Chapter 48

48

TWELVE WEEKS LATER

As I walk towards the library—still hobbling a little but finally without crutches—I smile, enjoying the scatter of copper-coloured leaves that blanket the pavement and crunch under my boots. I shove my hands into my coat pockets as I stride by Baba’s, nodding my hello to Deli Dan inside as he chops up a cucumber at lightning speed. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon and already the sky has greyed, the orange lights of the lampposts fluttering on one by one as I pass.

Since I’ve gotten home, I’ve been following Jan’s advice to remain hopeful. To expect the best from life, from people. For the most part it’s working, especially with the help of the new therapist I’ve been seeing who is doing her best to help me figure out my messy brain and how I can work with it to stop myself from spiralling into isolation again.

I’ve been to see Cooper every single day at 10:00 a.m. on the dot. Every morning I desperately hope that this is the day he will wake up. And every day, nothing. Just the steady beep and whir of the machines keeping him alive. There are murmurs at the hospital about the possibility that Cooper will never wake up, and what decisions Amy and Malcolm may want to make about his care. But I can’t face thinking about that. So when I’m with him, I give him lengthy recaps about life at number 14 Westbourne Hyde Road.

I tell him about Mr. Yoon, who has now bought his own VOCA and is such a whizz on the keyboard that Aled (his actual new best friend) says he thinks he has the best word-per-minute rate of anyone he’s ever met. I tell him how the council have approved the need for additional home care and that he now has a lovely helper called Claire who makes sure that he has everything he needs to be clean and comfortable and cared for. I tell him how the VOCA has meant that my continuing breakfasts with Mr. Yoon have led to a now encyclopaedic knowledge of his life—I know now that Mr. Yoon grew up in a small Korean village with his sister. They had a serious falling-out after he had an affair with the wife of his conductor and got kicked out of the orchestra where he was working, blackballed from joining any other orchestra in the country.

I hold Cooper’s hand as I regale him with stories of Mrs. Ernestine, who has taken to joining Mr. Yoon each morning for breakfast before she sits for me. In my head I imagine Cooper asking me why Mrs. Ernestine is sitting for me. And so I tell him that I’ve been drawing her. In fact I’ve been drawing every visitor I’ve had. There wasn’t much else to do stuck in bed with a broken knee, and everyone who turned up at my house was happy to be drawn while we chatted.

It’s funny the things people talk about when they think you’re not really listening. I’ve gotten to know this community of people around my building more than I ever thought I would. More than I thought I ever wanted to. Now, I can’t imagine not knowing the glee that comes with being privy to Leanne’s weird phobia of lizards that once made her pass out on a school trip to a reptile sanctuary. Or that Mrs. Ernestine was once a contestant on Catchphrase and had an on-screen argument with the eventual winners because she thought they were cheating, leading to the episode getting cut.

I see Aled’s collecting of friends as something deeper and more heartfelt than a slight desperation after he revealed to me that he too had been bullied, but at university, rather than at secondary school. His reaction to that trauma was the opposite to mine. While I shut myself off from anyone and anything that could hurt me, he actively searched for people to love and love him in return. Frida told me yesterday that she is falling in love with him.

I even love knowing that Deli Dan has, according to Jan, the straightest, most proud-looking penis she ever saw and she has seen her fair share of penii. The very knowledge of it makes me feel pleased for her on a daily basis—Jan deserves all the good things. We’re even going to visit The Orchestra Pit together next week, which I will endure because she’s quickly becoming one of my favourite people.

I push open the door to the library and pass the display table filled with the books of R. L. Cooper. I swallow down the despair that darts my chest as sharply as if it were still those lost hours immediately after the accident. When I visited him yesterday I begged him once again to please come back. I had been so certain that Merritt was planning to make it happen, but as the weeks have drifted by with zero change in circumstances, I’m starting to lose faith.

I drop the books I’ve been reading—a selection of excellent romance novels Merritt had mentioned and the first two of the R. L. Cooper series I’ve been hooked on—into the returns box and head down the long back corridor, past the huge stained-glass windows and into the large, bright reading room where my exhibition is being held today.

An exhibition. Me! It’s sort of ridiculous, really. I’ve only just started to go back to the weekly life-drawing classes with Frida, and I’m very much still an amateur, but everyone I drew thought it would be a nice idea to display my work for an afternoon so that we could celebrate. I refused at first, on account of acute embarrassment. And then I remembered what Jan said at the hospital—that being alive is about experiencing the full gamut of emotions. If you’re not feeling pushed and pulled and scared and delighted instead of just safe—then you’re not doing it right. So I decided to just go for it. The exhibition is called My People: The Characters of Westbourne Hyde Road.

Most of the invitees are already here. Mr. Yoon, with Aled and Frida at his side, the three of them pointing at my framed ink drawing of Mrs. Ernestine on my sofa, head resting lightly on her hands, before moving on to the nude I did of Leanne, who was thankfully a little more discreet in her poses than Kat at the life-drawing class had been. Jan and Leanne and Jan’s mum, Diane, are chatting by a series of portraits of Mr. Yoon, all of his most used expressions apparent in the series—Mr. Yoon grumpy, Mr. Yoon laughing, Mr. Yoon blissfully playing his violin, and Mr. Yoon sneering because I made him listen to the excellent new Doja Cat album. Flashy Tom holds up his camera and takes a selfie with my drawing of him dressed up as Bernadette Peters in Annie.

I circulate the room, thanking everyone for coming, unable to quite believe that these people have turned out for me. Unable to quite believe I am willingly and happily conversing with each and every one of them in talk both big and small.

I glance over to the section of the wall that holds my portrait of Cooper. Of course he was unable to sit for me, so it’s mostly been done from memory and the visits at his bedside. In the drawing, he’s doing that cocky smile. The one that simultaneously makes me want to snipe at him, stroke his face, and climb into his lap. His eyes are twinkling, chin lifted, as if he’s on the edge of breaking into a laugh. I think about the way he laughs with his whole body, like every limb wants in on the fun. The thought of it brings a sting to my throat, the space behind my eyes aching with yet another round of tears.

I step out into the musty hallway of the library, taking a few deep lungfuls of air to steady myself. The people in that room have seen enough of me crying to last a lifetime. The worst thing I could do is to invite them to an event to witness more of it, only this time in more salubrious surroundings.

I’m about to go back in to join the others when I hear someone clear their throat behind me.

“The exhibition’s just through there,” I say absently, thumbing in the direction of the reading room.

“What, no cutting remark for the most obnoxious man you’ve ever encountered? That’s a first.”

I whirl around. And there, in a wheelchair, in front of the blazing stained-glass windows, is Cooper. He’s dressed in a pristine white shirt, his grey cargo pants a little baggy on his legs. His dark curls are past chin length, his eyes glinting and intense. They drink me in thirstily.

His lips lift into a full, wholehearted smile. “You know, I had this really strange dream about a girl who looked just like you.”

I start to laugh.

He’s back. Cooper came back.