After You
Page 5
‘Um. I may not have actually been asleep.’
‘And there’s your blood-alcohol level. They said … you had drunk … an awful lot.’
‘I’d had a tough night at work. I had a drink or two and I just went up on the roof to get some air. And then I got distracted by a voice.’
‘You heard a voice.’
‘I was standing on the top – looking out. I do it sometimes. And there was this girl’s voice behind me and it gave me a shock and I lost my footing.’
‘A girl?’
‘I only really heard her voice.’
Dad leans forward. ‘You’re sure it was an actual girl? Not an imaginary –’
‘It’s my hip that’s mashed up, Dad, not my brain.’
‘They did say it was a girl who called the ambulance.’ Mum touches Dad’s arm.
‘So you’re saying it really was an accident,’ he says.
I stop eating. They look away from each other guiltily.
‘What? You … you think I jumped off?’
‘We’re not saying anything.’ Dad scratches his head. ‘It’s just – well – things had all gone so wrong since … and we hadn’t seen you for so long … and we were a bit surprised that you’d be up walking on the roof of a building in the wee small hours. You used to be afraid of heights.’
‘I used to be engaged to a man who thought it was normal to calculate how many calories he’d burned while he slept. Jesus. This is why you’ve been so nice to me? You think I tried to kill myself?’
‘It’s just he was asking us all sorts …’
‘Who was asking what?’
‘The psychiatrist bloke. They just want to make sure you’re okay, love. We know things have been all – well, you know – since –’
‘Psychiatrist?’
‘They’re putting you on the waiting list to see someone. To talk, you know. And we’ve had a long chat with the doctors and you’re coming home with us. Just while you recover. You can’t stay by yourself in that flat of yours. It’s –’
‘You’ve been in my flat?’
‘Well, we had to fetch your things.’
There is a long silence. I think of them standing in my doorway, my mother’s hands tight on her bag as she surveyed the unwashed bed-linen, the empty wine bottles lined up in a row on the mantelpiece, the solitary half-bar of Fruit and Nut in the fridge. I picture them shaking their heads, looking at each other. Are you sure we’ve got the right place, Bernard?
‘Right now you need to be with your family. Just till you’re back on your feet.’
I want to say I’ll be fine in my flat, no matter what they think of it. I want to do my job and come home and not think until my next shift. I want to say I can’t come back to Stortfold and be that girl again, the one who. I don’t want to have to feel the weight of my mother’s carefully disguised disapproval, of my father’s cheerful determination that it’s all okay, everything is just fine, as if saying it enough times will actually make it okay. I don’t want to pass Will’s house every day, to think about what I was part of, the thing that will always be there.
But I don’t say any of it. Because suddenly I’m tired and everything hurts and I just can’t fight any more.
Dad brings me home two weeks later in his work van. There is only room for two in the front, so Mum has stayed behind to prepare the house, and as the motorway speeds beneath us, I find my stomach tightening nervously.
The cheerful streets of my hometown feel foreign to me now. I look at them with a distant, analytical eye, noting how small everything looks, how tired, how twee. I realize this is how Will must have seen it when he first came home after his accident, and push the thought away. As we drive down our street, I find myself sinking slightly in my seat. I don’t want to make polite conversation with neighbours, to explain myself. I don’t want to be judged for what I did.
‘You okay?’ Dad turns, as if he guesses something of what’s going through my head.
‘Fine.’
‘Good girl.’ He puts a hand briefly on my shoulder.
Mum is already at the door as we pull up. I suspect she has been standing by the window for the past half-hour. Dad puts one of my bags on the step, then comes back to help me out, hoisting the other over his shoulder.
I place my cane carefully on the paving stones, and feel the twitching of curtains behind me as I make my way slowly up the path. Look who it is, I can hear them whispering. What do you think she’s done now?
Dad steers me forward, watching my feet carefully, as if they might suddenly shoot out and go somewhere they shouldn’t. ‘Okay there?’ he keeps saying. ‘Not too fast now.’
I can see Granddad hovering behind Mum in the hall, wearing his checked shirt and his good blue jumper. Nothing has changed. The wallpaper is the same. The hall carpet is the same, the lines in the worn pile visible from where Mum must have vacuumed that morning. I can see my old blue anorak hanging on the hook. Eighteen months. I feel as if I have been away for a decade.
‘Don’t rush her,’ Mum says, her hands pressed together. ‘You’re going too fast, Bernard.’
‘She’s hardly flipping Mo Farah. If she goes any slower we’ll be moonwalking.’
‘Watch those steps. Should you stand behind her, Bernard, coming up the steps? You know, in case she falls backwards?’
‘I know where the steps are,’ I say, through gritted teeth. ‘I only lived here for twenty-six years.’
‘Watch she doesn’t catch herself on that lip there, Bernard. You don’t want her to smash the other hip.’
Oh, God, I think. Is this what it was like for you, Will? Every single day?
And then my sister is in the doorway, pushing past Mum. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Mum. Come on, Hopalong. You’re turning us into a freaking sideshow.’
Treena wedges her shoulder under my armpit and turns briefly to glare out at the neighbours, her eyebrows raised as if to say, Really? I can almost hear the swishing of curtains as they close.
‘Bunch of bloody rubberneckers. Anyway, hurry up. I promised Thomas he could see your scars before I take him to youth club. God, how much weight have you lost? Your boobs must look like two tangerines in a pair of socks.’
It’s hard to laugh and walk at the same time. Thomas runs to hug me so that I have to stop and put a hand against the wall to keep my balance as we collide. ‘Did they really cut you open and put you back together?’ he says. His head comes up to my chest. He’s missing four front teeth. ‘Grandpa says they probably put you back together all the wrong way. And God only knows how we’ll tell the difference.’
‘Bernard!’
‘I was joking.’
‘Louisa.’ Granddad’s voice is thick and hesitant. He reaches forward unsteadily and hugs me and I hug him back. He pulls away, his old hands gripping my arms surprisingly tightly, and frowns at me, a mock anger.
‘I know, Daddy. I know. But she’s home now,’ says Mum.
‘You’re back in your old room,’ says Dad. ‘I’m afraid we redecorated with Transformers wallpaper for Thom. You don’t mind the odd Autobot and Predacon, right?’
‘And there’s your blood-alcohol level. They said … you had drunk … an awful lot.’
‘I’d had a tough night at work. I had a drink or two and I just went up on the roof to get some air. And then I got distracted by a voice.’
‘You heard a voice.’
‘I was standing on the top – looking out. I do it sometimes. And there was this girl’s voice behind me and it gave me a shock and I lost my footing.’
‘A girl?’
‘I only really heard her voice.’
Dad leans forward. ‘You’re sure it was an actual girl? Not an imaginary –’
‘It’s my hip that’s mashed up, Dad, not my brain.’
‘They did say it was a girl who called the ambulance.’ Mum touches Dad’s arm.
‘So you’re saying it really was an accident,’ he says.
I stop eating. They look away from each other guiltily.
‘What? You … you think I jumped off?’
‘We’re not saying anything.’ Dad scratches his head. ‘It’s just – well – things had all gone so wrong since … and we hadn’t seen you for so long … and we were a bit surprised that you’d be up walking on the roof of a building in the wee small hours. You used to be afraid of heights.’
‘I used to be engaged to a man who thought it was normal to calculate how many calories he’d burned while he slept. Jesus. This is why you’ve been so nice to me? You think I tried to kill myself?’
‘It’s just he was asking us all sorts …’
‘Who was asking what?’
‘The psychiatrist bloke. They just want to make sure you’re okay, love. We know things have been all – well, you know – since –’
‘Psychiatrist?’
‘They’re putting you on the waiting list to see someone. To talk, you know. And we’ve had a long chat with the doctors and you’re coming home with us. Just while you recover. You can’t stay by yourself in that flat of yours. It’s –’
‘You’ve been in my flat?’
‘Well, we had to fetch your things.’
There is a long silence. I think of them standing in my doorway, my mother’s hands tight on her bag as she surveyed the unwashed bed-linen, the empty wine bottles lined up in a row on the mantelpiece, the solitary half-bar of Fruit and Nut in the fridge. I picture them shaking their heads, looking at each other. Are you sure we’ve got the right place, Bernard?
‘Right now you need to be with your family. Just till you’re back on your feet.’
I want to say I’ll be fine in my flat, no matter what they think of it. I want to do my job and come home and not think until my next shift. I want to say I can’t come back to Stortfold and be that girl again, the one who. I don’t want to have to feel the weight of my mother’s carefully disguised disapproval, of my father’s cheerful determination that it’s all okay, everything is just fine, as if saying it enough times will actually make it okay. I don’t want to pass Will’s house every day, to think about what I was part of, the thing that will always be there.
But I don’t say any of it. Because suddenly I’m tired and everything hurts and I just can’t fight any more.
Dad brings me home two weeks later in his work van. There is only room for two in the front, so Mum has stayed behind to prepare the house, and as the motorway speeds beneath us, I find my stomach tightening nervously.
The cheerful streets of my hometown feel foreign to me now. I look at them with a distant, analytical eye, noting how small everything looks, how tired, how twee. I realize this is how Will must have seen it when he first came home after his accident, and push the thought away. As we drive down our street, I find myself sinking slightly in my seat. I don’t want to make polite conversation with neighbours, to explain myself. I don’t want to be judged for what I did.
‘You okay?’ Dad turns, as if he guesses something of what’s going through my head.
‘Fine.’
‘Good girl.’ He puts a hand briefly on my shoulder.
Mum is already at the door as we pull up. I suspect she has been standing by the window for the past half-hour. Dad puts one of my bags on the step, then comes back to help me out, hoisting the other over his shoulder.
I place my cane carefully on the paving stones, and feel the twitching of curtains behind me as I make my way slowly up the path. Look who it is, I can hear them whispering. What do you think she’s done now?
Dad steers me forward, watching my feet carefully, as if they might suddenly shoot out and go somewhere they shouldn’t. ‘Okay there?’ he keeps saying. ‘Not too fast now.’
I can see Granddad hovering behind Mum in the hall, wearing his checked shirt and his good blue jumper. Nothing has changed. The wallpaper is the same. The hall carpet is the same, the lines in the worn pile visible from where Mum must have vacuumed that morning. I can see my old blue anorak hanging on the hook. Eighteen months. I feel as if I have been away for a decade.
‘Don’t rush her,’ Mum says, her hands pressed together. ‘You’re going too fast, Bernard.’
‘She’s hardly flipping Mo Farah. If she goes any slower we’ll be moonwalking.’
‘Watch those steps. Should you stand behind her, Bernard, coming up the steps? You know, in case she falls backwards?’
‘I know where the steps are,’ I say, through gritted teeth. ‘I only lived here for twenty-six years.’
‘Watch she doesn’t catch herself on that lip there, Bernard. You don’t want her to smash the other hip.’
Oh, God, I think. Is this what it was like for you, Will? Every single day?
And then my sister is in the doorway, pushing past Mum. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Mum. Come on, Hopalong. You’re turning us into a freaking sideshow.’
Treena wedges her shoulder under my armpit and turns briefly to glare out at the neighbours, her eyebrows raised as if to say, Really? I can almost hear the swishing of curtains as they close.
‘Bunch of bloody rubberneckers. Anyway, hurry up. I promised Thomas he could see your scars before I take him to youth club. God, how much weight have you lost? Your boobs must look like two tangerines in a pair of socks.’
It’s hard to laugh and walk at the same time. Thomas runs to hug me so that I have to stop and put a hand against the wall to keep my balance as we collide. ‘Did they really cut you open and put you back together?’ he says. His head comes up to my chest. He’s missing four front teeth. ‘Grandpa says they probably put you back together all the wrong way. And God only knows how we’ll tell the difference.’
‘Bernard!’
‘I was joking.’
‘Louisa.’ Granddad’s voice is thick and hesitant. He reaches forward unsteadily and hugs me and I hug him back. He pulls away, his old hands gripping my arms surprisingly tightly, and frowns at me, a mock anger.
‘I know, Daddy. I know. But she’s home now,’ says Mum.
‘You’re back in your old room,’ says Dad. ‘I’m afraid we redecorated with Transformers wallpaper for Thom. You don’t mind the odd Autobot and Predacon, right?’
