Their room had had a small balcony that faced the sea, and all three children had slept better than ever before, exhausted by playing in the fresh air. After they’d passed out, impossibly adorable, Nick and Carrie had drunk a little on that balcony. Carrie had just discovered Aperol Spritz, and he’d packed the wherewithal to make it for her in the room: she’d have two after dinner, and be tipsy, and remind him very much of the Carrie he’d married. Golden from the sun, where he was just pink.
And so, after that lovely week, he’d been a little bit resentful of going back to work. A little bit grouchy. After he’d tracked down his clean shirt, and shovelled in some Cheerios, he’d kissed her forehead. Not her mouth. And he’d gone to work, where he was instantly buried in backed-up emails. He hadn’t thought about her again. Until he’d got the call.
Afterwards, he couldn’t really remember the journey to the hospital. How he’d staggered out of his office, said something – what? – to the nearest colleague, left the building. He must have hailed a cab. Maybe someone had followed him out and done it for him. He couldn’t remember what he’d said. Just that the taxi driver – a burly Asian, with a neat row of photographs of his own kids taped to the roof of the cab – didn’t let him pay for the ride. Called him ‘mate’, and wished him well. And that random empathy had nearly made him sob.
There’d been a queue at the desk in A and E. A young woman with a bandaged hand. A milky-eyed old man in carpet slippers. They were both directed to the chairs by the window, with the vending machine and the three-year-old copies of National Geographic. He’d felt a stab of envy at their waiting-room status as he was ushered immediately beyond the desk. They were waiting because they could.
Carrie had been driving. Less than five miles from home. She was a good driver. Slower than him. Careful. It didn’t matter, though, any of that, if the person in the other car was none of those.
She hadn’t told him she was dropping Arthur off with a friend so she could take the girls to soft play for a couple of hours. It was minutiae. Tiny detail. No need for him to know. She hadn’t even known when she’d said goodbye. She’d been speaking to her friend Susie on the phone after he’d left – Susie had said she’d have Arthur while Carrie took the girls: soft play was impossible with a baby in tow, and it was such a wet day, and they loved it so … They’d have talked about it later. How it smelt of feet and how Bea had helped Delilah climb a rope net, and how the soft-play centre charged five pounds for a cup of chips because they had a captive audience.
They’d blue-lit her to the hospital. But she’d been dead when they arrived. She might have been when they put her into the ambulance. Maybe it was important to try, or just to be seen to try, when it was a young mother, like Carrie. Or maybe there had been a chance. If the crash had happened a mile closer to the hospital, or at five miles per hour slower, if the doctor had been less tired or just a better doctor. If, if, if. Ifs tortured him with their possibilities. With their different endings.
But there was just this one ending.
Another driver had hit Carrie’s car on a junction. He wasn’t drunk. He was late. He knew the road, but he misjudged the lights, and didn’t have time to slow down. The front of his car hit the side of theirs where the driver sat, far too fast. He killed Carrie. He didn’t kill Bea or Delilah. Just their mother. Catastrophic internal injuries.
The other driver had killed himself too: he was declared dead at the scene. Consolation? Frustration? Neither. Totally irrelevant. His survival would maybe have meant a charge, a trial, a devastatingly light sentence: someone to be angry with. Sometimes Nick longed for that complication, because it would have been somewhere to channel rage. More often he felt no rage at all. Just sadness.
At the hospital, he didn’t have to make heart-rending decisions about which bed to sit beside. There was no long wait, no time to pray or weep. Carrie was dead and the children were fine, physically at least. Bea and Delilah were fine. They’d evidently both been asleep. The motion of the car had always worked like magic: he’d spent hours driving around when they were small, at night, lulling them to sleep in third gear. Their bodies hadn’t braced for the impact, and their high-tech car seats had saved them from so much as a scratch. The first people on the scene had taken them out, away from their mother, held them and cooed while the ambulance came. They didn’t know anything about Arthur. There was no baby. No car seat. For a couple of minutes, Nick’s mind raced with the unbearable ifs.
It was Bea who’d solved the mystery, pale with shock, and so small on a gurney meant for an adult. ‘Arthur went to play at Susie’s.’
Carrie’s phone was in her handbag: 25 per cent battery charge, which was typical of her. He’d bought her a powerbank recently, and there was a cable permanently in the car, but she didn’t always remember to use it. Recent calls. Susie. He didn’t really know Susie. They’d met a handful of times at drinks or dinner. He’d had to call her and tell her. She was the first person he’d said it out loud to. Carrie’s dead. Before Carrie’s parents, even. ‘Carrie’s dead. Will you please bring Arthur to the hospital?’ And Carrie had looked fine, lying like Sleeping Beauty from the Disney film of a hundred sleepy Sunday mornings, peaceful, still and beautiful. This time he’d kissed her mouth, not her forehead.
Surreal. It all had been surreal. He’d called them next, Ed and Maureen. Then Charlie. He’d asked Charlie to call Laura and Scott. Then he’d called Fran, because he truly didn’t know what to do next. And that was his life now. Knowing what to do next – or, rather, not knowing what to do next – had become an everyday state of being for him.
19
Coming home at the end of a long day, when signalling failures at Waterloo had meant a crowded train with standing room only, even in first class, Scott registered more shopping than normal cluttering the hall. There was a pile of boxes just inside the front door.
Heather came towards him with a crystal tumbler of malt whisky. She did this most days when she was at home, with only a touch of irony. She called it her Mad Men move, or her Good Housekeeping circa 1960 technique. He rather liked it.
‘This is a lot of packages, even for you.’ He gestured at the pile.
‘Hold on – I didn’t order some of them. Most of them, actually. Maybe even none of them.’ She considered.
‘Who did, then? Have the girls got to my Amex?’
‘They’re gifts, hon. Hashtag gifted.’
‘Gifted from whom?’
She adopted a patient tone. She’d explained this. ‘Companies who want me to promote their products to my followers.’
‘Always makes me want to laugh when you say “followers”. Like you’re some cult leader.’
‘It isn’t funny. It’s a job.’
‘Is it, though?’ He cocked his head to one side.
She punched his nearest arm playfully, then gestured expansively in the direction of the boxes. ‘Free stuff.’
‘We so need more stuff! And is it free if you have to post something about it?’
She parroted back the line he’d heard before: ‘All endorsements are genuine. All opinions are my own. I have to protect my brand.’