started. In walked two doctors. Laura urgently scanned the face of the one who led, a kindly, bright Asian woman, trying to read it for news.

‘Mr and Mrs Cavendish,’ the doctor said, indicating the chairs. ‘Thank you for coming so quickly.’

Neither sat. ‘Where is he? Can we see him?’ asked Laura.

‘Very soon, of course. And I know you’re anxious to.’ She indicated the chairs again and they lowered themselves into them, as did the doctors.

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