5

Michele can hear the birds outside. The grey light of a breaking dawn is creeping through the blinds. She looks towards the alarm clock. Half past four. Her head is hurting. She gets up and puts on her dressing gown. In the kitchen she swallows two Nurofen. They didn’t make love last night. By the time they returned home from the dinner party they were both too tired. The birds outside are by now wide awake and very noisy. Michele can still feel the alcohol in her system. She had a glass of champagne to start with, followed by a couple of glasses of wine. She knows she shouldn’t mix alcohol, even sparkling and red. It will probably take all day for her body to deal with it. She fills a glass of water. Its tastelessness instantaneously makes her feel sick.

She climbs the stairs to the top floor. Thea’s room resembles an empty shell, long since evacuated. Not even a child ghost lingers here any longer. She is now working for an advertizing firm in New York. Michele walks around the bed and opens the cupboard. When Thea visited over Easter, Michele asked her to sort out anything she no longer wanted. The rest they stored in the attic. Michele runs her hand along the empty hangers. She wants to redecorate the room. Thea can use it when she comes home, but it can also serve as a general guestroom. The only personal touches left are some postcards still stuck to the wall above the desk. Michele removes them, scraping off the Blu-Tack with her fingernail. She should call the decorators next week.

Felix’s room still appears far more inhabited. He left for university two years ago and comes back most holidays. This summer, though, he’s working in a bar in Brighton. It will be another couple of years at least before he moves out for good.

‘Watch it, Michele. He might not move out at all,’ Hilary likes to tease her sister. ‘You’ve been incredibly lucky with Thea. She’s an independent girl. Always has been. She’s ambitious, like you. Felix, on the other hand, seems to go more for comfort. Like most young men nowadays. He’ll crawl back into the warm nest once he’s finished university.’

Michele sits down at his drum kit. She picks up two drumsticks, pretending to play. But suddenly she worries that she might hit them by mistake and returns the sticks to their place. On the middle floor she opens the balcony door in the study. A cool breeze enters the room. This is Jim’s and her favourite room in the house. Ceiling-high bookshelves fill every inch of wall space. She sits down in one of the two big old armchairs in the middle of the room. She puts her feet up on the coffee table. They sit here to read books, to listen to music or to make love on the Persian rug in front of the roaring fire in winter, or in the dark in front of the open balcony doors in summer. The wind plays with the light curtains. She closes her eyes. She feels the hard floor beneath her back and feels Jim thrusting inside her. She hears herself laughing, pulling Jim’s head down, asking him to be quieter. ‘Shh, the children might hear us.’ She sits on top of him and feels the fire on her naked body and his hands on her buttocks. But these are all images from years ago.

 

Michele slides into bed. Jim hasn’t stirred. His breathing is deep and regular. She moves closer to his back. She puts an arm around him and places her hand on his chest and her nose against his neck.

 

The phone rings far away. They are in a grotty hotel, Jim, the children and her. The children are still young. The sheets on the beds are dirty. Michele wants to go and complain, but Jim says, ‘I don’t like it when you complain.’ Then she hears the phone ring. She knows that it isn’t her mobile. Nevertheless, she finds herself looking in her handbag. The phone keeps on ringing. It’s becoming louder. Then it is quiet. She looks down the long hotel corridor. She feels someone tapping her shoulder.

‘Michele? Darling.’

She senses Jim sitting down on the bed next to her. His hand is resting on her shoulder.

‘I just had a dream,’ she mumbles, pulling the duvet up to her chin. She wants to go back to the hotel to see what happens next. Why did they visit the hotel in the first place? And the children were so young. She has a feeling that they’ve been to this hotel before, have left something there and have now returned to fetch it. She needs to get back to her dream to figure out what she was supposed to find.

‘Michele.’ Jim shakes her shoulder gently again. ‘Sorry to wake you, darling. But your sister is on the phone. She’s distraught and refuses to go until you’ve spoken to her.’

Michele finally opens her eyes. For a moment she lies totally still. The dream has gone.

‘What time is it?’ she asks.

‘Eight fifteen.’

She turns on her back and looks at Jim. He is fully dressed.

‘I was just on my way out to get some croissants. It’s a beautiful day.’ He rises to his feet.

‘I was thinking . . . we haven’t been to an exhibitions for months. I also wondered about going to a matinee.’

He is already at the door. He stops for a moment and points to the study, whispering, ‘Your sister . . . Don’t forget.’

Michele is tempted to turn around, pull the duvet over her head and go back to sleep. She feels drowsy and heavy. But then she sits up, throws off the cover and jumps out of bed. She takes the phone from the desk in the study and sits down in the chair facing the open balcony door. Jim must have opened it. She rests her head against the back and looks up into the clear blue sky. They should go on holiday. Somewhere warm. As soon as the Sea Shelf 3 deal is finalized.

‘Hi, Hil. It’s me.’

‘Thank God you are up . . .’

Hilary starts sobbing. Michele lifts her outstretched right foot and looks at her painted toenails.

‘Mum is in hospital.’

Michele lets go of her foot and straightens her back.

‘Why?’

Again sobbing.

‘Hil, what happened?’

‘She fell down the stairs.’

‘Which stairs?’

‘The big ones.’ More sobbing. ‘Apparently she tried to call . . . to call you. As she was lying at the bottom of the stairs.’ Sobbing. ‘She couldn’t move. But the mobile was in her skirt pocket. And then she fell and then she tried to call you, but you didn’t pick up . . .’

Michele stands up and walks out on to the balcony. The wooden decking feels cool under her bare feet. She forbids her mind to race ahead.

‘Has she broken anything? Is she conscious?’

Michele pauses to give Hilary a chance to catch her breath. The panting becomes less audible. A pigeon settles on a branch in the pear tree, gently bobbing up and down in the wind.

Hilary’s sobbing resumes.

‘I can’t do anything if you don’t tell me the facts,’ Michele says.

‘The facts, the facts, the facts! You always want to know the damn stupid facts. I’ll give you the facts: Mum needed our help last night and we weren’t there. She was at the bottom of the stairs all night, knocking on the neighbours’ wall. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. All night long. Until they finally woke up and wondered about the noise and knocked on her door. Then they called the police, who broke the door down.’

The pigeon looks incredibly happy and content on its branch. It is quite amazing how such a thin branch can support such a fat pigeon.

‘Why didn’t she call an ambulance if she had the phone in her hand?’

‘I don’t know!’ Hilary screams hysterically. ‘How should I know? Perhaps her battery was flat.’

Michele realizes that this was the wrong question to ask.

‘Has Mum broken anything, Hilary? Is she conscious?’ Michele repeats, her voice now stern.

‘She is so confused. And so frightened.’

‘What does the doctor say?’

A vision of their mother in a hospital bed, unable to move, has appeared in Michele’s mind.

‘I haven’t spoken to any doctor. Mum called. We need to go and pick her up.’

Michele interrupts her sister. ‘Which hospital?’

‘They say she’s fine. Didn’t you hear what I said?’ Hilary is beside herself. ‘They won’t tell you anything different. She is fine. But she isn’t. And she won’t ever be. Do you understand? And it’s our fault. I promised Dad we’d look after Mum.’

‘Hilary, I am sorry but I’m not going to talk to you any further until I’ve spoken to the hospital myself.’

The pigeon suddenly opens its wings and flies away. The branch continues to bob. There is a silence at the other end of the phone. Michele fixes her gaze on the bobbing branch. It anchors her.

‘What’s the name of the hospital?’

‘Chelsea and Westminster.’

‘Which ward?’

‘I don’t know. And there is no point ringing them. You won’t be able to speak to anyone there. We need to go.’

‘We will go. I will get dressed and pick you up.’

Michele cuts the line before her sister has time to say anything else. She steps from the balcony inside. For a moment she stands motionless at the desk, gathering her thoughts. Then she sits down, wakes the computer out of sleep mode and Googles the hospital to check the phone number. The hospital confirms that her mother was admitted, but no doctor is available to talk to Michele.