Girl Heart Boy: No Such Thing as Forever (Book 1) (16 page)

‘F’nn,’ I said, too sleepy to move my lips.

The nurse patted my shoulder. ‘You’re welcome.’

The next time I woke up it was to sunlight and noise. Opening my eyes a smidgen, I tried to look around without anyone noticing. It felt like I’d been sleeping in a shop window. People were milling about and I could hear the clink of cutlery. Breakfast time. My tummy growled and I heard gentle laughter. Mum! Turning towards the sound, I saw her knees by my pillow. I huddled against them and she placed her hand on my head.

‘Hi, Mum.’ I was glad my face was hidden. I didn’t trust myself not to burst into tears, which under the circumstances would have seemed embarrassingly melodramatic.

‘Hello, darling.’ Mum’s voice broke, and I hugged her knees tighter.

I shifted so she could see my face. ‘How long have you been sitting there?’

‘Well, visiting hours started at eight.’ She looked at her watch. ‘And it’s eight forty-two now.’

‘Have they told you what happened?’ An image of Ashley sinking under the water popped into my head. I swallowed and stretched my legs, flexing my toes against the stiff cotton of the sheet. Mum didn’t answer, and, when I turned to her she was crying, her fist against her mouth. My dad had his arm round her – I hadn’t noticed him before – and his eyes were brimming. Invisible hands squeezed my chest. Seeing my dad cry was the world flipped on its head. Like the time he’d shunted into the car in front and the driver stood in the street and yelled at him. I’d felt the same seeing my dad being told off as I did seeing him crying. It was wrong. I twisted my sheet. ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’

Mum kind of snorted, her mouth twisting as it veered between laughing and crying. I knew how it felt. ‘Oh, Sarah, don’t be sorry. We’re so … so proud of you.’

My dad took my hand. ‘We’re just thinking about what could have happened.’

I kept my eyes on the sheet, pleating it between my fingers. ‘Well, don’t,’ I said quietly.

‘I know, Sooz, you’re right.’ (My dad calls me Sooz. Don’t ask.) ‘Just give us a minute to indulge it. We’ll be fine in a sec.’

I chewed my lip. They’d only had all bloody night to indulge it, but whatever. ‘Where’s Dan?’ I asked, for something to say while my parents were having their private what-if grief party.

‘He stayed at Oscar’s last night. We came up with Ashley’s mum.’

The weirdness of my parents and Ashley’s mum being in the same car was temporarily eclipsed by my realization that I hadn’t even thought about Ash. I whipped round, coughing as I choked on my own anticipation. She was propped up on pillows, eating a bowl of cereal. She looked grey and tired, but otherwise pretty good, considering.

‘All right, life-saver,’ she said, without looking up from her breakfast. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’

I beamed. Never had watching someone drip milk and Rice Krispies on to their chin given me so much pleasure. ‘How are you?’

She smiled. ‘Oh, all right.’ She looked at me and giggled, but then she hiccuped and her eyes filled with tears. I jumped up, took her bowl from her and put it on the bedside table, then got into bed beside her. Covering us both with the sheet, I said, ‘You’d better bloody be wearing knickers under that nightie.’

Ash squeezed the tears out of her eyes with the splayed fingers of one hand. ‘What, in case I decide to cross lesbo sex off my list?’

‘Exactly. I might be a good enough friend to watch you nearly drown yourself, but I draw the line at rudies.’

Ashley curled her hand around mine. Something had changed. The balance between us had shifted. I wasn’t yet sure if this was a good thing.

‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘Where’s your mum?’

‘Gone to the shop. She was doing my head in.’

‘Did you know she got a lift with my mum and dad?’ I glanced across at them. They were still there, watching me with half-smiles on their faces. Not too weird, then. I gave them a quick smile and turned back to Ashley. She widened her eyes but spoke quietly.

‘Yeah. Apparently your parents are a “lovely couple”.’ She did the speech marks thing, which seemed slightly unnecessary. Like, they
are
a lovely couple. ‘I suppose they think my mum’s a tanorexic try-hard,’ she whispered so they couldn’t hear.

‘What? No!’ I protested, but to be honest they probably did. In the end they just weren’t fake-tan-and-false-nails kind of people.

Ashley shrugged. ‘They’d be right.’

I shifted in the bed. This wasn’t how I’d imagined this conversation going. I suppose I’d secretly expected tearful thanks, heartfelt gratitude from her mum – maybe even a news reporter wanting my story. Moody Ashley was not in the script.

I eyed her as she bit off split ends. I wanted to ask her what it felt like to believe she was going to die, or if she’d had any near-death visions, or if she remembered any of being rescued and having mouth-to-mouth, but I couldn’t. It’s like if you see someone with no hair and a headscarf, you don’t march up and say, ‘So what’s it like having cancer, then?’ I mean, I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t insensitive to bring it up at all.

So in the end I settled for the boring but safe ‘How are you feeling?’

She smiled briefly. ‘Shit … But, y’know –’ she gave me lazy jazz hands – ‘alive.’

Later that day the others came to visit. Ashley had spent most of the morning sleeping while I’d dozed and flicked through a few magazines. Mum and Dad had gone to find a hotel and get some sleep, even though the nurses reckoned I’d be discharged that day. I’d felt strangely gutted when they left, but I was kind of too knackered to worry about it.

Anyway, when Cass, Donna, Rich, Ollie and Jack arrived they found me and Ashley sitting up in bed, troughing some surprisingly OK cheesy tomato pasta for lunch. They formed a circle round our beds, which was a bit weird but I suppose that’s how it’s done, the visiting-invalids thing. Ash had shot me a
quick eyebrow-raise when they’d first come in. Like:
Hmm, what’ll this be like?
I knew how she felt. And they did all seem kind of nervous at first, taking it in turns to give us both hugs.

Rich teared up a bit, bless him, and even Donna, who held on to Ashley for ages, was a bit moist round the eye area when she pulled away. ‘Fuck’s sake, you’ll do anything for a bit of attention,’ she said, quickly brushing away the tears with the back of her hand.

Ash laughed, in a tired kind of way. ‘Yeah, I’m thinking of walking down the motorway next time.’

Then Donna threw herself at me. ‘And bless YOU, missus.’ I hugged her back, blushing but loving it. Who wouldn’t?

‘Yeah, you’re amazing, hon,’ said Cass, smiling at me. ‘We’re so proud of you.’

‘And Jack …’ I prompted, reaching out my hand to take his. ‘He’s the real life-saver.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ he said quietly. ‘You did just as much.’

Rich flung his arm round Jack’s shoulders. ‘You’re a hero, mate. You both are.’ I beamed and bit my lip; Jack just smiled and looked at the floor.

‘Anyway,’ said Cass, putting a box of Celebrations on the bedside table. ‘We got you these. I wanted to get you Heroes, but Donna vetoed.’

‘Yeah, totally,’ said Donna. ‘Way too obvious.’

‘Any chocolate’s fine with me,’ I said, tearing open the box and pouring them on to my bed. ‘Help yourselves.’

‘Um, they’re for Ashley too, of course,’ said Cass.

I blushed. ‘Yeah, course. You don’t mind if we share them out, do you?’

Ashley shrugged and nodded, but didn’t take one.

Cass chose a mini Mars and perched on the end of Ash’s bed. ‘So how are you, hon, if that’s not a stupid question?’

Ash pulled herself up a bit straighter and smoothed the sheets over her thighs. ‘I suppose I’m pretty good, considering the nearly dying stuff … I can’t seem to get enough sleep, but apart from that … Yeah, I feel all right.’

Cass’s eyes darted to the others, and Donna and Rich kind of nodded encouragingly. ‘Are you OK to tell us what happened?’ she added gently. Ah, now I understood. They must have had a discussion about whether or not it was all right to ask. I didn’t blame them. After all, I couldn’t bring myself to ask and I was there.

‘Not much to tell, to be honest,’ said Ashley. ‘I got cramp. I’d never had it before, so I kind of freaked. It was like something was attacking me.’ She shook her head at the memory. ‘I thought I was … done for.’ She widened her eyes and waggled her fingers
ironically, but her eyes did look scared. Poor her, she really had been through something terrifying. I couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to actually believe that your time was up.

‘Thank God for you, babes,’ said Cass, reaching over and patting my leg.

I shrugged. ‘Right place at the right time. I didn’t even think about it – I just went in.’ I told them the whole story. It felt good to voice it all. I swear I didn’t embellish it, but I saw Donna gave Rich a look, like I was loving it. I didn’t really care. She was probably just jealous. She loved being the centre of attention.

I looked over at Ollie, who hadn’t said a word. ‘You all right, Ols?’

He blinked and cleared his throat. ‘Yeah, fine. Just glad you’re all right.’ He attempted a watery smile. Aw, what a softy. Who’d have thought Ollie would get emotional?

‘What about you, Jack?’ I said. ‘How come you turned up in the nick of time? I’ve been going over and over it in my head and I just can’t work it out.’

He hunched his shoulders, his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets. ‘I was looking for my scarf – I left it when we were playing volleyball. Then I recognized your bag and Ashley’s coat …’ He tailed off.

‘Oh, riiiight,’ I said. ‘God, I’d been thinking you were, like, psychic or something. But, shit, thank God
you left your scarf … I might have got Ashley out of the water, but I’d have been useless at the mouth-to-mouth stuff.’ It was probably part of the life-saving badge all those years ago, but I couldn’t remember any of it.

Jack shrugged. ‘We both did what we had to do.’ He seemed genuinely uncomfortable, like he’d rather we didn’t go on about it. Honestly, I could have talked about it all day. Maybe it was cos Jack was so into sport that it wasn’t all that to him – physical exertion was what he was all about, and he put on his life-saver guise every time he went to work at the swimming pool – but this might be the one amazing thing I do in my whole life. I was more than happy to milk it.

As we paused in a moment of awkward silence, a nurse appeared to tell me and Ash that the consultant was on her way to see us. Cue friends’ departure.

‘We’ll come and see you tomorrow,’ said Cass. ‘Look after yourselves.’

‘Can’t really do anything else in this place,’ said Ashley. ‘But thanks. You too.’

Another quick round of hugs, and they disappeared, leaving the ward feeling very quiet and empty. I wondered where they were going now. The hostel and the beach seemed to belong in some kind of parallel universe since I’d been in here.

I started to say as much to Ashley, but she had her eyes closed again. It worried me to see her like this. Obviously she’d be in intensive care if the doctors thought there was a problem, but still. What if the water had done some kind of terrible damage to her lungs and no one had noticed? As I waited for the consultant I watched Ashley’s chest rise and fall, and tried not to think about what could have been – or what might be.

Facebook status update

Sarah Millar:
is thinking winter swimming ain’t all that.

Comments:

Cass Henderson:
LOL me too! V glad you’re OK, hero lady! Xx