After ten days, life came knocking. Howard had to get back to the office for some urgent meetings. Her PA had tentatively left a message saying she had a few things to pass on whenever Laura was ready. They had to be important or she wouldn’t have bothered her.
They fell into a routine. She would go to the office in the morning and work from home in the afternoon, visiting Daniel for at least two hours every day. Howard would go in the evening, on the way back from work. Laura had decided to let Cherry see him as well. She was prepared to do anything that might help bring Daniel out of his coma. If Cherry spoke to him, maybe her voice could trigger something inside his brain, something that would bring him back to her. She was allowed to visit early in the evening twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Laura gave strict instructions that this was the only time she could visit and she had to be out by the time Howard arrived at eight. Wondering if the nursing staff were sticking to the rules, she spoke to Howard once about it and he said he hadn’t seen her.
Laura had come back to some bad news: ITV were unwilling to commission a second series of her drama as the ratings had continued to fall and so, regrettably, it wasn’t something they could continue with. But they had ‘high hopes’ for the new crime drama and were looking forward to seeing the script. In the meantime, she could keep on paying staff salaries for now. She’d been on the verge of calling Howard about the decision, wanting someone to talk to about it, but had stopped with the phone in her hand. After a momentary closeness, brought together by their son’s accident, they had drifted apart again. Each returned from the hospital with little to report, as neither really thought to talk with the other about what they had said to Daniel. They had been apart for so long they had separate lives; if Howard were to discuss his with Laura, he would have to start from the beginning, and it was the same with her.
Laura could never get used to the idea of Daniel lying there in the hospital bed and her heart tightened every time she saw him. She talked brightly, incessantly after researching comas in books and on the Internet, and cornering friends of friends who worked in neurology. She read reports of recovering patients who could relay full sentences of what had been said to them when they were in their dark place. It was just a matter of time. Or so she obstinately believed.
The year drew on and Isabella had her usual Christmas party, carols round the piano and a lot of champagne and mulled wine. She’d been such a good friend since the accident and had been there every single time Laura had wanted to talk, providing words of encouragement and tissues. She knew Christmas would be a difficult time and told Laura she understood if she didn’t want to come, but Laura felt it was important to keep life as normal as possible, even though she started every day with a heavy pain in her chest. Once she was there, though, she felt like an outsider. She wasn’t interested in drinking, and for her, the festive atmosphere never caught on. She also felt that people were awkward around her, didn’t know how to talk about Daniel and so most didn’t mention him except maybe to say, ‘Give him our love,’ which they would do with a pained, fatalistic expression, something she read to be so desolately pessimistic it angered her. He’s still alive, she wanted to scream out. He’s still here, a part of me. He hasn’t bloody gone yet, she whimpered to herself. After a couple of drawn-out hours, she slipped away home. Then Christmas itself came. She and Howard spent it with Daniel, in the long-term care provision, a special nursing home he’d been moved to. It gave her comfort to be with him, to make sure he wasn’t alone.
As the new year turned, it seemed joyless and bleak. Every day fear would attack her when she was doing the most ordinary things: putting on her tights, locking the front door. When? When? She sometimes shouted it out loud when no one was listening, a word that evaporated like vapour as it left her mouth, leaving no trace and no answer. When would he recover? The waiting was torturous. She stared into a black chasm of an unknown depth but remained agonizingly defiant. She would never give up.
TWENTY-FIVE
Thursday 12 February
It had been over five months since the accident. Tiny signs of spring were emerging. Snowdrops appeared in Hyde Park, snuggled round the foot of trees. Because London had its own microclimate, all those buildings and people, there were even a few crocuses, splashes of yellow and purple. Laura sat in the back of a cab on the way back from her afternoon meeting. The sun had made a late appearance and it was above ten degrees for the first time since October. She felt an urge to get outside, feel the air on her face, and she tapped on the partition between herself and the driver.
As she stepped out of the cab, she knew it had been a good idea. The sun was so sweet, and she saw something she hadn’t seen in weeks: shadows on the pavement. It had been so long they seemed slightly strange to the eye, a novelty. It lifted her spirits, which had been frozen in gloom for several months. The ITV meeting had been good. They’d read the script of the crime drama and liked it. In fact, they were as committed to the project as ever and were keen to see the next draft as soon as possible. Assuming the writer went away and satisfactorily wrote in all the notes that had been discussed today, Laura felt she might get a green light.
The sun and fresh air were helping, but Laura’s headache still hung around, threatening to erupt into a migraine. She’d never had one before Daniel’s accident but could now claim at least one a month. She dug into her bag for the tablets she always carried around but found the packet empty. Knowing the migraine, if it came, would be debilitating, she stopped at a chemist’s and went in to buy some. She waited in line at the pharmacy counter, concentrating on the shelves behind the assistant until she found what she was looking for. Then it was her turn. The girl in front of her turned round. It was Cherry.
She hadn’t seen her for months, so it was a shock, even more so because of how she looked. She’d lost weight and had grown pale, with purple shadows under her eyes, and the glow that she’d noticed the first time she’d seen her, that day she’d peered in the estate agent’s window, that glow had gone.
Cherry recovered first. ‘Hello, Laura.’
‘Hello, Cherry.’
They both stood there, bound together by one man, yet unsure of their own relationship.
‘I think it’s time we had a chat, don’t you?’ said Laura.