Ignoring him, I turned to the woman behind the plexiglass screen. ‘I really don’t care where I’m seated. Put me in the hold with the luggage if that’s the only choice. Just help me get home as fast as I can. Please.’
I slid my passport and credit card across the counter and didn’t even wince at the eye-watering price of my last-minute ticket.
‘One way?’ the airline rep asked, her fingers already flying over the keyboard at an impressive speed.
‘Yes. I think so.’ I heard Jeff’s indrawn breath but didn’t turn around; I was too busy swapping my suitcase for a boarding pass and following the woman’s instructions to ‘run like crazy’ to the gate.
I was too winded from the sprint to Security to say half the things I should probably have said to Jeff. They’d all have to wait. But perhaps he sensed them, for there was something hurried and detached in the kiss he pressed on my lips.
‘Thank you for coming with me,’ I said, already moving towards the automatic barrier.
‘Let me know when you land,’ he called as the gate spat me out on to airside.
It already felt as though there was a continent between us.
2
London was cold, foggy and wet and felt immediately like home in a way New York, for all its efforts and allure, never could. It seemed like the kind of day when the airline would surely lose my suitcase, or we’d be diverted to some airport in the Midlands because of bad weather. But miraculously, everything went smoothly. For the first timeever, my bag was the first on the carousel, and even the snaking queues at passport control moved with surprising speed.
Admittedly, the family ahead of me at the car hire desk seemed to be taking an excruciatingly long time to choose the model of car they wanted to rent, and just as long picking out the type of child seat they needed. My foot was doing an involuntary tap dance of frustration, but I stifled my impatience and used the time to rattle off messages to both Mum and Jeff, letting them know I’d landed safely. Mum’s relieved reply pinged back almost instantly, but from Jeff there was only silence. We’d had plans for brunch with friends and then tickets for the ice hockey at Madison Square Garden. Jeff was a big fan of the New York Rangers. Me? Not so much. There was obviously no reason for him to have cancelled his plans, but I couldn’t help wondering who was sitting beside him in the seat that should have been mine.
The indecisive family in front of me finally settled on a vehicle and I stepped up to the counter. I took whatever they had to offer, which turned out to be bigger and more powerful than anything I’d driven before. I passed the Avis rep my UK driver’s licence, grateful that the form I’d completed hadn’t asked:And exactly how long is it since you last drove?
I pulled out of the airport car park with all the confidence of an eighty-year-old learner on their driving test. It was years since I’d been behind the wheel of a car, and I’d have preferred not to be doing so now, in the dark, on a wet, foggy evening. But somewhere in Somerset, my older sister was lying in a hospital bed, seriously ill, and I’d have crawled the three hundred miles to reach her on my hands and knees if that was the only way to get there.
My lips twitched at the notion. It was the sort of over-the-top comment I’d probably suggest deleting in a manuscript. But this wasn’t a story I could edit to my liking. I shivered and turned the car heater up to maximum, but I still couldn’t seem to get warm.
I stopped just once on the three-hour drive. I’d had less than four hours’ sleep in the last thirty-six hours and knew it was madness and dangerous to keep going when I was this tired. I pulled off the motorway, in need of industrial strength caffeine.
The motorway services was too everything. Too bright, too loud, too full of people who had no idea this was one of the most terrifying days of my life. My memory kept spinning me back in time to another contender for that title. And suddenly I was eight years old again, watching the blood drain from my mother’s face and the phone fall from her hand as she took the call that had destroyed our happy little family. Why did it seem as though every piece of devastating news begins with that one dreadful phone call?
I practically inhaled two flat whites in the cafeteria, drinking them back to back as though it was a contest, and then got up and ordered a third to take away. I took one last look at the sandwich I’d bought, with its single, mouse-sized nibbled corner. It was wasteful, but I scrunched it up inside its cellophane package and dropped it into the nearest bin.
The fog was even thicker when I emerged from the services and I wasted precious minutes searching for the hire car, which blipped plaintively back at me in the mist before I eventually managed to track down where I’d parked it. There would be no more stopping until I got to the hospital, I resolved, which was probably a foolish plan given the amount of liquid I’d just consumed.
The only good thing about the atrocious driving conditions was that they forced me to concentrate on nothing but the road. But as soon as I reached the hospital site, it was as though a catch had been sprung on my emotions. I’d been focusing only on how to get there as quickly as I could, but now I could feel the panic starting to stream through my veins like a virus.
The hospital multistorey car park had hundreds of vacant spaces and yet I still managed to park badly, straddling two bays in my eagerness to reach my family. I sent Mum a one-word message – ‘Here’ – and then walked briskly to the stairwell, following signs to the main entrance.
The hospital foyer probably looked very different during the day. There would be patients, visitors and hospital staff milling around. The shops would be brightly lit and open for business, not shadowy and deserted, shuttered behind metal grilles. And there would definitely have been someone sitting behind the Enquiries desk who could have directed me to Amelia’s ward.
There was an unsettling eeriness that made it feel like an empty soundstage waiting for someone to yell ‘Action’. I don’t spook easily, but I jumped when the silence was broken by a loud ping behind me. I spun around just as the metal doors of the lift slid open, for a moment failing to realise the small, weary-looking woman inside the carriage was my own mother. Until she called my name.
I fell into her arms, or she fell into mine, I couldn’t tell which. She’d always been slighter than both her daughters, petite and delicately framed in a way that we weren’t. And yet as children we’d clung to her when knees were scraped or dreams were scary, as though she was an Amazonian. I did so again now, inhaling all the things about her I never realised I missed until the moment I found them again. The tang of her hairspray that always caught the back of my throat, the sweetness of her perfume and her own unique scent. Her arms were warm as she folded them around me. It was strange, I hadn’t realised how cold I was until her hug began to thaw me.
‘How is she?’ I asked, skipping straight past ‘hello’, even though we hadn’t seen each other for over eight months.
‘She’s been given something to help her sleep,’ Mum replied. For a retired primary school teacher, it was an evasive politician’s answer.
‘But is she okay? I’ve been googling hypothermia. It can be really dangerous.’
Something shifted in my mother’s eyes. It alerted me, even before she reached for my hand.
‘Why don’t we go and sit down over there, where it’s quiet,’ she suggested, nodding towards a horseshoe of vacant seats in the far corner of the room. I glanced around the foyer. It was quieteverywhere.
‘What is it, Mum? What’s wrong?’
‘Let’s just go over there, out of the way,’ Mum insisted.
