You Can't Get Them Back (a Psychological Mystery & Suspense Thriller)

First published 2014 by Thomas Wymark

This is a work of fiction. All the characters, places and events portrayed are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

This book is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the reader. It is the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, copied, or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes without prior written permission.

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YOU CAN’T GET THEM BACK

By Thomas Wymark

01

Ray walked through the kitchen doorway about twenty seconds after the bowl smashed against the back wall. He may have even heard it smash.

I looked at him. His more or less permanent smile smiled at me and I scowled back.

The thing we always looked out for first with Ray was whether he was drunk or not, even this early in the fucking morning. It was easy enough to tell. He walked like a duck when he was sober, and a duck with back issues when he was pissed, his feet flapped down in front of him, slapping each footstep against the floor, his back twitched.

At one time, apparently, he had been a major in the army, and a member of MENSA. But then he gave it all up for drink. That was his life now. That and washing pots and pans as a hotel kitchen porter.

I liked Ray, and I think he liked me too. That’s why I knew I’d get away with the broken bowls and plates. Fuck early was no good for me. Asking me to do a breakfast shift was like asking the devil to hold a Sunday school picnic, it was never going to have a happy ending.

He looked at the broken crockery at the base of the far wall, took in the fragments scattered across various sections of the floor.

‘Busy morning?’ he said.

‘They should never put me on breakfast,’ I said. ‘Everything just pisses me off.’

‘How many did you throw?’ he said.

‘Not enough,’ I said. ‘Fucking wankers.’

‘Do you mean the guests or the waiting staff?’

‘Every fucker,’ I said.

Ray hated swearing, I think that’s why we did it so much when he was around. We all liked to see how far we could push that smile of his.

‘I’ll clear it up before Chef gets in,’ he said.

I kicked the side of the metal bain-marie, kicked it again and stomped outside for a cigarette. If any of the waiting staff were out there I was pretty sure I would punch them. If it was Salvi, the restaurant manager, I would probably kill him.

Fuck early mornings pissed me off. As a chef, the only good thing about doing breakfast was that I wouldn’t have to work evening service, but that was it. Everything else was a pisser.

I had arrived late. Getting anywhere for 5:45am was always going to require a miracle. As soon as I walked in through the back entrance to the hotel kitchen I could see the lights were already on. The smell of bacon prickled my nose.

Salvi stood over a huge pot.

‘I have started the scrambled eggs,’ he said. ‘There is bacon under the grill. We have three orders already. Hurry the fuck up.’

Salvi was about a foot shorter than me and about twenty years older. A little Italian fucker who was always polite and in control. That set me off straight away.

‘Get out of the fucking kitchen, Salvi,’ I said. ‘I had plenty of time to get this shit done. I don’t come into your fucking restaurant and start poncing about the place, so piss off.’

He smiled at me. ‘The first order needs to go as soon as possible, OK?’

He walked out of the kitchen and back round to his side of the hotplate. I kicked the door shut behind him.

My breakfast shift progressed downhill from there, and didn’t really pick up again, despite the brief tension release of throwing crockery against a wall, until Ray walked in at 8:30am.

And even then not much.

By the time the head chef arrived at about quarter to nine, the broken crockery was gone and my filthy mood was coming cleaner.

‘Stuart, you go off now,’ he said. ‘Paul is ill today, he rang me at home. I need you in tonight.’

‘For fuck sake, Chef,’ I said. ‘Emma’s about to give birth any minute, how busy are we tonight, can’t someone else cover?’

‘You’re in,’ he said. ‘So fuck off home now and tell the baby to either come out before tonight, or to hold on until Paul’s better.’

Over his shoulder I saw Ray wincing, as though he expected more crockery to come his way.

‘Yes, Chef!’ I said.

All the way home I threw the foulest looks I could to anyone stupid enough to make eye contact. If any of them wanted to make something of it I would happily rip their fucking heads from their bodies.

When I got home, Emma and Michael were out. Where the hell had they gone at that time of day? I took a shower, made a coffee and sat down to sulk.

I must have fallen asleep because Michael’s crying woke me up.

‘What are you doing home?’ Emma said. ‘I thought you were on until half two?’

She was pushing through the door, pushchair first, with Michael screaming blue murder to no one in particular.

‘Paul’s ill,’ I said. ‘They want me in tonight, so I’m off now. Where were you two?’

She looked red in the face, as though she’d been running somewhere.

‘Just out,’ she said. ‘Nowhere. Just trying to give Michael something else to think about other than these four walls.’

It sounded like a dig, and I wasn’t in the mood for that.

She helped Michael out of the pushchair.

‘So where did you go?’ I said.

‘Nowhere, Stuart, I just told you. What is the matter with you? Why don’t you ever listen?’

‘I think I need to sleep,’ I said. ‘Are you staying home now?’

If I had been more awake I wouldn’t have said it. It obviously came at the wrong moment.

‘Are you serious?’ she said. ‘I’m about to give birth, Stuart, I’ve just had to take Michael out because he’s been awake for at least as long as you have, possibly longer, and now I’m back — you’re tired and want to go to sleep!’

‘I’ve had a shit morning, that’s all,’ I said. ‘The chef was a fucker, so was Salvi. I only need an hour or so.’

She slammed Michael’s pushchair shut and shoved it against the wall. It made Michael jump. At least it stopped his crying.

‘You do whatever the fuck you want, Stuart,’ she said. ‘But I’m going out and leaving Michael here. Do you think you can cope with looking after your son for a little while, or are you too tired for that?’

She yanked the front door open so hard that the doorknob dented the hall wall as it hit. Again. She put one hand on her nearly nine month lump and gave me a look that dared me to say something. I didn’t rise to it. She pulled the door shut more gently than she had opened it and I heard her footsteps clank along the corridor outside our flat.

Michael looked at me and scrunched up his face. Two years old, and he already had me wrapped around his finger, just like his mother.

02

We’d kind of made it up a bit by the time I had to go in for the evening shift at half four. I had looked after Michael and he’d fallen asleep on my chest, which meant I’d shut my eyes for twenty minutes or so too. That was enough to put me in a slightly better mood.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said when Emma came back home.

‘Me too,’ she said.

Sorry about her or sorry about me? She still sounded frosty.

‘I must have got out of bed the wrong side,’ I said. ‘Turned me from mild-mannered-chef into super-arsehole-chef.’

‘How’s Michael been?’ she said.

‘Lovely. Fell asleep for a while.’

‘My back aches, Stuart, I need to lie down for a while. I’ve felt her kicking. I think the stress has filtered through to her.’

‘Sorry,’ I said again.

‘I’ll be glad when this is over,’ she said.

I was hoping she meant the pregnancy.

‘Stuart!’

‘Yes, Chef?’

‘Phone call — in my office.’

‘Yes, Chef.’

I put the knife on the chopping board, wiped the blood from my hands and made my way through the kitchen to Chef’s office.

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘Stuart, it’s me.’

‘Hi Lucy,’ I said. ‘Everything OK?’

‘She’s gone into labour, Stu, I’ve got little Michael here with me, you need to get yourself to the hospital — sharpish.’

Shit! She was early, only a couple of weeks, but still early. Two years earlier Michael had gone full-term.

‘I’ll get off now,’ I said. ‘Is she OK?’

‘She’s fine, Stuart, you just need to get there.’

I got a cab, I couldn’t afford a car. Chef was a bit of a miserable git about it.

‘Just get back as soon as you can, yes? This is a busy time.’

‘I’ll see you soon, Chef.’

It was always a busy time at The Edwardian Hotel, always. The Head Chef was a Belgian who spoke German, and didn’t smile in any language. I hadn’t been working there when Michael was born. I hadn’t been working anywhere, I was between jobs. Emma’s mum, Lucy, helped us out a lot then. My parents weren’t on the scene. They weren’t dead, they just didn’t approve of me or Emma. They didn’t really approve of anything.

I could understand their disapproval of me, I had been an ongoing big disappointment to them, but Emma had been nothing but adorable. Perhaps they saw some irreparable flaw in her because she had chosen to be with me. I could understand that myself.

I wondered if it was because we’d had Michael before getting married, that would explain why they were funny about Michael as well, but even at our wedding they were off.

I’d more of less given up on trying with them anymore, life was too short.

The cab got me to the hospital by about 7:15pm. I smelled my hands, they still stank of the kitchen. I always liked to have a shower after work, to wash away the garlic and onion smells, the oil and sweat. The raw meat. I didn’t want to smell disgusting to Emma, or our new baby when she arrived.

‘You cut yourself again, mate?’ the taxi driver said.

‘Sorry?’

‘I’ve taken you before, when you cut yourself.’

‘My wife’s having a baby,’ I said.

‘Fuck me. I bet you wish you had cut yourself.’

The streets of Southampton were darkening as the summer evening drew in. There were few people out and about. The rain had started coming down hard. The wettest June for twenty years, apparently, but the night was too hot. A bit of rain wasn’t going to wash away the smell of the kitchen, it would just look like I was still sweating.

The taxi driver pulled up at the hospital entrance, I paid him and ran in.

Both the hospital lifts had black and yellow ribbon across the doors, as though there had been some sort of nuclear fallout. I remembered where I needed to go from when Michael had arrived. I checked the sign on the wall, just in case. Maternity, fourth floor. I pushed open the door to the stairs and started on up.

Why they had to have maternity up on the fourth floor was beyond me. Maybe they thought the walk would bring the mothers on a bit sooner, get them out of the hospital quicker. Whatever, it was a pain in the arse.

It had been almost an hour since the call in Chef’s office. Could babies come that quickly? I thought they could. Emma would be livid if I missed it.

I took a deep breath and pumped my legs up the stairs. My footsteps echoed off the walls and bounced up and down the entire stairwell. As I ran up, I could hear someone else running down.

Even if I had had a shower, I would probably have needed another one after the stairs. By the time I reached the second floor I was already out of breath and the humidity that had hit me outside was like a hot air hammer in the stairwell.

The footsteps thundering down the stairs grew louder. I looked up between the gap in the stairwell. I could see a hand sliding down the metal banister. A man’s hand. He was travelling fast, faster than me, I supposed because he was coming down and I was going up.

I moved away from the banister to give him room. His footsteps surpassed mine in echoes. I was amazed he hadn’t fallen, the speed he was going.

I was one flight below him. I heard his breathing. It was harder than mine, and I was going up. He swept around the corner, gripping the banister to stop from flying into the stairwell wall. I moved over further, to give him more room.

I was almost at the top of the flight when our eyes met.

It’s amazing how much we take in, and how quickly. He was my age, 26, or maybe a year younger; dark eyes and longish hair. He had a tooth missing, right at the front of his mouth, from the top row.

He didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down, but I could see something like recognition in his eyes. As I moved to the side, he moved with me, coming towards me. He raised his hands, as though to push me out of the way, and something caught my eye. He was holding something.

But then he hit me, full on. His head crashed against mine and I felt myself spin on the stairs. My foot slipped off the step and I was falling through the air. Something pressed hard against my back. His hand? It felt as though he was helping me through the fall, pushing with me to make sure I didn’t stop.

I tried forcing my hands out to break the fall, but something knocked them back down again. I had flown the whole flight of stairs and had nowhere else to go. My head smashed against the floor and then slammed into something else.

That must have been when I went to sleep.

03

Sleeping was one of those things I was never particularly good at.

If I went to bed early, I’d wake in the middle of the night, some song or other going through my head on an endless loop, and unbearably hot no matter what the time of year.

If I went to bed late, which as a chef I usually did, I would still wake up in the middle of the night.

If I got pissed, I would wake in the middle of the night to have a pee.

All of which was fine, except that of course I eventually would fall asleep again and then usually wake up late. I think that’s why Chef hated me so much. I was unreliable and a bit useless. I couldn’t retain information, not like other people seemed to be able to. If Chef asked me to prepare some sweet or something, or butcher some meat we had delivered, I would wait until none of the other chefs were looking, and quickly check my book to make sure I did it properly.

Not with everything, of course. I wasn’t a complete imbecile, but I think it was because I wasn’t really bothered about being a chef. I’d fallen into it, rather than had a consuming desire for it.

‘You need a trade, Stuart,’ my mother had said, in the days when we actually spoke to one another.

‘Someone like you should always have something to fall back on.’

And from nowhere she found me a job working in a cafe and takeaway. From there I ended up going to college to train, and from there to working in places like The Edwardian Hotel.

I knew why they were disappointed in me. It was because of Anthony. He had forged the path before me. He had done really well at school, was popular with everyone, great at sport, tall and well spoken. I used to wonder if he really was my brother or just someone they’d found at a finishing school.

Posh Anthony was eight years older than me. In fact, I think they had wanted to stop with just him, but somehow I slipped through the net eight years later.

I was shit at school. I wasn’t popular, hated sports and spoke like the back end of a bus (apparently).

‘Is that what they teach you at that school of yours?’ Mother said. ‘Your brother never spoke like that.’

Which made me speak like it even more. In the months leading up to my leaving home I sounded like I had been born and bred in the East End of London, rather than the outskirts of Lowestoft.

It was more or less a given that I would leave home at an earlier age than Anthony had, he had been almost twenty.

I could see the relief in my mother’s eyes when I told them I was going, aged seventeen. But by the time it came to leave, she’d twisted it in her head so that I was leaving just to spite her.

‘After all we’ve done for you. All the opportunities you’ve had. And this is the thanks we get.’

I came back that Christmas, when they were all out, and left presents on the doorstep. I found out later that she threw them all away, unopened.

‘Once you’ve gone, you’ve gone,’ Anthony said on the phone. ‘You mustn’t be too hard on them, Stu. They had high hopes for you, that’s all. They gave us a good childhood, you know, you just didn’t make the best of things, that’s all.’

Fuck you, posh Anthony.

Being a chef in a hotel was better than being a chef in a restaurant. Very often it gave you somewhere to live, as well as giving you a job. Of course they screwed you out of a huge chunk of wages for the privilege and then stuck you in the shittiest part of the hotel that would never be shown to guests in a million years.

But it’s how I met Emma. She didn’t work in the hotel, she worked at a nightclub, behind the bar.

Working until the hotel restaurant shut meant late nights most nights. And wind-down time had to come sometime, so we all made our way to the nearest nightclub to smoke and drink ourselves stupid.

She worked in a place called Subterfuge. Very dark, very smoky and full of people dressed in black. Most of the songs they played were iffy, but they finished every night with The Passenger by Iggy Pop, and they sold alcohol at the right time of night for us. And it was only a short stumble from the hotel.

Emma didn’t look like the sort of person that would have gone to Subterfuge if she hadn’t worked there. Just as I wouldn’t have gone there if they hadn’t sold booze (until Emma started working there of course).

She made my chest go funny, like something had expanded inside me and I couldn’t breath so easily anymore. She had a smile to die for and a body to kill for.

I had no idea why she agreed to go out with me, but she did.

‘Why not?’ she said. ‘It’ll be good.’

And I think that’s another thing I liked about her, her willingness to try something new. That’s probably why she ended up working at Subterfuge, rather than a more normal club, and going out with me, rather than a more normal bloke.

Neither of our jobs paid well and cash-in-hand pretty much meant we were out of pocket well before the week was up. I sneaked her into my room at the hotel, until I got caught.

Then her dad died and left her a bit of money, so we found somewhere to rent together. We were both nearly twenty three years old and I had never felt so comfortable with anyone in my life.

Michael came along fairly quickly, and it felt right.

‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’ she said. ‘Having a baby is a big step.’

‘Of course I’m ready. I was a baby myself once.’

‘Stuart, this is important.’

‘I’m ready,’ I said.

I thought I was, but a baby is a bit out there. Knocked me off kilter. Emma was into him right away, right from the word go, but I struggled. I did my fair share of nappies and dressing him and so on, but I found I just didn’t get him. Didn’t understand him. I think it was because he didn’t communicate back to me, just made noises or cried.

I was thankful that Emma understood him, otherwise we would have been in trouble.

Once he started acting a little bit more like a human being I found it easier to relate to him.

‘Once he starts talking I’ll be fine,’ I said.

‘You should be fine anyway,’ Emma said.

‘I am. It’s just that then I’ll be more fine.’

By the time I got the phone call at the hotel to say that Emma had gone to the hospital to have child number two, Michael was a fairly talkative little guy, as long as you were happy with the same dozen or so words over and over again.

We were looking forward to him having a sister to play with.

‘Do you want to know the sex?’ the nurse had said at the scan.

We had decided beforehand that we did.

‘She’s a little girl.’

She was Michael’s sister, Megan.

04

They say everyone dreams, but not everyone can remember them. It’s the brain’s way of making sense of what’s happened in real life.

I wasn’t sure if that was right or not. Some of the dreams I had were so far away from anything I did or saw in real life that it didn’t seem normal for my brain to be even seeing those things, let alone trying to make sense of them.

But in this sleep I dreamed a lot. The sleep that came after I flew down the stairs, helped by the angel from behind. He had rested his hand on my back, making sure my trajectory was even, making sure I landed with my head where I needed to land. So I could have this sleep.

Some of the dreams were real, really were real. And in some I knew I was dreaming. Those were the best ones. I made things happen, to a certain extent. I floated along the ground, glided just above the surface of the earth. I talked to Michael and he talked back. I made love to Emma, then fell asleep, then woke up and made love again. But they were all dreams.

Other things happened in my head too. Lightning storms jolted me with electric shocks, like pin pricks stabbing into my brain cells then trickling all over my body. Even in my sleep I could feel them.

Bright lights flashed behind my eyes, incessant flashes, like a lighthouse through the night. And low rumbling thunder in pitch black skies, rolling over my mind, pressing down on it, squeezing everything out of it.

Before I fell down the stairs I’d had fairly regular dream patterns. If I woke in the middle of the night I would get the best dreams after falling asleep again. If I slept through, I would usually recall some of my dreams later in the day. But sometimes not at all.

I didn’t think I had much in my life that needed sorting through anyway, and I figured that was why my dreams were occupied with more random things. If I’d had worries or problems, other than money and my job, then my dreams would no doubt have served a purpose, sorting and sifting. But as it was, my mind was pretty clear.

‘It’s a blank canvass, Stu,’ Emma said. ‘It must be great to have a mind as empty as yours.’

She dreamed about cooking broccoli or catching the bus into town.

‘At least it takes me to exciting places,’ I said. ‘Let’s me do amazing things.’

‘That’s supposed to be what life is for,’ she said. ‘Stop dreaming it, and start living it.’

Which was all well and good, but even with my blank canvass of a brain I knew that it wasn’t possible for me to fly along the ground, have a meaningful conversation with Michael, or make love more than once before falling asleep.

‘We need to do something with our lives, Stuart. We can’t keep doing this forever. You’re never going to make any real money doing what you do, and I can’t do much with a young one here and another on the way.’

You need to have something to fall back on.

‘What do you suggest?’ I said. ‘A mathematician?’

‘Don’t be an arse, Stuart. You just need to find something with better pay and better hours than that bloody hotel.’

I thought I heard Emma calling to me, while I was asleep. One of those awful moments where you realise you’ve overslept and someone other than the alarm clock is having to wake you up. But it must have been just another dream, because it moved on and I didn’t have to wake up at all.

If it was true that the brain makes sense of things while you dream, then I should have dreamed more about flying down the stairs, but I don’t think I did. Other than an inner knowledge that I was helped by someone behind me, and that I flew the whole flight of stairs, I didn’t dream about it at all. Not that I can remember.

There were periods of sleep that were uncomfortably cold, and some that were too hot. I dreamed about peeing in odd places, being desperate to go, but not being able to find anywhere private enough, so I’d end up pissing in the corner of a room, or in a litter bin, or on a table when no one was looking. I peed while sitting down on a bus, just let it come out of me, through my trousers into the seat. I heard it dripping on the floor and pretended to read a book, hoping that no one would realise it was me.

Odd dreams. Some nasty, some great, but lots of them. Almost like a lifetime of dreams in one sleep. And I was asleep. Despite all the things I thought I heard and saw, all the things I thought I had been aware of, I was actually in the deepest sleep of my life.

My brain didn’t sift or sort, it didn’t make sense or bring clarity. While I slept, my brain did nothing but feed me random entertainment of its own choosing. And while it did that, reality changed.

The world shifted and changed around me, and my brain did nothing to help.

It did nothing to inform me for the whole time I was asleep. It blocked the shuddering, real world out by running its own set of programs for me, so that I couldn’t know what was happening in real life.

The whole time I was asleep.

05

Waking up happened over a period of time, just as being asleep had. But it was time that I was aware of.

A door slammed shut. That was the first thing I knew I heard. Then voices, muffled and far off, but they were real. Then sleep again.

Later, perhaps the same day, maybe a few days had gone, I heard someone close to me. A man, speaking with an accent in a soft voice. He rested his hand on my forehead, then over my eyes, then more sleep.

Later still, both my eyes opened all on their own. Something brushed against my arm and I could smell the hospital.

My room was bright, I had to squint my newly opened eyes for a while, and a humming noise came from somewhere beside me. I tried to move my head, but couldn’t, something soft was pressing either side of my neck. Soft but restrictive.

A nurse walked into the room, I watched her through my squinty eyes, but I didn’t say anything, didn’t even try to speak, just watched. She looked around the room then left.

I had no idea how long I had been there, but my body felt like it belonged to someone else. I wondered if it was a result of falling down the stairs and banging my head.

Had I missed the birth yet? Emma would go mad if I had, even though I felt I had a pretty good excuse. But I didn’t want to have missed it. Maybe I’d only been unconscious for a few hours, maybe time had felt odd and I had woken up quicker than I thought, over minutes, rather than hours or days.

The nurse left the room and I was left with the humming machine next to me.

A tube stuck out from my nostrils, it felt like it was going right down into my throat. Other tubes and wires seemed to be stuck all over me. Maybe I had been hurt more badly than I’d thought.

I wanted to see Emma, wanted to see my baby girl being born. I tried moving my head again but only succeeded in making some of the plastic tubes and wires wobble.

Something really wasn’t right with my body, it felt rigid and worn out. My bones and joints all felt welded together, like they needed oiling to get working again.

The walls of the room were bare. No pictures, no hospital notices, nothing. I thought I could sense daylight as well as the powerful electric lights, but I couldn’t see where the window was.

I wondered if anyone had let Emma know that I was here, that I was injured. Would they have known who I was. Probably the kitchen-stink would have given me away to Emma, but not necessarily to anyone else.

If they didn’t know who I was, Emma might be worried, especially if her mum had told her I was on my way. And what about Michael, what if I really had been here for hours, or even days?

The door opened and the same nurse walked back in. This time she came over to the bed and stood with her back to me, looking at something to my left. The humming machine I think.

I heard her clicking a few buttons and making a few noises to herself, like she didn’t understand something. Then her uniform rustled and she turned her face to me.

Her hair looked kind of weird, pretty but unusual.

She looked into my eyes, really studied them, almost as though she was trying to see my brain through them. I opened my mouth to speak to her, but my voice wasn’t working.

‘Are you awake, Stuart?’ she said. ‘Can you hear me?’

I blinked my eyes and tried to nod but my head still wouldn’t move. I watched her face go bright red and felt her breathing fast on my face.

‘Oh my God,’ she said.

She touched my hand and turned towards the door, paused for a moment, looked back at my face, then ran out of the room.

I had obviously sparked something off in her. Perhaps she was going to let Emma know that I was here and awake.

The door swung open and several men and women walked in. I assumed that some were doctors and some nurses.

‘Mr Burton, can you hear me?’ a doctor said.

I blinked again as that seemed to have worked with the nurse.

This caused a stir, some of them looked pleased, some looked decidedly pissed off. I hoped I hadn’t been a shit patient.

I opened my mouth again, tried to say Emma, but still nothing came out. One of the doctors said something to one of the nurses and she left the room. He came to me and looked into my eyes, just as the nurse had done.

‘How do you feel, Stuart?’ he said. ‘Can you talk?’

I think I needed a drink of water or something because getting my voice to work was proving difficult. I blinked my eyes again and tried jerking my head about.

‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘Keep still. We’re getting you a drink, something to help your voice. Just be patient.’

A low mutter of voices filtered across the room. Barely audible over the hum of the machine. Then the voices stopped.

The nurse came back in carrying a tray with a jug of water and a plastic glass. Rather than sit me up to drink it, she filled a sort of syphon tube and dripped the water into my mouth.

I followed it down my throat, running over the dry skin, opening my vocal cords, cooling the heat I hadn’t noticed was there.

It was odd being stared at by these people. Occasionally one of them said something to the person next to them and they would both nod at me, or shake their heads, but mostly everyone just stared.

It seemed to take hours to drink just half the cup of water, but I guess it must have been only minutes. No one else left the room, in fact a few more people came in to stare at me.

Perhaps my brain was showing out of the top of my skull, or maybe I had been so badly disfigured that I was now something to look at. I hoped they could put me right before Emma saw me. I didn’t want to frighten Michael.

I tried speaking again.

‘Emm,’ I said. ‘Emm.’

The doctor nodded at the water nurse and she dripped more water into my mouth. This was the oil I needed. If it was taking this long to get my voice working, how long would it take for the rest of me?’

‘Emma,’ I said.

The nurse shook her head.

‘My name is Sian,’ she said. ‘And this is Doctor Akari.’

I flicked my eyes between them both then blinked them, trying to make them see I was shaking my head. I didn’t want to know their names, I wanted to know how Emma was, whether she’d had our baby yet.

‘Emma,’ I said. ‘Baby.’

The nurse seemed to understand but didn’t answer. Instead she looked at the doctor, then back at everyone else in the room. They all muttered again.

‘You need to rest, Stuart,’ she said. She turned to the doctor. I think she wanted him to say something, but he just shook his head