Innocence (24 page)

T
HE
JOURNEY
back to Arlow is a blur of motorway grayness. Malachi’s little car shakes at high speeds, and by the time we’re back on familiar roads, a tremor is running through me that makes my nerves feel taut as guitar strings.

Fed up of being on the backseat for so many hours, Maisie whines. I reach my hand back to stroke her belly and tell her it won’t be long now, my voice sounding strange in the silence.

Since we left Oxford, Malachi and I have not uttered a word to each other. He focuses on driving, fast, and I’ve only had one coherent thought in my head for the past two hours—Jay.

I’ve tried not to imagine what it is Dad didn’t want to tell me, what could possibly be wrong. I’ve tried to keep my mind blank and hoping, but it’s hard. So hard.

If I look out the passenger mirror, I can see Honey’s Land Rover stuck a couple of cars behind us. She insisted on coming with us when we went back in the café to explain that we had to go. I was too desperate to be back here to argue.

It’s as though now she’s found us, she’s not going to let us out of her sight.

We hit rush hour coming into town. Queues of traffic filling up the narrow roads.

Honey struggles to keep track of us, and several times I see Malachi looking for her in his mirrors, checking she is still with us.

“It was a mistake for her to come,” I say, knowing it’s too late now to do anything about it.

“After her reaction at the cafe, I think she might have followed us anyway.”

“I know, but…. Kai, what about Dad? What’s he going to make of her?”

Malachi just glances at me wryly. “I shouldn’t like it when you call me that.”

Thumping my head back against the headrest, I run my hands through my hair.

“Christopher, your dad can handle this,” he says with otherworldly calmness.

“I’ve got to warn him that Honey is here before he sees her.”

How can I just spring this on him? Especially after not telling him I knew where Isabella might be and going to see her, it feels like I’ve betrayed him. I don’t even know if he’s aware Isabella
has
a sister.

“It’s okay,” he says reluctantly. “I can keep her company or something.”

There is a certain resignation in his tone that warms me—that he would do this for me.

That he said he would do anything.

V
ISITING
HOURS
are over by the time we get to the hospital and park. If they don’t let me see Jay after all this, I know I’m going to lose the brittle control my life has been under these past two days. Already I’m craving something to wrap me up in a dim fog, softening the edges of everything and numbing the way I feel, like alcohol does.

It would be so easy to give in.

I look over at Malachi as we get out of the car and wonder if this is what he feels all the time and how he can deal with it. Or if that need has somehow just vanished, that hollow space inside him somehow been filled with something else.

Honey rushes towards us, apprehensive but fiercely trying to keep it under control.

Despite my misgivings, the fact that she would drop everything for us means something.

And even though she is standing next to us, for the briefest moment Malachi wraps his arm round my waist, in full view of everyone, and gives me a tight, one-armed hug. The warm pressure of his body, the fathomless depths of his eyes seem to promise me something, but I’ve no idea what. I’m too stunned by the obvious affection.

But I want this moment to happen some other time when we’re alone and not about to go into a hospital so that I can savor it and work out what it means.

Honey watches us appraisingly, curious, then firmly links her arm in mine as we walk inside.

“I need to explain some stuff to my dad before he meets you,” I say as we reach the ward.

“Of course,” she replies easily. It is, after all, what she wanted to do with her own parents. “I’ll go get us something hot to drink.”

I hope Dad will forgive me.

I push open the door.

“Hey.” Malachi catches my arm.

I think he’s going to say something, but he just gives me that look again, the one he gave me in the car park, and closes his eyes for a second. It reminds me of something Jay and I used to do when we were little—pretending we could send our thoughts to each other in a blink. And I’m not sure if it’s because of that or if I’m just feeling reckless and in need of some connection, but I lean forwards, intending to kiss his cheek, then at the last moment change my mind and press my lips so, so softly against his.

I don’t wait to see his reaction. I just disappear through the doors, holding my hand up to my mouth when I know he can’t see me, remembering the feel of his lips there.

It was probably a completely idiotic thing to do, and the wall that’s been coming down between us has probably gone right back up, but for a fleeting moment it felt like it was supposed to happen that way.

Dad is on the ward. I can see him standing at the end of Jay’s bed, though the bed itself is half obscured by the floor-length curtain drawn around it. At first the nurses don’t want another body in the way—Jay is in the process of being moved down to one of the less critical wards—but I plead and promise I won’t get in the way, and they don’t stop me as I walk shakily towards him.

My chest hurts as though I’m being squeezed too tight, my ribs cracking under the pressure. I’m perhaps more scared now than I was when I saw him in a coma for the first time, his body full of tubes and wires. More scared because this moment holds the promise of finality—this is how it’s going to be for him.

Dad sees me before I reach the curtain. He steps towards me and holds out his hand, a cautiously solemn look on his face.

“I’m glad you’re here, Christopher,” he says.

And though he doesn’t look glad or happy, I can tell he’s genuinely pleased to see me.

Until a few weeks ago, I never thought I’d ever physically be his equal. My height still surprises me. I always thought he was a giant, and now the giant is me.

I knock his hand away and with a little hesitation—because I’m still not one hundred percent sure he’s not going to push me away—throw my arms around him like I used to when I was a kid.

“I’m sorry,” I gasp as I feel his arms come round my back.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, son. Nothing,” he murmurs. “Come on.”

He pulls the curtain aside a little so that I can step up to the bed. One nurse is busy unclipping the colored wires from the heart monitor, and another is taking a sample of blood from Jay’s arm. I try not to make a sound lest I surprise Jay as he watches her and she unwittingly hurts him.

He looks so small, his arms so thin, but
He’s okay, he’s okay,
my heart sings.

I smile as he turns to me. I feel radiant. I can’t remember ever feeling like this, my heart as light as a helium balloon, but then his eyes meet mine and—

“Jay?” I whisper, my smile fading fast.

I see no recognition there.

Jay continues to look at me blankly, a touch of helpless fear in his eyes.

“James, this is Christopher,” Dad cuts in. “Christopher is your brother.”

The world becomes very small. The walls disappear, the nurses, the floor. There is just Jay and me, and Dad’s echoey voice.

“James’s memory could return at any point,” Dad says, his tone so positive, I can only presume it’s for Jay’s benefit.

“Hello,” Jay says, not meeting my eyes.

He’s shy, only before he was never shy with me.

All I can think is no, no, no, this can’t be happening. All I can think is what Honey told me about Isabella, how she might not even know me, and how much that news now pales in the face of
this
. All I can think is how much I love him, and how scary it must be to wake up no longer knowing who you are.

I take a deep breath to steady myself.

“Hey,” I say, sitting down on his bed, my expression feigning calmness.
At any point,
I think desperately,
he might remember me at any point.
“How do you feel?”

He swallows and looks around at the other people behind this curtain, invading his space. I want to tell the nurses to go away, leave him alone. I want to take care of him like I always have.

“I don’t know,” he admits with a faint shrug.

“Do you remember anything?”

He shakes his head and shrugs again, trying not to let me see how terrified he is.

The enormity of it all still evades me somehow.

“The doctors say this can happen after a coma. And because his speech is good and he has a few incomplete memories and he can remember how to do things like read, it’s likely that his memories are all locked in there and one day will come back.”

Dad sits down next to me and takes Jay’s hand. For a fraction of a second, I can tell Jay wants to pull away, and it comforts me that I can still read him so easily.

The nurses leave, and we’re on our own with Jay for a moment.

“Incomplete memories?” I look at Dad. Even though I sense the last thing Jay wants is for me to go on about this.

“He remembers odd things about the boat, being on the river, swimming,” Dad says quietly.

And that’s all he has? No people, just things?

“You must be really scared, waking up here and having all of us treating you like we know more about your life than you do,” I say.

Jay looks like he’s going to cry. I want more than anything to comfort him, but I’m a stranger right now. He doesn’t want a stranger hugging him, he doesn’t want a stranger to hold his hand. All I can do is work towards gaining his trust.

“Do you want us to leave you alone for a bit?”

He shrugs, then whispers, “I feel sick.”

“I’ll go ask the nurse if they can give you anything for it,” I say, getting up.

I notice the water jug on the cabinet next to his bed is empty and take it with me. I make a gesture with my eyes for Dad to follow me.

Surprisingly he does.

The nurses say the sickness will come and go. They have given him something to help but it takes a while to kick in. They fill up the water jug and hand it back to me.

“What exactly did the doctors say?” I ask Dad as we step away to one side of the nurse’s station.

“That he’s very lucky not to have any obvious brain damage after being deprived of oxygen for so long. The retrograde amnesia is the best they could have hoped for.”

“Will his memories ever come back?”

I know what he said while we were with Jay, but I want the truth.

“Hopefully.”

“But they might not.”

Dad looks away.

And I understand, because I can’t contemplate it either.

I know I should tell him about Honey, but I just can’t bring myself to do it right now. We walk slowly back to Jay’s bedside. I pour him a glass of water and help him sit up to drink it. His body is thinner than I ever remember, bones all sharp and protruding.

Dad sits down on the end of the bed.

“I’ll come back tomorrow and bring you something to read,” I say to Jay, thinking reading something he’s read before might help his memory.

“We could bring in some photographs,” Dad adds. “The doctors said photographs might help.”

I think about Malachi’s photograph album and wonder if that would help, but I know I could never bring it here.

“And friends, seeing people Jay knows.”

I think about Honey still waiting out in the corridor. I don’t know how to tell Dad about her, but I’ve got to say something.

“I met someone in Oxford,” I say across the narrow expanse of Jay’s bed. I pull a few stray threads out of the bedsheet rather than look at him. “A relative. She came back here with us to see Jay.”

Dad’s eyes flick across to me, widening in shock. He thinks I’m talking about Isabella.

“Her name is Honey St. Clare. She’s… our aunt.”

I try to imagine what Jay’s excitement would have been like.

“Honey St. Clare?” Dad repeats disbelievingly, looking as though I’ve said something deeply shocking and at the same time utterly ridiculous.

“Yeah. I told her I wanted to talk to you first, let you know she was here.”

Jay sips his water, looking like he doesn’t really understand what’s going on, like he doesn’t really want to know right now either.

Awful thoughts go through my head—thoughts that question if Jay is still the same person inside, if this boy on the bed can ever know what it means to be my brother, if our shared experiences no longer exist for him. If he is now as much a stranger to me as I am to him.

But I choke them down, ignoring them.

“Jay? Do you mind meeting someone else? You can say no if you want. It’s okay.”

It might make me feel better if he did say no. At least that would mean he feels comfortable enough with us to let us know what he wants.

“I don’t mind,” he says, his gaze drifting to the floor, showing me that he does mind, showing me that all he wants is to curl up on his side and for us all to go away, so he can try to figure this out.

I know him. I know him so well.
Still
, I think determinedly.
Still.

“Dad? Are you okay with this?”

“I just need a minute.”

He gets up and goes to stand by the window, shifting the blinds a little so that the early evening light filters through. The ward is on the fifth floor and there is a view across the slated rooftops of the town, the sunlit streets, people walking home.

After a minute I go and stand next to him, noticing the whites of his knuckles as he grips the windowsill.

“Go and get her, then,” he says.

The nurses tell me five more minutes only when I walk up to the desk and say another relative desperately wants to see Jay.

Out in the corridor, I beckon Honey over. Both she and Malachi are sitting in the plastic chairs just outside the doors. Empty plastic cups line the floor by their feet.

“I spoke to my dad,” I say. “I think he’s okay with this.”