Truly Madly Guilty(100)

‘The doctor is here,’ said Sam now as Clementine rubbed her eyes and swallowed, her mouth dry and sour. ‘They’re going to extubate, wake her up.’

‘Good morning!’ said a pale-haired, pale-skinned doctor. ‘Let’s see if we can wake up this little sleeping beauty, shall we?’

It was fast. The tubes came out. The mask was removed.

After twenty minutes, Ruby frowned heavily. Her eyelids twitched.

‘Ruby?’ said Sam, as if he were begging for his life.

Ruby’s eyes finally fluttered opened. She stared at the cannula in her arm with an expression of pure disgust. Thankfully, her thumb-sucking hand was free, and she jammed her thumb in her mouth. She looked up, found her parents, and looked angrier still.

‘Whisk,’ she demanded hoarsely.

The relief Clementine experienced as she rushed to deliver Whisk was exquisite, glorious; like the cessation of an agonising pain, like a gasp of air when you’d been forced to hold your breath.

She looked for Sam with the vague expectation that something would now happen between them, something important and climactic. They would grab hands, for example, their fingers would lock together in mutual joy and they would smile down at Ruby while tears rained down their faces.

But it didn’t happen. They looked at each other and yes, they did smile, and yes, their eyes were full of tears, but something wasn’t quite right. She didn’t know who looked away first, she didn’t know if it was her coldness or his coldness, if she was blaming him or he was blaming her, but then Ruby began to cry, distressed by her sore throat from the tube, and the doctor started talking and it was all too late. It was another moment they’d never get back to do right.





chapter sixty-three



‘Dinner is ready!’ called Sam, and he sounded perfectly normal, not at all like the stranger who, less than one hour ago, had discussed separating. I think I’m done with us. Now he sounded just like Daddy, like Sam, like himself.

The smell of Sam’s signature dish, shepherd’s pie, filled the house. Clementine loved his shepherd’s pie but the girls hated it, which was annoying because it seemed like the sort of nutritious, kid-friendly food they should like, so every week they kept deluding themselves and trying again.

‘When will it ever stop raining?’ asked Holly as she turned off her iPad with all the technological insouciance of a millennium kid. ‘It is actually driving me crazy.’

‘Me too,’ said Clementine. ‘Ruby! Come on! Dinnertime.’

Ruby looked up from where she was sitting in the middle of a circle of dolls and soft toys. She had placed them around her in imitation of ‘story circle’ at day care, and had been pretending to read them a Curious George book, holding it up in the same way that her teacher obviously did, and carefully licking her finger each time she turned the page.

‘It’s nap time!’ said Ruby cheerfully, and knocked the toys into sleeping positions with a casual backhand. Hopefully she hadn’t learned that at day care too.

‘What’s for dinner?’ Holly ran to the table and sat herself up. She grabbed her knife and fork with ominous enthusiasm. ‘Pasta? It’s pasta, right?’

‘It’s shepherd’s pie,’ said Sam as Clementine strapped Ruby into the ‘big girl’ booster seat she now used instead of a high chair.

‘What?’ Holly slumped as if to news of a great injustice. ‘Shepherd’s pie? Again? We had it last night.’

‘You did not have it last night,’ said Sam evenly, putting the plate in front of her. ‘You had pasta with Grandma last night while Mummy and Daddy went out to dinner.’

‘There’s some still in the fridge!’ said Holly excitedly. ‘I remember! We didn’t eat it all! And Grandma said that –’

‘There’s none left in the fridge,’ said Clementine. ‘I ate it last night.’

‘What?’ cried Holly. Life was a series of travesties. ‘But you went to a restaurant!’

‘It wasn’t a very good restaurant, so we came home early,’ said Clementine. Mummy and Daddy can no longer stand to go out to dinner together. Mummy and Daddy no longer like each other very much. Mummy and Daddy might be ‘separating’.

‘What?’

‘Sit up straight, Holly,’ said Clementine mechanically.

Holly squawked.

‘Please don’t make that sound,’ said Clementine. ‘Please.’

Holly made the sound again but softer.

‘Holly.’

‘Yuck,’ said Ruby. She picked up her spoon and held it limply between her fingertips over the plate. She let it swing back and forth. ‘No fank you.’

‘I’ll give you “no fank you”,’ said Sam. ‘Come on, girls. Just a little bit.’

‘Mmmm, delicious,’ said Clementine, taking a mouthful. ‘Good work, Daddy.’

‘Well, I’m not eating any of it,’ said Holly. She folded her arms and pressed her lips together. ‘I have too many tastebuds.’

‘What do you mean you have too many tastebuds?’ said Sam as he determinedly shovelled food into his mouth.

‘Kids have more tastebuds than grown-ups, that’s why it tastes yucky,’ said Holly.