I recall the unbearable sadness in her eyes when she talked of Hannah and her children, and I wonder again how it has been for these two women, trying to rebuild their relationship in such extraordinary circumstances. I hope it’s made Sarah happy. I hope the fact that Hannah is with her for the birth means that they’ve become as close as they deserve to be. As close as sisters should be.
Hospital 1 mile , says a sign. One mile too far. I pass under a railway bridge and climb a hill, cursing the traffic. I drive, far too slowly, past a fish-and-chip shop. A man stands outside it in the fading light, a plastic bag of warm paper packages swinging from his wrist. He’s on his phone, laughing, completely oblivious to the desperate man stuck in slow-moving traffic in a Land Rover.
A minute or so later there’s a sign saying the hospital is half a mile away, but that’s still not close enough. Another traffic light turns red. I seem unable to stop swearing.
The Land Rover is silent, save for the old-fashioned ticker-flicker of the indicator. I imagine Sarah, my beautiful Sarah, exhausted on a bed somewhere. I think of all the labours I’ve seen in films: terrible screams, panicking midwives, doctors shouting, emergency alarms going off. It’s like someone’s taken an ice-cream scoop and hollowed me out. I am weightless with fear. What if something goes wrong?
I turn left, reminding myself that problem-free labours happen all day, every day – they have to: the human race wouldn’t have survived, otherwise – and the brown hulk of Gloucester Royal slides finally into vision.
The hospital’s busy. Illness, I suppose, is a 24/7 business. Several people cross the roadway in front of me. There are speed bumps everywhere. The first car park is full and I want to scream. I want to hurtle to the nearest entrance and abandon my car there.
And I know, finally, how Sarah felt the day she set off in pursuit of her boyfriend and her little sister. I know the terror that gripped her, the instinct that sent her spinning off the road to prevent a car crash Hannah would never have survived. I know she didn’t swerve because she didn’t care about Alex. It was love and fear that made her wrench that steering wheel. The same love and fear that, right now, I am feeling for her. I would do anything to keep her safe. I’d block a hospital car park. I’d break the speed limit. And I, too, in that same situation Sarah found herself in, in 1997, would have swerved left, if it meant saving the person I loved most.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Hamish is right, of course: they don’t let me in. The lady on the other side of the intercom sounds amazed that I’d even try.
‘Is there anywhere I can wait?’ I ask her. ‘I’ve told Sarah’s birthing partner that I’m here . . . Um, and I am actually the father, if that helps . . . Or at least I think I am . . .’ At that point the woman stops replying. I wonder if she’s calling security.
I find a small waiting area at the entrance to the Women’s Centre and sit under an escalator, opposite a set of lifts I’d probably be arrested for attempting to use. And here, in the strip-lit reality of a hospital corridor – with proper families, proper couples everywhere – the stupidity of this enterprise is suddenly so blindingly apparent I almost laugh.
What was I hoping? That Hannah would pause from her duties to check her messages, maybe catch up on some emails? That she’d read Hamish’s text and think, Oh fantastic! The father’s Eddie Wallace! And he’s turned up here – how lovely! and pop out to invite me in?
I sink my head into my hands, wondering if Hamish is doing the same back in Bisley.
If I stand any hope at all of getting Sarah back, it’s going to take a damn sight more than a dash to Gloucester Royal. Six months she’s lived less than a mile from me. Six months she’s had to get in touch, to tell me I’m going to be a father, and I haven’t heard a peep out of her.
But even though I know it’s almost certainly pointless, I stay. I can’t leave. I can’t turn my back on her again.
The lift dings and I start, but, of course, it’s not Sarah, holding a baby, it’s a tired-looking man with a lanyard round his neck and a packet of fags already halfway out of his pocket.
We have a choice, I told her, the day we met. We are not just victims of our lives. We can choose to be happy. And yet I chose not to be happy, in spite of all I’d said. I turned my back on Sarah Harrington, and this once-in-a-lifetime thing that existed between us, and chose duty. A life only half lived.
An hour passes, two hours, three. People come and go, bringing with them blasts of icy air that quickly turn stale. A lightbulb breaks; it flickers intermittently, but a man comes to fix it before I’ve so much as thought of telling anyone. I offer silent prayers for the NHS. For Sarah. For my mother, whose feelings about this situation I can’t even begin to imagine. Maybe Felix will have popped round. Felix with his good humour and his determination to remain positive, no matter what life throws at him.
Sometime after dark has wrapped itself around the Women’s Centre, a family joins me in the little waiting area, a mother and father and a kid. The boy has a blond Afro and a naughty, impish little face that I immediately like. He assesses the waiting area, declares it boring and asks his mum what she’s going to do about it. She’s fiddling with her phone, preoccupied. She says something to her husband about visiting hours.
Then the child says – and my heart stops – ‘Why hasn’t Sarah’s baby got a dad, Mum? Why is Sarah’s sister helping her and not the baby’s dad?’
I stare into my lap and my face burns.
The mother replies, ‘You’re not to talk to Sarah about that, babe. If we get to go in and see her, you can ask about anything other than dads. Rudi, are you listening?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘If you promise me you won’t, I’ll take you to the ice cream factory tomorrow, the one I told you about near Stroud.’
My heart is hammering. I chance a look at the boy, but he’s not even remotely interested in me.
‘Is it the man who broke her heart? The one who made her cry because he didn’t call?’
And I feel like ripping off my skin.
The woman – Sarah’s friend Jo – receives a call on her phone. She wanders off towards the lifts to take it, and Rudi plays with his father. Except it can’t be his father, because after beating him at rock, paper, scissors five times in a row, he calls the man Tommy.
Tommy! Sarah’s childhood friend! Although, I realize, that doesn’t quite tally with what she told me in her life story. I know those messages off by heart: she never said Tommy and Jo were a couple. Maybe I misread? I wish I knew more about Sarah and her life. I wish I’d known what she ate for breakfast the day she went into labour, how her pregnancy has been, what it’s like to have a relationship with her sister after all these years. I wish I knew she was safe.
When Jo returns, she starts packing up their stuff. Above Rudi’s Afro, she catches Tommy’s eye and shakes her head.
‘Mum? Why are you going? Mum! I want to see Sarah! ’
‘We’re going to stay with Sarah’s mum and dad,’ she tells her son. ‘They just called to invite us for a sleepover. It’s getting late, you need to go to bed, and Sarah can’t have visitors today. She might not even be able to see us tomorrow.’
‘When can we see her, then?’
Jo’s face is unreadable. ‘I don’t know,’ she admits.
An ugly scene ensues: Rudi obviously loves Sarah and has no plans to leave. But eventually – furiously – he gets into his coat. And they’re just about to leave when Tommy walks past me and does a double take. He carries on walking and then stops again, and I know he’s looking at me. And after a beat I look up at him, because I’m desperate. If a crawlingly awkward conversation with Sarah’s oldest friend is going to help, I’ll take it.
‘Sorry,’ he says, when our eyes meet. ‘Sorry, I thought you were someone else . . .’
Once again he turns. Once again he stops. ‘No, you . . . Are you Eddie?’
Jo, who’s by the bottom of the escalator, wheels round. She stares at me. They both do. Rudi looks vaguely in my direction, but he’s too busy being pissed off to take any real notice. I see Jo mouthing a few choice words – although I’m not sure if they’re born of anger or shock – then she marches her son through an automatic door.