“Oh, shit,” he said, and lay down again; and then: “I’m going out for a fag. I’ll be just outside the main door if there’s any news, OK?”
Charlie nodded.
He sat down on a chair in A &E for a bit, but then the pictures began to come back and he started pacing up and down, between the front door and the lift, and then when they stayed with him there as well, he went to the front door and looked out into the area where the ambulances came in, and beyond that the high lights of the car park, and thought maybe it would be better if he ran; maybe he could get away from them that way; and he ran round the car park, round and round, weaving his way in between the few cars, until he was breathless and sat down on the wall by the road, staring out at it, and wondering if he had the courage to run into a car himself now, get it over. He looked back at the hospital, up at the third floor, at the lighted window where Daisy lay, probably dying, maybe even dead, and then back across the car park and saw his father walking towards him, waving at him, calling his name. This was it then; he’d come to tell him it was over; he’d not just nearly killed her now: he’d actually killed her, and he closed his eyes and waited, waited for the words.
But, “You all right, Charlie?” his father said.
And he shook his head, and finally managed, “What… what’s happened?”
“Nothing. She’s just the same. I came to find you, make sure you were OK.”
He didn’t deserve this, this kindness; it was wrong, all wrong. Why couldn’t they be cruel, as cruel as he’d been…?
And then his father put his hand on his shoulder and something happened, inside his head, and he started to cry, quite quietly, but desperately, and his father said, “Come on, old chap; let’s go inside, see if we can find somewhere a bit nice to sit, shall we?”
They couldn’t find anywhere exactly nice, but they did find a corner near a radiator, and his father fetched two chairs from down the corridor, and they sat down, and Charlie felt a bit dizzy and leaned forward and put his head on his knees.
“Poor old boy,” his father said, and he felt his hand gently rubbing his back.
And he sat up and pushed him away, saying through his tears, “Don’t, don’t do that; don’t be so… so nice to me. Why don’t you hit me-go on, hit me, hard, please, please…”
But then somehow he was in his father’s arms, where he had never thought he would be again, and his face was buried in his chest, and he was sobbing and clutching at him desperately, as if he might go away, and then he stopped suddenly and looked up and said, “Dad, it was my fault.”
And instead of saying something stupid and trying to comfort him, as if he was some kind of a retard, his father looked back at him very steadily and said, “Yes, I know it was.”
The words hit him like a lash; they were shocking, but they helped, made him calmer, stopped his tears.
“Did… did Mum tell you?”
“Sort of. Of course, she didn’t see-she wasn’t there-but Mick told me as well what happened, and I can put two and two together. Not all your fault, Charlie; these things never are. Mummy and I both played our part, but… well, in a way, of course it was, yes. I can see why you feel so bad.”
“Not even in a way,” he said, and the relief of being able to talk about it, to let the pictures out, made him feel just slightly better. “I… I wasn’t looking after her. That was why it happened. No other reason.”
“Go on. Just hang on a minute…” He pulled his mobile out of his pocket and looked at it. “No, it’s OK. Just wanted to check that Mummy hadn’t called me. Sorry.” He pressed a key, said, “Hi. I’ve got him; he’s fine; we’re downstairs together having a chat. Any news? No, OK. Ring me if you want me.”
“I thought you weren’t allowed to use mobiles in hospitals,” said Charlie.
“You’re not.” He smiled at him suddenly, a warm, almost cheerful smile. “They’d better not tell me not to, that’s all.”
“I’m sure they won’t.”
“I’m sure too. Now… want to go on?”
He nodded, settled back on his chair. The words came slowly, had to be forced out. “She was annoying me. Making me cross. I couldn’t help it. I know I shouldn’t have felt like that, but… Anyway, Mum made me take her to the shop, and I wanted to go on the computer, and I was horrible to her, really horrible, telling her she was stupid when she went on about some kitten she wanted…” He stopped, remembering Daisy’s face as she talked about the kitten, so serious, so anxious to discuss the kitten’s possible name; she’d been all right then, fine… He gulped, swallowed some tears.
“It was on the way back. I just walked ahead, faster and faster; she was dropping things, Dad, and I wouldn’t help, wouldn’t wait. I knew she was getting upset; you know how she does.”
“Yes, I do. Go on.”
“Well, that was it. I was walking farther and farther ahead, and she called to me to wait, to help her, said the cover had come off her comic, and I still walked on, and then… then I heard it. Heard the car…
“You didn’t see it?”
“No, and I don’t know why, because it all happened really slowly…”
“Accidents do. Or seem to.”
“I just heard the brakes and I heard her scream and I turned round then and… there she was. On the road. Like a… a…” Dead person, he had been going to say, and he couldn’t, and then he started crying harder again, and hurled himself at his father, clutching at him, and saying, “I’m sorry, Dad, I’m so, so sorry,” over and over again.
Finally he stopped, looked up at him, and waited. Waited for the words, the shocked, shocking, angry words. Or worse, the stupid, rubbish words, saying he couldn’t have helped it. They didn’t come. Nothing came. Just a silence. His father was staring in front of him, and his eyes were sadder than Charlie had ever seen them; and then finally he looked at him and said, “Charlie, we all make mistakes.
Some don’t matter very much; some are terrible. Terrible mistakes that make other people very unhappy. Mistakes we’d give anything, anything at all, to change. To take back. But… we can’t. I made one, as you know. You’ve made one. Both serious mistakes that can’t be unmade. And that’s the thing. They are unchangeable. They won’t go away, whatever you do. So… the only thing to do is to live with them. Do the best you can. You can’t put them right. But you can put them behind you. Which isn’t easy, but… well, it isn’t easy.”
He was silent again; Charlie sat looking at him, his sobs quieted, his feelings oddly quieter too. After a while, Jonathan put his arm round him, pulled him closer; Charlie relaxed against him, rested his head on his chest.
And then Jonathan said, “I love you, Charlie. Very much.” And after quite a long time, Charlie heard his own voice, very quiet, almost as if it didn’t belong to him: “I love you too, Dad.”
“Oh, God. That’s so awful.”
“What?” Sylvie looked up from the TV; Abi was sitting at the table, staring at the newspaper, her face very white.
“It’s… Oh, God, how horrible. I… Sylvie, look at this. Look.”
Sylvie looked: a small paragraph, next to an item about yet another politician caught taking bribes: “Hero Doctor’s Child in Coma,” it was headed. “Daisy Gilliatt, seven-year-old daughter of top gynaecologist Jonathan Gilliatt, dubbed the hero of the M4 crash last August, has been knocked down by a car and is in intensive care. Her parents and her elder brother were at her bedside last night. No one from the hospital was available for comment. Our medical correspondent writes…”
“God,” said Sylvie, “how sad.”
“I don’t know what to do, Sylvie.”
“What do you mean? What could you do?”
“Like I said, I don’t know. But I ought to do something, don’t you think?”
“No. Like what?”
“Oh… I don’t know. Call him, maybe, send some flowers to the mother…”