‘We’ll just go down to the park on the corner and back; Dug’s puppy legs can’t take too much exercise.’
‘I think we’ll stay here.’ Amongst my own things, safe and familiar.
‘Anna, you’ve got to go out sometime. I know it’s daunting because Harry is constantly hungry and, to be blunt, he shits himself more times a day than Josh, but I’d feel better when I go back to work knowing you’ve ventured further than the kitchen. We’ve got to take him outside sometime. This is our life now.’
Our life. It’s our home. The same and yet somehow not. It’s like the hopscotch Nell and I used to play as kids. Each time the rain would rub out our chalk marks, we’d scratch them onto the pavement again. At first glance they looked exactly the same but it’s impossible to recreate something twice. There’s always a subtle difference. It is all here. Our furniture. Our clothes. But there is something missing.
The underlying anger we’d been carrying.
The disappointment.
The way we usually skirted around each other.
It’s gone. All of it.
I smile. ‘You’re right. I’m just nervous.’
‘Don’t be. I’ve got you.’
It’s ages before we’re ready to leave. I’ve changed Harry’s nappy and the second I get him dressed, he fills it again. He’s now wrapped in so many layers he lays stiff in his pram, unable to kick his limbs.
‘A snowsuit is a little extreme?’ Adam says cautiously. ‘No, it’s fine,’ he quickly says when I begin to lift Harry up. ‘Don’t change him. Honestly, Anna, it’s taken you an hour so far and we’re only going to be out for ten minutes.’
‘I just want…’ My voice thins. ‘I just want everything to be perfect.’
‘And it is.’ Adam wraps his arms around me, his chin resting on the top of my head. ‘Now, come on, we can be back by three.’
‘What’s at three… Oh.’ Football, but oddly this doesn’t irritate me. I might even watch the match myself.
Adam pushes the pram into the hall and opens the front door. ‘Right, let’s do this. Little man, meet the world.’ Adam manoeuvres the wheels down the step. ‘It might seem big and scary but it’s pretty awesome. Like your dad actually.’
I roll my eyes and step outside, and that’s when it happens.
The world tilts and blurs and I can feel myself slipping away.
‘Adam!’ I cling on to the door frame and stretch out my arm. Adam rushes back down the path towards me. He takes my hand but I feel his fingers fading from my grasp.
I feel myself fading.
I feel nothing.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Adam
Falling. Twisting. Weightlessness.
Fighting to breathe.
Fighting to move.
Choking.
Choking.
Choking.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Oliver
The siren blares. Oliver half falls out of bed and grabs his glasses. Runs barefoot down the corridor wearing his pyjamas.
Orange flashing lights blink on and off. On and off. The noise builds and builds as he approaches Adam’s room.
‘Quick.’ Sofia beckons him inside. He can’t believe, after everything, they are losing Adam. Anna will be devastated. Oliver has come to deeply care about them both.
He rushes inside. Adam’s bed is empty. Oliver is momentarily confused until he notices light shining through the open door to the scanner room. It’s a sudden sickening realization.
No. Anna. No.
In there, Luis is hunched over the patient table.
Doing what he can.
No.
Oliver draws nearer and sickness thuds deep in his stomach as he realizes it isn’t Adam at all who is in trouble.
It’s Anna.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Adam
Drifting. Drifting.
Body heavy.
Can’t think straight.
Noise. Whooshing? The waves?
Hissing. The sound of the sea?
Something else?
A siren.
A voice.
Somebody calling Anna’s name.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Anna
‘Anna.’ Hands shake my shoulders. ‘Anna.’ Fingertips press into my pulse point on my wrist. ‘Anna. Wake up.’ But I don’t want to. Instead of Harry’s crying and Dug’s happy barking, there is the blare of the emergency siren.
I am in the last place I want to be.
Blood streams from my nose, down my throat. I choke but I don’t care. Without Adam, Harry, I am nothing. I am rolled onto my side, something pressed under my nostrils.
‘Anna.’ The voice won’t stop talking. I prise open my eyes and the light feels like a laser slicing through my brain. ‘Thank goodness.’ Oliver’s concerned face looms towards me. I close my eyes once more.
I don’t want to see.
I don’t want to speak.
I don’t want to feel.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Oliver
Oliver sits by Adam’s bed. Partly because he had promised Anna that he wouldn’t leave Adam while she slept, but mostly because he still wants to be close to her in case she needs him.
When he’d found her earlier, pale and still, blood pouring from her nose, guilt and panic had thrust through Oliver’s veins. He had thought for a second they’d lost her and he’d felt genuine sorrow for her. Then the feeling of relief that she’d been okay. The relief that he wouldn’t be held culpable for leaving the scanner room unlocked, the equipment unsecured, only came later and he hated himself for it.
He wasn’t the most important one here.
‘It was never supposed to be like this,’ Oliver tells Adam. He has spent the last hour telling Adam all about the trial. It’s a relief Adam can’t respond. He knew how he would feel if somebody had put Clem in a similar situation.
‘I wish you’d wake up, mate,’ he tells Adam before selfconsciously pushing his glasses onto his nose. The word ‘mate’ unfamiliar on his tongue, but Oliver doesn’t feel comfortable around men; he doesn’t feel comfortable around people. ‘If you’d wake up there’s a chance you could make it all real. Give Anna a baby. She’s become so attached to Harry, it’s blurred the lines between what’s real and what’s not. She won’t accept that her mind has fabricated him.’ Oliver sighs. ‘Survivor’s guilt is so common. She’s okay and she’s taking the guilt she feels and channelling it into this fake life she’s created where you’re all so happy.’
Oliver studies Adam. It’s hard to imagine him talking. Laughing.
‘I wish… I wish it had been real. I wish I could have met you properly. I think I’d have liked you. I’m not sure what you’d had made of me. Anna thinks you’d be horrified I haven’t seen Footloose. There’s the thing. You have likes and dislikes. Hobbies. Passions. You love. You feel. I put it all second, all of those things that make us human. I made the science more important than the emotion. I’m sorry for what I’ve put Anna through. What I’ve yet to put her through.’