Page 15 of The Wish
‘I’m sorry I upset you yesterday,’ he says. ‘I’d like to talk to you some more about your wish. Maybe I can make it come true for you after all.’
‘Who made you come here? Was it Kelly?’
Before Kelly can reply, Alex jumps in.
‘No. Sorry, no, it was my boss.’
‘What’d they say?’
‘In less than polite language, he said that I have to make your wish come true.’
‘Or else he’d fire you. Is that it?’
‘Something like that, yeah.’ Alex grins ruefully.
‘Do you think that’s a good reason to be here?’
‘As good a reason as any. Kind of motivates me, don’t you think?’
For the first time since Alex and Kelly had entered the room, Jesse smiles. Alex relaxes a little and smiles back.
Jesse turns to Kelly. ‘Thanks, we’ll be OK now.’
‘I’ll just stick around for a bit,’ Kelly says.
Alex turns to Kelly, trying to keep his annoyance in check.
‘Like Jesse says, I think we’ll be OK, but thanks for the vote of confidence.’
‘I think he’s going to behave, Kelly. He’s going to take my suggestions seriously, and we’re going to do this together. Aren’t we, Alex?’
Alex is surprised to see a hurt look on Kelly’s face. She returns her chair back to its place beside Amy’s bed and silently leaves the room, keeping the door wide open behind her.
‘So,’ Alex says, ‘where shall we start? We have a virtual reality suit and games at the office, I could drag one out—’
‘No, Alex, that’s not the kind of thing I want. I don’t want my family to be locked into their own suits with goggles, wandering aimlessly around and unable to engage with one another. I know you can create moving backgrounds of places and scenes for people to walk into together, and experience a moment already lived or dreamed of. I want to be part of the scenes, and I want them to be able to enter them without me. Does that make sense?’
‘Yes, absolutely. But you’re going to have to give me more background.’
‘Go and look at my pinboard. Really look at it.’
Alex walks over to the pinboard, but this time lingers over the contents. Several drawings are pinned up alongside the photos. Childish but with a clear message. A family of four building sandcastles on the beach, a woman, a young girl and a boy close together, a male figure sitting apart with a phone in his hand, a dog further away. Three stick figures playing a board game.
He points at them. ‘Who did these?’
‘My little brother Sam. He’s eight. They make me sad when I look at them, they tell me how our last holiday together as a family was for him.’
‘Wasn’t it a happy holiday?’ Alex asks.
‘It should have been, we were away from all of this,’ Jesse says, waving her arms to indicate the hospital room. ‘It was a beach holiday, and it was during term so there weren’t many people around, and we had the whole beach to ourselves. Dad took time off work, but he didn’t leave his work behind. He’d sit on the beach with us or go to a restaurant with us but most of the time he wasn’t with us, if you get what I mean.’
‘I think I do.’
Alex takes a piece of paper from the pinboard, a poem. He starts to read. The effects of the words play out on his face, which he has turned away from Jesse.
My sweet Jesse, my love, my precious one,
The days we’ve shared, the joy, the fun.
