The Magpies A Psychological Thriller - By Mark Edwards Page 0,32

alive with machines, but as you know…well, is that really living?’

Heather, Kirsty and Jamie looked at each other. Heather started to cry, and Kirsty put her arms around her. Jamie stood there, wishing he was somewhere else, wishing life was like TiVo: that he could press rewind to change history, or even fast forward to find out what would happen.

He could still see the look of joy and cocky assuredness on Paul’s face when he first climbed into the go-kart. And then he saw Chris, standing on the other side of the track, not catching anyone’s eye.

After the accident, Chris and Lucy had driven straight home. They hadn’t visited the hospital, or even phoned to see how Paul was. Jamie hadn’t noticed at the time – he had been too preoccupied to worry about the actions of his neighbours – but afterwards, when he began to process what had happened, dwelling on it on sleepless nights, he began to feel outraged that the people who were responsible for Paul being at the track in the first place hadn’t bothered to find out how he was. They hadn’t even sent a card, or expressed any sort of regret. Chris, for God’s sake, had even been involved in the accident! And now he was hiding.

No, that wasn’t right. He was acting as if nothing had happened.

Three days after the accident, Chris came up to Jamie and Kirsty’s and asked them if they wanted their windows cleaned: he knew a window cleaner who could do it cheap.

‘I’ve noticed your back windows are looking a bit grubby.’

Jamie was speechless. He had only come home to take a bath and change his clothes. In ten minutes he would be heading back to Bromley to sit in a room with his comatose best mate.

‘I don’t give a toss about the windows,’ he said after a long pause, and Chris looked surprised.

‘There’s no need to be rude,’ he said, and he turned around and walked off, leaving Jamie, once again, speechless.

Jamie and Kirsty hadn’t spoken to their downstairs neighbours since. They saw them coming and going, but they didn’t even attempt smalltalk. Jamie was waiting for Chris to say something about the accident, or ask after Paul’s health. But it never happened. Most of the time he didn’t think about it. His annoyance and anger were there in the background, but that was all. He felt too weakened by what had happened to Paul to care much about anything else – work, his other friends, his family. Lucy and Chris were the least of his concerns.

Three weeks after the accident, Heather and Kirsty pulled some strings – calling in a few favours from consultants they knew – and got Paul transferred to St Thomas’s, which meant that they could see him every day. Heather usually spent her lunchbreak sitting with him. Now, when Jamie spent his shift beside Paul, he did so knowing that Kirsty was close by, working, dealing with her own patients. It made him feel comforted – and also gave him some perspective. Theirs was not the only unfortunate situation in the world. There were many people in the same boat. When Kirsty told him about the sick children she had to deal with, he remembered that there were a lot of people worse off. It didn’t make what had happened to Paul any less painful or easier to accept, but it made him feel less alone.

Paul’s condition continued. He was stable. There was no sign of a recovery, but nor did his condition worsen. As Paul slept on, Jamie and Kirsty’s life returned to a normal routine – normal but for the shadow of Paul hanging in the background. They started to cope. Jamie realised he was grieving, even though that grief was for somebody who wasn’t actually dead. Grief was another thing that only time could aid. By the time summer ended, he and Kirsty felt like they had re-entered the real world. Now all they wanted was for Paul to join them.

Nine

Making love felt like an affirmation of life. They hadn’t had sex for weeks, but suddenly, one evening, they looked at each other and a moment later they were pulling off their clothes and falling onto the bed, Kirsty pushing herself backwards with her heels as Jamie trailed kisses from her ankles, up her thighs, tasting her arousal, moving up to her breasts, his hands grasping her shoulder blades as their mouths met in a hard kiss. He had to