Luke has a thing about making playlists. He takes his iPod everywhere with him and has a playlist for every mood. After he’d kissed Alice on Saturday he started thinking about the songs he’d pick for her; he imagined the two of them walking along together, holding hands, sharing one earbud each to listen to the perfect set of songs.
Now, with Alice ill in hospital, the playlist changes. Luke spends hours scrolling through his favourite songs, trying to guess if they’d appeal to Alice. A Robbie Williams song they once learnt in primary school, a Beatles track from the CD Miss Harper used to play on rainy lunchtimes, the Avril Lavigne song they’d all sung at the start of the Alice in Wonderland school play; these are songs he can guess at, a part of their shared past. For the rest, he scours his own song lists, a wild, eclectic mash-up of tracks from the past forty or fifty years.
Luke’s dad works as a sound engineer for a theatre, but he once worked for a record company. Luke’s mum was once in an 80s girl-band called the Crêpe Suzettes; the press photos show a trio of teenage girls with wildly crimped and backcombed hair and lots of ribbons, polka dots and Doc Marten boots. He finds it hard to tally this image with his mum as she is now: a youth counsellor working with troubled children and teenagers. She no longer backcombs her hair or wears polka dots, but the Doc Martens are still part of her trademark look.
Luke grew up listening to a patchwork of weird and wonderful music, and he picks out tracks from this now, things that Alice might like. Lainey calls him three times as the evening goes on, but Luke ignores each call. He knows that Lainey is hurting just as much as he is, but right now he cannot handle her awkward, frightened comments; her conviction that Alice is smashed beyond repair.
Luke cannot let himself think that way.
He remembers the girl he kissed on the tyre swing on Saturday; the two of them holding on tight, swinging softly, balanced on the edge of something like wonder.
It’s not possible for that to be wiped away so easily, surely?
He works on the playlist into the early hours, as if keeping himself busy can somehow drag Alice back from the nightmare she has fallen into. By morning he is satisfied; the playlist covers past, present and future. The music says what he cannot, uses imagery and symbolism and sound to cast a net into the abyss Alice has fallen into.
Perhaps, somehow, it can save her.
By 9 a.m., Luke is back at Ardenley General.
He knows it is too early for visiting, but he holds his head high and walks with confidence past reception and down to the lifts, up to the third floor. The corridors are still damp from the morning cleaning and smell strongly of disinfectant. Walking into the ICU is like stepping into a different world; calm, quiet, gentle, removed from the chaos of the outside world.
Luke sees Alice’s mum dozing in a chair beside the bed, a discarded paperback novel on her lap. Her hair is mussed and her clothes are crumpled, as if she’s been sitting there all night. She probably has. Functioning on just a few hours’ sleep, Luke knows he probably doesn’t look a whole lot better.
‘Luke?’ Laura Beech says. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Hello, Mrs Beech,’ he says. ‘I hope you don’t mind – I made a playlist for Alice. You said that perhaps she can hear us, so I thought she might like some music to listen to. I don’t know. I thought that music might reach her even if words can’t.’
Luke’s eyes slide towards the bed, where Alice is still, silent. A tide of anger rushes through his body; he wants to pull out the tubes and wires attached to her, rip away the bandages that swathe her head. He doesn’t, of course. Those things are not what have made Alice sick; they are trying to make her better. Still, Luke can’t bear to look at them.
‘That’s a lovely thought,’ Mrs Beech says. ‘We brought Alice’s iPod in, hoping her favourite music would get through to her, but perhaps your playlist would be better? Different songs, different tracks; perhaps they could jolt her out of her sleep? Something has to, Luke. Something will …’
‘Can I stay for a bit?’ he asks. ‘Talk to her?’
‘Of course you can. I might pop down to the cafeteria and grab some breakfast; give you a few minutes on your own.’ Laura Beech looks uncertain for a moment. ‘The nurses are right here if anything happens; you just have to call …’
Luke smiles. ‘If anything happens, I’ll yell so loudly for the nurses that you’ll hear me all the way from the cafeteria,’ he promises.