I stand up and offer Tommy my hand, which he shakes, although it takes him a while.
‘How did you know?’ he asks. ‘Did Sarah get in touch with you?’ He’s blushed a deep, livid red, although I’m not sure why. It’s me who should be feeling ashamed.
‘I only found out this afternoon. It’s a long story. But Hannah knows I’m here, I think.’
Before he’s worked out what to say, I blurt, ‘How is she? Is she OK? Has the baby been born? Is Sarah all right? I’m sorry – I know I sound mad, and I know I gave Sarah a terrible time last summer, but I . . . can’t bear it. I just want to know she’s OK.’
Tommy blushes even more deeply. His eyebrows have taken on a life of their own, as if he’s thinking up a speech, or solving a puzzle.
‘I honestly don’t know,’ he says eventually. ‘Jo’s just got off the phone to Sarah’s mum. I’m guessing she didn’t want to update me in front of Rudi.’
‘Shit,’ I say. ‘Does that mean it’s bad news?’
Tommy looks helpless and harassed. ‘I don’t know,’ he repeats. ‘I hope not. I mean, her parents were here earlier and they’ve gone home, so it’s probably just . . . Look, I have to go. I . . .’ He trails off, backing towards the exit. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he says, and then he’s gone.
It’s the middle of the night. I’m pacing, like people do in films. I understand it now. Sitting down would be like staying still while someone pressed hot metal to your skin.
I’m sharing the waiting area with an ageing man in his pyjamas, but neither of us has spoken to each other. He looks as anxious as I do. A grandfather, maybe. Like me, he can do little else but yawn, jiggle his knees and stare intermittently at the delivery-suite entrance.
I’ve decided this must be what purgatory feels like. Perpetual postponement. Intense waiting in the key of fear minor. Nothing moving, other than the slow hands of a clock.
Alan’s been trying to reassure me – keeps sending me articles about childbirth. Gia wants me to remind you that birth doesn’t need to be like those horror shows you see on telly , he wrote earlier. Women give birth all day long, all over the world. She says you should forget about all that over-produced drama and visualize Sarah taking long, slow breaths.
Or something like that. I should take it seriously, but I’m too far gone.
In desperation, I start reading the messages Sarah sent me last summer. I read the whole lot, from the day she left my barn to the day before we met on Santa Monica Beach. I read them twice, three times, trying to find something I know they can’t tell me.
Then the delivery-suite door opens and my heart starts galloping. But it’s just a staff member, pulling on a hat, yawning, plunging her hands deep into her coat pockets. She walks past us both with barely a sideways glance, patently exhausted.
I can’t bear it.
I scroll back to the first message Sarah sent me, twenty minutes after we said goodbye.
Back home , it said. I had such a wonderful time with you. Thank you, for everything. X
I had a wonderful time, too, I write now. In fact, I had the best week of my life. I can still hardly believe it happened.
On my way to Leicester and thinking about you , she had written, a couple of hours later.
I was thinking about you, too , I write. And while I admit my thoughts weren’t as lovely and straightforward as yours, by that stage, I want you to know that underneath it all, I was hopelessly in love with you. That was what made it more painful than anything else – I was absolutely, totally, head over heels in love with you. I couldn’t believe you existed. I still can’t.
Then her messages started getting worried. Hey – you OK? Did you get to Gatwick in time ?
I swallow. It’s painful, watching her panic unfurl, knowing I could have stopped it.
I read a few more, but then I stop, because I feel too guilty.
You are the best and most beautiful person I have ever known , I write instead. And I knew that the first day we spent together. You fell asleep and I thought, I want to marry this woman.
I love you, Sarah , I write. I think I’m crying. I wish I was there with you, cheering you on. I want only for you and the baby to be safe.
I’m so sorry I haven’t been there for you. I wish I had been. I wish we could have done this together. I should have been braver. I should have trusted I’d be able to work something out with Mum. I should have stopped at nothing.
I’m definitely crying. A tear is pooling fatly across my phone screen. I try to clean it with a dirty cuff and the whole thing goes blurry. Then another one drips down and I realize I’m in danger of actually sobbing. I stand up and start walking again. I go outside, where the air is cold as an arctic sea, but it stops the tears immediately, so I stay there. The car park is quiet now. Coppery light, leafless trees swaying in a bitter breeze.
I send you every ounce of strength and courage I have, although I know you won’t need it. You are an extraordinary woman, Sarah Harrington. The best I know.
My fingers are shaking. Cold knifes in through the open front of my duffel coat, but I’ve stopped caring about me.
Please, when you’re ready, can we try again? Can we draw a line under everything – even the thing that I thought we couldn’t get past? Can we go back to the start? There’s nothing that would make me happier than being with you. You, me, this baby. A little family .
I love you, Sarah Harrington.
An ambulance wails, and a gust of paralysing wind punches me in the side of the face.
I love you. I’m sorry.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Sarah
I am rotating slowly, hovering above my life. There are hexagons and octagons, maybe ceiling tiles, or perhaps it’s just the fine detail of the thing I was leaning my forearms on earlier, that chair . . .
There have been many tiny furniture details during this parallel time, things I have stared at so hard they’ve gone macro and taken on patterns, danced: a kaleidoscope in heaven.
Happy times. Positive images. Things that will stimulate oxytocin. That’s what I’m meant to be thinking about. I play happy times on the screen in front of my brow bone. There is the fat little pony that belonged to the woman who lived in that house beyond Tommy’s—
Pain . A roaring waterfall of it. But: I trust my body, I repeat, because that’s what I was told to do. I trust my body. It’s bringing my baby to me.
There is Hugo, Tommy’s cat, the funny one that didn’t drink enough water in the summer.
The midwife is doing something to my abdomen again. Tightening straps. Since I moved into this room they’ve been monitoring my baby’s heart with a device that looks like a laboratory experiment. One sensor for your contractions, one for baby , she reminds me, catching my expression. I nod, and try to take myself back to happy memories.
There is a child called Hannah; she is twelve years old. She wears a sling; her eye is swollen and green, her skin pockmarked with cuts and bruises. Her best friend is dead and she hates me.
No, this isn’t happy. I search through layers of pain and exhaustion for something better. I breathe in for four, out for six. Or was it eight? Trust your body , they said at the classes. Trust your body. Trust the process of labour.
But I’ve gone into some sort of tunnel, and it’s so deep I don’t quite know where I am. I think there are drugs. That’s right: there was an injection in my thigh, and there’s the thing near my mouth. I clamp around it and breathe in sweet stories as I start to climb another mountain. It’s floating – someone tries to take it away, so I hold on hard.
There is a room full of medical equipment, and that same girl, Hannah, only she’s different now: she’s my sister again, but she’s a woman with a family and a career. She’s my birthing partner. She’s been having counselling because she doesn’t like herself very much. She says she was awful to me.
But she wasn’t awful. She was never awful. Hannah is in the bank of good memories getting me through this tunnel. I breathe in the wonder I felt in my heart the first time I saw her, when she turned up at Mum and Dad’s house on the morning of Granddad’s funeral. How she held herself stiffly in front of me and then crumpled forward, and the other-worldly joy when I hugged my sister for the first time in nearly two decades.