Afterwards Read Free Page B

back into that depth of compassion as I looked at her. I stood in the corridor and closed my eyes.
    ‘Mum?’
    I’d know her voice anywhere.
    I looked down at a girl crouched in the corridor, her arms around her knees.
    The girl I’d recognise among a thousand faces.
    My second heartbeat.
    I put my arms around her.
    ‘What are we, Mum?’
    ‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’
    It may seem strange, but I didn’t even really wonder. The fire had burnt away everything I once thought of as normal. Nothing made sense any more.
    A trolley with Jenny’s body on it was wheeled past us; surrounded by medical staff. They’d covered her up using a sheet like a tent so the fabric wouldn’t touch her burns.
    Beside me I felt her flinch.
    ‘Did you see your body?’ I asked. ‘Before they covered it, I mean.’
    I’d tried to let out the words delicately but they fell with a clump on the floor, forming a boorish, brutal question.
    ‘Yeah, I did. “Return of the living dead” kind of summarises it, doesn’t it?’
    ‘Jen, sweetheart—’
    ‘This morning I was worried about blackheads on my nose.
Blackheads
. How ridiculous is that, Mum?’
    I tried to comfort her, but she shook her head. She wanted me to ignore her tears and believe the act she was putting on. Needed me to. The one where she is still funny, lively, buoyant Jenny.
    A doctor was talking to a nurse as they passed us.
    ‘The dad’s on his way, poor bloke.’
    We hurried to find you.

4
    The large hospital atrium was crowded with press. Your TV fame from presenting the ‘Hostile Environments’ series had attracted them. ‘
Not fame, Gracie
,’ you’d corrected me once. ‘
Familiarity. Like a tin of baked beans
.’
    A smartly dressed man arrived and the people who’d been buzzing around with cameras and microphones moved towards him. I wondered if Jenny also felt vulnerable and exposed in this swarm of people, but if she did, she gave no sign of it. She’s always shared your courage.
    ‘This will just be a brief statement,’ the suited man said, looking annoyed at their presence. ‘Grace and Jennifer Covey were admitted at four fifteen this afternoon with serious injuries. They are now being treated for those injuries in our specialist units. Rowena White was also admitted suffering from minor burns and smoke inhalation. At this point we have no further information. I’d be grateful if you would now wait
outside
the hospital rather than here.’
    ‘How did the fire start?’ a journalist asked the suited man.
    ‘That’s a question for the police, not us. Now if you’ll excuse me.’
    They carried on shouting out their questions, but we were looking out of the glass wall of the atrium for you. I’d been looking for our Prius and it was Jenny who spotted you first.
    ‘He’s here.’
    You were getting out of an unfamiliar car. The BBC must have driven you in one of theirs.
    Sometimes looking at your face is like looking in the mirror – so familiar it’s become a part of me. But there was a mask of anxiety covering your usual face, making it strange. I hadn’t realised that you are nearly always smiling.
    You came into the hospital, and it was all wrong seeing you here in this hectic, frightening, sanitised place. You are in the kitchen getting a bottle of wine out of the fridge or in the garden waging a new offensive against snails, or driving out to dinner, me next to you, bemoaning traffic jams and praising sat-navs. You belong next to me on the sofa and on the right-hand side of our bed, moving slowly in the night towards mine. Even your appearances on TV in a jungle on the other side of the world are watched by me and the children on our family squashy sofa; the foreign mediated through the familiar.
    You didn’t belong here.
    Jenny ran to you and put her arms around you, but you didn’t know she was there and hurried on, half running up to the reception desk, your stride jerky with shock.
    ‘My wife and daughter are here, Grace and