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IT WAS OVER a week after John’s admission to hospital that she went back to visit him. She used one of Mother’s Hermès scarves to hide the wounds on her neck and took a bus to Northport General. Public transport was a novelty for Marion, and she had to check several times on the timetable to find out which was the right bus, then look carefully at the map so she wouldn’t miss her stop and end up lost somewhere miles from home.
The bus driver, a young Polish man, told her when to get off and where to get the bus back. When she asked him what the number of the return bus was, he said it was the same number but on the opposite side of the street. Though she felt stupid for not knowing, the driver was very polite and patient and didn’t treat her as though she was an idiot at all.
When she finally arrived at Northport General, she found John sitting up in bed. The tubes were gone from his nose, and he was reading the Daily Mail. It felt as though several years had passed since she last saw him. She thought he would be angry that she’d stayed away for so long, but instead his face was filled with relief, as though he had been terrified she would never come back.
“Marion, love, I didn’t know what had happened to you—is everything all right?”
As John reached out and grasped her hand, his pajamas gaped open and she saw bruises in his chest where the nurses had put needles into the mottled skin. A pretty, brown-haired nurse was attending to a young black man with an oxygen mask over his face in the next bed. Had the old woman who occupied it previously died? It seemed unlikely that she had suddenly got better, though perhaps they had moved her to another ward. Marion sat down in the chair by John’s bedside.
“How are you feeling?”
He attempted to prop himself up, then winced.
“The stitches hurt like murder every time I move—but apart from that, not too bad. They let me out of bed today. I managed to shower myself.”
An image of John naked with those women entered her head, and she shuddered.
“I brought you some things.”
From her shopping bag Marion took out pajamas, toiletries, and a bag of strawberry shoelaces.
“Didn’t you bring anything for me to read?” He chucked the Daily Mail onto the bedside table. “I’m sick of this rubbish about pop singers and soap actresses, no real news.”
“I didn’t think you’d be up to reading.”
“Maybe the next time you come you could bring me a Times or a Telegraph. And a good novel. I don’t fancy anything too heavy, but perhaps if you see a decent thriller in the bookshop. A bottle of cordial wouldn’t go amiss, something sharp like lime. I’ve got this awful taste in my mouth from the drugs. Make sure it’s Robinsons; you know I don’t like the supermarket’s own stuff.”
John opened the bag of sweets she had brought him, releasing the sickly sweet smell of artificial fruit.
“Well, I didn’t know they still made these.”
As he put a red lace into his mouth and sucked, his eyes brightened with pleasure.
“Mm, that takes me back. A Proustian rush, one might say,” he declared, not to his sister, but perhaps for the benefit of some invisible intellectual who might appreciate the remark.
“Oh, for God’s sake, John, don’t talk such rubbish. They’re only bloody sweets,” Marion snapped. Her brother looked shocked.
“What’s up with you? Can’t be your time of the month. I doubt you’ve had that for a good ten years.”
And then he gave a nasty little snigger. Though Marion was faintly disgusted by his remark, she felt no sting. Looking at him, lying there in the hospital bed, she realized that his words had no more effect on her than those of a stranger. It was as if Marion’s love for her brother was a kind of sickness she had suffered from since birth. It had given her long bouts of pain and discomfort, mixed with short spells of relief that she mistook for joy. It seemed now that some powerful cure had cleansed her system of all feeling for him.
Before she left, he grasped her arm. It took all of her strength not to pull away as he whispered a message:
“Are they asking for me? I expect they’ll be worried, especially Sonya. She is such an anxious little thing.”
“Sonya told me to say that she hopes you get better soon,” Marion replied, surprised at the ease with which the lie flew from her lips.
Smiling with satisfaction, he let go of her arm.
Eventually, of course, she would explain what had happened, that she had done her best and really none of it was her fault. What happened simply couldn’t have been avoided.
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AS MARION WAS riding the bus home, two young girls, all bouncy and giggling, got on board and took the seats in front of her. One of them was telling the other about a boy called Patrick. Patrick had got fired for pouring a drink over a rude customer in the restaurant where they both worked. The other girl, who kept laughing a lot about the story, reminded Marion of Sonya.
Poor little Sonya. Of course she felt worst of all about her. Just the thought of those scared eyes and her pitiful crying tore at Marion. Unlike Violetta, she felt she was a decent, thoughtful girl, someone whom Marion would have liked if she had met her under different circumstances.
Perhaps we could have been friends, thought Marion. Perhaps she could have told me things about her past, about her tragic childhood, and I could have comforted her. We could have moved into Aunt Agnes’s flat, just the two of us, like mother and daughter. She would have taken a job in a shop, maybe a florist’s or one of those gift places on the pier. I would cook dinner for her in the evenings, and we would eat together while she told me stories about silly things that had happened in the shop and we would laugh together. Then we would watch TV until she fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. The next morning I would make her a cup of coffee and toast before she went off to work.
But deep down, Marion knew that this would never have happened. Like Lydia, Sonya wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with her. Young pretty girls didn’t want to waste their time with lonely, middle-aged spinsters. They preferred to go to parties with girls their own age, and text each other about boys and clothes. Becoming like her was what they feared the most. Yes, the truth was that Sonya wouldn’t have wanted to be friends with someone like me, she thought. Not one bit. She wouldn’t have given me the time of day. I would be invisible to her, just like I am to those two, she thought, watching the girls as they got off the bus together, still laughing.
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