Page 23 of Rewrite the Stars
We glance at the theatre door where doctors are operating on Matthew as if the door can give us answers but it’s just a waiting game for now.
All we know is that Matthew’s car spun off the road following a head-on collision with a people carrier – a mother and her children who were on their way home from seeing Santa. His head injuries are severe, theirs aren’t life-threatening, thank goodness, but Matthew is going to take the guilt of this to his grave should he survive it at all.
The dark place he’d been in for four years is set to get a whole lot darker, and just when he was showing some signs of hope again. Just when he had found a nice girl, just when he was making plans for next summer with his family, along I come and mention the one name that he couldn’t cope with hearing. And now he’s lying on an operating table fighting for his life.
I burst out crying and Martin, whoever the hell he is, puts his arm around me and pats my back like I’m a baby.
‘It’s my fault,’ I sniffle, conscious that I’m set to ruin his very expensive woollen coat. ‘I don’t know why but he stormed off on me without giving me any explanation. Why didn’t I just get on with things instead of going home to cause trouble? I’m always causing trouble, it seems. It’s all my stupid fault.’
Martin continues to hush me. I may have no idea who he is but I’m glad of the comfort. For a moment I pretend he is Tom who would hold me even tighter and make me feel so safe if he were here now. Why is life so bloody complicated and unfair?
I hear Emily and Kevin whisper in hushed voices as they make their way back towards us, so I pull away from Martin to greet them. They’ve only been gone less than half an hour but it feels like forever, and I’m so glad to see my big sister who links her husband as they walk towards us.
‘This is Martin,’ I say to them both. ‘Martin, this is my sister Emily and her husband, Kevin. Martin is—’
I stop, realizing of course that I’ve no idea who Martin is, only that he has a nice coat, gives good hugs and smells like a fresh Christmas in a mix of oranges and cloves.
‘I’m a friend of Matthew’s,’ says Martin, extending a hand in a firm shake that almost takes my sister’s arm out of her socket. She’s white as a ghost with worry and has barely spoken since she got here. None of us have spoken much, come to think of it, apart from hurried whispers of the type normally saved for wakes or in the pews of the church. ‘Angela from the bar rang me to tell me what happened and I came straight here.’
‘You’re a good friend,’ says Emily, clasping Martin’s hand with both of hers. ‘Thanks for coming along to support us.’
Martin looks at us in confusion. He’s probably just as distraught as we are.
‘Matthew and I were due to meet in Sullivan’s later tonight to talk about the folk club we’re starting up together,’ he sniffles, ‘yet here we are instead in hospital. God, I hope he’s going to pull through from this. I can’t understand it. He would never drive the car after a drink. Never.’
They were going to start up a folk club together? Matthew’s friend? I’m fully aware my mouth is gaping open now as I stare at Martin and try and put the pieces of the puzzle that has just formed in my head together. Martin is Matthew’s new friend, they were going to start a folk club together. Matthew told me he’d met someone special …
‘Martin, are you … are you Matthew’s new partner?’ I ask, wanting to kick myself for being so presumptuous and blind to what’s been going on in my brother’s life. Emily looks like she’s going to faint as Martin nods, glancing at us both, wondering why we are so behind the times.
‘Yes,’ he says, embarrassed now. ‘I thought he may have told you by now?’
I don’t know what to say. I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for hours as the penny drops, making a lot of things about Matthew make sense, but also making me a lot more confused. He said earlier he had big news, that he wanted to tell me first, after having told Mam and Dad, and I could kick myself now for stealing his thunder when he was just about to tell me something he’s been holding in all his life.
‘Charlotte, did you know about this?’ Emily asks me, her face twisted in sheer confusion. ‘I mean, it’s no big deal to me, it’s just a bit of a—’
‘I’d no idea,’ I whisper, ‘but it does make sense now. He asked me to come and see him. He was going to tell me this evening.’
Matthew was just about to tell me in the bar, but then he stopped and asked me about my love life, and I took the opportunity because I was on a one-track mission to tell him about Tom. I hadn’t for a second thought he wanted to see me for something as huge as this.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say to Martin, rubbing my forehead. ‘We aren’t home as much as we should be, but I think Matthew was going to tell me all about you, just before … just before this happened.’
Martin takes a deep breath and opens the buttons of his fine woollen coat, then takes it off, wrapping it over his left arm. My mother notices him at last and gets up, then falls into him, hugging him tightly while my father stands beside her staring at the ground. He then glances at Martin and nods in his direction.
‘We didn’t think this would be coming to our door, did we, Martin?’ Dad says, his chin tilted up in a way that tells me he is fighting back tears. ‘Only last night we were having dinner with the two of you and loving how happy Matthew was at last, and now … one day later. One day later.’
My father breaks down and both me and Emily race to his side, wrapping our arms around his waist like we used to when we were little girls.
So my brother’s special person is not a woman like I’d automatically assumed, but a man, and he was going to tell me today. Just as Matthew had paired me up in his mind with Mr Sensible who teaches Year Fives which drove me insane, I too had made my own assumptions about his love life without pausing to notice who my brother really wants to be with. So why the big reaction over Tom Farley? Was it because …? Oh my God.
I might even love him a little bit myself.
The words he said so lightly on that very first day I met Tom come back to me.
I slowly let go of my father and stumble down the corridor, grasping my phone in my pocket. I push through two swinging doors, briefly noticing a strange double-take from a doctor on his way past me, and I charge out through a glass-paned connection until I find a soft seat by a potted plant. I collapse down on it and hit Tom’s number.
‘Charlie, thank God,’ he says after the first ring. ‘Please tell me you’re OK? I was going to call you but didn’t want to in case I interrupted you and Matthew. So did you tell him? What did he say?’
I close my eyes tight, wanting the glare of prissy celebrities on the fronts of the magazines that share my space on the hospital sofa to piss away off.
