My headache is really pounding and I’m sweating as I run up the stairs. As I turn on the landing I can see his bare legs on the bedroom floor and I know what I’m going to find.
I don’t want to know but I know.
There’s shit everywhere if you look.
Mum said it all the time.
Or slurred it.
I can hear male voices; someone is counting as I walk in. I watch them pounding on his chest, there are bruises all over it. The paramedics that have just arrived are pulling up drugs and I’m pretty much ignored as I walk in the room, except by one.
‘You all right love?’
I think I nod.
He’s a big guy, and he’s very practical and kind and he lets me take in the scene for a second or two before the questions start.
‘Do you know if there’s any history?’
So much history, so much bloody history, because even though I haven’t looked, even though I haven’t so much as turned my head towards her, I know that she’s there. I turn and face her and mum was right – I’m looking at shit. She’s wrapped in a sheet and crying and shaking, her skinny legs are buckling and, Christ, she’d only be about twenty!
‘Does he have any history of heart problems, or medical conditions?’ The paramedic is more specific with his questions this time.
‘None.’ I hear my voice, so I guess I can speak.
‘Is he on any medication?’
‘None.’ There goes my voice again, except what would it know? There’s a policeman going through his jacket pocket and he opens a pillbox. I stare at the little pile of blue pills that he tips out onto the bed and one falls on the floor beside his body.
It might be safer for him if they stop the resuscitation! I feel my lips stretch into the wrong shape - into a shocked, incredulous smile.
There’s no need to state the obvious – no need to say that I didn’t know.
I stare at the pill that rolled to the floor and all I can think is - he wouldn’t get them for me.
For the first time I look properly at him.
He’s naked.
They’ve put a towel over his bits.
A white one that he’s not allowed to use – it’s one of my for display purposes only towels. How ironic, I think. I never let him dry his hands on it and now it’s covering his cock.
The room smells of sex.
It reeks of it.
It sticks to the lining of my nostrils and it makes be want to gag as it moves into my lungs. I see that they’re not bruises on his chest - they’re love bites and, a moment or two later, when he makes gurgling noises and they roll him on his side, I see scratches on his back and they didn’t come from me.
I will kill her.
I swear, the second this over, my eyes turn from him to her, and even though I don’t say a word, my expression clearly tells her that very soon, any moment now, she’s going to have her head ripped off.
His phone is ringing and I half expect him to answer it. For him to ask everyone to stop everything for a moment and then get up and step outside, or go out to the garden to answer it, as he always does. Christmas, Easter, middle of a row, it doesn’t matter, if his phone rings he answers it. This time though it rings out and I know then that he’s gone.
I know, even as they stand back and his body jolts and his chest lifts off the carpet, that he’s not coming back.
‘We’ve got a rhythm.’
He’s got a pulse apparently. They’re all taking about moving him and a policeman comes and tells me that he’s moving my car as I’m blocking the ambulance. I’m not alone with her, but we’re the only two standing doing nothing in the room.
‘I’m sorry…’ She’s sobbing, there is snot running down her nose and she’s beside herself and she’s cowering as if I’m about to hit her. I think about it, believe me, I think about it, but his phone rings again and we both stand there frozen for a moment before I answer it.
‘Where the hell are you? We’re supposed to be starting the meeting…’
‘Luke?’ He sounds normal, he sounds busy, he sounds like he lives in the same world that I did a few moments ago.
‘Lucy?’ I hear his confusion. ‘Sorry, I thought I was ringing…’
‘You did.’ I’m not crying, I’m shivering and shaking, and he sounds so normal, so oblivious. ‘I’m at home…’ I can hardly get the words out, let alone explain things to Luke. ‘They’re taking him to hospital…’ and there’s just silence. ‘It doesn’t look good.’
He’s all calm and practical and tells me that he’ll meet me there, that things will be fine, that he’s tough, and if anyone is going to pull through then it’s him, but I don’t think so.
I really don’t think so.
I turn off the phone and I look at her and I’m not going to hit her, I just want her gone. I want her out, I want her away, I want this finished and done, right here, right now…
‘If my daughter ever has to hear about this.’
‘I won’t say anything.’ She’s pulling on her clothes.
‘I swear to God,’ I tell her, ‘if my daughter, if anyone, gets so much as a sniff…’ The room stinks of sex and I feel like I’m going to throw up.
‘I’m not going to tell anyone,’ she whimpers. The policeman’s back with a colleague and I’m told that he’s not well enough for me to go with him in the ambulance, but the police will drive me there – I’m in no fit state apparently.
She’s dressed now, about to run out, but the policeman asks her to wait. ‘We need a few details,’ he says.
I don’t even attempt to comprehend what he wants her for. I mean, I don’t dwell on his words. I’m led down the stairs and they’re closing up the back of the ambulance. I can see that they’ve got this bag attached to a tube in his throat and are breathing air into him, but even though they’re not banging on his chest now, I just feel like he’s gone, I feel like he left in the bedroom…
I’m driven to the hospital. Occasionally the police car blasts the siren, but only at traffic lights and things. We’re not following the ambulance; they’re just trying to get me there as soon as they can, but I know that the blue lights are on, because people keep turning around as the car swishes past.
And all I can think is that I haven’t got any underwear on.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sensitive.
That’s probably the word.
The paramedics would have told the staff and they are sensitive as they come in to the room I’ve been put in. They ask about his history, and if, apart from Viagra, he’s on any medication.
I feel bile in the back of my throat. How would I know?
‘Nothing.’
They’re doing everything they can, they tell me, but his heart has stopped again and they’re having a lot of trouble getting it started. At that moment Luke walks in. He just stands there, his face white like chalk and I’m told a doctor will be in to speak with me shortly.
‘What happened?’
I run a tongue over my lips and I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.
‘Lucy?’
I rest my head in my hands – I have too many thoughts to think, let alone speak, and slowly Luke starts to voice a few of them. ‘Do you need to call his family?’
I’m his family.
Charlotte and I are his family.
I don’t say it though.
It’s another thing they don’t tell you when you marry that sexy older guy, that one day you’ll be ringing his daughter, except Eleanor is due to have a baby in a few weeks. We only found out just after Christmas, and she was already five months pregnant by then. ‘Do you know her husband’s number?’ Luke’s so practical, so boring and practical - he just gets things done. ‘He’s the dentist isn’t he? The one doing Charlotte’s braces?’
It’s more complicated than that. This is the Jamesons we’re talking about after all, so it’s always more complicated than that. I’m not supposed to talk about it yet, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to even know that Noel walked out a couple of weeks ago. I don’t tell that to Luke, I don’t really get the chance, he’s going through my phone and he asks to be put through to Noel. He says that it’s a family emergency and Noel must have come to the phone because Luke is explaining the situation and, after a brief conversation, Luke ends the call.
‘He’s going to go home now and tell Eleanor.’ Luke sits down beside me, he goes to take my hand, but he stops when I pull mine away – I don’t want his sudden friendship – he’s not my friend, he’s his friend, and he’s Charlotte’s godfather. I close my eyes as I remember that I should be picking Charlotte up soon – she’s sitting in school and she doesn’t have a clue that her father’s going to die.
And he is going to die.
I know it.
I think he already has.
I think he was gone by the time they put him in the ambulance – I can’t explain that because I don’t believe in God, or a Higher Power, or spirits, or anything, but he’s not here any more, I just know it.
He’s gone.
I’m left.
And I can’t do this on my own.
‘I have to pick Charlotte up.’ Except I’m dressed in a smock and not wearing any underwear and I don’t have my car but I have to be there for her.