Blood Sisters(60)

‘We’d just … started to. Kitty … Kitty wouldn’t hold my hand. And then … the car came straight at us. The Wrights’ car with the L plate on the front.’

David’s fists were clenched. ‘I’m going to kill that kid.’

Something else wasn’t right. I could feel it.

‘Is Vanessa in an induced coma too?’

Mum’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m sorry, Ali-bean.’

Ali-bean. The nickname Mum had used when it was just the two of us. ‘I’m afraid Vanessa’s dead. And Crispin’s mother too.’

Dead? Both of them? My skin froze as her words sank into my head. That couldn’t be right. Could it?

Because if it was, I had blood on my hands. And on my soul.

What would Mum say when she knew the truth? It would only be a matter of time now.

Because when Kitty finally came round, she’d tell everyone exactly what happened.

We were allowed to see my sister through a window in Intensive Care. But we couldn’t go in. Not yet. There were too many people doing things to her. Checking the monitor, which was making that awful high-pitched shrieking noise every now and then. ‘Don’t worry too much about that,’ said one nurse. ‘It’s only because it’s just rising above the average. It usually steadies again.’

But what if it didn’t?

I could see Mum and David were thinking the same. But neither wanted to say so. Instead, we just stood there. Holding hands. I was between them. Mum’s hand on the left. David’s on the right. Never had I felt so close to them before. It had taken Kitty’s accident to do this.

Only a matter of time …

The bleeper got louder. It continued to shriek. It wasn’t falling down to the average line.

Yes it was.

Collectively, we breathed a sigh of relief.

Meanwhile, Kitty lay in a bed with wires all over her body. She was wearing a kind of cradle cap. There were more wires coming out of that. Her face was covered with bandages. Her left arm too.

A trolley passed behind us. A grey-faced woman was lying on it. Not young. Not old. Her eyes were closed. There was a drip attached to her arm. She was being taken into a side room. Another trolley passed in the opposite direction. There was an air of calm urgency in this place. Like a small, intense little community. A world, I told myself, which hung on by its fingertips every day while I and everyone else carried on as normal. Until chance took one of us inside.

Nothing mattered more than life, I realized, my eyes returning to Kitty. Why hadn’t I understood that before? Not long ago, I had wished she was dead. And yet, here I was, praying my sister would survive. Prepared to forgive her for all her slights and insults. Willing her to wake up. To let us start again.

The bleep kicked into action once more. The three of us held our breaths. Waited for it to subside like it did before. But it was carrying on. Higher. More persistent.

‘What’s happening?’ cried out Mum.

‘It’s all right,’ snapped David, as though reassuring himself too.

‘High-frequency alert,’ said one of the nurses urgently.

A white coat rushed into the room. Another attempted to usher us out but Mum was having none of it. ‘What’s going on?’ she growled. A protective mother, crouching over her cub.

‘There are signs of a blood clot.’ The white coat’s face flashed pity. ‘We’re doing what we can.’

A nurse in blue and white stripes offered tea. No takers.

‘Don’t let our daughter die,’ begged David.

Die? No! She couldn’t. But at the same time, I was aware of something awful rising in my chest. Something I didn’t even want to acknowledge. But there it was. Refusing to go away.

The thought that if Kitty died, I’d be off the hook.

They managed to sort out the blood clot. I couldn’t say exactly how long it took. Time, I was beginning to understand, was a weird thing in hospital. It seemed to pass really slowly and then, all of a sudden, it was dark outside when you still thought it was afternoon.

‘Will there be any long-lasting damage?’ Mum had asked. The white coat had hesitated. There were heavy bags under his eyes. ‘I’m afraid it’s difficult to say at this stage.’

I felt relief. Hope. And fear. All at the same time.

The uncertainty was the worst part. ‘If we knew exactly how bad she is, we could get our heads round it,’ David said as we drove home. I knew what he meant. But I also wished I hadn’t agreed to the suggestion about going back for clean clothes and a rest while Mum stayed with Kitty.

It was awkward, being in the car alone with David. He kept pushing me to go over the ‘sequence of events’ again and again until I felt my head would explode. ‘Stop it!’ I yelled finally. ‘I can’t talk about it any more. Don’t you understand?’

Then his face had crumpled and, to my horror, he began to cry. I found myself briefly touching his hand in sympathy, even though he was driving.

The first sight, as we opened the door, was Kitty’s new turquoise trainers. Just like Vanessa’s. Now they sat on the shoe rack, redundant. ‘She never got a chance to wear them,’ whispered David.

Flying up the stairs, I tore into Kitty’s bedroom. Maybe she was still here! Maybe the accident had never happened. Shivering, I took in the school blouse flung on the floor. A copy of a teenage magazine with a coffee-mug stain. Doodles on her desk. A poster of S Club 7 on the wall above the bed. A teddy, next to a mascara wand on the dressing table. It was all there.