Page 69 of The Christmas Letter

‘Lily?’ Holly asked. ‘Who was that?’

‘No one,’ Lily said, and her voice was sharp. ‘This actually isn’t a great time, Holly – did you really just ring for a chat?’ The words were brisk, rushed. It could not be clearer that athough she’d answered the phone, Lily did not want to be talking to her.

‘Yes, I . . .’ She swallowed again. ‘I wanted to see how you were,’ she said softly.

There was a quiet that stretched on too long. A quiet in which Holly counted five heartbeats.

‘Why did you answer?’

Lily said nothing still, and Holly felt something hot in the back of her throat.

Her own tone turned sharp. ‘If you didn’t want to talk to me, why did you answer?’

Emma was coming back into the courtyard now, her gait stiff. She was grimacing, though when she saw Holly looking at her, she eased her face into a smile.

‘Because I thought it might be something important,’ Lily said – and it cut through Holly.

‘And what, seeing how you are isn’t important?’ She shouldn’t do that, shouldn’t make her voice defensive, like she was ready to lash out. She should be calm. ‘Lily, I—’

But she didn’t finish. Because Emma was stumbling in the middle of the courtyard. Stumbling, then falling.

Holly dropped her phone onto the table as she stood and lurched towards Emma. She got there just in time to catch her shoulders, to break the fall before she hit the stone. She threw one hand out to catch the both of them. And then they were both on the ground, Holly sitting, Emma in a crumpled heap. She wasn’t moving and her eyelids were closed.

‘Emma?’ Holly’s voice was high and scratchy. She shook Emma’s shoulders, got no reaction. ‘Emma!’ She looked around wildly, saw the waitress from earlier, staring at them wide-eyed. ‘Get help!’ Holly shouted, and the woman lurched into action.

She heard the message being relayed, caught snatches of Italian. Svenuta . . . aiuto . . . ambulanza. The last one stuck with her. Ambulance. Someone was calling an ambulance, someone was sorting it.

She moved Emma’s head so it was pillowed in her lap. When she took her hand, she saw that her own was shaking. ‘You’ll be ok.’ She tried to keep her voice from trembling. She needed to be calm, strong. Emma would need her to be. She’d just fainted, that was all. It was only the heat; it was enough to get to anyone. ‘You hear me? You’ll be ok.’ And she tried, very hard, to believe what she was saying.

Holly’s phone was pressed to her ear, sweat dripping down her back. She’d come out of the cool, air-conditioned and very hospital-like waiting room to make the call, and was now pacing along the long red carpet, next to big stone pillars, the mullioned windows showing a glimpse of the city outside. The hospital was a former fifteenth-century monastery, the man behind the reception desk in the waiting room had told her. It was probably in an attempt to distract her, and certainly, when she’d followed the paramedics wheeling Emma on a stretcher into the grand stone building with its mosaic floor, she had initially panicked that they were taking them the wrong way because, until you got to the main bit inside, the hospital looked like another tourist attraction.

The paramedics hadn’t spoken English, so she’d been unable to ask them what was going on as they strapped an oxygen mask over Emma’s face, got her onto the stretcher and then onto a yellow boat, the word Ambulanza on its side. Then Emma had been taken away from her, through white doors where she wasn’t allowed to follow, and none of the doctors had explained what was going on. The man at reception had been a life-saver so far, had explained that they needed to run some tests, and had asked her to call Emma’s next of kin.

So now that was what she was doing, dialling his number for the second time because he hadn’t answered the first time around. Maybe he didn’t want to speak to her. Maybe he’d continue to ignore her and she’d have no way of getting hold of Emma’s next of kin. She hadn’t actually asked why they needed that – would they refuse to tell her anything, because she wasn’t related to Emma? Or did they just think Emma would need a family member here – and was that because this was something really serious? Was she going to . . .? But no. She could not think that.

Come on, she pleaded silently, her breath coming in short sharp bursts, her feet unable to stand still. Answer.

And then he did!

‘Hello?’

‘Jack? It’s Holly.’ She stopped walking, clutched the phone tighter to her ear.

‘I know. I’d almost given up hope I might hear from you again.’ It was said with an almost carefully light tone.

‘Jack, I . . .’ But she couldn’t stop the sob from coming, racking through her tightly wound body.

‘Holly?’ Jack’s voice changed, became more urgent. ‘Holly, what’s wrong?’

She pressed her lips together to try to stem the sobs. ‘It’s Emma.’

There was a silence.

‘What about Emma? Is she . . .?’ An audible swallow. ‘What’s happened?’

‘She’s in hospital. We’re in Venice and—’

‘Venice? Venice, Italy?’