Olivia Flies High (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Tom, Georgia and Eel were sitting around the sides of Olivia’s hospital bed. A vase of daffodils, the colour of sunshine, sat on the bedside table. Olivia was sitting up in bed, looking very pale. She had a large bruise on her forehead and a black eye. But she was smiling broadly as Tom recounted yet again his rescue from the
dressing-room
window.

“There was a horrible moment when you let yourself down from the window sill on to the
castell
and it began to resemble the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” she said. “But everyone was awesome in the way they held it together.”

“They’ll be queuing around the block to sign up for circus skills at the Swan now,” said Georgia.

“Are they going to allow you to get up soon?” asked Eel, who kept stroking Livy’s arm as if she were a cat.

“They’re going to come and help me try shortly,” said Olivia. “But it’s going to be fine. I know it. I feel as if I could run a marathon.”

“Oh, Livy, I thought you were dead when I saw you lying there so pale and still,” said Eel, and her eyes filled with tears.

“Don’t cry, Eel sweetie. I’m very much alive,” said her sister. “Apart from the concussion, the black eye, the mild dislocation of my neck, the bruising along my spine and the ankle sprain, I’ve really never felt better in my life.”

Everyone laughed.

The night before, things had looked far grimmer. The paramedics had put a neck brace on Olivia and strapped her on to a stretcher before racing her to hospital with sirens wailing and red lights flashing. The doctors had assessed her immediately, their faces grave. They tapped Olivia’s toes, ordered X-rays and shone lights into her eyes. Two more doctors had been called. Pablo had looked agonised; he felt that he was to blame. Alicia resembled a living ghost, and for only the second time in her life Eel was rendered
entirely speechless. The first time had been after the car accident that had almost ended Jack’s high-wire walking career for ever.

Tom and Georgia’s parents had come and picked them up from the hospital, even though both of them protested that they didn’t want to leave and wouldn’t be able to sleep until they knew what was happening with Livy. Pablo promised he would text as soon as there was any news, and Alicia said they should take the day off school tomorrow.

“We must ring Jack,” said Pablo.

“But what can we tell him?” said Alicia. “They’re several hours behind in Idaho. We don’t know how bad it is yet, and he won’t be able to get a flight until the morning now anyway. He’ll just be worried sick.”

Pablo said nothing. It looked pretty bad to him. He had overheard one of the doctors muttering about concussion and possible paralysis.

But in the event things had proved far less calamitous. The doctors studied X-rays and stopped looking so worried, and at about two–thirty a.m. they’d come to see Alicia, Eel and Pablo in the little relatives’ waiting room with
good news: Olivia’s injuries were all relatively minor, and although they wouldn’t know the full extent until the next day, when they would try to get her up and walking, there was nothing immediately life-threatening to worry about.

“She’ll need to stay in for a couple of days so we can keep an eye on her, particularly because of the concussion,” said one of the doctors. “And the shock could take its toll. But we feel optimistic. She’s a very lucky girl and a very strong and resilient one. Not many people could take a fall like that without so much as a broken bone.”

Alicia had wept, and both she and Pablo had tried to reach Jack, but his phone had just gone straight to voicemail.

First thing in the morning Tom had turned up at the hospital, clutching a bunch of early daffodils. Their yellow cheerfulness felt like a reproach to him. The nurses had told him he was far too early and that non-relative visiting time wasn’t for hours, but he refused to go away and just sat on a bench in the corridor, clutching the drooping flowers and swinging his legs despondently. Pablo had let him know that Liv was out of danger, but that didn’t make him
feel any better. He felt that he couldn’t escape blame for the fact that she was in hospital. Their friendship had gone so terribly wrong.

In the end, the ward sister took pity on him and let him visit Olivia, who was on her own in a side room. It might, she hoped, cheer them both up. Olivia’s face was as long as Tom’s. From past experience, the nursing sister knew that most people who survived such a horrific accident relatively unscathed were relieved, often incredibly exhilarated, but Olivia seemed miserable and listless, as if something else was troubling her far more than her injuries.

Tom stood stiffly by the side of the bed. Olivia was lying propped up on a pillow, her hair like a dark cloud around her head.

“Hello, Liv,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

Olivia said nothing. She just turned her face away from him and closed her eyes. A tear trickled out of the corner of her bruised eye and she winced.

“Liv, please listen to me,” whispered Tom.

Olivia didn’t move. It was as if she was made of stone, like an effigy in a churchyard.

“Liv?”

“Go away, Tom,” she whispered. “You made your feelings quite clear in your note. I don’t want your flowers or your guilt. I just want you to leave me alone and never come back.”

Olivia turned her head and looked him full in the face. Her eyes were huge pools, black and hard like granite. “I thought that you and me, and Georgia and Aeysha were real friends. But I was so wrong. I’ve been lying here thinking about it. Maybe I don’t know what friendship is. I’ve not had much practice, what with all the travelling I’ve done with the circus. Maybe what we had was just a temporary alliance like those people we learn about in history. Maybe we were just all useful to each other. Maybe that’s why it fell apart so easily. It’s like a
castell
. It has to be strong at the base, otherwise it just wobbles and crumbles away. Anyway, whatever it was, it’s over now. Destroyed.”

Tom walked closer to the bed. She flinched as he came nearer.

“Liv,” he said desperately. “I’m going to go away. But before I do I want you to do one last thing for me. And if after you’ve done it, you still want me to leave, I will. I promise. I’ll never bother you again. I’ll even leave the Swan
if that’s what you want. I swear.”

Olivia stirred. Tom leaving the Swan was a massive sacrifice. She knew how much he loved it. It was more like home to him than it would ever be to her, and she lived there. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

Tom took another step closer and dropped a piece of paper on to the bedclothes. Olivia saw what it was and shrank away.

“Liv, I want you to look at that really closely and tell me if you notice anything strange about it.”

Gingerly, Olivia picked up the note, holding it as if it was a hand grenade that might explode in her face at any moment. She scanned the words, each one feeling like a needle in her stomach.

“Turn it over,” said Tom.

She did. Tom held his breath. Olivia stared at the name on the front and suddenly she smiled, and it was like the first ray of sunshine hitting the sea at dawn on a summer’s morning.

She looked up at Tom. “Oh, Tom, I’m so sorry.” She frowned. “But I don’t understand. The note is definitely in your handwriting.”

“Yes,” said Tom, “but I wrote it to somebody
else. Then they must have put your name on the front and left it with Bert.”

“Who?” asked Olivia.

“The same person who deleted the text that you sent me apologising and substituted it with another saying how much you hated me and Georgia and Aeysha.”

“Katie Wilkes-Cox!”

Tom nodded. Olivia patted the edge of the bed and Tom sat down and started to tell her everything that had happened.

By the time that Alicia, Pablo and Eel turned up an hour later, Olivia was transformed. Georgia arrived shortly afterwards with chocolate and lemonade, and the next time the ward sister popped her head around the door, there seemed to be a full-scale party going on in the side room. She was going to tell them off, but caught a glimpse of Olivia’s laughing face and just closed the door and pretended she knew nothing about it.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“But I could just walk down to physiotherapy!” said Olivia impatiently, as a porter and a nurse helped her from the bed into a wheelchair.

The nurse shook her head and said, “Not allowed, Livy, I’m afraid. We’ll wheel you down to physio so they can assess you and then you can try to walk in controlled conditions. Just be patient. I’m sure that by this afternoon you’ll be able to walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats if that’s what you really want to do. But you may find that you won’t want to walk as much as you think you will. Your body has had a real shock. It needs rest, and time to recover.”

They wheeled her to the lift and took her down two floors to the physiotherapy department. Eel, Alicia and Pablo followed.
Tom and Georgia had gone home to rest because they had a performance of
The Sound of Music
that night. Alicia had wanted Eel to go back to the Swan for a rest, too, but Eel had refused to leave Livy. She was glued to her sister’s side.

Once Olivia had been assessed, her chair was placed between two parallel bars.

“We’ll help you out of the wheelchair,” explained the physiotherapist, “so you can put your weight on the bars. Then in your own time you can take a step or two and see how you feel.”

“I feel fine,” said Olivia confidently. She grinned. “I might even do a cartwheel.”

The physiotherapist looked shocked. Most of her patients had to be coaxed into taking their first steps after an accident, but Olivia was almost too confident about her own abilities.

“Let’s give it a go and see how you get on,” said the physio, and she asked the nurse to help her lift Olivia into a standing position. Olivia stood between the bars. If she was being honest, she found she was pleased she had them to hold on to. She felt a little as if she were standing on the deck of a ship in a violent storm and her legs were surprisingly shaky. Now she was upright, the floor suddenly seemed a very long way
away. She held tightly to the bars, then after a few seconds the dizziness passed.

“Take your time,” said the physio. “There’s no hurry. We’ve got all day if you need it.”

Olivia took a deep breath. Now she was out of bed she was intensely aware of how bruised and battered her body felt, and she was more nervous than she ever imagined it was possible to be about the simple act of putting one foot in front of another. Walking, she thought to herself, was like breathing. As long as you didn’t think about it, it was easy-peasy. But as soon as you did, it became difficult and made you feel a bit panicky.

Her body – so lithe and strong and supple – had always done exactly what she wanted it to do, and she had never thought what it must feel like to have a body that let you down. She caught Alicia’s eye and smiled at her with a pang of sympathy, thinking how her granny lived every day with the terrible pain of arthritis and how Alicia’s twisted hands and feet prevented her from doing the things she loved most in the world: dancing and acting on the West End stage.

Still holding tightly to the bars and
concentrating intensely, Olivia slowly moved one foot in front of the other. She paused, then she did the same with the other foot. She looked up, her eyes shining, and saw everyone in the room was watching her intently and smiling too.

She was about to joke that this walking business was a piece of cake, when Pablo’s mobile phone rang. Guiltily he took it out of his pocket, pressed a button, said, “Pablo Catalano,” and turned to leave the room with the phone clasped to his ear. He had almost reached the door when he turned slowly around, the colour draining from his face. He gave a tiny cry of distress. “I’ll call you straight back,” he said abruptly.

Everyone stared at him. A frown crossed Alicia’s face. He beckoned her to leave the room with him, but Olivia cried out, “What is it? What’s happened?” Her eyes searched Pablo’s anguished face. “It’s Dad, isn’t it?” she said wildly. “Something’s happened to Dad!”

Pablo nodded, his eyes wet with unshed tears. “His plane, it go missing. Radio contact was lost and it didn’t return to the airfield. As soon as it’s light they will look for it again. But they are thinking they must have ditched the plane for some reason or…” His voice tailed off.

“Or what?” asked Alicia quietly.

“Or it must have crashed,” said Pablo.

Eel gave a great howl like a wounded animal. Olivia felt as if all the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room and she was gasping for breath. She tried to take another step forwards, but her legs simply collapsed beneath her and she fell to the ground.