Longest Whale Song Read online

We don’t talk on the way to the hospital. I keep thinking about Mum sleeping. I’m still scared it means she’s dead. I’ve never seen a dead person but I imagine Mum chalk-white, with her eyes closed and her mouth gaping open.

  We leave the car in the hospital car park. Jack helps me out, tying the rug round my shoulders.

  ‘You’re sure you want to see Mum?’ he asks.

  I nod, though I’m not so sure now. Jack takes my hand and leads me into the hospital and down a maze of corridors. There are red routes and green routes and yellow routes. We keep going down unmarked corridors and losing the right-coloured route. It’s as if we’re stuck in the middle of some grisly children’s game. Then, at long last, we come to the right ward. Jack pulls me in, though my legs have gone wobbly.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. It’s way past visiting time. You can’t come in here now,’ says a nurse.

  Jack pauses. He puts his hands on my shoulders. ‘This little girl must see her mother. She’s very ill. She needs to see her just for a few seconds,’ he says in his best teacher voice.

  He doesn’t wait to argue it out, he just steers me onwards, to the end of the ward, to a special room. I bite on my knuckles, terrified. I don’t know what Mum’s going to look like. I want my mum, not some weird nightmare half-dead mother.

  I peep round the door and see her. There’s a nurse beside her checking some sort of machine. Mum’s lying on her back, oddly flat now, with tubes coming in and out of her. But she’s still Mum, eyes closed, her hair tousled on the pillow, her hands lying gently curled on the covers.

  ‘Mum – oh, Mum!’ I say, running to her.

  I kiss her soft pink cheek. ‘Mum, it’s me, Ella. Oh, Mum, wake up, please wake up.’

  Mum seems to catch her breath. The nurse looks round. But Mum’s eyes don’t open.

  ‘Mum!’ I say, right in her ear.

  It’s like Sunday mornings before Jack, when I used to climb into Mum’s bed and try to wake her up. She’d lie still, eyes closed, pretending. I’d have to tickle her under her chin to get her to open her eyes.

  I try tickling her now, very, very gently, but her eyes stay shut. I smooth her hair off her forehead, combing it with my fingers, and then I take hold of her hand.

  ‘That’s right, Ella. I’m sure Mum knows you’re here,’ says Jack. ‘Give her a goodnight kiss. I’ll bring you back tomorrow.’

  I kiss Mum again and then whisper in her ear. ‘Keep breathing, Mum. In and out, in and out. Promise you’ll keep breathing.’

  Chapter 3

  I don’t go to school on Monday. Neither does Jack. We spend the whole day at the hospital. We sit in Mum’s room on hard orange chairs, Jack on one side, me on the other. Jack talks to her a lot, whispering all sorts of mushy stuff. Sometimes he tries telling her jokes. The nurse laughs a couple of times, but Mum doesn’t give the flicker of a smile. Her eyes are still closed. A lady doctor comes and lifts up her eyelids and peers into her eyes with a little light. I hate this in case she’s hurting her, but Mum doesn’t seem to mind. She lies still, fast, fast asleep.

  ‘When will she wake up?’ I ask the doctor.

  ‘We don’t know yet. We’ll have to wait and see. She maybe knows you’re here, so you keep chatting to her, you and Dad.’

  He’s not my dad, I say inside my head.

  I wish Jack didn’t have to be here too. I don’t want to talk to Mum in front of him. I don’t really know what to say. I just burble stupid stuff.

  ‘Hello, Mum, it’s me, Ella. I’m wearing my stripy top again. Aunty Liz washed it for me but I don’t like the smell of her washing powder – it doesn’t smell like us, and home.’

  Mum doesn’t smell right either. She doesn’t smell bad, but her hair hasn’t got the fresh coconut smell of her shampoo, and she isn’t wearing her rosy perfume. She smells of hospital.

  She’s wearing the wrong things too – a silly white gown that ties at the back – and the sheets are white and too crisp. I’m sure she’d sooner have her own soft pink nightie and her own cosy duvet. No wonder she’s got a little frown on her forehead.

  I wait until Jack goes out of the room for a coffee. The nurse keeps coming in and out, but I pretend she’s not there. I stretch forward until I’m talking in Mum’s ear.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum, you’re breathing just fine. I don’t think you’re really asleep, you’re just having a lovely long rest, aren’t you? Remember when I was little and you used to read aloud to me, and you’d stroke the back of my hand? Look, I’ll stroke yours now.’ I stroke her hand and all the way up to her elbow and back. I will her fingers to move just a fraction. I keep thinking they’re about to, but they stay lying still and limp.

  I start crying, my head bent.

  ‘Ella,’ says Jack, coming back into the room.

  He tries to put his arm round me but I jerk away. ‘I know,’ he says quietly.

  He doesn’t know. He’s only known Mum just over a year. I’ve known her all my life.

  ‘Come with me,’ Jack says.

  ‘I’m staying with Mum.’

  ‘Just for a minute or two. I want to show you something,’ he says.

  ‘Go with your daddy, dear. I’ll keep an eye on Mum,’ says the nurse.

  ‘He’s not my dad.’ This time I say it out loud.

  The nurse looks startled.

  ‘I’m her stepdad,’ says Jack. ‘Ella, please, come with me.’

  So I have to follow him, back down the long ward, out into the corridor, down another – until I hear the sound of babies crying.

  Oh. I’d forgotten all about the baby. Jack’s trying to smile.

  ‘I want you to meet your little brother,’ he says.

  He’s not my brother, just a half-brother, I think, but I don’t say it out loud because it sounds so mean. It’s easy being mean to Jack, but this brother is only a little baby one day old.

  We look through the window of the nursery and see the babies in their grey steel cots.

  ‘He’s that one, in the corner,’ says Jack. His voice is wobbly again. ‘Poor little chap, all on his own.’

  A nurse bustles past. She looks at Jack. ‘Mr Winters? You can go in and give your son a cuddle if you like.’ She nods at me. ‘And you, poppet.’

  Jack washes his hands very thoroughly with the special disinfectant stuff on the wall. I rub it all over my hands too. Then we go into the nursery, both of us walking on tiptoe, though most of the babies are wide awake. Some are screaming their heads off. It’s much louder now we’re in the room.

  We zigzag round the cots until we get to the one in the corner.

  ‘Yes, that’s him,’ says Jack.

  My eyes are still teary, so I give them a good rub and then look. He’s crying too, but quietly, dolefully, as if he’s really sad, not angry. He’s not red in the face like the babies who are really bawling. He’s pink, with little mottled patches on his cheeks and forehead. His eyes are screwed up and his mouth is open. His nose is just a tiny button. I thought he’d look like Jack, big and bluff, but he’s little and delicate, with the softest fair wisps of hair. His tiny hands are up by his head, his fingers clenched into fists as if he’s fighting.

  ‘Hello, little chap,’ Jack whispers.

  He reaches down into the cot and lifts the baby up very, very carefully. His gown is caught up, so one of his comically tiny bare feet dangles down. Jack smooths his gown and holds the baby against his chest. He’s holding him tightly, but I can see his hands are trembling.

  ‘There you are, poor little boy,’ he says.

  He tries rocking him. The baby snuffles. ‘You like that, don’t you?’ says Jack. He presses his cheek against the baby’s head. ‘My little boy.’

  I swallow.

  Jack looks at me. ‘Do you want to hold him, Ella?’

  I shake my head, but Jack holds him out all the same.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, it’s easy. Just hold your arms out. There we go.’

  He presses the baby against me so I have to wrap my ar