My Second Life (2 page)

“What did they say when you phoned earlier?”

“They said it went well.”

“That's good, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“But you're thinking that's what they always say … You never really know until you get there.”

Rachel slowed her pace and looked at me. “Exactly,” she said, and she stroked my hair as we walked and I wanted to pull away from her as she touched me. It just made me want Mum even more when she touched me. Her loss was like an endless ache when I was with Rachel. It was something I'd always lived with. It was with me almost all the time. But today I let Rachel stroke my hair. I didn't pull away. Because I didn't want to hurt her feelings. Not now when she was so worried about Grillie.

When we walked into Grillie's room she was sitting up in bed. She smiled when she saw us. I could see it was a struggle to smile. Even though she was propped up she didn't look all that comfortable. She had a crinkly gown on and a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She was pale but calm. I knew she wasn't going to die. Not today.

“How are you?” Rachel said, leaning forward to give her a kiss.

I wanted to give her a kiss too, to say hello, but I was nervous. I didn't want to lean in and press down on her in all the wrong places.

“My throat's a little dry,” she said.

I jumped to it. “Here, I'll pour you some water.” There was a plastic jug on the side with a flappy white lid and a small plastic cup.

“Thank you, lovely,” she said.

I sat down gently on the side of the bed, passing her the cup. She took a drink and then she set the cup down and took my hand.

“You've got the room all to yourself, Grillie! You've lucked in!”

“Well, yes. For now,” she said. “So how was your day, lovely?”

“Oh
—
not much to tell. Just school,” I said.

“But you like it, don't you? It's a good school. Rachel's always telling me how well you're doing.”

I looked at Grillie. This was the same conversation we always had. She was tired. Her usual feisty chat dulled by the painkillers. She was slow, placid.

“I'm going to go and find a nurse. See if we can get you another pillow,” said Rachel. “I'll be back in a minute.”

“How long do you have to stay in for?” I asked.

“Not sure just yet. See how I go. If all is well I'll be out by the weekend, I think.”

“I'll come again tomorrow, okay? Bring you a magazine or something.”

“Yes. I'd like that,” she said, and then her hand slipped its grip from mine and she sank quickly into sleep. I knew it was the drugs but it still surprised me.

Rachel came back.

“She's asleep,” I whispered.

“Oh
—
is she?” Rachel said. I could see the disappointment in her face as she pulled the pillow she'd just found for Grillie toward her tummy. She was hugging it for comfort.

“I'm sure she'll wake up again in a minute,” I said. I wanted to make it better for her.

“I don't know. She must be tired. And all the drugs … She needs to sleep.”

I stood up to let Rachel sit where I had been sitting on the bed, and I watched Rachel put the pillow down and take Grillie's hand, and as she held it in her own she looked into Grillie's face with such love. I had never felt love like that for Rachel. Because all I have ever wanted is my mum. My real mum. I wanted to cry and call out for her now, to come to me. But I couldn't. Because no one would have come. The room suddenly felt hot.

Too hot.

“Maybe you're right. Maybe we should go.” I said to Rachel, picking up my bag from the floor. “We should let her sleep.”

I had to get out. Find some fresh air. I had to get out, to breathe.

“Yes,” said Rachel, and she picked up the pillow she'd left on the end of the bed and plumped it before putting it back, and then she kissed Grillie on the forehead, so gently, and we left.

We walked through the hospital in complete silence. I didn't know why I felt so bad. Maybe it was just the hospital. There was a smell of illness in the air. A place where you went to get better should smell of good health
—
of a rich, dark earth and a fresh spring wind
—
but this place smelled sterile and poisonous. I kept walking, fast, trying to get Rachel to walk faster with me. I could tell she was worried, thinking hard. Her pace was much slower than when we'd arrived. And as I walked I looked at the walls, the signs, the people here visiting family, friends …

I could see a rush up ahead: a couple of doctors with a stretcher jogging it along the corridor, people parting ways. An emergency
.
Just let me out. Let me out … That's all I could think as I kept walking. The stretcher was coming closer now, and I could see there was an old woman lying on it, crying, her arms stretched high on a pillow above her head, her head turned to one side. Crying. Wailing. I stopped. I had to. I was forced to. And as much as I didn't want to look, I did. And that's when I saw her
—
Frances. She opened her eyes as she passed me, and we were locked together in a moment
—

“Frances Wells…,” I said, out loud, as they wheeled her away.

“What's that?” said Rachel.

“That was Frances Wells!”

I knew her … I knew her face.

An image flew through my mind: a child, a small child, with her eyes open wide … wet and wild … her body, still … cradled by a mass of twigs and branches in the water …

I thought I might pass out. I took a deep breath in.

“She didn't look so well, did she?” said Rachel, utterly mishearing me. “Let's go, come on. Let's get fish and chips.”

And as we walked out into the cooler air I could feel that something had changed. There had been a shift
—
in me
—
and I had this feeling. A feeling that I had done something so wrong … so very wrong that I didn't dare to name it … And I was afraid.

 

tuesday

2

I
WENT BACK TO
visit Grillie the following day. She was better: less pale, her eyelids less droopy. She was offering me strawberries and interrupting me all the time, so I knew she was on her way to being well again. And she was impatient to tell me all the details of her new roommate.

“The one next door,” she mouthed in a theatrical whisper, pointing in the direction of the other bed. I nodded to stop her pointing and mouthing the words. “She's in a terrible state. Terrible. Been up all night crying with the pain.”

I stood up and pulled the curtain around the bed quickly, to give us some privacy. I could tell Grillie was kind of enjoying the drama of it all and I didn't want the woman in the next bed to hear her talking on. “Did you sleep all right, though?” I said.

“Me? Oh yes. Fine. I woke up a couple of times, you know, with the noise”
—
and again she pointed
—
“but generally I slept fine. Can't wait to get home now. Get back into my own bed. And the food is pretty awful.”

“Rachel's made a pie for when you get home. Chicken. It's in the freezer.”

“Oh, lovely,” she said. “I'll look forward to that.”

We sat in silence for a moment. I could hear a voice, a doctor, talking to the woman in the opposite bed. Something about tests and needing to go down to the ground floor, and an aide coming in about an hour.

“Open the curtain a little, lovely. Just in case the doctor's got anything to say to me too.”

I stood up to open the curtain and smiled to myself. I knew Grillie just wanted a good nosy at her roommate. I didn't blame her. There wasn't much else to do, and I'd forgotten to buy the magazine I'd promised.

“Shall I go down and get you that magazine?” I said.

“Don't bother, honestly. I can't really concentrate on anything for too long at the moment. Reading just sends me to sleep. I'm fine. Just open the curtain some more. Get the light in here. I'd have liked a bed right next to the window. Lots of light. But they put me here. A bed by the window would have been nice, wouldn't it?”

“A room with a view,” I said, smiling. “Yes, that would have been nice, Grillie. Very nice.” And as I walked the curtain all the way around the bed and pushed it firmly against the wall I saw the person in the bed next to Grillie's
—
next to where I stood. Frances Wells. She was still, motionless. I was close enough to reach out and touch her.

My body tensed up until all I could feel was the pain as my muscles contracted hard under my skin. If I could have pulled myself inward and retracted, into nothing, I would have done it. A sickness was rising up from my belly, slowly, steadily.

She'd been the one wailing all night. She'd been the one in pain. It was Frances Wells. And she didn't know that I was here
—
now
—
that I had been Emma.

My chest pounded as the sickness traveled upward toward my throat. I tried to swallow it down, and as I did I was filled with a stark and vivid memory. I was outside a house. A big house. Frances was inside. I could see her through the window. She was younger, smiling, happy … She wore a navy dress with red stitching and red buttons and a shiny thick black belt. Her hair was tied back, but strands were hanging down in front of her ears and around her collar. She was pretty. She stood in a large front room. There were dark green sofas, and bookshelves, a fireplace … There was someone else in the room with her. A man. He was standing behind her and she was talking to him, telling him something. They were laughing. And she stepped forward and she closed the curtains. Her neat, slim waist was the last thing I saw through the final gap of the closing material in the window as she turned away from me and disappeared into the depths of the room. I didn't want her to close the curtains. I could feel anger pulsing in my chest … She'd shut me out. Why had she shut me out?

“Ana?” Grillie's voice broke through.

I hung on to Grillie's bed. I grasped the cold metal bar on the headboard until it hurt all the way up my arms. I couldn't let myself be sick. Not here. Not now. I tried to swallow again and my mouth was wet, too wet. I could feel the rising lumps in my throat, the banging in my ears. I screwed up my eyes, and I opened my mouth wide to gulp some air, and as I did my shoulders sank down and I felt the banging in my body begin to slowly subside. I let go of the bed and looked down at Frances again. I couldn't help myself looking.

She was an old woman. She lay on her side sleeping. Her body now wider, heavier with age, her hair shorter, colorless, wiry, although it still settled on her neck like it used to. It was her. It was Frances. I knew her. It was actually her.

“Ana? Are you okay?” Grillie was shifting in her bed behind me. I could hear the sheets slipping around her as she moved.

I looked at Grillie and I tried a smile.

“She doesn't look well, does she?” Grillie said, motioning toward Frances with her head.

“Have you talked to her?”

“Yes,” Grillie said. “She's in a lot of pain.”

“Has she had any visitors?” I whispered.

Grillie shook her head. “No one.”

I looked over my shoulder again. I wanted to make sure Frances was still asleep, that she couldn't hear a word of what we were saying.

“Lost a husband to cancer, and then lost her daughter as well. The child drowned. She was only six years old.”

I nodded. I didn't feel like I could speak. I swallowed and my throat felt thick again, like it was swelling, but this time with tears. I didn't know where to look so I walked away and took a chair from under the window. It gave me some time to breathe, and then I brought it over to sit next to Grillie on the other side of the bed.

Guilt.

All I could feel was guilt.

It was uncoiling itself inside me.

“She told you that?” I whispered.

“I only asked whether she had any children. I wondered if she was going to have any visitors. That woman across the hall, she's got people coming in left, right, and center. It's like a bloody bus station…”

I nodded again.

“… She told me she had a daughter, and I jumped in and said how nice that was and that I had a daughter and a granddaughter, that you were both coming in later and what a blessing it was … And then she said she'd lost her child, her daughter. I felt terrible. I mean, how was I to know? Terrible. And then she told me very matter-of-factly that the girl had been drowned, when she was only six years old…”

I took Grillie's hand. “You couldn't have known, Grillie.”

“I know that, but I felt awful … and then the worst of it was I couldn't think of anything else to say. Shut me right up, it did. Until I started gabbing to fill in the awkward silence. I ended up inviting her to bridge. I wish I hadn't. So I'm glad to see you, Ana, because I haven't been able to talk to anyone else today but her. Maybe you should go and get me that magazine after all, lovely? Something gossipy and fun.”

“Did she say anything else? About her daughter?” I asked.

Grillie was fumbling with her purse, trying to find some coins. “No, nothing else, lovely. And I didn't like to ask. Now here, get yourself something too. Some chocolate or something.”

I took the coins and walked down to the shop. I glanced back at Frances's motionless body as I went. This was the closest I had ever been to my first life, and I didn't know what I was meant to do. But in that very moment I was glad of the space to think, of the opportunity to be walking away.

 

3

I
WAS MEETING
J
AMIE
at four thirty.

I couldn't stop thinking about Frances Wells as I walked to meet him at the café.