7 February 2006
I wake up feeling sick, remembering what happened at my interview yesterday.
I wait for the nausea to pass but instead it keeps building, and I rush into the bathroom to throw up.
It doesn’t make me feel any better.
As I flush, I spot something on the floor: Elaine’s hairbrush behind the wash basin. It’s an old-fashioned one, with a black handle and a pink cushioned base pierced by bristles. Thin white hairs coil in between them. She kept most of her hair until the end. It had a beautiful whorl when you saw it from above, like a meringue.
‘What will I do if I can’t be a doctor, Elaine? What the fuck am I going to do with my life instead?’
When I close my eyes, I can see her there in the doorway, and she’s mouthing something I can’t hear.
Hallucinations too? Great. I clearly have a winter bug as well as a rapidly diminishing chance of getting into med school. At least I’m off rota.
The nausea comes again and this time I am sick for way, way longer. I stand up, dig around in the bathroom cabinet for a sachet of Dioralyte. I tip the contents into the toothbrush mug and fill it with tap water, too knackered to go to the kitchen for a fresh glass, and I try to force down the salty-sweet liquid.
When I catch sight of my reflection in the mirror, I hardly recognize myself, my eyes wide and my complexion deathly pale.
But there’s something else that’s different about me.
I can’t catch my breath.
Because I realize what the imaginary Elaine was trying to tell me, something I must have realized subconsciously but not been able to admit to myself until now.
I board the train, knowing I can’t wait till the weekend to talk to Tim. I tried to call him but his mobile was switched off, and the phone is no good for this kind of news, either. He’s smarter now. Thanks to the work we’ve done together to help him read emotions he can usually locate the most appropriate thing to say in the majority of situations. But his face can’t lie and I need to be with him to know how he really feels about us having a baby.
A baby.
Even as I peed on the test stick I bought from the chemist at Seven Dials, it felt like a cliché from a soap opera. The feckless woman, the unwanted pregnancy.
Except I’m not feckless. I’m on the Pill, though there were times last year when I wondered why, because Tim and I pretty much stopped having sex.
The last time we made love was New Year’s Eve. We celebrated surviving the year, as individuals and as newlyweds. As the fireworks went off over the city, he clung to me and I clung to him and we made love noisily; we don’t have to keep quiet anymore.
I was drunk, too, a rare thing for me. Did I forget my Pill? No, that’s not something I’d do. My stomach was upset for a day or two over Christmas, because of all the comfort food we ate, but could that really have stopped the Pill working? I sigh: looking back is pointless, now. It’s the future that’s the bigger issue . . .
The train isn’t that busy but there is a mother with a small baby, sitting diagonally across the aisle. I stare at them now with the same intensity Marilyn had when she was trying to get pregnant.
But I’m not coveting the baby, I’m studying his mother. She looks tired, yes, but not out of her depth. The paraphernalia she’s brought seems manageable and she still looks capable of conversation.
Perhaps letting this happen wouldn’t be the worst thing, especially if I’m not going to be a doctor. I could stay with the ambulance service, go part-time, share childcare with Marilyn who has baby Alfie now as well as Ava. Being a younger mum isn’t all bad, either, I’ve heard. You bounce back sooner, don’t you?
The train pulls into a station and the woman gets off. There are another twenty or so stops before I get to Tim.
That’s when it’ll feel real. When I see his face, it’ll tell me if this is something we can do together.
Even though, I guess, it’s something we’ve already done.
The hospital is a fraction of the size of the Sussex, yet I can’t find my husband.
‘He’s meant to be on shift,’ I tell the nurse once I get to the gastro ward.
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know about that.’
Behind her, a junior doctor looks up from tapping into the computer. He meets my eye for a moment, before hurriedly returning to whatever it is he’s doing.
‘What’s going on?’
No one replies.
The unsettled feeling in my belly tells me something’s up. ‘Is he sick? You have to tell me because right now I’m fearing the worst.’
Back on drugs? Surely not after everything he put me through . . .
The nurse sighs. ‘The relatives’ room is over there. I’ll see if I can find the registrar.’
The room is nicer than they usually are. The little potted rose is coming into bloom, the magazines are new, and I can just about see treetops through the high window. I crave cities, but I’d hoped a quieter deanery might be the perfect space for Tim to develop his skills. It feels safe.
Felt safe. Now it feels anything but. Has he been attacked? Or caught stealing drugs? My chest tightens, pain spreading across my shoulders.
Tim’s boss steps into the room. Young, balding, so tall that the room suddenly feels half the size. He introduces himself. His name is Fred but I don’t register his surname because I’m more worried about the fact he’s the consultant, not the registrar. This is bad.
I try to read his body language – warm handshake, anxious eyes.
‘Tim hasn’t called you?’
I shake my head.
‘There’s been an . . . incident. He’s taken leave for a few days, I assumed he’d gone home. Brighton, isn’t it?’
At least Tim’s not sick or off his head on something. ‘What sort of incident?’
‘I can’t go into detail but it involves a patient. It would be better if he could tell you himself.’
‘Yes it bloody would, but he’s not fucking here, is he?’ I regret the words as soon as I’ve said them. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry, I’m . . .’ Tears are welling up.
Hormones. Pregnancy hormones, already? Everything is out of control.
‘Oh, Mrs Palmer—’
‘My name’s Kerry and you don’t need to mollycoddle me – I’m in the ambulance service, I know there’s no way you’d give an F1 leave unless it was serious.’
He nods and sits down next to me. ‘You’re right. It’s serious, though we’ve . . . contained things. The patient involved is showing some early signs of a recovery. I don’t want to pre-empt the process, but every junior doctor makes mistakes and with the right training and attitude, it doesn’t have to mean the end for Tim.’
‘Does he know that?’ I shake my head. ‘Sorry. Stupid. You can’t know the answer to that without being a mind-reader, and even if you were, Tim’s mind would be very difficult to read.’
‘The thing is—’ His bleep goes off and as he stands up, I almost expect him to bang his head on the ceiling. ‘Is there a family member or friend he might have gone to see? To talk it through, lick his wounds?’
He doesn’t have time to wait for an answer, but there isn’t one anyway.
Now Elaine has gone, Tim only has me.
I call him again as I walk towards his digs. It goes straight to voicemail, like before.
‘Where the hell are you, Tim? Whatever happens, we can fix it.’
My bloody mantra: let’s fix this, let’s put things right. My mending mania, the compulsion that means I am always there when I am needed, so I can get that buzz when it all works out . . .
His landlady tells me she hasn’t seen him face-to-face since last Wednesday. ‘But he woke me up this morning, because he slammed the door behind him, like he was in a temper or a rush?’
I search his room methodically, revolted at myself but also hating him for turning me into a paranoid, snooping wife who is searching for . . .
What? Infidelity? Not the Tim I know. But this brings back memories of when I had to do this two years ago, turning the bungalow upside down to find out why he really failed his exams.
Saint Kerry swung into action then. Rescuing him wasn’t enough: while I was at it, I had Joel locked up above Ant’s cafe, ‘fixing’ him too. I never doubted my own magic. After all, I’d brought someone back to life. Everything else is easy compared to that . . .
My head and shoulders throb and my belly churns, as though the tiny life inside me is already reminding me it has a heartbeat too.
For the first time, I let myself consider that Tim might have taken his own life.
No. He couldn’t do that to me.
Unless he felt there was no other way to escape.
There is nothing left for me to do here so I walk back towards the station, the cold air making my chest hurt even more. I board the train home and try another call. This time, the voicemail doesn’t kick in straight away. His number rings and rings.
It’s Tim here. Or, to be exact, not here. Please leave a message.
‘You have to tell me what’s going on. You can’t run away from me, from whatever this is.’
I watch my phone for the whole journey but no message appears. At Brighton, I catch a bus from the station to the hospital and go looking for Laura. She’s the only person I can think of who Tim still sees or talks to. If she doesn’t know anything, I have no other ideas.
I find her in the diabetes clinic. When I tell her what’s happened, she looks shifty.
‘You knew?’ I try to read her face. ‘Are you . . . the two of you? You’re not together again, are you?’
‘No! I’m very happily engaged, OK?’ She scoffs. ‘Bloody Tim, I can’t believe he’s put me in this position.’
‘If you know where he is, please tell me. I have to talk to him.’
She exhales. ‘All right. Let me get a pen.’
Six years of taking 999 calls has given me a complete mental A–Z of the city. The address Laura gives me is under a mile away but I’m so exhausted that I get a taxi.
The flat is in a nondescript modern block behind Preston Park. When I buzz the intercom, a woman answers.
‘Hello?’
‘My name is Kerry Smith. I’ve been told this might be where my husband is staying.’
The connection goes dead. Is this real? Part of me wants to go home, curl up under the duvet, pretend it’s yesterday.
The lock buzzes. ‘Third floor.’
As I climb the stairs, the weariness of the six-hour round trip makes me light-headed.
A woman answers the door. Angular, but attractive, with dark oval eyes that bore into mine. ‘Hi. I’m Maria.’
I want to ask: are you my husband’s lover? Instead, I manage, ‘He’s here?’
‘Come through.’ She has an accent – Spanish or Italian.
Tim stands by the window, his face dark and strained against the brightness of the winter light, but definitely in one piece.
I step forward and, without planning to, slap him hard across the cheek. My fingers sting. He flinches but says nothing.
‘How dare you run away, after everything?’
His eyes dart about, settling on anything except me. Behind us, the living-room door closes softly. This room is nothing like the bungalow: it’s sparsely but tastefully furnished from charity shops. Neat piles of books serve as lamp tables. No TV.
Perhaps they’re too busy talking – or screwing – to need distractions.
Stars appear at the edge of my vision. ‘I need to sit down.’
That startles him out of self-pity and he grabs my arm, steering me towards the sofa, just in time to stop me falling. ‘It’s OK, I’ve got you.’
I try to will myself not to faint. I need answers. Now. But there are so many unknowns that my head spins trying to work out where to begin.
‘What have you done, Tim? The hospital . . . there was a patient . . . your consultant said . . .’ The words come but in the wrong order, and the harder I try the more stars I see, and even though I’ve never fainted in my life before, I know the blackness is coming and a part of me welcomes it.