September 1936
She thought her eyes were open but it was so dark she couldn’t be sure. Was she still asleep? Still dreaming?
The steady beat of pain in her head suggested not.
She lay very still, hoping that might ease it, knowing that it wouldn’t. She tried to think around it, to grasp hold of something to anchor her, something comforting. She could hear rain on the window, steady and silvery. Was it still the rainy season? Her lips were dry but her skin was sticky with sweat, and with an effort she turned her head to see if the ceiling fan was turning, but her eyes burned and the tent of darkness above her was too thick to penetrate.
She should call someone. Ring the bell for Polly. Even as the thought formed in her head she knew it was wrong and that Polly wasn’t there. For Lwin, or Than, then? Or Rupert. Would Rupert come?
A pale rectangle emerged from the gloom, close at hand. Memory stirred. Her birthday. Alice had sent a picture. Another pain joined the throb in her head, sharp and sudden, like a knife in her chest. She drew her legs up, curling around the emptiness like she had in the nursing home on the night that Alice was born. Such love, blossoming and bleeding inside her, expanding into the void of her misery. Alice. She wanted to pick up the picture, to look at it again, but the pale outline of it shimmered and shifted, beyond her reach. Instead she went to clasp the aquamarine pendant around her neck, warm and heavy between her breasts, her touchstone and talisman through all these years.
She heard her own cry of anguish.
Gone. All gone.
Footsteps outside. Voices and hands. A light switched on, making the pain bounce wildly around her head. A stinging pinch on her arm and then warmth, spreading upwards. Relief as the light dimmed again and quiet darkness returned.
She felt herself slipping back into numbness, and didn’t resist. Someone was standing at the foot of the bed, watching, and she felt comforted by that. Not Polly. Not Lwin or Than or Rupert. A nurse. She opened her eyes a crack to see which one and felt a flash of delighted surprise.
‘Flick …!’
‘I’ve been waiting for you, darling,’ she said, and laughed. ‘Doesn’t that make quite a change?’