Truly Madly Guilty, Page 25

  The course had been fun. Oliver and Erika were the star students. They'd both done first aid courses before this. Of course they had. They had their bronze medallions, their rescue diving certificates. They were the sort of people who believed in first aid courses, and anyway, no matter the subject, Oliver and Erika had always been star students. Even when the subject wasn't a matter of life and death they took it as seriously as if it were.

  Erika could see their teacher now. Paul was a ruddy-faced, heavy-breathing man who looked like a potential heart attack victim himself. 'Got it in one,' Paul kept saying to Erika and Oliver with an approving click of his fingers each time they got something right.

  Fifteen compressions and two rescue breaths. They were doing it right. They were doing it exactly right. They were following the rules, Paul, so why was Ruby just lying there, why wasn't she responding, Paul, you hateful, stupid, red-faced, finger-clicking man?

  '... thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and one ...'

  'Where is the ambulance?' said Sam. 'I can't hear a siren. Why can't I hear a siren?'

  Erika pinched Ruby's nostrils together again, bent her head and exhaled a silent scream of fury into Ruby's body. YOU DO AS I SAY, RUBY. YOU BREATHE. It was her mother's voice; her mother at her most manic and vicious and terrifying, her mother when she caught Erika trying to throw something out. YOU BREATHE RIGHT THIS INSTANT, RUBY, HOW DARE YOU IGNORE ME, YOU BREATHE, NOW, RIGHT NOW.

  Erika lifted her head.

  Ruby's chest jolted. Water spewed up from her mouth. Oliver made a high, startled sound of surprise like a dog's whimper and lifted his hands.

  Got it in one, said Paul in Erika's head, with a click of his fingers, and Erika turned Ruby's head to the side, just like they'd done with the rubbery-tasting plastic mannequin, and Ruby vomited more water, over and over, while Clementine sobbed and heaved as if she were being sick too. The long, thin wail of an ambulance pierced Erika's consciousness as if it had been there all along, and together she and Oliver turned Ruby onto her side, into the recovery position as they'd been taught.

  Good girl, thought Erika, and she ran her hand gently over Ruby's head, brushing the wet strands of hair from her eyes as she continued to vomit water. Good girl.

  chapter fifty

  'Erika?'

  'Mmmm.' Erika fidgeted and focused on the rain falling outside Not Pat's window. Was it easing perhaps?

  For the first time ever, she was longing for her session with Not Pat to end. Normally, she found therapy such a soothing process, like getting a massage, a lovely self-validating massage of her ego, but today Not Pat was just annoying her. She'd latched onto the subject of Erika's friendship with Clementine like a little rat terrier with a bone.

  Each time Not Pat said Clementine's name Erika felt like she was being pinched, very hard.

  Look, she was paying for this. She didn't have to put up with it.

  'I don't want to talk about Clementine anymore!' she snapped.

  'All righty,' said Not Pat in her folksy way, and she wrote something down on her notepad. Erika had to restrain herself from reaching over and grabbing the notebook from her lap. Did she have a legal right to demand access to Not Pat's notes? She would find out.

  In the meantime she distracted Not Pat by telling her the story of Ruby's accident.

  'Oh my goodness me!' Not Pat's hand rushed to her mouth.

  When Erika had finished Not Pat said, 'You know, Erika, it's perfectly understandable if your memory of that afternoon feels disjointed. You suffered a shock. It would have been a traumatic event.'

  'I would have thought that would have made my memory clearer,' said Erika, and in fact, there were some parts of her memory that were frighteningly vivid. She could feel the shock of the water around her legs as she leaped into the fountain, the plumes of water drenching her like rain.

  'Why do you think you're so concerned about your memory of that afternoon?' asked Not Pat.

  'I have this feeling there's something important I've forgotten,' said Erika. 'It almost feels like there's something I've forgotten to do. Like when people talk about how they start to get this niggling worry they've left the iron on when they leave the house.'

  'I know that feeling,' said Not Pat with a wry smile.

  'But that's my point, I do not know that feeling!' said Erika. 'I'm not that sort of person. I have perfect recall! I never forget anything like that.'

  She never worried that she'd left the iron on because she knew she'd never do such a thing. Once, Clementine had left her house with two hotplates on at full strength. 'The house didn't burn down!' she'd said happily, as if it had been a fascinating experiment. 'Nothing burned at all!' Another time she'd gone out with the front door wide open. 'An open invitation to the neighbourhood burglars,' said Sam. 'Come on in, boys, and help yourselves to my three-hundred-thousand-dollar cello. It's just lying here on the bed for you. Great place for it!'

  Clementine's excuse had been that she was 'deep in thought'.

  'About your music?' asked Oliver, respectful of her talent, and Clementine had said, 'No, I was trying to work out why Caramello Koalas don't taste as good as they once did. I was thinking: Has the chocolate changed or have I changed?' Then she and Sam had got into a discussion about Caramello Koalas, as if it mattered. There had been no consequences for Clementine's negligence. There never had been a consequence for Clementine's negligence until that Sunday afternoon, and Erika had never wished for that.

  Just a financial penalty maybe. Sunburn. A hangover. Clementine never even got hangovers.

  'I just need to get it clear in my head,' she said to Not Pat.

  'Well, as I said earlier, you could try going back to your next-door neighbour's backyard, if you haven't already done so, and some relaxation exercises might help. You could try some of those self-meditation exercises I've given you in the past. But honestly, Erika, you might be fighting a losing battle when you consider the medication you took that afternoon combined with the alcohol. It's possible you've remembered as much as you ever will remember. It may even be that you're subconsciously protecting yourself; that part of you doesn't want to remember.'

  'You mean I'm repressing it?' Erika said disdainfully. 'There are actually no empirical studies on the validity of memory repression! In fact I can send you some links to articles about false memory syndrome if you like -'

  But at that point the little timer on Not Pat's desk gave its smug little click to indicate the session was over. Not Pat jumped up like a jack-in-the-box. She wasn't normally so fast to get to her feet. Maybe she hadn't enjoyed this session much either.

  Erika hurried out to her car parked in the quiet street outside Not Pat's home office and sat for a few minutes with the ignition on, listening to the thunderous rain on her roof and watching her windscreen wipers work feverishly.

  'Calm down,' she said to the windscreen wipers. Their manic rhythm reminded her of her mother when she got herself into a state over something inconsequential. She didn't want to go back to her mother's house. She'd taken the whole day off work to help her mother, but she didn't think she had the fortitude to manage going there twice in one day. That was too much. Like asking someone to get back into a freezing cold swimming pool and swim one hundred laps after they'd already done one hundred laps that morning, and now they'd had a shower and were all warm and dry again.

  She closed her eyes and tried some of the breathing exercises that Not Pat had taught her in a previous session. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. She let the memories spin through her head: The fairy lights in the trees. The smell of cooked, marinated meat. The sour taste of too much wine.

  She saw that face again. That ghastly, featureless face she'd seen in her office yesterday. Like a ghoul.

  She thought suddenly: Harry. It's Harry's face. Grumpy old Harry. Was there something important she needed to do for Harry? No. Because of Harry. Something to do with Harry. Don't chase the memory, or it will disappear. She'd learned this. Relax, breath
e. Harry's neatly combed white hair. No, that wasn't a memory. That was an image Oliver had put in her mind: Harry's hair, still neatly combed in death.

  Harry at the letterbox, muttering to himself as he studied an envelope. Barney streaking across the yard. Vid coming out of his front door.

  An obligation. A request. A responsibility. Something that Harry needed from her. Shards of broken blue crockery on terracotta tiles.

  Look up. Look up.

  She opened her eyes in the fogged-up car and looked up. Nothing to see except rain.

  For heaven's sake, she was only thinking about Harry because he'd died. It was a casebook example of false memory syndrome. If Erika had a weaker personality, a more malleable mind, then an over-eager therapist could help her fabricate an entire memory about the barbeque and Harry. Next thing she'd be convinced that Harry had been there at the barbeque molesting Ruby or some such nonsense.

  She turned the keys in the ignition, indicated and looked over her shoulder at the traffic. She would try Not Pat's idea of 'returning to the scene of the crime'. When she got home she would ask Vid and Tiffany if she could stand alone in their backyard in the rain for a while. That wouldn't sound odd at all. Ha ha. No, the best thing would be if she went over when she knew they were out.

  It probably wouldn't help, but it couldn't hurt.

  chapter fifty-one

  The day of the barbeque

  The two blue-uniformed paramedics came into the backyard with the absolute authority of conductors walking onto a stage. They didn't run, but they moved fast, with a rigid calmness.

  It was as though the rest of them weren't grown-ups anymore. It was as though they'd all been playing a game, a game where they'd pretended to be in control of their lives, a game where they'd pretended they had interesting professions and healthy bank accounts and families and backyard barbeques, but now a curtain had been pulled briskly aside and the grown-ups had marched in because rules had been broken.

  Rules had been very badly broken. The circle of people surrounding Ruby parted automatically so the paramedics could get to her. Ruby mumbled incoherently, terrifyingly. She seemed drowsy and drugged, as if she were coming out of anaesthesia.

  The paramedics moved as if in a choreographed dance they'd done many times before. As they examined Ruby with plastic-gloved hands the older man asked rapid questions without looking up, confident that the answers would be provided. He spoke in a voice that was fractionally louder and slower than a normal speaking voice, as if he were speaking to children.

  'What happened here?'

  'What's her name?'

  'And how old is Ruby?'

  'When was Ruby last seen?'

  'So no one saw her fall? You don't know if she hit her head?'

  'Did she have a pulse when she was pulled from the fountain?'

  'Are you the parents?'

  He looked briefly up at Erika and Oliver as he asked the last question. A reasonable assumption. They were the ones in wet clothes.

  'No,' said Sam. 'We are.' He indicated Clementine.

  'They rescued her,' said Clementine. It seemed important to get this on the record. 'Our friends. They did CPR. They got her breathing.'

  'How long did you perform CPR for?' said the paramedic.

  'It would have been about five minutes,' said Oliver. He looked at Erika to confirm.

  'At the most,' said Erika.

  'We did two rescue breaths for every fifteen compressions,' said Oliver anxiously.

  Five minutes? It wasn't possible, thought Clementine. It had been an unbearably long stretch of time.

  There was something in Ruby's mouth, a tube in her nose, a mask over her face. She'd been turned into a generic patient. Not their wicked, funny little Ruby.

  'Have you got any towels?' asked the younger paramedic. He was using a pair of large, serrated scissors to cut a straight line through Ruby's clothes: her tutu, her long-sleeved T-shirt, unpeeling the layers of clothing to reveal Ruby's tiny white chest.

  'Of course.' Vid hurried inside and returned with a stack of beautifully folded white fluffy towels.

  'What are you doing?' asked Sam sharply as the paramedic dried Ruby's body firmly and pressed two sticky pads to her chest.

  'These are defibrillator pads,' said the paramedic. 'In case she arrests again. We're just preparing for the worst case scenario. It can also give us useful information.'

  Ruby's little arms flailed about.

  'We're going to sedate her,' said the older paramedic. 'Are there any allergies I need to know about?'

  'None,' said Sam.

  'Is she on any medication? What's her medical history?'

  'She's never even had antibiotics,' said Clementine.

  The paramedic tapped the side of a needle. Clementine saw white dots in front of her eyes.

  'Watch her,' said the paramedic sharply, and Clementine realised he meant her only when Sam took her arm.

  Sam had always been the one to take the girls for their injections. Clementine couldn't bear needles.

  'Head between your knees,' said the paramedic.

  'I'm okay,' said Clementine, breathing deeply.

  'Why are the police here?' asked Sam. Clementine looked up and saw Vid talking to a very young-looking policewoman with a pert ponytail. She took notes as Vid spoke. What was he saying? The mother wasn't watching. She was talking to me. She was telling jokes.

  Clementine saw that Erika had got up from her position by the fountain next to Ruby without Clementine noticing and had moved inside the cabana. She had two white towels draped over her shoulders and another on her lap, where Holly now sat, her back to Clementine, her head resting on Erika's shoulder.

  'It's standard for an event like this,' said the paramedic as he continued to treat Ruby. 'They'll just ask some questions to clarify what happened. We'll also need them to help block off the street for the rescue helicopter.'

  'A helicopter?' said Sam. 'They're sending a helicopter? Where are they going to land it?'

  'Basically outside the front door,' said the paramedic. He bent over Ruby's arm. Clementine looked away.

  'You're kidding,' said Sam.

  'They land on highways, backyards, tennis courts. This place is perfect. Nice wide cul-de-sac. Underground power lines. They do it all the time.'

  'Huh,' said Sam.

  'Yeah, the blades are shorter than on a normal helicopter.'

  For God's sake, were they having a chatty, masculine conversation about helicopters?

  Except that Clementine could see that even though Sam sounded like himself, he wasn't really, because he was opening and shutting his fists, rapidly and obsessively, over and over, as if he were freezing cold or mad.

  'But why do they need a helicopter?' said Clementine. The panic, which had receded a little when she'd seen Ruby's chest move and even more so when the paramedics arrived, sky-rocketed again. 'She's okay now, isn't she? She's going to be okay? She's breathing now. Isn't she breathing?'

  She looked at Sam and saw the dread in his eyes. He was always a step ahead of her when it came to recognising danger ahead. Glass half-empty, she called it. Alert, he called it. Two crass, ugly words came into her head for the first time: brain damage.

  'It's pretty standard procedure for a serious paediatric event. There will be a doctor on board. I expect they'll intubate her and make sure she has stabilised before she goes on the helicopter,' said the paramedic. He looked up at her. His skin had the roughened look of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors. There was a kind of professional weariness in his eyes, like a war veteran who has seen things a civilian could never understand. 'Your friends did everything right.'

  chapter fifty-two

  We were all doing it. Clementine's words hung in the air while she and Sam looked at each other over the mound of Holly's clothes, breathing heavily.

  Clementine heard the rain lashing Holly's window and wondered if their little house could withstand this weather for much longer. Perhaps the walls would
finally soften and sag and collapse.

  'I know we were all doing it,' said Sam. 'All four of us. Acting like idiots. Like teenagers. Our behaviour was disgusting. It makes me want to vomit when I think of it.'

  The extreme violence of his words made Clementine want to leap to their defence. They'd been people at a barbeque having a laugh, flirting, being silly. It had meant nothing. If the girls had kept chasing the fairy lights then nothing more would have come of it. They would have looked back on that day with laughter, not shame.

  'It was bad luck,' she said. 'It was very bad luck.'

  'It was not!' exploded Sam. 'It was negligence! Our negligence. I should have been watching the girls. I should have known that I couldn't depend on you.'

  'What?' Clementine felt a crazy, almost exhilarated feeling of rage and injustice blow straight through her body like a white-hot flame, making her feel as if she could lift off the ground. Finally, after all these weeks, they were going to fight.

  'It was the one time,' he said coldly. 'The one time I let my attention slip.'

  'Yes, maybe I thought I could sit back and relax,' said Clementine. Her voice shook with fury. 'Because the better parent was there, because Mr Fucking Perfect was on duty!'

  Sam gave a bitter half-laugh. 'Fine then, it was all my fault.'

  'Oh, for God's sake, don't be such a martyr,' said Clementine. 'We were both there, we were both equally responsible. This is silly.'

  They looked at each other with flat dislike. Their different parenting styles had always been a teasing point of contention, a hairline fracture in an otherwise solid marriage, but now that tiny fracture had become a chasm.

  'I think I'm done,' said Sam.

  'It's a pointless conversation,' agreed Clementine.

  'No,' said Sam. 'I think maybe I'm done with us.'

  'Done with us,' repeated Clementine slowly. Was this what gunshot victims meant when they said they initially felt no pain? 'You're done with us.'

  'I think we should consider separating,' said Sam. 'Possibly. I don't know. Don't you think?'

  chapter fifty-three

  The day of the barbeque

  Tiffany stood in her backyard being interviewed by a young police officer. She looked over her shoulder at the paramedics next to the tiny form of Ruby. Sam and Clementine were talking to the paramedics, and they looked like entirely different people from the ones who had been sitting around the table only minutes earlier. Their faces had collapsed, like popped balloons.