Chapter 6
‘I heard there wasn’t nearly enough water for everyone and that’s what caused the panic.’
Whispered conversations dripped into Alice’s consciousness from familiar voices and unfamiliar hospital staff during the twenty-four hours they kept her in after it happened.
‘Where was security, though? They must have seen some warning signs that people were getting all hyped up.’
‘I think it was just an act of God – nobody could have prevented that heatwave and people got desperate and claustrophobic and it was overcrowded.’
Speculating, wondering, gossiping, all cut with abstract phrases and acronyms that somehow related to her body and her health. Alice kept her eyes shut, letting the sleep and drugs wash her away.
‘She was near the front I think, got out quickly and found her way to the first aid tent.’
‘One of the lucky ones.’
‘She keeps asking about a friend?’
It was raining again on the other side of the curtains – just like Britain had hoped for, had expected.Thiswas a typical August day in Britain. Alice awoke to the gentle rhythm of the droplets against the glass. For a second she could make-believe she was in a spa, and this was a sound effects CD, and she was just coming to from a long and drowsy massage. But even with her eyes still closed, her face half-pressed into her pillow, her brain trying to back away from the thoughts she knew were reality, the fact remained.
Jill was gone.
She was dead, and it was Alice’s fault.
When Ed Bright knocked on the door of his daughter’s childhood bedroom a while later, with the trepidation of someone who’d been told by doctors and police professionals several times over the past week since it happened, ‘avoid loud noises’, she was already sitting up. Hunched, and staring at her fingers while they idly traced the floral pattern of her duvet cover, but upright.
‘Hello, my love,’ he soothed. ‘Mind if I come and drink my cup of tea in here? I brought you one.’
It was a sweet turn of phrase, Alice noticed, her dad acting like she was doing him a favour by giving him company while he drank, rather than the other way around.
‘Sure,’ she replied, her voice croaky from days of rasping sobs. She patted the bed and Ed perched, getting up again a moment later to draw back one of the curtains, watching her for signs of this not being okay.
‘Raining again,’ he remarked, settling back down and blowing on his mug of brew.
‘Why do you think I’m crying?’ Alice smiled to show her dad it was a joke. Just a small one.
‘Did you manage to go back to sleep?’
‘Yeah, sorry again for last night. You and Mum must be exhausted.’
‘We’re absolutely fine.’ He patted her shin ever so gently through the duvet.
Alice hadn’t slept through the night for over a week now, ever since the concert. At the beginning her mind was switching off when she slept, fatigued by the rush of events, the information overload, and the tilting of her world. Instead she would come to in middle of the night and when she opened her eyes to the darkness a fear would consume her and she couldn’t stop herself from crying out. When she started to sleep with the light on, the fears, the memories, knew exactly where she was, and they would creep into her dreams instead and find their way to her there. The result: crying out in her sleep instead.
Her parents seemed to take it in turns, like they’d done when she was a baby, to be the ones to get up and comfort their daughter, the feeling being that if two of them fussed around her it would be too overwhelming. Alice’s pattern with her father was becoming that he would come into the room with his iPad and a hot chocolate, sit beside her on the bed and they’d watch oldVicar of Dibleyepisodes until she drifted back into – for the time being – a peaceful slumber.
‘What are your plans today?’ she asked him, as if it was just a normal day and plans mattered.
‘Oh not much. Your mum wants to make a cake to take around to Jill’s family . . . We thought we’d go for a walk in a bit. Still good to get a bit of fresh air, even in the rain. Would you like to come?’
‘To deliver the cake?’ Alice couldn’t even comprehend going to Jill’s parents’ house. The thought of being there, when their daughter was not, felt like she’d be mocking them.
‘No, no,’ her dad reassured, worried he’d gone and said the wrong thing. He didn’t know how to navigate this. ‘A separate walk. If your leg feels okay?’
Alice shook her head. ‘No thanks, I’ll stay here.’
‘Are you sure? Why don’t you take some painkillers and then see how you feel in a while?’
‘No.’
