Blink(44)

It was really hard to make the adults understand it all, so Evie decided it was better to just stay quiet. Today, when they’d got home from school and Evie had been upset, Mummy had looked at her as if she was disappointed, somehow.

Evie hadn’t known what would happen. She hadn’t known Daddy would fall off that cliff and get all broken into little pieces. At her old school, Arthur Chapman’s Action Man got stamped on at break and had to be thrown away by Miss Bert because it simply couldn’t be mended.

When the last bell sounded today, she’d been so happy it was Friday and there was no more stinking school for two days, but then Mummy had taken that phone call in the kitchen and been all pretend-bright afterwards, with her beaming smile that she used when she really wanted Evie to like something that wasn’t very nice.

She told Evie that next week she would be doing a special after-school club, on her own, with Miss Watson.

‘Everything is going to be fine.’ Mummy had held her hand a bit too tight and her eyes looked all misty again, like she was struggling to see Evie properly. ‘Miss Watson has got a lot of faith in you, Evie. She wants to help you settle in.’

Evie was never going to settle in. Not here in this house or at St Saviour’s Primary School.

She just knew it.





38





Present Day





Queen’s Medical Centre





The room appears quiet and perfectly still, but something in the air has changed. Whoever the person was who very quietly opened and closed the door, they’re still in here. I can sense their presence.

There’s a long beat of silence, during which the walls seem to press closer to my face. It feels harder to breathe. If I had to breathe of my own accord, that is.

When it comes, her voice sounds coarser than I remembered.

‘I heard about what happened to you but I had to see it for myself before I could really believe it.’

I hear her pad forward from the door a few steps. It’s almost inaudible, but I am instantly alert to the faintest muted rustle of soft soles on a hard floor. My ears have sharpened. It’s as if my body is trying to make up for the fact that almost all other bodily functions have been rendered useless by the stroke, or whatever condition since then has paralysed me.

I catch a whisper of breath and that tells me she has moved a little closer to my bed. But I still can’t see her.

‘What happened to Evie, it’s your fault.’ Her voice sounds fairly level but there is a wobble behind it, a sort of worrying unevenness.

It’s true. It’s my fault Evie was taken. I don’t need her to tell me that. Of all people, she is far from blameless. I should never have listened to her poisoned words.

My heartbeat wallops against my chest wall and, worse than that, I can feel nausea rising in my chest. If I bring back my liquid food, I could choke to death before the nurses even get here.

I hear the soft rustle again. She’s on the move but sticking close to the walls, staying purposely out of my view.

With her last step, she comes into focus.

A vague shape of unidentifiable colours, over on my right hand side. She stands adjacent to my head but well back.

If only I could swivel my eyes, just slightly to the right . . .

‘They say you can’t move, not even a millimetre,’ she says. ‘They say it’s not known whether you can see or hear, but I’ve got some things I want to say to you all the same.’ She shuffles slightly. ‘I’ve got something I want to show you, too.’

I don’t like the way she says that.

I start to shake my head violently from side to side, and stretch the fingers of my left hand until it hurts, stretching towards the emergency button that hangs on a thick cord, just centimetres away.

I shout and yell for the nurse to come and help me, to make her go away.

But of course, in the real world, I remain completely still and unresponsive.

Now she has stopped speaking, there is only the ticking of the clock, the rasp of the respirator and the thick, cloying air that settles on the surface of my skin like a toxic sheen.

I wonder how she got past the nurses. Do they even keep a check on who is coming in here? The medical staff check on me around three or four times a day, taking their readings, maintaining my life support. In addition, Dr Shaw and Dr Chance pay their brief visits also.

The cleaner came in early this morning, whisking quickly under my bed with a mop and leaving the air thick with the acrid disinfectant that chafes at my throat. Another cleaner will drop by later.

None of them will take a moment to really look at me. Nobody will speak to me. Unless the nice nurse comes back, that is.

But for now, I am alone with someone I thought I would never see again. Someone I hoped I would never breathe the same air as again.

Evie, I whisper.

‘Do you still think about Evie? Think about what you did?’

Every day. Every day, I think about her.

‘You just had one job that mattered and that was to take care of her.’ The coloured shape draws nearer to me. ‘It’s laughable you could even think of yourself as worthy. She wasn’t taken, you let her go.’

I didn’t let her go, I screamed. She was taken. Somebody took Evie away.

And then, swiftly, she is right next to my bed and her face is above mine. Directly above my eyes, staring down at me, her lips set in a terrible grimace of something that falls between hatred and anger.