Sometimes I Lie(77)
Now
Tuesday, 3rd January 2017
‘You left me there.’
‘I’d been drinking, I shouldn’t have been behind the wheel. I was scared.’
‘You were scared? Did you even call for help?’
She looks away. ‘I thought you were dead.’
‘You hoped I was dead.’
‘That’s not true, don’t ever say that, I love you.’
‘You need me, you don’t love me. The two things are different.’
‘Do you know what would have happened if they found out I was driving? I have two young children who need me.’
‘I was pregnant. And now I’m not.’
‘I know. I’m so sorry. I would never deliberately do anything to hurt you, you know that.’
‘Have you told Paul?’
‘Told him what?’
‘That you were driving?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘Do you think he would have let you in here if I had?’
The anger hisses out of her then. ‘It was an accident, Amber. I was trying to help you. I was trying to get you to the hospital. Don’t you remember?’
‘I remember you fastening your own seat belt, driving really fast, then slamming the brakes. I remember me flying through the air.’
‘I had to stop.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘We were driving along, you were crying in pain and then you said something about a little girl in a pink dressing gown. I thought there was a child in the street. You screamed at me to stop.’
She empties her words into my ears and eventually they find me. I don’t know what’s real any more. I don’t know which version of events to believe. My sister’s or my own. The room attempts to nurse my wounds in the suspended quiet, but Claire tears out the stitches.
‘There was no child when I got out of the car, I never saw her. Either you imagined her or she ran away,’ she says.
Both.
I turn away, I can’t look at her any more. It took a lot of love to hate her the way I do.
‘I shouldn’t have left you there. But you should have told me about the baby. And you should have told me about him. This is what happens when we lie to each other.’
‘I didn’t lie.’
‘You didn’t tell me the truth either. I’ve looked him up, Edward Clarke. He was thrown out of medical school not long after you broke up with him.’
‘Because of the letters you wrote.’
‘Maybe. Either way, I was right, I knew there was something wrong with him. He took odd jobs at different hospitals until he got this one. I think he chose this hospital to be close to you. Do you understand? I think he’s been following you for years and I don’t think this is over. Tell me where he lives.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Yes, you do. Tell me. I won’t let him hurt you again. I won’t let anyone hurt you again.’
‘I’d like to sleep now,’ I say and close my eyes.
‘I brought this for you,’ she says, and I hear her put something down on the bedside table. I open my eyes long enough to look at it, but I don’t look at her. ‘I thought it might remind you who we were, who we could be again,’ she says. I don’t answer. The gold bracelet looks so much smaller than I remember, I’m amazed it ever fitted around my wrist. It’s the one she stole from me when we were children. My date of birth carved into the gold. Her date of birth too. Terrible twins. It still has the safety pin I used to mend it when she broke it. So fragile. I’m amazed she still has it, I want to touch it, but I don’t. I close my eyes and turn my back on her. I long for the silence to return and swallow me down into the darkness, I don’t want to hear any more. I get my wish. The door closes and I am left alone. The bracelet is gone and so is my sister.
After
Six Weeks Later 15th February 2017
I stand at the end of our bed, watching his face as he sleeps. Paul’s eyes move beneath his closed eyelids, and his mouth has fallen slightly open. He’s aged over the last couple of months, the lines have carved themselves deeper, the circles beneath his eyes a shade darker than before. I’m watching over a fully grown man and yet all I can see is a picture of vulnerability. I stand in the glorious silence that only the night can deliver and carefully consider whether I have made the right choice. I decide that I have. I won’t let my past dictate our future.
I’ve been home for just over a month now. After so long in the quiet darkness, it felt like sensory overload when I first left the hospital. The world seemed so fast, so loud and so real. Perhaps it was always that way and I just never really noticed before. It took a while to adjust, to process it all. I’ve been to the site of the accident, a trauma counsellor at the hospital thought it would be a good idea. There was a bunch of dead flowers by the tree. Someone kind must have thought that I died that night. I think a version of me did.
I am trying to move on. I have forgiven Claire now too, so much so that we offered to look after the twins while David and Claire had a romantic Valentine’s celebration yesterday. I thought they deserved some quality time alone together, I even prepared a special meal for them.
It was nice having the twins here. They had an afternoon nap in our spare bedroom, it was the first time they slept here and I kept checking on them to make sure they were OK. I stood in the doorway and stared at their pink cheeks, wild tufts of hair, both dreaming away like two peas in a pod. I’d stuck some luminous stars on the ceiling, which they seemed to love. I kept turning the light on and off to show them that stars can’t shine without darkness. They cried less than normal today, Paul was so good at knowing how to keep them happy. Speaking to them in the right tone, always making everything better. The house is silent again now. I check the time: 03.02.