Page 121 of Between Us

‘… Remember you once said that thing about not having many people in your life? I’ve never missed my dad and my brother like I do now. Anyway. You don’t need to reply to this or call me back, or anything. You don’t owe me anything at all. I just needed to talk to someone. Not someone. I wanted to talk toyou. Leaving this message has helped, stupid as it sounds. Anyway. OK. Thanks for listening, even though I didn’t give you much choice in the matter. Bye.’

When she walked back into the hospital, a consultant was craning his neck, looking for her.

‘Miss Walters? I need to speak to you about your mother.’

She looked at the back of her hand, which bore the smudged imprint of Lost Cherry.

Roisin listened to the soft hiss of medical machinery, the rustling of the ward beyond the thin curtain, as the day began.

Outside the window, the sky had started to lighten in asickly tangerine-grey. It was the most beautiful sunrise Roisin had ever seen, because it was the first one she feared her mum would never see.

It turned out this emergency wasn’t anything more than a turbulent, yet brief and fully survivable, episode, one she could leave Lorraine to sit up in bed and recount to Ryan later on her mobile.

Roisin was still scrabbling to catch up, retrieving her imagination from the dark places it had roamed to during the crisis. Part of her was still travelling the alternative timeline.

What she’d discovered was that her mother needed her. And Roisin needed Lorraine, too. Not in trivial, mercenary ways, but profound ones that neither of them had articulated. Roisin had been so preoccupied with her mother’s indulgent tolerance of her father and brother that she’d absorbed a deep sense she didn’t matter. That wasn’t ever true, she realised.

Lorraine knew Roisin was angry with her, for things they could never discuss without it provoking scorn and disgust, more damage. It had created a barrier between them.

Roisin needed to stop punishing the people available to be punished, who might’ve made mistakes but sincerely loved her back.

She would be back later with a bag packed with her mother’s favourite perfume, her Kindle, her pyjamas. She leaned in and kissed her sleeping face.

74

She was heading to the door of the A&E department when she saw him. Arms folded in that dark denim jacket, sitting on one of the plastic seats, head to one side, eyes closed, boot resting on opposite knee.

Roisin stared and stared at him. She took in every detail and committed it to memory as her heart tripled in size. It was almost six a.m. and Roisin was lightheaded. She wondered how long he’d been here: she’d spent two hours by her mum’s bedside, so he must have arrived then.

She reached out and put a hand on Matt’s shoulder.

He started awake and focused on her, rubbing his eyes as he made sense of his surroundings.

‘Morning,’ he said, blearily standing up.

‘Morning. You came all this way?’ she said.

‘I left as soon as I got your message. How are you? How’s Lorraine?’

‘She’s …’ Roisin bit hard into her bottom lip to maintain a semblance of composure. Seeing Matt, after the outcome of such a sleepless and turbulent night, could be like a dam breaking. ‘She’s fine. It was a burst appendix. It can belife-threatening, but they caught it in time. Most of their patients don’t ignore the signs of appendicitis for as long as my mother did.’ Roisin made a face.

‘Oh, thank God,’ Matt said.

‘They’ll keep her in for a few days and she’ll feel like she’s been run over for weeks, but such a relief.’

‘You’ll know she’s truly recovered when she’s pressing the bed alarm for a Kir Royale.’

‘You know her too well,’ Roisin said, her voice thick. She was broken with gratitude at the sight of him. The love was like a physical weight on her chest.

‘Fresh air?’ Matt said, after a loaded pause, and Roisin nodded as he pushed the door open.

Under the bricked shelter of the A&E entrance, they took in the view of hospital grounds at dawn, breathed in and out, looked at each other and shook their heads. Sudden illness was like being torn from the normal world and hurled into an alternative universe.

‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Roisin said.

Matt turned to face her fully. ‘Listen, Rosh. I want to make it clear, I’m not here with any expectation of—’

Roisin grabbed him by the lapels, buried her face in his chest and howled. He put his arms around her and held her tightly.

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