‘You’re in shock,’ someone says, in pink scrubs. ‘The way you’re feeling is normal. Youwillsurvive this, Fraser.’
I can think of nothing worse than surviving this.
From somewhere I find the courage to ask this next thing. ‘Did she suffer?’
What I mean is, did she suffer at the end? I know she was in pain earlier. I’ll never forget the inhuman wailing I heard over the phone at the scene until they could sedate her.
‘She’s not suffering now,’ she says.
I’m gripped by an intense longing to twist fate and swap places with Audrey. Women are built to withstand pain.
I want it to be me who is dead. Me who is no longer suffering.
Selfishly, I want Audrey to be here with this nurse, hearing this news in reverse. I wish it wereherbeing forced to pick up her phone and call Parker and say the impossible words: Daddy’s gone.Because what use will I be to Parker, like this?
Audrey would push through this misery to the other side and into the future I know she would embrace. She would drag herself through these initial steps of agony and make all the music she held back.
She would appreciate that life is short. I’m certain she would. All I know is that it’s unbearable. And all I can think about is how this would all unfold if that mess of missed calls from the school had landed the other way.
If this whole thing were the other way around …
23
AUDREY
Rach envelops me the second I step into the hospital foyer, and we’re adrift. As if we’re twenty again, with no clue how to handle life. Back then, we thought we knew everything. We bluffed our way through study stress and romantic calamities like endearing heroines in Richard Curtis rom-coms.
There is no bluffing now. We’re free-climbing on the edge of an abyss. No safety gear. No ropes. Clinging to rocks by our fingernails, petrified of the height and the dark and the cold.
It would be so easy to let go. So tempting to unfurl my fingertips and fall. I’d black out before I even hit the ground. It would bemerciful. All I want is for Fraser to climb up behind me, wrap his arms around me, and guide me to safety, one tentative footstep at a time. But he isn’t showing up.
‘How is this possible?’ Rach demands, her voice fractured, shaking in my arms. She never cries. She is always strong. Always calm. She doesn’t overreact or get hysterical or do things she’ll later regret. Her brand is chilled. Professional. Serene. So when she lets go of me and bends double as if this physically hurts, I realise we are in huge trouble.
For a few seconds I can only look at her, the emotion locked inside me, churning, gathering steam, searching for a broken fissure from which to explode.
Finally, she grasps at some strength, drags herself upright, blue eyes determined, and pulls me towards her again, whispering, ‘I’m sorry, Audrey. Sorry.Sorry.’
Her body straightens in my arms. ‘I’m just so broken for you,’ she explains.
We can’t debrief any further, because Clair and April arrive on the scene with Jess. Collectively horrified.
‘This is a fuckingnightmare!’ April says, squeezing me hard, her language sending an elderly couple nearby scampering.
At the sight of my bridesmaids, I’m freshly crushed by the timing of this tragedy, which we can’t even keep private while I digest the shock, or sixty people will show up at the church on Saturday expecting a wedding instead of a funeral.
‘Come on, we’re taking you home,’ Clair announces. ‘You need a nice cup of tea.’
‘Or something stronger if you wish? You won’t be left alone for asecond,’ April assures me, flicking dark curls confidently from her forehead.
A kernel of instinct tells me the stronger beverage is somehow the wrong move, and a quiet night with Rach is probably more sensible, but when I look to her for backup, she seems to have collapsed in on herself again. The concept has already taken flight anyway, and April, Jess and Clair will hear nothing of my tackling this unfolding catastrophe untethered. It’s an echo of all the times some man broke one of our hearts and we’d obliterate the crisis as a team. Often with tequila.
But I don’t want to obliterate Fraser. I’m scared I’ll forget this happened, only for the shock to hit just as hard again in the morning. We’re not in our twenties anymore. We have sensible jobs and responsibilities and mortgages.
Oh, God!
Fresh panic descends, shock and grief shoved sideways for a second by a mental picture of the balance owing on our townhouse.
‘I’ll have to sell the house,’ I say, feeling sick. It’s another layer of terrifying on top of everything else.
