‘Good morning, wife,’ he whispered into my ear, his breath warm against the back of my neck. It was how he’d greeted me every day for the last two months, and even though we were technically edging out of the honeymoon phase, his words never failed to start my day with a smile.
Despite Nick being on call, his phone hadn’t rung during the night, and I remember feeling as though the day had already begun with a small victory. He got out of bed and pulled on old joggers and a sweatshirt, pausing at the bedroom door to watch me stretch like a lazy cat in a beam of sunlight that was hitting the mattress.
‘What are the chances that Mabel doesn’t feel like a walk this morning?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Slim to none,’ I replied on a laugh, loving the reluctance to leave me that was written so clearly on his face.
It was a perfectly ordinary Wednesday morning. A nothing special or remarkable middle-of-the-week day in spring. Later, I’d wonder why I’d had no presentiment that this day would be the gatepost between ‘before’ and ‘after’ and why I hadn’t somehow been aware of it.
We grabbed a quick breakfast the way we always did, sitting on stools in the sunny kitchen. Cereal for me, toast for Nick, and a bowl of kibble for Mabel. Nick’s thoughts were already on the busy morning of surgery ahead of him at The Willows, while mine were straying to the complicated edit I was halfway through. Deciding to go freelance had been a huge gamble, but one that happily appeared to be paying off. It allowed me to continue doing the job I loved without having to compromise on the amount of time I got to spend with Nick or my family.
We kissed goodbye in the hallway, and perhaps I held on to him for a few moments longer than normal. Maybe a feeling of unease had already filtered into the day, and I just didn’t know why yet.
‘I’ll call you at lunchtime,’ he said, pressing one last kiss on to my lips.
I nodded, unaware that I wouldn’t be here to take the call.
I loaded the dishwasher and tidied the kitchen before pouring one last coffee to take with me into the lounge. There were enough spare bedrooms to have claimed one as a home office, but I’d chosen to set up my desk in this corner of the room, right beside the wall of windows where Nick had proposed. I suppose there would inevitably come a time when I’d pull out my chair and not think of the day when he’d dropped to one knee before me on this very spot, but I wasn’t there yet.
I was quickly engrossed in the edit, pleased with how it was slowly shaping up. I was so lost in the author’s words that when my mobile vibrated silently on the stack of papers where I’d left it, I was reluctant to tug myself out of the story.
But when the name ‘Linda’ lit up on my phone screen, all thoughts of the novel were swept from my mind. I snatched up the phone, my fingers clumsy as I accepted the call.
There were three erratic heartbeats before Amelia’s carer spoke my name. Three beats for me to hope she was asking me where the bin bags were kept, or something equally trivial that Amelia could no longer remember.
‘I don’t want you to panic,’ Linda began, her soft Scottish burr sounding more pronounced than usual. A small, distracted part of my mind wondered why anyone ever bothered to preface a sentence with those words. It had to be the most useless phrase in the entire English language and was the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy. I panicked.
‘What’s happened?’ The words felt like bullets, fired from a place of absolute fear.
The thing I liked most about Amelia’s carer was her straight-talking, no-nonsense attitude. So, it was strange to hear her picking carefully through a minefield of euphemisms to answer me.
‘Your sister’s had a “bit of a turn”.’
I was fairly confident that phrase wasn’t one you’d find in any medical dictionary. And as a former nurse, I doubted it was one Linda herself would normally use.
‘What does that mean exactly, “a turn”?’
‘It means I’m a wee bit concerned about her breathing.’
‘Have you tried her on oxygen?’
It was an insulting question, but Linda was as good at handling panicked relatives as she was their ailing loved ones.
‘Of course, and it’s helped her… some. But not enough for my liking. Which is why I’ve called for an ambulance.’
‘An ambulance?’ I parroted, as though I wasn’t entirely sure what one of those might be.
‘Just to be on the safe side,’ Linda said carefully, before totally destroying the moment of calm she’d created by adding, ‘I think you should make your way straight to the hospital, Lexi.’
I’d had this conversation before – a thousand times or more. It usually ended in me jerking myself awake, bathed in a sheen of sweat and fear. But this was no dream. This was real and it didn’t matter how many times I’d rehearsed my lines, I wasn’t ready for this scene to play out in real life.
‘Have you called my mother yet?’ My thoughts were spinning like a centrifuge, and I was grateful to have managed to snatch and grab a useful one.
‘Yes. I have. Luckily, Mr Tom was with her. He’s called for a taxi to take them to the hospital. They’ll meet you there.’
I had a hundred questions to ask but they were all silenced when I heard the sound of a distant siren trilling down the phone.
‘I’m sorry, Lexi, I have to go now. The ambulance is almost here. Will you be alright? Can you make your way to the hospital?’
