Bad Friends. Claire Seeber
so very deeply once he’d actually dropped off. I’d ring back in half an hour. He’d be getting up then; getting up for work, not knowing anything was wrong. Maybe a little concerned, of course, but –
I replaced the phone carefully on the stand and smoothed my hospital gown down over my knees. I really did feel rather peculiar. And I was freezing now.
When I finally went back to my bed, the next-door one was empty, the wail silenced. The small nurse stripping it wouldn’t catch my eye; her jaw was set grimly. I started to shiver, my teeth chattering in my head. The nice nurse came back with her list. She looked at me; she seemed a little worried.
‘I’ll bring you some sweet tea. The sugar’ll do you good. The police are here now. They’ll explain things to you.’
As she adjusted my pillow, I caught the typed heading on the paper. ‘SURVIVORS’, its bold black letters stated unequivocally. My bowels clenched in a strange involuntary movement. How could I be on a list? I made lists, that’s what I did, compiled lists of people, and attached those lists to a clipboard, clasped the clipboard protectively to my chest so that no one but me could consult it, and then checked people off that list. I ticked the names off as they arrived, fretted when they didn’t, shepherded them around the warren of corridors at the studios, and primed them on what to say down in the dressing-rooms. I couldn’t be on a list; I didn’t want to be on a list. I wanted to get the hell off the list and out of here. I wanted Alex to come and get me the hell out of here.
On my fourth try, Alex answered.
‘Thank God.’ I started to cry with relief. Once I started, I found I couldn’t stop.
‘What?’
‘Thank God you’re there.’
He was groggy, uncommunicative. He was always terrible in the morning. ‘Why are you crying?’
‘Sorry.’ I breathed deeply to quieten my sobs. ‘I’m okay, don’t worry.’ I stifled another sob. ‘Can you come and get me?’
‘What time is it?’
He was probably hung over.
‘I don’t know. It’s early. I’m in the hospital.’
Probably hung over? There was no probably about it. There never was these days.
‘Come and get me, Alex, please.’
‘Are you fucking joking?’
My brain couldn’t compute this. ‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Why should I come and get you?’
‘Because I’ve – there’s been an accident.’
‘Oh really?’
I stopped crying. The shock stopped me crying. For some reason he thought I was lying.
‘Alex,’ I whispered.
‘Yes?’
‘Why are you being like this? I – I need you. I’m in the hospital.’
There was a pause. I could feel him struggling with something. ‘Yeah, well.’ His voice had thickened. I heard him take a deep breath in. ‘Bad luck, Maggie.’
There was a click. My boyfriend had apparently hung up.
In the end, my father came to fetch me. I sat numb in my hospital bed, racking my brain, over and over, and as soon as my father arrived I was out of that bed. God, I would have run down the corridor if I could have. The wheelchair the nice nurse wanted me to use loomed black and heavy by my bed, but I couldn’t bear it. Instead I clutched my father’s arm like I’d never let it go.
‘Please, Daddy, get me out of here,’ I whispered. I hadn’t called him Daddy since I was thirteen. And he understood my desperation, my fear of such institutions; he probably shared it with me, in fact, but he hid it well. He pulled me nearer to his red anorak that rustled so, that smelled of fresh air and bonfires. He stroked my hair, just once.
‘Chin up, hey, Mag,’ he said and his eyes were both sorry and kind. And then he put me in his car and took me back to his house – because though I just couldn’t remember, I apparently no longer had a home.
On the Monday after Bel’s wedding I woke early and almost sick with nerves. For a moment I couldn’t think why – then I realised that today I was returning to work, to the nightmare of Renee Reveals. Pulling the duvet over my head didn’t make the fear dissipate. Eventually I clambered out of bed.
For once, the journey into town flashed by, when usually it seemed interminable. Surrounded by a floating sea of free newspapers, we rattled over the arches of Rotherhithe and Bermondsey, the sky a cobweb of intricate cloud above neat tower-blocks that flapped bright washing on plastic lines, and I realised with stomach-clenching clarity that I was actually frightened. Although I’d seen a few of the team while I recuperated at my dad’s, I had no idea how they were going to react to me in the office. I had no idea how much they knew, and that was what scared me most. I could still barely piece it all together myself. And, deeper down, I was frightened I’d lost my touch. Sitting at home alone for months hadn’t been exactly morale-boosting.
Of course, this morning the journey was so smooth that I ended up being early. I felt very tiny as I dawdled across Charing Cross footbridge in the freezing autumn air, the skyline hectic, huge cranes soaring above the spires of centuries past. I stopped at the corner café for coffee so strong it made my heart bump and they recognised me behind the counter, but I couldn’t manage conversation this morning. Finally I couldn’t drag it out any longer. I was so nervous that I almost couldn’t sign my own name at security.
But when I actually walked into the office, the initial reception I received was so nice, the girls so pleased to see me, the gossip to catch up with so comfortingly familiar, that I felt an enormous wash of relief; compounded by the fact that Charlie was apparently out all day. It’s not so bad, I told myself. Perhaps I can manage, after all.
I was just starting to relax a little, sorting things out in my tiny office, trying not to be overwhelmed by the thousands of emails and piles of paperwork that had accumulated since I’d last been here, when there was a tentative knock at my door.
‘Maggie?’
I looked up from the letter I’d been reading. It was the blond boy from the trauma show. Now that I looked at him again, it was funny – he reminded me of someone. Probably himself.
‘Oh, hi.’ I’d forgotten his bloody name again.
‘I thought you might like a coffee.’
He looked so eager I didn’t dare tell him I was already buzzing with caffeine. Very carefully, like it was a Faberge egg and not a chipped old mug declaring ‘You’re the best’ in hot-pink on one side, he placed it down beside the computer. Then he stood and looked at me.
‘So, how’s it going?’ I asked when I realised he wasn’t going to speak. ‘Are you settling in? Sometimes it can –’
‘Oh I love it,’ he interrupted airily. ‘The girls have made me really welcome.’ That’d be a first. They hated anyone who wasn’t their own. ‘They remember me from the summer, of course.’
I wished to God I did. ‘So, what are you working on?’
But he never got to answer because Charlie suddenly stuck his head round the door.
‘Miss Warren. Not before time, some less patient than myself might say.’
‘Hi, Charlie.’
‘Everything all right? Excited to be back?’ He sauntered in holding a folder I didn’t much like the look of.
‘Oh yes, very excited.’