Chapter Thirty
Time changes everything
It’s six a.m. and a thunderstorm has woken me, with rain hammering on the balcony like a scene from an Eighties soft rock video. If I had a fire escape, there’d be a saxophonist on it, possibly wearing a bandana. The storm reminds me of when Simon and I were kids – long hot summers, sleeping under just sheets, and Mother Pells letting us go outside when the weather ‘broke’ to cool off. We would run about the garden in our pants, laughing in the rain. Then she would bring out beach towels – a Showaddywaddy one and a green tie-dye one – calling, ‘Come in now, you rain-dancing rascals!’), and she’d wrap us up, one in each of her arms. It felt safe, like Gabe’s hand did on the small of my back.
But in this storm, I am alone. I lie, trying to doze off again, although the rain is too loud and my brain is whirring round and around. I need to get up soon anyway. The plan is to catch an early train to Swindon and taxi from there. It’s expensive, and as Yuvana still hasn’t paid me I’ll have to put it on a credit card, but anything to get to Mother Pells before she bumps into someone who’s read the news.
Two hours later, I’m at Paddington. I get a flat white and a croissant, dipping the latter in the former, glad of the caffeine and carbs after last night’s sambuca, but even more glad I stopped drinking when I did. Channing has already sent me a picture of him and Melanie joining in a ‘Ruff Mudster Challenge’ at London Fields – clearly uninvited and still wearing last night’s clothes – which only serves to confirm that I made the right decision.
As I am passing Upper Crust, a man in the queue wearing a plastic rain poncho says, ‘Hey, aren’t you that old woman with the robot face?’ While this is an imaginative interpretation of the news story, I’m really not in the mood for uninvited questions from strangers, so I just keep on walking across the concourse towards platform four.
The train to Swindon is less than an hour – on a good day. Today is not a good day. According to an announcement, the heavy rain overnight has caused a landslide onto the tracks, and at Didcot Parkway we all have to get off and transfer to a shuttle bus. I am squashed in next to a middle-aged woman wearing much more practical clothes than me, who is reading the Highway Code.
I’m getting really worried that I won’t make it to Mother Pells in time. I am also angry with Cassia (I mean, who else would have sold the story?) and wish I had Nandy to talk to about it, or even just send a sticker to, but I don’t dare – she was so annoyed with me last time I saw her, and after what happened with Kai, I can now see why. There’s also the money thing, and what all this is going to mean for the work with Yuvana. I’ll need to call Merlyn. I let out a little sigh and the woman next to me looks round sympathetically, then offers me a Tracker bar from her bag. ‘They were the UK’s first cereal bar,’ she tells me. I say, ‘Righty-ho,’ which I’m worried is becoming my new catchphrase.
The bus smells of Pakora that time he rolled in a dead seal on the beach in Suffolk. It’s taking ages via an ‘alternative route’ because there’s flooding at Shrivenham, and the winding roads mean I keep getting either thrown into the aisle, or against the UK’s first cereal bar woman. I get my phone out, and ignoring all the missed calls from god knows who about the newspaper article, I message Simon to tell him I’m going to see Mother Pells, waiting for the ticks to turn blue. They don’t. What can he be doing? Misting his Lion’s Mane (not a euphemism)?
At about ten a.m., we arrive at Swindon bus station, which is not, in case anyone was wondering, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. After about twenty minutes – most of which is spent queuing for the toilet behind a woman having a loud video call about what I think/hope is cooking related as she keeps shouting things like ‘plunge them into icy water!’ and ‘skim off the fatty liquid!’ – I find a taxi and I’m on my way.
It’s funny how long it takes your brain to process things when you don’t want to. At first, I think the lights flashing outside Mother Pells’ house are to do with Dinah. Some sort of outdoor decorations? She’s always one for a display at Christmas so maybe she’s put something together for summer? Or maybe it’s a party. Maybe it’s…
It’s an ambulance.
The taxi driver is muttering something about how it’s the third ambulance he’s seen this morning and how that’s ‘not a good omen’. They’re not bloody magpies, I think, but say nothing and instead focus on paying the £60 fare without vomiting with worry, both at the fact that my card is likely to be declined, and at what I am about to face. Thankfully, the payment goes through. I get out of the taxi and walk towards the ambulance and the people gathered beside it.
Now I am closer I can see that one of them is Josie, talking to two paramedics. She is holding an umbrella and has her arm around a child, who is wrapped in a blanket. It takes me a moment to realise it’s Héloïse as her hair is short. They all turn around as I approach.
‘Erica? I didn’t expect…’ Josie’s face is serious.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Your mum’s in the ambulance.’ She looks guarded, but it’s Josie, so she can never not be kind. ‘The stream at the back of her house burst its banks and she slipped in. Héloïse and I found her. We were dropping off some scones Héloïse made. Thank goodness…’
She pulls Héloïse closer to her. ‘It was Héloïse that helped her.’
‘Go and see your mum, love,’ says one of the paramedics in a thick west country accent, who must be wondering how she can possibly be my mum. ‘We’re just about to take her to the Great Western.’
I climb in the back of the ambulance. It’s more like a room than I thought it would be, with drawers and compartments full of equipment on the walls. Mother Pells is lying on a trolley wrapped in a red blanket, with an oxygen mask strapped to her face and a dressing on her head. Another paramedic is sitting with her, writing notes on a clipboard.
‘Mum, it’s me. Are you okay?’ I bend down and take her hand.
I can see her eyes just above the mask staring at me and darting from side to side. She looks so frail, like a little bird. I want to wrap my arms around her, like she did to me and Simon in the storm. But her hand pulls away from mine, and her head shakes. She’s making a noise but it’s muffled. Could it be crying?
‘Mum, it’s Erica.’ My voice comes out croaky. I go to take her hand again but she won’t let me.
‘She’s getting a bit upset, love,’ says the paramedic. ‘I don’t think she recognises you. Maybe better to just…’ He looks towards the door of the ambulance.
‘But… I…’
She’s shaking her head and moaning. The paramedic strokes her arm, then looks at me impatiently, so I turn and climb back out of the ambulance.
There is suddenly something large and sharp in my throat, and it feels like I can’t swallow, or speak, or even breathe.
Ten minutes later, I’m in Josie’s car. We’re dropping Héloïse off at home with Laure, then Josie is taking me to the hospital. She’s put me in the back to keep an eye on Héloïse, who is next to me, shivering. Under the blanket wrapped around her, she’s only wearing a t-shirt and I can just make out the design, which seems to be either a raccoon dressed as a person or a person dressed as a raccoon. I pull her close to me so she can get some of the warmth of my body.
‘Thank you for helping my mum,’ I say. ‘You’re very brave.’
Héloïse nods and leans in, fitting her head into the space between my armpit and my right tit, which seems to have been perfectly designed for this. I am comforting her. I didn’t know I could comfort people.
