Losing You (52 page)

‘No! What I need is to do this, OK? Nothing else matters. I know that’s hard for someone like you to get your head around, but for me, what counts is getting her back to who she really is.’

Russ felt oddly as though he’d been punched. ‘Is it OK for me to tell you what matters to me?’ he said. ‘I know it probably doesn’t feature very large for you, but for me
all
that matters is you and what you’re going to do with your life.’

Oliver seemed beside himself with frustration. ‘I knew you wouldn’t get it, because you see, as far as I’m concerned, if she doesn’t have a future then I don’t have one either.’

Stunned again, Russ could only look at him as he realised that through the cyber connection and now these visits Oliver hadn’t only managed to fall for the girl, he was starting to identify himself with her in a way that ... Well, in a way that was unnatural, to say the least. Russ wondered what Charlie was making of it, since he surely knew. The fact that he was keeping the confidence presumably meant he had a better handle on it than Russ was achieving. However, neither of his sons had yet had to deal with any real responsibility in their lives, and their generation saw things very differently.

Oliver said, ‘I know you don’t get this, Dad, but she’s something else. She really is.’

Russ didn’t argue. How could he, when he’d already put forward his concerns and they’d apparently made no impact at all? He searched for some words of advice, but he had none. He wasn’t even sure what else to ask. He only knew, sensed, that there was no point trying to reason with Oliver any more over this, because the time for that had clearly already come and gone.

Chapter Twenty-Six

EMMA AND HER
mother were being shown around the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Centre at Frenchay. Though it was on the same site as the hospital, it was a privately owned unit with an atmosphere that made it feel almost luxurious in comparison to the tired old building where Lauren was now. Of course, it was way beyond anything they could afford; however, Dr Hanworth, the senior consultant, who’d already assessed Lauren at the invitation of one of his ward colleagues, had explained that most, if not all, of the patients were funded by their Primary Care Trusts. He was of the opinion that Lauren could qualify for funding too, and virtually from the moment he’d shown Emma through the door she’d known she’d do just about anything to get Lauren here. It was so welcoming and spacious, surrounded by tree-shaded patios and with wide, light corridors leading off a hexagonal-shaped reception. Each patient had his or her own private room with posters and photos on the walls, a TV on the dressing table and their own clothes in the wardrobe. The dining room, just off the reception, was like an upmarket cafe with round shiny tables, plenty of space to manoeuvre wheelchairs in and out, and a well-equipped kitchen next door where patients and visitors could make cups of tea or even prepare food.

‘We hold all sorts of events and competitions,’ the centre’s manager, Anita, was telling them as they wandered through to an occupational therapy room. ‘Anything from
Come Dine with Me
, to poetry readings or plays, to races in the pool. We have parties for birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, you name it, which makes for a very busy time in the OT department, as I’m sure you can imagine.’

‘You mean the patients make their own costumes and hats and things?’ Phyllis ventured, as Emma shrank inside at the thought of Lauren being here for so long.

‘Absolutely everything,’ Anita confirmed. ‘They’re usually a lot of fun, these bashes, for all of us.’

‘As I explained to you at our first meeting,’ Dr Hanworth continued, as he returned them to the hexagon to direct them down another corridor with rooms either side, each displaying a patient’s name and sometimes photo on the door, ‘if Lauren does join us she’ll have a dedicated team of supporters, starting with a key worker who’ll devise her routine with the OTs, physios, psychologists and speech and language therapists.’

Realising that couldn’t happen until Lauren was conscious, Emma said, ‘So what do we have to do to get her a place here while she’s like she is?’

‘Nothing,’ he replied, leading the way into the gym, where a badly scarred young Asian man was being helped on to the treadmill by his physio. ‘I will make the application for you. It could take the PCT a while to respond, and I’m afraid there are no guarantees that they will come through, but in Lauren’s case I really do consider it worth a try.’

‘Even though we’ve no idea how long her coma might last?’

‘That isn’t a problem for us, but I have to admit that the decision-makers might see it as an obstacle to funding. They don’t like open-ended situations. However, they might well agree to pay for three or six months’ care, and once she’s here it’ll be much easier for us to make the case to keep her until she’s ready to go home.’

Feeling, naively perhaps, that it all seemed so much more possible from here, Emma turned to watch a young woman being wheeled in by a nurse, her head lolling on to one shoulder, her eyes staring blankly ahead. Was she conscious? How much did she know about what was going on around her?

‘How many patients do you have here at any one time?’ she asked.

‘We have twenty rooms,’ Anita answered, ‘so no more than that.’

‘Are they all ages?’ Phyllis wondered.

‘From sixteen up.’

‘Would you like to see the hydrotherapy pool next?’ Andy Hanworth suggested.

Half an hour later, clutching a glossy brochure each, and some very high hopes, Emma and Phyllis were walking back across the site to where Lauren was still entombed in her soulless side room with good and constant care, it had to be said, though nothing to compare with what they’d just seen.

‘We have to get her in there,’ Phyllis stated, voicing both their thoughts. ‘They just have to come up with the funding.’

‘If she was showing some signs of recovery,’ Emma said, gazing in through the windows of a large, sunny cafe that they hadn’t even known existed until now, ‘it would probably be a lot easier.’

‘Even so, the doctor’s going to try, so he must think we’re in with a chance.’

Taking hope from that, Emma said, ‘Did you realise it was a secure unit?’

‘Mm, yes, but you’d never know it, would you? Such pretty little gardens with those parasols and nice wooden tables. Well, I was very impressed with all of it. How could you not be?’

‘It seems like a world away from where she is now, doesn’t it?’ Emma remarked. It was heartbreaking and cruel, she was thinking, how drastically her ambitions for Lauren had changed in such a relatively short time, but she was learning to adapt, as Lauren must too, when the time came.

‘... and you’ll never guess what happened this morning,’ Emma was saying to Lauren as she sat beside her bed a week later, oblivious to the comings and goings outside the little side room. Today she was barely even noticing the monitors charting Lauren’s progress, nor the nasal specs that looped from Lauren’s nose across her cheeks, providing oxygen. Not even the gastric tube that supplied her nutrients was catching Emma’s attention. She only saw Lauren’s
still, tranquil features, warmed and faintly flushed by the blood running beneath the skin, and the delicate shaping of her lips that made them seem about to smile. In every other way she was healing, returning to health; she just wasn’t waking up. Nevertheless the physio still came twice a day to flex and massage her muscles, sit her up, turn her over and praise her for how well she was doing, when in fact she was doing nothing at all.

‘I only had a phone call from Hamish Gallagher,’ Emma went on, injecting some enthusiasm into her voice. ‘You remember, the manager at the Avon Valley Manor Hotel? Apparently, they want to put on a local arts fair this summer, and he’s asked
me
if I’ll organise it.’

Her eyebrows rose in anticipation of a reaction, and she smiled, as though she’d received one. ‘I know you’re saying wow, or amazing, or that’s so cool, or something like that,’ she said softly, ‘but it’s a bigger challenge than I was expecting for my first project. I’m sure I can do it, though. In fact, it feels right up my street, or I like to think it is. And I’ll love meeting local artists and potters, jewellery and home-craft designers ... I thought we could invite a few self-published writers too. They’ll probably welcome some added exposure for their books. It’s all got to be worked out yet, obviously, I’m just thinking off the top of my head before I go for a meeting with Hamish. He told me to call him that, which is very friendly, isn’t it? No, don’t start getting ideas. He’s happily married to a wife who’s apparently keen to help me make new contacts around the area, if I need them, and I certainly do. I’m hoping she might have access to a few local celebrities, so we can invite them along. That should bring in the crowds.’ She paused, giving herself a moment to imagine what Lauren herself might suggest, while trying not to dwell on how much she would have enjoyed helping to organise it.

‘Of course, musicians,’ she said, realising that would have been top of Lauren’s list. ‘We must include them, and dancers. They’ll really liven things up. Actually, I wonder if a local drama club might be interested in putting on a short play, or doing some readings. There’s a lot to think about, and if I’m going to do it I shall have to start work
on it straight away, which is going to be difficult now I’m part-time at the vet’s. It was a case of having to go for that job though, otherwise Granny would have ended up paying for everything, and she has to be as careful as the rest of us with prices going up all the time, and her royalty payments starting to dwindle. I’ve a feeling she’s digging into her savings already, but she won’t discuss it, so I just have to make sure that I’m paying the lion’s share of the bills.’

Thinking of her mother she gave a long, gentle sigh of relief. ‘I expect you’ve been thinking about the chat Granny and I had that I told you about. I knew you’d be pleased to hear that we’d finally started making an effort to get past all the bad feelings we had between us. I guess I was so wrapped up in myself and how awful she was to me as a child that I didn’t allow myself to see the overtures she says she made over the years. Yes, I’m sure you saw them, but the thing with you, Lauren, is you always see the good in people, even when it’s so hidden from the rest of us we’d need some sort of X-ray eyes to get there. Not that I’m saying Granny has no good in her, because obviously she has, it just never seemed to be directed at me, or not in my mind it didn’t. And you, well you’ve never been able to help yourself the way you give everyone the benefit of the doubt, or insist their motives are far worthier than they appear to the rest of us. It’s true that you really don’t see the bad in people, do you? Or, if you do, you manage to look straight past it to where the shyness, or hurt, or fear, or whatever it is, is hiding. Berry’s always said it’s another way you’re like my father, because he had time for everyone, apparently, no matter who they were or where they’d come from.’

She paused, and her head bowed with unhappiness as she tried to reconcile her beautiful, tender-hearted daughter with the girl who’d seemed to gain such pleasure from an illicit relationship with a man more than twice her age. It was still hard for Emma to accept that it had really happened in spite of having read the diary, and in spite of knowing how complex a human personality could be. Everyone, without exception, was capable of hiding traits
or thoughts or failings they didn’t want anyone else to know about, and it was second nature to keep secrets from those who might be hurt by them. Lauren would have known that her liaison with Philip Leesom would hurt her mother, but that really wasn’t the point. What bothered Emma most was that she had been so brazen with her newfound sexuality, so proud of it and ready to embrace anything Leesom might suggest. Never once had she seemed to consider her reputation if their relationship became known, or, more importantly, what danger she might be putting herself in.

Every mother thought they knew their child inside out, until they found out the hard way that they really didn’t.

Feeling tremors of unease coasting through her she wondered, not for the first time, what the accident and surgery might have done to Lauren’s personality, ambitions, understanding of others. Would she still be a musician when, if, she came round, or at least someone who enjoyed music? Maybe that part of her had been crushed by the impact, or removed by the scalpel. What if her character had changed completely and she woke up not as a virtual vegetable as Will obviously feared, but as another kind of person altogether? Maybe aspects of who she’d been before would remain, but would they be the tender, sunny qualities that made her so special? Or would she, Emma, have to get to know the side of her that had thrilled to Leesom’s attentions? Maybe there were other traits that even Lauren herself hadn’t yet discovered. Emma would still love her, whoever she was – she just couldn’t help fearing that fate’s crueller side might not have finished with them yet.

There was so much to worry about, so many awful scenarios ready to crowd out the pleasure of seeing Lauren return to consciousness, that sometimes she could feel herself becoming swamped by it all. What if Lauren came round and it was discovered she’d never be able to do anything but think for herself again? How terrible it would be for her, trapped inside a body that couldn’t function at all, never to be able to put her thoughts into words, or actions, or anything else that would help her to be understood, or move, or even eat unassisted. Locked-in syndrome,
they called it. If that happened Will would have been proved right: she, Emma, would have condemned herself to a lifetime of caring for a daughter who might actually hate her for forcing such a miserable existence upon her. Lauren would probably consider herself better off dead.

As the days, weeks had worn on she’d found herself wondering more and more how delusional, selfish, even arrogant, she was in believing that her love for Lauren could make everything all right. Perhaps Will’s way was the kindest.
If you really love someone you’ll let them go
. Did that mean he loved Lauren more because he was prepared to let her go? Emma couldn’t accept that, but she was starting to realise that maybe she should have tried harder to understand that all he really wanted was what he thought was the best for Lauren.