One Moment, One Morning

  Hurriedly she flicks it open, knowing she only has seconds before voicemail clicks in.

  ‘Hiya!’ she says, happy to see the name that comes up on the screen.

  ‘Anna?’ checks a voice, thin, plaintive.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. That you?’

  The voice on the other end cracks. ‘Yes.’

  It sounds as if there is something the matter. ‘Hey, hey,’ says Anna, adopting a gentler tone and leaning into the mouthpiece to make herself heard. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s – it’s – Simon.’ The voice – so familiar to Anna – is strangely small.

  ‘What about him?’ Anna is confused.

  ‘He’s—’ There is a pause. A long pause.

  ‘What?’ Anna is insistent – now she is worried.

  ‘He’s . . .’ Then everything rushes through Anna’s head at once. She has a terrible premonition: she knows what’s coming next, but it can’t be, no, it can’t – then, finally, dreadfully, confirmation; the word is there, out, in the cab, real. ‘. . . dead.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ cries Anna. Thoughts hurtle. What is this – some kind of sick joke?

  ‘What is it?’ says Lou, immediately grabbing Anna’s knee.

  Anna shakes her hand, motioning that quiet is called for. ‘What – when – ?’

  ‘Just now – this morning – on the train –’

  ‘What? The seven forty-four to Victoria? No!’

  ‘Yes.’ The voice is barely audible. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘But I was on that train!’ exclaims Anna. ‘Christ, I don’t believe it! Oh, oh, Karen—’ Instinctively, she starts to cry; giant tears plop forth before she can stop herself. It is not even sorrow, really; the information hasn’t even sunk in. It is shock. Karen and Simon are her friends. Karen is her best friend. Still, she has to get the facts straight. ‘But what were you doing on that train? You never normally get that train – that’s the one I get.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it must be,’ says Karen. ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘Shit.’ All at once Anna realizes this is no joke. It makes sense. ‘You had to sign the mortgage papers today, no?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Karen, scarcely above a whisper. ‘We were going up to London together, to the solicitors, before Simon went on to work. It seemed to make sense to do it like that. And then I had some shopping to do. I was going to Hamleys to get a birthday present for Luke.’

  At this point, the taxi driver interrupts. ‘I’m sorry, love,’ he says, his manner less brusque this time. ‘But we’re here.’

  ‘What?’ Anna looks out of the window; sees a flower stall, a splash of colours and foliage, and up above it, a large red sign:

  CLAPHAM JUNCTION

  ‘Oh, oh, right.’ She gathers up her bag. ‘Hang on a minute, Karen, hang on, just need to pay for this taxi. Stay there, right there – I’ll be with you in a tick.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ says Lou. ‘You get out – carry on – I’ll get this, don’t worry. You’re all right, we’ll sort it in a sec.’

  Anna nods her head, grateful. ‘Thanks.’ She opens the taxi door and somehow manoeuvres herself from the car onto the pavement, still holding her phone open precariously so as not to lose Karen. Lou pays the driver – luckily she seems to have enough cash – and follows her.

  ‘You still there?’ Anna checks.

  ‘Yes,’ says Karen.

  ‘Just a second.’ Despite everything, Anna wants to settle up. She digs deep into her bag for her purse but just as she pulls it out, she drops it.

  Lou retrieves it. ‘I can wait,’ she says, handing it back. ‘Please. You just carry on.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Lou nods and diplomatically steps to one side so as not to be intrusive.

  Anna returns to Karen. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At the hospital,’ says Karen.

  ‘Which hospital? Haywards Heath?’

  ‘No, Brighton. For some reason they brought us here – I suppose it’s because they have a cardiac ward or something.’

  ‘Oh, right. So, tell me, what happened, exactly?’ Although she’s heard the story from Lou already, Anna has to hear it again from Karen to make sure the experiences tally and to grasp the fact that it’s real.

  ‘We were sitting on the train, together, this morning, you know, everything was normal, when – I don’t know – we were chatting, we had a coffee each, and – suddenly – he had a heart attack.’

  ‘What? Just from nowhere?’

  ‘Well, the funny thing is, he had been complaining of indigestion on the way to the station. But you know Simon, he’s always getting heartburn, he gets so wound up about stuff, and – well, to be honest, I thought it was nothing. Just nerves, about the new house, signing the papers.’

  Anna nods, although there’s no way Karen can see her. ‘So, what—’ Anna hesitates, unsure if she’s being insensitive, but ploughs on anyway. There have never been many barriers between herself and Karen. ‘Did it just come on all of a sudden, or what?’

  ‘Yeah. He was right beside me. It all happened in minutes . . . He was sick, fell forward, knocked over his coffee. Then nurses came running, tried to resuscitate him, and everyone had to get off the train, then there was an ambulance and we were taken to hospital. They took him to A&E . . . Then I had to talk to the police, and the hospital chaplain – there were so many people. But the doctor said there was nothing anyone could have done.’ Karen’s voice tails off to a whisper again. ‘Apparently he died immediately. Just like that.’

  Anna is reeling. She leans against the pillar of the flower stall for support. ‘Er – er . . . Let me think . . . Where did you say you were?’

  ‘The Royal Sussex.’

  ‘What, in Kemptown?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘The children?’

  ‘They’re at Tracy’s.’

  ‘Luke’s not at school?’

  ‘No, it’s half-term in Brighton this week. We took them both there, so we could go on to London.’

  ‘I see. When are you supposed to be picking them up?’

  ‘Oh, um . . . half three.’

  That’s good – it gives us a bit of time, Anna thinks, her mind whizzing. ‘You told them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tracy?’

  ‘No, no, not yet. You were the first person I called.’

  ‘And where’s Simon?’

  ‘Um . . .’ Karen sounds fazed, as if she doesn’t know what Anna means. ‘He’s here, too. At the hospital. They’re moving him to a special room. I’m to go back in a while. I suppose to A&E. Where are you?’

  ‘Clapham Junction. The station. I got a taxi—’ Anna thinks about explaining that she has just been sitting next to a woman who witnessed Simon’s death, but then decides not to. Now is not the time, and it is not relevant. ‘Look . . .’ She tries to formulate a plan. ‘I’ll come back. I’ve got a meeting, but someone else can go. It’s not that important, really. I’ll call them. They’ll understand, and if they don’t, well, sod it. So, I dunno . . . wait there. I’ll be—’ She checks her watch. It’s five to ten. ‘I think the trains go at twelve minutes past the hour. As long as they’re still running the other way, I can be back in Brighton by eleven, and get a taxi, be with you as soon as I can.

  ‘Can you really?’ Karen’s voice cracks again. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’

  ‘Mind?’Anna is incredulous she should even ask. ‘Of course I don’t mind. Where are you going to wait? Are you going to go home?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Karen is obviously in no state to make a decision. ‘Later, yes, but I want to be with Simon now . . .’

  ‘Of course. I’ll be on the phone again anyway, in a minute. I just want to make sure I get the next train and ring work, so I’m going to go now. OK? I’ll call you again, in a bit.’

  ‘OK,’ so quietly. ‘Thanks.’

  A few seconds later Anna feels a squeeze on her shoulder. It’s Lou. ‘You
all right?’

  ‘Yes, I guess,’ though she’s far from it.

  ‘Do you want to go for a coffee or something? You’re white as a sheet. I think you ought to sit down.’

  ‘No. I have to go. That was my friend, Karen. It was her husband on the train. I’ve got to get back and see her. But thanks anyway.’

  ‘Are you sure? You really look as though you could do with sitting down. There’s a coffee shop right here . . .’

  Lou is right: Anna has been gazing at the familiar blue logo whilst on the phone without really seeing it. ‘No.’ She is definite. ‘I need to get the next train, I promised.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Anna smiles, weakly, then recalls, ‘Oh, gosh, I owe you fifty quid, don’t I? Or is it more than that? Did we give him a tip?’ She rummages in her purse. ‘Damn! I’ve only got three twenties.’

  ‘Two’s plenty. Really. You don’t want to leave yourself short or you won’t be able to get a cab at the other end.’

  ‘No, no,’ insists Anna. ‘I’m sure I can change one.’

  ‘Don’t be silly! Forty is fine.’

  ‘I hate owing money.’

  ‘All right, then, but tell you what: rather than worrying about that now, here, take this.’ Now it’s Lou’s turn to open her wallet: she takes out a functional-looking white business card headed Hammersmith & Fulham Education Services. ‘Pop it in the post to me at some point. Or better still, give me a call or text me one day when you’re on the train. Well, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ says Anna

  ‘I work Mondays to Thursdays. Or give me a ring any time. If you just want to talk.’

  Lou’s expression is so sympathetic Anna doesn’t know what to say. She mutters ‘Thanks’, but it seems quite inadequate.

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘No, well, still, I appreciate it.’

  ‘Really, don’t give it any thought. And please, when it’s appropriate – if it ever is – tell your friend, I really am very sorry.’

  ‘Um, yes, sure, I will,’ says Anna.

  Anna is fingering Lou’s card, absently using the edges to clean beneath her nails, when the train halts at a signal just before its final stop. To her left the city sprawls up and over the Downs, row upon row of terraced houses getting smaller into the distance. The sign at the end of the carriage is scrolling in orange dots: The next station is Brighton. Although she is nearly there, she feels completely disoriented, emotions all over the place. She has travelled from Brighton to Wivelsfield to Clapham up the motorway and back, and it’s only eleven. She feels as if she has left pieces of her mind scattered along the way and is no longer herself as a result.

  She attempts to reassemble her thoughts into a more coherent stream, so as to help Karen. But how are they ever going to get through this? There’s the issue of Luke and Molly: how does one tell two small children their father has died? It is not just a question of telling them; it is how it will impact on their lives. What will this do to them, losing their father? They are so young; they have so much of their childhood to go. Then there is the rest of Simon’s family – his mother is still alive, for instance, and he has a brother too, Alan. Anna has met him many times, and he and Simon are close. He lives nearby and they play football together, down on the lawns on the seafront, with some other local dads.

  And there is Karen herself. She and Simon have been together since Karen’s first job after college. Simon was living with another woman when they met – what a drama that caused. But that was aeons ago; they’ve been together for nearly twenty years. And while they have had a few bleak periods – there was the time when Simon lost his job, for example, and when Luke was very ill just after he was born – these ultimately didn’t threaten them as a couple. In fact, nothing has ever truly rocked their relationship . . . until today.

  Anna shivers. She is aware this is just the beginning, the very beginning; and already she feels so much of Karen’s pain that she’s not sure where her own feelings end and Karen’s start. She is sure it hasn’t sunk in fully yet, because she still can’t believe what’s happened, that Simon is really gone. And although she shed a few tears an hour or so ago, it feels too soon to cry.

  Maybe he isn’t dead, she allows herself to think, just for a split second. Maybe Karen has gone mad, got it wrong, or someone else has.

  Anna shakes her head, suddenly angry. Of course no one’s got it wrong. But couldn’t someone, somewhere, have done more for him? A fifty-one-year-old man doesn’t just keel over: there had to be some signs, surely? Didn’t Simon himself know something was up? What about when he was playing football? Didn’t he feel a twinge, or anything, then? Why didn’t he have a check-up, get himself examined? He was a father, for heaven’s sake, with responsibilities. Failing that, the medical profession should have pre-empted it. Why didn’t his GP warn him? (Though she can’t imagine that Simon would readily go to the doctor; lots of men don’t. Anna’s own partner, Steve, hasn’t been to a doctor in years.) But what about those nurses Karen mentioned, on the train – why couldn’t they do anything? Or the bloody paramedics, or the doctors in Brighton’s precious cardiac ward? Doubtless it was because they were understaffed and unequipped. It was the government’s fault, then, too. Bunch of idiots. Fuck the lot of them.

  Then, another thought, less enraging, but more distressing. Anna is sure Karen will blame herself – it would be typical of her to do so. Karen can be a worrier, and always puts other people first. The children, Simon, often Anna too. And of course it’s not her fault, but Anna is sure she will think it is, will believe she has failed Simon.

  This leads Anna to touch, for the first time, on her own guilt. Perhaps she is the one who’s failed Simon. Karen not spotting his condition is understandable when she lived with him, and when she looks after so many people. Anna can comprehend how she could easily miss a gradual change in his health. But she, Anna, had the benefit of more objectivity. She should have noticed something. Been less wrapped up in her work and the demands of her own relationship. She had seen Simon pretty much every week, hadn’t she, for God knows how long? She should have noticed that he was breathless, faint or dizzy, or had indigestion more than was normal, or was really pink in the face, or whatever symptoms there are that act as a forewarning to a heart attack, if she had been less self-absorbed.

  Oh dear, she thinks, coming back to the present with a jolt. The other passengers have gone ahead of her, and she is alone in her seat. She had better get off the train. The cleaner is making her way down the aisle, using gloved hands to put cups and discarded newspapers into a big clear plastic bag. So Anna pulls on her coat, picks up her handbag from the table and, for the second time that day, makes her way through Brighton station.

  * * *

  Karen is sitting in the cafe opposite the hospital, watching the clock on the wall. Only a few more minutes until Anna arrives. She wants to wait for her, she needs her help, guidance, before going back. Karen has never in her life needed rescuing, not from anything serious; she has always been the one to take care of others. Even when she was a little girl, she was the elder sister or bossy friend taking charge. But today has made up for forty years with one catastrophic event. She seems caught in a nightmare she cannot escape; she wants someone to wake her up, tell her it is all a mistake, it is not happening, she can go home. She feels completely disconnected from the world about her. The room she is sitting in looks unreal, the proportions all wrong for a cafe: it is too big, there is too much space between the tables, the strip fluorescent lights are eerily bright, the counter from which she collected her tea looks oddly one-dimensional, flat. And though she can hear voices – the cafe is sadly empty but still there are people, an elderly couple, for instance, and a woman cooing at her baby nearby – they sound distant, echoing, distorted.

  When she was an undergraduate, she dropped acid once, with Anna. She hated the experience; she felt so out of control. This is like that, but worse, because somehow even then, through he
r fear, she knew she was hallucinating, that it would end; that it was just a trick of the mind. Plus she’d had Anna with her, who was also tripping, but who had done it before and was rather enjoying it. She had helped ground Karen, talk her down.

  But here she is alone, and now she has no idea what to do. The person she would normally ask is Simon, so in her head she asks him, yet at the same time a voice in her head – the doctor’s from earlier – reminds her: he is dead. The two thoughts can’t co-exist: it is all very confusing. She can’t believe he has gone. She feels numbness, and suffused through the numbness, stabs of panic, like shards of glass. The panic is horrible, horrible – she feels she can’t control it; the numbness is better. It is the panic she wants to go away.

  Perhaps she should make a list. She is good at lists.

  She’s got all those legal papers in her bag; that’s good, she can write on the back of one of the sheets of A4. And yes, there’s a pen. She remembers putting it in the front pocket earlier; she’s been caught without a pen before on the train and it has irritated her. Though to feel mere irritation – she can’t imagine that will ever happen again. It was a lifetime ago.

  Still, at an utter loss what else to do, she forces herself to draw upon her memories; she can use the experience they had with Simon’s father to help. Five years ago he’d died, also unexpectedly. He had an aneurysm and one day it popped. And if she’d told Simon to get himself checked out afterwards, in case it was heriditary, she had told him a dozen times, but did he? Of course not. Among the shards of glass comes a tidal wave of fury. She almost likes it though; it feels sort of normal. She has been cross with Simon before and she recognizes the sensation – this is the same, just more powerful, and she wants to scream. But in a split second it has gone, and she is back to the shards of glass, the numbness and panic.

  When Simon’s dad died, she and Simon helped Simon’s mother to make a list of what to do. Karen puts all her focus into the task, and slowly, automatically, she begins to formulate the words.

  1. Phone Tracy. Collect the children.