Page 36 of The Love of Our Lives

It takes us longer than it should to get to the hospital because of the ice, but at least Adam’s driving this time.

I was just too jittery, my legs shaking from a combination of skiing and shock, but I was still able to direct him before he’d even turned the satnav on.

I knew how confused he must have been at how well I knew the route, how I could even tell him which back roads to take.

This isn’t the first time I’ve raced to the hospital here.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been at risk of losing someone I love. But it’s simply not the time to be concealing my old self from him.

Because Charlie has to be OK.

The baby has to be OK .

The words go over and over in my head as we approach the bright lights of the hospital.

Parking up as quickly as possible, the two of us jump out and run across the grey car park to the tall beige buildings at the centre.

Inside, Adam goes up to the reception desk, as I stand back a little, trying to process what is happening.

A million thoughts are running through my head. How did Charlie fall if she wasn’t skiing? Did I cause this to happen by suggesting we all come up here? By keeping everyone up like that. If Charlie hadn’t have come here, would she and the baby still be OK?

William’s family were not OK.

Cat was not OK.

Before I can process it any further, however, Adam is telling me which ward we need to go to. I follow dumbly, heart pounding in my chest.

‘They’ve been given a private room apparently,’ Adam says, but I can only nod, panic surging up inside me.

‘You all right?’ Adam says, turning briefly to me with worried eyes, and it’s enough to snap me out of it. Because this isn’t about me right now. It’s about Charlie and the baby.

Arriving outside the room, we pause briefly at the sight inside.

Sven is sitting with his back to us on a hospital chair, beside Charlie on a hospital bed, seemingly asleep.

She’s lying on her side, a slight bump still protruding out from the covers, thank God, but her usually active body is now hooked up to all sorts of wires and monitors.

It’s an experience I know only too well, though seeing it on Charlie seems different somehow.

She’s supposed to be up dancing and laughing and moving.

And now one mistake – just one – might have destroyed everything.

As though sensing our presence, Sven turns sharply.

His usually calm-looking eyes are red and swollen and he’s still wearing his black salopettes and skins from the mountain.

He gets up and walks over to the door. Immediately Adam pulls him into a hug and Sven shuts his eyes. A small noise comes out.

‘Thanks for coming, guys,’ he says eventually, stepping back before hugging me too, and as he does, I think about how much I truly love Sven and Charlie. I can’t bear the thought of them suffering.

They’re like family to me.

‘How is she?’ I ask, just as Adam says, ‘What happened?’

Sven shakes his head. ‘She was just so excited to be close to the mountains; you know how she gets sometimes . . .’

I nod. I really do.

‘She convinced me to take her up in the end, just for a quick ski on a green slope. But then she fell out of nowhere . . . she was so tired.’

‘But how is she?’ I repeat, heart beating fast. ‘How is the baby?’

Sven’s face darkens and he looks back in through the glass at Charlie. ‘It’s too early to tell at the moment, apparently . . . the way she fell caused some internal bleeding,’ he says, tailing off.

He covers his face with his hands and I immediately go to put my arm about him.

He takes a few breathes in.

‘You guys should get home and get some sleep,’ he says after a few moments.

Adam and I shake our heads at the same time. ‘No way,’ Adam says. ‘We’ll hang out here tonight, see it through with you.’

After a moment Sven nods. ‘OK,’ he says, putting up no further fight.

Light, corridor walls, the clattering of plates, the scent of toast. I look blearily around when I wake the next morning, feel something soft against my cheek – Adam’s fleecy shoulder.

I lift my head up to see we’re in another part of the hospital, having slept on a couple of stiff plastic chairs through the night.

It’s dimly lit, though doctors and nurses are still rushing by.

An alarm is going somewhere. My heart beats faster and, just like that, I’m back there again.

The day my whole world collapsed.

It was me who suggested we come up to the cottage for the weekend, at the tail-end of that balmy summer – for ‘old times’ sake’.

Cat was now living with Fraser in Edinburgh, and I would be off to art school soon.

Already I felt like there was something precious about this moment in time, like it was a hazy peak that we would never get back again.

Maybe because of that, I allowed myself to relax a little, be the ‘doer’ for once.

I remember Cat smiling across at me in the car as she drove: ‘What’s come over you, sis? Is this the new Maggie?’

I laughed, but perhaps it was? Perhaps I could start doing more – living more.

So, we bought a tonne of stuff from the supermarket: wine, crisps, pizzas, sweets and everything we could think of for our final hurrah together.

Stuff I would never normally be allowed but on this occasion, I thought I could relax a little – after all, Mum wasn’t going to be there.

And we weren’t going to go completely nuts – just enjoy ourselves.

I knew how happy it made Cat, seeing me let go of the reins slightly.

Stop worrying quite so much for everyone.

That first night we ate crap and drank wine and watched brat-pack movies until the wee hours of the morning – Pretty In Pink , The Breakfast Club and our favourite, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off .

That was always our thing: watching eighties movies and escaping to that safe, fun-only era where the hardest thing you had to deal with was getting a great dress for the prom.

The next morning, groggy but happy, we went for a long walk around the loch together, ambling our way under the tall pine trees, the sun glinting down through the branches at us.

The water on the loch was calm that day, inviting in the clammy summer heat, and we paused when we found the high bit we used to jump off as kids.

Mum had banned it years ago due to my condition but it probably wasn’t a good idea anyway, given the lower water level in recent years.

We laughed about how we used to do synchronised dives, and I said we should do it again.

Cat laughed (at the idea of me doing it clearly) and, in a moment of defensiveness, I smilingly suggested that perhaps she was the one not brave enough to try it.

Then we walked on, talking about all the things I would do when I got up to Aberdeen, all the art I would create and the experiences I would have.

And it felt lovely for a time, to feel like I would get a few years of normality: at some point, we agreed, I would get a new heart, and everything would just work itself out.

She told me her plans too, that she was applying to do nursing – it had been her secret dream apparently, after seeing how much they did for me in the hospitals, and when she said it, it made absolute sense.

Of course she would be a fantastic nurse.

Of course she would make everyone feel better, with her cheer and spark, just like she’d always done for me.

Then she admitted she and Fraser had had a fight, and suddenly I realised why she was only too happy to disappear off with me.

It was over something stupid, she said, but she’d gotten angry and walked out.

And I felt awful for her, knowing how much Fraser meant to her, how serious they’d become.

‘It will be OK,’ I said gently, ‘just speak to him when you get back,’ and she nodded; said she would do that.

Said she loved him so much.

That evening, we had dinner together again, some chilli I cooked up for us over the course of a lazy afternoon, then we just lay on the sofa together, reading magazines and scrolling through my fresher’s week itinerary. We had a few too many glasses of wine and I fell asleep on the sofa.

When I woke, she was gone, and even though I felt a twinge of worry, I just put it down to the alcohol; after all, Cat disappeared off to do stuff all the time.

In the end, it took me an hour to fully realise something was wrong, and I will regret that hour for the rest of my life.

I will forever regret falling into an alcohol-induced sleep on the sofa and not trusting that kick of worry when I woke.

Because, instead, I went upstairs and had a shower.

I took a while drying my hair, sent a message to Mum saying we were having a great time and not to worry.

And then I headed back downstairs and waited for her to reappear.

But she never did. My darling, wonderful sister, the person who made me tick, the person I was supposed to grow old with.

My other half.

I will never forget that image of her floating face down out on the water, below the high bit we used to dive from – for old times’ sake , I could imagine her saying as she leapt up high, eyes shining.

But now, her usually bright-red hair was splayed dark, and my gut twisted when I realised what she’d done; what I’d done, by goading her like that before.

I ran in screaming, pulled her limp body out, then I shouted as loud as I could for someone, anyone to help. But there was no one was there.

No one heard me.

I went into some sort of auto mode next – called emergency services, administered the CPR we’d both been taught until they got there, and then when the ambulance finally arrived, I rode with her all the way to the hospital just praying that it could all be taken away; that this was all an awful, awful dream.