Here, I could hear my thoughts. I could almost hear my heartbeat. I realized, to my surprise, that I quite liked it.
At five, my mobile phone signalled a text message. Will stirred, and I leapt out of the chair, anxious to get it before it disturbed him.
No trains. Is there any chance you could stay over tonight?
Nathan cannot do it. Camilla Traynor.
I didn’t really think about it before I typed back.
No problem.
I rang my parents and told them that I would stay over. My mother sounded relieved. When I told her I was going to get paid for sleeping over, she sounded overjoyed.
‘Did you hear that, Bernard?’ she said, her hand half over the phone. ‘They’re paying her to sleep now.’
I could hear my father’s exclamation. ‘Praise the Lord. She’s found her dream career.’
I sent a text message to Patrick, telling him that I had been asked to stay at work and I would ring him later. The message came back within seconds.
Going cross-country snow running tonight.
Good practice for Norway! X P.
I wondered how it was possible for someone to get so excited at the thought of jogging through sub-zero temperatures in a vest and pants.
Will slept. I cooked myself some food, and defrosted some soup in case he wanted some later. I got the log fire going in case he felt well enough to go into the living room. I read another of the short stories and wondered how long it was since I had bought myself a book. I had loved reading as a child, but I couldn’t remember reading anything except magazines since. Treen was the reader. It was almost as if by picking up a book I felt like I was invading her patch. I thought about her and Thomas disappearing to university and realized I still didn’t know whether it made me feel happy or sad – or something a bit complicated in between.
Nathan rang at seven. He seemed relieved that I was staying over.
‘I couldn’t raise Mr Traynor. I even rang their landline number, but it went straight through to answerphone.’
‘Yeah. Well. He’ll be gone.’
‘Gone?’
I felt a sudden instinctive panic at the idea that it would be just Will and me in the house all night. I was afraid of getting something fundamental wrong again, of jeopardizing Will’s health. ‘Should I call Mrs Traynor, then?’
There was a short silence on the other end of the phone. ‘No. Best not.’
‘But –’
‘Look, Lou, he often … he often goes somewhere else when Mrs T stays over in town.’
It took me a minute or two to grasp what he was saying.
‘Oh.’
‘It’s just good that you’re there, that’s all. If you’re sure Will’s looking better, I’ll be back first thing in the morning.’
There are normal hours, and then there are invalid hours, where time stalls and slips, where life – real life – seems to exist at one remove. I watched some television, ate, and cleared up the kitchen, drifting around the annexe in silence. Finally, I let myself back into Will’s room.
He stirred as I closed the door, half lifting his head. ‘What time is it, Clark?’ His voice was slightly muffled by the pillow.
‘Quarter past eight.’
He let his head drop, and digested this. ‘Can I have a drink?’
There was no sharpness to him now, no edge. It was as if being ill had finally made him vulnerable. I gave him a drink, and turned on the bedside light. I perched on the side of his bed, and felt his forehead, as my mother might have done when I was a child. He was still a little warm, but nothing like he had been.
‘Cool hands.’
‘You complained about them earlier.’
‘Did I?’ He sounded genuinely surprised.
‘Would you like some soup?’
‘No.’
‘Are you comfortable?’
I never knew how much discomfort he was in, but I suspected it was more than he let on.
‘The other side would be good. Just roll me. I don’t need to sit up.’
I climbed across the bed and moved him over, as gently as I could. He no longer radiated a sinister heat, just the ordinary warmth of a body that had spent time under a duvet.
‘Can I do anything else?’
‘Shouldn’t you be heading home?’
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’m staying over.’
Outside, the last of the light had long been extinguished. The snow was still falling. Where it caught the porch glow through the window it was bathed in a pale-gold, melancholy light. We sat there in peaceful silence, watching its hypnotic fall.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I said, finally. I could see his hands on top of the sheet. It seemed so strange that they should look so ordinary, so strong, and yet be so useless.
‘I suspect you’re going to.’
‘What happened?’ I kept wondering about the marks on his wrists. It was the one question I couldn’t ask directly.
He opened one eye. ‘How did I get like this?’
When I nodded, he closed his eyes again. ‘Motorbike accident. Not mine. I was an innocent pedestrian.’
‘I thought it would be skiing or bungee jumping or something.’
‘Everyone does. God’s little joke. I was crossing the road outside my home. Not this place,’ he said. ‘My London home.’
I stared at the books in his bookshelf. Among the novels, the well-thumbed Penguin paperbacks, were business titles: Corporate Law, TakeOver, directories of names I did not recognize.
‘And there was no way you could carry on with your job?’
‘No. Nor the apartment, the holidays, the life … I believe you met my ex-girlfriend.’ The break in his voice couldn’t disguise the bitterness. ‘But I should apparently be grateful, as for some time they didn’t think I was going to live at all.’
‘Do you hate it? Living here, I mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there any way you might be able to live in London again?’
‘Not like this, no.’
‘But you might improve. I mean, Nathan said there are loads of advances in this kind of injury.’
Will closed his eyes again.
I waited, and then I adjusted the pillow behind his head, and the duvet around his chest. ‘Sorry,’ I said, sitting upright. ‘If I ask too many questions. Do you want me to leave?’
‘No. Stay for a bit. Talk to me.’ He swallowed. His eyes opened again and his gaze slid up to mine. He looked unbearably tired. ‘Tell me something good.’
I hesitated a moment, then I leant back against the pillows beside him. We sat there in the near dark, watching the briefly illuminated flakes of snow disappear into the black night.
‘You know … I used to say that to my Dad,’ I said, finally. ‘But if I told you what he used to say back, you’d think I was insane.’
‘More than I do?’
‘When I had a nightmare or was sad or frightened about something, he used to sing me … ’ I started to laugh. ‘Oh … I can’t.’
‘Go on.’
‘He used to sing me the “Molahonkey Song”.’
‘The what?’
‘The “Molahonkey Song”. I used to think everyone knew it.’
‘Trust me, Clark,’ he murmured, ‘I am a Molahonkey virgin.’
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and began to sing.
I wi-li-lished I li-li-lived in Molahonkey la-la-land
The la-la-land where I-li-li was bo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lorn
So I-li-li could play-la-lay my o-lo-lold banjo-lo-lo
My o-lo-lold ban-jo-lo-lo won’t go-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo.
‘Jesus Christ.’
I took another breath.
I too-lo-look it to-lo-lo the me-le-lender’s sho-lo-lop to
See-lee-lee what they-le-ley could do-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo
They sai-lai-laid to me-le-le your stri-li-lings are sho-lo-lot
They’re no-lo-lo more u-lu-luse to you-lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-loo.
There was a short silence.
‘You are insane. Your whole family is insane.’
‘But it worked.’
‘And you are a God-awful singer. I hope your dad was better.’
‘I think what you meant to say was, “Thank you, Miss Clark, for attempting to entertain me.”’
‘I suppose it makes about as much sense as most of the psychotherapeutic help I’ve received. Okay, Clark,’ he said, ‘tell me something else. Something that doesn’t involve singing.’
I thought for a bit.
‘Um … okay, well … you were looking at my shoes the other day?’
‘Hard not to.’
‘Well, my mum can date my unusual shoe thing back to when I was three. She bought me a pair of bright-turquoise glittery wellies – they were quite unusual back then – kids used to just have those green ones, or maybe red if you were lucky. And she said from the day she brought them home I refused to take them off. I wore them to bed, in the bath, to nursery all through the summer. My favourite outfit was those glitter boots and my bumblebee tights.’
‘Bumblebee tights?’
‘Black and yellow stripes.’
‘Gorgeous.’
‘That’s a bit harsh.’
‘Well, it’s true. They sound revolting.’
‘They might sound revolting to you, but astonishingly, Will Traynor, not all girls get dressed just to please men.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Everything women do is with men in mind. Everything anyone does is with sex in mind. Haven’t you read The Red Queen?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. But I can assure you I’m not sitting on your bed singing the “Molahonkey Song” because I’m trying to get my leg over. And when I was three, I just really, really liked having stripy legs.’
I realized that the anxiety that had held me in its grip all day was slowly ebbing away with every one of Will’s comments. I was no longer in sole charge of a poorly quadriplegic. It was just me, sitting next to a particularly sarcastic bloke, having a chat.
‘So come on, then, what happened to these gorgeous glittery wellies?’
‘She had to throw them away. I got terrible athlete’s foot.’
‘Delightful.’
‘And she threw the tights away too.’
‘Why?’
‘I never found out. But it broke my heart. I have never found a pair of tights I loved like that again. They don’t do them any more. Or if they do, they don’t make them for grown women.’
‘Strange, that.’
‘Oh, you can mock. Didn’t you ever love anything that much?’
I could barely see him now, the room shrouded in the near dark. I could have turned the overhead light on, but something stopped me. And almost as soon as I realized what I had said, I wished I hadn’t.
‘Yes,’ he said, quietly. ‘Yes, I did.’
We talked a bit longer, and then Will nodded off. I lay there, watching him breathe, and occasionally wondering what he would say if he woke up and found me staring at him, at his too-long hair and tired eyes and scraggy beginnings of a beard. But I couldn’t move. The hours had become surreal, an island out of time. I was the only other person in the house, and I was still afraid to leave him.
Shortly after eleven, I saw he had begun to sweat again, his breathing becoming shallower, and I woke him and made him take some fever medication. He didn’t talk, except to murmur his thanks. I changed his top sheet and his pillowcase, and then, when he finally slept again, I lay down a foot away from him and, a long time later, I slept too.
I woke to the sound of my name. I was in a classroom, asleep on my desk, and the teacher was rapping a blackboard, repeating my name again and again. I knew I should be paying attention, knew that the teacher would see this slumber as an act of subversion, but I could not raise my head from the desk.