Three Things About Elsie(89)

‘Forgive me,’ said the nurse. ‘I think you are all around the same age?’ We nodded. ‘Do you sleep a lot?’

‘Not especially,’ I said.

‘I think then, perhaps, we need to look further than someone’s age to explain why they behave the way they do.’

We all agreed with her, and I found a watery smile.

‘Ten minutes.’ This was not presented as a question, but as a starched, blue statement, and the nurse left us alone with Mrs Honeyman in the room washed with soap and sunlight.

Mrs Honeyman. I realised I didn’t know her first name, and I looked up at the felt-tipped board above the bed. Ruth Honeyman. Ruth.

‘Ruth?’ I said. There was not a flicker of acknowledgement, her eyes finding something no one else could see, her hands curled into fists on the bedsheets.

‘Ruth, it’s Florence. From Cherry Tree.’

Nothing.

‘We came to see if you were all right? If you needed anything?’

I heard Jack take a breath out of the silence. Everything was quiet, except a clock in the corner of the room, tutting away at the seconds.

‘Ruth, we need to talk to you.’ I drew a chair up to the side of the bed and tried to take one of her fisted hands. ‘We haven’t got long and we need to talk to you about Gabriel.’

Now she looked at me, eyes wide and white, busy with anxiety. ‘He’s not my Gabriel.’

‘We know he isn’t,’ I said.

‘But we can’t tell anyone,’ she whispered, and uncurled a finger to hold against her lips.

‘Try not to worry,’ I said.

‘The police are going to come asking, he said, and when they do, we’re to say it’s him.’

The fear stretched across her face.

‘What did he say to you? Whatever did he do to make you disappear like that?’ I said.

Mrs Honeyman lost herself in the distance again. I could hear her breathing. Soft, damp breaths held by a heart that had outstayed its time.

‘It wasn’t my fault.’ Mrs Honeyman wasn’t speaking to us any more. I wasn’t even sure if she was speaking to anyone at all, to be honest, because I know that sometimes words just need to be let go of, and it doesn’t really matter where they land. ‘I hadn’t been drinking. I just fell. Gabriel didn’t leave me because I murdered my own child. He just …’ She searched for a word. ‘… disappeared,’ she said eventually.

Her eyes met mine. For someone who was usually so noiseless and absent, her eyes were sharp. Quick. It felt as though they’d seen everything.

‘I missed my footing,’ she said. ‘Didn’t judge it properly. I reached out to save myself, but there was nothing there.’

Looking back, I think that was the moment I started to remember what happened with Ronnie, when the pieces stitched together and finally made sense.

‘He didn’t leave you, Ruth,’ I said.

‘He didn’t?’

‘No. He really didn’t. I can’t explain right now, because I’m only beginning to understand it myself,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to just believe me. He didn’t leave you. He never left you.’

I reached for her hand, and when she reached back, something fell from her fingers. It was a fossil. An ammonite. A spiral of the past; proof of a time long since gone, a reminder of something that once existed. I picked it up.

‘I know where she’s been,’ I said.

I held on to the ammonite in my pocket as we walked along polished corridors and out of the hospital. Mrs Honeyman wouldn’t take it back. Perhaps it had served its purpose for her, or perhaps she gave it to me for safekeeping. Either way, I couldn’t let it go. We walked slowly, finding our thoughts in careful steps, and when we finally got outside, the wall of bright sunlight and the smell of the morning made it feel as though we’d been on a very long journey.

We sat in the hotel dining room, still in our coats, staring at a blank table stripped of everything except a thick white cloth. I put the ammonite in front of us. It looked so insignificant. So small. It was strange to think something so unremarkable held thousands of years of history inside itself.

Handy Simon walked past and backtracked when he saw what was in front of us.

‘A fossil,’ he said, rather unnecessarily. He peered down at it. ‘Fascinating things, fossils.’

‘They are,’ I said.

‘Sometimes, they’re the only evidence we have to prove something once existed.’

‘Do you really think that’s true?’ I said.

Simon straightened up and folded his arms. ‘Geographical Scientist magazine thinks it’s true.’

‘But what about you, Simon? What do you think? What’s your own opinion?’

Simon swallowed a little air to help him digest the question. ‘I don’t rightly know,’ he said after a while. ‘I’ve never really thought about it.’

‘Well, why don’t you think about it now?’ Jack asked.

Simon shifted his weight and took a large breath. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to be able to see something for it to be significant.’

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘Before this fossil was found’ – he had another little peer for good measure – ‘it was still influential, wasn’t it? It still changed the universe in some way. We just don’t know how.’