Gemma was swimming in a warm sea, lying on her back with her long hair streaming like silk in the water, moving her arms languidly, kicking her feet so that spray leapt and dazzled before her eyes. The sky above her upturned face was cobalt blue and the beach was a crescent of sun-bright sand edged by the greenest of trees. She was supremely and effortlessly happy, young, tanned, well-fed, relaxed, drop-dead-gorgeous. If only that wasp would stop buzzing.
She put up a hand to brush it away but it was right in front of her face and she couldn’t shift it. Right in front of her face and getting bigger and bigger, a huge, dust-covered, metallic horror, with great wheels coming to squash her, slimy with grease and spitting gobbets of impacted dirt as it shrieked towards her. It was enormous, obscene, grinding her down, the weight of it compressing her ribs. She had to struggle to breathe, pushing with all her strength against the horror of it, the heavy, filthy, unspeakable horror, fighting like a mad thing, frantic to escape. She had to get away from it. She had to get away. She had to. But she couldn’t move because both her legs were set in concrete. She was pinned to the ground as it screamed and crumpled, in a blur of blue and white and scarlet so that blood gushed in the air in long, red plumes like the red breath of dragons, and she knew that it was going to crush her and kill her and she couldn’t do anything about it.
‘She’s waking up,’ Sister said to her junior. ‘Gemma. Can you open your eyes for me, dear? That’s fine. We’re going to take your blood pressure again. Just lift your arm up a bit, there’s a good girl.’
Gemma opened her eyes but horror still weighed her down and for a few seconds she couldn’t think where she was. Although she had a vague memory of coming round in a very white room and of somebody offering her a sip of water. She lifted her left arm obediently and tried to gather her thoughts, recognised that she was very, very tired and that her arm was surprisingly heavy, gradually took in the blue checked curtains round her bed, the blue uniforms, the distinctive smell of the place. Hospital, she thought. Yes, that’s it, I’m in hospital and in a ward. But her mind was too full of nightmare to cope with anything more than that.
The nurse began to take her blood pressure and, turning her head to watch, she saw that the bedclothes were mounded over a support of some kind and then she recalled it all, everything, all at once, with a return of terror that constricted her throat and an overwhelming pain pulsing in her memory. They were going to cut off her leg. That white-haired doctor had been explaining it to her. They were going to cut off her leg and she had to let them do it because it was the only way to get out of the wreckage. Oh God! They were going to cut off her leg. How could she endure it?
But even as panic washed over her, she could feel both her feet quite clearly. One was in plaster and very heavy and the other was irritating, really rather badly. She could feel the irritation right down to her big toe. She would have to put down a hand and scratch it when they’d finished taking her blood pressure. So they couldn’t have done it, after all. They must have got her out some other way. What a relief! Thank God! Thank God!
‘That’s good,’ the nurse said, removing the stethoscope from her ears. She was a pretty West Indian with an easy smile and friendly eyes. ‘How about a cup of tea?’
The thought of tea brought a lump to Gemma’s throat. It was so blessedly normal. But when she tried to sit up to drink it, she discovered that she was attached to a trailing tube and felt a great deal weaker than she’d expected.
‘That’s just to help you over your operation,’ the nurse explained, supporting her as she drank. ‘It looks worse than it is. You lost a lot of blood, so we’re putting it back.’
Loss of blood sounded ominous. But she didn’t dare ask questions in case she was told something she didn’t want to hear. ‘What time is it?’ she compromised.
‘Half-past eleven.’
That was a surprise. ‘Half-past eleven?’ It couldn’t be half-past eleven. I caught the twenty-past ten train and I was hours in the wreckage. ‘What day is it?’
‘Friday. You’ve been sleeping.’
All that time, Gemma thought and she looked up at the drip and wondered how mobile she could be. ‘Can I get out to the loo?’ she asked.
‘You don’t need to worry about that,’ the nurse told her. ‘You’ve got a catheter in.’
Oh how vile! How demoralising! ‘Do I have to have it? Can’t it come out? I could get down to the loo, couldn’t I? I know my right foot’s in plaster but my left’s OK, isn’t it? I mean they haven’t plastered that I can feel my toes.’
There was a pause while the nurse looked at her, her pretty face thoughtful. ‘I’ll get you a chair,’ she said. And did, manoeuvring it until it was right against the bed. Then she turned back the bedclothes and removed the support. And Gemma saw the full extent of her injuries. The full, inescapable extent.
Her right leg was striped with stitches and the foot was encased in plaster just as she expected, but the lower part of her left leg was gone, ending below the knee in a bandaged stump. The shock of it was so searing that for a few seconds she just sat where she was and stared at it, feeling sick to the pit of her stomach. How could it be gone when she could feel her toes? It was worse than the nightmare. Perhaps she was still dreaming and it was a nightmare. ‘But I can feel it,’ she protested. ‘I can see it’s gone but I can feel it.’
‘It often happens,’ the nurse told her. ‘We don’t know why. Lots of amputees can feel their limbs. It goes off.’
Amputees, Gemma thought. The word was like a blow. That’s what I am now. An amputee. It sounded less than human. This is what I’m like now. This is what I look like and this is how I’m going to look from now on. Incomplete, deformed, hideous. She wanted to run away, to hide in a corner and cry and cry. But where could she hide in a hospital ward? And what would be the point of it if she did? All the crying in the world wouldn’t bring her leg back.
The nurse was removing the catheter and being brisk and practical about it. ‘Now then,’ she said, when it was done, ‘let’s see if we can get you into this chair. Take your time. It’s a bit tricky the first time you try it.’
It wasn’t just tricky. It was painful. As soon as Gemma bent her knees, the stump began to throb.
‘It always does that,’ the nurse explained, as Gemma winced. ‘It’s the force of gravity. It’ll go off.’
I wish she wouldn’t keep saying things’ll go off, Gemma thought. ‘So I should hope,’ she said grimly.
‘It adjusts after a day or so,’ the nurse reassured. ‘The first few days after any op are always the worst. Tell me when you’re ready.’
The pulse was dying away as she spoke. ‘Another minute,’ Gemma decided.
‘Now we get to the comedy bit,’ the nurse told her, picking up the drip. ‘It’s like carrying a coat-hanger around. Hold on and I’ll bring all this stuff round the other side.’ She was doing her best to distract her patient by making a joke of it.
But it horrified Gemma to be wheeled away, drip and all, with her stump propped before her on a special board. And the contortions she had to go through once she was in the toilet upset her terribly. By the time she got back to her bed again she was miserable and exhausted.
The nurse was still determined to be cheerful. ‘Now then,’ she said, arranging the bedclothes over the cradle, ‘you’ve got some visitors, if you’re up to it.’
It depended who they were.
‘One of them says he’s your boyfriend. Jerry, is it? And two girls from your flat.’
Yes, Gemma thought. It might be nice to see them. They were such fun and so full of life. They might be just what she needed.
They trooped into the ward, bearing flowers and magazines and a huge box of her favourite chocolates, tied with a red ribbon. Trudi had come straight, from the office in her serviceable black and white and Tracey had dressed up for the occasion in a flowing Laura Ashley skirt and a shawl and full make-up.
‘Your poor old thing,’ the two girls said, as they kissed her. ‘What a thing to happen! Are you all right? You look awful!’
Their good health and crashing lack of tact made her unexpectedly angry. ‘Well of course I look awful,’ she said. ‘What d’you expect? I’ve just had my leg cut off, for Christ’s sake.’
That embarrassed them, but only temporarily. ‘I brought you the latest Trollope,’ Trudi said, putting the paperback on the bedspread.
‘I don’t like Trollope.’
‘Don’t you?’ Tracey said, raising her eyebrows with surprise. ‘I thought everybody did. Oh well I’ll have it then.’
‘Do you mind?’ Trudi remonstrated, resting her weight on the bed to lean forward and grab the book. ‘I bought it. If she doesn’t want it, I’ll have it.’
They’re not going to quarrel over it, surely, Gemma thought. Not when I’m in this state. ‘Mind my legs!’ she warned.
Jerry was carrying a bundle of newspapers. ‘You were on the telly last night,’ he said. ‘Star of the show. Don’t suppose you saw it though, did you.’
Gemma made a grimace. ‘I was otherwise engaged.’
‘Right,’ he said, easily. ‘Right. Anyway you’re in all the papers this morning so you haven’t missed anything. Old Ma Edmunds brought hers up first thing to show us, fairly frothing. I was still in bed. She said I was a layabout. Probably right. Anyway I nipped out later on and bought the lot. Thought you’d like to see them.’ He dropped the wodge of papers on to the bed. ‘Great, eh?’
Gemma couldn’t see anything great about it, but she was certainly front-page news.
‘FEISTY HEROINE OF WANDSWORTH COMMON DISASTER,’ she read. The Chronicle had even got her name, ‘TWO-HOUR ORDEAL FOR PLUCKY GEMMA.’ And so had the Mirror, ‘GEMMA SMILES AS SHE IS PULLED FROM THE CRASH,’ their headline said, and they had a picture of her being carried off to the ambulance with an oxygen mask over her face, her head bandaged, her cheeks streaked with blood, the shredded arm of her leather jacket swinging below the blanket. It looked dreadful and yet she couldn’t help a feeling of pride. It was fame, of a sort, and God knows she’d earned it. She had been brave. She was being brave now. There had to be some consolation for all this.
‘Great, eh?’ Jerry repeated. ‘D’you want some choccies?’ He was busily opening the box. ‘What’s your fave?’
‘No thanks,’ Gemma said. ‘Actually I feel a bit sick.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose you would. That’ll be the anaesthetic.’ Did he have to be quite so matter-of-fact about it? ‘How about you, Trace?’
Tracey chose an orange cream, Trudi a caramel. Soon all three of them were sitting by the bedside gobbling their way through the box, while they told Gemma how easy it had been to wangle time off to see her and regaled her with tales of all the ‘gross’ things that had happened to them the previous day. It was what they always did of an evening while they were eating their communal meal and they saw no incongruity in continuing the tradition that morning. But Gemma did. It was inappropriate and thoughtless. How shallow they are, she thought, listening to their prattle. How they mock people and how little they care. She was surprised she hadn’t noticed it before.
Finally they pulled their attention back to her.
‘How long are they going to keep you in?’ Tracey wanted to know.
Gemma hadn’t even thought about it. ‘I’ve no idea. Depends how quickly I recover, I suppose.’
‘They won’t let you back to the flat though, will they?’ Tracey said amiably. ‘Because of the stairs. I mean, you’ll never be able to manage the stairs, will you?’
Gemma was shocked by such a question. It sounded callous – and felt contrived, as if it was being asked for a purpose. But she answered it as honestly as she could. ‘I don’t know what I’ll be able to manage yet.’
‘Not two flights,’ Trudi said, tucking her hair behind her ear. ‘Not with only one leg.’ The hair escaped from the temporary restriction of her earlobe and swung across her cheek again, as it always did. ‘I mean, think about it.’
I’d rather not, Gemma thought. It made her feel that life without her leg was going to be altogether too complicated and difficult.
‘The thing is,’ Tracey went on, adjusting her shawl, ‘we’ve been thinking, haven’t we, Jerry? And what we’ve been thinking is – well – as you’re not going to be able to come back – because of the stairs and everything – maybe we ought to find someone else to take your room. Sort of temporary or something like that. Course, we don’t want you to think we’re turning you out or anything. We wouldn’t do that, would we Jez. I mean, if you could manage it, we’d be … It’s just it’s the stairs – and the rent. Isn’t that right, Trudi?’
‘Shared between three,’ Trudi explained, attending to her hair again. ‘I mean it’s a lot of money shared between three, when you’ve been used to it being four.’
‘You need the rent,’ Gemma understood.
‘There’s no rush,’ Trudi said. ‘Only Jerry’s got this friend, haven’t you Jez?’
They don’t care about me at all, Gemma realised. They’re fair-weather friends and that’s all they’ve ever been. I just haven’t seen it until now. ‘When does he want to move in?’ she asked.
‘It’s a her, actually,’ Jerry admitted, rather shamefacedly. And hastened to justify himself. ‘She’s a laugh. You’d love her. We thought she’d be just the one.’
I’ve been replaced, Gemma thought. That’s how much I meant to him. That’s how much I meant to all of them. If she’d been on her feet – if she’d had feet – she would have walked away from them. ‘You’ll have to go now,’ she said. ‘I’m tired.’
Trudi persisted. ‘What about the flat?’
‘Do what you like with it,’ Gemma said, turning on her side. ‘It’s nothing to do with me, is it? Not now. You’ve made your decision.’ And she slithered down the bed, pulled the covers over her ears and closed her eyes. She wanted to weep and shout at them. How could they be so unkind?
‘That’s settled then is it?’ Trudi’s voice said from behind her. ‘See you later, then.’
Gemma didn’t bother to answer. She heard them make their exit, the tone of their voices light, cheerful, teasing, unchanged by what they’d just done to her, unmoved by what she’d just said, unaware of how much they’d just hurt her. We don’t want you to think we’re turning you out, she thought. But that’s exactly what they were doing. How could I have liked them? Any of them. Even for a minute. They’re shallow, selfish monsters. Not like Pippa. If she’d come to see me she’d have been quite different. Pippa had been the best friend she’d ever had and she missed her terribly. Oh Pippa! she mourned, as the tears pricked behind her eyelids, why did you have to go round the world? I need you here. Now. But what’s the good of even thinking about it? She’s not here. I’ve lost her. I’ve lost my leg and my job and my flat. Everything. Nothing will ever be the same again.
There was a rustle beside her bed. Somebody was behind her, bending towards her. Had one of them come back? Surely not. Hadn’t they done enough damage?
But it wasn’t either of the girls. Ringed fingers touched her hair, stroked it and withdrew. ‘Darling!’ a familiar voice said lovingly. ‘Are you awake?’
It was her mother, leaning across the bed to kiss her cheek, so that her beads swung and clinked across the straight stylish jacket of her best Chanel-style suit. She was wearing high heels and her blonde hair was immaculate, so she’d obviously come straight from the boutique. And her brown eyes were swimming with tears.
‘I got your message,’ she said, as Gemma struggled to sit up. ‘They rang from the hospital. It must have been just after you got here. Oh my darling, this is so awful!’ And she stretched out a hand to try and help.
Gemma shook it away. ‘I can manage,’ she said, hauling herself into a better position. She knew she was being ungracious but she couldn’t help it. She had to be independent.
‘I’ve been trying to see you for ages,’ her mother told her. ‘I came as soon as I got the phone call but you weren’t down from the operating theatre then. They let me have a peep at you yesterday evening but you were sound asleep. Dead to the world. Like a little baby. So I thought I’d pop in early this morning and I saw Sister that time, and she said to try during my lunch break. So here I am. Oh my poor dear darling. What can I say?’
‘I’m all right,’ Gemma said, making a bleak attempt to smile and failing. ‘Don’t fuss.’ It always took such an effort to cope with her mother, and she didn’t have the energy for it. Not now. Not after Trudi and Tracey. Just keep off the modelling career, she willed her dominating parent, and don’t run my life for me. I’ve got enough to cope with this morning without that.
Billie Goodeve put her shopping bag on the bed and began to unpack it. ‘I brought you some things. I didn’t know what you’d like so I thought grapes. Well they’re generally acceptable, aren’t they, and I don’t suppose the food is up to much. It never is in these places.’
‘I haven’t had any yet,’ Gemma said.
‘No, poor darling,’ Billie sympathised. ‘I don’t suppose you have. Now I’ve put some washing things in this little dolly-bag. Just necessities, soap and flannel, that sort of thing. Little box of tissues. I’ll put that on the cabinet shall I? And your hairbrush. The one you had when you were a little girl, d’you remember? You used to brush the cat with it, poor thing. I used to say leave it be, but would you? No you wouldn’t. You used to dress it up in your doll’s clothes – bonnet on its poor little head and everything. You said it was your baby. You used to take it for walks in the pram. D’you remember? Never knew a cat so long-suffering. And a nightie, look. I was going to pop round to your flat and get one for you there, then I remembered this one and I thought, it’s just the thing.’ She pulled a hideous piece of middle-aged silk from the shopping bag, like a magician producing a rabbit from a hat.
I wouldn’t be seen dead in it, Gemma thought, even if I very nearly was. And she wondered what had happened to her expensive clothes. Torn to shreds, probably. Didn’t they cut off her jeans? The memory of what happened at the accident was curiously jumbled. It was only the faces she could remember in any detail, the nice reassuring one with the white hair and the handsome one who said. ‘I don’t let my patients die.’
Her mother had finished unpacking and was arranging fruit in an old bowl on Gemma’s bedside table. ‘Now then, my darling,’ she said, ‘what else do you need?’
My leg, Gemma thought, but she tried to answer in the way her mother expected. ‘I can’t think of anything for the moment, thanks.’
‘Well if you do, get one of these nice nurses to give me a ring and I’ll see to it. I’m sure they won’t mind. You’re not to worry about a thing.’
The banality of the conversation was so irritating that Gemma had to turn her head away from it. I’ve lost my leg, she thought, and she tells me not to worry about a thing. But she held on to her control and didn’t complain.
‘Well that’s that then,’ her mother said, settling herself into the armchair beside the bed. ‘Now we must think about the future.’
That was too much. ‘Not now, Mother,’ Gemma begged. ‘Not yet. Leave it.’
‘We can’t leave it,’ her mother said. ‘I mean, there are things to be decided. You’ll have to tell them where you’re going when you leave here, for a start. They’ll want to know. And you can’t go back to the flat, can you? Tracey was telling me last night. Because of the stairs. So, I’ve thought it all out. You can come home with me. You can have your old room. I know we’re on the second floor but I’m sure we can manage the lift between us. Will they provide you with a wheelchair or will you have to buy your own? Not that it matters, because you’ve got insurance haven’t you?’
Gemma was beginning to feel dizzy. ‘What?’
‘Insurance. You told me. Remember? For being an actress. In case you got injured on stage. Little did they know!’
‘Look!’ Gemma said. ‘I don’t want to talk about this. Not now. I can’t take it. It’ll have to wait.’
‘Of course,’ her mother agreed affably. ‘I can understand that. Oh, it’s so unfair for this to happen to you. My poor baby!’
Gemma didn’t want this cloying sympathy either. ‘I’m twenty-one, Mother,’ she said. ‘Going on twenty-two.’
‘I know, I know,’ Billie crooned. ‘And now this. It’s iniquitous. But don’t you worry about a thing, darling. I’ll look after you.’
She was irritating Gemma so much that she simply had to speak up. ‘I don’t want to be looked after,’ she said. ‘I can stand on my own two feet. Even if I’ve only got one.’ The irony of the joke pleased her.
But it was lost on her mother. ‘Of course,’ she agreed again, with happy insincerity. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing.’
Gemma rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘It’s no good talking to you,’ she complained. ‘You don’t listen to a word I’m saying. Read my lips. I don’t want to be looked after.’
‘You might not want it,’ Billie said, ‘but everything’s changed now, hasn’t it?’ It was breaking her heart to see her beautiful daughter reduced to such a state but they both had to accept it.
‘It hasn’t! I won’t let it!’
‘Oh come on, Gemma. Face facts. You’ll have to face them sooner or later. You’re … a … well you’re a cripple, darling, aren’t you really?’
‘I’m not! I won’t be! You’re not to say such a thing.’
Battle had been joined between them, as it so often was and although neither of them had intended it. ‘I have to, darling,’ Billie said, ‘it’s the truth. I mean, they’ll never take you on as a model now, not with one leg. And when I think what you were like when you were Miss Pears! Oh it’s so unfair!’
‘I knew we’d get round to this,’ Gemma said. ‘You can’t leave it alone, can you? I don’t want to be a model. I never have. I never will. I’ve told you over and over again.’
‘You were a model when you were four and you were Miss Pears,’ Billie insisted. ‘You couldn’t have had a better start than that. And then there was all the work you did for the catalogues. You were a wonderful little model. They all loved you. But what’s the good of talking about it now you’re crippled?’
That word again. It was like a sting. ‘I’m not crippled. How many more times? I’ve been in a rail crash, that’s what’s the matter with me. I’ve been in a rail crash and I’ve lost my leg because they had to cut me out of the wreckage. I’m lucky to be alive. I damn nearly wasn’t. They had to cut me out of the wreckage, don’t you understand?’
Her mother pulled her jacket straight. ‘Yes darling. Yes I know,’ she murmured. ‘But it’ll be all right.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about your future,’ Billie told her. ‘It’s no good talking about the past. We’ve got to think about the future. You must come home with me and let me look after you. That’s all there is to it.’ And as Gemma was glaring at her, she tried to persuade. ‘It’ll all be for the best, darling, you’ll see. After all, I know your ways, don’t I? And there’s no one to beat your mother when you’re not well.’
Gemma was as close to beating her mother as she’d ever been. ‘You’re not listening to me,’ she said angrily. ‘I don’t want to come home with you. I don’t want to be looked after. Not by you. Not by anyone. I want to stand on my own feet.’
Anger triggered annoyance. ‘You don’t face facts, Gemma. That’s always been your trouble,’ Billie said. ‘You never have. You’re too self-willed. You always have to know best. Well it’ll have to stop now. You’ll have to be looked after whether you like it or not.’
‘No,’ Gemma insisted. ‘I won’t. I’m going to get better and I’m going to look after myself. And while we’re on the subject, I’m not going to be a model. Not. N O T. I’m going to be an actress.’
Billie’s face was wrinkled with distress. ‘Oh my poor darling,’ she said. ‘You’ll never get an acting job now. Not with your face in this state. And all your lovely hair gone.’
Until that moment, Gemma hadn’t thought about any other part of her body except her missing leg. ‘What?’ she said, putting up her hand to touch her hair. Lumps. Spikes. Nasty tacky …
‘They haven’t shown you.’ Billie understood. ‘You haven’t seen.’ She was fishing in her handbag for her powder compact, flicking it open, dusting the powder from the surface of the mirror. ‘They should have let you see. I mean to say, it’s not fair to keep it from you.’
Gemma didn’t want to look but it was already too late. The mirror gleamed before her and the image in it was unavoidable. There was her forehead scored with red scars and pitted with black spots as if she’d been peppered with shot, her eyes, not brown and shining as she knew them but small and bloodshot, the left one half closed by swollen flesh and purple bruises. But above her face – and far, far worse – were the roughly cropped remains of her hair, spiky with blood and grease, standing on end, grotesque as a clown’s wig, and running through it from the left side of her forehead and round behind her ear, a long hideous wound. It was sutured together with great black stitches like a strip of barbed wire and all the hair on either side of it had been shaved away. The shock of such a terrible change of image was so shattering it ripped away the last of her control. She hurled the mirror from her mother’s hand and began to scream.
‘It isn’t me! It isn’t! It isn’t! I don’t look like that. I won’t!’ Then she burst into passionate weeping, unable to bear it a second longer, because she did look like that, she was changed for ever, wrecked, ruined, finished. ‘What did you have to go and do that for?’
Billie was shattered. She hadn’t meant to upset her poor daughter. Not like this. She hadn’t thought … If only she’d … Faced with such a terrible reaction, she didn’t know what to do or say. She dithered, patted Gemma’s arm and was thrown off violently, took two paces into the ward, called for the nurse, returned to the bedside, her face taut with concern, tried to defend herself. ‘You had to see sooner or later, darling. I mean to say … They couldn’t keep it from you for ever.’
Gemma went on weeping, hiding her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. ‘Oh, don’t cry, darling,’ Billie pleaded. ‘Please don’t cry. You’ll make yourself ill. Please, please don’t cry. It’s not as bad as all that. I mean, scars fade, don’t they, in time. And your hair’ll grow back. You think how quickly it grows. There’s always a bright side. Every cloud has a silver lining. You’ll get enormous damages.’
That made matters worse. ‘Go away!’ Gemma shouted. ‘I can’t stand this. Go away! Do you hear?’ The entire ward could hear but she was too far gone to care. ‘I can’t bear to see you. I can’t bear to see …’
A nurse had arrived at the foot of the bed. ‘Oh, nurse,’ Billie tried to explain. ‘She’s had a bit of an upset.’
‘Yes,’ the nurse said. ‘I can see.’ And she drew the curtains round her patient. ‘If you wouldn’t mind leaving us for a moment, Mrs Goodeve,’ she suggested. ‘It’s time for Gemma’s medication. She was in theatre a very long time.’
Now that her tears had begun, Gemma lay back on her pillows and wept with abandon, crying out Thursday’s terror and pain, her friends’ rejection, her stupid, stupid weakness, her utter revulsion at what she had become. She took the proffered pills still weeping, heard the nurse’s commiserations still weeping, closed her eyes still weeping. It was a very long time before she slipped into the relief of sleep.
She woke to a changed world. Even before she opened her eyes she could feel the change. It was so peaceful – quiet and soothing and contained. It made her feel secure, as though she were tucked in a cradle. And it smelt heavenly. She opened her good eye, saw that the curtains were opened too and peeped sideways at the ward. It was empty of everything except beds and patients and so quiet that she could hear the slip-slop of footsteps slummocking away along the corridor and the clatter of cutlery from the central table where the rest of the patients were eating their supper, talking to one another in gentle easy voices. The blue daylight of the morning had softened, deepening the colour of the curtains and veiling the walls with lilac shadow, and the square of sky in the window opposite was peach pink and suffused with soft light. It was afternoon.
Then she noticed the flowers.
They were heaped on every surface all round her bed, two glass vases full of roses and gypsophila on the cabinet and vases and baskets and pots of every kind filling the table at the foot of the bed. She’d never seen such a display except in a florist’s. She sat up carefully and smiled at the women sitting round the table.
‘Better?’ one of them called.
She agreed that she was. ‘I’m sorry I made such a fuss.’
‘You go ahead, duck,’ the woman said. She was a comfortable woman in a pink dressing gown and a large neck brace. ‘Make as much fuss as you like. If you can’t, I don’t know who can.’
‘Why have they put all those flowers on my table?’ Gemma asked.
One of the other women got up and strolled across the ward to Gemma’s bed. ‘They’re yours,’ she said. ‘Been coming in all afternoon.’
‘Good heavens! Who from?’
‘Well-wishers,’ the woman said. ‘Sister Foster was telling us. You been in the papers. You’re a heroine. We been reading about you.’
Gemma leant across the bed and picked up the card attached to the nearest vase of roses. Get well soon, it said, dear brave girl, from Mrs Elliott and the girls at Ivymount Engineering.
Surprise gave way to pleasure. The sense of being cared for brought an unexpected feeling of well-being. All these flowers, she thought. All these people I’ve never met taking the time and trouble to send me flowers. She picked up the second card. That said much the same thing as the first: We hope you soon get better, from Rainbow class. ‘How kind!’
‘People are,’ the woman told her. ‘Given half a chance. You got a lotta cards too. They’re in your drawer. I’m Patsy, by the way. I was in the crash an’ all. Broken collarbone and concussion. There’s five of us from the crash in here.’
Gemma looked round the ward at her fellow sufferers, who nodded and smiled. Seeing them made her feel ashamed of herself for making a fuss like that when she was surrounded by so many other people who’d been hurt in the accident too. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked Patsy.
‘Yes,’ Patsy said shortly. ‘Well I’m better now anyway. All right if I take the painkillers. Mustn’t grumble. We’re the lucky ones. There was twenty-seven killed. We been reading about it in the papers. Would you like to see them?’
Gemma took the papers and read them one after the other. The pictures gave her a shock even though she knew how serious the accident had been but the text was worse. Twenty-seven dead. It was horrific. It should never have happened. And reading about it brought it all back to her.
‘There was a little boy,’ she remembered, as she opened the third paper in the pile. ‘He was in the carriage with me. I wonder what happened to him.’
And there he was, in the first picture on the centre pages, wrapped in a blanket and being carried away by an ambulance woman. ‘Miraculous escaped,’ she read. ‘Little Jack Turner pulled from the wreckage alive after being trapped for nearly an hour, escaped with cuts and bruises, despite fears for his life. Sadly his mother, Maureen, was one of the fatalities.’
The news crushed Gemma with sadness. ‘That’s awful,’ she said. ‘She was telling him off when we crashed.’ She remembered it too clearly. ‘He was drinking Coke and it was all slopping out of the can. And she told him off. It must have been the last thing she did. Oh poor woman!’ It was so awful it made her cry.
‘It was a bad business,’ Patsy agreed.
I mustn’t make any more fuss, Gemma thought, stanching her tears. And trying to be positive, she turned her attention to the flowers. ‘We ought to put these all round the ward,’ she said. ‘They’re as much for you as for me. We were all in it together.’ It was suddenly important to her to share her good fortune.
‘They was sent to you,’ Patsy pointed out.
‘Only because I was in the paper and they knew who I was,’ Gemma said. ‘If you’d been in the paper they’d have come to you. Let’s spread them around. They’d look better spread around.’
So the flowers were borne away to every cabinet, the cards were read and hung on strings above the bed and, having recovered enough to find an appetite, Gemma was given some supper.
‘That’s better,’ the woman in the pink dressing gown said. ‘That’s put some colour in your cheeks. That’ll please our Doctor Quennell.’
Gemma was enjoying the sight of her roses. She wasn’t particularly interested in doctors at that moment. But to make conversation she asked who he was.
‘He’s our doctor,’ Patsy said. ‘You’d have seen him yesterday if you hadn’t been asleep all the time. He was in and out all day. Ever so kind. Couldn’t do enough for us. You’ll see him tomorrow when he does his rounds. You’ll love him. He’s gorgeous.’