The Last Thing I Remember Read online

  THE LAST THING I REMEMBER

  DEBORAH BEE

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For Felicity Green

  1

  Sarah

  Day Zero – 11 p.m.

  Hello. Hello?

  Can you hear me?

  Hello? I’m here.

  ‘Alright, Lisa?’ A man’s voice.

  I’m not Lisa. Am I? Am I called Lisa? What’s my name?

  Hello?

  There’s the sound of an engine switching off and running footsteps.

  ‘Another day in paradise, Tom. What you got?’

  That’s a woman talking. She is out of breath.

  ‘Brain trauma. Female. Late twenties.’

  He sounds Australian. There is shouting in the background and more running. And a siren.

  ‘Tottenham?’

  ‘Yeah, Haringey.’

  ‘Evening, Lisa.’

  Another male voice. Not Australian. More London.

  ‘The one from White Hart Lane. We should keep a squad up there permanently on standby.’

  There’s the sound of scraping and clanking. Their voices are getting lost in the distance, cut short by gusts of wind.

  ‘Thanks, Matt. We’ll take her from here.’

  ‘She say anything, Tom, did she? On the way. Did she, you know . . .?’

  That’s the London man.

  ‘Nah, mate. She didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything about anything else either. Usual procedure. Best leave that sort of stuff to the experts. You know.’

  ‘She’s not even conscious, is she?’

  That was the woman again.

  ‘No . . . Hang on a minute – she did say something.’

  That’s the first guy again. The Australian one.

  ‘Well? What’d she say?’

  ‘She said thank you’

  ‘She did?’

  Everything is quiet, apart from the traffic and the restless wind. Footsteps. Running. Someone arrives, breathing hard.

  ‘Come on. The trauma unit is ready.’

  ‘Can I just get that down on the report? So, she was conscious when you arrived on the scene?’

  ‘She was then. We sedated her of course but, yes, at the scene she was conscious, just for a bit.’

  ‘And she said thank you?’

  ‘Yeah, Matt. “Thank you” – that’s all she said.’

  ‘What’d she say thank you for?’

  ‘I dunno. She’s British. The Brits always say thank you.’

  Hello.

  Hello?

  Where’ve they gone?

  This is me thinking.

  I have woken up and I’m not there.

  I can hear. There is a buzzing sound and a rhythmic heaving, in out in out, and a click, click, click, click.

  But there is no me.

  My body has gone.

  I have disappeared.

  This is me thinking.

  That is all I can do.

  I am a thought, lost in a dark, empty room, forgotten in an abandoned house.

  It’s dark. Too dark. Nothing but darkness.

  Hello?

  There are voices next to me. There’s a clanking sound of metal hitting metal. People are straining to lift.

  ‘Bed 4. Cerebral haemorrhage.’

  ‘What time d’ya get home last night?’

  Can you hear me? There are two women’s voices. Close to me. I can hear them breathing.

  ‘Quarter to five.’

  ‘Same.’

  ‘Can you do the admit for A&E?’

  ‘Nah. I hate that fucking computer.’

  ‘I’ve got Malin coming in ten. He’s in early. Just my luck.’

  ‘They haven’t done the admit already, have they?’

  ‘She only got here five minutes ago.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, Lisa’s on.’

  Lisa again. Is my name Lisa?

  ‘How did you guess? Did you see Mark last night?’

  ‘What, shit-faced and all over Emily?’

  ‘Emily Whiting? Shut up. I didn’t see that. Suspected brain haemorrhage, it says here. No life signs.’

  ‘Really? Stroke?’

  ‘No, mugged. Trauma to the anterior cranium. Tottenham. Not even that late. Brought in at . . . 23:04. Been trying to stabilise her.’

  ‘Really? Tottenham. Totally wrong nails for Tottenham.’

  A door opens.

  ‘I’m off, ladies. How was last night?’

  ‘Yeah, Lisa, amazing. Have you done the admin for Bed 4?’

  ‘I’ve been in A&E. Was Mark there?’

  ‘I never saw him. Did you, Beth?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mark.’

  ‘Did you even make a start on the admit for Bed 4?’

  ‘I brought her in – the preliminary report is right there. See you tomorrow . . . bright and early.’

  The door bangs.

  ‘. . . when we will still be filling out this fucking form. She is such a lazy slag. I am so not surprised Mark dumped her.’

  The door opens again.

  ‘Beth. There’s a man here to see Sarah.’

  ‘Tell him no way. Jesus. Give us a chance. Who is he?’

  ‘Brother.’

  ‘Tell him no way. Not right now. Tell him we need to get her sorted. Take his number or something. Tell him, oh I don’t know, tell him we’ll call him. In a few hours.’

  Hello. Can you hear me?

  I have heard this voice before.

  ‘Hello, Sarah.’

  Sarah? Am I Sarah?

  ‘Time to wake up now, Sarah. You’re in hospital. I’m Nurse Hodder. You can call me Beth. I am one of the nurses looking after you. You’ve been in an accident and you are going to be fine. It’s time to wake up now, Sarah. Can you hear me?’

  Yes. YES, I CAN HEAR YOU.

  CAN YOU HEAR ME?

  None of this makes sense.

  An accident?

  I don’t know why I am here. I don’t know who I am. I’m not here. This isn’t happening.

  2

  Kelly

  Day One – 7 a.m.

  You don’t know me. I’m not what you think. You’re just like all those people out there who think you can take one look at a person and, like, sum them up. Just like that. Just by the clothes they’re wearing or the amount of lip gloss they’ve got on. I don’t do that. I don’t assume. That lady there, for example,
in that orange plastic armchair in the corner, with the perm and the peach-coloured lipstick? You could look at her and think, middle-aged, middle-class, boring, watches MasterChef and listens to like Classic FM or something. Look at the tiny piece of pink toilet roll that she’s dabbing her eyes with. It’s twisted so tight. Someone my age, someone young, might decide that that lady didn’t have much to fucking say that could interest me.

  Drug smuggler. Seriously. She’s a drug smuggler. The police were just talking to her. She’s been brought from a maximum-security prison because her son has OD’d. He’s on life support. You see, you don’t know. I nearly shat myself when the nurse told me. I was like, OMG. You can’t tell stuff just because her skirt’s like this massive great tent. You have to see ‘beyond the clothes’ – that’s what Sarah says. That’s how this all works.

  I look at how someone sits. You can tell a lot about a person by how they sit. How comfortable they look. Her arms are folded too tightly around her body – do you see? She’s crossed her legs and the way that her foot is twisted and jammed behind her flesh-coloured support tights like my mum wears, that shows how nervous she is. How intimidated. Every time a policeman walks past the window she grips herself tighter. Every time the swing doors bang against the wall making the windows rattle in their dodgy wooden frames, she jumps and her eyes flick sideways. Those things you can’t control. They’re much harder to mask than, say, how you put on a hairband or tie your tie. You need to really work at them.

  You might think you can tell a lot about me just by looking at me, but you can’t. You might think, yeah, she’s around thirteen, maybe younger. She’s a total geek. My skirt is the wrong length and my Little-Miss-Prim white shirt is overly white and beyond ironed. The collar lies nice and flat and my tie is neatly knotted. And this god-awful satchel. Totally random, I know. You think that makes me a type. My school socks are too long, folded over twice at the knee; my heels are sensible, beyond sensible – lace-ups. What sad fucker wears lace-ups? Even little kids don’t wear lace-ups any more. You probably look at me and think I’m a bit sad. Maybe you feel a bit sorry for me. You think, bit of warpaint, bit of lipstick and mascara, and take off those goofy glasses, I might be sort of pretty. ‘Your hair,’ my Mum said to me the other day, while looking totally disappointed at my carefully combed bunches. ‘Your hair. D’ya think it could do with a bit of curl?’ A bit of curl? It needs straightening irons and a pot of peroxide. Bunches at fourteen. That is actually sad. But, you’d think, bunches? Typical of a nice girl. A good girl. Sweet. She won’t know anything about anything. She’s probably so busy doing her homework or reading a fucking Jane Austen novel to even notice what’s going on.

  So, here I am. I’m in my school uniform because it was nearest my bed on my floor at 2 a.m. and I’ve been here for what, five hours. They came to Sarah’s house in the middle of the night and then knocked on our door – we live next door. The blue flashing lights woke me up. I heard them ask if we knew Sarah. Asked if my mum was a good friend. She said yes. Slowly. Like she didn’t want to hear what was gonna come next. They spoke real quiet so I couldn’t hear. Then my mum saw me, standing at the top of the stairs, straining to hear in my PJs. My mum said I had to get dressed, then she went round and got Anna to look after Billy and we drove straight to the hospital. We waited here for like ages and they didn’t say nothing to us. Not at all. My mum went home at six to get Billy ready for school. Cos he’s a lame-o. Can’t even make a sandwich for himself. Can’t even get his uniform on. I bet I could get my fucking uniform on when I was fucking seven. She should’ve got back here again by now. She should be here any minute. She said she’d be really quick.

  This is what they call the Family Room. It’s got a sign on the door saying ‘Family Room’. It’s not really a sign. It’s a bit of paper stuck with Sellotape that’s gone yellow and split. Someone has made the sign with that clip-art software we have at school to make the title pages for our coursework projects. They’ve done it in like curly font, in the shape of a rainbow. Trying to kid you this is not totally a shit place to be. Patronising prettiness. It don’t make it any better. This is where they park the visitors of people who are dying. You can come in any time – they don’t have visiting hours for patients who are like really, really ill. The room is part of the Critical Care ward. That’s what they call it when you are like really bad. There are windows running the side of one wall that let you see the corridor, who’s going in and who’s going out. And let whoever’s in the corridor see you. From my seat right by the door I can lean my head out and see all the way down beyond the Family Room towards the wards. It’s dark. The nurses’ station is lit with like angle lamps and computer screens. They talk quiet. The phone rings a lot. There’s like a hum of electricity. Beeping and clicking. And every so often the doors to the ward crash open as a trolley gets pushed through followed by policemen in hi-vis jackets and nurses carrying bags of water with tubes and stuff.

  No one has really said anything to me. When we arrived a nurse just took our names and told us to wait. They wrote our names down on a list on a clipboard. They said we weren’t relatives so we shouldn’t be here at all. But then someone else, another nurse – older – checked the list and said we were OK because none of the relatives were here yet. Apart from some bloke who had come and gone and didn’t even leave a name.

  Do you know what I think? I think they thought she was gonna die. I’m not even lying. So they needed us here to identify her or something. They want you for filling out forms even if you’re not related. I hate the police. Pigs.

  And now, I don’t fucking believe it, my mum’s gone and I’m sitting here on my fucking own, right on the edge of this fucking plastic seat because if she dies I’ll have to look at her body dead. I keep pushing my bum back into the chair but it doesn’t feel right to be comfortable. The hot-water urn is bubbling in the corner next to a tray of like really horrible mismatched mugs standing in rings of washing-up foam and a box of sugar cubes that has got damp at some point at the bottom and so the cardboard has gone lumpy and torn. What’d they put them on there for anyway? Tea seems like too fucking comfortable when people next door are like dying. The lady in the corner looks too small in that great big armchair. She’s still twisting that fucking tissue. Can’t someone give her another one?

  An old guy arrived at seven. He’s parked in the corridor with the clipboard. He’s just sat there. Old. Like maybe he volunteers or something. When a visitor buzzes the door he hauls himself up. He asks for a name then reads down his list. You can see people getting impatient. They think he is doing it too slow but they have to wait and be polite, while looking over his shoulder. Almost afraid to look over his shoulder. Then while he’s still looking up and down the board, they might turn and look at me and the psycho in the Family Room. Some of them give me a bit of a smile. That’s their sympathy smile. As if to say, there’s a poor nice girl whose relative must be about to snuff it. What’s she doing there all on her own? And then they head towards the nurses’ station and their own relative hanging on to life by their fucking fingertips. Two more policemen come through the doors. Tinny shouting comes out of their radios. They look at the drug smuggler first, then at me. They check the list. They nod. They obviously think that I’ll have nothing much to say. I look like the sort of girl who has nothing much to say. They continue to the wards. To Sarah. In a coma. Did I tell you that? The nurse says she’s in a coma.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  3

  Sarah

  Day One – 8 a.m.

  Hello?

  Can you hear me now?

  ‘Morning. Are you Mum?’

  Mum? A woman’s voice answers quietly – almost whispers. It’s a thin voice.

  ‘Yes, I’m her mother. This is Brian. He’s Dad.’

  ‘How are you both? Was it a long drive you had?’

  ‘It was more the shock, wasn’t it, Brian?’

  There is a constant beeping sound and intermitte
nt clicks. Her voice feels a long way off even though she must be close.

  ‘So,’ Lucinda – she’s the Irish one, ‘can I ask you a few questions about Sarah, now that you both have your tea?’

  There’s the sound of papers being leafed through.

  ‘Did you fill out this form with Nurse Hodder outside? The ones about Sarah’s age and occupation, all that?’

  ‘Yes, nurse. We did that when we got here. Sarah’s twenty-eight. She’s always been a good girl.’

  She’s starting to cry.

  ‘She’s never been in any trouble.’

  ‘D’ya know what? I think everything is complete here. Let me go and check. So how are we doing with our talking, Mum? Have we been trying to talk to Sarah, like Nurse Hodder said? Did Nurse Hodder explain?’

  She’s shouting a bit.

  ‘Oh yes. We’ve talked to her, haven’t we, Brian? Brian! He hasn’t got his hearing aid in. He didn’t even have time to pick it up. They came, you know. In the night. The police did. He didn’t hear the door. He never hears the door. The only reason I heard it was because I’ve had this cough and I’d got up to make a cup of coffee. I find a coffee sends me off. Just a small cup and then, twenty minutes later, I’m out. Gone. The kitchen is right next to the front door, you see. It overlooks our drive.

  ‘Actually it was the blue lights that I saw first. I thought they’d come for that boy again down on the corner. He’s nothing but trouble to his parents since he left school. But the police car came all the way down to our end. Woke the whole road, I shouldn’t wonder. They’ll think we’re common criminals.

  ‘They didn’t put the siren on. They don’t put the siren on for domestic situations, that’s what the young man told us, unless there’s violence, you see. But they do put the blue light on if it’s an emergency. And this is an emergency because they’re just not sure that, well . . . you know. They said they weren’t sure.

  ‘Took us three hours to get here. In the dark. We don’t know the area. Don’t know it at all. Not even in the light, you see. So they said they would give us a lift. That was kind. I thought the government didn’t have any money. Wasn’t it kind, though? I could see Paul, you know, he’s Rachel’s husband, on the corner looking out of his lounge window from behind the new vertical louvre blinds they’ve just had fitted. I would have waved to show that we didn’t have those restraints on, you know. Handcuffs. But I was too busy looking for Brian’s glasses in my handbag.