Page 13 of When I Awake

‘Actually, you’re not the only one Ryan’s being over-protective with.’

‘Do you mean Hope?’ I asked, immediately sitting up straighter, like a meerkat on alert.

Chloe nodded. ‘Things have been pretty fraught between her and Ryan lately, ever since she started seeing this new boyfriend of hers—’

‘—Dan,’ I supplied.

Chloe looked surprised. ‘She’s told you about him?’

I gave a nod, almost wishing we were back talking about Mitch and me again.

‘I spend all my time having to referee their arguments. Frankly, it’s exhausting.’ I looked a little closer and noticed what I should have seen before: the dark circles beneath her eyes, and maybe a few more silvery strands infiltrating the blonde at her temples. ‘He’s being too hard on her; setting rules and curfews that she keeps breaking. But whenever I try to talk to him about it, it ends badly. It’s the first time we’ve disagreed about anything this important since we got married.’ Chloe gave an unhappy sigh and reached for her glass, looking almost surprised to find it empty.

She and I had shared many frank conversations over the years, but by tacit agreement what went on between her and Ryan was permanently off the table. But today those barriers were starting to crumble. The friend in me wanted to kick the rubble out of the way and reach out to her; the ex-fiancée to her husband wanted to cover her ears and start singing‘la, la, la’very loudly.

‘Hope won’t confide in me,’ Chloe said sadly, ‘because she thinks I’m just going to tell her dad.’ She bit down on her lower lip, which I’d only just noticed was starting to tremble. ‘The only thing that makes it bearable is knowing that she has you to talk to, Maddie. She really needs you right now.’

*

Later that night, in the quiet of my bedroom, Chloe’s words came back to haunt me, the way I had known they surely would. She’d unwittingly stepped right into the middle of my own personal nightmare. Because more than anything I longed to be a permanent part of Hope’s future –and Mitch’s too?asked a voice in my head. But how could I when the odds were stacked so high against me?

I closed my eyes and I was back in the consultant’s office, as he tried to cushion the blow of his words. ‘I wish I could give you the guarantee you’re asking for, Maddie. But the truth is we simply don’t understand enough about your condition. Youcouldbe awake now for the next forty years,’ he’d said, starting with the best-case scenario.

‘Or?’ I had prompted, needing to hear him say the words, even though I already knew them.

‘Or it could just be weeks or months,’ he had concluded sadly. ‘There’s no way of telling for sure.’

I had hurt so many people over the years by slipping out of their lives. And while I would fight with every last ounce of my strength to stay here for my daughter, it would be madness to fall in love again. That could never happen.

CHAPTER 6

The sound pierced holes in my dream, which was a shame because it had been a particularly lovely one. I had been in a lush green meadow, enjoying a summer picnic with my mum. There was an old-fashioned hamper on a gingham cloth, and a feast of food to enjoy, but best of all the Alzheimer’s that had stolen her away was miraculously gone. We were talking about the past… and she remembered it all with perfect clarity. We were both laughing when somewhere, far in the distance, a bell began to ring. I wanted to ignore it, because even dream me realised these moments with my mum were rare and should be treasured. But she wouldn’t let me block out the sound. ‘Maddie, answer the phone,’ she commanded.

My hand emerged from beneath the duvet and groped blindly on my bedside cabinet for the source of the sound. I knocked my mobile to the floor and lost a few precious seconds having to haul it back up by its charger lead. With eyes still unfocussed, I squinted at the screen, noting that it was almost one o’clock in the morning. I jabbed frantically at the button to accept the call. It would be Dad, phoning to give me the news I had been dreading every single day since my visit to the care home.

My heart was pounding so loudly I couldn’t even recognise his voice to begin with. ‘Hello,’ I said, trying to pull myself together. I could hear what sounded like sobs on the other end of the line.Oh, Daddy, no, I thought, my heart already breaking.

But it wasn’t my father. The voice was too high, and also far, far too young.

‘Hello. Who is this?’ I asked, my question urgent with an entirely different fear. Please be a prank call, I silently prayed; be some drunken idiot who’d punched in a load of random numbers and come up with mine. But, of course, it wasn’t.

‘M… m… Maddie.’

‘Hope?’ I said, my voice surfing on a rush of adrenaline. ‘Is that you?’

A dull thud sounded in the background. It was followed swiftly by the unmistakable sound of breaking glass, and a lot of shouting. What the hell was going on?

‘Hope, what’s wrong? Where are you?’

The shouting in the background escalated. Wherever she was calling from, it definitely wasn’t her own home. My question was answered with a succession of hitching sobs, interspersed with the odd word or two thrown in for me to decipher. It was like playing a very dangerous guessing game.

‘I… I’m in a room… a bathroom. I’ve been sick,’ she added miserably.

‘Are you ill?’ I guessed, already knowing I was on the wrong track. There was a heavy pulse of music in the background and suddenly all the pieces fell into place.

‘Are you at a party?’ I asked, already groping in the dark for my jeans. ‘Who are you there with?’

‘Dan. But he’s downstairs now with some mates who I don’t know. They’re all much older and they’ve been drinking and… and taking stuff, and I got really scared. I’ve locked myself in the bathroom.’

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