‘Hello,’ I say, my voice is calm and normal, not high and hysterical like it wants to be. ‘My brother was brought in earlier. Logan Carlisle. He was found on the seafront.’
The woman seems to be in no rush to get the information up. The whole area is filling up with people suffering from the usual misadventures that seem to befall them on Saturday night more than any other night of the week. The woman behind the counter takes an age to look at me, to get the right screen up in front of her. ‘Date of birth?’ she asks.
I tell her and she types some more into the keyboard, then looks up at me. Her manner has slightly shifted, now she looks concerned. Now she confirms how awful it is. ‘He’s in surgery right now,’ she says. ‘If you could take a seat, when the surgeon finishes, someone will come and talk to you.’
‘That’s it? I – we – just have to wait until someone comes to talk to us?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘But I need to know what happened.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t have that information. Those people came in with him. One of them is a doctor, he may have more information. But other than that, I’m sorry, all I can advise is for you to wait.’
‘Who did you say came in with him?’
The woman behind the glass partition points behind me and I spin in that direction.
She’s standing right behind me. Not too close, but close enough for my whole being to have a reaction when I see her. Near enough for my body to entirely freeze, then unfreeze to allow me to take a step back.
This can’t be happening.
It really can’t be happening.
We stare at each other for a forever.
This forever has been stretched out over the last ten years, over the last thirty years. I have not seen her in ten years. I’ve often thought I might, living and working in Brighton like we both do, but no. I think Fate has intervened, keeping us apart, allowing us to live in peace.
I have not seen her in ten years.
Now I am staring at her and she is staring at me.
And all that history, all that stuff we left at Marcus’s grave all those years ago, is rushing back in like grains of sand falling back into the empty end of a large hourglass. The particles of time, those feelings, emotions, moments, actions, memories gush in. All that stuff, all that everything that made up the connections of our lives is pouring back between us.
We stand staring at each other and wait for the sands of time to smother us.
‘Hello, Poppy,’ she eventually says.
‘Hello, Serena,’ I reply.
serena
Now
‘What happened to my brother?’ she asks in the moments after we’ve reacquainted ourselves with each other. ‘The woman said you came in with him. Why?’
‘We don’t know what happened to him. He was outside where we were having a party on the seafront. No one knows why he was there or how he got there. Or what happened to him.’ I point vaguely to my left, at Evan. ‘There were a few doctors there and they helped him. Evan was one of them. He came in the ambulance with him.’
Her gaze flitters over Evan and a little shimmer of shame crosses her eyes as she remembers what she did, how she tricked him to get to talk to him so she could get at me. ‘It was just coincidence that he just happened to be near you?’ she says, as though I am making up outlandish things and she is not going to fall for a word of it.
I shrug. ‘I don’t know. Probably not.’ I take a deep breath. Once I say this. Once I verbally admit this to another person, let alone her, I am setting our lives off on a trajectory that none of us will be able to control. ‘He and . . . he and my daughter, Verity, were involved.’ I point vaguely to my right, where my daughter is sitting. The area is almost entirely full now, with more and more people gushing in as if through an open wound that is going to be difficult to seal and heal, but Poppy knows immediately who I mean.
‘Involved?’ Her shock raises her voice and causes her eyes to run over and over my daughter’s form. ‘What do you mean, “involved”?’
What do you think I mean? I want to snap. Has the shock made you thick or something? ‘They were together,’ I say quietly. ‘Dating.’ Screwing. Fucking. Making love. They were together.
‘Dating?’ Her distressed gaze keeps darting between my rapidly wilting eldest child and me. ‘How? Why? How?’
I don’t have answers for her. My questions are many and detailed and I cannot ask them because I do not want to shout at Verity. I do not want to give her any idea that I might be as furious and hurt and scared as I am. I am scared because you do not mess with another person’s past in the way Verity and her boyfriend have been doing and not create consequences that are felt by everyone involved.
‘Is this some kind of sick joke?’ Poppy asks me.
I wish, I think. I wish because once the punchline is delivered, we can all walk away, we can all go back to our normal lives. But this is not a joke. And any punchline that does come with this will leave us all with bloodied noses. Marcus only ever punched me in the face once. He didn’t break my nose, but he did bloody it. And he did realise his mistake because it was a very visible representation of what he was doing. He did not want other people to notice, to talk, to possibly be motivated enough to try to help. Once was probably enough, though. I’m sure I never did whatever it was that set him off ever again.
‘No, this isn’t a joke.’ I indicate to Evan, ask him to come over so he can tell her what he knows.
In his presence, Poppy stands up straighter, her scowl drops away, and she seems meek almost. Is she scared of Evan? Embarrassed by what she did? Or is it more? Is it something that will put us at odds again? Because I will tolerate almost any woman looking twice at my husband but not her. Never her.
She nods and stares at him with big doe eyes while he tells her what he knows. About Logan’s injuries, what he and the other doctors did to make him comfortable until the ambulance arrived, how he was unconscious but stable when they got to the hospital. The reason why they needed to operate to relieve the pressure on his brain.
‘Is he going to die?’ she asks when Evan has finished talking.
‘Everyone is doing all they can for him,’ my husband replies. Which feels as close to ‘probably’ that Evan can say without actually saying the word. ‘Try not to worry,’ he adds, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. ‘He’s in the best place, receiving the best care.’
I can’t believe he’s touching her. Comforting her. And I can’t believe it’s bothering me. Of all the things that are happening right now, this is what is causing the most unpleasant feelings to rise in me.
Evan seems to suddenly remember himself and takes his hand away. He needs to not do that again. He needs to not touch Poppy Carlisle again. Ever.
My husband returns to his seat, while Poppy reaches out and takes the hand of the woman next to her. She looks a bit like Poppy, not so much a younger version, but a slimmer, different version. Her sister, I am guessing.
‘Once the police have been to take our statements we’ll leave,’ I say to Poppy. She nods in response, but has, to all intents and purposes, forgotten I’m there.