By My Side E-Book

Alice Peterson

• Herausgeber: Bedford Square Publishers
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 406

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

One step can change everything... Cass Brooks wishes she could turn back time. She'd go back to that morning and retrace her steps. Her boyfriend would still be with her. Her mother wouldn't be nagging her to plan a new future when all she wants is her old life back. Everything seems out of reach. But when Ticket, the most intelligent and devoted golden Labrador, bursts into Cass's life and chooses her, she dares to dream that she can be happy again. Then on a flight she sits next to Charlie, who believes he can show her a life full of possibilities. But will Cass let him? Can she let herself believe that with Ticket and Charlie, maybe she has a future after all?

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Praise for Alice Peterson

‘If You Were Here is a moving and emotional story about facing a life-altering dilemma’ Jill Mansell, bestselling author of Rumour Has It

‘It’s not often that I fall in love with a book within the first few pages, but it happened to me with this one’ The Bookbag on You, Me and Him

‘Compelling and beautifully written’ Daisy Buchanan, journalist and author on If You Were Here

‘As it was the favourite book of the year to date for my reader in this field, I had to read it too… I loved it. It’s character-led, warm and sensitive’ Sarah Broadhurst, The Bookseller on Letters From My Sister

‘This is a wonderful portrait of the different dynamics within an unusual family’ Sara Lawrence, Daily Mail on The Things We Do for Love

‘A lovely example of realistic fiction that many women will be able to relate to’ Sun on One Step Closer to You

‘Echoes of Jane Austin, A Room With a View and Bridget Jones’s Diary’ Robert O’Rourke on Monday to Friday Man

‘A lovely read, tackling both light and dark material with real assurance. I love the idea of a love triangle where one of the characters has died, which actually makes him more of an obstacle than if he were still alive. Also, the thought that you can find true love twice feels a strong romantic notion – and quite true, I’m sure’ Tom Williams, Chalet Girl screenwriter on Ten Years On

To Sarah Orr

Prologue

‘I have a very woolly head,’ I tell Sean, wishing I hadn’t downed that last tequila shot in the early hours of this morning. It seemed such a good idea at the time to have just one more.

Sean wraps an arm around my waist, our bodies warm in bed. ‘Well, Miss Brooks, I happen to know a great cure for woolly heads.’

‘You do? Don’t say raw eggs.’

‘Sex.’

‘Sex?’

‘Yep, sex.’ Sean strokes his chin and adopts a serious expression. ‘And plenty of it. In fact, I’m going to write you out a prescription right now.’

‘That’s so very kind of you, Doctor Irwin.’

He pretends to write on my bare stomach, his fingers light against my skin.

‘Sex at least three times a day.’

I laugh.

‘Missionary in the morning, doggy style in the afternoon, and…’ He pauses as he surveys me.

I roll on to my side, prop myself up with the pillows. ‘Please don’t stop, Doctor Irwin.’

‘Let’s have you in your tartan mini skirt and stilettos up against the wall in the evening.’ He’s signing the pretend prescription now, and handing it to me. ‘And the sooner you start, the better.’

‘Great. I’ll give Johnny Depp a call.’

‘Busy. Only works if you do it with someone called Sean. I hear he’s amazing in bed too.’

I raise an eyebrow. ‘That’s not what I’ve heard.’

Next, he’s on top of me, we’re both laughing as I wrestle to push him away, we roll over in bed, almost fall on to the floor, we kiss, Sean runs a hand down my bare back… pulls me close… until I have to wriggle out from underneath him. ‘Sorry, need a pee.’ I hear a loud sigh as I leave the room.

‘Don’t be long,’ he calls out.

I look at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Um. Not a pretty sight. Black eye make-up is smudged; hair could do with a wash. I gulp down some water with a couple of headache tablets and brush my teeth. Sean shouts for some water too. ‘Your woolly head is catching!’

Sean and I are both studying medicine at King’s College, London. We’re in our fourth year and I have just returned from a four-week placement in Paediatrics in the King’s College Hospital. Next term we’ll be doing three-week rotations in A&E, Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Anaesthetics. Sean and I joke about how we’re giddy from information overload. We wake up and forget which end of the body we’re working on.

We’re alone in the flat today. Our other housemate, Sarah, has already returned home for Christmas. She’s also reading medicine. I’m heading to my parents’ this afternoon. I dread the holidays. A weekend is fine, but Mum and I together for any longer than that is asking for trouble. After five minutes we bicker. ‘You should be reading law, not medicine, Cassandra,’ she says. ‘You’re so good at arguing.’ Then there’s my brother, Jamie. He’s nineteen, four years younger than me, and similar to my dad in temperament: soft, loveable, kind and impossible to be cross with. On a camping holiday in France, he stole money from my purse so he could go and buy me a present. He’s in Madrid at the moment, teaching English as a foreign language. He doesn’t want to go to university. He’s not sure what he wants to do. That’s where I’m lucky. All I’ve ever wanted is to be a doctor. My parents never had to nag me to do my biology homework. When I was a child I had a fascination with first-aid boxes, and always gave my toys injuries that I could cure with medicine or mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Dad used to wonder where this passion came from, since no one in our family likes to go anywhere near a needle. Jamie faints at the sight of blood.

‘Hurry up, Cass! I’m dying of thirst in here.’

Back in my bedroom, I hand him a glass of water. ‘Lazy sod. What’s wrong with your legs?’

‘Nothing… but yours work so much better than mine.’

I throw on a pair of skinny jeans, ankle boots and one of Sean’s navy jumpers, aware he’s watching me. I scoop my long dark blonde hair into a ponytail.

‘You’re beautiful.’

‘Sean Irwin, what do you want?’

‘Nothing. Well, some hot sex?’

I smile, wondering what’s got into him this morning.

‘Where you going? Remember that prescription! Come back to bed,’ he groans, stretching his arms.

‘We need some milk and bread and stuff. I thought I could make us some brunch, you know, before we head home.’ My parents live in Dorset, close to Dorchester. Sean’s family live in Dublin. It was Sean’s Irish accent that attracted me at once, when he chatted me up in the student union bar – he could have spouted out the telephone directory and I’d still have been entranced. His accent, coupled with a sharp sense of humour that shone from his pale blue eyes, and I was hooked. I grab my wallet, collecting a few bits of loose change on my dressing table. ‘How about a big fat bacon butty? I need grease. Sean?’ I wave a hand in front of him.

‘I love you, Cass.’

‘What?’ I mutter, too shocked to say anything else. We’ve been going out for a year, and many times Sean has said, ‘I love going out with you’ or ‘I love the way you make me feel’ and when he says, ‘I love doing it with you,’ I tease him, saying he’s such an old romantic.

‘I love you,’ he repeats.

I kick my boots off and fall back into bed, Sean pulling my jeans off as quickly as I’d put them on.

Outside, the sunlight blinds my eyes. It’s freezing cold. Our flat in Pimlico is on a main road, but I’ve become used to the traffic and the noise; it’s almost comforting, like a friend that’s always there.

I want to sing and dance and tell the whole world I’m in love.

In a daze I head towards the traffic lights and zebra crossing, which feel too far away today. The road is clear. If I’m quick I could make a run for it now, the idea of bacon and coffee and being in bed again with Sean too tempting to waste time.

‘Cass!’ I hear him shout.

I turn round, look up to our flat on the third floor and see a bare-chested Sean leaning out of the window, waving my wallet. I’m such an idiot.

‘Chuck it down!’

A car races past, and I have to manoeuvre myself out of the way of a couple of joggers on the pavement.

He holds on to the wallet. ‘We need sugar too. And fags.’

‘Fine. Throw.’

He hesitates. ‘I’ll come down.’

‘Don’t. Get on with your packing!’ Sean’s flight is this afternoon. I jog up and down on the spot. ‘Just throw it!’

Sean hurls my wallet towards me. I jump to catch it. It hits the side of my hand and flies over my shoulder and on to the road.

Without thinking I run towards it.

‘Careful!’ he shouts. I stop. I hear him screaming now.

A car horn blasting.

I don’t remember what happens next.

1

Five months later

I hear her coming upstairs. The jangling of her gold bracelets gives her away.

I sense her hovering outside my bedroom door, summoning the strength to enter. The handle moves and in she comes, in a bright red sundress, her vanilla scent overpowering.

‘Morning!’ She strides across my room in her high heels. I don’t think Mum has ever worn a pair of flats. ‘The God of height wasn’t on my side,’ she’d once said.

‘What a lovely day!’ she says with gusto, opening the curtains to allow the sunshine to stream in. ‘I thought we could go out for lunch, just to the pub opposite?’ Clocking my hesitancy, she says, ‘Or how about a nice drive?’

‘Maybe.’

She picks my tracksuit trousers off the floor, hangs them on the back of my chair. ‘Or we could go for a walk… maybe see a film?’

I don’t move. ‘I’m fine, Mum. But you go.’

‘Oh, Cass, it’s been weeks!’ she says, raising her voice for the first time since I returned home from Stoke Mandeville Hospital at the end of April. ‘You can’t fester inside, day after day.’ The telephone rings. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ she warns me.

I’m testing her patience, but I don’t feel ready to face the world yet. Minutes later she returns, notepad in hand this time. ‘That was Sarah,’ she says, sitting on the end of my bed. ‘I told her you’d call back.’

Sarah’s the one Sean and I shared a flat with at King’s. She was my clinical partner, which basically means we did everything together. In our third year, when we were pushed out of our safe lecture-room environment and thrown into the world of real-life patients, Sarah and I clung on to one another in fear, scared they might bite. I see us turning up on our first day at hospital, dressed in long pleated skirts, white shirts and navy cardigans. We looked as if we were in school uniform. When I was asked to clerk a patient Sarah came with me, and as we walked down the long airy corridor we were too nervous to talk; all we did was make sure our stethoscopes were placed squarely round our necks. Sarah is in her final term of year four. She told me she was planning to go to Gibraltar during the summer break. At the end of year four we had to organise a two-month placement abroad. I was planning to go to a bush hospital in Africa.

I feel a prod. ‘Cass?’ Mum says.

‘Hmm?’

‘Oh, Cassandra, you haven’t heard a word I’ve said.’ Impatiently, Mum flicks open her notepad. ‘I was saying you have a baseline.’ She draws a thick horizontal line across the paper. ‘The fact of the matter is—’ she takes in a deep breath, as if she’s about to plunge herself into icecold water – ‘this is how it’s going to be for the rest of your life. We can’t change that, but what we can do—’ she sketches neat arrows going upwards from this baseline – ‘is change how we manage it.’

I raise an eyebrow. ‘Will you be doing a PowerPoint presentation next?’

She puts the pen down. ‘You need to think about your future.’

‘What future?’ I burst out. Why doesn’t she understand? ‘Everything I loved… everyone I loved…’ I trail off.

‘I’ve damaged my spinal cord,’ I’d said to Sean when he’d visited me in hospital for the first time since the accident. I saw the colour literally drain from his face; he knew exactly what that meant. ‘I’m paralysed, Sean, from the waist down.’

Ironically one of his favourite subjects was neurology and spinal cord injury. Sean didn’t shed a tear. He looked as if he wanted to punch the living daylights out of the next person who came into the ward. I searched his face, looking for signs that he was going to stick around, but all I could see was anger and helplessness in his eyes. Part of me wanted to ease his pain, tell him he was free to go. I didn’t want him to stay with me out of pity.

The other half wanted him to get off that chair and give me a hug, and tell me everything was going to be all right, and that he still loved me.

As I looked at him, all I could think was how could life change so quickly? Only days ago we were dancing, fooling around in bed and making plans for the New Year. He had invited me to Dublin. I was going to meet his parents for the first time.

He stood up, turned his back to me. ‘This is my fault.’

Tears came to my eyes. ‘No. Don’t blame yourself.’

‘Visiting hours are over,’ said an abrupt Georgina, my assigned nurse, examining my medical notes on her clipboard. ‘Off you go, now. She needs her rest. You can see her tomorrow.’

Sean gathered his coat and scarf. He hesitated before kissing my cheek and touching my hand. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. As he reached the door, he looked over his shoulder. ‘Will you come tomorrow?’ I called out, my voice as fragile as my broken body.

I was in hospital for four months. Sean did visit again, ten days later. He left a letter on my bedside table, telling me not to open it until he’d gone—

‘Cassandra!’

I shudder when I feel another prod on my shoulder. ‘I give up,’ she says with resignation. ‘What can I do?’

‘Why don’t you go back to work?’ I suggest. Mum runs a successful property-letting company. She founded the business in London, where we’d lived until I was sixteen. Mum agreed to Dad’s demands to move out of the city, to Dorset, on the proviso that she could expand her company to the West Country. Her company now deals with properties in the southwest region, covering Somerset, Dorset and Devon.

She looks indignant. ‘I am working.’

‘I mean full-time, in your office?’ Mum has an office in Dorchester.

‘Not yet. A, I can work from home and B, if I wasn’t here, I’d come home in the evening and find you still in bed.’ She looks at me, concerned. ‘Would you like me to arrange some counselling for you?’

‘No! I’m fine, I promise.’ I say, praying to be left alone.

‘I want you up. Five minutes.’ She grabs my dressing gown from the back of the door and throws it at me.

I push the gown away from my face. ‘I feel sick, Mum.’

Dad walks in now.

‘She won’t get up, Michael.’

‘Cass can stay in bed a bit longer, can’t she?’ Dad reasons.

Mum’s temper explodes like a pressure cooker. ‘Wrapping her in cotton wool isn’t going to help anyone,’ she says, ‘least of all Cass!’ Next thing I know, Dad grabs her by the arm and pulls her out of my room.

‘I need your support!’ Mum says in protest, shaking her arm free. ‘My parents are hopeless, not one single visit. Mum can’t even be bothered to pick up the bloody phone.’

‘Look, it’s going to take time,’ Dad says in a low voice. ‘The doctors warned us Cass will be abnormally tired in the first year.’

I hear them walking away. I strain to hear what Mum’s saying now. Something about me getting out of my bed and doing my exercises. ‘She’s depressed!’ she shouts in exasperation.

I close my eyes, feeling guilty that I’m causing this grief.

Five minutes later Dad stands at my bedroom door, his face creased with anxiety.

‘Dad, I’m sorry.’

‘Could you try and get up this morning?’

I nod, my lip quivering.

Ten minutes later Mum is back with the shower chair on wheels. ‘You haven’t undressed yet.’

Slowly I unbutton my pyjama top. My hand is shaking. ‘I’m trying.’

‘Well, try harder,’ comes back the harsh reply, like the smash of a tennis ball into the body of an opponent. I can feel her stare as she waits for me to transfer myself from the edge of the bed across to the shower seat. Finally she wheels me into the bathroom.

‘Cass, I shouldn’t have snapped earlier but I hate seeing you like this. You have to stop feeling so sorry for yourself.’ She turns on the shower and tests the temperature of the water. ‘You need to make some kind of plan.’

‘I had my heart set on medicine.’

‘I know you did. You could go back to King’s. Why don’t you talk to Doctor Lewis?’ She reverses the chair into the right position before putting the brakes on.

Doctor Lewis was my clinical supervisor.

‘He’s used to dealing with all kinds of problems and I’m sure he’d want to—’

‘No,’ I cut her off. ‘I can’t.’ Sarah has also tried to convince me to return, but each time I try to imagine it, all I see is disabled accommodation and pity on people’s faces. How would I cope bumping into Sean or seeing him with someone else? It’s too raw. It’s too soon. And even if I did qualify, what would a patient think when they saw me in a wheelchair? ‘It wouldn’t be the same, Mum.’

‘No, no it wouldn’t, but you have to do something. Us Brookses, we’re fighters, we don’t give up.’

‘This didn’t happen to you.’

‘No, it didn’t. It happened to us.’ Close to tears, Mum hands me the shampoo bottle. ‘Us, Cass.’

I watch her leaving the room. I wish I could see a way forward, but I don’t know where or how to begin. ‘It’s a terrible thing to come to terms with but you are in the best possible care,’ the consultant had said to me from the foot of my bed. ‘With lots of physiotherapy we will teach you how to make the most of what you’ve been left with so you can be independent again.’

But what they can’t teach you is how to care. My heart can’t go to the gym. It’s broken.

When I’m dressed I call out for my father. Dad was the first person I saw in the ward when I’d regained consciousness.

‘How are we going to tell her?’ he’d said.

I wasn’t able to turn to see the person he was talking to because there was something hard against my back, stiff like a brace, but I was sure it was Mum by my side. ‘What’s wrong?’ I cried out. I can remember desperately trying to move my feet. ‘I can’t move!’

Mum was stroking my hair and I felt terrified by the gentleness of her touch and what it was trying to tell me.

I wheel myself to the top of the stairs where my father is waiting for me. ‘Good girl,’ he says as he bends down, a hand leaning on my armrest. ‘Are you ready?’ Carefully he lifts me out of my chair and carries me downstairs, saying, ‘It’s going to get better, Cass. I promise.’

I wish I’d died that morning.

2

Dad reaches the bottom of the stairs and Jamie emerges from the kitchen saying he’ll bring the wheelchair down. He must have been out because he’s still in his jacket.

When I’m finally positioned at the kitchen table Dad retreats into his study. He’s an architect and has worked from home since I was nine years old. Before Mum and Dad married they had talked about children, making an agreement that they wanted no more than two and one of them had to look after the family, not hire a nanny or au pair. Looking back, I can see why now. Both Mum and Dad don’t get on with their parents. Mum says they feel this deep void; neither of them was nurtured or encouraged, even loved. ‘They were strangers to me, they still are,’ Mum says. So, when I was born, Mum was the full-time stay-athome mum.

When I was five, and Jamie was still in his highchair, Mum explained to us, over tea, that Dad was taking on her role. Jamie was too young to understand, but I was worried. Dad couldn’t cook. That same year, Mum launched herself into the property business dealing in lettings. I’ve seen her website. Mum sits on top of the office tree, shoulder-length blonde hair professionally washed and blow-dried, and she’s wearing a figure-hugging grey jersey dress, scarlet lipstick, bronzed cheeks and a beaming smile. Underneath are all her minions in smaller boxes.

‘All right?’ Jamie asks in his deep rumbling voice.

‘Fine.’

‘I went to the post office, bought those for you.’ He gestures to a white plastic bag in the middle of the table. Inside are a couple of glossy magazines, pictures of Hollywood actresses with pearl white teeth gracing the front.

Jamie looks tired, as if he didn’t sleep last night. ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘While you’re up, make me a coffee, will you?’

‘Yeah, yeah, sure.’ He puts the kettle on. The sound of Mum’s Hoover coming from next door in the sitting room is like that of an aeroplane’s engine at high pitch just before it takes off. I find myself smiling, remembering how I used to turn the Hoover on when I was much younger just so I could shout, ‘Bugger!’ and ‘Fuck!’ without Mum or Dad hearing me.

‘She’s always cleaning, isn’t she?’ claims Jamie. ‘While you were in the hospital—’ he rubs his eyes, and for a moment he looks much younger than nineteen – ‘oh my God, you should have seen her.’ A small smile creeps on to his face.

‘Really? More than usual?’

‘Shitloads. This one time, right, she spilt a whole load of washing powder over the sink and went ballistic. Dad says she’s upset. That we need to give her masses of support.’ Jamie shakes his head. ‘Nothing I do is right, Cass.’

‘Well, I like you being here,’ I say, when he hands me my drink and I take a sip. It tastes weak, reminds me of hospital coffee. ‘You just need to brush up on your coffeemaking skills, that’s all.’

‘You’re just like Mum, you are!’ He smiles. ‘Any complaints in this hotel, write to the manager.’

Being here with Jamie reminds me of the time when he visited me in the ward. At this stage I had my own private room. I heard Dad and Jamie muttering in the corridor.

Then Jamie knocked on the door tentatively, before walking into my room wearing scuffed trainers and baggy jeans that showed off his Calvin Klein pants. He was carrying a box of After Eight mint chocolates he’d bought from the hospital shop, with the bright orange price sticker still on them. He looked awkward as he glanced at my white surgical stockings. ‘Don’t look so jealous,’ I said. ‘I’m sure they’d have some in your size.’

Next he was staring at the catheter bag that hung under the bed, unable to be hidden. I was desperate for him to look away, and thankfully he did. He checked out the room instead, his eyes wandering over the mini television system.

‘I’m thirsty,’ I said, gesturing to the water jug on my side table.

He hopped off his chair, grateful for the distraction. ‘Don’t get too used to this,’ he said, daring to grin as he poured me a glass.

‘Sorry, but you have to be extra nice to me now.’ There was another long uncomfortable pause. ‘Open the chocolates then,’ I said. ‘And pass me that magazine, would you?’

‘Oh man, this really stinks. I never liked you much before but now you’ll be a real nightmare.’

I found myself smiling, and I could see Jamie’s shoulders relaxing.

I look at my brother now. He’s tall and handsome, like my father, though slighter in build, like Mum and me. He has dark blond hair and blue eyes, an open face, big nose and a wide smile that puts you at ease immediately. He’s looking tanned right now. We both have skin that tans easily. Dad called us his ‘little gypsies’ when we were on family holidays abroad. Jamie’s attractive because he has no self-consciousness, despite the attention he receives from the opposite sex. ‘Come on, Jamie. Why are you still at home?’ I pick up the cereal box. ‘You were loving Madrid. You’d saved up for months, working in that old people’s home.’ All the residents fell for Jamie, of course. Morag was his favourite. Every evening she’d ask for half a banana with her meal, with the peel still on, and when Jamie brought it to her on a tray she’d tuck it into the drawer of her bedside table, and never touch it, but Jamie didn’t laugh at her or try to get her to explain. When the boss said this banana charade had to stop, Jamie snuck in his own.

He shrugs. ‘I can go back any time.’

We hear the Hoover right outside the kitchen now. ‘Anyway, I like being here,’ he continues, the hesitancy in his voice giving him away. I throw the magazine at him. ‘Jamie Brooks, you can’t tell a lie, not even if someone paid you a million quid.’

He scratches the back of his head. ‘I’ll go back when I’m ready. Madrid’s not going anywhere.’

I am touched by what he really means.

After Jamie and I have cleared up breakfast he tells me he’s meeting a friend in town. ‘Want to come?’

‘Are you meeting a girl?’

‘No.’ He blushes. ‘Why?’

‘You’ve brushed your hair.’ Jamie has thick hair with a life of its own. ‘And you’re wearing aftershave.’ I pinch my nose and laugh. The Hoover stops. Mum rushes into the kitchen, as if to make sure that that laughter was really coming from me.

3

Mum is back at work and I have been at home for six weeks now. Jamie has moved to London and found a job in an IT company, but he visits regularly at weekends. We all need him. When Jamie comes home, he brings with him a ray of sun.

It’s strange being here. Everything is familiar yet offers little comfort. It’s as if I’ve been at war and returned the injured soldier. It’s taken some time for Mum, Dad, Jamie and me to get used to the sound of wheels in the house. Wheelchair obstacles such as rugs and coffee tables have all been removed. With planning permission, my father has installed ramps in and outside the house. He’s adapted the bathroom, building a sliding door and repositioning the sink so that I can wheel myself alongside the bath to get to the loo. He’s built some low glass shelves in the kitchen so that I can reach plates and mugs. I still flinch when I see my jackets and coats on silver pegs halfway down the wall, and my pair of wellington boots that remind me of cliff-top walks by the sea, hair blowing in the wind.

As I sip my coffee, I hear the sound of hooves. Cautiously I look out of the shuttered windows. It’s one of the neighbours, Emily, riding her horse, Gus.

My fantasy to own a pony started when Mum and I saw two policemen riding horses through Hyde Park. I was ten at the time and thought the horses looked magnificent, their coats as shiny as Dad’s polished shoes. That night I made a plan.

We lived in a terrace house. Dad could design and build me a stable in the garden. I could ride Smartie, the name I gave my dream horse, in the park, feed him carrots, and in the winter he could come inside and sleep by the fire. I showed Mum my plan, which included lots of pictures, boxes and arrows.

‘Cass, darling, our garden is the size of a sandpit and what am I going to do with Smartie when you’re at school? Take it to the office?’

‘Well, I have thought about this,’ I replied, redirecting her to my diagram, showing her how I’d decided that the best option was for Mum to give up work. I’d drawn a picture of Mum in the kitchen, wearing a frilly apron and high heels. Often I’d ask Dad when it was Mum’s turn to work from home again. ‘You burn our sausages, like, all the time.’

Mum looked up from my masterpiece. ‘Oh, sweetheart, I can’t give up work.’ She ruffled my hair. ‘We have a mortgage to pay. Anyway, I love my job.’ I started to doodle on my diagram, not wanting Mum to see my tears. ‘One day, Cass, when you’re a successful hotshot doctor, you’ll understand. Not all women are cut out to stay at home.’

‘But—’

‘No buts! All you need to think about right now is A, getting dressed and B, going to school.’

However, the day did come when I thought I’d won the battle. ‘When you get home there will be a surprise for you in the garden,’ she said over breakfast. ‘It’s not a horse, but you’ll love him.’

Dad picked me up from school. I was so excited to get home. I’d told all my friends that Mum and Dad had bought me a puppy. ‘His name’s Henry,’ he said, ‘and he’s very handsome, but he’s not quite what you’re expecting.’

There was a tortoise in our garden.

When I was in my teens, I kept on asking Mum if we could have a dog. I promised I’d walk him or her but Mum kept on saying no. She’s asthmatic and allergic to animal hair. ‘Anything with fur, Cass, that moves, makes me sneeze and come out in splotches.’

When I was eighteen and had finished my A levels, I travelled to the south of Spain, to a donkey sanctuary, where I volunteered to help out on the farm. There were other abandoned animals too – dogs, cats, rabbits, pigs, chickens, goats, hens and uninvited rats. It was a cheap way to travel, and at last I could be with animals. Every year, until my accident, I’d returned to this sanctuary; it was my fix.

I hear the sound of hooves once more. When Emily glances towards the window I move away quickly, as if she’s seen me naked.

I’m on my own this morning. Dad’s doing some work for the council, designing a new office block or something. I decide to write an email to my friends Dom and Guy. They were both in hospital at the same time as me. Dom’s injury is similar to mine. He’s a paraplegic. The consultant had told me I was a T12.

‘Rings of bone called vertebrae surround the spinal cord,’ he’d explained. ‘Together, these bones form the spinal column. The seven vertebrae in the neck are called the cervical vertebrae, the top one being C1, the lowest C7. The twelve vertebrae in the chest are called the thoracic vertebrae, T1 to T12. Below that are the lumbar nerves, L1 to L5, and the sacral nerves, S1 to S5. If the spinal cord is damaged at any level, it means you are paralysed below the level of that injury. The higher the injury, the worse off you are. If you had been unfortunate enough to break your neck, Cass, with a high cervical injury, say C3, you would have no movement in your arms, trunk and legs. You are a T12 complete, meaning the spinal cord has been severed completely and you won’t be able to feel or move anything below your waist. An injury like yours, complete and to the thoracic root, only leads to loss of movement in the legs. You are a paraplegic,’ he announced as if I had won first prize in a disability competition. ‘You’re one of the lucky ones.’

When I didn’t clap my hands with gratitude, finally he put his notes down. ‘I am sorry, Cassandra. In terms of suddenness of onset and extent of impact, nothing compares to spinal cord injury. All I’m trying to say is it could have been a lot worse.’

I send a message to Dom first. ‘What are you up to? As weird as this sounds, I miss the hospital, especially you and Guy, even Georgina!’ I stop typing, remembering how Georgina would turn me over in bed like a slab of meat to examine my backside for pressure sores.

The thing about hospital was we had structure to our day, and everyone was in the same boat. To my amazement the time went quickly too. The motto was ‘keep them busy’. I woke up early to the comforting sound of the breakfast trolley rattling into the ward. Mum turned up later on in the morning, bringing us both a cappuccino or latte from the café because she won’t drink instant. By ten o’clock I was in the gym. My physiotherapist, Paul, had given me a tough rehabilitation programme. I had to do hours of stretching on my front and back, lifting weights and doing resistance work with stretch bands. One time, I was so tired that I’d lost my concentration and fallen straight out of my chair. Paul would only put an arm out if I were going to fall awkwardly or catch my skin on something. As I struggled to get back into my seat he told me he wasn’t going to help me; the only way I’d learn how to control my balance was by making mistakes. I asked him if he’d been a sergeant major in a former life. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That means I’m doing my job well.’

If I wasn’t in the gym I was playing table tennis with Dom or Jamie or I was in the hydrotherapy pool. During my first hydrotherapy session, three weeks after the accident, all I could do was lie in the water supported by floats and armbands, Paul holding my head. It was frightening because I’d realised just how helpless I was. By the end of the four months I could swim lengths, even if it was with a lot of thrashing and flapping. Paul called my style ‘Brooks Stroke’. ‘You’ll be at the Paralympics next,’ he’d teased, before adding that the first Paralympics had been held at Stoke Mandeville back in 1948, inspired by a German-born British neurologist. ‘A genius called Ludwig Guttmann established the National Spinal Injuries Centre here. He realised sport was vital to rehab, so come on, Brooks, another length!’

‘I don’t know what to do, Dom,’ I type. I look outside. It’s a lovely summer’s day, but the trouble is I want to go out biking or to the beach, play tennis or go for a run – all the things I took for granted. ‘This morning Mum and I argued. She suggested I go back to King’s. I know she’s only trying to help but… Do you know what else drives me mad? I’m twenty-three and being told to tidy up my bedroom! How are you? Let me know how you’re getting on, and love to Miranda.’

Miranda is Dom’s wife. She used to come into the ward with fruit and energy drinks and dark chocolate. Seeing them together made me think of Sean. I can’t do this… I’m so sorry, Cass, he’d written in his letter.

‘PS,’ I type. ‘Tell me a funny joke, Dom.’

‘Knock knock…’ comes the quick response.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Colleen.’

‘Colleen who?’

‘Colleen up your bedroom!’

I giggle, before replying, ‘That’s terrible, even for you.’

The first time I’d met Dom was when I’d moved to the rehabilitation ward. It was a mixed ward, most of us young, and Mum was sitting by my bedside, knitting me a pair of socks, as we waited to meet my new physiotherapist. I found it disconcerting because Mum had never even sewn a nametag in a school shirt.

‘Good day, I’m Paul Parker,’ said a very fit-looking man with a strong Aussie accent.

‘All right, Parker!’ called out the man from the opposite bed.

‘Thank you, Dom,’ said Paul, picking up my notes that were pinned to a clipboard at the end of my bed. ‘Para T12 complete,’ he muttered.

I wanted to say, ‘My name is Cass,’ but instead I confided that I’d tried to get up the day before but had fainted.

‘Well, the sooner we try again, the sooner you can leave this place.’

‘But I want to walk out when I leave,’ I said, somehow hoping that I could defy the rules, that there could still be hope.

‘Darling, please try to cooperate,’ Mum urged.

‘Mrs Brooks, do you mind if I see Cassandra on her own?’ Paul asked.

Mum picked up her knitting bag, wool trailing out of the back of it as she left. Paul alerted her to the trail. ‘We don’t want our patients tripping up on the ward,’ he joked, helping her gather it back into the bag.

‘Ah look,’ he said, turning back to me, ‘do you want me to help you?’

‘Hmm.’

‘Speak properly.’

There was no room for weakness in this place.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Let’s get you into this chair so we can start working on your muscle tone.’

‘Bonne chance!’ shouted the cheerful, nosy man called Dom. His hair was short and showed specks of grey, which gave away his age. I guessed he was in his late thirties, early forties. He looked sporty, as if he were training for the Olympics. The scary man in the next-door bed told him to shut the fuck up, that some people were trying to get some sleep. ‘And what’s with the French all of a sudden?’ he continued.

‘Stop being so miserable, Guy,’ he replied. ‘Come to the gym.’

‘Get stuffed.’

‘The day goes by much more quickly if you’re busy,’ he persevered, not taking the slightest offence. He wedged a water bottle into one side of his wheelchair and slipped on a pair of fingerless gloves.

Paul drew the beige flowered curtain around my bed, blocking them both out of sight. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘No nonsense, otherwise you’re wasting my time. Are you ready?’

I saluted. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Top banana.’

I smiled. ‘What did you just say?’

‘Top banana. Now, let’s start off gently and see how we go.’

As I attempted to sit up I found it hard adjusting to the slightly different position. It felt like I was taking giant steps forward when I knew I was barely moving. ‘A bit more,’ Paul encouraged, supporting my back. ‘Georgina! I need a hand!’ he shouted.

When I was finally upright and had transferred myself into the wheelchair, I cried out, ‘I’m going to be sick.’ Immediately he tilted the chair back. ‘Ah look, don’t panic, mate. It will feel strange to begin with,’ he said, steadying me. ‘Your blood pressure will be low; it takes time to readjust. It’s all right, Cass, I’m here, OK.’ It felt like I was hanging in midair.

Georgina drew back the curtain and there was my perky fingerless-glove neighbour, still watching, as if it were a soap opera. Finally he stuck his thumb up and raced off in his wheelchair, saying he was going to do a bit of archery. He acted like he was at some kind of holiday camp.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ says Paul. ‘He’s one of the nice guys.’

Dom turned to me one last time. ‘Good luck, Cass. Break a leg!’

And strangely I did find that funny.

Another message appears in my inbox. ‘Come to London soon. Don’t see your wheelchair as a disability badge, Cass, see it as a way to come and visit me and Guy.’

Both live in West London. Dom’s flat is in Hammersmith. Guy lives with his parents in Ladbroke Grove.

‘Don’t shut yourself away at home. We miss you.’

4

It’s late in the evening when my mobile rings. Jamie, who’s home for the weekend, hands it to me.

‘I’ve had a terrible day,’ Guy says the moment I come on to the line.

‘What happened?’

Jamie glances my way, before turning the television off and discreetly leaving the room.

‘I met some old work mates.’ Guy used to work in the City. ‘They asked me if I wanted to meet for a coffee and I thought it’d be good to get out of the house. We met in this bar, they’d sussed out a place with easy access. The boys ordered me an espresso because that’s what I used to have, so when the waitress brings it over I drop the cup and coffee spills all over the table. They order me another and I drop that one too, this time the cup breaks. The handle is so fucking delicate, I couldn’t hold it properly.’

‘Oh God, Guy, I’m so sorry.’

Guy has a higher-level injury than mine. He broke his neck at C6 and is paralysed from the collarbone down. The nerves on your neck correspond to the movement and strength in your hands and wrists, so as a result his are weak. I can remember his screaming frustration at just trying to brush his teeth. ‘It was terrible.’ His voice shudders. ‘How are you, Cass? When are you coming to London?’

‘I’m sorry, Guy,’ I say again, understanding there is something else he wants to tell me.

‘Oh, Cass, you should have seen the look on their faces, as if I were a cripple. It nearly killed me.’

Later, Dad comes to say goodnight. He has deep circles under his eyes; he has aged ten years since my accident.

‘Thanks for doing so much to the house,’ I say, thinking of Guy in the downstairs room of his parents’ flat where he eats, sleeps… He says it’s like living in a rabbit hutch. ‘It must have been hard work.’

‘It was nothing.’ He sits on the edge of my bed. ‘Do you think you’ll sleep tonight?’ Dad is aware I’m having recurring nightmares. Sometimes I’m back on the hospital ward; other times I’m running barefoot along a hot tarmac road. Sean is waiting for me at the end. ‘Come on!’ he’s shouting, but just as I’m about to reach him he disappears. When I look down to my feet blood is seeping in between my toes, they’re burning like fire.

‘I hope so,’ I say, unconvinced.

Dad makes himself comfortable. ‘What’s worrying you?’

I tell him about Guy’s day. I can’t stop thinking about how traumatic it must have been for him to see the people he used to work with. They head back to the office to resume their normal working day; Guy heads back to his rabbit hutch. This is why I find it hard to talk to Sarah. I can’t return to King’s.

Dad understands. ‘It’s tough. All we can do is take one day at a time,’ he says gently, before kissing me goodnight. He stands at the door. ‘Sweet dreams, OK. No nightmares.’

I close my eyes.

Georgina rushes to my bed. ‘It’s Cass,’ Dom tells her.

‘I can feel something,’ I insist, lifting the sheets. ‘My toes, I think it’s my right foot.’ At last I feel a tiny connection to my body. ‘Georgina?’

‘Often you can feel pain below the level of injury in an area you can’t move,’ she says.

‘I’ve had that,’ claims Dom. ‘I get terrible pain sometimes, like a hot needle jabbing up and down my spine. It’s like biting on foil with a filling.’

‘Isn’t it good to feel something, Georgina?’

‘Yes and no. The problem is pain is hard to treat. Imagine lots of wires inside you, basically your nerves,’ she explains. ‘Pain goes through one or two and then sparks off as there is no connection. They’re alive but don’t have anything to do.’

I look at my feet, trying to understand. ‘Cass,’ she says, ‘try and get back to sleep.’ My feet are covered again as if laid back in the coffin. Lights are turned off.

‘Are you OK, Cass?’ Guy asks.

Struggling not to cry I say, ‘Not really. You?’

‘I’m sorry, Princess. Why us?’

We lie awake in the darkness but I can feel our arms around each other.

‘There’s no escape is there? Not even in your sleep,’ Guy says.

There’s no escape. There’s no escape. Not even in your sleep—

I scream. Sit up, gasping for breath.

‘Cass?’ Jamie rushes into my room.

I turn on the bedside light; recover my breath. It was so vivid; their voices as clear as daylight.

‘Can I get you anything? Glass of water?’ He hiccups. ‘Were you having one of your bad dreams again?

I nod. ‘Have you been drinking?’ I can smell alcohol on his breath.

‘No.’ He grins.

‘Liar liar, pants on fire.’ Dad used to say it to us as children.

He walks over to my wheelchair and plonks himself in it. He unclips the brakes and moves forward, crashing into the side of my bed and attempting to steer himself around the small space. ‘What does it feel like sitting in this?’

‘Horrible. Why?’

‘I’m really worried that you must feel like you’re this top half—’ with one hand he cuts across his own stomach – ‘floating above nothing. I’d hate to feel like that, sorry.’ He reddens. ‘You know what I mean. Dad said I should ask you questions and stuff, about how it feels, not tiptoe round you all the time.’ Another hiccup. ‘But I’m not very good.’

‘I can’t describe what it’s like,’ I admit.

Jamie jumps up from the chair and sits on my bed. ‘Shut your eyes,’ he demands.

‘Why?’

‘Do it.’

I shut them.

‘If I hit you right here, can you feel anything?’

‘Nope.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing. Can we stop this game now?’

‘I’m trying to understand, Cass.’

I open my eyes. ‘All right. Do it again, whatever you did before.’

Jamie hits me on the thigh.

‘It’s slightly different because I saw you doing it,’ I say. ‘I’m aware of something.’

‘What does it feel like?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t feel normal but then how do you describe normal?’

‘D’you think you’ll get back to sleep? Do you have nightmares about the accident?’

I shake my head, telling Jamie I don’t dream about that morning in Pimlico. I dream about Dom and Guy. I’m back in hospital with them. Sometimes Sean is in my dreams too. Deep down, however much I pretend to myself that I’m better off without him, I’m hurt by his rejection. Often, late at night, I wonder how I’d feel if it were the other way round. Would I still love him?

‘Would you be able to go out with someone in a wheelchair, Jamie?’

‘I don’t know. I think so, yeah. You love the person, right, not their legs. I mean it helps if they’ve got good legs but… D’you want to watch a film?’ he asks, when he sees my tears. We often do this when he’s home. There’s a small television in the corner of my room.

‘I think we’ve seen them all now.’

‘No,’ he insists. ‘I bought some new ones.’

Next he’s dragging his stripy red and navy duvet into my bedroom, a DVD in his mouth. He slots it into the player and camps on my floor. Jamie keeps on turning to me, making sure I’m all right.

‘Thank you, Jamie,’ I say, feeling a strong tug of affection for him that I’ve never felt before. ‘And sorry if I boss you around all the time.’

‘It’s all right. You’re my sister. You can boss me around and do whatever, but I’ll always love you.’

And it’s so clear to me now why Mum loves him so much.

He’s her uncomplicated little boy.

He’s like Dad.

I don’t remember at which part finally I fall asleep.