It is so much louder than she remembers, and so much more bright.
"Hey, sweetheart." She curls her hand under her niece's limp palm and kisses the pale fingers. "Hi, darling." The eyelids flutter and open halfway. They are bruised and swollen and sore, purple with pooled blood from ruptured vessels that stain the ridge of her nose. "How are you?"
"I want to come home." a small voice whispers back.
"I know. You will do, darling." She keeps smiling at the frightened little face as though she isn't just as terrified. "And then we'll have to go to the beach together, what do you think?"
"Yeah." The smile falls slightly, and she tightens her fingers over her niece's without meaning to.
"I love you." Lily looks down at the bedsheets. "I love you, sweetheart. I always have, Lils. I promise you." The same smile that adorns the walls and the bookshelf and the mantelpiece rises up and cements itself on Lily's face. "I was sad, and I did love your dad, very much. You're right. But I always loved you. I never- I never would have changed any of this, sweetheart. We got you." She purses her lips and breathes in through her nose and shakes her head as though she is doing everything she can to stop herself from crying. "We got you, Lils. There's absolutely nothing I would ever do to change that. Of course I love you."
Auntie Rachel is an utterly terrible liar. Lily watches for the nervous twitch, the guilty smile, the elegant fingers that flick her hair behind her ear as her body searches for a distraction, the small sign that will give her away.
It doesn't come.
She had known it wouldn't.
She isn't sure what she had expected - perhaps an empathetic wince as the van somersaulted away from the rogue supercar and crushed her into oblivion along its path of wreckage, or a few choice words about karma. Instead her aunt had winced prematurely and spun her expensive car instinctively into the crash barrier without a second thought.
It had surprised her, so much that she hadn't really registered the arm that reached for her and the smooth, ringless fingers pressing against her ribcage in an effort to stop her from flying through the windscreen.
Nobody can pretend that quickly.
"It's okay." Lily whispers, because the ever-composed, effortlessly calm Auntie Rachel has small pools of tears collecting against her waterline. "It's fine, Auntie Rach. I know." She lifts her chin over her aunts shoulder when she is cocooned in a hug. She breathes the clean, expensive scent and feels the soft hair against her cheek, then wraps her arms around the cashmere jumper. It feels like home.
"I love you, Lils." The words tumble out quickly before Rachel's voice breaks.
"Okay, I know, you don't have to keep telling me all the time." she murmurs. She can't see Rachel blinking back the tears and rolling her eyes, but she feels the kiss against the top of her head and the fingers combing through her hair even though they can't move properly in the plaster cast. "Is your arm broken?"
"My wrist."
"From the crash?"
"Yeah." She has fallen asleep like that, with the small, quiet breath of her niece against her shoulder, after lullabies and nursery rhymes and bedtime stories, bottles of milk and clean teeth and little silk-eared rabbits. It has always made her feel safe. Lily is that sort of person.
He watches them, the curtain of blonde that falls against his daughter's shoulder, the way she is being rocked, slowly, from side to side, in Rachel's arms. It is the same way he first saw her.
She'd been placed in his arms as though she was made of glass.
"Isn't she gorgeous?" Rachel had whispered, quietly enough not to wake her sister, crouching beside the chair he was sat in. "Eddie, she's perfect." He'd stared down at the baby he was holding, watched her aunt run her fingertip over the tiny, clenched knuckles, the ecstasy and exhaustion all rolled into one. "You should be so proud. She's lovely." The small lips and the dry skin and swollen eyelids, something alien and repulsive. A strange creature squirming against his shirt. "Hey, darling." The way joy radiated from her, the way the baby basked in it, the sudden urge he had to hand it back in terror. "Your daddy's here now." Her fingers had brushed over the fine hair at the top of his daughter's scalp. "Your dad's here now; it's all going to be alright." She'd kissed the white blanket and stood up. "Congratulations, Eddie." And left him with an unbearable guilt.
"Hey, Lil." His voice comes out patchy and uneven. Lily looks up at him with her cheek still pressed firmly against her aunt's shoulder.
"Hello." she whispers back.
"How are you feeling, sweetheart?"
"Mm."
"Still hurting?" Rachel asks. Lily nods.
"Your mum left this for you." Eddie tells her. The white rabbit is pulled out of his pocket, like a graceless magic trick.
"Is Mum here?"
"No." He gives a compensatory smile instead of an explanation. The little white rabbit curls up beneath her chin. "I love you, Lily." he tells her, and she thinks that, as much as he probably wants it to be, it isn't the truth. She knows it isn't. It is a lie he has spent her entire life trying adamantly to believe in. She thinks that it must be an awful affliction to live with. It is the sort of thing that could break a person in two, torture them into self-destruction, turn them into her father.
"I love you too, dad."
He leans across and kisses her hair, and it feels just like the well-timed hug on his doorstep all those months ago. "Dad?"
"Yeah?"
"I think I'll stay with Auntie Rach now." He takes a deep breath and nods.
"Alright."
"For a while."
"Okay."
"Until I'm older."
"Yeah." He keeps nodding, even though his eyes start to fill with tears. "Okay."
He is still there, alone on the metal chairs, even though it has been hours, even though he should have left her there.
"She okay?" Rachel nods tiredly. He stands up and wraps his arms around her. They are like tired parents who have just got their newborn to sleep. "Thanks, Rach."
He drives her home and brings her a toasted sandwich that she eats in front of the TV before leaving her plate on the coffee table and mumbling something about heading to bed.
She knows now why Lily fell asleep at the top of the staircase. She is tempted to do the same.
It is much later, in the early hours of the morning, that she tiptoes back down the staircase, to the landing with four spare rooms. It is excessive; she has always thought so. She pushes on the door to each one. He isn't there. He has gone. She doesn't know why she thought he would stay.
"Rach?" He stands in the doorway to Lily's room. "You okay?" She nods and nibbles a dry section of her cuticle, then goes to him.
He holds her, lets her head rest against his chest, strokes her hair down. She is so tired.
Her fingers run over his arms, gently pulling his hands away from her, only to gather them into hers. "Did Adam take it?" She looks up at him, wondering what she has lost, what she is missing. The book. The diamond bracelet. The silver watch. "The picture." He swings their hands to point towards the photo frame on the bedside table.
"No, Phil." She looks at the tiny hands curled over her fingers, the blonde hair clipped back, the trail of footprints left in the damp sand.
Her gaze drifts away, to the bedcovers that have not been moved from the scrunched heap she left them in before they left for the hospital. "How long have you been in here?" Long enough for him not to answer.
He sighs and squeezes her hands.
"We both need to get some sleep."
"Yeah." She nods. She is still leaning against him, clutching his hands in hers. She will close her eyes and feel his chest beneath her cheek for a few more precious seconds. She will feel the heavy heartbeat, the soft, unbuttoned collar of his shirt, the warmth, the smell of him.
"Come on." He kisses her parting and steps away. Her hair pulls where it has caught on one of the buttons. His fingers untangle it and brush the hair back down behind her ear. "Come on." he whispers again.
He holds her hand and leads her out of the room, away from the dark pink duvet and the little alarm clock and the small, framed photograph and the felt-tip drawing hung on the wall. She follows him down the staircase, through the hall, into the living-room.
He picks up the blanket that has been left over the cushions and covers her with it, then wraps his arm around her as she leans against him with closed eyes. Just like he did before.
"I never blamed her." he whispers.
"I know." she whispers back.
"It's just complicated."
"I know."
"I thought... when you rang, I..." He stares aimlessly at the blackened TV screen. "It was like reliving..."
"I'm sorry, they told me to call." He nods, scratches his beard.
"You know, I stopped believing in a God after S..." She watches his eyes glaze, the deliberate breath. His hand rests in the hollow of her waist and velveted electricity plays across her skin. He is a stranger, and the only man she has ever known. "I was praying today." he chuckles, half-heartedly, swallowing down the sadness with a gulp.
"Me too."
A soft smile graces his lips. "Eddie?"
"Yeah?" She hesitates, stares at the coffee table and concentrates on the weight of his arms.
"Oh, it doesn't... It's not..."
"What?"
"I- I don't... I mean, it's not..."
"It's not what?" Her lips part, grasping at half-words and the hundreds of things she has dreamed of whispering to him.
"I don't know if I..." She stares at him, waiting for him to finish her sentence. "I'm not a mother." He smirks at the blanket.
"Right."
"No, I mean I think she's expecting I'll know how to... I don't know, be one."
"I think you'll be alright, Rach." She can't tell if it was supposed to sting. It does anyway, smarts inside her soul. It feels insensitive, to deprive him of his child and complain about it, sort of spoilt. "She loves you." He smiles again, more sincerely. "She just wants to know you love her too."
"Course I do."
"I know. I think she overthinks it sometimes." He brushes her hair away from her face. "And you might not have noticed, but you're quite good with kids."
It makes her grin. "She thinks the world of you, Rachel." he whispers. "It was always 'Auntie Rach this' and 'Auntie Rach that', 'Auntie Rach knows how to plait my hair properly'."
"Sorry." she murmurs, not quite hiding her glee. "I think I had the other side of that." He frowns at her. "Dad lets me watch that show. Dad doesn't make me eat green pepper."
"Oh, I can't stand it."
"I know." she whispers, rolls her eyes at him. "I know, Eddie. None of you can. You're all wimps when it comes to green vegetables."
Rachel has to double back when her brain catches up enough to recognise the two figures sat on the metal chairs in the corridor outside the ward.
"You don't have to." Alison tells him quietly. "We can ask, but if it's too hard then you don't have to."
"Hi." Rachel stops in front of them, with a glittering smile, obnoxiously inviting herself into a conversation that she is unwelcome to. She has started to make a habit of it, interrupting doctors to make them explain everything and asking silly questions about car accidents and the police.
"Hello." Alison stands and smiles at her and hugs her and it takes Rachel longer than it should to remember to hug her back. "God, you must be tired." Yes. Tired. That's what this is. Alison is holding her up the way Atlas holds up the heavens. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah." She smiles and lets go to take her own weight again, to unburden the woman before her. Alison smiles back and raises her eyebrows sympathetically and nods.
"Were you just going to see Lily?" She glances at Michael. "What about if you went in with Rachel, then you could come back if it's too much?" Rachel finds herself nodding. Michael looks between them sceptically, then rises from the metal chair.
"Wait here though, Mum." He is still just a little kid, even though he is holding his car keys like a status symbol. Nobody is ever as grown up as they seem.
"Yeah." Alison sits back down so that Rachel can show him what to do. It is like the Friday afternoon handovers on Alison's doorstep thirteen years ago.
"Alright." Rachel smiles at him and leads him to the ward. "She's a bit tired." He nods and follows her through the door and along the corridor and into the bay, then holds the curtain back while Rachel walks to the side of Lily's bed.
He watches her stroke his sister's hair back gently to wake her, then whisper something to her. Lily is gentle. He has never thought about it before. She sits up, in blue pyjamas, and smiles at him.
"Hey." She seems so normal. He had thought she would be deranged or something, like the asylum patients on TV.
"Hey." He mumbles back. She stares at him, lips twitching nervously.
"I'm fine." she tells him quietly, with a nervous laugh, as though she is embarrassed by the hospital bed and the dark circles beneath her eyes.
"You, um…" He steps forward, letting the curtain fall closed behind him. It still seems odd to him that Rachel is Lily's aunt, Melissa's sister, it is a logic problem that he can't seem to get his head around.
"You can sit down if you want, Michael." Rachel points to a chair with a high back and teal padded cushions. He drops into the chair and watches Rachel fuss with a small storage unit, removing a t-shirt only to fold it back up again.
"Did you drive?" Lily asks.
"Yeah."
"Did you get a new car?"
"Yeah."
"Oh." Lily nods and turns back to the blanket over her legs. "Cool." She pulls her knees in and picks at a bit of fluff that has come loose at the blanket seam. "That's good."
"You okay though, Lily?"
"Yeah. I'm fine."
"Okay." He watches her nod at the blanket again. "If you want, we could go and get McDonald's or something sometime. I can drive you." Lily smiles at him. "They do vegan ones now."
"Okay."
"There's one by that place you wanted to go - with the Alpacas."
"Okay." She stretches her legs out again and nods. "Cool."
They are both laughing. Both of his children. Giggling at what Rachel is saying. She is laughing too.
"And I just thought, I am in so much trouble with your dad if this doesn't work out, I…" She turns and follows Lily's eye-line to where he is stood in the gap between the curtains. She swallows and turns back to them. "I'll let you guys…" Lily grips her hand.
"What did you do?" she whispers.
"I…" Rachel lets her niece pull on her hand, holding it so tightly that it starts to hurt. She could have had this. They could all have sat together like this on Friday evenings. This story could have been retold until they grinned and rolled their eyes every time she started telling it because they already knew exactly how it would end.
"I don't know what she said to her, but Alison was very impressed." Eddie sits beside her, at the edge of the bed. They could have moved away, lived in France or Spain or Italy or- Nobody would have known. She wouldn't have had to be 'Auntie Rachel', she would have just been 'Mum'.
She looks down at her hand, clutched tightly between her niece's fingers. Lily would have known. It would have been wrong for Lily.
Eddie is telling them instead, about the musical that Michael can only very vaguely remember, about how Rachel annoyed every single person in the school on her first day, about how she told him off for not having a tie for a meeting. She smiles into the brown eyes staring up at her.
"I love you." she mouths. The pale cheeks make space for a smile.
"I love you too." she lipreads. She moves beside her niece, smirking at the way Eddie calls her the 'scariest woman in the world'.
Lily almost melts into her when she slips into the bed. The story is forgotten. There is just the feeling of Auntie Rachel's fingers tickling the back of her head, and the smell of her perfume, and the soft wool of her jumper.
She is held there, like a baby, with the blanket wrapped around her, and her brother doesn't hate her, and her dad doesn't resent her, and Auntie Rachel isn't cross with her for being born.
She is tired and she wants to cry, but this is different. She will not cry forever. She doesn't need to sleep for the rest of her life. The pile of stones has been lifted away. Her body will reset. Soon she will be able to stand up again without crumbling to the floor.
"Melissa." Rachel answers, not quite opening the front door far enough to let her in. Lily watches from the landing as her mother shifts her feet nervously on the doorstep. "I wasn't expecting you."
"Rach, I…" Melissa's fingers writhe over each other. "I just wanted to…" She shrugs.
"What?" Rachel snaps. "What do you want? Why are you here?"
"I just wanted…" Melissa's voice trembles.
"You wanted what? What are you trying to achieve, Melissa? Because you can't just come and go whenever it suits you."
"I wasn't- I…" She bites her lip and roughly swipes a tear from her cheek. "I just want my big sister." Rachel's shoulders drop, and the door is opened a little wider. "I'm not doing that well." Melissa cries into her shoulder, muffling the words against her top like a child. "Thanks, Rach." she whispers, as though she has been holding her breath for a year.
"Okay." Rachel steps back slightly.
"Is Lil in? I could-"
"No, she's out." she answers.
"When's she going to get back? I don't mind wait-"
"Why?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why do you want to see her?"
"She's my kid, Rachel. I don't need a reason."
Lily watches her aunt hesitate. She thinks about running back to her room and shutting herself in the wardrobe. Then the front door rattles again.
"Sorry. Maybe another time, if we arrange something beforehand." It comes out robotic and cold.
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah."
"You've been dying to do this ever since you found out I was pregnant."
"Do what?"
"Take her away from me. Every chance you get you poison her against me."
"Mel, I've never tried to manipulate her into-"
"Oh, please. You... What is it?"
"I'm tired." Melissa stares back at her sister. "I've got a headache, Mel. I don't want to get into a fight."
"Well you..." She has seen her like this before, in the ruins of a secondary school, broken by the weight of it all. Rachel leans against the front door. "Well get her to answer my calls then." Melissa murmurs, then flounces away, back down the posh driveway, an ooze of satisfaction in the way she knows her sister is watching, waiting to call her back and smooth things over, to make everything right.
The front door is pushed shut.
Rachel leans against it, feels the grooves of the wood against her fingertips, closes her eyes.
"Have you really got a headache?" It comes from the staircase, unevenly bitten nails gripping the bannister.
"Yeah." She smiles at the bruised eyes.
"From being tired?"
"Yeah."
"Well, maybe you should rest for a bit?"
"Maybe."
The groan of a car backing off the driveway.
"Shall I make you a cup of tea?"
"Thank you." New slippers down the stairs. "Thanks, Lils." Her niece shrugs.
"S'alright."