Sometimes I Lie(34)

Claire did everything: arranged to bring them home, organised their funeral, dealt with the solicitor. I cleared out their home, disposed of their things, distributed parts of their lives to other people in other places. Claire said she couldn’t bear to do that.

I’m still shocked by how very real they seemed to me in this hospital room. I must have wanted to share my solitude with someone so badly that my mind obliged by returning my parents to me as living memories. The dead are not so very far away when you really need them; they’re just on the other side of an invisible wall. Grief is only ever yours and so is guilt. It’s not something you can share. Claire was genuinely heartbroken when they died. She cried on the outside for weeks, I cried on the inside for ever. I’m starting to question everything my mind presents to me now, trying to sift through what is real and what might be a dream.

The door opens and someone pulls up a chair. He takes my hand and I know it’s Paul just from the way he holds it. His hands are mostly soft, except for a lump of hard skin on his middle finger where he grips his pen too hard when writing. He’s back. The police must have let him go. We sit in silence for a long time. I can feel him staring at me, he doesn’t say a word, just holds my hand. When the nurses come to turn and change me, he waits outside as requested. When they leave me, he is there again. I want to know what happened to him, I want to know what the police said, what it was they thought he had done.

A nurse comes in to tell him that visiting hours are over. He doesn’t reply but his face must have said something to her, because she says it’s fine for him to stay as long as he wants. Whatever the police thought he did, the nurses clearly think he’s a good husband. We sit in silence for a while longer, he can’t find the right words and mine have been taken away.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

Just as I’m wondering what for, I feel him lean over me and the routine panic sets in. I don’t know why I am afraid and then there is that flash of memory again, a man’s hands around my throat, it feels like I can’t breathe despite the machine forcing oxygen into my lungs. Paul’s hands are on my face, not my throat, but I don’t know what he is doing. I want to cry out as he pushes something into both of my ears. The soundtrack of my world deflates a little and I don’t like it at all; hearing is all I have left.

‘What are you doing?’ asks Claire and I am shocked to hear her voice. I don’t know how long she has been here; I didn’t know that she was.

‘The doctor said it might help,’ says Paul, taking my hand in his again.

‘The police let you go?’

‘It would appear so.’

‘Are you all right?’ she asks.

‘What do you think?’

‘I think you look like crap and smell like you need a shower.’

‘Thanks. I came straight here.’

‘Well, it’s over now.’

‘It’s not over, they still think that I . . .’

But it’s over for me because I can no longer hear them. My ears are filled with music, which pulses and bleeds down into my body, diminishing all other sensation until it is all that I know. Everything else, everyone else is gone and I am taken away from this place by a series of notes culminating in a memory; this is the song I walked down the aisle to when Paul and I got married. The lyrics about trying to fix someone you love pull me back in time. Even back then he wanted to fix me, when I didn’t know I was broken. He’s still trying.

The memory is a little torn around the edges, but it’s something real, so I slow it right down and hold on to it. I can see Paul in the corner of the memory, sliding a ring onto my finger, he is smiling at me and we are happy. We were happy then, I remember now just how much. I wish we could be that version of us again. Too late now.

It was a small ceremony; I’ve never had many friends. The truth is I just don’t like many people, not really. Everyone you meet is inevitably flawed. Once I know someone well enough to see all the cracks and blemishes, I don’t really want to spend time with them any more. I don’t avoid broken people because I think I’m better than them, I just don’t like looking at my own reflection. Besides, everyone I’ve ever got close to gets hurt in the end, that’s why I don’t bother to make any new friends any more. I’ve learned it’s best to just hold on to what you’ve got.

The track stops and I’m back. The music replaced by the rhythm of the ventilator accompanied by a less familiar beeping sound. A nurse has joined us. I can tell by the shh of her plastic apron as she sashays past the bed. The apron has got its wish, the room is silent. I paint my life by sounds, not numbers now, my overworked ears holding the brush. The beeping stops. When the nurse leaves, Paul and Claire resume their conversation and I can’t help wondering about the words I missed.

‘You have to stop blaming yourself, Paul. It was an accident.’

‘I should never have let her go.’

‘You’ve got to keep it together. She needs you and right now you’re a mess. You need to wash and rest and get your head sorted.’

‘They still think I was driving the car, that I’m some guy who beats his wife when he’s drunk and then forgets about it. I’m not that guy.’

‘I know.’

‘They hate me. They won’t give up, they’ll come back, I know it. I’m not leaving her again. You go if you want to.’