The Things I Know(78)

‘My mum. Ida Potts.’

‘Ah, yes,’ she said, nodding along the corridor. ‘Second bed from the end on the left.’ She turned and pointed with her arm extended, her hand flicking at the wrist like a flight attendant in the middle of the safety briefing.

They ran then, and as the adrenaline that had fuelled him since he first took the call from his Auntie Joan a few hours before began to ebb, he began to shake with fatigue, lines of worry etched upon his face. Thomasina rubbed his arm and again kissed his shoulder when they arrived, tiny gestures designed not to intrude but to let him know she was close.

The two stared at the woman in the bed. Thomasina noticed that she was smaller than when she pictured her curled into her chair at home, and she also looked older – small and old, with fear and tension shading her furrowed brow even as she slept.

She heard the gasp of distress from Grayson as he sat down on the plastic chair by the side of the bed and placed his satchel on his knees, watching his mother sleep. His shoulders sloped in relief at finally being with her.

Gently, Thomasina placed her hand on his shoulder, and he jumped, as if he’d quite forgotten she was there. ‘Do you want me to leave you alone?’

He shook his head. ‘I feel like I should take her hand and whisper words of comfort, but we’re just not that kind of people.’

‘This isn’t a film. There’s no blueprint, Grayson. You do whatever you feel is right,’ she said, gently rubbing his back.

He nodded again and gave a small smile. She stood by his side, both of them watching as his mother drifted in and out of dreams, head back, mouth a little slack, the oxygen coming from somewhere overhead, filling her lungs through a snug-fitting mask over her mouth and nose. Despite the intimacy of the situation, Mrs Potts was still very much a stranger and Thomasina felt her presence to be a little intrusive. But as Grayson reached back and took her hand in his, she felt all doubt diminish, knowing she was where she should be.

Their breathing slowed and the atmosphere grew a little calmer as she and Grayson settled into the environment. Their new-found peace, however, was shattered when his aunts came bustling on to the ward, carrying with them a fug of cigarette smoke that seemed even more repulsive in this sterile environment. The two women, almost carbon copies of their sister, were crying loudly, disturbingly so, as they approached the cubicle, dabbing at their eyes with damp bits of tissue and linking arms, as if this mutual physical support were necessary for them to remain upright. Thomasina couldn’t help but think that there was an element of performance in their manner.

‘Frightened us half to death, she did!’

‘I thought she was a goner!’

‘Called us and was all wheezy, breathless . . .’

‘By the time we got there she was on the floor – the floor!’

‘Shouting out for you, she was, but you’re here now.’

‘Yes.’ They more or less barged Thomasina out of the way in their eagerness to squeeze and pat their nephew’s flesh beneath their pudgy fingers. ‘He’s here now.’

‘Is she going to be okay, do you think?’ he asked softly, as if wary of triggering another wave of distress from his aunts.

‘They said she was lucky.’

‘Very lucky.’

‘She’s always been lucky.’

‘Except for picking that bastard – she wasn’t so lucky then.’

‘True.’

‘Fancy running out on your wife and child . . . Who does that?’

‘Bastard.’

‘Bastard.’

Thomasina saw Grayson sit up straight, as if their words were a slap across his cheek, and she wished they would either shut up or leave but was not in a position to request either.

‘This . . . this is Thomasina.’ He gestured towards her before turning his attention back to his mother.

She felt the gawp of the women graze her skin. It was a look that managed to be both disapproving and judgemental, leaving her in no doubt that they had been thoroughly briefed by their sister and already held fully formed opinions on her, the floozy!

‘Hi.’

They lifted their chins briefly in response.

She pictured driving along earlier on this very same day with Grayson’s new puddle-jumpers nestling on the back seat, her confidence high at having confronted Emery and the whole day feeling like sunshine . . . Now it felt like a lifetime ago.

The minutes ticked by and turned into an hour, which slipped into two. The aunts hovered around the bed, took turns at sitting in the chair on the opposite side from Grayson, rubbing their sister’s arm or crying into their soggy bits of tissue, which they rolled between their impatient fingers. Twice, at his insistence, Thomasina sat on Grayson’s vacated chair until the ache in her foot subsided, or she walked to the waiting room and back, aware of the silence of the women when she returned, as if she’d interrupted a delicate conversation. And, the way they greeted her with a semi-scowl, she suspected that the topic was herself.

‘I could do with a cup of tea.’

‘I could do with a cup of tea,’ the other echoed, parrot-fashion.

It might have been the mention of tea but, as the word left their mouths, Mrs Potts’s eyes flickered open.

‘There she is!’

‘Hello, darlin’!’

‘Don’t you worry, we’re all here, all of us!’