It was a small ceremony; I’ve never had many friends. The truth is I just don’t like many people, not really. Everyone you meet is inevitably flawed. Once I know someone well enough to see all the cracks and blemishes, I don’t really want to spend time with them any more. I don’t avoid broken people because I think I’m better than them, I just don’t like looking at my own reflection. Besides, everyone I’ve ever got close to gets hurt in the end, that’s why I don’t bother to make any new friends any more. I’ve learned it’s best to just hold on to what you’ve got.
The track stops and I’m back. The music replaced by the rhythm of the ventilator accompanied by a less familiar beeping sound. A nurse has joined us. I can tell by the shh of her plastic apron as she sashays past the bed. The apron has got its wish, the room is silent. I paint my life by sounds, not numbers now, my overworked ears holding the brush. The beeping stops. When the nurse leaves, Paul and Claire resume their conversation and I can’t help wondering about the words I missed.
‘You have to stop blaming yourself, Paul. It was an accident.’
‘I should never have let her go.’
‘You’ve got to keep it together. She needs you and right now you’re a mess. You need to wash and rest and get your head sorted.’
‘They still think I was driving the car, that I’m some guy who beats his wife when he’s drunk and then forgets about it. I’m not that guy.’
‘I know.’
‘They hate me. They won’t give up, they’ll come back, I know it. I’m not leaving her again. You go if you want to.’
When I want them to speak the most, they stop. Someone else was driving the car, I’m sure of it. But not Paul. I’m relieved that Claire believes him too.
‘I’ll stay a while, keep you company if you like?’ she says.
‘Suit yourself.’
They settle themselves down into the silence. Paul plays me another memory; a song we fell in love with on our last holiday. There are more songs, more memories, but then the music stops, the silence resumes and it’s so much louder.
‘Do you want to talk about the baby?’ asks Claire.
What baby?
‘No,’ says Paul.
‘Did you know?’
Know what?
‘I said, I don’t want to talk about it.’
I want them to talk about it.
But they don’t. The ventilator huffs and puffs, echoing the frustration in the room.
‘Right, well, I’m going home. It’s late,’ says Claire. ‘I can give you a lift or I can pick up some clean clothes and a washbag for you, if you want to give me your house keys?’
Don’t give her the keys.
‘I’ll take a lift home, then come back in a couple of hours.’
‘You need to rest.’
‘I need to be with Amber.’
‘OK.’
Claire kisses me on the cheek and I can smell her peppermint shampoo. I wonder what my hair must look like having not been washed for so long. Paul kisses me too, then tugs the tiny speakers out of my ears. I don’t want him to go and I feel my mood darken as the door closes behind them, leaving me alone with my silence and machinery. I hear the door and think that Paul has changed his mind and come back to stay with me, but it isn’t Paul.
‘Hello, Amber,’ says a man’s voice. I hear a lock turn and I know it’s him, the man who was here before, the man who deleted my voicemail. ‘I just bumped into your husband. Rather dishevelled chap, not sure what you see in him. I hear from one of my colleagues that we nearly lost you? But you found your way back, so no harm done there then.’
Colleagues.
He works here?
‘Did you know that one of the drugs we use to keep people in a coma is the same drug they use in America for the death penalty? That’s why I’m so surprised to see you tonight, because that dose really should have killed you. I got the maths wrong, you see.’
This can’t be real, this isn’t happening. Wake up. WAKE UP!
‘Everyone makes mistakes. The important thing is to learn from them. I’m going to do a much better job of looking after you from now on.’
This is not a dream.
‘You’re welcome. I know you’d thank me if you could.’
I know this man.
He strokes my face.
I remember him now.
He leans down to the bed and kisses me, then slowly licks my cheek, as though tasting my skin. I shrivel inside of myself. He moves my breathing tube to the side and kisses my mouth, pushing his tongue inside my lips, his teeth gnashing against the tube and my own. His hand slides along my body, cupping my breast beneath the hospital gown. When he is finished he puts me back how he found me.
‘You’re right, we should take it slow,’ he says and leaves the room.
Then
Thursday, 22nd December 2016 – Evening
I’m not doing this because Paul isn’t coming home again tonight. And it isn’t because of the disappearing bag of black lace, there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. I’m doing it because I want to and that’s OK. Plenty of people are friends with their exes, it doesn’t have to mean something and I’m not doing anything wrong. I encourage the words to repeat themselves in my head until I might believe them. Every step forward feels like I’m going in the wrong direction, but I carry on regardless down my chosen path.
The Southbank is alive with people wearing each other’s smiles. The Thames dances in the moonlight and the buildings rise up majestically in the distance, snaking around the river’s shores. I love the city at night, you can’t see the dirt or the sorrow in the dark.
I spot him straight away at the bar, his outline still strangely familiar even after all these years. He has his back to me but I can see he has a glass of something in his hand already. It isn’t too late. I could just turn around and walk out the door, forget the whole thing that never happened.
It’s just a drink.
My heeled feet seem stuck to the floor until the nausea rushes up through my body, screaming at me to run. I see a neon sign for the toilets and push my way through the early evening drinkers, fearful I won’t make it in time. But the feeling passes as soon as I’m inside a cubicle, just nerves perhaps. I wash my hands. I don’t know why, they’re not dirty. I take a paper towel and roughly dry them, my attention suddenly focused on the wedding ring on my left hand. I take a deep breath, exhale and then stare at my reflection in the mirror, grateful that there is nobody else here to see this me. The eyes that stare back look tired and far away but overall things are satisfactory. My new little black dress looks good, flattering my neglected body, and the heels, although uncomfortable, give me confidence. I’ve tamed my brunette mop of hair and painted my face and nails. I don’t know why it matters so much, but I want him to see me looking good.