Page 43 of The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up
I’m not sure how things have gone from light and playful to intense, but I know I need to cut through it somehow. To steer us back to where we were before.
‘Shall we have a look at these brochures then?’ I ask.
He looks relieved. ‘You start looking. I’ll get the tea.’
I get lost, over the next half an hour, in daydreams of white sand beaches and cloudless skies.
‘Where would you go?’ I ask Matt. ‘If you could go anywhere at all.’
‘Money no object?’
‘No object.’
‘I’d really like to do a road trip across North America. You know, Route 66, all that. New York at one end, California at the other, and a whole lot of nothing in between. I’d eat greasy burgers in roadside diners and paddle in the ocean and everyone would think I was cute because I have an English accent.’
I try to picture it. I close my eyes and see us in a car, together, me at the wheel and him leaning back in the passenger seat. It’s a convertible, and the wind’s whipping through our hair, and I have never felt more alive.
‘Wow,’ I say.
‘What?’
‘You really sold it. I closed my eyes and felt like I was there. Have you been, to the States?’
‘Yes, a couple of times. But there’s so much of it to see, you know? And it’s so vast that it has a bit of everything. Beaches and mountains and desert and cities.’
‘I hope you get to do it,’ I say.
‘Me too.’ He takes a deep breath, says that he needs to get going, asks if he should leave the brochures here with me.
‘Yes please,’ I say.
I’m not sure how to tell him that they’re the best thing he could have brought. So I say nothing, just goodbye.
Just after he leaves, Jamie comes over to check my temperature and blood pressure.
‘He’s a good one, isn’t he?’ he says, jerking his head in the direction that Matt just wandered off in.
‘Seems to be,’ I say. ‘Is he… I mean, does everyone in the hospital know him?’
‘What do you mean?’ Jamie asks, frowning as he wraps the blood pressure cuff around my arm.
‘I just wondered whether he’s volunteered here for a long time.’
Jamie stops what he’s doing and frowns at me. ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life. I thought he was a friend of yours. Or more than a friend, if I’m honest. I thought he might be your partner.’
I feel the redness creep up my neck and onto my cheeks. I laugh, but it sounds fake. Hollow.
‘He visits people,’ I say. ‘People who don’t have many visitors.’
‘Oh,’ Jamie says. ‘Well I never. And is he whisking you away on some big trip?’
‘What?’
He nods towards the brochures, then inputs some numbers on his iPad.
‘Oh, no, he just… He brought these for me to have a look through. So I could plan a trip for, you know, when I’m better.’
Jamie catches my eye and doesn’t look away. After a full minute has passed, I break the stare-off by looking down at the small pile of brochures.
