‘Thanks. A tea would be lovely,’ I said. ‘Is it… are we okay to stay here?’
The staff nurse smiled. ‘Normally there’s no visitors overnight,’ she said. ‘But under the circumstances, I think it’s fine. Or if you would be more comfortable there’s a lounge area just down the ward corridor on your left. There’s a vending machine and comfier chairs. Up to you.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, my voice wobbling as she walked away.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me at the moment,’ I said to Joe. ‘Every time someone is even remotely kind and helpful I want to burst into tears. And the trouble is, everyone’s been lovely so far, ever since we first arrived at the hospital. I’m an emotional wreck!’
He put an arm around me and pulled my head to his shoulder where I wept quietly for a few moments. ‘It’s been quite a rollercoaster day,’ he said eventually. ‘Even I’ve been a bit emotional.’
I nodded against him.
‘Did I ever tell you,’ he said, ‘about that first journey home when we’d dropped her off at uni?’
‘What?’ I lifted my head up to look at him.
‘You know when we stopped for fuel and I was in the toilets for like half an hour?’
‘And you said it was all the shortbread – had bunged you up a bit.’
‘Yeah, well, that was a lie. I was bawling my eyes out.’
‘You were?’
He nodded. ‘Sobbing like a baby sat in that cubicle. One of the attendants came to ask if I was alright, knocking on the door. God knows what he thought was going on. I know girls cry in the toilets all the time – there’s a bit more novelty value when it happens in the gents’.’
‘Gosh,’ I said, feeling a bit crestfallen that I hadn’t noticed at the time. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t even realise you were feeling that sad.’
He shrugged. ‘One of us had to be okay,’ he said. ‘One of us needed to be able to drive us home safely and keep their shit together.’
‘And that person clearly wasn’t me,’ I said sadly.
‘No, it wasn’t an accusation,’ he said, taking my hand. ‘I didn’t mean that your being upset stole my chance at expressing myown sadness. I just meant that from a practical point of view I knew I couldn’t go to pieces.’
‘But I didn’t know. All that time I was thinking, bloody hell Joe, great time to get stuck in the bog, and actually your heart was breaking and you didn’t tell me.’
‘My heartwasbreaking a bit,’ he admitted. ‘It was bloody awful wasn’t it, that day? And then the months go by, and we sort of settle into a new pattern. And it’s still weird and we miss her, but we keep telling ourselves it’s for the best and she’s having this amazing opportunity. And then something like this happens.’ He gestured to Layla lying on the hospital bed, the blanket draped over some elaborate construction of wire and pins framing her left ankle. ‘And we’re both forcibly reminded how far away she is.’ The corners of his mouth turned down, and a tear leaked out of his eye.
‘But I guess,’ I said, wiping the tear from his cheek as I assumed the new role of reassurer rather than reassuree, ‘awful as today has been, at least we’ve seen for ourselves that she’s got people around her who care about her. It’s some consolation, both that she wasn’t alone when it happened, and that her friends have rallied around. I mean, just think about the number of kids in the waiting room when we got here, all worrying about her and wanting to find out how she was doing.’
He smiled as we both cast our minds back four or five hours earlier when we’d arrived in A&E to be greeted by Layla’s entire football team, including the coach, and all seven of her flatmates. Leon and Karl gruffly shaking mine and Joe’s hands, Marianne gushing over how brave Layla had been, although admittedly she hadn’tbeen thereduring the match, but she’d come as soon as she heard becauseobviously, she and Layla weresuch great friends. Asmaa rolling her eyes at Marianne while she relayed the information we needed to hear, thatLayla was currently being prepped for surgery and that the orthopaedic doctor had said to bleep him as soon as we arrived.
We managed to see her briefly before she was taken into theatre. It was probably one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, my daughter’s face, pale with pain against the blue of her hospital gown, needles and tubes attached to the back of her hand as they wheeled her into the anaesthetic induction room. But at least we had seen her. And she had seen us. She knew we were there.
Layla woke briefly during the small hours of the night to have a few sips of water and press on the self-administered morphine pump, which I had been assured would not turn her into a heroin addict, and then slipped back into a sedated sleep. I was completely unable to drift off, sitting bolt upright and rinsed with adrenaline, so instead I roved social media watching in astonishment as the image of Mum on the police car went viral with the hashtags#GrannyRiotand#GranniesForLibraries.
The surgeon had come to speak to us straight after Layla’s operation and told us about the level of damage to the surrounding tendons and how long she would be in a cast for, but we were assured that although she’d been unlucky in sustaining the injury, she had youth and health on her side and would likely make a full recovery if she wanted to return to contact sports. I had immediately scoffed at the suggestion,as ifI’d be letting my daughter throw herself back into any activity that brought such a risk of injury with it, but Joe had raised his eyebrows in a way that meant,she’s an adult and she will decide what she does and doesn’t want to do, so I shut up. I knew he was right.
The adult status of our daughter was reinforced this morning when the surgical team conducted their ward round. Joe and I were perched on our uncomfortable chairs, both assuming the doctors would be addressing their comments to us, Layla’sparents. But, of course, they spoke to her. She was the patient. She was the one who would be making decisions about her care, managing her pain medication when she was discharged, attending her follow-up appointment in the fracture clinic and scheduling physio. It was a lot to take in, a lot of responsibility, and I wondered if she felt a little overwhelmed – I certainly did – but she followed their instructions with an earnest expression, responding with questions of her own – When can I get up? When can I leave the hospital? When’s breakfast?
She hadn’t eaten for the past twenty-four hours so while she scarfed a huge bowl of granola and yoghurt, two bananas, and a round of toast with four of those little foiled packs of jam, Joe went off to search for food options for the two of us and I regaled her with tales of the protest and her grandmother’s exploits. We video-called Mum on my phone so that Layla could speak to the troublemaker-in-chief herself, and we both learned a little more detail about the events following her arrest. It appears that once David heard of Mum’s enforced relocation to the local police station, he had put Ren in charge of the media interviews and debriefing the protesters, and gone straight there to plead her case. They had insisted on keeping her in custody until she was a little more coherent, so David and Pilot had waited in the station reception area for five hours until she was released with a caution and a hefty fine to pay for criminal damage to the police vehicle. She was predictably jolly about the whole encounter.
‘The officers were absolutely delightful,’ she said. ‘Every single one of them. And by the time I was released most of them had signed the online petition. They all agreed with me about the library situation. PC Winton told me that he and his daughter went there every Saturday morning and that she always returned brimming with excitement, and clutching a bagful of books. And Sharon on the desk said that her father used the audiobook CDs extensively since his sight was failing, he couldn’t get themanywhere else. And Naveesh, one of the parole officers who was passing through the station, said he often recommended the library as a place for ex-offenders to get help with job applications and workshopping their CVs and such.’
‘Oh, well I’m glad you used your time in police custody constructively,’ I said, ‘promoting the library cause despite being high on cannabis.’ There was a beat of silence as we all contemplated the peculiarities of my uttering that sentence to my seventy-four-year-old mother.
Later, when a few of Layla’s friends visited and Joe and I left in order to make space for them (only four were allowed around the bed at any time) I could hear Layla sharing her grandmother’s story with Asmaa, Suri, Leon and Karl, and when I returned with a coffee, they had all viewed the photo and Layla had managed to unearth a video of the entire arrest that had been uploaded to some influencer’s YouTube channel. Leon suggested that Mum might want to capitalise on this new-found fame with a few social media accounts of her own, under the handle@grannyriot– I said I’d pass it on.
As the day drew on it became apparent that Joe and I needed a plan. We were hours from home and had neither a change of clothes nor a toothbrush between us. Layla’s condition was stable, her pain was under control, and she just needed to sleep, so Karl suggested that we came back to the halls of residence to rest and that I used Layla’s room for a few days while Joe drove home. He’d already called work to let them know that he wouldn’t be coming in on Monday but we both recognised that there was a significant chance he’d be required to take further days off in the next week or so, in order to transport Layla home, and much as his bosses were reasonable and fair minded, it wouldn’t be the best plan to jeopardise the only reliable source of income we had at the moment – especially as there was a big contract under negotiation.
