Truly Madly Guilty

Clementine glanced over at Sam to see if he was remembering their own 'traumatic event' but his face was impassive. He wrote something down in his notepad.

Jan got Dale the muscly personal trainer to lie on the floor and then picked two attractive young girls (carrot and cauliflower) to have a go at putting Dale into the recovery position, which they did, and because they were three attractive young people it was kind of enjoyable to watch, and when they rolled Dale over you could see his underwear riding up under his shorts and Jan said, 'Nice to see you're wearing Calvin Klein today.'

It was all good fun. It was interesting and informative, and Sam asked intelligent questions and made the occasional well-timed joke. That's why it was so unexpected when it happened.

Clementine had to breathe hard when Jan demonstrated CPR on a bright blue plastic dummy of a head and torso. The rocking motion of Jan's hands, pushing so forcefully and rapidly, brought it all back: the hard pavers beneath her knees, Ruby's waxen cheeks and blue lips, the fairy lights winking in her peripheral vision. But she breathed through it, and when she looked at Sam he seemed fine.

Then Jan asked everyone to get into pairs and she gave each pair one blue dummy and two disposable resuscitation face shields. (Jan always had a spare disposable face shield on her key ring: that's how prepared she was to offer her services.) They had to find a free spot on the floor where they could lay the dummy out flat.

Jan wandered around the room checking on everyone's progress.

'Do you want to go first?' said Clementine to Sam. They were both on their knees on either side of the dummy.

'Sure,' said Sam, and he seemed fine as he methodically worked his way through the acronym Jan had just taught them: 'DRS ABCD', standing for Danger, Response, Send for help, Airway, Breathing, CPR and Defibrillator.

He cleared the airway, he looked, listened and felt for breathing, he commenced CPR, his locked hands pressing rhythmically on the dummy's chest, and as he did, his eyes met Clementine's and she saw a bead of sweat roll down the side of his face.

'Sam? Are you all right?' said Clementine.

He shook his head, a tiny 'no', but he didn't stop doing CPR compressions. His face was dead white. His eyes were bloodshot.

She didn't know what to do. 'Are you ... having chest pains?' At least they were in the right place. Jan seemed just as competent as any doctor or paramedic, and certainly more passionate.

He shook his head again.

He bent his head, pinched the dummy's nostrils and gave it two breaths. The dummy's chest rose to show that he'd done it correctly. He lifted his head and recommenced compressions and Clementine saw, with a kick-in-the-stomach sense of shock, that tears were sliding down his face and dripping onto the dummy. She'd never seen her husband cry, properly cry, not on their wedding day, not when the children were born, not when Ruby was not breathing, not when she woke up the next day. And she'd never questioned it because she'd never seen her father cry either, and her older brothers weren't criers, they were door slammers and wall hitters during their angry-young-man years. Her mother got teary at times but Clementine was the family's only true crier, she was always in floods of tears over something. Maybe all those staunch, stoic men around her had resulted in her internalising that ancient cliche: boys don't cry, because it was absolutely astonishing to Clementine that Sam could cry like that, that his body was even capable of doing that, of producing that many tears. As she watched his tears drip onto the dummy, she felt something break inside her and a great welling of sympathy rise within her chest, and the terrible thought occurred to her that perhaps she'd always unconsciously believed that because Sam didn't cry, he therefore didn't feel, or he felt less, not as profoundly and deeply as she did. Her focus had always been on how his actions affected her feelings, as if his role was to do things for her, to her, and all that mattered was her emotional response to him; as if a 'man' were a product or a service and she'd finally chosen the right brand to get the right response. Was it possible she'd never seen or truly loved him the way he deserved to be seen and loved? As a person? An ordinary, flawed, feeling person?

'Oh, Sam.'

He stood up so fast from his kneeling position that he nearly toppled backwards. He averted his face, rubbing his cheek hard with the heel of one hand, as if something had stung him. He turned and left the room.

chapter eighty

'Sorry,' said Clementine to the teacher. 'I'll just go and check on my husband. I think he's not feeling well.'

'Of course,' said Jan. She added, hopefully, 'Let me know if you need me.'

Clementine left the classroom and looked to the left. He was already nearly at the far end of the corridor. 'Sam!' she called, half-running past classrooms filled with adults bettering themselves.

He seemed to pick up his pace.

'Sam!' she called again. 'Wait!'

She followed him to a quiet, deserted passageway with a glass ceiling that connected two buildings. The walls were jammed with grey lockers. Sam suddenly stopped. He found a narrow column of space in between two blocks of lockers, the sort of hidey-hole the girls would gravitate towards, and he sat down, his back against the wall. He rested his forehead on his knees. His shoulders heaved silently. There was a round patch of sweat on his shirt. She went to touch his shoulder, but her hand hovered uncertainly for a few seconds before she changed her mind.

Instead she sat down opposite him, on the other side of the passageway, her back against the cool metal of a locker. There were squares of sunlight all the way along the corridor, like a train of sunshine. She felt strangely peaceful as she waited for Sam to stop crying, breathing in the nostalgic fragrance of high school.

At last Sam looked up, his face wet and puffy. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Well, that was dignified.'

'Are you all right?' she said.

'It was the compressions,' said Sam. He ran the back of his hand across his nose and sniffed.

'I know,' said Clementine.

'It felt like I was there.' He used his palms to rub his cheekbones in a circular motion.

'I know,' she said again.