In the middle of the night a phone starts to ring in the depths of my dream about trying to cross the river to reach Frankie.
Matthew fumbles for it, knocking his watch and keys off the nightstand with a clatter.
‘Yes?’ His voice is sleep filled and low.
I keep my eyes tightly shut. Calls in the early hours always bode ill.
‘What?’ He sits bolt upright. ‘Jesus fucking Christ, Kaye! You should have told me earlier…’
Now my eyes are open too; I am wide awake, fingers clutching the sheet.
‘I’m on my way.’ Matt is scrambling out of bed, falling over as he pulls on his trousers.
‘What is it?’ My stomach is plunging like a fairground ride. ‘Matt? What’s wrong?’
‘It’s Luke,’ he says shortly. ‘He’s been rushed to Hemel Hempstead Hospital. Where the fuck’s my shirt?’
* * *
We race back down the empty motorway from tranquil Oxfordshire, driving straight to the hospital. There Matthew is rushed off by a nurse through paediatric A & E to the theatre, where they are about to operate on Luke for suspected appendicitis.
I don’t know what to do for the best. I want to support Matthew – but I can’t really see myself hanging out with a distraught Kaye. We’ve never even met.
In the end, after spending a lonely hour in the lobby with no news, I call a cab and go home.
Twenty-One
Jeanie
15 February 2015
6.30 a.m.
* * *
The dawn is flat and unpromising. The empty house is cold. Frankie is in Glasgow this weekend with a group of friends, watching a local band they’ve started to follow.
‘They’re kind of grungy, Mum, like Drenge,’ he’d explained kindly when I’d dropped him at the station. I was none the wiser.
I put the heating on and walk into the kitchen in my coat, staring out into the forlorn February garden. A few pathetic shoots struggle to reach the light from the pots on the terrace; further down clusters of snowdrops hang their pure white heads.
Everything else looks withered and dead.
Switching the kettle on, I see my Valentine’s card to Matthew on the windowsill: a gaudy, soppy affair I made myself.
It feels wrong, misplaced somehow. I feel wrong and misplaced myself.
What is going on? Everything feels discordant suddenly.
Picking up the card, I put it in the kitchen drawer.
Then I pull my phone out and check for messages from Matthew: nothing. I send him one saying I love him and hope everything is okay and to let me know if he needs me.
Then I text my sister.
Everything’s going a bit odd. Can’t wait to see you next week.
Twenty-Two
Marlena
A bit odd? This is starting to sound like an episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey or Dynasty or some crap, don’t you think?
I didn’t really know what her text meant at the time, but I did know it didn’t sound great for a newlywed.
And – a ghost?
I mean really?
Twenty-Three
Jeanie
22 February 2015
The good news is Luke’s fine, thank God.
It wasn’t appendicitis – in fact, after they put a camera inside him when he’d stopped being so sick, they couldn’t find anything wrong, which was a relief all round. They didn’t have to operate after all.
I couldn’t help feeling then that maybe the degree of urgency had been unwarranted; that the screaming on the phone had been largely hysterical and not helpful to the poor boy.
I kept that to myself though. I appreciated that if something happened to Frankie, I’d have rushed down the motorway even faster than Matthew had: a parent’s instinct kicking in – only natural. I loved Matthew even more for caring.
I just wish I didn’t feel so – excluded. Like it’s him and them, and him and me. Or me and Frankie, and him and them. I suppose that’s normal in this set-up. My book on step-parenting says it takes years to ‘blend’ a family; it says women have overly high expectations. Ridiculous expectations, in my case.
But none of it says quite how tough it is – or how bad it might make you feel.
* * *
Matthew had stayed at the hospital until Luke was discharged.
We’d had a muted week, and yesterday he told me he was going to take Scarlett off to see her cousins in King’s Lynn, did I mind? Luke was at home with his mum, and I was waiting for Marlena to arrive, so I said no – please go.
And then of course, just after Matthew pulled out the drive, my unreliable sister texted from Germany saying she couldn’t come at all – she’d had a new lead; she had to file her copy, blah blah – the usual excuses. She’d ring when she got back.