‘No painkillers?’
She shook her head. She had no right to numb her pain.
After the crush Alice had been considered ‘one of the lucky ones’. Being so close to where the barriers broke she’d managed to release herself from the crowd fairly quickly. But she was disorientated and scared and she kept trying to get back into the throng to find Jill, to give her some water, until someone physically pulled her and dragged her to the first aid tent to stop the bleeding in her leg. She had no idea how long she’d been looking for Jill by that time, but she knew it would never, never feel like enough time. Jill was one of the six unlucky ones.
It hurt Alice to think about the concert itself in too much detail, or to analyse the sequence of events, because one thing was very clear to her: Jill was there because of her. She’d left Jill on her own.Shewas to blame for Jill’s death.
‘I don’t like to see you hurting, my love,’ Ed said, struggling for the words to show his daughter what he really meant.
Then don’t look at me, she thought, unkindly, but managed to bite her tongue before she said it out loud. He was only trying to help.
Alice shuffled back down into the bed with care, wincing in pain, and pulled the covers up. She closed her eyes though she knew she wouldn’t go back to sleep. ‘I think I’m going to try and nap again,’ she told her dad. ‘Thank you for the tea.’
She heard him leave the room and pull the door to, but not closed, and she wished she could feel better quicker, for her parents’ sake. But how could she pretend to feel okay when she couldn’t even remember what okay felt like?
A day later, maybe two, Alice was pacing her bedroom, enjoying the ache it caused her leg. With each step she allowed the throb to vividly remind her not of the concert – she didn’t allow herself to think of that – but not to forget to think about Jill, even for a second.
She picked up a pen from her windowsill and tapped it against her wound as she walked, an extra little sharp pain, an extra thing to fidget with.
The pen fell from her fingers and she cursed, crouching as best she could with her bad leg out to the side to pick it up. And within a microsecond she was back at the concert.
It was like a tableau she’d stepped into, where the world was frozen but she could see every detail of that second before it happened, painted in front of her in vivid, 4D surround sound. She was crouched to the ground, her hand pressed hard against her dropped lipstick, surrounded by legs and feet in outfits that had been planned and favourite shoes, that now danced as if they were on fire, looking for somewhere to step, looking for gaps to run into. Sweat and the scent of sticky, spilled soda rose from the ground and hovered in the air. Jill was behind her, half turned, a smile on her face and Alice cried because she knew what was coming. And she kept crying because she couldn’t stop it and she wanted to shout out to Jill to move but she was frozen, they all were, frozen in a last moment that should never have happened.
Alice tried and tried to make a sound but all that came out was a strained, inaudible wail that went on and on.
Liz Bright was in the upstairs corridor when she heard the pacing stop, and had crept towards her daughter’s door to listen, to see if it was appropriate to go in. When she heard the sound of her daughter cry out a few moments later her heart broke and she pushed her way in to find Alice crouched in a ball on the floor, her hand reaching statically for a pen, her eyes searching for something Liz couldn’t see.
‘Oh my love.’ Liz rushed to her daughter’s side and stroked her head, grasping her hand, saying her name over and over again. She didn’t know if this was the right thing to do but every instinct told her to do anything to bring Alice back from the place she’d gone to.
Eventually Alice seemed to inhale again, her breaths coming thick and fast, her rapid eye movements becoming slower and her head lowered. The tears came, dropping from her in parallel to her entire body drooping into Liz’s arms. ‘Mum,’ she said. ‘I dropped my lipstick again.’
‘It’s okay, it was just a pen, you’re safe, you’re at home.’
Alice looked around. How could she be in her childhood bedroom when she was justthere? ‘It felt real, though. I saw her.’
‘I know, but it’s okay, I promise. I’ve got you.’ And her mum didn’t let go.
Later that same day, Alice ventured downstairs where her mum and dad were sitting at the kitchen table discussing something (probably her) in hushed tones.
Ed jumped up when he saw her. ‘Hello love, how are you feeling?’
She shrugged. ‘Okay.’ She didn’t feel okay, but she couldn’t bear to tell them that a week . . . ten days . . . two weeks (how long had it been?) in and she felt exactly the same. Numb.
‘Mum was telling me about your, um, episode this morning. I think we should ask the doctor to come back over, just for a talk.’
‘I’m fine.’
Ed and Liz exchanged a glance. Ed opened his mouth again but Alice shot in with the question which was the reason she’d come down in the first place.
‘Where is Bear?’
‘Bear?’ her mum asked. ‘One of your old teddy bears? I think they’re all in the wardrobe—’
‘No, Bear, the dog, Jill’s dog. Is he okay?’
‘Oh, the puppy,’ Ed answered. ‘The big puppy. He’s fine. He’s at Jill’s mum and dad’s.’
‘How do you know?’
