Something shakes me impatiently and insistently until eventually I open my eyes again. Caro’s face is swimming right in front of me; she has pulled my head up by the hair.
Perhaps she says something—her lips move, but I can’t make sense of it, and she recognizes that; she speaks again, almost defiantly, and this time I understand. “We wouldn’t have. We wouldn’t have been friends.” I see her flat eyes, the intensity within them, and deep down I marvel at it: that insistence, that passion for what she wants. I think I had that once, but the drug has wrested it from me now.
Something bangs. It takes a good while to recognize it’s my own head, lolling back on the floor after she drops it.
Time passes. Or perhaps it doesn’t. I’m an unreliable witness to life now.
At some point I become aware of Severine folding her beautiful walnut limbs fluidly to sit cross-legged beside me on the cold tiles, her eyes fixed on mine, and I feel . . . something. It takes a while to identify it, but I do: it’s gratitude. Gratitude for her continued presence. I feel it wash through me now I’ve named it. Don’t leave. I don’t say the words, but I can see she won’t: for the first time I have penetrated her inscrutability and can read what those dark eyes hold. She won’t leave me. She will never leave me. She will be here until there’s no more here for me. And now I know at long last what the point of her is, why Severine has been here all along. For this. This is where the ribbon of time has been leading for me. There should be no emotion because this was all determined a long time ago. Because Seb is Seb, and Caro is Caro, and Kate is Kate, and Tom is . . .
Tom, I want to say, but the word cannot be formed. There is only thought, and the thought of him, the dream of us that had only just begun to take form, pierces the cotton wool within me a little. Severine is speaking, gesturing at me urgently. She hasn’t done that before, but I can’t hear the words and I can’t understand what she wants. It’s too late in any case. It seems that she’s trying to pick up my phone, but she’s a ghost, bound too tightly by the ribbon of time. Material things are for her no longer. But she isn’t giving up. It’s almost enough to make me smile, if I had the ability to form a smile, the urgency with which she is trying to rally me into . . . what? Something. I don’t know.
Tom. I want another ribbon, a different one. I want us. I want to step sideways, into a time stream where Kate is Kate and Tom is Tom and neither of us are snubbed out by a pearl on the string of time. I want lazy Sunday mornings together and hectic dashes to work on the tube and holidays and home days and workdays and . . . days. I just want days. Days that start and end with Tom. Tom.
I’m slipping further away now. I can’t fight it, and Severine has stopped trying to make me. I want to tell her that I know what happened, that I can see it all now; I want to say that I’m sorry I can’t tell the world, but she knows it anyway and I don’t think she cares. That was never why she was here. She remains watchfully cross-legged on the ivory sea beside me, not moving, not leaving; forever beautiful, forever unsmiling.
I would have liked to have seen her smile.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I’m waking up.
This is . . . unexpected.
And painful. Oh my God, this is painful. My head, my throat, my stomach, my eyes, but most of all my head, my head, my head . . . It pounds as if the ebb and flow of the blood within it is a violent storm raging against the shore of my brain. Where is that cool, calm ivory sea to lay my hot, aching temple against?
Perhaps I make a movement as I try to open my eyes, because I hear a voice, a woman, but no one familiar: “Kate? Kate, are you with us?” And then light rushes in, swirling around until my brain gets control of it and forces it into blocks of colors and shades: I’m in a room. A pale room, nowhere I know, but it’s instantly recognizable as a hospital.
A plump woman in dark blue scrubs is leaning over me, still saying my name, but I look past her, looking around for Severine, but she’s not there; I can’t see her anywhere, and now I really start to panic. She wouldn’t leave me, I know she wouldn’t leave me; what does it mean that she’s not here?
“Kate? No, shhh, just lie still . . . It’s all right, you’re all right. You’re in a hospital.” She turns as someone enters the room, but I can’t see who it is—is it Severine? But no, that can’t be right, though I can’t quite remember why that can’t be right . . . “She’s just come round,” she says to them. She turns back to me. “Kate, do you know who this is?”
And then he’s right beside me, reaching for my hand, and the panic dissolves. “Tom.” My voice is more of a croak; nonetheless the relief on his face is staggering.
“You’re back,” he says simply, and lays a hand against my face. I want to move into it, but I’m unsure of my body, of what it can and can’t do. As the nurse suggested, lying still seems safest.
“Was I away?” I croak out. He looks awful. He hasn’t shaved in days, and it’s possible he hasn’t slept, either. I have the feeling I’ve been dropped onstage in the middle of a play without a script or any knowledge of the first act. How did I get here?
“Yes. You’ve been . . . away . . . for two days.” He takes a shuddering breath and starts to say something, but the nurse cuts him off.
“Let’s get you a drink of water and then I just need to check a few things, Kate.” She brings the bed a little more upright, holds some water to my lips and starts to flash lights in my eyes, all the while asking me questions. What’s my name? When was I born? What year is it? Do I know where I am? With each answer the words come easier, as if the route from my brain to my mouth is clearing.
“Did I hit my head then?” I ask suddenly, recognizing the questions as more than information gathering, and then I remember—or do I? The memories are inconstant, jumbled, the colors too strange. “I did, didn’t I . . . I think . . .”
“Yes, you gave your head rather a thwack, I’m afraid. We’ve been quite worried about you.” This is from someone new. I turn my head a little, gritting my teeth against the wave of pain that accompanies the movement, and find the source: a tall woman in her early forties, dark hair scraped back into an elegant bun, standing in the doorway with a faint smile in place. She’s in scrubs, too, but she wears the cloak of her authority over them, further underlined by her enormous diamond studs: you wouldn’t expect to see those on a low-paid nurse. “Welcome back. I’m Dr. Page.” She steps into the room and picks up the chart, scanning it quickly. “And you, I rather think, are going to be fine, after a lot of rest. What do you remember?” she asks, but there’s something in her face that doesn’t quite match the casual tone. My eyes fall on the nurse. She’s busying herself so completely with changing a drip that she must be listening intently. Even Tom has a little tension in his face. Again I have the feeling that I’m missing the script.
“I don’t . . . I’m not sure . . . I was at my flat.” I remember that, definitively. “I wasn’t feeling well. I was running a bath.” Severine was in the bath; once again I see the water sheeting off her hair as she sits up. “Caro—oh my God—”
Tom gives a start. “Caro? Caro was there?”
“Yes. She came round. She put something in my wine, I think—”
“Caro put something in your wine.” It’s more of a statement than a question. His voice is tightly controlled, but there’s an anger lurking beneath that somehow puts me in mind of his impressive fury during the poolside debacle in France.
Caro. Caro and Seb. Seb and Alina—“Oh God, Alina; is Alina okay?”
“Rohypnol,” says Dr. Page, ignoring my question. Her tone is crisp, but her face has relaxed. “Rather a large dose, I’m afraid.” Enough to fell an elephant. Tom hasn’t reacted to her words; it dawns on me that this is not news to him. “We had to pump your stomach, and also you had subcranial bleeding so we—”