Dany Atkins - Fractured

‘Absolutely,’ I replied and was still smiling when I hung up the phone.

The air outside was much colder than I had expected, and I was glad of my thick woollen coat and knitted scarf wound tightly about my neck. Without any conscious thought or instruction, my feet found their own rhythm and began to direct me down the twisting side roads which would lead me to my old home. I didn’t intervene. This was the first stop I needed to make and this should be the easy one. No dark memories there, only happy ones from my childhood.

Someone had replaced the old picket fence with something much fancier made out of wrought iron, and the front door was now a garishly green colour, but apart from that it all looked the same. There was a comfort in seeing that the house hadn’t been altered too dramatically, although the garden was better kept, I noticed, but then Dad had never been much of a gardener. Also, fancy wooden blinds replaced the more homely curtains that we had preferred, but basically this was still my old home.

As I lingered on the pavement, I allowed a wave of memories to assault me, a kaleidoscope of images spanning the years. Yet still there were no dark shadows here. Up until five years ago this was the only home I had known and it still represented the feelings of safety and sanctuary which had eluded me in any subsequent accommodation. Standing on the pavement, feeling like I still belonged there, yet at the same time knowing strangely that I did not, I felt a dart of nostalgia pierce through me. I realised with a shock that this was the first time I had actually seen the house since the night of the accident.

The decision to move away, the packing up and sale had all been carried out during the long slow months of my hospital stay. Whether it was the right decision or not, who could say? My poor father had been desperate enough to do whatever he could to minimise my pain. Half-demented with grief, I had clung to him desperately from my hospital bed and pleaded with him to let us move far away: so move we did.

Suddenly the memories coming at me were cyanide-bitter and I turned from the house and began walking briskly away. My eyes started to water furiously as a bitter icy wind blasted my face; at least I thought it was the wind doing that.

I walked face-down against the gusting currents, my stride just short of a run. At the end of the street I stopped and hesitated. I looked up at the four converging roads beside me: I was standing at a crossroads; in a physical as well as a spiritual sense. If it hadn’t been so heartbreakingly sad, it would almost have been funny. The headache, which the painkillers had dulled to a persistent throb, now threatened to go into overdrive. I could use it as an excuse not to make my next stop. But I thought I’d been hiding behind excuses for too long now.

My hand gripped tightly on the door knocker, as a fleeting glimmer of hope ran through me. Perhaps they too had moved? Sarah had never said; but then we hadn’t spoken of his family at all in the intervening years. Some wounds just go too deep.

If she was shocked by my appearance on her doorstep after a five-year absence, she hid it well. She also hid her reaction to my damaged face, which I knew she must have noticed with the wind whipping my hair about my head in long chestnut banners. I hoped I was as good at masking my own shock when I saw how much she had aged in the last five years. Although she smiled and reached out to envelope me in a welcoming hug, the grief was so deeply etched into her face that I realised no new emotion was ever going to be powerful enough to erase it. Guilt sliced through me like a knife wound. It was my fault she looked like that. My fault she had lost her son.

It hadn’t been an easy afternoon, and by the time I got back to the hotel, the tension and the emotions of the day had brought my headache to a never-before-experienced crescendo of agony. My first action on returning to my room was to blindly fumble in my toiletry bag for the bottle of pills. I ignored the dosage instructions on the label and immediately dry swallowed two tablets instead of one. As I waited for the medication to kick in, I ran a deep hot bath in the small white-tiled bathroom.

The headache was still with me as I slid under the fragrantly perfumed water; slightly better when I emerged pink and beginning to shrivel almost half-an-hour later, and back to a manageable dull ache when I realised it was already time to get ready for the evening ahead.

I tried to keep my mind away from my visit with Jimmy’s mother, knowing there was much I needed to consider about what she had said that day, and knowing too that this night was not the time to do so. I couldn’t afford myself the luxury of thinking of that now. First, we all had to face the night ahead; a night of reunion and a time of celebration, all the while trying to ignore the fact that, for the first time, we would be meeting as six instead of seven.

‘Baby steps,’ I murmured again to myself as I settled before the dressing table, and began to apply my make-up.

Sarah had chosen the location for the dinner well. We were booked at a fancy restaurant on the other side of town. A place far too expensive and sophisticated to have been visited by us in our student days. I got there deliberately early, a good thirty minutes before our allocated time, hoping it would give me some sort of mental advantage. Having given Sarah’s name to the maitre d’, I declined the suggestion to wait at the bar and asked instead to be seated straight away.

I was ushered to a large circular table in the far corner of the restaurant. I chose a chair facing the doorway, wanting the advantage of being able to see who would arrive next. I could certainly have done without the large mirrored wall directly opposite our table though. I’d already spent far too much time stressing over my reflection in the hotel room, I didn’t really need the indulgence of another half-hour of wondering whether my choice of midnight blue dress with the deep V neckline had been the right one. Having brought no alternative for the evening, there wasn’t really much I could do about it either way. Nervously I kept checking my reflection, each time pulling my hair forward, making sure it swung deeply across my cheek.

Phil was the first to arrive, looking tanned and much more muscled and broad-shouldered than I had remembered. He crushed me to him in such a bear hug of an embrace, I felt sure some ribs were going to give way in the process.

‘OK, need to breathe now.’ He laughed and released me, sliding into the chair beside me.

‘You’re looking good Rachel,’ he began and I had to almost sit on my hand to stop myself from automatically reaching up to check my hair was still hiding my face. If he noticed, he was too polite to say. ‘It’s been way too long. How have you been? Are you still living in Devon?’

We filled in the gaps in our histories, keeping it light, and his story was sufficiently varied to take us through until the next arrival: Trevor and his partner Kate. I didn’t know that Sarah had invited partners, but as I introduced myself, after receiving a lift-you-off-your feet hug from her boyfriend, I realised that Sarah had been wise to have included outsiders at our group’s reunion. Somehow new faces would take the pressure off.

For the first time I counted up the place settings at the table, and wondered who the extra seat was for. I didn’t have to wait long to find out, before Sarah burst into the restaurant with an infectious grin, a bundle of Getting Married helium balloons and her fiancé Dave in tow.

‘Who brings their fiancé to their hen night?’ joked Phil, standing up to shake Dave’s hand warmly in greeting.

‘What can I say? He just can’t bear to be apart from me.’