Page 82 of The Life We Almost Had

Anna is pale. Agitated as she twists the corner of the tissue in her hand into a sharp point before dabbing at the blood still leaking from her nose.

‘We couldn’t see anything on the screen,’ Oliver says again.

‘I’m not making it up,’ Anna insists. ‘I can see how you might think I’d be so desperate to talk to Adam again I might have fabricated it all, but I didn’t. I was back at home and everything was… normal.’

Oliver scratches notes on his pad. Usually he’d type on his laptop but the way his computer had let him down by failing to record the trial had left a desire to go back to basics. Computer readings were often wrong or missing during trials, but it didn’t make it any easier knowing that.

‘If I’d imagined it,’ Anna says, ‘I wouldn’t have imagined it that way. There was a point when we were bickering the way we used to but… I was there. He was there.’ Anna’s expression is so earnest that Oliver believes her. The computer may not have recorded it, but it has worked. Despite his years of research, Oliver is staggered that it has. On the outside he is composed, studiously documenting Anna’s account of her journey,but on the inside he is singing. Dancing. Frothing open the champagne. This is revolutionary. He has built a bridge between the subconscious and the conscious. It really will change lives.

Clem would be so proud of him. She’d also tell him he should be looking after Anna. Oliver feels a pang of shame as he notices the droop of her eyes. The yawn she’s stifling.

‘Do you want to go and have a lie down?’ he asks.

‘Yes, please.’ She stands, her shoulders rounded as she begins to shuffle away. ‘Oliver?’ She turns, their eyes meet and then hers flicker away from his. For a second he is tense. Certain she is going to ask for arrangements to be made for Adam to be flown home. Instead she says, ‘How soon can we repeat this?’ He relaxes.

‘Luis will check Adam over again and you need another physical and to talk to Eva. I want to be certain that there are no delayed reactions and we’ll take it from there, okay?’

‘Okay. But… when?’

‘I’m concerned about your nosebleed, Anna. The throbbing you’ve described in your head.’ Her face shadows. ‘I’m glad you’ve told me your head hurts. It’s important that I know these things. Let’s take it step by step. Get some rest and I’ll come and see you later.’

It is dusk when Oliver taps on Anna’s door.

‘How are you feeling?’

She yawns. ‘Fine. I can’t believe I’ve slept. I saw Sofia before I crashed but I haven’t spoken to Eva yet. Is she still around?’

‘She’s finished for the day. Don’t worry, you can see her in the morning. Join me downstairs for dinner? We can talk.’

‘Give me a sec.’ Anna crosses over to Adam and kisses his lips before moving the coin on his bedside table closer to him.

In the cafeteria, Oliver asks, ‘What’s the coin for?’

‘It’s the coin my grandad used to win my nan’s heart.’ Anna laughs at the expression on Oliver’s face. ‘No really.’ She explains about the jukebox. About the coin passing back and forth between her grandparents and now back and forth between her and Adam. ‘Did you and Clem have any rituals?’

‘No,’ Oliver began. ‘Yes, actually. She used to press a finger against her lips. It was her way of telling me that she loved me when she couldn’t say it. From across a room, that sort of thing.’ Oliver fiddles with the salt pot. ‘It was the last thing she ever did.’

‘Oh, Oliver.’ Anna rubs the top of his arm. ‘You must miss her terribly.’

‘You think you know how you’ll feel when you lose someone you love, but you don’t. You can’t possibly imagine it. She’s everywhere and yet she isn’t here. Her absence makes her more present in a way. That doesn’t make any sense, does it?’ Oliver can recite facts and figures but he has never been good at expressing his emotions.

‘It does. She fills your mind.’

Oliver nods. ‘Yes, that’s it. And I haven’t just lost her but I’ve lost everything else I wanted to be. A father. A grandfather. We hadn’t planned on having kids for another few years but we would have done. Eventually.’

‘A child would be a comfort,’ Anna says.

‘Sorry. That was insensitive of me.’ Oliver is horrified at his thoughtlessness. ‘I know you’ve suffered a miscarriage recently. Do you want to talk about it?’

Anna scrapes her hair back with both hands before letting it fall free again.‘There’s not much to say. We’d wanted a baby for such a long time and now…’ She looks sorrowfully at her flat stomach. ‘Now I’m left with that empty, unbearable sadness that I’ll never get to meet them. Him or her. Harry or Charlotte.’

‘I’m so sorry, Anna.’

‘I… I was pregnant today, when I went back. About seven or eight months, I think.’

Oliver processes this for a moment.

‘I didn’t tell you earlier because… it’s personal. My life and yet,’ she shakes her head, ‘it isn’t my life.’ She sweeps her arm around the room. ‘This is my reality unfortunately.’

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