LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Seven

       BEFORE: JUNE

      I had dreamed that I was dying, such a very vivid dream. When I woke, I wasn’t absolutely sure I hadn’t. A huge weight squatted on my stomach, face pulled back in a rictus grin, gurning down at me until, panicking, I pushed up through its mass. Rearing from the bed, my arms flailed like a sprinter’s tangled in the finish line; a great sob of terror scraping through my chest.

      I wasn’t dead, apparently. Not unless heaven was an ice-cream-coloured curtain drawn round a narrow bed, or a glimpse of rain through a small window in a quietly rumbling room. A room that was grey and regular. A dormitory. A ward. Not unless the woman in blue with smiley eyes who stepped neatly to my side was some bizarre kind of angel in a nurse’s uniform.

      ‘You haven’t got a halo.’ I blinked at the nurse. ‘Have you?’

      The woman leaned forward to hear me properly, but my voice was apparently stuck in my sore and tired throat. I tried to smile instead, but smiling seemed to hurt me even more. Tentatively I brought my hand up to touch my own face, my hand that felt freezing.

      ‘Your lip’s been stitched.’

      She caught my hand and moved it gently down. The nurse’s skin was beautiful, dark and creamy like a pint of newly pulled Guinness. I had the impulse to stroke her arm, but before I could she tucked my hand beneath the sheet. And I winced at the touch. My body ached; I was realising slowly that every part of me was tender, every part felt bruised and sore.

      ‘Only a few stitches, though.’

      I thought the nurse might have said something next about being right as rain in no time, right as the rain I could see falling in vertical lines through that little window. Rain was never really right, though, was it, not unless you gardened like my father and – I had a revelation.

      ‘Have I gone mad?’ I enquired politely. ‘Is this the loony bin?’ This time the nurse caught my words.

      ‘Not mad, no, Maggie. You’ve had an accident. You’re in hospital.’

      ‘Accident?’

      ‘Just slip your sleeve up so I can take your blood pressure. Can you tell me how you feel now?’ she asked me kindly, but actually I couldn’t, because I didn’t know. I gazed at her blankly. Well, I did know I felt calm. Calm, but sort of bewildered.

      ‘You’re in shock, dear. And the doctor’s given you something to monitor the pain.’ The nurse tightened the band round my arm until it pinched. ‘Morphine.’

      ‘Ouch. I can’t seem to –’ I gazed at the nurse again. ‘I can’t think what happened. It’s funny, though. Was there –’ I stopped again.

      ‘What?’ the nurse prompted. ‘What do you think, Maggie?’

      ‘I keep thinking about a horse. Did I – did I fall off a horse?’ But I didn’t remember being on a horse yesterday. I could vaguely remember a riding lesson from years ago, somewhere in the countryside; remembered my mother waving gaily from the gate of the school. It must have been a long time ago. I remembered that my hat had been too big, that it used to rattle down over my eyes as I bobbed along until I was pink and out of breath and couldn’t see anything – not my mother, not the waving – only my own small hands beneath me, clutching the pony’s mane as valiantly I tried to retain control.

      ‘There was – I think there might have been a horse.’ The nurse seemed alarmed suddenly. She paused for a moment, thinking. ‘You were on –’

      The consultant arrived at the foot of the bed with a flick of his pristine white coat. He was very tall and he had a face rather like an eagle, I thought. Yes, an eagle. His nose was a downward curve, like a cruel beak. He glanced at the chart at the foot of my bed, then at me.

      ‘Ms Warren.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Feeling better?’

      Better than what?

      ‘I’m not – I don’t know really.’

      ‘Vitals all fine, sir.’ The nurse peeled the band off my arm and popped something bleeping in my ear.

      ‘Good, good.’ He inspected my lip. ‘Nice job with the sutures. Bruising?’

      ‘All external, apparently.’ The nurse took the bleeping thing out.

      ‘It’s just –’ I cut in.

      ‘What?’ The doctor seemed impatient, ready to move on to the next bed. The one with the curtains right round it. Tight around it.

      ‘I can’t remember what happened. Why I’m here.’

      The consultant shot the nurse a look. The nurse looked down at her sensible shoes.

      ‘Does anyone know that I’m here?’ I thought of Alex. I sat up in bed again. ‘I must let my boyfriend know.’

      ‘I’ll get the list.’ The nurse seemed grateful for an excuse to move down the ward. There was a sudden commotion from the bed next door, the bed that I couldn’t see. Someone was crying, racked with terrible sobs. The noise made my blood freeze.

      ‘I think I might like to get up,’ I began, but the consultant was already swishing through those curtains. I knew I couldn’t stay here, not next to that wall of sound, that ascending wail. I tried to collect my thoughts. I’d go and find a phone, ring Alex to come and fetch me. Gingerly I swung my legs down to the cold floor. A pain like a cold sharp blade shot up through my left foot but I tried to ignore it. I must escape those sobs.

      I managed to limp as far as the first double-doors before I thought the pain might actually make me sick. The nice nurse caught up with me as I leaned on the wall in agony, sat me on a furry old chair by the door and held my hand, just for a minute. A middle-aged couple rushed through the doors, the frizzy-haired woman pressing a tissue to her mouth to stop the tears, followed by a younger man, beanie hat pulled down against the weather, all glittery with silver raindrops. He dropped his phone as he passed; it clattered to the ground near my feet.

      ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, sweeping it up again. He saw the nurse. ‘We’re looking for my girlfriend? She was on the coach.’

      ‘Go to the desk.’ The nurse pointed back the way they’d come. ‘They’ve got the list.’

      He rushed back through the doors without any more ado, the couple following behind. An old woman in the bed opposite started to groan. Oh God.

      ‘I need to ring my boyfriend,’ I whispered when I’d recovered enough to talk. ‘He’ll be so worried. I never stay out all night.’ Did I?

      ‘Go back to bed. I’ll bring you the phone.’ But then the nurse looked up the ward, at the other nurses flying back and forth between those pastel curtains and then at the crash-cart that came slamming through the doors, and she changed her mind. She wheeled the phone to me where I sat. And I tried very hard not to look at that bed, and concentrated on making the phone call.

      It took me three attempts to remember my home number. First I got the voicemail for some curry-house in Dalston; then some very disgruntled old man whom I’d obviously just woken up.

      ‘Sorry.’ I thumped the receiver down again in frustration; glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was ridiculously early.

      ‘Eight-nine-eight,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Nine-eight-nine.’ For God’s sake! How could I not remember? I made a third attempt. Somehow, somewhere in the depths of last night’s accident, I’d wiped out my home number. I’d wiped

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