by Dani Atkins
‘I have a nine o’clock train to catch. That’s the only time I’m going to be around. If you want to see me, then that’s where I’ll be.’
Just then a loud rumbling sound came up the road. I glanced up, and with mixed emotions saw that it was my bus. I dug into my pocket and pulled out my pass as the doors hissed open to let me board. I turned back to David who was standing on the pavement, his face a little conflicted.
‘I don’t even know your name,’ he said, as I flashed my pass at the weary-looking bus driver.
‘If you turn up tomorrow, I’ll tell you,’ I promised, just as the driver – right on cue – pressed the button to close the doors, effectively putting an end to our conversation.
David stayed on the pavement watching me through the grimy windows as I walked down the length of the bus, found somewhere to sit and settled my trumpet case on the seat beside me. Of course he wouldn’t be at the coffee shop the next day. That much was obvious. He was at a ball, and the party was only just getting started; he was probably a great many hours away from going to bed. I was certain the last thing he was going to do was get up early after a night like that, to go and meet some random girl he’d been teasingly flirting with that night. He probably wouldn’t even remember meeting me by the time morning came around. It was, most definitely, the last time I was ever going to see him. As the bus slowly pulled away from the kerb, I waggled my fingers at him through the window in farewell.
But the following morning, looking decidedly the worse for wear, he was sitting in the coffee shop, his eyes fixed on the door, waiting for me.
Charlotte
‘Can I see him now?’
The doctor nodded. ‘Of course. He’ll be going up to Radiography shortly, as we need to run a few more tests, but you can sit with him until they’re ready for us.’
I didn’t even bother asking the name or the nature of these further investigations. The names would scare me, and whatever they were trying to discover would frighten me even more. The click of my heels on the shiny linoleum was all I could hear as I followed the doctors to David’s room, that and the faint strains of Christmas music coming from a small radio playing quietly at the nurses’ station. It seemed almost irreverent for everyone to be looking forward to the imminent holiday season, while all I could see in the days and weeks ahead of us was something dark and fearful.
I threw a glance over my shoulder at the other occupied bay in the ICU unit. At the far end of the corridor, Ally’s husband was still surrounded by a group of worried-looking medics. It served as a reminder that ours wasn’t the only uncertain future that night.
‘I should warn you, Mrs Williams,’ the russet-bearded consultant began, turning to me as we reached the glass-walled cubicle where David lay. ‘We’ve given your husband a very powerful sedative, in preparation for the tests, so you may find him rather woozy.’ I craned my neck, like an onlooker at an accident, trying to see beyond the width of the doctor’s broad shoulders for a glimpse of David. But the man was as broad as a small garden shed, and I couldn’t see past his white-coated frame.
‘I understand,’ I said, anxiously stepping through the gap he left when he finally stood aside and allowed me to enter the room.
There were two nurses in David’s room, but I never looked their way as I walked towards the bed on rubber-jointed legs. I don’t even remember lowering myself onto the plastic moulded chair positioned beside him. I just found myself suddenly seated. I could hear the doctor asking questions, I heard the nurses reply, but their words were distorted, just unintelligible sounds, like a record played at the wrong speed. For a moment I wondered if they were even talking in English. Admittedly it was hard to distinguish anything above the small hitching sound that someone was making. It wasn’t until one of the nurses passed me a small square box of tissues, and squeezed my shoulder gently, that I realised the sound was coming from me.
The wall of monitors surrounding David looked like a bank of television screens, each one showing a program I didn’t want to watch. They reduced David to a compilation of blips, charts and read-outs. It was all these professionals could see of the man I loved; it was all they knew of him. But there was more – so much more – about him that they didn’t reveal. Things that not even the woman sitting in the Relatives’ Room down the corridor knew. Those secrets were mine. They were a wife’s.
David was sleeping, but not in a way I recognised. His body wasn’t curled on his side, there was no hollow for me to be drawn into by his powerful free arm, to cradle me tightly against him through the night. There was no hand, gently caressing my hip bone as I snuggled back against him, or tenderly cupping the fullness of my breast, as he slept.
His head moved fitfully upon the starchy hospital pillowcase, and the nurse closest to him gently touched his shoulder. ‘Wake up, Mr Williams, you have a visitor.’
David’s eyelids fluttered, and I was torn with a need to see the beautiful blue depths of his eyes, and the fear that if he opened them he would read every last worry stencilled on my face. ‘Your wife is here,’ the nurse urged softy.
‘Wife,’ David repeated, his voice thick and muzzy with medication. ‘No, she’s not here. She’s in New York.’
The nurse looked at me quizzically, but I just shook my head. Somewhere in his dream, my ‘secret’ Christmas surprise was weighing on his mind.
‘I’m right here, David,’ I said entwining our left hands, hearing a small satisfying metallic sound as our wedding bands brushed against each other.
‘New York,’ he repeated, his words a gasping breath.
‘Hush now,’ I soothed. ‘Save your strength. New York can wait, until you’re better,’ I murmured, no longer caring that I had ruined his surprise.
‘No,’ he said, struggling to break through the drugs, to make me understand. ‘By the tree, in New York. With the lights. They were playing our song.’
‘Do you know what he’s talking about?’ whispered the nurse. I nodded, my eyes filling with tears as I shared his memory.
‘On the ice,’ David continued, his voice lost in our past. ‘By the tree.’
The tears were running down my face, too fast now to stop.
‘There was music, beautiful music.’
I gave a watery smile. ‘There was. I remember it. I’ll always remember it.’
‘She plays, you know . . . she plays music. She’s in a band.’
Ally – Nine Years Earlier
‘Are you ready, love? We don’t want to be late.’
Reluctantly I scrambled off the bed and opened my bedroom door to call down to my mum in the hall below. ‘Just putting on my shoes,’ I lied, glancing down at my feet in the black patent flats, the same ones I’d been wearing one week earlier on the night of the ball. For the twenty-third time (and seriously worried now about my newly developed OCD tendencies), I checked my phone’s Inbox to see if I could possibly have missed a message. Nothing. I switched the phone’s ringer off and slipped it into the pocket of my festive red tunic dress that I was wearing over thick black tights. I gave a quick glance at my reflection, ran a comb through my long chestnut-coloured hair, fought the urge (and won) not to sneak one last glance at my phone, and ran down the stairs to join my parents in the hall below.
Neither of them were wearing coats, but they were hardly necessary as we were only going as far as our next-door neighbour’s house for a glass of Christmas morning sherry. It was a tradition we’d been indulging in for as long as I could remember, certainly it pre-dated the time when Max and I were permitted to drink at all. But over the intervening years we had gravitated from orange squash in a beaker, to fizzy Pepsi clunking with ice, to tumblers of frothy Snowballs, and had finally reached the giddy alcoholic heights of a glass of amber-coloured cream sherry. To be honest, I’d have been quite happy sticking with the Snowballs, but then I never had been a particularly sophisticated drinker.
We walked the length of our short crazy-paving path, took a sharp right and walked up the
identical path of our neighbours. There was a large ivy wreath on the door that practically obscured the knocker, but Max’s mum had been lying in wait in the hall and flung open the door with a cheery ‘Merry Christmas! Come in! Come in!’
We followed her into the small front room that was a mirror reversal replica of our own. Decorations were looped like bunting from the cornices of the room, and the entire bay window was taken up with a Christmas tree flashing so fiercely I only hoped no one with serious epilepsy happened to be passing by. Christmas music blared out from the CD player, and I felt a funny little twinge as I recognised the exact same song that had been playing in the coffee shop when David and I had met there seven mornings ago. Seven mornings, seven afternoons, and seven nights. And not a single text. What does that tell you, you stupid idiot, I told myself angrily. Just forget about him.
A figure unfurled himself from the settee beside the roaring fire and threw a very large and disgruntled ginger cat off his lap before getting to his feet and enveloping me in a huge hug.
‘Happy Christmas, you,’ he said, holding me tightly against his long lean body. He held me at arm’s length and surveyed what I was wearing. ‘You look like one of Santa’s Helpers,’ he observed.
‘That was so the look I was going for,’ I replied.
‘Sit, sit, sit,’ commanded Max’s mum, as though we were pupils in a dog training class. She busied herself, bustling around the room with plates of Devils on Horseback, Pigs in Blankets and other curiously named Christmas fare.
‘In her element, as usual,’ observed Max, pulling me back down onto the settee he had just vacated. ‘So did Father Christmas swing by your place?’
‘Absolutely,’ I confirmed, taking a small glass of sherry from the tray Max’s dad was carrying. ‘New boots, CDs and lots of smelly stuff. How about you?’
‘The daft bugger managed to get a sewing machine down the chimney this year,’ Max informed me, sounding inordinately pleased.
‘Wow! The expensive one you showed me in the catalogue?’
‘Yep,’ he agreed, pulling Flatbread, the decidedly overweight ginger cat, back onto his lap. ‘I still feel a bit guilty. It’s way more than they usually spend.’
I gave his hand a squeeze, noting that it no longer felt like the hand of a boy; it was now that of a man. ‘When you’re a rich and famous dress designer you can buy them a mansion. That’ll square things up.’
He grinned and ruffled my hair in the way he knew I hated. Max was my closest friend; the only one I had missed like an ache when I’d left home to study music at university while he’d gone to college to study fashion design.
‘So,’ he asked, stuffing an entire Pig into his mouth, ‘has Prince-Ever-So-Charming been in touch with you yet?’
I shoved him on the shoulder. ‘Stop calling him that. I really wish I’d never told you now. Especially as it doesn’t look like he’s going to call anyway.’
Max put his arm around my shoulders and drew me to his side in a quick hard squeeze. ‘Then he’s too stupid to deserve you. You’re just going to have to end up with me after all,’ he teased. From the encouraging glances I saw his mum and dad exchange from across the room, I knew that for them that would be the best outcome imaginable. For Max and I . . . not so much.
‘Not that I want to take his side, or anything,’ Max added, virtually inhaling a Devil from the servietteful he was guarding preciously from a very hungry-looking cat, ‘but you have to admit you didn’t exactly make it easy for him. You could have given him your number.’
I pulled a face, but I knew he was right. For some perverse reason I had intentionally made it ridiculously difficult for David to contact me, almost as though it were a test. I still found it hard to believe he’d actually been waiting for me when I’d walked into the warm coffee shop, pulling my heavy suitcase behind me.
There had been small smudgy circles beneath David’s eyes, yet even they couldn’t mar the head-turning perfection of his face. If anything, he looked even better in daylight, dressed in shirt and jeans, than he’d done the night before in a dinner suit.
‘Good morning,’ he’d said, pulling out a chair for me at the small table. ‘I’ve got you a coffee.’ He slid a polystyrene cup towards me.
I was shaking my head in pleasant disbelief as I slid into the seat and undid my quilted jacket. ‘I really didn’t expect you to be here. I felt sure you’d still be asleep.’
He gave a half grin, which made a pulse at the base of my throat forget its normal rhythm and start to race. ‘Still asleep hasn’t happened yet,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘By the time Survivors’ Breakfast came around there really didn’t seem much point.’
‘You must be exhausted.’
‘Nah. I can cope with late nights,’ he admitted. ‘We’ve had a few of those over the last three years.’ I didn’t doubt it. The students in any university fell into a multitude of categories, ranging from the studious geeks who practically lived in the library, to the hardened party-goers who would be hard pushed to tell you where the library was. I suspected that David and I hovered near opposite ends of that spectrum. I was here to get an education so I could get the job I wanted in life. I suspected his path in life was already secure, whatever class of degree he came out with.
‘So mystery girl, are you going to tell me your name now, seeing as this is our second date? It’s about time I knew, don’t you think?’
‘This isn’t a date,’ I corrected.
‘I bought you coffee,’ he said, nodding at the container I was sipping from.
I immediately reached into the copious shoulder bag that I’d dropped beside my chair and pulled out my purse. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said feeling my cheeks grow instantly warm. ‘What do I owe you?’ On the few dates I had gone on at university, all the bills had been split clean down the middle, and I didn’t have a problem with that at all.
‘Put your money away,’ David chided, looking genuinely appalled that I had thought he was asking me for payment. ‘Let’s start again, shall we?’ he continued, and held his hand out to me across the table top. ‘My name is David Williams, I am a third-year Economics student, I come from Hampshire, I like rowing and skiing and meeting strange tuba-playing girls at Christmas balls.’
‘That sounded like a University Challenge introduction, until the last bit,’ I said, trying not to laugh, as I briefly allowed my hand to be held by his.
‘The last bit was the best bit,’ he said seriously, and my stomach flipped weirdly at his words.
‘So,’ he prompted, giving me a warm encouraging smile.
‘My name is Ally – short for Alexandra, and I play the trumpet.’
‘That’s it? That’s all I’m getting? What am I going to say when people ask me about my new girlfriend? I’m going to look ridiculous when I have to say I don’t know anything about her.’
He was doing it again, pretending this silly little flirting game was actually going somewhere, and I wasn’t slick or skilful enough to know how to deal with it.
‘I doubt anyone will be asking, because I’m not your girlfriend.’
‘Not yet,’ he said, with a confidence that threw me completely. ‘But you will be.’
There was a promise in his words that thrilled and scared me in equal measure. But I was determined not to be just another notch on his bedpost, which I was worried was what this was all about. Had one of his friends dared him to pursue me? Had they even had a bet on it? The thought made me feel more than a little sick, but somehow it rang true. Let’s face it, people like him went out with girls who came from the same kind of background as them. Where I came from, polo was a type of mint with a hole, for his friends it was a game everyone they knew played.
‘So is that really all you’re going to tell me?’ he said disbelievingly.
I nodded. ‘This was fun, but let’s not drag it out, shall we. Thanks for the coffee, but I really have to go now, if I don’t want to miss my train.’
‘I don’t know what you think o
f me, but I’m not the type of guy who plays games,’ he said and suddenly there was far less humour in his eyes. ‘I’m interested, Trumpet-Playing Ally. Really interested.’
I got to my feet, biting my lower lip nervously. If I didn’t know better I would have actually believed he was sincere.
‘Give me your number,’ he asked, pulling his phone from his pocket ready to add it to his contacts.
I shook my head.
He looked exasperated.
‘Your surname then,’ he asked.
Again I shook my head.
‘Jesus, you really are going to make me work for it, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not playing hard-to-get,’ I said, getting to my feet. He went to stand too, but I laid my hand on his shoulder to stop him, almost losing my train of thought as I felt the strength of his broad muscles flex beneath my palm. ‘I just think there’s not much point in making this into something that it’s not.’
‘I will find out your number, and I will call you,’ he promised solemnly.
I smiled at him as I pulled on the retractable handle of my suitcase and tilted it onto its wheels. ‘Okay You do that and maybe I’ll believe you’re actually serious,’ I said, as I began heading towards the door.
‘You’ll be hearing from me,’ he called out across the practically deserted coffee shop as I twisted the handle, letting in an icy gust of December air.
Only now, seven days had passed, and I hadn’t.
Charlotte – Six Years Earlier
It was cold, in the way only New York can be in the depths of December. I was wrapped up warmly, but despite the layers, the scarf and warm fluffy hat, the Big Apple was biting back with determination.
We were only here for four days, and David had planned this, our first trip away together, with almost military precision. He was determined that everything would be absolutely perfect. And it had been.
He’d surprised me with tickets for my birthday present. He’d booked the flights, hotels, and even secretly contacted my boss and secured the time off work, all without me suspecting a single thing. I’d got a little teary when he had handed me the envelope with the airline tickets, in the classy French restaurant where he’d taken me for dinner.
