What became of us

beige dress she had been wearing the previous evening. First she saw Annie’s black dress crumpled on the floor, then she saw Liam sleeping in the bed. There was a dribble of saliva dangling from the side of his mouth. The moment of readjustment was instant and bitter. Guilt hammered against the inside of her skull.
    ‘Just a minute,’ she said to the door, trying to collect herself, ‘who is it?’
    ‘It’s the porter,’ he replied. ‘Shall I tell him to call back when you’ve had a chance to sort yourself out?’
    The clear implication was that he knew what she was up to.
    ‘What’s the time?’ she called.
    ‘It’s nearly nine o’clock. He says he would have left it, but he’s at the hospital and he didn’t want you calling and finding nobody at home.’
    ‘Hospital?’ she shrieked. The fuzz of alcohol suddenly evaporated from her body leaving only the clarity of fear in her brain.
    ‘Which hospital, why didn’t he call my mobile?’
    She snatched up her bag and saw that the phone was switched off. Who had switched it off? She was about to round on Liam, who was beginning to stir irritably, as if inconvenienced by the noise, then she remembered the moment that she herself had switched it off in haste when Annie had caught her talking to him in Brown’s.
    Frantically she pulled on her casual clothes, Marks and Spencer khaki slacks and a matching top; then, running her fingers through her hair, she opened the door. Behind her, Liam turned over again, pulling the blankets over his head.
    ‘Come on!’ she said to the porter, as if he was the one who had been keeping them waiting.
    They ran down the stairs and across the quad. She was at the lodge before he was and snatched up the receiver.
    ‘Barry?’
    ‘We’re at Casualty. Hang on, I’ve got to put some more money in...’
    ‘Which hospital?’ she screamed at him, in case his money ran out.
    ‘It’s OK, that’s another pound’s worth.’
    ‘What’s happened?’
    ‘It’s George. His temperature went right up and he got a bit of a rash. I called the GP, he couldn’t come for hours, so I decided to bring him here.’ Meningitis, she thought. My punishment is meningitis.
    ‘Oh God!’
    ‘We’ve seen a doctor...’
    Ursula held her breath. There were sinking moments when the responsibility of having a child was so awful you did not think you would be strong enough to cope with it.
    ‘... and you’ll never guess what, it’s chickenpox!’ Barry said.
    ‘Chickenpox?’ she repeated, ‘you mean as well?’
    ‘As well as what? It’s just chickenpox.’
    ‘Have you seen a consultant?’
    ‘No, I think she was a registrar.’
    ‘Insist on a consultant.’ Ursula’s mind raced on, thinking of all the newspaper stories about misdiagnosis, children who had been brought to hospital only to be sent home to die twenty-four hours later. Whole episodes of ER...
    ‘Ursula, it’s OK. It’s chickenpox. They’re none too thrilled at us bringing an infectious child in anyway.’
    ‘Have you done the glass test?’ she asked him, trying to summon up all the medical knowledge she had gained from anxiously watching Panorama specials.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Have you pressed a glass down his arm and seen if the rash goes away?’
    ‘No? Would a can of Coke do? There’s a machine.’
    ‘Barry, you can’t see through a can of Coke, can you?’ She tried to keep herself calm. ‘Is he listless, not himself?’
    ‘A bit, but I think he’s missing you.’
    A sharp intake of guilt.
    ‘Is he there? Shall I say hello to him?’
    ‘Here, George, do you want to say hello to Mummy? Oh. He says he’s busy playing with the train.’
    Her heart seemed to start beating again. Children in the advanced stages of meningitis did not get preoccupied with trains, did they?
    ‘Where are the others?’ she asked.
    ‘I’ve got them all here. It was a bit early in the morning to wake your mother.’
    ‘What does the rash look like?’
    ‘Lots of spots,’ Barry said, ‘more and more of them by the minute. Look, I’d better be getting them home.’
    ‘I’m coming back straight away,’ she said.
    ‘There’s no need.’
    ‘Of course I will,’ she said.
    ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, and she could hear the relief in his voice.
    Poor Barry, she thought, suddenly realizing how frightened he must have been to take the child to Casualty. She pictured the four of them, all in their pyjamas, waiting anxiously in the inhospitable pale green waiting area.