CHAPTER 17
Ava was standing at the crossing when her phone beeped. She took it from her pocket at the same time as glancing left for traffic.
Instead of looking right, Ava opened the WhatsApp message from her brother, Rory: Gran in hospital, it read. She frowned down at her phone and wondered how Rory could ever think that was enough information. But then the horn of the 281 bus stopped all other conscious thought.
The shriek of the brakes filled the air as she saw the huge windscreen, the wipers. The face of the driver in slow motion, mouth open. Her whole body tensed. She felt her hand drop the phone. Time paused.
There was a fleeting thought that this was actually really embarrassing.
And then – smack – she didn’t think anything else. Just felt the hard pain in her hip, then the thwack of her head as she was thrown down on to the tarmac, and an overriding sense of unfairness because she wasn’t yet ready to die.
The nurse waited patiently as Ava tried once more to get through to her brother.
‘It’s voicemail,’ Ava said, apologetic. ‘Everyone’s on voicemail. No one’s answering their phone, I’ve tried everyone. I’m really sorry.’ All her friends were in meetings or on the tube or at lunch, unreachable.
‘It’s fine.’ The nurse’s nametag read Julie Stork. Ava wondered if using her name might aid familiarity – she found it a bit creepy when the man at Starbucks called her Ava because he’d written it on a cup every day, but she could do with an ally. The alternative was another nurse, Tina, who Julie was talking quietly with now. Tina was terrifying. Her uniform stretched tight over her solid figure, hair scraped back in a ponytail, all-seeing eyes like hungry jackdaws. She’d been the one to inform Ava that she couldn’t go home without someone to watch over her for twenty-four hours, while making it very clear that they needed the bed back as soon as possible.
Without the pressure of having no one to come and get her, Ava might have quite enjoyed her hospital stay. Starched white sheets, lamb chops and green beans, sponge pudding and custard, and a tatty out-of-date copy of OK! magazine. But her eyes hovered distractedly to her phone the whole time, her fingers scrolling through her contacts every few seconds, texting, WhatsApping, refreshing.
She felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment as she heard Nurse Tina mutter, ‘There must be someone.’
So when her phone beeped she pounced on it. A text from Rory: Can’t get away. Jonathon coming to get you.
Ava put her hand over her mouth. How could her brother send her ex-boyfriend, of all people? Send his PA, one of the runners on set, anyone. Not the guy he’d set her up with and who she’d split from three months ago.
She sat up quickly to get dressed and out of the stupid hospital gown that did up at the back, the magazine clattering to the floor. She tried to check her reflection in anything she could find: a knife from her plate. She scrunched her flat hair. She felt dizzy. She paused on the side of the bed and looked up just in time to see Jonathon sauntering up the hospital aisle with a sardonic grin on his face.
‘Hi, Jonathon,’ she said with an embarrassed half-smile as he stopped, hands on hips, at the end of her bed.
‘Hit by a bus, eh?’
She nodded. Tried to stand up but felt faint and sat down again. He swooped round the side of the bed to help her. ‘Thanks,’ she mumbled.
‘It’s fine. Take your time.’
She remembered how familiar his face had been. The wide brown eyes and ruddy cheeks. The frustrated look he’d given her when she’d told him that she didn’t think they were going to work as a couple. That she wasn’t very good at relationships and she didn’t
