“She’s alive,” he says.

14. November

Eve

The pediatric intensive care ward is hot and brightly lit. Eve is getting used to the background hum: nurses at the desk and the doctors on their rounds, the never-ending bleep of machines. She’s learned to ignore the constant movement around the beds. From time to time there are muffled gasps of someone weeping. She focuses on Sorrel’s fingers lying curved on the sheet; the crusted blood has been washed away. She holds her hand, the small palm lying motionless against hers, and watches the rise and fall of her chest under the sheet.

Sorrel’s brain scan was normal. The blood tests showed early starvation and dehydration, nothing that can’t be reversed, the nurse tells her. Her name is Annie. Her voice is pleasant, the rhythm sings. She is from the south of Ireland and has creamy skin and black curly eyelashes, one of those kind, brisk girls whose quiet way of moving inspires confidence. Annie’s glance plays constantly over the machines by Sorrel’s bed, her fingers adjust the rate of the IV drip and the height of the pillows, she smooths strands of damp hair off her forehead. Eve watches to see if Annie is on shift, and once she is, Eve allows herself to doze.

Eric tells her to go home, but what if she misses the moment when Sorrel’s eyes open? Eve has hardly moved from her bedside for three days, not even to brush her teeth. Eric holds Sorrel’s hand; he is polite but more remote than ever. She wonders if Melly let slip about her relationship with Martin. She can’t ask her; they haven’t talked since Sorrel was found, she has no energy to cross the little gap that has opened between her and Melly.

The affair with Martin seems irrelevant now, like a film she saw long ago, with an actress taking her part, playing a character she hardly recognizes. It’s impossible to tell what thoughts lurk behind Eric’s brooding face opposite hers or whether he knows; only that he seems to have gone as far away from her as she has from him.

He brings Poppy to the ward after school; she’s allowed ten minutes at a time. Her auburn hair and the bright splash of her freckles shine against the beige of walls and beds. Eve holds her, breathing in her health, her fresh-air scent. Poppy doesn’t twist away anymore but her glance moves rapidly over the immobile bodies on the beds around them; it takes in the IVs, the catheters and machines, the electrodes placed on small chests.

“Can I bring Noah to see Sorrel?”

“I wish you could, darling, but things in here have to be very clean.”

“Noah’s clean.”

“I mean sterile clean, in case of germs; some of these children are very sick.”

“Is Sorrel very sick?”

“She’s tired. Too tired to wake up properly yet; she didn’t have anything to eat or drink for nearly two days, remember.”

“Was she scared?” The tone shifts higher.