He nodded. “Sorry.”
She wished she could once again tell him it was all going to be fine.
The nurse came back in and started to check Daniel’s IV fluids and Laura watched silently. They’d been told the nurse stayed with him all the time, and she was grateful. After a moment, she turned to Daniel and started telling him about her day. Awkwardly, at first, for she was unused to his bleeps, his silent responses. When she faltered, Howard came in. After a while, they got up a good rhythm, each supporting the other. After a couple of hours of keeping up a cheerful run of nonsense, the exhaustion started to set in. It was then that another nurse subtly drew back the curtains and spoke the words Laura had been waiting to hear:
“Someone’s outside who would like to see Daniel. Cherry?”
Laura stiffened. “No,” she blurted out. “I don’t want her here.”
Howard glanced at her, but she refused to budge. “I’ll go and see her,” he said.
“Tell her we want his things.”
Howard nodded and left the cubicle. Laura held her son’s hand tighter and silently vowed to stay at his side all night and all the next day if it kept Cherry away from him. Something that she knew was unfeasible, but what she could do, as next of kin, was stop Cherry from visiting. She burned with a deep emotional rage when she thought about her, about her stupid little plan ofone-upmanship, and how in order to score a point, she’d ended up putting Daniel in the hospital. She wanted to know what had happened, but she couldn’t stand to see her. Whenever she pictured Cherry’s face, Laura felt such a blind anger, she lost all rationality. Laura knew that if she was in the same room, she’d not trust herself. Howard would find out.
23
TIME HAD A FUNNY WAY OF MAGNIFYING ANXIETY. CHERRY SAT IN THEcoffee shop, nursing her third cup, and would occasionally look up at the clock and get a flutter of apprehension when a largish chunk, more than a five-minute block, had passed. She’d escaped down here, at about the time she thought Laura and Howard would be arriving, to think about what she was going to say to them before she went back up. The day had been long and nightmarish. She’d come out of the changing rooms to find the police waiting outside, apparently a routine procedure when an ambulance had been called to an accident. Gareth had already spoken to them and she felt a chill of fear. It was an accident, hitting Daniel on the head with her paddle. But it wasn’t that which had propelled him out of the boat, it was the waves; the river was clearly too swollen, too dangerous to ride, and she felt a stab of anger toward the cocky Gareth with his patronizing jokes.
She’d driven Daniel’s car to the hospital, followed by the police. When they arrived, the nursing staff told her that he’d had to go straight into surgery, but they wouldn’t say why or give her any details, something that worried her even more. So she had no further reason to delay talking to the police. She gave her version of the events, tearful as she relived the accident. Then it was over. They asked if they could call anyone for her, get a friend to come and sit with her, but she’d refused. After she’d assured them she was okay, they left, saying they would be in touch again.
Cherry was now free to go over her thoughts. She allowed the ripple of guilt to come to the surface, to examine it, and see if it had any credibility. She knew she should have paddled when Gareth had shouted his instruction at her, but for a split second she couldn’t be bothered. This had possibly had a bearing on where the raft had gone to next, to a section where the rapids were particularly violent; that might have been what caused her to throw her paddle up in the air and hit Daniel. Perhaps this had unbalanced him so he’d not been able to stay in the raft when the wave hit and threw him out of the boat. Perhaps, in striking him, she’d knocked his helmet so that his head was unprotected at a crucial point when it hit the rock. Perhaps. But it was all conjecture, she reasoned with herself. No one knew if her apathy had started the chain of events, if one thing hadactuallycaused the next. None of it could be proven. And she’d said none of it to the police.
They had asked her about the blow to his forehead, and genuinely tearful and remorseful, she’d told them her paddle had flipped upward, out of her control. They themselves said that his helmet had been dislodged, but it could have been the fall onto the rock that had done it, not her. Secretly, she was relieved the blame could not be laid at her feet. She thought about poor Daniel lying unconscious on the rock and wished with all her heart that she’d done as she was told, paddled when asked. Then perhaps they’d be at home now, back in his flat in London, making dinner together.
She’d gone to check at the desk, to see if there was any news on his progress. She was relieved to hear the operation had gone well and he was now recovering. A doctor would come and speak to her, and then she would be able to go and see him. In the meantime, Laura and Howard had been called and were on their way. Cherry timed her afternoon; she’d have forty-five minutes with Daniel and then she’d come back to the coffee shop, give his parents some time alone with him.
When she first saw him, she’d been rocked at how he looked, how suddenly vulnerable and dependent. It upset her more than she expected and it reinforced how much she’d fallen for him.
Cherry finished her coffee. She’d been sitting so long she’d gotten to “know” some of the other people waiting. There was a young couple, the woman heavily pregnant and looking exhausted. He had a permanent excitement about him, and would every now and then knead her lower back with his thumbs. Then there was the late-middle-aged woman, dressed well in a cream coat and amber silk scarf. She was alone, but somehow this didn’t suit her; she looked like the sort of woman to always be with a husband. Cherry had spotted a ring and wondered if she was here to see him. Both had been here as long as she had and they felt like comrades, each with her own vigil, but united by an essential need to be in the hospital. They’d caught each other’s eyes, the pregnant woman when her devoted husband had gone to get a refill. She’d sighed and sat back, her hands around her enormous belly; the middle-aged woman with her hands around her warm cup; both had smiled. Cherry stood nervously. It was time to go back to the unit.
The nurse looked up as she approached and said that Daniel’s parents were with him and she’d let them know Cherry was here. When she disappeared, Cherry tried to imagine the conversation that was going on. She was not surprised, but, nonetheless, still perturbed to see that Howard came back alone.
“Hello, Cherry.”
“Can I see him?”
He put a hand on her shoulder and led her away. “Not right now. Why don’t we go and get a coffee.”
They went back to the place she’d vacated all of five minutes ago, but somehow, in the time she’d been away, her allies had left. This threw Cherry—she felt deserted and it made her even more nervous. She sipped at her fourth cup of the day, and feeling like a child awaiting a reprimand from the head teacher, she waited for Howard to speak.
“How are you doing?”
It was a good sign, his asking after her. Made her think they were on the same side. “Fine. Okay. I’m still a bit shaken up, but it’s Daniel I’m worried about.”
“We all are,” he said brusquely.
She nodded, her earlier optimism evaporating.
“What happened out there this morning?”
Cherry told Howard the same story she’d told the police. Once again, she cried when she mentioned the paddle that hit his head. She hated saying this bit, as she felt it incriminated her. She made it clear, conversationally, that it wasn’t the blow that caused the injury. At the end, she was expecting questions, but Howard just stirred his coffee, and it unnerved her. Did he believe her? She could hardly ask him, for doing so would suggest that she might have been lying.
He looked at her. “Do you have his bag, his things?”
Cherry had forgotten about them; she’d hurriedly grabbed them from the locker at the rafting center and stashed them safely in the holdall they’d shared. She had felt a sense of responsibility and care for looking after them. She’d assumed she would be the one to do so, and it felt odd to give them up. She hesitated, but he continued to look at her, so she retrieved the holdall, which she’d been carrying around all day, from under the table.
“There’s both of our things in here. . . .”
