Breathless, distraught, I could only reply with a gaping mouth and shaking head before everything went blurry and then black.
2
I woke to find myself lying on a sofa, an older woman peering at me, one hand on my wrist. A mass of curly salt and pepper hair framed her head in a huge circle, and glasses dangled on a chain over her thick aran sweater.
‘Ah! There you are!’ She offered a brief smile. ‘I hear you’ve had a bit of a night of it.’
I swivelled one eye to see the man loitering behind her, his expression tight.
‘Do you know where you are?’ the woman asked.
‘Damson Farm?’ I managed to mumble.A living nightmare?
‘Excellent. I’m Doctor Ziva Solomon. Can you tell me your name?’
I closed my eyes, concentrating so I got the right one. ‘Eleanor Sharpley.’
‘Ah-ah, keep your eyes open. Look at me. Watch my finger. Very good. What day is it today, Eleanor?’
She asked me a few more questions along those lines –keep looking at me! –while simultaneously prodding about my person, before nodding briskly. ‘Bumps and bruises, but nothing serious. I’d put the fainting down to exhaustion, shock and excessively low blood sugar. What do you reckon?’
I reckoned I’d feel much better if I was allowed to close my eyes and lie here in peace for a few weeks.
‘I’m prescribing more sweet tea, some decent painkillers and a round of hot toast.’ She placed a cool, wet cloth on my head and it felt like I’d died and gone to heaven…
Died… Someone’s died. Charlie. Oh, Charlie.
My face crumpled, the pain in my forehead intensifying as the tears began to flow, my heart contracting with sorrow. Charlie had died and I hadn’t even known. I’d assumed… just thought that… no one had told me… mybest friendand she’d gone… I hadn’t even been at her funeral, said goodbye…
Pelted by one realisation after another, I curled over and gripped the cushion beside me, wrapping myself around it as if that could protect me.
I sobbed, probably wailed a few times, dribbled snot and tears and goodness knows what else on the cushion. But I couldn’t care less that I was in a strange house, with a strange man and his matching baby, pouring out unbridled emotion while crumpled on his sofa.
The doctor was there for a while, patting my shoulder and telling me how sorry she was. And then she was gone, and it was just the man, pulling up a low table and placing tea and toast on it, jiggling the baby on his hip and offering me a piece of kitchen roll.
A good while later, and by that point I could have failed the doctor’s ‘what day is it’ test, my tears dribbled to a stop. I took a few slow breaths, wiped my face with the remains of the kitchen roll clutched in my hand, pushed my hair off my face and creaked to a sitting position.
I looked at the tea. The man stood up from where he’d been sitting in an office chair. ‘I’ll make you a fresh one.’
I managed a weak smile as he nodded at the baby, curled up in one of those baby bouncers, head tilted to one side, chewing absentmindedly on her fist as she stared at me. ‘Can you keep an eye on this one?’
Not waiting for me to reply, he grabbed the toast plate and disappeared. I took the time to appraise the room – too small to be the main living room in a house this big, it looked like a sort of nursery-study hybrid, with a desk underneath the large sash window opposite me, covered in papers, mugs and other mess. The wall to one side contained bookshelves stuffed with books, folders and other random items. The wall across from that had a changing table pushed up against it, on top of which was a mountain of tiny clothes, a packet of nappies, several of which were spilling out, wipes, bottles, a dummy and other baby related paraphernalia. The floor was relatively empty, but a pile of clutter in the space between the desk and the changing table implied that this was because everything had been shoved out of the way to create a path to the sofa. The walls were bare, the paintwork shabby. The grimy window was framed by a wonky blind. Looking up, a bare bulb swung amongst trails of cobwebs. This room was worse than the kitchen. Full of stuff, but empty of all warmth or beauty.
The man returned, placing a mug in my hand and fresh toast on the table.
‘Thank you.’
He nodded.
‘I’m so sorry for ruining your day like this.’ Sorry, and embarrassed.
‘And I’m sorry you had to hear such bad news straight after crashing your car.’
‘If you could call that garage, I’ll get out of your way as soon as possible.’ I took a tentative bite of thick, buttery toast, resisting the urge to groan in relief.
‘I already called. The car’s… notfine…but shall we say, no worse than it was before rolling into the ditch. They’ll drop it off later.’
‘Thanks. You’ve been unnecessarily kind.’
