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‘Please wake up,’ I whisper. ‘Please, please, wake up.’
After the police told me that Mum was under arrest, my ears started ringing so loudly I couldn’t hear. I sat still and silent, my mind blank, and then my dad left the room and I snapped out of it.
I told them everything about what Tristan, Frances, Mina and Lydia did to me. But I don’t think they believed me. I had already lied about the graze on my cheek, about what I’d been doing that night, and my saying Tristan had just tried to rape me, right after I’d learned my mother had been accused of doing the same to him, just seemed a bit too convenient.
Maybe if I had cried, it would have helped.
Mum always says I need to learn how to inhabit my characters.
I flop my legs out of bed and get up to go to the toilet. The first two days a policeman was stationed outside the ward, but the doctors don’t think Mum is waking up. She has a broken cheekbone, arm, ribs, a bruised windpipe and a fractured skull. There was evidence of intercourse and some bruising, but the doctors say it’s not conclusive enough to be considered evidence of rape.
But I know, don’t I?
I go down to the café and buy myself a Snickers and notice I only have two pounds left. I wonder when my dad will come again, or if there’s a cashpoint nearby. It doesn’t matter though. The nurses have been letting me eat the meals my mum would be having if she were awake.
They don’t know why she’s cuffed to the bed.
I stand outside for a moment, watching the cars pulling in and out of the car park, the people’s faces, tired and dry. There’s a man clutching a newborn baby to his shoulder, singing quietly as he jiggles it.
It’s strange that my dad isn’t here, isn’t it? It’s strange that it doesn’t feel stranger. But he’s never really here, even when he is. I guess he really doesn’t love her. I guess I was right all along.
When I get back to the ward, there are two nurses in the room, and one turns to look at me and she gives me a smile and I rush forward.
Mum is propped up, not quite upright, and her eyes are open. Someone has taken the tube out of her mouth.
‘Mum?’
Her eyes wander over and she looks at me.
She’s awake. My mum is awake.
57
BEFORE
‘Mum!’ I throw myself on her, but someone reminds me to be careful of her ribs so I press my face gently to the side of hers that isn’t broken. If only the bright, sparkling joy bursting out of me weren’t shaded by the looming fear of what comes next, when the police find out she’s awake.
I pull back and look at her. ‘Mum?’
Her eyes lose their focus and she looks away.
The doctor, a skinny Indian woman with red glasses called Dr Rani, puts a hand on my back and draws me away. ‘Georgia, remember what we said.’ She smiles kindly.
We don’t know the extent of the damage to my mum’s brain. We don’t know if she can understand or speak or hear or remember.
But she’s awake.
The doctors take her away for some tests, and when she comes back I crawl onto her bed to lie pressed next to her.
The police arrive. They ask if I’ve told her anything and I shake my head and tell them to get out. How can they be here? My mum can’t even speak yet. Dr Rani agrees. She asks them to leave.
One of them goes; the other takes up his position again, on the chair outside the ward.
My mum watches it all and I think I can see a faint frown forming.
Where is my dad? The hospital called him hours ago and he said he was coming.
Then I feel my mum’s arm move up, around me, and she’s hugging me with her free arm, and angling her head down to press her nose in my hair.
