Second Chances Part 1

Second Chances.

CHARITY.

NORMAN.

For Paul.

Hawke's Bay Today.

Local News.

In the early hours of this morning, the Lowe Corporation rescue helicopter was scrambled to airlift a five-year-old boy from a coastal address north of Napier. He was flown to Hawke's Bay Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery for extensive internal injuries.

It is understood that the child was injured as a result of a fall from a first-floor balcony. However, hospital staff declined to speculate on the circ.u.mstances of the incident.

'I can confirm that a small boy with life-threatening injuries was admitted earlier today,' said a spokesperson. 'At this stage it would be inappropriate to comment further. Police and child protection agencies have been alerted, and comprehensive enquiries are ongoing. I am not in a position to release any details until that investigation has taken its course.'

The injured child remains in the hospital's intensive care unit, where his condition is reported to be critical. His name has yet to be released.

One.

Finn fell.

I don't think, if I used a million words, I could call up the horror. It isn't a matter of words.

My son plunged headlong, tiny hands clutching at nothing. He never made a sound. I can see his pyjamas disappearing into the greedy dark. Mr Men pyjamas, from his Christmas stocking. I can see his pirate doll, cartwheeling out of reach.

No moon yet. In films, tragedy always strikes during a torrential storm amid lightning and thunder, and the heroine's hair is plastered to her tear-streaked cheeks-though she's wearing waterproof mascara so no harm done. But it was a calm night, when Finn fell. A starry winter's night, and the hills were gentle swells against a singing sky. There was only the screech of a plover in the fields; the mother-in-law bird, bossy and rea.s.suring. A calm New Zealand night.

And then the world exploded. I can still hear the swish of bushes. I can feel the thud as my baby hit the ground. Really, I can feel it. It shook the house. It shook the hills. It shook the heavens. I hurled myself down the stairs, trying to outrun this unholy terror.

Something lay lifeless beside a lemon tree, a dark little mound in the garden of my dream house. I thought my boy was dead. I touched the white face, feeling the miracle of his pulse, bargaining with a G.o.d in whose existence I'd never believed. You will, too. Oh yes you will, if ever your own nightmares come alive. You will pray with all your heart, and all your soul, and with some part of your brain that you've never used before, never even knew was there. Believe me, you will. At such a time, atheism is a luxury you can't afford.

It took so long for them to come. So long, while Finn hung suspended over the abyss of death, and fear pressed us both into the black earth. Buccaneer Bob sprawled close by. Where Finn goes, his pirate goes too. At last I sensed the throb of rotor blades beating through the pitiless dark, the rhythm of rescue; brilliant lights rising over the hillside. The Heavenly Host. They landed in our front paddock in a hurricane of sound, sprinted towards my waving torch-two men in red coveralls, not a choir of dazzling angels-and worked with urgency and few words: fixed a line into Finn's arm and a brace around his neck, muttering together about his spine as they lifted him across the lawn and into the helicopter.

Neither asked how it happened. Not yet. They knew-as I knew-that this could be Finn's last journey. He's in trouble, they were thinking. Head injury, internal bleeding, G.o.d knows what else. In all likelihood, this one isn't coming home.

We were gone within minutes, Finn and I, lifting tail-first into the future.

Even as we landed, people and equipment appeared out of nowhere, mobbing us in an efficient scrum. Through a fog of panic I heard that Finn's blood pressure was falling, that heart and respiration rates had increased. Figures were called out-eightyaforty; sixtyathirty-with increasing insistence. They cut away his favourite pyjamas and covered him with a worn flannel blanket. Now he was anonymous.

I was with him when they began a blood transfusion, when they fed a plastic tube through the gentle mouth and into his airways, when his lonely body moved through the ma.s.sive complexity of the CT scanner. I couldn't hold him, I couldn't care for him. I was useless. Soon they took him away, wheeling him rapidly through impa.s.sable doors to where surgeons' knives were waiting.

I know someone led me to this quiet cubicle and tried to explain what was happening. They've done their best, but my mind has seized. I'm hunched in a plastic chair, my fingers wrapped around a white mug that has inexplicably appeared in one hand. I clutch Buccaneer Bob's floppy body to my chest. We're trying to comfort one another.

Finn is alone under vicious white lights and the eyes of adult strangers. They'll be discussing the weather as they cut my baby open. Hardest frost on record . . . nearly two metres of snow up at Ruapehu, going to extend the ski season. We're losing him, says the anaesthetist.

A woman ambles past. Another patient's mother, I imagine. She has wide hips and a comfortable bread-dough face, and she reminds me of Louisa. I'd give anything to see my sister's matronly form in a flowered skirt, swinging solidly up the hospital corridor with her arms held out wide and love in her smile. I'd give anything to see an old friend, someone who likes and trusts me because we go back a lifetime. I've no old friends here. In this whole country, this whole hemisphere, there's not one person outside my family-no, including my family-who truly knows me.

I curl my legs onto the sharp plastic of the chair, knees pulled up. I know I look a sorry sight, a bag lady on a bad day. A pa.s.sing nurse obviously thinks so because she turns into my cubicle, tugging on the curtain. She's a tidy creature with a curling fringe. When she speaks, I dully register a familiar accent. Liverpool, I'd say.

'How're you doing?' It's made-in-China sympathy, but better than nothing.

I shake my head, driving my teeth into my knees. I'm rocking.

'Whoops! You're going to spill that.' She takes the mug from me, resting it on a stainless-steel trolley. 'What a horrible thing to happen. He's getting the best possible care, that's the main thing.'

Then she asks the question. She's the first, but I know she won't be the last.

'How did he come to fall?'

Honesty is the best policy! hisses Mum, right in my ear. Makes me jump. She's long dead, my mother, but that doesn't stop her and her cliches. Don't misunderstand me; I'm not having auditory hallucinations, nor-so far as I know-am I a medium. My mother's personality was so a.s.sertive and censorious that she took up residence in my head when I was about three. I've been trying to evict her ever since. Sometimes she disappears for months at a time, but always pops up to twist the knife when the going gets tough.

The truth sets us free! she whispers now.

I think about the truth. I really do. I turn it over and over with a sense of horrified disconnection. I look at it from every angle, like a 3-D image on a computer screen. And on that screen I see police, and a courtroom, and a prison cell. I see disaster.

Finn's a sleepwalker, I tell the kind nurse. Always has been. It's funny because his twin brother never does it. Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. I should have locked their door. It's my fault.

That last part is true, at least.

'Nah. Could have happened to anybody,' she croons, in comfortable ignorance. She isn't really listening. People don't. 'It's an accident waiting to happen when they mess about in their sleep. I've got one who did it till he was thirteen. We lost him in a resort in Fiji, two years old!'

'Awful.'

'Worst ten minutes of my life. Lucky he wasn't floating face down in the pool.'

'Lucky.' I think of Finn, whose luck ran out.

'So what brought you out here?' she asks.

It's a perennial question. This country is home to many immigrants, and every one of us has our story. I wonder how many tell the whole truth.

'My husband,' I say. 'He fell in love with the place years ago, always wanted to come back. You?'

'Married a Kiwi. Broke my mum's heart, but what can you do?'

I try to answer, but Finn is falling. He's falling, and I hear the thud. The nurse pulls some tissues from a box, handing them to me with a sisterly rub of my shoulder.

'Sometimes you have to wonder, don't you?' she muses, smoothing the breaking wave of her fringe. 'You have to wonder why these things have to go and happen.'

Clattering feet, the rumble of a trolley. A baby's fretful wail.

'Got to go,' she sighs, giving my shoulder one last pat. 'No rest for the wicked.'

Ah, I think, as I watch her twitch back the curtain and hurry duck-footed to the latest emergency. There's the question. Not how. Why.

I'm haunted by that question as the night wears on.

Why, why, and why.

Two.

If I had to stick a pin in the map of s.p.a.ce and time, marking the start of our journey, I'd choose a Bedfordshire village on a Friday in June. Our village. Our house.

I remember driving home from work through a brief summer downpour. For ten minutes I skulked in the car by our garden pond, while the cooling engine tick-tick-ticked, summoning the will to go into the house. Finally I dug out my phone. Delaying tactics.

How did physics go? xx Immediately, the screen flashed and buzzed. dunno x.x.x Very informative, I thought resignedly as I hauled myself out and up the path. My daughter was coming to the last of her fifth-form exams, and I had no idea how she'd done. I stood for a long moment in the porch, steeling myself. Then I opened our front door.

The change struck me as soon as I stepped into the hall. That morning, I'd escaped a house pervaded by the cold draught of Kit's despair. Now I caught the cheerful whiff of toasting crumpets and his mellow voice, accompanied by the twins' merry discordancy.

Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water I followed these sounds of revelry to the kitchen. Kit stood ironing a shirt while his sons lumbered on the tabletop among the plates. Charlie paused to give me smacky crumpety kisses, but Finn was reaching an earsplitting crescendo, shaking matted dark locks: Jack fell down and broke his crown And Jill came tumbling af-ter! h.e.l.lo, Mummee!

Inevitably, he stood in the b.u.t.ter dish.

'Yuck!' he squawked, hopping on one narrow foot while holding the b.u.t.tery one up in front of him.

'b.u.t.ter toes,' said Kit, and flashed me a vivid smile.

Charlie pointed a chubby forefinger, delight on the cartoon-round cheeks. Fair-curled and st.u.r.dy, he was the elder by half an hour. 'b.u.t.ter toes, b.u.t.ter toes.'

I gave Finn a piggyback to the sink, dumped him on the draining board and doused his foot. Then I stood close behind Kit, running my hands around his waist and basking in his buoyancy. When he was on top of life, we could cope with anything at all. Sacha's dog slithered out of her basket to headb.u.t.t my knees. m.u.f.fin has a lot of Old English sheepdog in her and a touch of something smaller, and wanders through life with an air of genial absent-mindedness, like a professorial teddy bear.

'Hey, m.u.f.fin,' called Finn from the sink. 'D'you want to lick some lovely b.u.t.ter?'

'You're ironing a shirt,' I said, watching Kit turn a crumpled rag into something crisp and immaculate. 'Why are you ironing a shirt?'

'Think I've had a bit of a break.' Steam hissed from the iron. I could smell washing powder. 'I'll be taking the train to London in an hour. I called Stella Black today-remember, from way back? Graphic designer, I've worked with her on a couple of projects-she reckons her boss might have some consultancy work for me.'

'That would be wonderful,' I breathed, rubbing my cheek into the warmth of his shoulder. Consultancy work would be more than wonderful. It might even be a lifeline.

Kit was taut with hope and nerves; I could feel them jangling through his skin. He always had a deceptively lazy, understated way of moving- never seemed to pick up his feet-yet I sensed a frantic excitement that day. He finished the shirt, kissed me enthusiastically and strode off to the shower. Our house was one of the oldest in the village, the stairs steep and uneven. I sat halfway up, fretting, while the boys plotted mischief in the kitchen. My chest seemed to be squeezed in a vice, as though it was I who had the vital meeting. There was so much at stake. I had to force myself to exhale.

That's where Sacha found me. She paused in the hall, grinning, schoolbag swinging from one shoulder. 'Mum! You on the naughty stair?'

My daughter inherited the syrup-and-caramel ringlets from me. I can't seem to grow my hair beyond shoulder length and it sticks out like a string floor mop, but hers is glorious, rippling exuberantly down her back and around her face. She has the Norris family hooked nose, too. I've always thought-as her adoring mother-that her high forehead and imperfect nose are what make Sacha truly beautiful.

'I put myself here,' I said. 'It's my place in life. Now gimme the lowdown on that exam, and if you say "dunno", I'll tan your hide.'

She held up innocent palms. 'Well I don't know, do I? I think I did okay. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds never asked about electromagnetism though, after all the swotting I did. That was sc.u.mmy.'

'Kit might have some work,' I blurted, and she promptly dumped her bag and sat on the stair beneath mine, resting her forearm on my lap while I told her about his trip to London.

'How bad are things, Mum?' she asked seriously. 'You can come clean, now GCSEs are almost over. I know you two have been trying to cover up.'

She was right, of course. We'd been shielding her from the worst. I reached down to plait her hair, comforted by the heavy skein of it under my fingers.

'Our lifestyle-this house, everything-it all came from Kit's income, from the heyday of his agency before the economy melted down. My salary isn't nearly enough. I don't earn much more than his PA did! Pretty galling, but there we are.'

'So we'll have to sell this house if he doesn't get another job?'

'Maybe,' I agreed cautiously.

'And I'll have to shift schools, won't I?'

'We'll see.'

'That means yes.'

I shrugged, wishing I could deny it.

'Um . . .' She began tapping a syncopated rhythm on my knee with her palm. 'I know Kit's drinking again.'

'You do?'

'I have eyes, Mum, and I have ears. Last Friday the twins told me they locked themselves out in the rain and got soaking wet while he was asleep on the sofa. Charlie said he'd "gone funny again". Poor little beanies! No prizes for guessing what went on there. And I heard on the grapevine that you had to collect him from the pub.'

'They don't want him back,' I confessed.

That call was excruciating. Our local landlord, concerned and embarra.s.sed: I've had to take his car keys off him again . . . might be best if he doesn't come here for a while.

'Losing the agency was his worst nightmare,' I said now, needing to defend Kit. 'Letting people down, when they had mortgages and school fees too. The past few months have been really rough and-well, endless knockbacks and money worries have finally worn him down. Alcohol's a sort of self-medication.'

'Poor Kit.' Sacha wrinkled her nose. 'Banned from the local? That's pretty screwball.'

Charlie appeared in the kitchen doorway, lighting up at the sight of his sister. 'Come and see,' he squeaked, beckoning. 'We've made a slide on the kitchen floor.'

'A slide? How?' Sacha sounded suspicious.

'With loads and loads of b.u.t.ter. It's really slippy.'