fund-raiser for the firemen,” he says at one point, his eyes lighting up. “Now you have to come.”
“Since when has firefighting been a cause close to your heart?”
He stops in his tracks. “Have you ever seen an American firefighter? I have no idea how they do it, but they make them differently over here. They are quite the most gorgeous things you’ve ever seen. Turns out”—he grins smugly—“Eddie’s a volunteer.”
“Well, of course he is. Is there anything Eddie can’t do?” I say grumpily.
“I’m not sure he can knit,” Sam says eventually, after appearing to think about it very hard.
* * *
I have often thought that you know instantly when something very bad happens.
I have heard stories of people waking up in the middle of the night at the precise time that, on the other side of the world, their mother died. Or the phone will ring, and as you pick it up, you get a wave of premonition, a sense of dread about what it is that you are about to hear.
I am sitting at a trestle table, at the firemen’s fund-raiser, moving pasta salad around my paper plate with a plastic fork, when a couple of policemen walk into the room.
I notice them because they’re in uniform, and they seem to know everyone here, which is unsurprising, and I wonder if this is a fund-raiser for the police too, and if not, why they might be here.
They seem to be looking for someone, but everyone they ask seems to shrug and shake their heads, until a guy we were talking to earlier looks over in our direction and points, at least I think he points, to me.
And my blood runs cold.
“Are you the mother of Annie Halliwell?” I realize my mouth is filled with pasta salad that will not go down my throat, and I pick up my napkin and expel the salad into it as I start to shake. Whatever they are about to say, this cannot be real. This isn’t for me. This has to be a mistake.
“There’s been an accident,” they say. “You need to come with us.”
“Where is she?” My voice comes out as a shriek as Sam and Eddie jump to their feet, although I don’t see them, don’t see anything, the room closing in to a pinprick of black. “Is she okay?”
“She’s in the hospital,” one of them says gently, taking my arm. “We’re going to take you to see her now.”
* * *
I don’t want to ask. I sit in the back of the police car, Sam at my side, holding my hand, stroking my arm, and I can’t ask the question that’s whirring round and round in my head, waves of nausea each time I think of it.
They would have told me, I think. If she was dead they would have told me. They would have said something like I’m so sorry but she didn’t make it. They didn’t say that. She must be alive. And if she’s alive, there must be hope.
Nothing makes sense. A scooter accident? She doesn’t have a scooter. She knows she’s not allowed to go on a scooter. We’re here on holiday, for God’s sake, and she is thirteen years old. Where is she going to get a scooter from?
And why? Didn’t she text just an hour ago to say they were renting a movie and making popcorn? How did a movie and popcorn turn into a scooter? How did a movie and popcorn turn into police turning up at a firemen’s fund-raiser? How did a movie and popcorn turn into me sitting in a police car, about to throw up, more terrified than I have ever been in my life?
I am not, was not, a woman of faith. Religion was never part of my life when I was a child, although I always had a belief in God, in someone looking out for me. When I first went to AA, all those years ago, I thought everyone was crazy, talking about a Higher Power. I had no idea of the power of prayer, or of trusting that there is someone, something bigger, who is looking out for us. It seemed like a load of nonsense.
For a while, I talked about the group being my Higher Power. I had heard other people say this, and I felt less ridiculous, less “woo-woo,” having something substantive rather than a great bearded man in the sky.
But something shifted this last time I got sober, the last time, I hope,