Twenty-five years earlier
I slide the receiver back into its cradle. The hall floorboards feel icy under my bare toes. The dawn light picks out a furring of dust on the mirror, and the ticking clock sounds like someone clucking their tongue, a steady beat of disapproval.
There’s a pad of footsteps and Becca appears, rubbing her eyes. “What time is it? Was that the phone?” At the sight of my face, her hands drop. “Has something happened?”
“That was Mum.”
She jerks her head.
“Nick’s in hospital.” My words and mouth feel disconnected. “He’s in a coma.”
Becca stares. Her lips purse like she’s going to say What? or perhaps Why? But nothing comes out.
I stumble on anyway. “They got to the Hotel okay but he was ill in the night. Drowsy and dizzy, then sick, and he got a rash on his skin . . . I think that’s what Mum said . . .” The phone call already seems hours ago. “And then he started having trouble with his breathing. Mum called a taxi to hospital. He fell unconscious on the way.”
Something is casting a dappled shadow across Becca’s face. The clock seems to get louder, nipping at the silence.
“What . . . caused it?” Becca asks at last.
“They’re running tests.”
Neither of us wants to say it. I don’t even want to think it.
“It couldn’t be,” Becca murmurs: the closest we can bring ourselves to facing the possibility. “It was only—”
“Exactly,” I cut her off, turning slightly away. “There’s no chance.” I stare into the kitchen, picturing myself at the counter tipping crushed tablets into a bottle. “Anyway, he’ll probably be okay. Surely he’ll be fine.” My legs buckle and I sink onto the floor, head between my knees.
“Even if he is, what if the tests show . . . ?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know what kind of tests they’ll do.”
“Shit.” Becca kicks the baseboard with her bare foot. “Oh, shit, shit, shit.”
“A coincidence,” I say, like a chant. “It’s just a coincidence.”
“I told you this was a bad idea.” She’s pacing now. I can see her feet going back and forth along the hall, chipped purple varnish on her toenails. “You had to talk me into it . . . crying, making me feel awful . . .”
I leap up. “I wasn’t faking that, Bec! Remember why we did it in the first place!”
She comes to a halt. Her shoulders droop and she presses a hand against her mouth.
“We did it for Mum,” I say in a tiny voice. “We only meant to shake him up.”
She nods, her head hanging. My eyes sting, my stomach feels scooped out.
“It might help them treat him,” Becca says.
“What?”
“If we tell them.”
Fear surges through me. I know she’s right. But the thought of confessing makes me want to run away and crawl under my bed.
“We could ring the hospital,” she says. “Do 1471 on the phone.”
I grab her arm. “What would we say?”
“I don’t know. That we think he might accidentally have taken some of”—she stalls as she looks into our bedroom, past her rumpled sleeping bag, toward the tub still sitting brazenly on the bedside table—“my pills?”
We both stare, breathing heavy and hard. I tell myself again that it can’t have been them, not a reaction so strong. Imagine if we confessed and it was nothing to do with us. Imagine what Mum would think of me, Auntie Rach, my teachers . . . Would I ever be allowed back to school? Would we go to prison?
“They won’t believe us.”
“We could tell them we’ve just noticed some missing. They won’t know it was us.”
“They will.” My fingers tighten on her arm. She doesn’t blink as she peers at me, a lattice of pink lines on her eyeballs.
Then she slides her arm free and smooths her pajama sleeve. She smooths mine, too, unnecessarily, the gesture a minuscule comfort to us both. There’s a long pause as I watch her weighing things up. My own thought processes are gagged by fear.
“I’m going to make us some tea,” she says hoarsely.
She walks into the kitchen, her footsteps soft, as though she’s tiptoeing. The tap hisses and a cupboard door swings. I lean against the rutted wallpaper, shivering in the draft.
We sit dumbly at the kitchen table, sneaking glances at one another as if afraid of what we might talk ourselves into, or out of. My tea’s too hot, then too cold, but I sip it anyway, at intervals, when I remember it’s there. It’s daytime now but the sun is more like moonlight, white and cold. Next door’s kids wake up and start yelling; traffic noise rises from the streets below.
The phone rings again at half past seven. I scramble to my feet, Becca following me into the hall, her breath in my left ear as I press the phone to my right.
“Hello?”
“It’s me,” Mum says.
Footsteps of dread patter up my spine. “How’s Nick?” I manage.
“He’s . . .” Mum falters. “He’s gone.”
Something in my brain blocks the full meaning of her words. “Gone?”
“He didn’t make it.”
There’s a suspended moment, almost an anticlimax, until the reality of what she’s just said smacks me on the back of the neck.
“Oh, my God, Mum.”
“He seemed to be improving, almost stable, but then . . . Then he stopped breathing. It was all so surreal . . . doctors rushing in. Like on TV, Kate.” She sounds spaced out. “Except they didn’t save him. They usually do, in the programs, don’t they? Everything went so still. I could see through the door. I saw the moment they all gave up.”
“Why did it happen?”
“They don’t know. There’ll be a postmortem.”
Becca’s doing an agitated dance beside me. I hold my hand up because I want her to stop, I can’t get any words together.
“Do you want us to come down there, Mum?”
“I . . . no. I’ll come home as soon as I can. I have to go now. There’re things to sort out . . . God, such a lot to sort out. I can’t believe it. It doesn’t feel real.”
Her breathing comes soft and slow down the line, an echoey hospital bustle in the background, before the dial tone hums.
I drop the phone with a clatter. Becca’s eyes widen and I slowly nod. She releases a string of swear words, then stuffs her knuckles into her mouth. I start to cry and sway on the spot. Someone who was alive only a few hours ago is now dead. And there’s a strong possibility it’s because of us. Me.
Becca doesn’t comfort me, like she has all the other times I’ve sobbed in front of her. She pats at the blotches that have broken out on her neck. “Fuck,” she says. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.”
I cover my face, squeezing my fingers together so no light can sneak through the cracks. I remember coming home last night, staring at Mum and Nick’s luggage in the hall, all those desperate plans reeling through my head. If only I’d chosen one of them instead.
Perhaps he deserved it. Maybe he would’ve killed Mum eventually if he hadn’t died today.
I want to believe it. Want to comfort myself with the idea that Nick’s death saved my mum’s life.
“Bec?” As I lower my hands I realize she’s panting scarily fast. Rasping something I can’t make out: the word pills and maybe police or promise.
Her body stiffens and then bucks backward. I’m slow to react, until everything snaps into focus and I see her convulsing on the floor. Blue seeping into her lips. Her limbs jerking even faster than I remember from last time.
I crash onto my knees. As I support her head, its weight and warmth are so familiar, the silky texture of her hair. Should I call an ambulance? I remember Becca saying that it isn’t really necessary anymore, not unless she doesn’t regain consciousness. But today it feels like anything can happen.
I close my eyes again.
When I open them, I want none of this to be true. I want to be standing at my dressing table helping Mum with her ponytail, hardly aware that men like Nick even exist.
I think of the plane that day, soaring over me, the raked-up night sky followed by the beautiful calm. I’m back there and I’m gazing upward and I’m never going to move.
Becca’s seizure is slowing. Her face is soft and sleepy, with drool running down her chin. Eventually she lies still. I see her chest rising normally, find a pulse on her wrist, and drop my head in relief. As she comes round, I almost envy her because she’s temporarily forgotten everything that’s happened. She’s been granted a few seconds of absence.
I settle her on the sofa. The seizure has zapped her energy and given her an excuse to stop thinking, stop deciding what to do. Recovering from her own small ordeal, she can just sit. And so I do the same.