Gabriel's Angel Read online

  ‘Do you need to see that?’ Christopher asked, as gently as he could.

  ‘You tell me,’ Gabriel said in monotone. ‘You brought me here.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why after a few of these groups, why? I mean all this trouble, getting me here?’

  ‘It really isn’t that much trouble.’

  ‘It fucking was for me.’

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Christopher.

  ‘Why now?’

  And Christopher breathed in deeply and said, ‘Do you know what? I’m not sure. I saw this, of course I watch, it’s what I do, but it surprised me and nothing surprises me. That’s why I came in here last night to look at this again, and that is why I brought you here.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Look I know it’s a lot to take in, but there’s more,’ Christopher said.

  ‘More? What more? I’m dead for fuck’s sake that’s as bloody final as it gets, I think—how can there be more …?’

  ‘Can we watch it again?’ Christopher sounded calm, he sounded … therapeutic.

  Gabriel didn’t move. Christopher nodded toward the screen. Gabriel shook his head. Christopher understood the man’s reluctance. What else was there to see? But he reached and touched Gabriel’s arm and whispered, ‘Please.’ Gabriel’s volition, like so much else, had left him and he thought of himself once more.

  Again he saw Ellie entering the room and again he looked at her, letting out a little groan. But this time Christopher told him: ‘Look at the nurse.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Think about that nurse.’

  The screen filled with the man setting up the drip. Kevin.

  Kevin the Killer.

  Kevin had somehow been given a reprieve to go back and finish him off.

  And both Christopher and Gabriel knew by whom.

  39

  Michael and James had made their way to an Italian café across the road from the hospital. Just in case you didn’t know it was owned by an Italian family, there were loads of pictures of Italian footballers on the walls. And a large flag. And all the waitresses looked Italian and desperately bored. And it was called “Little Italy.”

  They sat in a wooden booth at the back eating ciabattas, drinking coffee and, in Michael’s case at least, wanting to go. Michael had already paid and James, uncertain as to when he might get the opportunity to eat this well again, was taking full advantage by wading through a side order of chips and a caramel slice, although not at the same time.

  ‘Do you think she’ll wake up?’ asked Michael for no reason, other than because it was all he was thinking about.

  James shrugged.

  ‘I suppose the longer she stays unconscious, the less chance there is …’ said Michael. ‘I think … it’s hard not being able to do anything … except wait.’

  ‘And how long can you wait?’ said James, genuinely curious, ‘I mean, a week? A month? A year? At some point you need to get on with your life. Anyone would have to. I don’t know...’ He shrugged again and stuffed some chips into his mouth. Michael stared at his coffee. James was right, at some point he would have to stop coming. Just not yet, not for a while, but when was it appropriate to stop sitting there? What if she stayed in a coma for years?

  ‘I don’t know,’ Michael whispered. ‘I mean it hasn’t been that long yet, really, has it?’

  ‘Do you talk to her?’

  Michael nodded. ‘It’s silly, but you never know, do you?’

  ‘No no, it’s what you do to people in comas,’ said James, as if he were an expert on stuff to try on people in comas. ‘Have you tried her favourite music?’

  Michael looked up. ‘No, do you think that would help?’

  ‘Dunno, but isn’t that what people do? Get visits from their favourite pop stars, try familiar sounds and stuff?’

  ‘Yeah, and smells and things. That could be worth trying. What music, do you think?’ Michael paused. It occurred to him he didn’t really know her favourite things, he only knew a corner of her world. In the time he had been sitting beside her, he had thought of a hundred questions he wanted to ask her. It occurred to him that maybe James knew more about her than he did. Not that he imagined James actually knew her—just things about her. ‘Do you have any ideas?’ he asked James sheepishly.

  James thought for a moment. He didn’t have any ideas, not about this anyway. But if there was anything, a song, a piece of clothing, an old teddy bear, it would be in Norfolk. ‘Well she didn’t have much,’ he said tentatively. ‘But she did seem quite attached to the things she did have. Maybe, I dunno, the smell of her favourite shirt or … there was a stuffed toy she said she had had for a long time. We could go round to where she was staying, have a look. What do you think?’

  ‘Stuffed toy? Julie?’

  ‘I don’t think it was hers.’

  ‘Music is easy, I could nip down Oxford Street, buy some CDs and a portable player. Maybe I’ll do that. Or I could talk to Lynne first. What do you think?’

  Michael had asked James what he thought twice more in the last minute than he had in the previous 15 years. James sensed that was a good thing.

  ‘Yeah Mikey, good idea … but I was wondering, isn’t the point to get some personal stuff, you know … stuff that is hers? The music—good idea but, well … it’s up to you.’ James shrugged. He was good at this kind of game.

  It did make some kind of sense, Michael thought: bringing the familiar, the reassuring, the things that meant something to Julie. And even if it was desperate, it was something, and if you have a choice between trying something and doing nothing, it’s obvious which one you go for. ‘We could go and get some stuff,’ Michael murmured.

  ‘Do you know where she was living?’ James said.

  ‘I’ve got a number I could call...’

  ‘Hey, how about the weekend? I’ll drive you there. No doubt Dykey Girl can be around more at the weekend right?’

  ‘Yeah … Yes,’ said Michael. ‘That would be good. Thanks James. I’ll call the woman Julie moved in with. Let her know we’re coming.’

  And James smiled sympathetically. In his head, he was turning to the crowd, hands raised aloft, milking the rapturous applause and shouting ‘Result!’

  40

  Michael talked with Lynne about going to Norwich. He was worried that she would consider it an attempt to slip away from their shared vigil. To his surprise, she didn’t. When he first mentioned the idea of getting some of Julie’s things—some music, a favourite perfume, anything that might be considered a stimulus—she nodded vigorously. ‘I’ve been wondering the same,’ she said.

  They found themselves sitting together with Julie, instead of taking it in turns as they had for the first couple of days. They talked, at first in whispers, but increasingly as if they were talking over coffee rather than the body of the comatose friend they both loved. As they talked, Michael began to feel comfortable with the fact that it wasn’t simply Lynne’s doubts he needed to address, but his own. He felt that surrounding Julie with personal mementos, playing music, or filling the room with her favourite colours would be a useful, if slightly desperate thing to do, but he didn’t really know what things might make a difference. It wasn’t as if he could get a recorded message from her favourite film star, or arrange for Leonard Cohen to pop in. He worried that this was further proof that he didn’t actually know her, and had no right loving her, or even sitting with her. And he wondered, deep in his heart, if maybe he was going to look for Julie in order to learn more about her. But it seemed that Lynne, who had known Julie forever, knew better.

  ‘Julie didn’t collect mementos,’ Lynne said. ‘She found a reason to be wherever she was, and stayed there until the reason didn’t seem a good one anymore.’

  ‘So do you think this is pointless?’

  ‘No,’ Lynne shook her head. ‘If there is anything we can do that might help, no matter how remote a possibility, then we sh
ould do it.’

  Michael nodded. The more Lynne spoke, the softer she looked. And the more able he felt to talk. ‘The thing is, I don’t know what might help. What things might resonate? I suppose I don’t really know her in that way.’

  ‘Music, definitely music, but she had very specific taste; she tended to judge people throughout her twenties entirely according to what music they listened to,’ she shrugged. ‘Bring back her stuff, even if you haven’t heard of it, and some of her clothes.’

  ‘James said that there were still a few bits and pieces at his place.’

  Lynne raised her eyebrows. ‘Really? Hard to imagine Julie leaving anything behind there; she had no intention of going back. Anything he has I doubt would be of any value to her.’

  They sat in silence for a while, and then Lynne said, ‘When Julie leaves, she doesn’t go back. In fact she doesn’t even look back. She was with this guy in Mexico for a while. Not sure why, he was an old painter, in a wheelchair. She sort of pretended to play the muse and he, from what I could gather, rather liked that. She liked his art, at first she liked him too, and the age or the immobility didn’t matter to her. But after a while he started acting like a prat. When he was sober he would describe his temperament as ‘a stove that bakes his work’ with the shallow pretensions of a man who hadn’t sold anything for fifteen years. Julie said he was like a thirteen-year-old boy with borrowed hormones. She was getting bored and was planning to move on. He may have sensed it; he got angry one night after too much tequila and set fire to her curtains while she slept.’

  ‘Did he set up a ramp as a getaway?’ said Michael, disliking the stranger in the wheelchair already.

  Lynne smiled ‘It does conjure up a weird image, doesn’t it?

  They fell into a comfortable silence, Michael reluctant to go.

  ‘I won’t be away long. Up and down in five hours, I reckon.’

  ‘It will take a bit longer than that. If anything changes, I’ll call you straight away.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He still didn’t move.

  ‘Look, it’s none of my business, but about that mate of yours.’

  Michael looked puzzled. He couldn’t think of a mate …

  ‘The one who comes in here, the bloke that Julie tolerated for a while.’

  ‘Oh right, James—yes.’

  ‘Don’t trust him.’

  ‘No, well, what’s to trust?’

  ‘I mean I don’t think you should trust him, hope you don’t mind me mentioning it. I wouldn’t if I didn’t think I should, but I think I should. He has something about him.’

  ‘He’s a shallow, self-serving opportunist, if that’s what you mean,’ Michael smiled.

  ‘Well, that obviously, but—and I’m good at this stuff—I’d like to say, ask Julie, but I can’t. So watch yourself, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Michael, who thought of James as benign, like a fading boil, and as incapable of doing anything to touch him beyond be annoying and cadge sandwiches and coffee. But then boils can flare up again, if you don’t lance them when you have the chance.

  41

  Ellie was lying in a darkened room with her legs in the air, and an unflattering, old but soft cotton nightie with bluebells and daisies on it pulled up round her hips. Izzy was beside her; Moira and Sam were in the waiting room. High in the corner of the room was a TV monitor, on which Ellie would be shown her embryos before they were placed inside her. She was having two implanted, which left her three more frozen as insurance or as, in a place far beyond her wildest dreams, a sibling. Dr Samani had said that statistically he was surprised that they had only managed five embryos, but given the fact that the sperm provider had been in a coma at the time of retrieval, and little research had been done on sperm from the comatose, it perhaps wasn’t that unusual. He also added, softly, that Ellie’s own health may not have helped, but under the circumstances he felt she was doing remarkably well.

  And so she was. Yesterday she watched her partner die; today she was trying to get pregnant. Life goes on. It seems.

  Dr Samani himself was doing the implantation, and he was being helped by his senior nurse, who should have been on a day off. Ellie was touched that these strangers should try so hard to help her, and as she lay on her back with her feet in stirrups, staring at the ceiling, and holding Izzy’s hand, she realised that since Gabriel had been run over, nobody—with the notable but now irrelevant exception of his consultant—had shown her anything but kindness and generosity. Even down to the strangers who helped Moira, despite the fact that they had their own grief: they had taken a risk, ultimately, to help her. She’d give her legs for the chance to say sarcastically to Gabe, ‘See, you grumpy old sod, people are OK,’ and her eyes burned.

  Dr Samani came in smiling. He took her hand and asked, ‘How are you?’

  Ellie shrugged, and he nodded. ‘OK, this is what we do. In a few moments, if you look up there on that monitor, you will see your embryos, two of them, then they will be brought in here, and I will put them into you. Simple. Afterwards you stay here a few minutes, and then go home and take it easy … as easy as you can. Remember Ellie, you cannot change the past, but you can shape the future, yes. This is Claire. She will be scanning your uterus, so I can see where they go.’

  Ellie nodded. And in a festival of nodding, Dr Samani nodded at Claire, who nodded right back and covered the end of her scanner—which looked like a smooth-ended electric razor—in jelly, and started to rub it over Ellie’s belly. Beside Ellie was a trolley with a monitor on it, turned so both Dr Samani and Ellie could see it. It began to flicker into life, and what looked like static appeared.

  ‘Good,’ said Dr Samani. ‘Good lining, under the circumstances, I am not sure how you got it, but your womb looks as ready as it could be for your embryos; it will keep them warm.’

  A voice from next door called, ‘Ready.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ said Dr Samani. ‘If you look up at that screen in the corner Ellie, you will see your embryos.’ The TV in the corner flicked into life and there—in the best traditions of a library-science picture were two baby planets, one smooth like a near perfect sphere, one coarse and uneven, more asteroid than moon.

  ‘Is that one OK?’

  ‘They are both fine. If they weren’t we wouldn’t be using them.’

  Then they vanished from the screen, sucked into what looked like a giant straw. Moments later a bustling embryologist walked into the room saying, ‘Ellie Saines, two embryos, numbers 32643 and 32646.’ Like a messenger in a hotel lobby.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr Samani.

  ‘What happened to 32644 and 5?’ asked Izzy.

  ‘They’re in the fridge. We chose these because they had grown more quickly. The others will be fine … for another time. Right, Ellie: lay still and try to relax. Claire, I’m ready.’

  And everyone got serious. Ellie could feel the room darken, although it may have been the concentration of those around her keeping the light out. Claire rubbed the scanner over Ellie’s belly looking for the picture Dr Samani wanted. She found it almost effortlessly.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘OK Ellie we’re going in now …’

  And Ellie breathed deeply, closed her eyes, and took something like comfort from the fact that he had said ‘we.’

  Seventy minutes later, Ellie was sitting in the front seat of the car next to Sam, who was driving at exactly thirty miles an hour and thus inviting a stunningly wide array of abuse from London’s road users. Ellie was staring in front and trying to picture her embryos Lola and Luca snuggling into the deep cotton wall glued to her uterus. The names had been a running joke for about five years. Luca after someone to do with Chelsea, and because Ellie liked it even though the Chelsea Luca had long since left. Lola because Ellie came up with it one night when she and Gabe were playing the Name Game in bed. Where once post-coital activity had been a fag or pizza and a gentle reminiscence, or the soft, safe sleep lovers share sometimes, now it was a game where they came up with a name they liked for ea
ch letter of the alphabet. Ever since that time, whenever Gabe or Ellie referred to their imagined child, he or she was Luca or Lola. And so they were.

  Izzy and Moira sat in the back of the car in pretty much the way they had when they were kids. ‘You OK, pet? Sam’s not driving too fast is he?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I can’t drive much slower.’

  ‘I know. Could you imagine if Gabe were driving behind you, the names he’d be calling you?’ She needed to hear his name in the car right then; she needed the thought of him as she cradled their maybe-babies home. Then returned her mind to the tasks that lay ahead of her, tasks that would somehow keep her breathing.

  She’d get home and rest because she had to, and then she would phone the hospital. She had things to sort out: the funeral, and his mother was finally flying in tomorrow, and Ellie had to tell her that she didn’t want her staying in the flat, as nicely as she could. And then she had to rest more and talk to work about how long she would be off. And sort out money … how? Why hadn’t Gabriel’s work been in touch? She’d left a message the day after the accident, but had heard nothing. Not even a card.

  ‘There is so much to do,’ she murmured.

  ‘When we get to yours, you need to rest for a while, we’ll have a cup of tea and work out the things we need to do, OK sweetie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Silence as everyone bar Ellie held their breath for a sleeping policeman.

  ‘Do you think there’s a God?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘I don’t know, sweetie … do you?’ Izzy was in full-on psychiatric nurse mode.

  ‘No, but it’s times like this, you realise why we invented him.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Moira.

  ‘Because there is nobody else to blame.’

  ‘Well,’ said Sam feeling Izzy’s eyes burning into the back of his head. ‘There is another way of looking at that.’