Liz: Beth just wanted a rest. She’d been up all night, the poor thing. Instead of leaving her be, Emma kept on at her, asking how she was, how Geoff was, all that. I wanted to tell her to go away, but it wasn’t my place.
Emma: Mum said she was going back to the hospital later in the afternoon and asked if I wanted to go with her. I told her that of course I would.
Liz: It was obvious to anyone watching that Emma didn’t want to go. Beth put her on the spot, where she couldn’t say no.
Emma: I asked Mum what she thought of the cottage – but she didn’t know anything about it. I had to tell her that the manager had moved all her things to a private cottage, instead of the main hotel. Nobody had told her and, when she got back from the hospital, she’d gone straight to the pool.
I ended up walking with her around the back of the pool out towards the cottages. That’s when I noticed the flowers.
Julius: I only saw it later. The staff had put together this display of flowers next to the door of Mum’s cottage. Fair play to them.
Emma: Someone had put in a lot of effort. They’d woven the flowers into a heart shape and then rested it up against the wall. Mum burst into tears the moment she saw it. She kept saying how kind it all was, but I was more worried about her physically. I was having to hold her up because she was so frail. I ended up guiding her over to the door and then I let her in with the key that the manager had left me.
It was a lot cooler inside because of the air con, but Mum was like a ghost. She was drifting aimlessly around the room while constantly catching herself on the corners of things. She barely seemed to notice and I did wonder if she’d taken something. I didn’t want to ask.
She said she wanted to take a shower, so I left her doing that while I waited in the bedroom area. There was a king-size bed and I remember thinking that Mum was going to find it very empty when it came to sleeping. She was having a hard enough time of it as it was – and that was before what happened to Dad.
…
I realise I contributed to everything that went wrong.
Julius: After Emma got her sentence, she wasn’t around to see how Mum took it. I would sometimes take the girls round to their house and Mum would still be in bed, even though it was the afternoon. Other times, she’d be on a cleaning spree and would be doing something like scrubbing the floor of a cupboard. I never knew which version of her would be home when I visited.
I know Emma will say she had it tough inside… but it was hardly a party outside.
Emma: When Mum came out of the shower, she said she wanted to sleep but made me promise to wake her at four o’clock, so that she could go back to the hospital. I told her I would, then she slipped a tablet and got herself under the covers. I didn’t even ask what she’d taken.
Julius: Mum took a lot of pills during the time Emma was inside. She tried to hide them at first, but it became too obvious. I would have asked what they were – but it wouldn’t have made any difference. I think we’ve always been a family of people who do what they want – and only answer questions if we need to.
Emma: I don’t know what I did for the next few hours. I might have slept myself… but that doesn’t sound like me. Perhaps I went for another walk? I doubt I went to the pool. Do you really need to know?
Julius: I don’t think I saw Emma between the time we got back from the hospital and later that night. It’s only now, looking back, when I wonder where she was, or – perhaps more importantly – who she was with.
Emma: When I woke Mum, she was looking a little better – but not much. There were still rings around her eyes and that hollowed sense that she carried. We ended up getting another taxi to the hospital and then the receptionist there waved us through. They knew who she was by then and I think word had gone around the island about what had happened.
Mum knew where she was going and led the way through the corridors without anyone stopping us. It would have probably felt odd, except that it all happened so fast that I didn’t have time to think it over. Before I knew it, we were in front of a door and a nurse was waiting for us. She said that Dad was doing as well as could be expected – and a few other things that I don’t really remember.
After that, she showed us inside. Dad had a private room to himself. It was quite a big space, all white, with a bed right in the middle. He was lying on his back in the bed, with the sheets tucked underneath his chin. Mum went closer to the bed, but I watched as he breathed in and out. It was so… peaceful.
I remember this stupid sense of envy; that I’d love to be able to sleep like that. I knew it wasn’t real sleep, that he was in a coma, but my mind was all over the place.
Mum was sitting at his side and she’d taken his arm out from under the covers. She was talking to him, saying she was there and that she loved him. She was holding his hand, squeezing his fingers and I felt so out of place. I shouldn’t have been there. I had no idea what I could say to him, whether he was awake or not.
Yes, he’s my dad, but I broke a part of him when I broke a part of me. How do you take that back?
I felt out of the moment, distant and detached, almost out of my body.
It’s funny how things like that happen. How you can sit and stare at a problem that never goes anywhere and then, the moment you step away, the answer slips into your mind.
I think that’s probably why I saw what wasn’t there, instead of what was.
Dad’s ring was missing.
Chapter Eight
THE WRONG THING TO SAY
Emma: Mum stared at Dad’s hand and then looked back up to me. She goes: ‘He never takes it off,’ which I already knew. That emerald signet ring was almost the thing for which Dad was best known. If he had to knock on someone’s front door, he’d do it with that ring instead of his knuckles. He sometimes used it to flick the cap off bottles. It was like he’d made it a part of himself.
He had definitely been wearing it the night before because he’d dinged his glass and made that speech.
Mum checked his other hand and then spoke to a couple of people at the hospital to see if Dad had been brought in alongside any other possessions. They said he hadn’t.
I know he’d fallen, but it seems unlikely gravity would be enough to remove a ring from someone’s fingers, which left us both thinking he might have been robbed. That made a lot more sense than him simply falling.
I still had Jin’s card on me, so tried calling the number he’d given. I wanted to tell him about Dad’s missing ring – but there was no answer. I probably tried three or four times, before leaving a message to ask if we could speak.
Jin: I had things to do. There was another big thing happening at that time.
Emma: I left Mum alone with Dad for a bit – but visiting hours were almost over, so it wasn’t long before we got a taxi back to the hotel. Dinner had started, but Mum had asked if everyone could wait for us, because she wanted another group meal.
Julius: The girls were hungry and trying to make them wait for Mum to get back from the hospital wasn’t going down well. It’s partly my own fault for letting them have so much ice cream on the first night.