Unexpected Lessons in Love by Lucy Dillon

Author:Lucy Dillon [Dillon, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473541795
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2019-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When Jeannie phoned her parents to tell them that Dan was showing signs of regaining consciousness, Sue sounded so relieved and delighted that Jeannie sank into a chair at the kitchen table and covered her face: it put her own complicated response to shame.

‘Oh, my darling, that’s wonderful!’ Sue cried. ‘Would you like Dad and me to come down to support you? I can phone next door and have Carol look after the horses – she owes me a favour.’

‘Mum, there’s nothing much to see,’ Jeannie warned her. ‘Dan’s still sleeping most of the time. Mr Allcott says it’s going to take a while for the sedatives to work out of his system and when he wakes up there’s a strong chance he’ll be acting strangely …’

‘Darling, don’t I know that.’ Sue’s voice was comforting; Jeannie’s eyes filled with tears at how much she missed her. ‘But it’s you we want to be there for. There’s going to be a lot to take in over the next few days.’

How much more? thought Jeannie, and fear crawled over her skin.

The next day, Brian and Sue came straight to the hospital. The sight of the two of them sanitising their hands as quickly as they could at the entrance to Dan’s room made Jeannie want to grab their hands and run away with them, right out of this situation, but she knew she couldn’t.

‘There she is!’ said Brian, pointing with delight. ‘There’s our girl.’

‘And here’s Dan,’ Sue added quickly. ‘Oh, Andrea, love – we were so glad to hear the news.’

Andrea had rushed back from Newcastle and had been holding Dan’s hand ever since. She hadn’t dropped it when Kate and Kim did his daily readings, or when the doctors arrived to discuss his sedation. She’d sat there, chatting away to him as if he was awake and listening, hope transfusing through her veins.

It took a while to bring the McCarthys up to speed on the new treatment plans for Dan – Jeannie and Andrea were now experts in brain oedema and intercranial pressure sensors – and then, as conversation dried up, Sue pointed at Jeannie, as if she’d just remembered something.

‘I’ve got this for you.’ She reached into her bag and retrieved a plastic sandwich bag. ‘I popped it in a bag because I wasn’t sure about germs.’

Dan’s phone.

Jeannie stared at it, frozen. It dangled from Sue’s fingers like official police evidence, and the smashed screen brought the shock of the accident scene crashing into her mind: the blue lights flashing round and round, the whispering forest of people, the ominous stillness behind the crackle of activity.

There was the phone. The phone containing her nuclear-bomb secret: that she was effectively the one who’d triggered this nightmare.

Jeannie glanced over to her dad; Brian’s face was tight with tension and his eyes seemed to be pleading, I did my best.

‘It was in your dad’s jacket,’ Sue went on conversationally, oblivious to the torment she was inflicting. ‘I was getting his suit ready to drop off at the cleaner’s, and it was with the inside pocket gubbins.

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