There’s a weight tucked in beside her feet, down at the end of the bed. Comforting. Warm, and solid. She flexes against it, nudging with one foot, and it shifts – wriggles – is gone.
Small feet, scampering away. A nearby door creaks.
‘She is awake! She is!’
Cassie opens her eyes. The ceiling is patterned with dancing leaves, with sunlight and shadow. She blinks. Pushes up against the pillows. Meg is standing in the doorway. Ella peeks round her mother’s legs, then squeezes past. Clambers back onto the bed.
‘Ella, don’t disturb her …’
‘No,’ says Cassie, ‘it’s fine. She’s not. Not at all.’
Meg is smiling – a smile that crinkles her eyes, spreads so wide it seems to lift her ears. ‘That was a good sleep.’
Was it? Cassie tries to remember. She was in the car – she was in Make-Believe – and then …?
It’s as though Meg hears her unspoken question. ‘Your friend – he brought you. He called, he was worried, and I told him, “Bring her straight round here, where we can look after her.” We were all so worried. How are you feeling?’
‘Good,’ says Cassie, and tests her answer – scanning herself for damage, lost data, impairment of any kind. She feels a stretch shuddering through her, long and warm and satisfying. The motion of her head and neck, the roll of her shoulders and the reach of her arms is smooth – like all her joints, her muscles and tendons are relaxed and freshly oiled. ‘Yeah: really good,’ she says.
Ella is standing now on the bed, giving little jumps that bounce the mattress.
‘Down, Ella,’ says Meg. ‘Let’s give Cassie a chance to get up.’
‘But you can give me a cuddle first, if you like.’ Cassie holds out her arms. ‘That would be nice.’
With a scramble, her niece lands in her arms. Presses her cheek against Cassie’s, and makes a popping sound with her lips. She smells sweet, of the tangle spray Meg uses on her crazy hair.
‘Oh, and a kiss too. Thank you!’
‘OK,’ says Meg, coming to stand beside them. ‘Come on now, and help me make breakfast for Auntie Cassie, yes?’
And Finn … Cassie’s about to ask where he is, but then she sees him, hovering by the door. ‘Are you being shy?’ she says, and he shakes his head, too-long fringe falling into his eyes.
‘Did you have a weapon?’ he asks.
‘A weapon when?’
‘In the fight. Mum said it was you against someone much bigger and that’s why you got knocked out for so long.’
Cassie glances at Meg, who is shaking her head.
‘Well – come here and I’ll tell you.’ She pats the duvet, a space beside her, and Finn hitches himself onto the bed. ‘I did have a kind of a weapon,’ she says, low-voiced like she’s telling him a secret. ‘Like a set of orders. Like a special command.’
‘What, like a spell?’ He looks sceptical, knows there’s no such thing.
‘Mmm … sort of. More like, a command that you’d give a computer.’
Meg’s voice is serious when she interrupts. ‘Cassie was very brave. That’s why she won.’
Cassie shoots her a questioning look: Then it worked? The remedy worked? She can’t believe she forgot to ask. It should have been her first question. But then she realises: she knew it already. She feels it, inside her. Where there was yearning, need, an urge for connection – now, there’s completion.
‘My brave little sister,’ says Meg.
For a few seconds, the bed holds all four of them in a hug; then Finn wriggles free, and Ella follows. Cassie holds her sister a moment longer, Meg’s hair tickling her nose.
‘OK, I really am going to let you get up now.’ Meg disengages, gently. ‘But take your time. Breakfast whenever you’re ready.’
Meg has laid out some clothes for her, neatly folded on top of a trunk – the same trunk they used to have in the spare room at home. She doesn’t remember Meg claiming it, could swear it had ended up in the window of the Bethany shop where she’d walked past it for weeks on end till finally someone bought it – loss and relief in equal measure. Their old rocking horse is here too, stashed in the corner – Brown Beauty, with her worn patched fur – and even the rug is familiar: concentric circles in greens and browns and yellows, the colours of childhood photographs.
She pulls on her jeans, stiff from the wash. Her old T-shirt: the slogan on the back reads SMILE & KEEEP. She pulls it over her head, reads the upside-down words on her front: HAPPY EVERYDAYS GREAT. At the bottom of the pile – fuzzy wool, all shades of orange. Their mother’s cardigan. Cassie holds it to her face, buries herself in its softness. She can almost catch it still, that scent of lily-of-the-valley, just the faintest trace. When she puts the cardi on, she can’t for the life of her find the stain that caused all that trouble.
In the kitchen with her family, she eats the creamiest, yellowest scrambled eggs. Orange juice sings in a tall glass, impossibly bright in a shaft of sun. On the radio, news of a profits warning from Imagen, of sackings and resignations at the highest levels. Morgan, she thinks. Morgan must have blown the whistle, has finally tried to set things straight.
Meg seems to guess what she’s thinking. ‘It’s because of you, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘It wouldn’t have happened without you.’
‘It’s over now,’ says Cassie. ‘Let’s turn it off. Have music instead.’
Finn and Ella want to do baking, are already burrowing into cupboards for equipment and ingredients. But Cassie drinks from her glass of sunshine and wants to be outside.
‘How about we go to the park?’ she says. ‘Then we can do baking this afternoon.’
The kids are full of energy, walking all the way to the Good Park without complaint. A small hand nestles in each of Cassie’s whenever they cross a road.
When they get there, the park is saturated with light: the sky a high shimmering blue, the grass a lush, fat green, the play-park as vivid as Cassie has seen it. Wind strokes the treetops, swaying the leaves. Pigeons roll their Rs in the backs of their throats. Swings, slide, roundabout; then the ice cream van plays its Pied-Piper chimes, and Cassie buys them each a lolly. Gives her choc ice to Finn when he drops his lemonade sparkler. She doesn’t like choc ices anyway, how the chocolate stays too cold to melt, coats her mouth with a layer of powdery fat.
On the way home she carts Ella on her back. Enjoys the monkey-cuddle, the weight of her just right.
Downstairs, the fairy cakes are in the oven; upstairs Cassie sits on the bed, screen in hand. She’s ready to fight for information, ready to lie through her teeth, pretend to be an aunt or a long-lost sister. What she’s not ready for is what the Raphael House receptionist suggests – to speak to Alan himself.
What must they be thinking, the doctors, the nurses, the orderlies? Cassie imagines a ward full of patients, suddenly lucid. A staff of orderlies armed with medication, surplus to requirements. A system of care, of control, of confidentiality beginning to crack apart, as the patients re-engage with reality, demand contact with the outside world.
She waits, and the screen slips in her sweating hand.
When he speaks, he says her name. When he speaks, his voice is the same as it always was. She hears her name in his voice, and everything else is lost in the rushing of her blood.
‘You,’ she says. ‘You know me.’
They talk for hours, or that’s how it feels. ‘The way you looked in your soldier dress,’ he says. ‘I knew you were strong. I knew you were the cavalry.’
She says, ‘I always believed in you. I never stopped.’
He’s not ready for her to see him yet. Doesn’t recognise himself, that’s what he tells her. And that’s alright. She feels the same. She shies from the thought of him in that body. Wants to hear his unchanged voice, and see him unchanged too – see the younger man she knows so well. And she’s waited such a long time now, after all. When will he be ready? ‘Soon,’ he says, and the answer soothes her, pleases her. He is mending. Underneath everything he says, she hears a
promise. Soon they’ll be together, and the in-between years will never have happened.
They will see each other. Not today, not tomorrow, but perhaps the day after.
While Meg makes dinner, Cassie reads the kids their bedtime stories, Ella first. She’s chosen a picture book: The Owl Who Wouldn’t Fly.
Cassie strokes the cover with her forefinger, its bold bright shapes. ‘Did your mummy choose this one for you?’
‘No,’ says Ella. ‘I chose it myself. It’s my favourite favourite book.’
Finn has chosen a dinosaur book. She recognises it as the one she sent him for his sixth birthday.
‘Honestly, Finn, did your mum pick this one for me to read to you?’
‘Honestly she didn’t. This is my best book.’
In the kitchen, a glass of wine waiting where her morning juice had been, catching the same ray of sun, turning thick and honeyed in the light. Meg sitting opposite. Between them a cake stand laden with fairy cakes. Jewel-bright icing, pink and blue and yellow, topped with shiny red cherries.
‘It’s like that book we used to have,’ says Meg. ‘You know the one I mean?’
‘With the runaway elephant?’
Meg is right. The cakes she made with Ella and Finn are straight out of those old illustrations. Having someone to remember with; her chest swells with warmth. She points at the umbrella plant in the corner, which is like another memory – and just like her own schefflera, the same height and spread. Its presence makes her perfectly happy. The only difference: this one is blooming. Beautiful flowers, all shades of orange and gently scented, a fuzz of stamens.
‘I’ve got one just the same,’ she tells her sister.
They don’t need to talk about before. It’s forgiven, forgotten. It never happened.
‘Can you blink for me? Can you open your eyes?’
A stupid question. Of course she can open her eyes. Morning. Leaves are dancing on the ceiling, sunlight and shadows. She pushes up against the pillows, looks around for whoever was trying to wake her. The bedroom is empty, but she can hear breakfast sounds from down below. She puts on jeans, her HAPPY EVERAFTER GREAT shirt, the cardigan. Breathes deep, mouth open, trying to catch a trace of lily-of-the-valley, but the scent has faded into imperceptibility.
In the kitchen, a glass of orange juice glows in the sun.
The kids walk all the way to the Good Park without complaint. Shimmering blue, lush fat green. Wind strokes through the trees. Cassie eats half her Mr Whippy, gives the remains to Finn, the half-eaten flake to Ella. ‘Don’t tell your mother.’ Her mouth is coated with cheap chocolate, the kind that doesn’t melt.
In the afternoon, they do baking. They arrange the cakes on the cake stand: pastel pink, yellow, blue. A storybook picture.
When she speaks to Alan, her screen is a lamp, and he emerges like a genie. Unbodied, but present: she sees him not as the boy he was, but the man he might have been. The man he may yet be. Still golden, still glowing, with a fan of lines at the corner of each eye and a smudge of blue beneath. His jaw a little looser, a little heavier.
She’ll see him soon. Not today, not tomorrow, but maybe the next day.
They talk for hours, or that’s how it feels.
Three bedtime stories, and Ella isn’t sleepy. ‘It’s not the end,’ she says. ‘Not if we make up a bit more story.’ She screws up her face, closes her eyes. Loving the let’s-pretend. Believing hard.
Cassie’s wine glass catches the evening sun. The flowers on the umbrella plant are bleaching, past their best.
‘How long are we going to leave it?’
Cassie rolls over, snuggles deeper under the duvet. She’s happy to wait, she tells him. Not today, not tomorrow. She’s waited this long, after all.
‘I just think we should get her to hospital—’
To hospital, now? Is Alan ready to see her? She opens her eyes. The room is empty. Shadow-leaves dance on the ceiling.
The breakfast sounds from downstairs are muted this morning, like they’re trying not to wake her. All she can think of is orange juice: she is suddenly, violently thirsty, as if she’s gone days without water.
Jeans. T-shirt. Upside-down, she reads it: HAPPY EVERAFTER.
She strains to catch the sound of the kettle boiling, the clatter of bowls and plates, knives and forks and spoons. But they are so quiet. They are silent. It’s as if she’s alone in the house; it’s as if they have left her.
She turns away from the mirror, reads herself backwards—
SMILE & SLEEEP
Her hands shake as she picks up her screen. Calls Alan. Hears his unchanged voice saying her name.
‘Why did you answer?’ she says.
‘Because you called me.’
‘But why didn’t I get the receptionist?’
‘Uch,’ he says, ‘details. Minor details. Don’t get hung up on those.’
But now she’s started to notice the details, and she can’t ignore them. ‘The chocolate doesn’t melt.’
‘But that’s not important, eh? You can’t get everything right.’
‘No. That was always the thing. And then, the umbrella plant. I never saw one with flowers before.’
‘Those flowers. They’re on their way out anyway.’
They are. Other things, too. She looks down at the cardigan, pale and bleached. When she reaches for its softness, her fingers feel gloved. ‘I think I must be tired,’ she says. ‘It’s not working any more.’ She sits on the floor, leans her back against the wall. Looks around the room. The trunk, the rug, the rocking horse: all the lost things. ‘I’m sorry, but I think … I think, perhaps, you’re not real.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I suppose not. The evidence does seem to suggest that you’re, you know. Making me up. But listen – if it’s any consolation, you’re doing a good job. A really good job. Don’t you think?’
‘I am, aren’t I? Or I was, at least. Not any more, though. There’s gaps, and – everything’s gone thin. Like something’s running out. Alan—’
‘I’m here.’
‘Alan – since you’re not real anyway – can we forget the screen? I want to have you here.’
‘You’re the boss,’ he says – and instead of the wall she is leaning against him, into his shoulder, his arms circled round her. She keeps her eyes closed. She’s tired, so tired, and it’s such hard work to Make. To Believe. She concentrates on the warmth of him. His solidity. His voice, saying her name.
She would like to stay here, in this happy ending. But her focus is trembling, her senses weak. Can she stay, even if she doesn’t believe? Stay, with the colours ebbing – with the smells fading – with even his voice beginning to waver? In the real world, is she somewhere safe? Are there people looking after her – the way Meg has looked after her here? Without food, without water, how long will she last? In the real world, will any of this be true? In the real world, did they win?
And if she wants to leave here, will she be allowed? Will it let her? The living thing inside her?
The soldier dress is long gone – but the battle isn’t over. ‘Just don’t tell me it was always like this,’ she says. ‘Don’t tell me you were never real. You and me.’
His breath on her cheek as he answers: ‘You know I’ll never tell you that.’
‘I can’t believe I’m doing it again. Leaving you again.’ She fits herself to him – face pressed into his neck – imprinting his warmth on her skin. ‘I don’t even know if this will work.’ She breathes him in, and holds that breath inside her.
‘Listen,’ he says—
She shapes the word.
‘—It’s not impossible—’
Thinks it.
‘—none of it’s impossible—’
STOP
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
A weight, beside her feet.
She shifted. Pain sparked through her ankle, raced up her leg. She made a small animal sound, and lay still.
She’d been dreaming. Somewhere safe. She couldn’t rem
ember it, not the details. Only the feeling. The last bright tatters of happiness.
Voices. Down the hallway, in the next room. Close, and far away.
‘… really worried now—’
‘I know, it’s just she said she might …’
They weren’t any voices she knew.
She sank from the surface, away from the pain and the sound of strangers. Reached for her dream.
‘… a doctor at least.’
A doctor. Was she in the hospital? The door was locked, the window high. She mustn’t close her eyes. Must keep staring, at the square of light that was just out of reach. If she closed her eyes – if she let herself sleep – they would come for her. They were waiting, the men with needles – it was waiting, the darkness – so stay awake, stay awake, stay awake—
Eyes open. Grit and gunge, and a half-lit world, out of focus.
She blinked and blinked, and licked a dry tongue over dried-out lips.
‘God,’ she said, but it wasn’t what she meant. She meant the weight across her legs. She remembered: that God had washed her face for her. Wiped away her salty fear. She tried to sit, but she was clumsy. Her legs kicked, and the weight sat up and barked.
Yes. Dog. Of course.
‘Leia!’ A shout; a woman’s voice, fierce. ‘Down! Now!’
No, don’t – she liked the weight. Tried to say so.
The woman exclaimed. ‘Nicol!’ she said. Brought her face close to the pillow. ‘Cassie. How are you feeling?’
The first question; the only question. ‘Did we win?’
A User's Guide to Make-Believe Page 29
