The Road Between Us Read Online Free PDF Page B

If I can summon the courage. If I can do it without crying.
    Edward reaches for her hand. He does this in the night sometimes, in the silence when she thinks she can hear him screaming inside.
    This morning he looks different. His hair has been cropped close to his skull again. Malnutrition oedema, meanwhile, has bloated his face and the skin around his shaved jaw is the colour of bone. Though he is no longer being fed through a tube, he looks twice his age. An old man. A concentration camp victim.
    ‘How is your band going?’ he asks. ‘What’s the name of it again?’
    He has remembered, she thinks. This is progress. She has told him two or three times now about how she is the bass player and backing vocalist in a pub band that plays covers. ‘The Sextuplets, though there are only five of us at the moment. We’ve played a few gigs. All girls. You should come and hear us.’ She wonders if he will also remember about her one-year art foundation course, the one she has had to drop out of in order to look after him.
    ‘And how is school?’
    ‘I’m not at school any more. Remember? I started a foundation course. I’m hoping to get a place at the Slade.’
    ‘Where your grandfather went … When can I see him?’
    ‘I’ll take you to see him as soon as you’re out of hospital.’
    ‘Can’t he come here?’
    ‘He’s aged a lot since you last saw him.’ She doesn’t elaborate. One thing at a time. The two are not so different, she reflects. Father and son. Tomorrow Edward will ask again about his father, and her life, and forget that they have had this conversation. The difference is Edward’s memory is improving. With each day he is becoming less confused.
    ‘I’ve asked about him before, haven’t I?’
    Hannah nods.
    ‘You must think I’m mad.’
    Hannah plumps up his pillow, so that she doesn’t have to look him in the eyes. ‘No, I don’t. You’re fine. You’re going through a period of readjustment, that’s all.’
    She begins tidying away her things and wants to open the curtain but sees her own Post-it note, the one she has stuck above the switch for the benefit of the nurses: ‘Please keep closed.’ Also in her handwriting is a note stuck above the light switch: ‘Please keep dimmed.’ Her father’s eyes are too sensitive to stand bright light, but, equally, he cannot bear being in the dark. A low-wattage nightlight is the compromise.
    She turns and studies him. He is staring at the ceiling now, lost in contemplation. How far this seems from the fairytale reunion she had imagined. While he may now be taking in certain things about her life, he doesn’t know her, and doesn’t seem to want to know her. She keeps telling herself that this is going to be a long haul, that gradually he will become less insular and less frightening, that he will become the friendly man into whose arms she pictured herself skipping. But there are times when she doesn’t believe that will ever happen now. She looks out of the window and sees a couple of photographers waiting in the ambulance bay. She recognizes one of them. Why won’t they leave her alone? In this momentshe realizes that what she wants more than anything is to have her old life back, to go back to a time before … She feels guilty for even thinking of it. Tears are rising to the surface again, beading her lashes.
    ‘Everything OK?’ her father asks.
    Hannah checks the time on her mobile as a way of averting her eyes. ‘Actually I’ve got a band practice to get to. Will you be all right till I get back?’
    Downstairs she gathers her long pale hair into the baseball cap she uses as a disguise to get past the photographers. She then heads outside and walks quickly towards the tube. Before she reaches it she slows down and changes direction. There is no band practice to go to. She will sit on a park bench for an hour or two instead.
    A week later, Hannah arrives at the hospital wearing her black-framed glasses rather than her contacts. It