Rose Alexander - Under an Amber Sky - A Gripping Emotional Page Turner You Won’t Be Able to Put Down

As she fumbled for her house keys, she ran through her and Matt’s plans for the weekend. Relaxing at home tonight, dinner out with a gang of people on Saturday, and a walk on Hampstead Heath with their good friends, Sam and Suzie, on Sunday. She also hoped to fit in a trip to John Lewis to choose a new stair carpet.

Alongside all of this ran the frisson of excitement that thrilled through her every time she thought about the fact that she and Matt had, only a couple of weeks before, started trying for a baby. Of course it was far too soon to expect to be pregnant, but the prospect of motherhood in the not too distant future floated tantalizingly before her, eclipsing all other hopes and dreams.

Her phone rang and, fishing it out of the detritus that always seemed to accumulate at the bottom of her bike basket, she noticed that it was an unknown number. She pressed accept and then immediately found herself inwardly cursing; it was bound to be someone she didn’t want or need to talk to, someone selling something or one of those irritating automated PPI calls.

‘Hello,’ she said warily, hovering half on and half off the doorstep, wanting the phone call over before she entered the sanctuary of the flat. There was a pause during which she almost hung up, and then someone said her name, hesitantly, as if testing that it were really her.

‘Sophie?’

She didn’t recognize the voice, though there was something familiar about it.

‘Speaking. Who is it, please?’

‘Sophie!’ The voice had a forced jollity about it that quickly faded. ‘Sophie, it’s Alex here, Matt’s work colleague.’ Alex faltered, then resumed. ‘We’ve met a couple of times, remember?’

Sophie nodded, vague recollections of Alex filtering through her mind. He was a typical city lawyer type, bold and brash, full of himself. He didn’t sound like that now, though. His words were tentative whilst at the same time carrying an undercurrent of urgency. It made her feel uneasy.

‘Nice to talk to –’ Sophie began, but Alex cut in.

‘Sophie, it’s Matt. He’s – well, he’s been taken ill. He’s on his way to hospital.’

‘What do you mean?’ Sophie’s head spun and she reached out her hand to hold on to the door surround, needing to steady herself.

‘The ambulance only took a few minutes to arrive; lucky we’re so near.’

‘Ambulance?’ The juddering realization that Matt must be really sick if it was bad enough to have called an ambulance seared through Sophie and she broke out into a cold sweat.

‘You need to get to the hospital as soon as you can.’ Matt named which one it was but Sophie hardly registered.

‘What’s happened, Alex? Is he OK? Is Matt OK?’ She was shrieking, frightening herself with the noise she was making. It echoed between the houses, rending apart the tranquillity.

‘He’s fine.’ There was a brief, telling pause. She could hear Alex whispering something to someone, but could not make out what he said.

‘I mean, I’m sure he’ll be fine.’ Alex was talking to her again, sounding suddenly much too loud. ‘Look, a cab will be with you in three minutes – it’s already been ordered.’

Sophie was crying, tears pouring down her cheeks and dripping onto the flimsy gauze scarf that kept the wind off her neck when she was cycling. ‘What’s going on?’ she sobbed. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

Her nose was running but she didn’t have a tissue and didn’t want to put the phone down for the time it would take to find one, as if losing hold of Alex for even a few seconds would mean that Matt was also lost.

Alex coughed. ‘I don’t know anything else, Sophie. When you get to the hospital – they’ll be able to tell you everything.’

The deep, low rumble of a diesel engine indicated the cab’s arrival. Slowly, trancelike, the phone still in her hand, Sophie moved towards the vehicle and indicated for it to stop. As she clambered in, a feeling of dread lodged in her heart and stayed there for the torturous duration of the drive, the cab constantly impeded by traffic lights, junctions, and queues. Staring out of the window, willing the cabbie to drive faster, to break all the rules, to just get her there as soon as possible, Sophie almost convinced herself that Matt would be all right.

***

Matt wasn’t all right.

When she got to the hospital, Sophie was ushered into a side room and left there to wait. She felt numb, dazed. She knew what the side room must mean but couldn’t accept it, couldn’t even begin to process it. He was probably in the operating theatre or something, having tubes stuck in him or observations (is that what they called them?) taken. That must be what was happening.

A doctor came in, knocking hesitantly on the door before swinging it open. He was accompanied by a nurse and another woman who wasn’t wearing a uniform but was dressed in ordinary, workaday clothes, trousers of the kind usually called slacks and a shirt that gaped where it was stretched over her bosom. She had a name badge proclaiming her to be Jan. Sophie stared at them, trancelike.

The three seemed to take a long time to settle down, arranging themselves carefully: the two women on adjacent chairs, the doctor finally alighting on the edge of one of the plastic armchairs. He was tall and looked incongruous and uncomfortable there, like a gangly heron on a tiny perch. All avoided eye contact with Sophie.

‘I’m really sorry to have to tell you this, Mrs, um …’ The doctor looked down at the notes in his hand. ‘Mrs Taylor.’ He gulped and fiddled with the stethoscope slung around his neck. ‘I have some bad news for you, I’m afraid.’

‘Bad news! What do you mean? How bad?’ Sophie could hear the panic in her voice. If Matt were disabled, brain-damaged, whatever, she would still love him. In sickness and in health – that’s what she had committed to.

‘Mr Taylor – your husband – came into A&E unconscious and unresponsive. We did everything we could.’

Sophie’s sharp intake of breath interrupted the doctor’s speech but did not seem to reach her lungs and she found herself gasping for air, floundering, drowning.

‘What are you saying? It’s not serious, is it? Tell me it’s not serious.’

‘I’m really sorry. Your husband has – he’s – passed away. I’m so sorry.’

‘No. No. What are you talking about?’ Sophie’s head spun, from the impossible words she was hearing and the lack of oxygen and the disbelief and denial that coursed through her veins. ‘He’s only thirty-two, he was fine this morning –’

‘We couldn’t … It wasn’t …’ The doctor’s words cut across hers. ‘He didn’t ever regain consciousness. I’m sorry.’

‘You mean … you mean he’s dead?’

Everything went black, the room and all that was in it swallowed up into an atramentous darkness. Sophie started to vomit and a cardboard tray was thrust into her hands. Jan was beside her, patting her shoulder, whispering soothing words that Sophie couldn’t process. When she had finished being sick, Jan removed the tray and gave her some water.

‘I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.’ Sophie was conscious of repeating the words, her voice a harsh, rasping whisper, even whilst she knew they could not be lying.

‘Tell me it’s not true,’ she said, again and again.

But neither the doctor nor the nurse nor Jan did so.

The next few hours were a blur. Her parents, Helena and Tony, came to the hospital, and Matt’s parents, too. All were speechless, stunned. Matt’s mum and dad went to see his body but Sophie didn’t, couldn’t. She couldn’t bear the thought, screamed when they tried to make her, telling her she’d regret not going. What did they know about how she would feel, did feel? Was it their husband, their lover, their soulmate who was lying on a hospital trolley, lifeless?