Truly Madly Guilty (31 page)

chapter sixty

The day of the barbeque

‘Is Ruby dead?’ asked Holly, playing with the handle of her little blue sequinned handbag full of rocks, which she held with both hands on her lap.

‘No,’ said Erika. ‘She’s not dead. She went in the helicopter with your daddy to the hospital. She’ll be there by now and the doctors will make her better.’

They were sitting under a duvet on the couch while Oliver made them hot chocolate.
Madagascar
was on TV. Erika had taken out her contact lenses so all she could see were flashes of colour on the television.

She had a feeling of impending sleep, like a huge black wave about to crash over her. Except she couldn’t fall asleep. Not while Holly was here. And it was only … what? Around six or seven pm. It felt much later. It felt like the middle of the night.

‘She
might
die.’ Holly stared at the television.

‘I don’t think she will, but she’s very sick. It’s very serious. Yes. She might.’

‘
Erika
,’ said Oliver as he walked into the room carrying the tray with the hot chocolates.

‘What?’ Weren’t you meant to be as truthful as possible with children? No one knew how long Ruby had been submerged before they’d pulled her out. There were no guarantees. She could have significant brain damage. Hypothermia. She might not make it through the night. Why did Erika feel as if she should know exactly how long Ruby had been under the water for? Why did she feel strangely responsible, as if she’d failed in some way? She’d got to Ruby first. She’d been the first one to act. She wasn’t Ruby’s parent. But there was something. Something she’d done or not done.

‘There you go,’ said Oliver. He was still in his wet clothes. He’d get sick. He handed Holly the mug of hot chocolate. ‘I didn’t make it too hot but just take a little sip in case, okay?’

‘Thank you,’ said Holly loudly.

‘Good manners, Holly,’ said Oliver.

‘Get changed,’ said Erika as she took the hot chocolate from him. ‘You’ll catch a cold.’

‘Are you okay?’ asked Oliver.

‘Why? Do I not look okay?’ She took a sip of her hot chocolate, and somehow missed her mouth. She wiped her finger across her chin.

‘No,’ said Oliver. ‘You don’t.’

‘Manners,’ said Holly to Erika.

‘What are you talking about?’ snapped Erika. The child wasn’t making sense. It occurred to her that she’d just snapped at Holly in exactly the same way Sylvia used to do when Erika was a child. The moment Erika started telling her mother something she would snap, ‘What are you talking about?’ And Erika would think, Let me finish and then you’ll
know
what I’m talking about!

‘You forgot to say thank you,’ said Holly. She looked frightened. ‘To Oliver.’

‘Oh,’ said Erika. ‘Of course. You’re right. I’m sorry, Holly, I didn’t mean to snap at you.’

Erika watched two giant teardrops quiver on the bottom eyelashes of Holly’s big blue eyes. It was more than just her snapping. Holly wasn’t that sensitive.

‘Holly,’ she said. ‘Holly. Sweetie. It’s fine, everything is fine, give me a cuddle, there, although I actually think … I might … I’m sorry.’ She couldn’t hold on. Holly needed her comfort right now but she couldn’t give it to her. She handed back the cup to Oliver and he reached out with surprise to take it just in time before it slipped from her hands. ‘I’m just so sleepy.’

She let that big black pool of nothingness take her, drag her under. She could hear a phone ringing, but it was too late, she couldn’t get back now, it was much too big and powerful to resist.

*

Oliver looked at his comatose wife with a dull, sick sense of recognition. She’d passed out, drunk. It meant she’d effectively left. Gone. Not back until the morning. He’d never ever looked at his wife with dislike before, but as he studied her drooping head and gaping mouth he felt his face distort with resentment. They didn’t even know yet if Ruby was going to be okay. How could she sleep? But of course, drunks could always sleep.

She’s not
a
drunk, he reminded himself. She’s just drunk. For the first time since you’ve known her.

‘She must be exhausted,’ said Holly, looking at Erika with fascination.

Oliver smiled at Holly’s use of the word ‘exhausted’. ‘I think you’re right,’ he said. ‘She’s exhausted. How’s your drink? Not too hot?’

‘No, it’s not too hot,’ said Holly. She took a very careful, tentative sip. There was a little moustache of milk on her upper lip.

‘Oliver,’ said Holly quietly. She held up her little blue handbag and her eyes filled with more tears.

‘Did you want me to put that somewhere safe?’ Oliver held out his hand.

‘Oliver,’ she said again, but much more quietly this time.

‘What is it, darling?’ Oliver crouched down in front of her. His clothes were still wet and filthy from the fountain.

Holly leaned forward and began to whisper urgently in his ear.

chapter sixty-one

The day of the barbeque

The four grandparents arrived at the hospital at the same time.

Clementine had come out of the ICU to make a quick phone call to Erika, to update her on Ruby’s progress and to make sure that Holly could stay with them for a little longer until they sorted out where she would spend the night.

To her surprise Oliver had answered Erika’s phone. Holly was fine, he said. She was on the couch under a blanket with Erika watching a DVD. He said that Erika was asleep, and he sounded embarrassed about that, or bewildered, but apart from that, he spoke exactly as Oliver always did, with polite, throat-clearing reticence, as if it had been an ordinary night, as if he and Erika hadn’t just saved Ruby’s life.

From where Clementine stood on the first-floor landing she could see the ground floor of the hospital and the sliding doors at the entrance. She recognised Sam’s parents first as they hurried in, their agitation clear in the way they half-ran, half-walked. They would have been caught in the same traffic jam as she and Tiffany had, and they would have felt that same demented frustration. Sam’s dad had grown up in the country and abhorred traffic lights.

She watched as the four of them grabbed at each other, like the survivors of a natural disaster running into each other at a refugee camp. Her father, dressed in his ‘around the house’ clothes, jeans and a misshapen jumper that would never normally be seen in public, hugged Sam’s tiny mother, and she put her arms up and clung to his back in a way that was almost frightening to see because it was so out of character. Clementine saw Sam’s dad put his hand on Clementine’s mother’s arm, and they both turned around, their faces lifted, studying the hospital signs for clues about where to go.

Clementine’s mother caught sight of Clementine first, and she pointed at the same time as Clementine raised her hand, and then they all hurried up the long, wide walkway towards her.

Clementine walked down to meet them halfway. Her mother was first, followed by Sam’s parents, with her dad at the back; he’d had a knee operation after a skiing accident a few months back. The expressions on their faces were painful to see. They each looked terrified, and sick, and as if they were labouring to breathe, as if the walkway was a mountain Clementine had forced them to climb. These were four fit, trim grandparents enjoying their retirement, but now they appeared much older. For the first time they looked elderly.

Ruby and Holly were the only grandchildren on both sides of the family. They were adored and spoiled, and Sam and Clementine lapped up the adoration with such casual
vanity
, for hadn’t they created these exquisite little angels? Why, yes they had, so they deserved their pick of free babysitters and they deserved to sit back and be fed home-made treats when they went to visit, for look what they offered in return: these glorious grandchildren!

‘She’s okay,’ she said. By okay, she meant ‘alive’; she wanted them to know that Ruby was still alive. But she spoke too soon, before they could properly hear, and she could see all four of them straining to understand, in a panic to get to her faster, and Sam’s mother grabbed for the banister, as if it were bad news.

‘Ruby is okay!’ she called again, louder, and then they were all around her, asking questions, creating a roadblock for people trying to get up the walkway.

‘They have her sedated,’ said Clementine. ‘And she’s still … intubated.’

She tripped on the terrifying word and thought of Ruby’s white little face and the huge tube extending from her mouth. It looked like it was choking her, not helping her breathe.

‘They’ve done a CT scan and there is no sign of swelling or brain injury, everything looks fine,’ said Clementine.
Swelling or brain injury
. She tried to make the medical words feel meaningless, like a foreign language, just sounds coming out of her mouth, because she couldn’t risk letting herself feel their full significance. ‘They’ve done a chest X-ray and there is some fluid on the lungs, but that’s to be expected, they’re not too concerned, they’ve started her on a course of antibiotics. Her ribs are okay. No fractures.’

‘Why wouldn’t her ribs be okay?’ asked her father.

Clementine cursed herself. She was trying to tell them anything positive she could but there was no need to tell them all the things that could have gone wrong but didn’t.

‘Sometimes the force of the compressions, the CPR – but it’s fine, it didn’t.’ She heard Oliver counting out loud and for a moment she couldn’t speak. ‘In the morning they’ll reduce the medication, wake her up, and get her breathing on her own.’

‘Can we see her?’ said Clementine’s mother.

‘I don’t know,’ said Clementine. ‘I’ll ask.’ She shouldn’t have let them come to the hospital. It would have been more sensible to tell them to wait at home, better for their elderly hearts. She hadn’t thought. She’d just expected them to come, as though she were still a child and she needed the grown-ups.

Once, she and Sam had been out at dinner with Erika and Oliver and they’d got into a conversation about whether they felt like grown-ups. She and Sam had said they didn’t. Not really. Erika and Oliver had looked perplexed and kind of appalled.

‘Of course I feel like a grown-up,’ said Erika. ‘I’m free. I’m in charge.’

Oliver had said, ‘I couldn’t
wait
to be a grown-up.’

‘So then,’ said Clementine’s mother, breathing heavily. Was she having a heart attack? Suddenly she lunged at Clementine. ‘Why weren’t you watching her?’ She was so close Clementine could smell the spicy scent on her breath of whatever she’d been eating for dinner. ‘You shouldn’t have taken your eyes off her. Not for a single second. Not around water, for God’s sake.’

‘Pam,’ said Clementine’s father. He went to take his wife’s arm, and she shook it off. A young pregnant woman squeezed her way past them and stared curiously.

‘You’re smarter than that. You know better!’ continued Pam, her eyes fixed on Clementine with such intensity it was as though Clementine were a stranger to her, as though she were trying to work out who this person was who had harmed her granddaughter. ‘Were you drunk? How
could
you? How could you be so stupid?’ Her face crumpled into a million lines before she covered it with both hands.

Clementine hadn’t even told her yet that it was Erika who had saved Ruby. Erika. The better daughter. The grateful daughter. The daughter who would never have made a mistake like this.

Clementine’s father put his arm around his wife. ‘It’s okay,’ he mouthed over her head. He led her up the walkway. ‘Let’s go and sit down.’

‘It’s the shock,’ said Sam’s mother, Joy. She was a woman who never left the house without ‘her face’, but tonight it was bare of make-up. Clementine had never seen her without lipstick before, maybe no one had. It looked like her lips were missing. She must have been having her nightly read in the bath when she got the call. Clementine imagined her panic. The throwing on of clothes before she was even properly dry.

‘Come on, darling,’ said Joy. ‘Chin up.’

Clementine could barely stand for shame.

chapter sixty-two

The morning after the barbeque

‘Clementine.’

‘What?’

She must have dozed off. She didn’t think she’d closed her eyes all night, but Sam was leaning over her, shaking her shoulder where she sat in the green leather chair next to Ruby’s bed.

There were purple shadows under Sam’s red-rimmed eyes, black stubble along his jaw and a thin line of white spittle around his lips. He had refused to sit at all. ‘Darl, you’re not helping your daughter by standing for the whole night,’ the nurse had told him, but Sam seemed psychopathically determined to stand, as if Ruby’s life depended on it, as if he were guarding her from harm, and eventually the nurse gave up, although every now and then she shot Sam a look as if she were just itching to stick a needle in his arm and knock him out.

The nurse’s name was Kylie. She was a New Zealander and she spoke slowly and simply to them, saying everything twice, as if English were their second language. Probably all parents were dull-witted with shock. Kylie explained that in intensive care every patient got their own nurse: ‘I’ve only got one job tonight and that’s Ruby.’ She told them there was a room available on the same floor where they could sleep, and she gave them little toiletry bags with toothbrushes and combs, of the style you might receive on an overnight premium economy flight. She advised them to try to get some sleep because Ruby was sedated and she wasn’t going to know if they were there or not, but they’d already let Ruby down once, they weren’t leaving her again.

Sam spent the night watching Ruby and the screens monitoring Ruby’s heart rhythm, her temperature, her breathing rate and her oxygen levels, as if he knew what they meant, and indeed he had asked Kylie to explain, so maybe he really did understand. Clementine hadn’t listened to the explanations. She spent the night with her eyes travelling back and forth between Ruby and Kylie’s face. She felt that Kylie’s face would tell her if there was anything to be concerned about, although she was wrong, because during the night Ruby’s oxygen levels dropped, and Kylie’s face remained exactly the same, while the doctor on duty was called and Sam moved quietly to the corner of the room with a clenched fist pressed hard against his cheek, as if he were poised to knock himself out. Ruby’s oxygen levels went back up to an acceptable level again, but the adrenaline buzzed through Clementine for the next few hours. It was a reminder that they could not, should not relax, even for a moment.

‘The doctor is here,’ said Sam now as Clementine rubbed her eyes and swallowed, her mouth dry and sour. ‘They’re going to extubate, wake her up.’

‘Good morning!’ said a pale-haired, pale-skinned doctor. ‘Let’s see if we can wake up this little sleeping beauty, shall we?’

It was fast. The tubes came out. The mask was removed.

After twenty minutes, Ruby frowned heavily. Her eyelids twitched.

‘Ruby?’ said Sam, as if he were begging for his life.

Ruby’s eyes finally fluttered opened. She stared at the cannula in her arm with an expression of pure disgust. Thankfully, her thumb-sucking hand was free, and she jammed her thumb in her mouth. She looked up, found her parents, and looked angrier still.

‘Whisk,’ she demanded hoarsely.

The relief Clementine experienced as she rushed to deliver Whisk was exquisite, glorious; like the cessation of an agonising pain, like a gasp of air when you’d been forced to hold your breath.

She looked for Sam with the vague expectation that something would now happen between them, something important and climactic. They would grab hands, for example, their fingers would lock together in mutual joy and they would smile down at Ruby while tears rained down their faces.

But it didn’t happen. They looked at each other and yes, they
did
smile, and yes, their eyes
were
full of tears, but something wasn’t quite right. She didn’t know who looked away first, she didn’t know if it was her coldness or his coldness, if she was blaming him or he was blaming her, but then Ruby began to cry, distressed by her sore throat from the tube, and the doctor started talking and it was all too late. It was another moment they’d never get back to do right.