We beat Amelia back to the ward by a good fifteen minutes. I left Mum in the café and raced back to the car, where I pulled a large bag from the back seat. An instinct I didn’t totally understand had told me to collect the memory box of photographs from their new home in Amelia’s bedroom. I couldn’t conjure up her phantom husband to be at her hospital bedside when she came round, but I could at least make sure she had photographs of the two of them close at hand.
I watched the doors to the corridor even more avidly than Amelia had done, jumping to my feet in relief when they finally wheeled her back through them. She was still more asleep than awake, mumbling utter nonsense as they positioned her bed back in the bay.
‘The doctor will be along later to explain everything to you both when Amelia is a little more awake,’ the arrhythmia nurse informed me with a kindly smile. ‘But it all went very well. She went straight back into sinus rhythm after just one shock.’
That was the Amelia I knew and loved, the one who aced every test and exam and who never did anything wrong. Failure simply wasn’t part of her vocabulary.
*
Amelia dozed for the next hour or so while Mum and I took it in turns to rise from our chair whenever she murmured fretfully in her sleep. Her long dark hair was splayed out across the pillow, and I gently touched the silky chestnut strands, being careful not to disturb her. She was mumbling something I couldn’t quite make out, but whatever it was made her forehead furrow into a stave of lines.
‘I’m so sorry Sam wasn’t with you today, Amelia,’ I said softly. ‘But I’m really glad that I was.’
*
Ironically, both Mum and I had nodded off when Amelia came fully awake. I guess our broken night’s sleep had finally taken its toll. I’m not sure what woke me, but I jerked upright in my chair to find my sister sitting up in bed, looking far better than she had when they’d wheeled her down to the lab.
While we slept, Amelia had clearly found the memory box of photographs that I’d set down on the bedside cabinet, for they were now tipped out all over the blanket that covered her legs.
‘How do you feel?’ I asked, my throat dry and scratchy, and not just from the overheated ward.
‘Better,’ she said succinctly.
On the other side of the bed, I saw Mum too was now awake. She shot me a worried glance as Amelia’s hands rifled through the photographs.
‘What are these?’ my sister asked.
Photographsseemed too facile a response, so I substituted it with one that I hoped she would appreciate more.
‘I brought them from the cottage for you. I thought you’d like to have them here when you came round.’
A tiny frown creased the smooth skin of her forehead.
‘Why?’
I swallowed awkwardly. This was where I was going to have to explain why Sam still hadn’t turned up, despite me asking him to. But I never got the chance to offer up the lie, because she reached among the photographs and plucked one up, holding it towards the light shafting in through the window.
‘Who is this?’ she asked, her face unreadable as she turned to me. ‘Who is the man in these photographs?’
There were a thousand ways I’d imagined today might play out, but I can honestly say that I hadn’t for a moment considered this would be one of them. Was this the moment when Amelia finally realised the photographs were of two imposters?
I swallowed several times before attempting to use my voice. Even so, it still came out squeaky.
‘He doesn’t look familiar to you?’
Her forehead crumpled in concentration as she reached for yet another photo. It was one taken on our horse ride. ‘Hmm… not really. Do you mean an actor or someone famous?’
I shook my head. ‘No. Someone you know. Someone you knowvery well.’
Another frown, this one genuinely puzzled.
‘No. I don’t think so. Why do you ask?’
The moment was here, and I felt like I was about to pull the pin out of a grenade that would explode everything. ‘You don’t think that man looks like Sam?’
It was the longest ten seconds of my entire life before Amelia set down the photograph and turned to face me.
‘Who’s Sam?’
