“I’m taking you as far as The Great Ouse,” said Danny. “We’re meeting Barbara there.”
“Barbara! But she’s not—”
“—dead. No, she’s not. But there are people who can pass between. I phoned her earlier, and we arranged a meeting place. She’ll take you the rest of the way.”
“What about you? Will I see you again?”
“Not any time soon, I hope.”
“But—”
“Look, I’m fine. Me and Jules are going to Spain. We’re going to walk the Camino de Santiago. But I’ll keep an ear to the ground for how things are with you. I’ll look out for you.”
“It’s been horrible since you went.”
“I know. It’s shit what happened. Completely buggered up my plans.”
“Mum has been…”
“The good thing is, I might get to meet Isambard Kingdom Brunel one day, if I’m lucky.”
“After the walk, we’re going to Bristol,” said Jules. “We’ve heard he’s sometimes seen round there. Then we’re going to Lindisfarne to visit Nadia and Berta.”
“You have a lot of plans.” Jen sank into her seat. The landscape outside the window was flat as the bottom of a snowdome. It stretched on and on, marked by a windfarm in one place, silos in another. The road passed over a drain, long and straight, slicing through the land.
“You have life,” said Danny. “You can make a difference in the world. You aren’t just tourists like us.”
“You’re making a difference to me.”
“Yes,” Jules turned to look at Danny and Jen could see her eyes were shining, “we are helping your sister. We can do something.”
Danny smiled at her, then put his hand on her thigh and squeezed.
“Bloody hell, you two have moved fast. You only just met.”
“Some things are just clearer here,” said Jules.
The journey took just over an hour, but it seemed like no time at all before Ely Cathedral appeared on the horizon. A few more miles, and they pulled up at the side of the road. It was as familiar to Jen as her gran’s face, the back of her brother’s head.
“You have to get out and walk here,” said Danny. “You’re meeting Barbara in the marina.”
“What about you?”
“This is where we say goodbye.”
Danny and Jules got out of the car as well as Jen. There was a footpath at the side of the road leading down to the river.
“Barbara said she’d meet you at the bridge,” said Danny.
Jen didn’t want to cry. She swallowed and squared her shoulders.
“Will you look out for Ethie?” she asked. “Make sure she’s OK?”
“She’ll be fine once you’re back,” said Danny.
“No, I don’t think you realise. She’s frightened. She needs help.”
“All will be well,” said Jules. “All will be well.”
She hugged Jen, and then Jen turned to her brother and hugged him.
“I’ll still talk to you,” she said in his ear. “I’m not going to leave you alone.”
He squeezed her tight. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said. “What would eternity be like without little sis nagging in my ear?”
Then he and Jules got back into the car and drove away, and Jen was alone at the side of the road.
She was tempted, for a moment, to stay there and stick out her thumb. To catch a lift somewhere, anywhere. But after a few minutes she turned and walked down the path into the marina.
Aunt Barbara was standing in the middle of the bridge. There was someone else with her, a man that Jen had never seen before. He was tall with a goatee beard and grey hair. He saw Jen approaching before Barbara did, and nudged her. Barbara turned and saw her niece. She walked towards her, holding out her hands.
Jen stepped forward slowly, one foot, then the other. By the time their fingers touched, she was fully on the bridge.
“Jen,” whispered Barbara.
Jen said nothing.
Barbara walked backwards slowly, bringing Jen with her into the middle. “Can I take you home?”
Jen nodded. “That’s why I’m here,” she said. “Danny and Gran, they persuaded me to come.”
They reached the man with the goatee. He was watching them, and as Barbara passed him, he stepped forward.
“Come on Jen,” said her aunt. “Keep walking, we’re nearly there.”
“But who…”
“Keep looking at me.” Barbara’s tone was sharp. “We need to get over the bridge.”
Jen had passed the man now. They were nearly at the other end. She felt his hand on her shoulder and turned to look at him.
“Jen, don’t stop!”
“Have you seen my son?” said the man.
“Who is your son?” Jen looked into the man’s face. She knew those eyes. She’d seen those eyes in another face. “Finn?”
“Have you seen him? Where is he?”
The man stepped closer, but Barbara pulled her, and his hand slipped from Jen’s shoulder. Barbara continued walking backwards, faster now, pulling Jen with her. Jen looked back at the man.
“You’re Finn’s father?”
“Was he there with you?”
Barbara stepped down from the bridge and Jen fell against her. She kept falling, and put out her hands to catch herself, but there was nothing there. Her hands grasped something soft, and she realised her eyes were closed. There was a strange smell, like disinfectant or blood.
“Jen?”
The voice was close. It sounded the way a voice did in a room, not outside. Jen tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt heavy.
“Finn.” The name fell from her lips in a sigh that was barely audible.
“Jen, did you say something? Can you hear me?”
The voice was her mother’s. Jen felt someone grasping her hand. She managed to lift her eyelids a fraction. There was light, there was a face, there was something stuck in the back of her hand.
“I think you should call the nurse,” said another voice. Aunt Barbara.
She could hear something beeping.
“Look at the monitor,” said Barbara’s voice.
“Nurse, nurse, doctor!” Her mother was further away now, and shouting. “I think she’s waking up!”
Then there were more people in the room. Jen could hear them moving about, she could feel someone lift her wrist, and then someone opened her eye with their fingers and bright light flooded in. Jen flinched.
“Did you see? Did you see that?” said Donna.
“Yes, I saw,” said Barbara.
“I think you should leave, just for the moment,” said another voice. Jen couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. “We need to check all her signs.”
“But she’s just woken up! You can’t send me away!”
“Donna, she’s not really awake yet. Let them look after her, come on.”
There was a noise like a sob, then someone was breathing close to her face, and her mother’s voice was right up close. “Don’t you go away again Jen, stay with us. Don’t leave.”
Jen let her eyelids relax and darkness enveloped her. She fell into a deep sleep.
She didn’t dream, but she was aware of time passing, time spent in the dark. It didn’t feel threatening, there wasn’t anything lurking. It was more like a huge blanket wrapped around her, covering everything except a small gap so she could breathe. She could peek out, but she didn’t want to. Not yet.
She heard voices every now and again. Sometimes they were listing numbers or using words she didn’t understand. Her mother’s voice came and went.
“How is this different from before? How can you tell she’s only sleeping?”
A low, patient voice spoke about vital signs, brain activity and REM. Jen stayed under the blanket, grateful to have somewhere to hide.
Eventually, she opened her eyes. She was in a hospital bed. She was attached to monitors. There was something uncomfortable between her legs. A breathing tube covered her face.
Her dad was sitting on one side of the bed, next to an empty chair. Rebecca was sitting in the chair on the other side. Neither of them were looking at her.
She lifted her left hand, which was less encumbered than her right, and took the tube away from her face. Immediately Steve and Rebecca looked up at her.
“Jen!”
“I’ll fetch your mum.”
Jen glared at her dad and shook her head. Her mouth was too dry to speak. Moving her head made her feel sick. He stayed put.
She licked her lips and opened her mouth, but there was no sound.
“Here.” Rebecca put a bottle of water to Jen’s lips, poured a little into her mouth. It tasted wonderful, like the purest, cleanest, sweetest drink on earth.
“More?” asked Rebecca, and Jen nodded. It felt like there was a huge weight in the back of her skull. Rebecca poured more water between Jen’s lips, and she swallowed. Swallowing hurt and she closed her eyes for a moment.
“Jen?” She felt her dad take her hand between both of his. His skin was warm and dry. She could smell him, the familiar smell of engine oil and soap.
“I’ll fetch the doctor,” he said, and hurried away.
“More water?” Rebecca put the bottle to Jen’s lips again, and this time the swallowing was less painful.
“Is Finn here?” Jen managed to say.
Rebecca smiled at her, but before she could speak Steve came back in with a doctor. He was softly spoken and Jen recognised his voice from before.
“Hello Jennifer.” She looked at him. His eyes were deep brown and his skin was the colour of creosote on wood. “Can you hear me, Jennifer?”
She nodded. The weight in her skull shifted and she winced.
“Just blink,” said the doctor. “Blink once to say yes.” His hair looked like dark silk. Jen imagined touching it. “Does it hurt when you move?”
She blinked.
“You’ve been lying still for a long time; your muscles are out of practice. You must take it slowly.”
She blinked again.
Just then Donna came into the room. She stopped inside the door and stared at Jen.
“Oh my God, you’re awake,” she said. “Why didn’t someone fetch me?” Her face crumpled. “Jen, are you really back?”
Jen blinked.
“That means yes,” said Steve.
Donna sat down hard and covered her face with her fingers. She looked at Jen through the gaps and wailed. “I’m so happy. Oh Jen, I’m so happy.” Steve put his arm round her shoulder.
Jen looked back at Rebecca.
“Finn,” she whispered.
“What was that? What did she say?” Donna leaned forward.
The doctor looked at Rebecca questioningly.
Rebecca shrugged, “It sounds like she’s saying Finn.”
Jen blinked again and again.
“Who’s Finn?” Donna asked “Did he do something to you? Did he hurt you? Was it him that…?”
Jen shook her head. Her mother disappeared like she had been pushed under water, then resurfaced again. Jen’s stomach clenched.
“Do you want to see him? This Finn?” asked the doctor.
She blinked at the doctor.
“I’ve never heard of anyone called Finn. Have you heard her talk about him?” Donna asked Rebecca.
“No, I’ve never heard of Finn either.”
“Could he be someone from university?”
Rebecca shook her head, then stopped. “There was someone,” she said.
“A boyfriend?”
Jen blinked.
“How can she have a boyfriend I don’t know about? She’s been lying here for three months, so where is he? Why hasn’t he been looking for her?”
Three months.
“No, it was someone she’d seen that she liked. I never saw him. I thought she might have made him up. She liked his coat.”
Jen blinked again.
“Well, how can we find him? Is he something to do with this whole mess? Was it because of him…?”
Her dad must have seen the panic in her eyes, because he said “Shh” to Donna, who was astonished and put her hands in her lap. Steve picked up Jen’s hand again. Despite the attachments, his hands still swamped hers. When she was tiny, there were days when Donna was angry. Not necessarily with her. Often she was angry with Danny, or her mother, or with her sister Barbara who she never saw, which made her more angry than anything. She would slam about the kitchen, opening doors, putting things away as loudly as she could, swearing. Jen would creep onto Steve’s lap in the living room and together they watched kids’ TV until Donna had calmed down. That was before she found God. Recently she had missed out the swearing, most of the time.
“It’s OK, love,” said Steve. “We’ll see what we can do. We’ll find Finn.”
Sometimes she fell asleep on her dad’s lap. He never moved. An hour later when Donna came in to tell them tea was ready and Jen woke up, he’d still be watching Blue Peter or Art Attack. She remembered the dark blanket. She closed her eyes.
When she woke, it was night. Aunt Barbara was sitting in the chair on the right and Rebecca was in one of the chairs on the left. The other chair was empty.
“Hello, love,” said Barbara.
“Hello.”
The word slipped out smoothly. Jen moved her arms and used her elbows to shuffle up the bed a bit.
“Want to sit up? You don’t need to do it yourself.”
Barbara pressed a button on the side of the bed and the top end rose up so that Jen was in a half-seated position.
“I can talk.”
“That’s brilliant. You’re doing really well.”
Barbara poured her a glass of water from the jug on the table. She picked it up and moved it to Jen’s lips, but Jen took the glass from her. Her hand shook, and she only managed one sip before Barbara had to take it back.
“Have I really been here for three months?”
They both nodded.
“Since June,” said Rebecca.
“Do you remember what happened?”
“The ship in the bottle,” said Jen.
“What?”
“I kept a piece of the glass.”
“Did you know you were…?”
“It was sharper than I realised.”
“The vicar found you, in a church. He was locking up for the day. Lucky he saw you, because you’d hidden behind an altar. You’d lost so much blood that your brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen.”
“Did you find Finn?”
They exchanged a glance, and Jen sat further forward on the bed. “What’s happened? Where is he?”
The man on the bridge had been looking for Finn. He must have been his father.
“You need to rest,” said Barbara.
“No!”
Her aunt smoothed Jen’s hair back from her forehead.
“It’s OK, Jen,” she said. “We’re all here for you.”
“Where is Finn?” said Jen.
“We phoned the university,” said Rebecca. Barbara glared at her, but Rebecca carried on. “They only had one person enrolled called Finn, but he can’t be the person you met.”
“Rebecca, Donna doesn’t want her getting upset.”
“She’s already upset.”
They stared at each other across the bed, then Barbara got to her feet. “You better be right about this,” she said, and walked out of the room.
Jen looked at Rebecca. “Well?”
Now that Barbara had gone, Rebecca looked much less sure of herself. She fiddled with her hands in her lap and didn’t meet Jen’s gaze.
“What do you mean, he can’t be the one I met?” said Jen. “I did meet him. He’s studying geology. We’re in love.”
Rebecca looked up sharply. She shook her head as though to clear it. “There was a Finn, and he did study geology, though I don’t know how you knew that. He was in the year above us.”
“We went to Whitby together. He loves fossils and dinosaurs.”
“No, Jen, you can’t have. He wasn’t at uni when we were there.”
“He bought me a jacket.”
Rebecca’s eyes had tears in them, but her face was still. “Finn went on a field trip to France the year before we even went to York.”
“Yes, to Angeac-Charente, the quarries full of fossils. He should be back now.”
“He fell from a ledge. He landed on his head.”
“What?”
“He’s on a life support machine in Paris. He’s been there for over a year. So you can’t have met him.”
Jen swung her legs across the bed and sat up.
“Lie down Jen, you’re not ready to get up yet.”
Why hadn’t she looked for him at the cathedral? Why hadn’t she demanded he come with her to the bridge? If she’d brought him with her in the car, he would have met his dad on the bridge. He’d be waking up right now in a hospital in Paris.
“Can you fetch the doctor?” she said.
Rebecca stood up straight away. “Is something wrong?”
Jen laughed out loud. “Yes, something’s wrong. I need to find out how soon I can leave this place and get to Paris.”