Postcards at Christmas Read online

  But no news must surely be good news. I recall, with a tiny stab of shame, what I had said to Mark when he made exactly the same point yesterday but dismiss it and focus on Simeon. There can’t have been any change in his condition or they would have rung me.

  I get up and go downstairs even though I know from the silence that I am alone in the house. There’s a note from Beth on the kitchen table.

  Morning, Lovely. Have taken Lily to mine to let Samson out. Am fine to have her all day so don’t worry. Will ring Mrs P and tell her what’s happened. You focus on S.

  Love B xxx

  PS Mark is with me.

  Bloody Mark. Why is he still here? Hasn’t he done enough damage? He should go back to London, where I can’t see him, and never come back.

  But I don’t have the resources to waste on him. I need to concentrate on Simeon. I ring the hospital and they tell me that there has been no change in his condition overnight and that he is due to have another scan shortly. I say that I’ll be there as soon as I can.

  I’m still in yesterday’s clothes, so I shower and change and stuff a few things for both of us into an overnight bag. It’s like we’re going on a little mini-break, and this thought reduces me to floods of desperate tears once again. I am so scared. I’m scared of what will happen to Sim. I’m scared for our life together. I’m scared that Lily will never get to know her wonderful father. All of it fills me with a kind of terror that I’ve never felt before.

  But there is no point falling apart. That will help no one and least of all Simeon. I text Beth that I’m heading back to the hospital and leave the house.

  Back in the hospital nothing has changed. There is a comforting sense of purpose here, ordered but urgent with everyone seeming to know exactly what their job is – except me. They buzz me into the Intensive Care Unit and I wait at the desk whilst they find someone to fill me in on how Simeon is doing. I only realise that I am biting my lip when I taste blood in my mouth. How long can it take to find someone who knows what is going on? My eyes flick up and down the unit as I desperately search for the nurse from the night before but then I realise that she must have gone off duty by now. My heart races faster and faster with each moment that I have to wait.

  Then I see a male nurse is heading towards me. He has a world-weary look about him but his face is kind and he smiles as he approaches.

  ‘Cara?’ he asks.

  I nod, desperate for him to give me information and not to waste any time with trivialities.

  ‘I’m Dan. Simeon has had a good night. He’s still unconscious but he’s had another scan and the swelling in his brain is reducing. We’re keeping a close eye on it but it’s a positive sign. His wrist will need to be set this morning and when he wakes he’ll need morphine for the pain from his collarbone and ribs.’

  ‘He will wake up then?’ I ask, jumping on this idea like a drunk on a bottle of whisky. My voice is low as if even suggesting that he won’t come round is enough to make it real.

  ‘As I say,’ Dan continues, ‘the signs are good. We are going to reduce the drugs this morning to see how he responds. We’ll know much more after that.’

  ‘But you’re hopeful?’ I ask. I’m desperate. I need him to tell me that everything is going to be all right. But Dan is reluctant.

  ‘We’re as positive as we can be at this stage,’ he says cautiously, ‘but there are no guarantees. We’ll know more when we try to bring him round.’

  ‘Can I see him?’ I ask now, realising that he has told me as much as he can.

  Dan smiles. This is something that he can do.

  He leads me into a room a little way up the corridor. There is a man lying in the bed. I know that it must be Simeon but for a moment I can’t bear to look. If I don’t see him then I can still pretend that this is all some terrible nightmare that I’ll wake up from.

  But then I look at my beautiful man lying there, battered and broken. He is barely recognisable both because of the injuries but also because he looks so vulnerable. Where is the Simeon I know, the strong, steady man that makes me laugh every day and keeps me safe from harm? There seems to be no essence of that person in this pale shell.

  I feel myself go light-headed and I sway backwards. Dan is at my side, holding me by the arm.

  ‘Let’s just sit down,’ he says gently. ‘Would you like a glass of water?’

  It’s such a shock seeing him just lying there, with his face a mess of red-raw gashes and rich purple bruises, his body hooked up to tubes and wires.

  The feeling of faintness passes as quickly as it came and I feel a little stupid.

  ‘No, I’m fine, thank you,’ I say to Dan. ‘Sorry.’

  Dan waves his hand in dismissal as if catching fainting loved ones is something he does every day of the week.

  ‘Oh God, Sim. Just look at you,’ I say then. ‘What a bloody mess.’

  ‘He’s not looking his best,’ agrees Dan. ‘You’re going to need to raise your game, Simeon, my lad, if you want to please the ladies again.’

  He talks in a perfectly natural voice, as if Sim is awake and able to respond. It must be part of the treatment, I suppose.

  ‘Can he hear us?’ I ask. I feel like someone in a TV medical drama.

  ‘Probably not,’ admits Dan, ‘but we’re never sure so we like to assume that they can. You should talk to him too. Familiar things help to get the memory to start functioning again.’

  His memory. It hadn’t even occurred to me that his memory might be affected. What if he can’t remember me? Or Lily? Or our life as it was before.

  ‘Will it be damaged, his memory?’ I ask.

  Dan looks at me kindly and prepares to repeat what he’s already said. I get in there first.

  ‘Sorry. You don’t know yet. Sorry. It’s just that I don’t know anything about any of this. I just have so many questions.’

  ‘Which you are completely entitled to ask,’ he says. ‘It’s just that I might not always know the answers.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I apologise again.

  Dan busies himself with charts and observations and I pull a chair up to Simeon’s bed.

  ‘Is this all right?’ I ask Dan as I take Sim’s right hand in mine.

  Dan nods.

  ‘Just be careful with his left-hand side,’ he says. ‘That collarbone is going to be sore.’

  Simeon’s right hand is perfect. It’s not even dirty. If I just focus on this little part of him I can forget about the rest of his battered and broken body just for a moment. I rub my thumb across the palm of his hand and my fingers play with his knuckles.

  ‘It’s me,’ I whisper. ‘I’m here. Everything is fine. Lily is with Beth and we’re all just waiting for you to wake up so if you’d hurry up and get on with it that would be great.’

  My voice cracks as I speak but I swallow and carry on. This is not about me and my feelings. I have to give everything I have to him so that he will wake up.

  And we’ll deal with whatever that brings with it after that. As I sit there stroking his hand and begging him to be okay, the tears drip off my chin and on to the hospital sheets.

  12

  It feels like an age before anyone comes to talk to me. Dan buzzes in and out carrying out observations and marking his findings on the charts but a lot of the time it’s just me and Simeon and the constant and strangely reassuring beeping of the equipment. I try talking to him, like Dan suggested I should and I start with a run through of everything that has happened since we last spoke but I quickly become self-conscious. My voice sounds over-bright and fake and I soon run out of things to say, lapsing into an uncomfortable silence. I decide that I’ll bring a book to read him instead. Or a newspaper. He loves the news. He loved the news. Tears flood my eyes again and I blink them away.

  I’m not sure I’m strong enough for this. When I stop speaking, the quiet is deafening in my head. I can’t help but play out the various disaster scenarios, all the terrible possibilities that might now lie ahead for the three, o
r, terrifyingly, just two, of us. Irritatingly, I can’t seem to stop crying, which annoys me. What have I got to cry about? I’m not the one fighting for my life. Yet my own grief washes over me at regular intervals. It makes me feel weak and inadequate and as if I’m no use to Simeon at all.

  By the time the doctor comes, my eyes are red and swollen and I have the beginnings of a headache from the tension and dehydration after losing all those tears. It is the same doctor that I spoke to before. I wonder if she can have been home in the intervening hours but she, unlike me, looks fresh and rested so I assume that she has.

  ‘Good morning,’ she says as she comes in but then her attention is entirely fixed on Simeon. She looks at the charts and the machines and then at him, rolling back his eyelids to examine his eyes with a little torch. I hold my breath as I wait for her to speak and I pray. I am not a religious person but somehow in this moment it feels like the only thing that I can do to help. Then she speaks to me.

  ‘He’s making reasonable progress,’ she says. ‘The swelling in his brain has gone down and as far as we can see there have been no further haemorrhages.’

  No further haemorrhages? Did that mean that there had been some before? What did that mean for Simeon? My head is full of questions but I have to wait to hear what she has to tell me before I say anything. I try to keep my own brain in check and to focus on her words.

  ‘So, this morning we will bring him out of the coma,’ she continues. ‘It may take him some time to wake up. Possibly days or even longer, depending on the depth of the natural coma. He may not wake up at all, but I think that’s unlikely.’

  She gives me a small but warmly reassuring smile which I lock on to like a heat-seeking missile. It isn’t enough but I have learned that there is little point asking questions. Until he’s awake the doctors know no more than they’ve already shared with me.

  And so now, we wait.

  They tell me when they have reduced the barbiturates enough for him to wake up. Dan keeps up a steady stream of conversation as he moves around the room, checking and making notes, peppering his words with Simeon’s name. I try again and I find that once I get into my stride, my self-consciousness evaporates. I chatter on inanely, I have no recollection what about, just stuff about our day-to-day lives together, the things that I took for granted twenty-four hours ago.

  Nothing happens. When I squeeze Simeon’s hand, I get no response. He gives me nothing back. They told me that this could take a while but my panic is starting to take control as more time passes and Simeon remains in whatever dark place he has been hiding.

  I start to get cross with him for not waking up.

  ‘For God’s sake, Sim,’ I hiss at him. ‘You need to wake up. You’re scaring the living daylights out of me. Just do it! Now!’

  But there is nothing. I can feel no spark of connection between us. This hand that I’m squeezing could belong to anyone.

  Dan continues to check his vital signs calmly and efficiently but the atmosphere in the room has altered. The buzz of positivity that was there before has been replaced with an urgent desperation. This isn’t what they were expecting, I can tell.

  ‘Shouldn’t he be awake by now?’ I ask, although I dread the answer.

  ‘There are no rules here, Cara. Simeon isn’t responding quite as quickly as we’d like but that doesn’t mean that he won’t. We just need to be patient.’

  But I can’t be patient any more. I’m done with being patient. I want him back and I want it now. I don’t care how badly injured he is, what problems we may have to face going forward. We will overcome them together, as a team. Right now, though, I just want him to wake up so that I know that I haven’t lost him forever.

  13

  BETH

  It’s lunchtime. Lily is asleep after gulping down her bottle as if her life depended on it (which I suppose it does.) I have had a couple of texts from Cara but there is no change in Simeon’s condition. My heart is breaking for her but there’s nothing I can do to help other than staying positive and looking after Lily until they get home. I have to keep believing that they will both be coming home.

  I think about poor Mark too, stuck on his own at my place without any news. What a terrible way to spend a weekend. I decide to text him.

  Hi. Beth here. Are you ok?

  A message comes back almost at once.

  Yes, thanks. Any news on Simeon?

  No. Nothing yet. Hungry? Shall we meet up for some lunch?

  Nice idea.

  I look out of the window and peer up at the sky. It’s now cobalt blue with not a single cloud. Despite all the odds being stacked against it, we’re forecast to have a wonderful Easter weekend. This means that town will be rammed with tourists and it will be difficult to get a table anywhere.

  How about a picnic?

  Sounds good.

  Great. I’ll pick up you up in an hour.

  I open Cara’s fridge, which is stuffed full of all the lovely food she’d bought for Mark’s visit, and start amassing the wherewithal for a pretty tasty picnic. Then I grab the things I’ll need for Lily, ticking things off on my fingers as I run through the lengthy list. Babies are surprisingly needy, I’ve discovered. We’ll have to go somewhere pushchair friendly but I can’t face the park on a sunny day like this. I decide that the moor will be a better bet and also has the added advantage of being able to show Mark at least some of the countryside around here.

  Lily barely stirs as I lift her from her cot and lay her gently in the pushchair. It’s a doddle, this parenting thing, I think. With everything either stuffed underneath or hanging off the pushchair we set off for my house.

  It feels slightly odd letting myself in, knowing that there is someone else inside – apart from Samson, of course, who is clearly delighted to see me and barks enthusiastically, jumping up against my shins in his excitement. I find his lead so that he can join us on our outing. Lily sleeps on.

  Mark is standing, a little awkwardly, in my sitting room. He is wearing shorts and a tee shirt having clearly taken the weather forecast at its word – he must be a risk taker! Interesting, I think, although not entirely surprising given where Simeon currently is.

  ‘Morning,’ he says. ‘Again.’

  ‘Hi,’ I reply. ‘Did you manage to get any sleep?’

  He looks at me wryly.

  ‘Well, I was asleep but then someone texted me . . .’

  I pull a face that says ‘Oops!’

  ‘God – I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.’

  But he’s shaking his head and smiling.

  ‘I was tossing and turning anyway,’ he says. ‘I just couldn’t seem to get things out of my mind, you know?’

  I do know and I also know that the horrifying image of Simeon being hit by the car is unlikely to leave his mind’s eye for a long time yet, if at all. But I just nod sympathetically.

  ‘I thought we’d head up to the moor,’ I say. ‘It’s a bit of a vertical slope but it’ll be worth it when we get there, I promise you.’

  ‘I’m in your hands,’ he says with a grin.

  A compliant man, I think. Well, there’s a thing I’m not used to.

  We set off. Mark offers to push the laden pushchair and, as I know what’s coming, I let him. We skirt around the edge of town and head upwards. I think about taking a detour to show him Simeon’s bachelor flat in the old maternity hospital but it’s already too warm to make this trip any harder than it needs to be. Maybe we can pass by on the way back down.

  About halfway up, I see droplets of sweat starting to trickle down Mark’s cheek, so I offer to take my turn with the pushchair. He gallantly refuses so I just chatter away and he joins in when he has the breath to.

  Eventually, we reach the path that leads up to White Wells, a whitewashed stone bathhouse nestled into the side of the moor. We can have our picnic there. Any further and the pushchair will get stuck in the bracken.

  ‘That’s where we’re heading,’ I say, pointing up the gravel path to the
white cottages above. Mark looks relieved.

  ‘Is that place occupied?’ he asks, his breathing heavy.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The people who live there manage the café and look after the plunge pool. It must be a bit grim in the winter.’

  ‘There’s a plunge pool?’ he asks, incredulous.

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up. It’s basically a hole in the ground with a hand rail. And the water is freezing all year round. It’s supposed to be good for your circulation but I’ve never been convinced.’

  It’s a bit like a fair when we get there, with people spilling out of the café and traipsing up and down every visible path. It’s going to be a challenge to find a quiet spot but I know that there’s a level-ish bit round the back, so we head for that and find a suitable patch of grass. I pull a couple of beach towels out from under the pushchair.

  ‘I didn’t know where Cara keeps her picnic blankets so we’ll have to make do with these,’ I say.

  ‘They’re great,’ he replies and spreads himself out on the blue one, leaving the pink one for me and Lily. I’m tempted to comment but decide against it.

  I dish out the food. Lily sits in the middle of my towel and I feed her raisins and Marmite sandwiches which I’ve cut into tiny squares for her. Mark is quiet and he gazes across the valley towards the town and beyond.

  ‘What do you think is happening?’ he asks eventually.

  ‘At the hospital?’ I reply. ‘I don’t know. I can text Cara again if you like.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I’d rather not know. At least this way I can still pretend he’s going to be okay.’

  Suddenly, I’m wondering if my picnic was such a great idea. It feels all wrong to be out here having a nice time when Simeon is still in a coma. But then again, we have to eat and this is as good a way to do it as any other.

  ‘Do you want to talk about what happened?’ I ask him. ‘It can help sometimes.’