I looked ahead at him again. He and Luc had stopped and were waiting for us, flopping down on the grass. Suddenly, I wished I’d never said anything, not made it real, but kept it in my head where I didn’t have to do anything with it. Maybe that was why my mouth had said the lie in the first place; I was forcing myself to deal with something I didn’t want to have to face.
“I know you love Tom,” Vic said carefully, as if reading my mind. “I love him too. I love you both. But you know, I also think he loves you quite a lot more than you love him, and I’m not sure that can ever really work long term.”
I looked at her, shocked.
“I’m sorry. I would never have said anything all the time I thought you were happy, because who am I to question it if it works? But it’s obviously not working, is it? Regardless of this Bailey—he’s just a symptom, not a cause.”
I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. I felt very confused.
“And I don’t deny that it’s not all horribly complicated by Tom being good-looking, nice to be around and basically willing to do anything for you.”
“And that’s a bad thing how exactly?”
“It’s not—it just makes it even harder because he’s ninety percent perfect. It’d be easy to walk away if he was a complete bastard and not right for you.”
“Oh come on, Vic, no one is one hundred percent perfect.”
She considered that. “You know, you’re right. If someone’s not the one for you, they’re not the one. It’s academic by how much they miss the mark, twenty percent, two percent, who cares? They’re still not hitting the spot. You and Tom are both so lovely, you deserve to be with the right people, even if that isn’t each other. And don’t ask me how you know if he’s the one, because if you have to ask, he isn’t. It’s as simple as that.”
She couldn’t say anything else because we caught up with the boys, but I wasn’t sure how much more I could listen to in any case. I felt as if a huge weight had sunk on to my shoulders. What had started as a light chat about a crush had suddenly mutated into something else entirely—a dark genie filling the air around me with heavy smoke as it barged its way out of the bottle.
I tried to smile at Tom. He had taken his socks and shoes off and was wiggling his toes happily in the sun. “I’m hot,” he said. “I can’t believe it’s only April. Hurrah for global warming. I think we should go and get a glass of something cool and celebratory.” I glanced at his feet and noticed he had one rather long toenail—gross.
“You need to cut that,” I said, nodding at it.
“But then how will I play the guitar?” he responded, quick as a flash, and I laughed. See, he could be funny too! He made me laugh! And Vic was right—he was kind, thoughtful, reliable …
And yet somehow I knew we were never going to be the same again. My clumsy confession about my crush on Bailey had seen to that.
Everything had already changed irrevocably and I wasn’t sure how, or if, we were going to be able to get it back.
I
t goes beyond selfish,” Tom rants, getting up, the cheap hospital chair sliding away from under him and hitting the wall. “It’s actually dangerous. We don’t know if there are decisions that need to be made about Gretchen that are being delayed because of him not being here! How is it that—”
I’m bordering on losing it completely. “Tom, he missed a plane! Please! For God’s sake!”
“You wait,” Tom says, shaking his head. “He’ll rock up here and it’ll come out that he wasn’t even in bloody Spain, the lying bastard. He’s totally responsible for—”
“Oh Tom!” I explode desperately, my voice cracking. “Just stop it!”
We’re interrupted by the nurse, who appears at the door. “It’s fine for you to go back through now,” she says, looking at Tom, and then me, a little uncertainly, obviously having heard our exchange. “If you’re ready?” Tom shoots me a hurt look and then gets to his feet. “Yes, we are.”
But I’m not. I don’t want to go back in there at all. I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t sit there next to her with him—just waiting—not knowing what really happened. And worse still, Bailey is going to arrive at any minute. What’s Tom going to do when he actually gets here?
I stand up on wobbly legs and we walk out of the room and up the corridor together, slowly. The room is getting closer and closer, my heart starts to thump and I feel another sluice of sick and panic pulse through me.
Then we turn the corner and there she is again. Everything starts to feel blurry, but I manage to sit down next to the bed and Tom sits next to me. We don’t say anything. The nurse is writing something on a chart at the far end of the room. Everything has regained a sense of calm efficiency.
Gretchen, in fact, looks no different than before the alarm sounded. Her eyelashes are resting on her cheeks and her hands are either side of her on the sheet. She is perfectly still. A drip, feeding into a needle embedded in a vein that runs along the back of her hand, is sending a curious, clear liquid drifting into her bloodstream. I try to focus on a bubble rising to the surface of the solution in the bag that hangs from the drip stand. It vanishes without trace and, so help me God, I wish, wish that she would just do the same.
“Is it OK to touch her?” Tom asks the nurse, almost in a whisper, and she nods.
“It’s fine.”
“I won’t hurt her or anything?” he hesitates.
“No,” she says kindly.
I watch him reach out and very gently stroke her pale cheek, softly, like you would to a sleeping newborn baby. Then he reaches down and takes her hand in his, but it’s limp and unresponsive. Her eyelids don’t flicker—she doesn’t move at all.It’s painful to see him touch her, but I am in no position to say anything. I look away instead and focus on a tiny bit of tinsel that is still stuck on the far corner of the ceiling, left over from Christmas. I can’t imagine having to spend a Christmas Day here. I hope whoever was lying in this bed then is all right now; safe at home with their family.
“I’ve never seen her so quiet,” Tom laughs, but it is the saddest little sound, like a shattering of ice as someone deliberately smashes the surface of a shallow puddle. There is nothing behind it, no warmth. “I don’t understand, Al,” he whispers. “She had everything ahead of her. Absolutely everything. It was all just coming good. Why would she want to do this to herself?”
“I don’t know. She probably didn’t either.”
I feel sick as soon as the lie is out of my mouth. I can’t look at him. I just tell myself that it’s what Gretchen would want.
“How is she now?” Tom looks worriedly at the nurse.
“There’s not really any change,” the nurse says. “Once her next of kin arrives …”
“Yes, I know,” Tom says tiredly. The nurse looks sympathetic and sits down silently at the back of the room, her thin wedding ring catching the light.
“He could have flown there and back by now, surely?” Tom whispers to me, beginning again, angrily tight-lipped.
Oh PLEASE! In spite of myself I resort to giving him a fierce warning look, and he shuts up. I look down at my hands with relief.
“So when you found her,” he suddenly asks, as ever needing somewhere to channel his energy, “did it look like she’d taken a lot of the pills? I suppose she must have, to have a heart attack like that.”
I look up sharply. “I’ve told them everything, Tom,” I say, glancing at the nurse. “Don’t worry.”
“Yes, but no one is telling me anything,” he says unhappily. “Was it her lithium? Because that’s really dangerous.”
“I don’t know what lithium looks like. They were just pills. I gave the bottles to the paramedics. It all happened really fast, Tom—there wasn’t a lot of time to think.”
“Bottles? There was more than one?”
“I don’t know—I can’t remember.” I’m starting to feel woozy, the blood is rushing around my veins. “She was unconscious—I was frightened.”
The nurse coughs pointedly and then says, “Perhaps you would like to discuss this outside?” and Tom says, “OK, OK—sorry.” She drops her head and resumes writing again.
“Thank God you did go over there.” He reaches his hand out and grabs mine, squeezing it tightly before letting it go again. “You’re such a good friend to Gretch. You’d do anything for her, wouldn’t you?”
I hear the nurse’s pen pause at that. Maybe it’s just coincidence. I just stare at the floor, not looking at either of them.
“At least bloody Bailey managed to do one thing right,” he continues. “Imagine what would have happened if he hadn’t phoned you and asked you to go over to check on her?” He shudders.
We fall silent.
But as Tom sits there, thinking, a slow look of puzzlement spreads across his face. “But, hang on,” he says. “How did you get into the flat if she was unconscious?”
Oh God.
Out of the corner of my eye I see the nurse’s head look up quickly, and I run a rather shaky hand across my face. “I …”
But before I can answer, to my relief, the door opens suddenly. We all turn and, finally, there is Bailey, standing in the doorway, much as Tom did earlier, panting slightly. Tom’s lip curls and he turns away. My heart, however, leaps involuntarily and delightedly at the sight of him. I quickly stand up. He is wearing a hoodie under a jacket, loose jeans and trainers. He has a big bag slung across his shoulder and a look of panic and fatigue on his tanned face.
“I’m so sorry!” He moves quickly over to me, pulling me into a hug and planting a kiss somewhere vaguely in the region of my hairline. I see Tom look to the floor and a muscle clench briefly in his jaw. “I got here literally as soon as I could.” He releases me and takes two steps toward the bed, where Gretchen is lying. “Oh shit!” he says in shock and puts his hands on his head, elbows wide, at the sight of his little sister. “Oh Gretch!” His voice cracks. “What the hell have you done this time?”
Y
ou know this gig tomorrow?” Gretchen walked unhurriedly up the street behind me, languidly smoking a cigarette. “What time is it? I’ve completely forgotten.”
“It’s at two,” I said absently, stopping to look at my list, feeling a bit stressed out. I’d not had an easy time of it since we got back from Paris. To all intents and purposes nothing had changed on the outside, but inside I was struggling to get a grip on how I felt about the me-and-Tom situation. I kept swinging between thinking I was being ridiculous to allow myself to become so unsettled by a crush, to worrying that my refusal to acknowledge my feelings didn’t mean they would neatly go away if I just buried my head in the sand. I didn’t know what to do or think, because I was so confused, but I couldn’t stop agonizing over it; even when I was focusing on something else entirely, it was lurking in the back of my mind like a circling pike just under the surface of the water.
As Vic was on holiday in Spain, I called Fran and arranged to meet her for lunch in the hope that she’d have some helpful big-sisterly advice, but she blew me off at the last moment with some sickness bug she thought she’d picked up at work.
“Well can I come and see you at home instead?” I’d asked her hopefully.
“Not unless you want to spend the morning in the bog holding my hair back and seeing what I had for breakfast,” she said graphically. “I feel like shit, Al. I’m sorry, but whatever it is will have to wait.”
I almost even called my mum instead, but seeing as she was a firmly paid-up member of the Tom fan club and had muttered darkly—on more than one occasion—about the unfairness of her being the only member of her fifty-plus yoga group not to have grandchildren, I wasn’t convinced she’d find herself able to offer me unbiased advice.
“Are you nearly done, Al?” Gretchen yawned, dropping her cigarette butt and grinding it out with her heel. “I’ve got to tell you, I love hanging out with you, but this isn’t the most exciting way to spend a morning. You’re not supposed to take the client to buy props you’re going to be using in her shoot, you know.” She nudged me and I couldn’t help grinning at her. I really wanted to talk to her about it, but I didn’t know where to start—Bailey was her brother!
“Not everything is about you, you know,” I teased.
“More’s the pity,” she said. “Come on then. What’s left on your little list, Rabbit?”
I looked at her, puzzled.
“As in
Winnie the Pooh?”
she said. “Christopher Robin? You should know that: “We’re changing the guard at Buckingham Palace, said Alice.”
“My grandpa says that to me,” I said delightedly.
“Ah,” she said, “that’s nice. But seriously—list, focus.” The studio was rotating her hosting gig with a new girl and so she had an enforced day off. I knew she was bored, I could tell. She’d quickly tired of lethargically trailing around after me for something to do.
“OK, OK. All I need now is the rope,” I said, “for the lassos. The PR girls are sending over the kids’ outfits, including the hats and the horse masks. Half an hour and we’ll go and have lunch, OK?”
“Urghhh!” groaned Gretchen melodramatically. “I hate my life. Why do I have to be photographed surrounded by a load of children dressed like cowgirls and small horses?”
“Because the magazine, whose idea the shoot is, is read by about six hundred thousand people a month and they thought it would be a ‘cute’ idea.” I folded the list and shoved it in my jeans pocket. “At least it’s me doing the shots—it could be a lot worse. I promise I’ll make you look good. This could be really good for both of us, you know. Did you tell them you wanted to use me?”
“No, I didn’t actually,” Gretchen said honestly. “My agent suggested you, but you got it on your own merit. So tell me again, what exactly are we doing tomorrow?”
“We’re gonna make twelve five-year-olds look like cowgirls and Gretchen like a fuckin’ grown-up sexy cowgirl, because she’s a kids’ TV host hitting America.” I did an impression of the stylist I’d spoken to earlier on the phone. “This magazine is quite literally jumping on your LA bandwagon.”
“Yeah, but I’m not going to bloody Texas, am I?” exclaimed Gretchen. “This ‘going to America’ thing seemed a really good idea at the time, but I’m nowhere near getting any actual offers and now every magazine I do seems to want to dress me up as a giant apple or the Statue of Liberty.”