The Hand That First Held Mine Read Online Free PDF Page B

and sits on Elina’s sofa, busying herself with papers and files and pen lids.
     
    Elina follows and stands before her on the carpet, astonished. She wants to say, who are you, what are you doing here, who sent you, but something about the files and papers strikes her dumb. She waits to see what will happen next.
     
    ‘So.’ The woman sighs and shifts her blue bottom against the sofa. ‘You’re Natalie.’
     
    It isn’t a question and Elina has to think about this. Is she Natalie? She doesn’t think so. ‘No,’ she says.
     
    The woman frowns. She scratches her hair with the end of the pen. ‘You’re not Natalie?’
     
    Elina gives a firm shake of the head.
     
    The woman flips over a piece of paper, screwing up her eyes, and says, ‘Oh.’ It is a sound full of disappointment, of weariness, and Elina wants to say sorry, she wants to apologise for not being Natalie. She wants to say that maybe she could be.
     
    ‘You’re Elina,’ the woman says, with another sigh.
     
    ‘Yes.’
     
    ‘And how are we today, Elina?’
     
    Elina finds the interchangeable use of the plural in English confusing. She is one person, one only. How can she be a ‘we’? ‘Fine,’ she replies, hoping this woman will leave.
     
    But the woman has a list of other questions. She wants to know what Elina is eating and how often. She wants to know if Elina is going out, how much she is sleeping, whether she has joined a group, if she is planning to join a group, if she’s taking her pills, if she is getting any help.
     
    ‘Help?’ Elina repeats.
     
    The woman shoots her a sharp glance from under her yellow fringe. Then she looks around the room. Then she looks at Elina’s pyjamas. ‘Do you live alone?’ she says.
     
    ‘No. There’s my boyfriend but . . .’
     
    ‘But what?’
     
    ‘He’s at work. He didn’t want to be. I mean, he was going to take time off. But he’s got this shoot that’s overrun and . . . well . . . you know.’
     
    This causes much scribbling in the file. This woman with her files and questions is making Elina tired. If she weren’t here, Elina could stretch herself out on the rug, lay her head on her arm and fall asleep.
     
    ‘And how is everything healing up?’ the woman asks, peering at something in her file.
     
    ‘Healing up?’
     
    ‘The scar.’
     
    ‘What scar?’
     
    The woman gives her another sharp look. ‘The section scar.’ An expression of doubt crosses her features for a split second. ‘You did have a section, didn’t you?’
     
    ‘A section?’ Elina circles the word warily. It means, she is sure, a part of something or a bit of something. A slice. She puts her hands to her abdomen and thinks about the searing, blowtorch pain there. ‘A section,’ she murmurs again.
     
    The woman glances again at her notes. She lifts a page in her file, she lets it fall. ‘It says here . . . let’s see . . . non-progressive labour, complications and – yes – emergency surgery, blood loss.’
     
    Elina stares at her. She would like to reach down, pick up the woman’s bag by its straps and hurl it through the window. She imagines the tinkling clatter of smashing glass, the fragmenting of something so perfect, so clear, and the satisfying thud as the bag hits the pavement.
     
    The woman is glaring back at her, her brows lowered, her mouth open slightly.
     
    ‘I need you,’ Elina says, forming each word very slowly, ‘to leave. Please. I’m very busy. I have to . . . I have to be . . . somewhere. Would you mind? Maybe we could do this another day.’ She is careful to be polite. She has no idea who this woman is but that is no reason to be rude. She walks the woman through the hall towards the door. ‘Thank you so much,’ she says, as she shuts the door. ‘Goodbye.’
     

 
     
    A lexandra shuts herself in her room for the rest of the day, pushing a chair under the door handle to keep out the siblings. They chitter and moan on the other side but she doesn’t