Watch Over Me (25 page)

‘Oh, wow, let me see …’ I heard him saying as I walked on, going further back into the room.

‘That’s great, Maisie, well done …’

Their voices melted away as the room started spinning around me. I blinked, once, twice. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

The cradle.

My
cradle.

The wrought-iron cradle, the one that Tom had brought home that day, when my world was still in one piece. The one he’d insisted we put in the nursery, in spite of my fear. I could hear his voice again: ‘It was made somewhere in the Highlands …’

I couldn’t breathe and I felt faint, so I ran out, I ran out blindly, into the milky light and the frozen air, I slipped in the snow and I didn’t see the car driving up St Colman’s Way.

‘She came out of nowhere!’

‘Eilidh? Eilidh!’

‘Oh God, oh God …’

Voices all around me.

I could see the sky.

‘Eilidh, my love …’

Shona?

The blonde woman leaned over me and put her hand on my forehead and I closed my eyes.

‘Shona …’ I murmured and then I was under water, blind and deaf and swirling down, down, into nothingness.

I don’t understand. One minute Maisie and I were looking at her jotter and Eilidh was wandering about with a smile on her face, looking at my work – I was watching her out of the corner of my eye, hoping that she’d like what she saw – and the next thing I knew, Eilidh ran out as if she’d seen a ghost.

Then that awful, awful sound, the sickening thud of a body being hit and thrown and floored, Eilidh’s body, my Eilidh’s. I said to Maisie to stay there, not to move, to sit at Daddy’s desk. She heard the tone of my voice and sat down at once, frozen.

Eilidh was lying in the middle of the road. She looked at me with empty eyes, she whispered: ‘Shona …’ and I didn’t know what to say. I could hear myself panting in fear and shock. I wanted to cradle her on my lap but in a moment of lucidity, I thought, don’t move her, and I forced myself to leave her there, lying on the cold, hard asphalt in the muddy snow. I held her hand and I was mute, the words got stuck in my throat and suffocated me. The words were ‘I love you’ but I couldn’t speak them.

Behind me, the driver of the car was calling 999. She was distraught and kept saying, ‘She came out of nowhere …’

The ambulance came. By then, my neighbour Morag had come out, hearing the commotion, and I’d managed to tell her that Maisie was in the workshop, to look after her for a bit while I went with Eilidh. And we were away, sirens blasting, breaking the icy air all around us, shocking Glen Avich out of its cottages and shops, people watching from the windows wondering, who is it, what happened?

When we got to the hospital, she was taken away and I couldn’t see her again for a long time. They told me to go home, that I wasn’t family, to go home to my daughter. I said no.

I phoned Peggy and listened to her crying.

I couldn’t remember Morag’s phone number, so I phoned my house and sure enough, Morag had taken Maisie home, Maisie had told her where I kept a spare set of keys, in the rosemary bush beside the door. She said not to worry about a thing, that Maisie was a bit shaken up but ok, she’d give her dinner and sit in my house until I’d come back.

I phoned Shona, she said she’d come down at once.

I got a call on my mobile from an unknown number. It was Eilidh’s mum. Peggy must have phoned her.

I kept saying to her I didn’t know how she was, they hadn’t told me anything, they had just whisked her away, but she wouldn’t listen, how did I not know anything, I was there, I should ask, I should
do something
.

‘We’re coming up,’ she said and hung up.

I sat for hours holding an untouched cup of coffee. It’d started snowing again. I kept staring at the lamppost in front of the window, at the hypnotic dancing of the snowflakes in the orange light, surrounded by darkness.

Then a doctor came out and said Eilidh had had to have an operation, that it was touch and go. Was I next of kin? Had I let her family know?

Her words blurred and my heart stopped beating, I stopped breathing, I existed in suspended reality as if it was me lying in intensive care, and I thought, please, God, please, please, please, save her.

So that’s what they were trying to tell me, the signs I’ve been feeling for a while. That’s what I’ve felt coming, like the wind that announces the storm, when the air is full of electricity and you don’t know where the lighting will strike.

I had tried to keep an eye on everyone, all my people here in Glen Avich, fearing it’d be one of them. It turned out to be Eilidh.

I was floating over the loch, in that stony corner where I love to be, when I felt this pulling inside, this terrible force wrangling me, taking me apart and then putting me together again. Human beings are solitary, independent entities whose bodies stand alone; ghosts are part of everything. I stood still for a bit, shaken, then I heard Jamie calling and I took myself over to him and I saw Eilidh lying in the street.

I knew she was alive or I would have seen her ghost beside her, stunned and shocked at being separated from the body. I knelt beside her and put my hand on her forehead.

Her eyes were open and they met mine. For a second, she could see me. I wasn’t that surprised, I know that sometimes we can be seen, especially by young children. Maisie sees me sometimes and sometimes I can even speak to her.

We looked at each other for a moment as I kept my hand on her, trying to give her a bit of my energy, to keep her strong. Then she closed her eyes and lost consciousness.

It was a huge effort to go to the hospital and sit with them all. Ghosts are bound to the place where they lived or where they died, and to go somewhere else takes a great deal of energy and concentration. It’s nearly impossible.

I sat with Jamie, my heart wrenched with fear and compassion. This peace we feel when we die, this sense of detachment and serenity, never really leaves us – but we can still feel worry and pain and fear, though somehow more softly than when we were alive, as if the edge had been taken off.

After a while, Eilidh’s ghost appeared. Floating against the far wall, the top of her head touching the ceiling. She looked terrified. I opened my mouth to speak and tried to reach her but I didn’t make it in time because as suddenly as she had come, she disappeared.

Her body was strong, it was fighting hard to recover, to keep the soul with it. She wanted to live.

I decided to go and see Maisie, so I took myself to her room, where she was lying in bed, her magic lantern making lovely dancing shapes on the walls and ceiling.

I sat on her bed and touched her forehead, just as I’d done with Eilidh. She was in deep sleep and didn’t stir. I was exhausted from the journey away from Glen Avich and lost myself in the dancing lights for a bit, watching her sleeping, until I heard the keys in the door. Jamie was back.

He came in, pale, worn out. Morag was dozing on the sofa, bless her, and woke up with a startle.

‘Sorry, Morag, didn’t mean to wake you.’

‘Not at all, don’t be silly, I was just resting my eyes.’

‘Maisie?’

‘Sleeping like an angel, Jamie, no need to worry about her, she’s fine. Any news?’

‘No news. She’s still asleep.’

‘Poor lamb. Come here, take your jacket off …’

Morag is a mother of four and a grandmother of ten, she knows how to look after someone who’s had a shock. In the space of ten minutes, she had Jamie on the sofa, a cup of tea in one hand, some fragrant toast in the other, and the fire revived.

‘Maybe you could try and sleep for a bit … It’s five in the morning, you can still get a couple of hours …’

‘I’m not sure I can. I’ll try.’

With Morag gone and Jamie on his way up the stairs, I couldn’t resist. I had to tell him he wasn’t alone.

I flickered the curtains, our secret sign. I knew he’d notice it.

And he did. He stopped for a moment, looked across the room in a daze and then went upstairs to try and get some sleep.

I dived into the sea of souls, into the sea of consciousness that floats in mine, until I found Eilidh’s and I stayed with her, in her sleep, telling her stories like you’d do with a wee girl, telling her of when Jamie and Shona were children and all the things we used to do, soothing her frightened mind until I felt her thoughts calming down, unknotting, and settling in a sleep that wasn’t death.

I watched them sitting in a green room with posters on the walls and plastic chairs. I watched them from the ceiling because somehow, that’s where I was.

Jamie, white as a sheet, looking distraught … my mum and dad, crying … to see my dad crying, it was just … impossible. Shona was there too, a bit further from the others, sitting in a corner on her own. She looked very slim, no baby bump there, where’s the baby? I was confused, my thoughts were all jumbled up.

Nobody could see me.

I was floating as if I had no body – actually that’s the way it was,
I had no body
. Oh God, I thought. I’m dead. I really am dead.

What a shame. I’m only thirty-five, I thought in despair. I haven’t done anything yet. I wasted so many years crying over what I didn’t have, and now I’m dead and I can’t change it.

One more chance, please give me one more chance, I cried inside, making no sound.

A man dressed in green walked in, I knew he was a doctor. He spoke to them and my mum hid her face in my dad’s chest and cried. My dad’s face looked all twisted and horrible, like he was being tortured. Jamie wasn’t moving, he looked pale and distant. I knew they were grieving for me. I’m so sorry, so sorry, I tried to say over and over again. I’m so sorry for putting them through this. If only I hadn’t run out, into the road … if only I hadn’t slipped in the snow … if only I’d said to Maisie, no, let’s wait for your daddy to come home … if only that cradle had been sold, if only that cradle had never been made, if only my cradle had been filled …

One more chance, one more chance.

Shona raised her head, she looked at me. She could see me! She opened her mouth to speak and I tried to reach her, but I was wrenched away with a terrible force, like the tide, like an all powerful current that pulled me backwards, and I felt nothing more and I saw nothing more.

But I could still think, in that deep darkness with no sensations, as desolate as the depths of the oceans miles and miles under water, where nothing swims, nothing moves, nothing disturbs the deep, solemn, barren peace.

I thought I was dead.

The day after the accident went by in a blur. I woke up after a black, exhausted, restless sleep that brought no respite from fear. Maisie and I had breakfast together – I clumsily tried to hide my terror as I explained to her that Eilidh wasn’t ok yet, she was still in hospital and the doctors were looking after her. Maisie asked no questions, she’s a wise child, she knew something bad had happened and she was trustingly waiting for us to sort it. As if we could.

I took her to school on autopilot – one foot in front of the other, a kiss and a cuddle, tried to be reassuring, ‘See you later, sweetheart,’ ignoring the looks of concern from all around. News of the accident had spread fast. I walked away from the school as quickly as I could and as soon as I was out of earshot, I phoned Eilidh’s dad, Simon.

No reply.

Shit. Their phone was switched off. I needed to wait until they phoned me. Maybe they won’t, I thought. Why should they? I’m not family, I’m not her husband or her boyfriend. Maybe they won’t tell me, maybe she died and I won’t know for ages. I felt tears prickling my eyes, a mixture of fear and exhaustion, everything swam and I leaned on the playground wall for a moment.

‘Jamie …’

Shona’s arms around me, her familiar scent, my mum’s scent and my own.

‘Come, come. Let’s go to Peggy’s.’

Peggy’s eyes were red and swollen, she hadn’t slept either.

‘They phoned this morning. No change, really, still the same. The doctor said she might not wake up or if she wakes up, she might be … what’s the word … brain damaged. That’s what Rhona said, brain damaged.’ She looked around, as if asking for clarification from us. Shona and I looked at each other, horrified.

I saw Shona opening her mouth. She was looking for something reassuring to say, something to make it better. One of those things my mum used to say when things were bleak, like when my dad got sick: ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ a mixture of stubborn optimism and sheer unwillingness to look at despair in the eye. Generations of women have used this to survive unspeakable hardships: it’ll be fine, we’ll be fine, it’ll all work out. Put the kettle on, get on with it, keep faith, keep hope, keep your chin up. We’ll be fine.

And sure enough, Shona and Peggy clutched each other’s hands and performed the Scottish woman’s ritual in the face of terror.