The park was crawling with families. The rare, blue-sky winter’s day had dragged everyone outdoors, wrapped up in coats, topped with hats and gloves to stave off the biting cold.
‘Daddy, you look like a dragon.’ Milly giggled at the little white clouds that fogged onto the air as Aidan breathed. She scooted along beside him, the large pom-pom on her woollen hat bobbing along with the motion. Jack and Callum were walking at a slower pace behind them.
They reached the playground and Aidan pushed open the gate and went inside. Milly threw down her scooter and ran off. Children zigzagged chaotically across the bark surface, narrowly avoiding colliding with each other, while parents winced at the near-misses as they looked on from the side-lines. He saw her climbing up on to a swing and he found a space on a bench and sat down.
They were slowly picking up the pieces of their lives and adjusting to their new reality without Rowan. The weekdays were a busy rush between school and work, then afterschool activities and homework, dinner and laundry, but they were muddling through and Aidan was so proud of his children. The situation with Milly was tormenting him though. The court hearing was set for two weeks’ time – the week before Christmas – and Aidan was a mess. The stress was weighing him down. He couldn’t eat, he couldn’t sleep. His head was full of horror. He kept waking with nightmares that Milly was being taken away; she was screaming for him to stop it all, but in his dream his legs and arms wouldn’t move – no matter how much he tried, he was frozen to the spot. Whenever he looked at his precious daughter, he couldn’t believe they were in this situation. The pain slammed into him once more and he was broken all over again.
Christmas ads would play on the TV showing happy families gathered around the table celebrating the festivities and his heart would break as he realised Milly might not be at their dinner table next year. She would chat excitedly about what she was going to ask Santa for in her letter and Aidan’s heart would twist at her innocence – her perfect trust in him as her father to protect her and to make things right almost crushed him every time he looked at her face. He felt as though they were racing against a clock – they were living on borrowed time – every day was a day closer to losing her. Was he doing the right thing by fighting for her? A part of his brain was questioning if it was fair to drag her into the centre of a messy legal battle and play tug-o-war with the child after everything that she had been through? But he also knew that he could never just hand her over to James. Aidan knew with every bone in his body that he had to fight; he had to do it for her.
The boys had headed for the roundabout and began messing around, seeing how fast they could spin one another. Some things never change, Aidan thought, smiling as he watched them fooling around together. Having Callum join them for the walk felt like nothing short of a miracle. In the days following the incident at the petrol station, Aidan and Callum had reached a truce of sorts. His purple bruising had now faded to a dirty yellow colour and so had his anger too, it seemed. Callum didn’t slam doors or ignore him any more, he didn’t avoid Aidan’s eye and he had started to join them at the table to eat dinner once again. He gave Aidan a hand making the school lunches in the mornings, and he helped to dress Milly. He had apologised to his principal and Mr Leonard too and had even agreed to meet with the grief counsellor that Jack was seeing, which felt like a major win in Aidan’s eyes. He hoped that by talking through his feelings in counselling, it might help Callum to deal with his anger. Aidan knew Callum had got a fright that night at the petrol station and although he was afraid to raise his hopes too much, he prayed that Callum had finally turned a corner.
A man clutching two takeaway coffees came up and handed one to what appeared to be his wife who was sitting at the other end of the bench beside Aidan. They exchanged an easy smile, a look of solidarity, as she took the cup from him, wrapping her hands gratefully around the warm cardboard. The simple gesture made Aidan’s heart sore. He was still in disbelief at how the rug had been pulled out from underneath his life. To think that his family had once been like that; they had gone for family walks to the park, he and Rowan would get coffees from the little café that operated from the old Victorian bandstand while the kids sipped hot chocolate. He had once taken those easy, ordinary days for granted, but now he knew the fragility of life. He had seen up close and personal just how cruel life could be. How you could have your whole world around you one minute and then in the next it could be washed away, leaving it virtually unrecognisable.
‘Come push me, Daddy,’ he heard Milly calling over to him from the swings. He stood up, went over to her, and began to push her from behind. ‘Higher, Daddy!’ she demanded. She threw her head back and grinned up at him, those large blue eyes radiating her smile. Her dark hair fanned out on the air behind her.
Aidan’s heart stumbled; she was so precious. What killed him was that she had no idea of how her world was about to change. When Milly had been placed in his arms for the very first time, this tiny, mewling bundle swaddled in white, Aidan had felt a huge surge of protectiveness for her. He had felt it with the boys too, but this was stronger – he had a daughter, and he felt an almost primal sense that he had to protect her from the evils of the world and now he was failing to do that. He couldn’t protect her from what was coming down the tracks no matter how much he wished he could. He was so scared for what was to come. He’d never survive losing her. He stopped pushing and let the momentum keep her going.
‘What’s wrong, Daddy?’ she said, turning around to face him, as the swing began to slow down. ‘Why aren’t you pushing me?’
Her face unravelled him, and tears pushed forward in his eyes. ‘Nothing, sweetie, everything is good.’
‘You look sad, Daddy, are you sad because you miss Mammy?’
‘Well… yeah… sort of,’ Aidan said, grappling for words, having been taken off guard.
‘It’s okay, Daddy, Mammy is in heaven now,’ she said, repeating the same words he had said to her so many times to soothe her whenever she was missing her mother.
He moved around to the front of the swing and crouched down on the ground before her, using his hand to steady the ropes on either side. ‘I love you so much, Milly, you know that don’t you – no matter what happens I need you to know this.’
She began giggling. ‘I already knowded that, Daddy, silly billy.’
She jumped down from the swings and tore off towards the spiderweb climbing frame.
‘Daddy, look at me, me the itsy bitsy spider,’ she laughed as she placed a foot on the rope and began climbing up along the web.
‘Don’t go any higher, Milly,’ he warned as he followed her over.
She was already above his head, moving faster, getting braver and more daring with each step she took. She looked too small to have scaled such a height. She turned around and grinned at him, a daredevil set to her face. She bit down on her lip with determination and raised her foot to climb higher still, but it didn’t connect with the rope and suddenly she was falling backwards through the air. He heard a collective intake of breath from the other parents who were witnessing the scene unfold. She landed with a thump on the sand just feet away from him. She was lying at a funny angle; her neck twisted awkwardly.
‘Milly,’ he heard himself scream as he ran over and cupped his hands around her face, but she didn’t respond.
‘Don’t move her!’ another voice called, rushing over to him. ‘She could have a spinal injury.’
Fear flooded through him. Sweaty palms, racing heart. This couldn’t be happening.
‘Somebody call an ambulance!’ another voice shouted as they took off their coat and placed it over her small body.
‘Milly,’ he said, crouching down beside her. ‘Come on, Milly, wake up, it’s Daddy!’ he begged, stroking the smooth skin of her face. He felt something warm on his palms and realised that his hand was covered in her sticky blood.
‘Aidan – is she okay?’ a familiar voice asked, crouching down on the ground beside him.
He turned around to see James there. His brain didn’t have the capacity to wonder what he was doing there. His body was too full with fear to feel anything for him. Not hatred or anger. He was numb.
‘I saw what happened,’ James continued.
Both men were staring at the child lying broken between them. The precious child that they both wanted.
Callum and Jack were beside Aidan now staring down at the crumpled body of their little sister lying on the ground beneath them.
‘Is Milly dead?’ Jack asked, his eyes wide with fear.
‘No, she’s not!’ Aidan said, sounding sharper than he had intended.
‘Do something, Dad!’ Callum roared at him. ‘You have to do something!’
‘She’s going to be okay,’ James reassured them. ‘Your sister is a tough cookie.’
‘But why won’t she wake up?’ Jack demanded.
‘Where the hell is that ambulance?’ Aidan cried. The wait felt like an eternity. Every second was stretched out before him like he was part of a slow-motion video. Chaotic thoughts scudded through his head: would she be okay? She had to be; he couldn’t bear to think she wouldn’t. How could this be happening again? He felt he had used up all his luck the first time around; somehow she had come back from the brink, but how could she hold on for a second time?
Eventually they could hear the wail of sirens coming in the distance and finally through a clearing in the trees, Aidan saw flashing blue lights and moments later the white shirts of two paramedics racing towards them.
‘Stand back!’ they shouted to the onlookers, putting order into the chaos.
The crowd moved back until it was just Aidan, James, Callum and Jack surrounding the paramedics as they worked on Milly. Aidan couldn’t bear to watch at they checked her pulse and pulled back her eyelids to check her pupils for a reaction. They continued to check her over, before stabilising her with a neck brace. She looked so tiny as they moved her onto the stretcher and carted her towards the ambulance. A large scarlet stain marked the sand where her head had lain.
‘Please tell me that she’ll be okay?’ Aidan begged.
‘Come on, we need to hurry,’ the paramedic urged, dodging his question.
‘What about the boys?’ Aidan said, panicked, torn between needing to take care of them and travel in the ambulance with Milly.
‘I’ll take them in a taxi, and we’ll meet you at the hospital,’ James offered.
‘Thanks,’ Aidan mumbled as he ran after the paramedic and climbed into the back of the ambulance.