It is half past two on Tuesday afternoon and Laura Beech is fresh out of the shower and asleep on the sofa, a duvet pulled over her head to block out the daylight. She is sleeping on the sofa because it is right next to the phone, and she doesn’t want to miss a call from the hospital with news. She didn’t want to leave the hospital at all – not while Alice was still unconscious, but even the doctors and nurses have been telling her she needs to get some proper sleep.
Laura is pretty sure sleep isn’t an option, but the moment her head hits the pillow she is gone, lost in a series of dark dreams that morph seamlessly into nightmares of falling, falling, falling.
A siren shrills, jolting her awake, and it takes a moment for her to realize that the phone is ringing. She snatches it up, still groggy from sleep.
‘Mmmph … hello? Has something happened? Is something wrong?’
‘No, no, nothing’s wrong,’ an unfamiliar voice says. ‘At least, nothing else. Am I speaking to Mrs Beech?’
Laura shrugs off the duvet and struggles into an upright position. ‘Yes; who’s calling?’
‘This is Jenny Hunter, Savannah’s mother. I’m just calling to offer you my support, and to see if there’s been any change in Alice’s condition. As you can imagine, Savannah has been worried sick …’
Laura feels a surge of anger flood through her; Jenny Hunter, Savannah’s mother, the woman who went away for the weekend and left a houseful of teenagers to fend for themselves.
‘No change,’ she says through gritted teeth. ‘Alice is still in a coma. We’re lucky she’s alive!’
There’s a brief pause at the other end of the line, then the voice is back, smooth and placatory. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry we all are. Such a dreadful, dreadful accident. It’s shaken us all up terribly. I believe Savannah was trying to befriend Alice, because she was very quiet at school, but of course, it all went terribly wrong …’
‘You could say that,’ Laura grates out. Inside, she is boiling with anger; she wants to shout and scream and throw the phone across the room. She wants someone to blame, and this Jenny woman is an easy target.
‘If there’s anything at all we can do …’
Laura tries to bite her tongue and fails. ‘It’s a little late for that,’ she says. ‘Perhaps if you’d been at home on the night of the accident, looking after those five girls instead of flitting off to enjoy your luxury break in … in … Cornwall, was it? Perhaps that might have helped. Because I can’t help feeling that something very strange was going on when everyone but Alice was fast asleep in bed at one in the morning, and yet she was fully dressed and wearing a coat and shoes as if she was planning to come home.’
‘My elder daughter, Carina, was keeping an eye on them,’ Jenny protests.
‘Not very well, by all accounts,’ Laura snaps, but her anger is ebbing away now and tears threaten. ‘Not very well!’
‘Oh, Mrs Beech, all this must be dreadful for you,’ the voice sweeps on. ‘And of course I feel terrible that we weren’t there, but that weekend had been planned for months; it was our wedding anniversary. And then at the last moment Savannah said she wanted a friend to come over – Erin. I didn’t want to disappoint her. And of course Carina is seventeen and very responsible; and she promised she’d look after everything. I had no reason to believe that anything could or would go wrong!’
Laura can feel herself folding, crumpling and curling up in a sad, defeated slump.
‘Savvy didn’t mention anything about Yaz and Lainey and Alice, but of course I know now that she’d invited them over too,’ Jenny Hunter says. ‘I have had a very stern talk to Savvy about that; about honesty and respect. If it’s any consolation, she is very sorry. We all are. Nobody had any idea things could turn out like this!’
‘No. No, of course not,’ Laura concedes. ‘I’m just – well, worried sick. And very, very tired.’
Jenny Hunter bulldozes on, but her voice is kinder now. ‘You poor, poor woman – I can’t begin to imagine how you’re feeling. I know in your shoes I’d be going out of my mind with worry. Is there anything I can do? Drop off a casserole? Help with lifts? Get some groceries delivered? I have an account with Ocado; it would be no trouble at all. Just let me know.’
‘No, no; we’re fine,’ Laura says, her voice no more than a whisper.
‘Well, that’s all I was ringing for, really. To pass on my condolences. Oh, that’s probably not the right word – my sympathy. You know what I mean. Savannah really is very distressed; she’s been asking me if she can visit, but I don’t suppose …’
Laura thinks of Alice, lying in the wheeled bed with the white coverlet in the Intensive Care Unit, the tangle of wires and the jumble of monitors bleeping and pulsing, the nurses gliding soundlessly in to change a drip, check on blood pressure, administer meds. She doesn’t want anyone to see her daughter like that; a shell of a person, broken, lost.
Then again, perhaps Jenny Hunter and her daughter should see just what they’ve done.
‘I’ll ask about visitors,’ she says. ‘I’ll ask.’