The Road Between Us Read Online Free

again. ‘Where’s Frejya? Where did she go?’
    Niall looks down. ‘That wasn’t Frejya you saw.’
    ‘But she was in here a minute ago.’
    Niall exhales slowly. ‘That was a couple of weeks ago. You’re going to have a problem with time gaps for a while, until your brain recalibrates itself … And it wasn’t Frejya you saw. It was Hannah.’ He sighs again, more heavily this time. ‘I’m not going to lie to you, Northy. This is all going to seem really fucked up, for a while at least. You’re just …’
    Edward has fallen asleep.
    The doctor flips over a sheet on a clipboard and gives Niall a sidelong glance. ‘You family? I recognize you.’
    ‘A friend. I’ve been interviewed on the news a bit lately, talking about Edward’s release.’
    ‘That’s it; you’re the guy from the Foreign Office. Sir Niall …’
    ‘Campbell. And it’s pronounced Neil. It’s Scottish.’
    ‘You don’t sound Scottish.’
    ‘It’s not compulsory. Can I have a word with you outside?’ The two men walk out into the corridor and speak in lowered voices. ‘So what’s the situation here?’
    The doctor looks over his shoulder before making eye contact. ‘He should make a reasonable recovery but we are going to have to monitor his food intake carefully. One of the mistakes they made after the liberation of Belsen was to feed the prisoners too quickly. Thousands died because their bodies couldn’t cope. Cardiac failure mostly. We’ll keep him in intensive care for a few weeks, on a controlled diet and a glucose drip, then we’ll start giving him some physio to try and rebuild his muscles.’
    ‘But no lasting medical problems?’
    ‘I didn’t say that. It’s too early to tell whether some of the conditions he is suffering from will be permanent, but so far we have detected … Well, do you want the whole list?’ He begins counting them off with his fingers. ‘Early evidence of renal failure, cirrhosis, possible diabetes, anaemia, dehydration, calcium deficiency and impaired vision which we think will leave him with a permanent sensitivity to light.’ The doctor shakes his head. ‘He also has fungi growing under his oesophagus, which makes swallowing painful for him. And our tests are showing he may have scurvy and rickets,which we haven’t really seen in this country for decades. But we think all these things will prove temporary. His long-term problems are going to be psychological.’
    ‘We’ve got a good therapist lined up for when he’s ready … Poor old Northy.’
    ‘Yes, poor old Northy,’ the doctor echoes.
    When they step back into the ward, Edward’s eyes are open but they are unfocused. They seem to be looking through Niall – the thousand-yard stare again. ‘It was Frejya,’ Edward says through closed teeth. ‘She was here.’
    ‘Well, I’ll leave you two to it,’ the doctor says.
    ‘You’ve been away for just over eleven years,’ Niall says, once the doctor has closed the door. ‘That was Hannah you saw. She’s twenty now.’
    Niall can see the blood pulsing in Edward’s face. Sense his dizziness and feeling of time dislocation. He now knows that his friend has been unable to take in any of the information fed into his brain on an aural drip as he drifted in and out of consciousness these past couple of weeks. This is not the first time Niall has explained to Edward that his daughter is now an adult.
    For a full minute, Edward is silent. Then he says softly: ‘Hannah is nine … She was nine.’
    ‘This is going to take some time to … to get used to.’
    ‘Can I see my wife? Where is she?’
    Niall hesitates. ‘One thing at a time, Northy …’
    Edward eyes him, as if recognizing him for the first time. ‘Did you say you were still at the Foreign Office?’
    ‘Yep. And you can come back to work for us whenever you feel ready, in whatever capacity.’
    ‘Says who?’
    Niall looks embarrassed. ‘Says me.’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘I’ll explain