by Eva Woods
“No really. Look.”
Daisy looked. It was true—a real Rosie-smile sat on her sister’s face. One she hadn’t seen for years.
“I think she likes my music,” said Scarlett, pressing Play once again on One Direction’s “You Don’t Know You’re Beautiful.”
A knock at the door announced one of the young doctors, the boy one. Daisy couldn’t think of him as a man; he looked like he’d only just started shaving. “How’s it going here?”
“I’m playing her music,” said Scarlett proudly.
“A bit of the old One Direction, eh? Think that’ll wake her?”
“If only to throw the phone out the window,” Daisy said quietly. “Is everything okay, Doctor? My parents have just... I can fetch them if you want.” Her mother was off crying somewhere, she suspected, and her father had taken Carole to the canteen, trying to defuse the standoff around Rosie’s bed.
“I just wanted to give you this.” He fished around in his coat pocket and pulled out a small plastic baggie with a phone inside. “The police took it as part of their enquiries, but they’ve decided not to investigate further. Busy with all the murders and such, you know. It was thrown clear apparently. Still works, amazingly.”
It was Rosie’s phone. Daisy stared at it. Only a crack across it suggested it had been involved in a near-fatal accident, one which had almost killed her sister. Even the phone was old and dented, a cheap model. “She had it in her hand?”
“They think so. Wasn’t in her bag with the rest of her stuff.”
“So that means...maybe she just wasn’t looking, maybe she just stepped out?” Daisy could hear the hope in her own voice. You wouldn’t have your phone in your hand if you were going to throw yourself under a bus. Would you?
He looked embarrassed. “Maybe. If you know the pass code, you could try and get some info off it—see who she texted last, where she was going, that kind of thing.”
Daisy took the plastic bag. She didn’t know the pass code—yet another thing she didn’t know about Rosie’s life. But if she could get into the phone, maybe it would yield some answers and she could go to her parents and say Look, Rosie wasn’t trying to kill herself, it was an accident. Find a release for the anxiety that stretched taut between them, stinging like snapping elastic, or for the tight ball of dread under her own rib cage. Of course Rosie wouldn’t do a thing like that. She wouldn’t. And yet, as she watched her sister’s sleeping face ripple with strange emotions, Daisy found that she was still not convinced.
Rosie
The Christmas memory had been so lovely. A feeling of being safe and warm and cherished, the excitement of presents and cake in the kitchen, the relief of having her mother back home safe with the new baby. Rosie was still smiling as the memory faded and the world came back, some awful tinny racket playing out of Scarlett’s phone and Daisy in the doorway talking to the young male doctor. God, it was dull being in a coma.
“Hey girl.”
Rosie looked up. Melissa had appeared beside her bed, grooving to Scarlett’s music. She was still wearing her school uniform and had her hair in ill-advised pigtails. “Hey.”
“This is some awesome disc-age. Rad.”
“Er, what are you on about, Mel?”
“Isn’t that how people talk nowadays? I don’t know, I only had fourteen years on earth and I was tragically uncool for all of them.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” said Rosie, lying. “Have you got another memory for me?”
“Yeah. Are you starting to remember what happened to you?”
“I don’t know. It’s like: when I first woke up I had nothing. I was all pure and clean. A blank slate. I didn’t even know my own name. And now I’m—well, I don’t really like what I’m seeing. It’s all arguments and sadness and—you know, general badness.” Maybe she was a terrible person. She’d alienated everyone around her, so completely it was almost a strategy. “Mel...am I horrible now?”
“I only know what you know, Ro-Ro.”
“Did you ever call me that in real life?”
“Sure I did. We were pals, for a while.”
Rosie sighed. “I’m so sorry, Melissa. If I could go back, do it all over again—we’d totally still be friends.”
“Would we? Could we make friendship bracelets and discuss the plot of My So-Called Life and talk about boys we fancied?”
“Of course we could. Though you know that show got canceled after one season.”
Melissa shook her head sadly. “That sucks. But there’s no do-overs in life, Ro-Ro. That’s the sad truth. You can’t change any of the things that have happened to you.”
“What’s the point of this, then?”
“To change what comes next. If there is a next. To try and figure out if you want your life back or not. Anyway, shall we go? Time’s a-ticking. Day two.” She looked at her Casio watch again. Rosie prepped herself for another memory. It was a bit like going under a wave when you learned to surf (but when had she learned to surf?). The first time was terrifying, salt water gushing into your eyes and nose and mouth, but then after a few goes you knew you wouldn’t die, and you just got on with it.
“Okay,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. “I’m ready. It’ll be a relief to get away from this bloody music, to be honest.”
“I think it’s bodacious,” said Melissa, wistfully glancing at the phone. “We don’t have tunes like that in the afterlife. Anyway, come on. ‘Where we’re going, there are no roads’—is that the line? Man I love that film.”
5 September 1991 (Twenty-six years ago)
The dials, the blur—mad as it seemed, Rosie was getting used to this. Imagine getting used to being sparko in a hospital bed, while your family bickered over you and your only respite was reliving some of the worst moments of your life. She shuddered at the thought as she opened her eyes. The dial this time had said 5 9 1991. “How can I remember the exact dates of these memories?” she said. “I mean, I wouldn’t be able to do that if you asked me.”
“It’s all in there somewhere,” Melissa explained. They seemed to be in a playground, on tarmacked ground with hopscotch squares chalked onto it. “Everything you’ve ever seen or heard or felt is in your brain. Like those computers you all have now—it’s just about knowing how to retrieve it. Right now your memories are all muddled up and out of their proper places, so this is your brain putting them back in order, trying to make sense of everything.”
“And this is...our old school.” Rosie looked about her. She hadn’t thought about this place in years, but the shape of it was disturbingly familiar, as if it had sat in her head all that time, just waiting. The low cream-colored building, the little garden beside it, the football nets and cheerful bright-colored monkey bars. Primary school. Where the world made sense, where what mattered most was what you’d brought in your packed lunch and who got top in the weekly spelling test. Rosie had been happy there, hadn’t she? A ginger-haired Mary in the nativity play, the kind of little girl who had sleepovers and invited the whole class to her birthday party. “But this isn’t...”
Oh. She remembered now. In the corner of the playground, half-hidden behind the slide, a young Rosie was crouched down, crying hard. That sort of jagged sobbing you do as a child (and as an adult when things are really bad) where it’s like falling down a hill and you can’t draw breath and you’re not sure you’ll actually be able to stop. She was wearing her school uniform, and could see that her shirt had marker pen on it and her hair was wild and unbrushed. What had happened to that girl in the Christmas memory, so happy and loved?
“Hello.” Another little girl was approaching—funny-looking, wearing a school skirt so long it almost skimmed her ankles. Her hair was cropped close to her head like a helmet and she wore cheap, thick, pink-rimmed specs.
“That’s me,” said Melissa.
“Oh. The short hair, that’s...ch
ic.”
“I had nits so my mum shaved my head,” she said matter-of-factly. “Look, I’m going to talk to you. I must have been going out to the loos and seen you crying—remember, we had outdoor ones still at that school.”
“Hello,” said Young Melissa again, to Young Rosie. “Are you okay?”
“F-fine,” stuttered Young Rosie.
“You’re crying. Do you want me to get Miss Rogers?”
“No.”
“Okay. Do you want half of my sandwich?”
At this, Young Rosie’s weeping subsided for a moment as she glanced at what Melissa was holding—an uninspiring lump of gray bread with what looked like watercress sticking out. “We were doing vegan that year,” the ghostly Melissa explained. “I wasn’t allowed sugar, or dairy or salt.”
“No,” said Young Rosie, turning her nose up. Then, remembering her manners: “No thank you.”
“What’s the matter? Did you fall off the monkey bars? I did that last week.”
“No.” Rosie never fell off. She could do the whole thing on one hand, even.
“Did Jason Bryan call you smelly? He called me smelly this morning.”
“No.” Rosie knew, even at seven, that when Jason Bryan pulled her hair and made fun of her Barbie schoolbag, he was really saying something else entirely, and she’d already learned to laugh at him and flick her hair so he’d chase after her during Kiss Tag.
“What’s the matter, then?”
“I...I...” Rosie was heaving big sobs. “My mummy is... I don’t know.” She must have been in a bad way to confide in weird Melissa. “She’s being strange.”
Melissa nodded wisely. “Because of your brother?”
“I don’t know. Yeah.”
“She’s very sad probably. My mummy was very sad when my daddy died, and she didn’t brush my hair or make my lunch for a long time so I had to go and stay with my auntie, but now she’s okay.”
Young Rosie raised her face up from her arms, swollen and red. “H-how long? Before she was okay again?”
“Ooh, I don’t know.” Melissa seemed to be pondering the nature of time. “I think it was maybe from after Christmas until the summertime.”
“Oh.” An eternity when you were seven.
“What about your daddy, Rosie?”
“He’s always at work. Even at nighttime now. Or he goes away on, on, conferences.” She sounded out the word carefully. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but it was a bad word, because it made her mother cry and lock herself in the room, and her dad stand outside shouting For Christ’s sake, Alison, someone has to earn the money around here.
Gently, Melissa reached down and patted Rosie with the hand that wasn’t holding the sandwich. “It will be okay, Ro-Ro. Can I call you Ro-Ro?”
“Erm...okay.” There was a noise—a bell ringing, and the beginning of a stampede, scraping chairs and running feet and banging doors.
“Break time,” said Melissa, in the tones of someone saying execution time.
“They bullied you,” said Rosie, remembering now. “The other kids. They were mean to you?” Memories of hiding Melissa’s clothes during swimming, putting a spider in her desk, throwing a ball at her head in the playground... “Not them. Me. I bullied you too?”
Melissa shrugged. “Sometimes. You were only a kid.”
“But still, it’s no excuse. Your dad had died! That’s terrible, I’m so sorry. Is he...is he there with you? Like, in the afterlife?”
“It doesn’t really work that way.”
Was anyone ever going to tell her how it did work? “So what’s the point of this memory? You were nice to me? Was I not nice back?” That would fit with all the other memories she’d seen, a parade of her own bad behavior.
Young Rosie had straightened up as the bell rang, wiping her face on the back of her hand. She hissed: “Don’t tell anybody I was crying, okay?” As soon as the first children streamed out the door, Rosie was loping over to them, hair bouncing, smile on her face, only her red eyes hinting that she’d been in such a state before. Melissa was left alone by the monkey bars, with her soggy vegan sandwich and ancient duffel coat. Then, just as Rosie’s heart was sinking, she watched her younger self turn back. “Do you want to come to my birthday party, Melissa?”
“Can I?” The other girl looked awestruck.
“’Course you can. I’ll get my mummy to phone your mummy. If she’s not sleeping all the time.”
Current Rosie looked on. “Did you come?”
“Oh no. Mum wouldn’t let me. She had some weird ideas about germs. But we did become friends. Even though you were way more popular than me.”
More memories were slotting into place. Round at Melissa’s house, eating disgusting sugar-free vegan carrot cake, making a den in the back garden with two chairs and a duvet, playing skipping games and learning to ice skate together, hand in hand, on a school trip to the rink... “But what happened? Why did we lose touch?” Had Rosie known her old friend was dead? She must have done, or she wouldn’t be seeing Melissa now. Assuming this was all a product of her disordered brain, of course.
“I moved away. It happens.”
“But we could have written, or phoned or...” Rosie trailed off. She had a feeling it was her fault they’d lost touch, and that she might be seeing that memory again soon too. “I’m so sorry, Mel. I wish we’d stayed friends. You were...cool.”
Melissa burst out laughing. “I wasn’t cool, I was a weirdo. But that’s okay. None of that matters once you’re gone, you know.”
“What does matter?” It suddenly seemed very important that Rosie should know this. “Does anything? Or do you just...stop?”
“It’s the people whose lives you touched—that’s what matters. Who remember you. The difference you made. That’s the only way you live on.” Melissa looked again at her schoolgirl watch. “Come on, Ro-Ro, time to get back.”
Rosie was silent as she shut her eyes, and the schoolyard faded, and the bright lights of the ward fizzled into focus on her lids. The people whose lives you touched. Well this was it for her, and it seemed she’d fallen out with all of them—her parents, her sister, her estranged friends. And maybe Luke too. Luke. Whatever had happened to him?
Daisy
Rosie’s birthday. Her flat number. The start of her phone number. 1234. 0000. Daisy had tried all the four-number combinations she could think of, and nothing was letting her into the cracked phone. She’d already frozen it four times, and had to admit defeat. She was sure that her sister’s secrets lurked on there, the reason she’d walked in front of that bus, where she’d been going that day. “Rosie. What’s your pass code? Can you, like, tap it out or something?”
Her sister didn’t even move an eyelid. Daisy knew that, had she been conscious at all, she’d have knocked the phone right out of her hand. Rosie had always been private. Daisy looked at the wall clock: it was midmorning already. Time ticking away, and Rosie still in a coma. She was supposed to be delivering a pitch now, on legal issues affecting the UK stationery industry. No doubt Mai was handling it with aplomb. She was probably wearing the Jimmy Choo heels she’d got for eighty quid in the sale that time. Daisy never found anything good in the sales, just misshapen jumpers that, when she got home, didn’t fit her at all and which she would keep, unworn, for three years before giving to a charity shop.
Her mother stuck her head into Rosie’s room. Despite the lack of sleep, despite the raw dry air of the hospital, she still looked flawless, her makeup like a smooth armor. Daisy could feel a cold sore starting up on her own face, and knew she had sandwich crumbs on her jumper. “Gary’s here.” Her mother’s voice dipped on saying her future son-in-law’s name. Approval. Relief. Daisy had chosen well; she would be looked after. So why did Daisy’s own heart falter?
“Oh great.” Unconvincing. “He must have got out of work at last.”
“So good of him, when he’s so busy.”
Daisy found snappy words in her mouth, the kind she usually pushed deep, deep down. “He’s a junior consultant working with a company that makes ball bearings, Mum, and my sister’s in a coma. It’s the least he can do.” He should have come sooner, she thought. Her mother was giving her a strange look.
“Oh darling. You aren’t...?”
But she didn’t get to finish the sentence. Gary came into sight, talking loudly into his phone, the edges of his good wool coat flapping. He’d bought it in the January sales—something he was also good at—trying on what seemed like hundreds of different ones, researching price points online, putting everything into a spreadsheet, marching all the way across town to get it a fiver off. When Rosie saw it she’d said he looked like a football manager and after that Gary hadn’t worn it for a week. “Yeah, yeah, sorry, mate, I’ll have to finish up now. Bit of an emergency our end. Let’s touch base tomorrow though, yeah? Thanks, fella.”
Since when had he said things like fella and touch base? Daisy made herself smile as he kissed her cheek. “How is she?” he asked, in a hushed tone.
“Oh, well—no change really. They’ve said we should keep talking to her though.” Daisy had been trying, but it was so hard when Rosie didn’t seem to hear her. Her mother was struggling to even try.
Gary stowed his phone in its holster—he actually had a phone holster—as her mother went to greet him. “Alison. I’m so sorry.”
“Darling Gary. So good of you to come.” Her mother melted into tears again. “It’s been...oh, Gary!”
He took charge. “Now, now, Alison, I’m sure she’ll be fine. They’ve said there’s still hope, yes? Let me go and find someone who knows what’s going on. Hello. Hello!” He waved in the young male doctor, as if calling for a waiter. Daisy saw the doctor was in the same white coat with coffee stains as yesterday, now joined by what looked like a smear of jam. At least she hoped it was jam. Hadn’t been home, clearly.
