Ali buried her face in Tabitha’s chest. She felt wrung-out. She was sobbing but no tears came.
How can you know that someone is dying, watch them every day as they die a little bit more yet still be completely unprepared when it comes?
No, she couldn’t believe it. They had come close before and Miles had always rallied. This wasn’t the day, she felt certain.
Tabitha released her from the hug and went to help another resident who had stumbled out of a nearby room. ‘I’ll be right back, Ali.’
Ali turned and looked through the crack in the door to where Mini was sitting, head down, silent tears falling into her empty hands.
Ali pulled back abruptly; she could feel the dark swell of panic spreading under her skin and filling her insides. Everything around her felt overwhelming and ominous. The beep of medical machinery, the clatter of the ward kitchen down the hall, it was all suddenly roaring at full volume.
She found herself drawn away from Miles’s room. A small part of her was screaming, telling her to go back, but she needed to get out. She couldn’t breathe. He won’t die. He won’t die. She pushed through the doors to the ward, through reception and out to her car on autopilot. She would go and get some things from home and then come back. She had time. They had time. Out here in the sunlight, it was easier to believe that he would be fine. Her phone started ringing – ‘Mini calling’. She ended the call immediately and squeezed her eyes shut. She just needed a couple of hours. She’d go home, get herself sorted and be back. It would all be fine – she quickly texted as much to Mini and got into the car. The phone started up again. This time it was Liv. Ali bit her lip and hesitated before hitting Accept.
‘Ali? Sam called me. He’s really worried. Are you OK?’
‘Kind of.’ Ali started the engine and began to back out of the car park.
‘Kind of? Is it Miles? I can be there in an hour – I just need to swing home, drop the thesis to Emer’s office and then I can be right there.’
‘I think it’s OK.’ Ali tried to sound calm. ‘We have some time – I spoke to Tabitha. I’m heading home myself for a bit and I’m coming back later. I just want to grab a couple of things.’
Liv didn’t speak for a few moments and Ali barely noticed. She was absorbed in pulling out onto the main road. She felt numb, like she was wading through a dream.
‘Are you sure about going home?’ Liv sounded baffled. ‘Maybe you should stay. I’ll bring up whatever you need.’
‘It’s cool,’ Ali murmured. ‘I’ll be back.’ She ended the call and joined the afternoon traffic heading across town, trying to ignore the mounting dread building in her chest.
Ali walked in to the house and felt like she’d been gone for years. Everything seemed normal yet strange somehow. The shower was going down the hall in Liv’s en suite; the brown carpet was still an assault on the senses; the orange lino glowed from the kitchen. Going by her Instagram, she lived in an airy New York-style loft – it was all marble effect and strategic detail shots. Not a scrap of this place made it to her page – too grim for the ’gram. She flashed on the OdourAway air freshener – my whole life is too grim for the ’gram.
She moved through to the living room where the sight of Sam hit her like a blast of heat from a fire on a winter’s day. Forgetting her cold behaviour that morning, she rushed towards him.
‘Sam, thank god you’re …’ She abandoned the last of this sentence, hushed by his strange expression. She froze an arm’s reach from him. She’d never seen this look before, and she struggled to compute what his narrowed eyes and hardened sneer meant until her eyes fell on what he was holding. The thesis.
Ali stopped dead. ‘I—’
‘Don’t,’ he snapped.
‘I can explain.’
Sam laughed a long, cruel, hollow laugh. ‘Can you? Can you really?’
Ali’s hands knotted together and she felt winded. Can I? Of course I can’t. It was as though the true magnitude of her lie was only now being revealed to her. Under the scrutiny of Sam’s glare, the idea that she’d done this was alien. What the actual fuck had she been thinking?
Sam was shaking his head and leafing through the pages. He stopped at a picture she’d posted of the two of them together at the Daddy Bears’ Picnic. ‘This is sick, Ali. You’re sick.’
‘I’m not,’ Ali whispered. ‘I’m just sad.’ As the words dropped, heavy like stones in a well, she knew they were true.
Sam put the thesis down gently on the coffee table. ‘I was in love with you. I thought I’d never met a girl like you before in my life.’ To her deep, deep shame she could see he was blinking away tears. ‘You let me believe we were going to have a family.’ He shook his head. ‘I never really had a family, Ali. After Mum died. Not a proper one.’
‘I’m sorry—’
‘Don’t fucking say that! This is not an “I’m sorry” moment, Ali. This is so beyond that. You need fucking help,’ he spat.
He started towards the door. As he passed her, she tried to reach out to him but he shrugged her off and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him, just as Liv rushed out of her room in a towel.
‘What’s happened? Was that Sam?’
‘Your thesis happened,’ Ali said simply. She couldn’t even find the will to be angry.
