Just Last Night(21)

It’s a level of cognitive dissonance that could make me faint. I’m going to faint. I must still be drunk, or this is a hallucination. I slide down the wall and crouch on the pavement, bag next to me, squatting.

“Are you alright?” Ed says. “I mean, no, you’re not alright,” he gabbles. “Is there anywhere to sit down?”

“I’m sat down,” I snap. “She texted me! This can’t be true. This is a mistake . . . I have the text here.” That I can’t read to you.

“When did she text you?”

“Not long after we left the pub . . . half eleven?”

“It happened just after midnight.”

My focus on the grimy ground swoops in and then out, in a way that suggests an imminent blacking out.

I put my hand on a wall to steady myself, and wonder why I’ve never noticed so much about walls before—the heat from the morning sun still in the brick, the rough, porous texture of it against my palm. The way the grainy mortar squeezes out like buttercream in cake.

“I need you to come to the hospital and meet me. I’ll be waiting outside the entrance of A&E at Queen’s Med. Can you get a taxi?”

“Yes,” I say, because this is what I’m supposed to say. I have no idea what I can and can’t do.

“Eve, this may sound stupid, but I don’t care. Walk to the car carefully, sit down if you feel light-headed, and look both ways crossing the road. You’ve had a huge shock. I want you to get here safely.”

“OK.”

“I’m not losing you too.”

The first hot tears leak from my eyes. My chest contracts and I can’t respond. He hasn’t lost Susie, we haven’t lost her?

“Call me again if you need to. I’m going to wait here until you arrive,” Ed says.

“Yes,” I squeak, and I drag at my face with my sleeve.

I end the call and stare at the gutter, a chips packet blowing along it in a light breeze. I can hear the electronic dinging of a car reversing in the next street, a song on the radio trickling from its wound-down window. I look up at the dirty paint-water gray of the cloudy sky.

Every single thing about this scene is humdrum, and yet I’ve been plunged into a dystopian science fiction. They’ve used the sets from my usual life.

How can all these people be living, how can everything be carrying on as usual, if Susie is dead?

She can’t be dead. Susie, dead? The single syllable is like a bullet, or an explosion. A profanity. The very idea is obscene, impossible, gruesomely ugly.

Reality has slipped ahead of me when I wasn’t concentrating, but I feel certain I can claw it back. If I feel strongly enough that this hasn’t happened, I can pull her back to me. This is a mistake. It has to be. But it needs my immediate attention to sort it out. I surprise myself with the strength of this conviction.

The door near me slaps open and Phil emerges. He double-takes at me as I rise shakily to my feet.

“Are you alright? Fuck me, you look like you’ve seen a ghost with its bollocks out. What were you drinking, Messer Schmitt Herbal Schnapps?”

“My best friend’s been killed,” I say, trying out this sentence for the first time, even though I think it has zero credibility. Phil’s face drops in horror.

“In a car accident. I have to go to the hospital. Can you tell Kirsty where I am if she checks in?”

“Jeezo, I’m sorry, Eve. Fuck! Sure,” he says.

“Thanks,” I say, shouldering my bag and walking mechanically toward the city center and the taxi stand.

I’m hovering somewhere outside my body, directing myself. I feel like a bag of clothes, held up by a skeleton.

Students from the nearby college pass by, chattering and whooping with laughter, as if this isn’t an abhorrent thing to be doing. As if it hasn’t happened.





9


Making sure I don’t throw up during the ride to the hospital is an unexpectedly useful distraction.

It forces me to prioritize the physical over the emotional and concentrate on swallowing, breathing, gripping the seat belt, and keeping my feet flat to the vibrating floor of the taxi.

Focus on what’s real and what’s present, worry about the future when it arrives, in a few short minutes’ time.

Once we’re outside the Queen’s Medical Center and start sweeping up the winding roads to the front entrance, and I see the red Accident & Emergency sign, abject terror washes over me. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more like a child in my life, including childhood. I want to run into the bushes and simply hide from this. I want an adult to make this alright, to protect me.

“Just here OK?” says the driver, peering at me curiously in the mirror.

“Fine,” I say and push a note into the tray in the window between us, before heaving myself out clumsily into the fresh air. I’m going to see Ed and when I see Ed, this will become real.

The thing is, you see, this can’t be true. It can’t be. But he’d never lie to me.

At first I can’t see him and my heart races. This was a prank. This was someone pretending to be Ed?! It hasn’t happened, it hasn’t happened, it hasn’t . . .

“Eve! Eve?” Ed calls to me and I look around. He’s rumpled in a T-shirt with his parka thrown over the top. His face twists, and collapses, as our eyes meet. I feel my own do the same. He belts over and throws his arms around me and I sink my face into the waxy cotton of his coat, and sob. I’ve never appreciated the solid six feet of Ed Cooper more, and I’ve done a lot of appreciating it. We grip each other as tightly and as desperately as if we’re on the deck of a sinking ship.