Damascus by Richard Beard Read Free Book Online Page B

from house to house as if none of it has anything to do with her. For the first time she stands separate from her own life and watches it from the outside, actively trying to memorise this room, this moment, her mother’s china animals, because who knows what else might be different before tomorrow?
    Exactly now, the Ford Mondeo or the Peugeot 405 or the Vauxhall Cavalier pulls into the drive. Hazel picks up
The Times Book of Jumbo Crosswords
, suddenly embarrassed to be thinking thoughts which seem out of place, under the circumstances. Or it might have been
The Times Jumbo Concise Crosswords
or just
The Times Crosswords
or even the
Jubilee Puzzles
, but whatever it is, Hazel puts it down again as soon as her mother opens the door. She is carrying a plastic bag bulging with provisions from Tesco’s or Sainsbury’s or Waitrose or Safeway, and Hazel follows her through to the kitchen, asking if there’s anything she can do to help.
    Together, mother and daughter unpack and stack in cupboards muesli, soya beans, cod-liver oil, apples, oranges, milk, prunes, walnut-halves, lavender tea, instant chicken soup.
    â€˜She’s still not well,’ Mum says. 'I bought her a few things, in case she wakes up.’
    She holds open the bag and Hazel looks inside. There is a box of Jaffa cakes, a packet of Bourbon biscuits, a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate, a Mars bar.
    â€˜She likes Jaffa cakes,’ Hazel says.
    Mum says: ‘We all have to be brave.’
    Olive has been admitted to the Queen’s Medical Centre, to the Royal Princess Margaret General Masonic St Mary’s Hospital. She is still unconscious, and X-rays have revealed extensive head and back injuries. It is possible, it is a possibility, that she may not wake up at all, Mum says. The bag swings between Hazel and her Mum as they both remember, on the way to the swimming pool, sudden traffic cones and a hole in the road. The car spinning round and round and then hits something, a wall or the bottom of a bridge or something. In the front of the car, Hazel and her mother unhurt, then outside the car, watching firemen take twenty minutes to cut Olive from the wreckage of the back seat. Mrs Burns, now in her own kitchen (back at the wrecked car) now in her own kitchen, takes Hazel in her arms and rocks her softly, side to side, forwards and backwards, stroking her hair.
    Yesterday, Hazel would have been too old for this. Today, her age and her expectations seem irrelevant. All that matters now is now, and she moves with her mother, side to side, forwards and backwards. Her mother’s cheek turns and presses against the top of her head.
    â€˜It’s alright,’ Mum says. ‘Everything’s going to be just fine.’
    Hazel remembers this morning, waking up excited: Monday, swimming after school. She pinches and punches Olive for the first day of the month, not as hard as she could have, but still pretty hard, meaning Olive you are as embarrassing as ever with your non-swimmer’s glasses and your books and being only eleven all the time. Probably it’s all Hazel’s fault for pinching and punching harder than allowed because it’s only supposed to be a game. And now Olive may be dying while everything else is alive and carries on, her mother’s hand on her hair, her own hair against her skin, her skin her skull her bones.
    â€˜You have beautiful hair,’ Mum says. ‘You
both
have beautiful hair.’
    She slowly pulls herself away and says she has to go now, back to the hospital, and Hazel finds she’s old enough to understand that her mother is being brilliant. She has made herself useful at the hospital, contacted her husband, garaged the smashed car, made Hazel feel involved. At last, something terrible has happened and Mrs Burns can cope with life like this because knowing she has always been right makes her strong. Her fears have been realised, so she is no longer frightened, and she acts without