THE WILLOW ROOM, WEYFIELD HALL, 10:00 A.M.
• • •
FROM: Olivia Birch <Olivia.Birch1984@gmail.com>
TO: Sean Coughlan <SeanKCoughlan@gmail.com>
DATE: Sat, Dec 24, 2016 at 10:00 a.m.
SUBJECT: No subject
Baby,
I know you won’t get this, or not today anyway, but I can’t not write.
She couldn’t think what to say next. It wasn’t fair to dump all her own terror on Sean, much as she wanted to. If she wrote at all, she should be reassuring, upbeat. But what was the point, either way, since there was no chance of Sean reading e-mails at the moment. Even if his condition stabilized, he wouldn’t be allowed any handheld devices until he was out of isolation. Which could be days. Because he would get better, wouldn’t he? He was in the Royal Free, not Monrovia, she reminded herself. He’d have twenty-four-hour care, from the same fat-cat consultants who should have come to help in Liberia. Immediately, any comfort in this was extinguished by shame. She thought of all the patients she’d admitted to the treatment center, where there were no beeping monitors or new drugs or assisted ventilators. There was no divine hand to medevac them to safety. Nobody to report their particular case in the papers.
What had she been thinking? How could she have lost control like this? She’d seen other aid workers do the same—living for the moment, like they were in a war zone. And she’d judged them. She even remembered discussing it with a fellow volunteer at the Calais camp, last year. They’d agreed that the way to meet emotional challenge was through focus on the work, practical care, applied learning. What a pompous twat. Now she’d gone and done exactly what she disapproved of. She’d put everyone at risk. Everyone and everything. Her own career, Sean’s career, HELP’s reputation in Liberia. Why hadn’t they held back, followed the protocol, instead of acting like teenagers? She dug her palms into her eye sockets.
There was a knock on her door. “I’m doing Mummy’s and Daddy’s stockings,” said Phoebe. Olivia paused. She wanted to tell Phoebe to go ahead, to do them without her. But she needed to carry on as normal. Her family suspecting her secret would only make things worse. “I’ll be down in a bit,” she said, brushing away tears even though Phoebe couldn’t see.
“OK, I’ll be in the Porch Room,” said Phoebe, footsteps fading along the passage.
• • •
The Porch Room was a child’s narrow bedroom, directly above the front door. Olivia wasn’t sure whose. Phoebe would know. For as long as Olivia could remember, it had been the present-wrapping room. The chest of drawers by the little cast-iron bed groaned with recycled Christmas paper, carefully saved gift boxes, and special pens that either didn’t work or suddenly glooped out gold blobs. As children, she and Phoebe used to hover outside on Christmas Eve, asking to come in, and delighting in a stern order to “Go away immediately.” How unfair, she thought, walking down the passage, that some children are born to such privilege, others to shantytowns. Weyfield was a different planet to Liberia. At least there was the whiff of reality in Camden, when you chatted to the Big Issue sellers.
She found Phoebe on the floor of the Porch Room, surrounded by carrier bags, chocolates, paperbacks, and beribboned soap.
“OK, here’s what I’ve got,” she said. “This is Mummy’s pile.” She pointed to the frothier and pinker of two heaps. “And this is Daddy’s. We’re short on non-edibles for him. It’s, like, practically all condiments. He’s so hard to buy for.” She sighed dramatically. “Annoying we can’t just go to Holt and buy extra stuff.”
Did Olivia detect a hint of reproach? She sat down beside Phoebe, inwardly calculating that each pile probably cost over a hundred pounds.
“Wow! Good job, Phoebs,” she said. It felt outrageous to be fussing about an adult man’s stocking, when forty-eight hours ago she had been comforting an orphaned toddler. She thought of Sean, and felt like someone was slowly, slowly squeezing her insides.
Phoebe looked up, her eyes suspicious. “What did you get?”
“Just these,” said Olivia, unwrapping two wooden bottle stoppers, carved into a giraffe and zebra, that she’d bought on a rare weekend off with Sean in Fish Town. They looked incongruous among the luxury littering the floor. Their paper bag still smelled of the spices that had hung in the air that Sunday.
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“OK. What are they for—wine?”
“Yeah, just, for bottles, I guess. Any bottle.” She hadn’t really thought about what they were for. Sean had been buying them for his parents, so she’d followed his lead. How could he be interred in a Trexler tent now?
“Are they, like, safe?”
“What? Yes! They’d need to have been in a Haag patient’s bed to be a risk.”
“OK.” Phoebe took them in a pincer grip, added one to each pile, then swapped them, then swapped them back again.
“Yeah, I think that’s right. Zebra for Mummy,” she said to herself, frowning.
“Sorry I didn’t have a chance to shop,” said Olivia. “It was pretty full-on out there.” She needed Phoebe to register that she hadn’t just been on holiday. “You’re so good at this stuff, though. You’ve done really well,” she added, in the voice she’d perfected as a trainee at Great Ormond Street.
Phoebe said nothing and kept tinkering with the heaps.
“I did get these,” said Olivia after a long silence, bringing out the six DVDs she had ordered, almost at random, last week. It was all Sean’s idea. He’d insisted she use his Amazon Prime account to deliver to Weyfield, when she admitted she hadn’t bought any proper gifts. “I was going to put them under the tree, but have them for the stockings if you need them.”
“You can’t have more than one DVD in a stocking.”
“Why not?”
“Because. It’s not balanced, it’s too many. And they watch stuff on Netflix now. Anyway, what will you give them for their main presents?”
“I’m sure they’ll manage without. And they’ll still be getting them, just not under the tree.” This conversation needs to end, she thought. She suddenly felt very tired. Phoebe studied each DVD case, took two, and began silently stuffing the pair of long woolly socks on the bed without looking at her. At first, Olivia tried handing her gifts, but with each offering Phoebe said something like: “No, I’ve just put a soap in. We need something edible,” so she gave up and sat watching, until the stockings bulged like just-fed pythons. This, thought Olivia, was why she avoided Christmas at Weyfield.