This Jim looks far too old to be doing such a job. Surely he must be nearing retirement, muses Tobias, his brain running along the most random trains of thought now. But then not everyone can choose to retire at forty with a massive pension. He, himself, could have, in fact did at one point, but then he grew bored and returned to work.
‘Drew,’ repeats the paramedic. ‘Drew, can you hear me? You’re okay, you’re safe.’
Then Tobias hears the most miraculous sound. Few things have stopped him in his tracks, have solidified in his memory, as he knows this will. The first time he heard the bubbling chuckle of his child’s laughter. The first time he heard the word ‘daddy’. The sound of his son’s screams as he carried him into A & E with a suspected broken arm. The wheezing sigh as his own father took his last breath.
It is the sound of coughing, followed by an awful retching as Drew turns and empties the contents of his lungs and stomach at the same time. Vomit and sea water. A stench, a gargled moan, eyes rolling back in an ashen face, drool hanging from wet lips. There are wires still sprouting from his slim, sunburned chest. Bruised ribs still prominent as his son takes his first desperate breath of oxygen. Like a newborn, muses Tobias. Just like when he was born.
He registers that tears are streaming down his face, as they were that day in the delivery room. He had been so proud to have a son. Someone to carry on the family name. To pass it all on to one day. But then Olivia had reached out a tentativehand and touched the wet scalp, announcing the baby as ‘a little blondie, like me’ and claiming him for herself, just like that.
Tobias watches as the paramedics continue to revive Drew; moving him into the recovery position, warming him up in a blanket, monitoring his heart rate. Preparing him for transfer to a stretcher and then to the waiting ambulance and onwards to a hospital. He doesn’t even know where the nearest one is, he realises. Whether it is any good. And suddenly he is homesick. For London, for the city, for the reassuringly constant thrum and life of it all; his house, his job, civilisation. He wants to be back there, to safety, familiarity. He is sick of this place, the renovation, the constant worry.
Then a thought finally occurs to him. He turns to his daughter, who has shuffled closer, under her blanket, weeping happy tears now, staring at her brother with palpable joy and relief.
‘Where the hell is your bloody mother?’
46
When she first awoke, Olivia was merely aware of birdsong; that incredible chorus that lifts the heart, the spirits. That signals the start of a new day. However, it was not really properly light, she remembers. Day had not yet broken, as far as her sleep-deprived brain could tell. Was the sun coming up or was it a different kind of light igniting the sky in soft yellow and peachy tones? She had closed her eyes and listened for a few moments, marvelling at the distinct call of each different bird as it announced to the world that ‘I am here, I am alive, I have survived the night’. And yet perhaps they had been mistaken, hoodwinked by a false dawn, just as she herself had been.
Then another feeling had overtaken this sense of wonder, quickly followed by another and another; pain, confusion, panic, guilt.
The pain was manifest, all over her body. In her back, her neck, a numbness in her hands and feet. A terrible nauseating feeling in her stomach and a sharp, shooting pain in her temples. Where was she? What was she doing here? Memory, logic, all comprehension of the facts seemed to have abandoned her. Her surroundings were so incongruous, her brain couldn’t make sense of it.
And then came the fear. The concept of danger flooding her consciousness, lighting up her synapses like a circuit board. She needed to get up, get out. Before it was too late.
She had leaned over then to see Marcus, lying beside her. To all intents and purposes, dead to the world. How, she hadwondered. How on earth had she found herself here, in this moment, with this person? A man she hardly knew, who was a mystery to everyone, including himself it seemed, if she was really honest.
Honesty. It is a bizarre, abstract concept to her these days, after everything that has happened. What would she say to her loved ones if they saw her now? How would she explain? She couldn’t. There is nothing to say. Which is why she must get moving now, find a way to escape this dawning nightmare, a spell somehow finally broken by the dreadful situation she finds herself in.
She tries to sit up but her head spins, a bolt of nausea threatening to overcome her, her stomach roiling like the sea so close and yet so far. She wishes she was down by the beach now. Always her happy place, in the water, she craves the feel of the waves now more than ever. To wash herself clean, renew her, to take away these feelings of shame and guilt.
Again she makes to move, to push herself up onto her elbows, to work blood into her muscles, bring her stiff body back to life. But it is useless. She attempts to open her eyes, to focus on her surroundings, which swim in and out of her field of vision. Her brain is addled, her senses dulled and she feels her eyes closing again, a bank of darkness engulfing her. The irresistible temptation to lie, rest, sleep and submit. To give in to the overwhelming blackness that surrounds her.
47
‘How should I know?’ says Bella, in answer to her father’s question – something of her old pique returning, now that she sees Drew is going to be okay.
Tobias runs a hand through his hair. His back is killing him after kneeling on the stony beach, crouching over his son’s body for so long.
‘I tried calling all three of you,’ he splutters. ‘When I heard all this racket going on in the town; fire brigades, sirens. A hell of a commotion. I’d woken up and found you all missing.’
Bella looks back at him vacantly. Her face still has a lost, haunted quality to it and he wonders how long it will remain, or if she will be permanently scarred by this near miss.
The female paramedic, Sarah, leans over then to give Bella’s shoulder an encouraging squeeze as if she can tell that Tobias’s barracking is not helping.
‘There’s been a house fire, over on the other side of the bay,’ she supplies. ‘That’s why we were so late in responding to you guys, I’m afraid. We’ve had most of our local crews over there. It’s where we’ve just come from.’
‘Christ,’ says Tobias, ‘Talk about atrocious timing. What are the bloody chances?’
He says this with little sympathy. If he’s honest, it feels like a massive inconvenience that his son didn’t receive priority treatment. As though reading the bitter inference in his voice, Sarah clears her throat.
‘It’s a pretty bad situation over there actually. There’s been some casualties. I can’t really say any more.’
‘Oh right. House fire, you say?’ he responds. ‘I presumed it was a campfire that had got out of hand. I hear it gets pretty lively round these parts when there’s a local celebration. Young kids, high jinks, taking the law into their own hands, that sort of thing.’
Bella shifts uncomfortably beside him and the irony hangs heavily between them.
‘No,’ says Sarah coldly. ‘Haven’t a clue how this one started, could have been a stray firework I suppose, even a lit cigarette end? But it was serious. One of the big houses up on Cliff Road. We thought it might be straightforward as it was a vacant property but a couple of people were found on site. Not sure if it was the smoke inhalation or the fallen scaffolding that got them.’
