Liar Liar

24

When would he ever escape this place?

Luke Simms had only been in hospital for a day, but already it felt like a lifetime. When you cannot move, when there’s nothing you can do for yourself, time passes very slowly. Luke had hardly slept – kept awake by the pain in his shoulder and legs and the dull ache of his loss. But at least at night he had been left alone.

During visiting hours today, he had been besieged – inundated with teary visitors who lavished him with affection or urged him to ‘stay strong’. They left flowers, chocolates, books, DVDs – already his room was a riot of colour. It was like an Aladdin’s cave and, though he was grateful for their kindness and concern, he hated it all. Some people he was glad to see of course, but his misfortune now seemed to be a magnet for anyone who’d ever known him. So in addition to family and close friends, he’d been visited by football mates and their parents, ex-girlfriends, godparents, guys from school, cousins several times removed. Some of them barely knew him, some of them he thought actively disliked him, but suddenly they all wanted a piece of him. Wanted to tell him how brave he was. Wanted to offer their sympathy to him and, worse than that, their praise.

It was all so inappropriate. What had he actually done? He had jumped from a building and broken his legs. In a stroke his home, his life, his future had been shattered – so what exactly was there to be happy or hopeful about? He was always polite, but when they geed him up by telling him how quick-thinking he’d been, how courageous, he wanted to tell them all to go Hell. He hadn’t jumped because he was brave. He had jumped because he was scared.

Had he been a proper son and brother, he would have braved the flames. He would have charged through them to find his mother and sister. He could have got them out of the house ten, twenty minutes earlier perhaps, but he didn’t. Because he was scared by the awful chorus of smoke alarms and the flames devouring the stairs, he had turned and fled, climbing out of his window and jumping to safety.

Because of that his mother had died. His mother who had given up work to raise him. Who had taken him to football practice three times a week. Who had always called him her ‘special one’. He’d abandoned her – as he had abandoned his little sister – to her fate. And for that he would never forgive himself.

Which is why all the bouquets and cards with messages of good will and praise seemed completely obscene. If he had his way, they would all have been thrown straight in the bin.