18th January
‘Are you awake, Swan?’
A familiar voice roused me from sleep.
I was in a bed in a brightly sunlit room. Sitting beside the bed was Helen Hargreaves, who lived in the house across the road – directly opposite to mine.
‘Where am I?’ I said to Helen.
‘You’re in the General Hospital. You’ve had a nasty bump on the head, but they say you’ll be fit to leave in a day or two.’
‘What the hell happened?’ I asked.
Helen paused as if confirming that the unusual and unique sentence that she was about to utter was actually true. ‘Sam’s house was hit by a meteorite.’
I suddenly recalled the fireman, the wreckage and the ambulance. ‘Oh God,’ I replied. ‘How’s Sam?’
‘I’m sorry, Swan,’ she said with tears forming in her eyes, ‘he’s dead. The police think the meteorite actually hit him.’ She paused. ‘He wouldn’t have known anything about it.’
We both remained silent for several moments. I was stunned at the thought of not seeing Sam again. Another thought then drifted into my mind – a thought about how Sam might be viewing his demise if he were looking down upon the aftermath. I suddenly laughed out loud.
Helen looked puzzled.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m really upset about what’s happened, but it’s kind of the way he would have wanted to go. With all this weird prediction stuff he’s been going on about during the past couple of years, being hit by an object from outer space somehow seems fitting.’
Our eyes met, and Helen burst out laughing too.
‘Poor old Sam,’ I said with cathartic tears of both sadness and mirth running down my cheeks, ‘at least he didn’t suffer.’
We both sat quietly for a while longer during which my mind returned to my own situation. ‘Did you say someone had told you that I could go home in a couple of days?’
‘The nurse said that you could probably leave hospital in a day or two. You might not be going home for a bit though, I’m afraid.’
I gave her a questioning glance.
‘Your house and Sam’s were two halves of a semi-detached. The meteorite went through the front wall of Sam’s house, through his bedroom, through the dividing wall between your houses and through the back wall of your house. It then buried itself in the ground beneath your patio.
‘They’ve propped up the walls that are still standing and used tarpaulins to keep the weather out. That’s to give time to recover as much of your stuff and Sam’s as possible.’ She paused before delivering her final summary. ‘Both houses are all but demolished, Swan.’
On reflection, that should have been obvious to me from my recollections of the event, and I wondered if I was still concussed. I had left a building which looked … well, looked as if a bomb had hit it.
I switched into problem solving mode. ‘Not having a house is going to be a problem,’ I said. ‘I can contact my insurance company while I’m still in hospital. I expect they can pay for storage of whatever I can salvage and also pay for some temporary accommodation.’
‘Look, Swan,’ interrupted Helen, ‘I’ve got a spare room. You’re very welcome to stay with me while all this gets sorted out.’ She paused. ‘Although,’ she added self-consciously, ‘I won’t be offended if you want to make some other arrangement.’
I had known Helen for about ten years – since she and her husband had first moved into the village.
Julie and I had invited them over for dinner on a few occasions, and they had reciprocated.
Helen and John had seemed happily married, so I was surprised when he had left her for someone he had met on the Internet.
That had happened about five years ago.
It had seemed hard for Helen at first, but within a couple of years, she appeared to be coping well and had become a leading light in village life.
We had met at various village events and had enjoyed lunch together on a few occasions.
Once or twice, Helen had mentioned, in passing, that she missed having a partner.
She appeared to me to be a very nice, caring person, and she was a stunningly attractive woman. For a long time, I could not understand why she had failed to find another relationship.
I believed that I had better understood her position three years ago, when I discovered that Julie was having an affair.
Shortly after I confronted her, she left me and went to live with her lover in America.
Before Julie and I split up, I could have imagined many of the feelings and the practical difficulties associated with a separation and a divorce. The devastating effect on my own self-confidence and ability to trust others, however, was not something I would have considered.
After Julie left, I had wondered whether similar feelings might be preventing Helen from taking a risk on another relationship.
‘Thank you, Helen,’ I said. ‘That’s very, very kind. Yes, I’d love to take up your offer.’