After the End(24)

“Are you OK?” Kirsty is a teacher friend of Ruby’s, and now, by proxy, of Leila’s.

“Rough day at work.”

“Tell me about it! I think my A-level history class expect me to sit their mocks for them, if the amount of revision they’ve done is anything to go by.”

“How will they do?”

There’s a glimpse of grudging pride on Kirsty’s face. “They’ll be all right. The straight passes and the straight fails will get what they deserve, and the ones in the middle will get a kick up the arse to revise properly for the real thing. That’s if they haven’t blown their chances of a uni place.” She takes a deep slug of wine, then grimaces. “Stressful!”

Leila’s phone vibrates. She checks the screen in case it’s work, but it’s a message from Jim, confirming a time.

“Ooh.” Ruby is looking at Leila’s phone. “Date?”

Leila turns the screen to the table. “It’s nothing.”

“Come on, don’t be like that.” She grabs at the phone, and something snaps in Leila—a breaking point brought on by too many hours at work and too much in her head and—

“For fuck’s sake, Ruby!” There is a split second’s silence around the table, before the hubbub of conversation resumes. “Sorry.” Leila touches her friend’s arm. “I’m sorry, Rubes.”

“Tough day?”

Leila nods. She wants to talk about it, but Ruby’s husband has put down his fork and is leaning across the table.

“Did you hear about the biology resits? Apparently the papers were ‘compromised.’” He makes quote marks in the air. There’s a break in conversation around the table; a collective “ooh” as everyone tunes in. Leila exchanges a glance of solidarity with Danni, a journalist and the only other non-teacher here.

“I wish my GCSE French paper had been compromised,” someone is saying. “My espèces de merde might stand a chance of passing, then.” There is raucous laughter at this, and Leila leans back against plush red velvet and thinks about Dylan. As Leila left work, delayed by a febrile seizure, she paused in the open doorway of Room 1. Keeley Jacobs, fresh from general pediatrics, was cradling Darcy in one arm, rocking her gently as the baby sucked hungrily on a bottle. As Leila watched, Darcy’s monitor began bleeping insistently, and Keeley deftly removed the bottle and waited for the baby’s breathing to stabilize before allowing her to continue. She caught Leila’s eye and smiled.

“Eyes bigger than her stomach, this one.”

In the middle bed, Dylan lay asleep, amid a tangle of tubes and wires. A thin feeding tube snaked from one nostril, and cannulas in both arms meant swift access when it was needed. Pip and Max sat next to him, their chairs pulled close together so that Pip could lean into her husband, his arm tight around her. They didn’t look up. They didn’t see Leila, or the tears that filled her eyes before she could blink them away.

“Did something happen today?”

Leila looks up, confused. Around the table, everyone’s desserts have arrived.

“At work,” Ruby says, scanning Leila’s face. “Did something happen?”

Leila shakes her head, not trusting herself to speak.

“Did you lose someone?”

Leila takes a sip of her drink to clear her throat. “No,” she says. “We didn’t lose anyone.”

Not yet.





nine





Pip


Max drives us home. I sit with my hands clasped in my lap, envying him the distraction of driving—the focus of gaze, the pattern of movement with his hands and feet—that means he has something to do. Something to think about other than Dylan.

Max’s car is less frequently used than mine—it spends as much time in airport car parks as on our drive—and so it bears fewer traces of car picnics and muddy walks, but nevertheless I know that if I got down on my knees and felt beneath the seats I’d find a raisin, a bread stick, an empty packet of the organic puffs that pass for crisps. Beside me, in the pocket of the door, is a CD of nursery rhymes. Behind me, Dylan’s car seat waits patiently for his next trip.

How can my son be a breath away from death, when evidence of his life is all around me? When I feel him in my heart, as surely as when I carried him in my womb?

I turn, and lay my cheek against the headrest, watching the buildings give way to hedgerows. I have made this journey two hundred and forty-two times. How many more times will I make it? How many more times before we leave PICU without saying See you tomorrow? Without kissing our child good night?

I have been thinking about death since the day Dylan was diagnosed with a brain tumour. Every outpatient appointment, every consultant review. Every round of chemo. And then, after he got pneumonitis and went to PICU, and he stayed there first for days and then for weeks. Bracing myself for a phone call at three a.m.: I’m sorry . . . we did everything we could . . . he just slipped away. I have imagined the crash team, the defibrillator, running feet, a racing trolley. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best, Cheryl said once. That’s how you cope. I told myself I was a realist, imagining that call from the hospital, but the truth is I was dancing with the devil. A staring contest; a game of chicken. If I think it, it won’t happen.