Chim- In aeternum

Chapter 7

“I mumbled.”

She hasn't got a clue what Cheryl means, looking up from Leigh's bruised face in confusion. The Geordie's looking down at her daughter, but Kimberley sees the slight flick of her eyes in her direction.

“When the nurse took me to see her the day after she was born, she asked me what I wanted to name her. I must've mumbled the first part--”

“Kimberley.”

Cheryl looks up, surprised. “Everybody says Ashley.”

“It's one of the first things your daughter said that night she turned up at Mum's.”

Cheryl chuckles. “That doesn't surprise me. She was always waiting for her long lost fairy godmother to appear so she could tell her fifty million different things at once. It didn't help that the three little pigs kept hyping you up.”

Kimberley smiles. “My very own PR team.”

There's silence, Kimberley looking up a moment later to find Cheryl trying to hold it together, tears already falling, the sobs barely being held. She gets up quickly, stepping around the bed and wrapping her arms around Cheryl from behind, the Geordie breaking.

“Sssh. She's going to be okay...she'll get her happy ending, just you wait. Her fairy godmother's back in town, so its pretty much a given.”

There's a snort in between sobs, Kimberley smiling as she drops a kiss on Cheryl's head.

-----

Leigh's whole family – the real one and the extended one – are taking up the entire waiting room as Kimberley walks towards them, crying freely as she tells them the little girl's awake. Her own mother's waiting there as well, stepping forward to embrace her, shushing her as Kimberley cries out an apology over and over.

-----

There's nineteen missed calls on her phone the next morning, all from her manager Sam. The press had heard about Leigh's accident the day after she'd been admitted, the youngster's picture along with Cheryl's on every newspaper in town, the news crews camping out the front of the hospital. Kimberley knows a statement's been given about Leigh's improved condition, guessing her manager's been closely following events. She'd left him a voice mail on the way to the airport, telling him to cancel everything, hardly remembering that she'd been due at a breast cancer charity function yesterday.

Sam's messages get more and more blunt as she listens to them, Kimberley recalling a stern Hillary, chuckling to herself at the thought. The woman could never stay mad at the five of them for very long. She has no idea what the older woman's doing now, whether she's still in the business. She thinks that she might go hunt down her number, give her current tosser of a manager the flick, now that he'd shown his true colours.

“Ai, just the lady I was lookin' for.”

Kimberley smiles up at Nadine, the Irish woman dropping a hand over her friend's knee as she sits down beside her in the waiting room.

“What's up?”

“Oh, nothing...just thought I'd check up on you. Missed a call?”

Kimberley shakes her head, flicking the phone back into her open bag beside her.

He could wait. It could all wait.

Well, except for one thing. Kimberley drops a hand down to Nadine's, squeezing and finding a smile on her friends face.

“Wanna colour my hair?”

-----

It was more out of necessity than actual friendship that she'd been offered the use of Cheryl's guest room, Sarah bringing her spare clothes and Nic making sure she ate, the two of them demanding she look after herself for Leigh's sake. She knew they were on Cheryl's back as well, a schedule between the two of them sorted out before Kimberley had even realised it. She'd been visiting Leigh in the mornings while Cheryl slept, the Geordie taking over around two, not much talk being made as one entered and the other left.

The house was warm and friendly, Leigh's drawings on the fridge, her room just as Kimberley had pictured it. The Saint Bernard's – Jackie and Rex – excitedly greeted her each morning at the back door, the rabbits, the guinea pigs and Tweedy shuffling around in their cages as she fed them, exact requirements for each animal written down in nine year old handwriting that Kimberley marvelled at. The little girl excelled at school, loved writing and learning as much as she loved – had loved – riding Chestnut. Kimberley had been occasionally thinking about bringing up the subject of buying another horse for Leigh, but she suspected that it was still too soon for Cheryl to consider letting her daughter on a horse again after what had happened. Leigh had been upset, of course, but the tears had dried with the knowledge that Chestnut was not suffering. Kimberley had the feeling the little girl had also realised that she was going to need all the energy she could muster up to recover from the broken pelvis and damaged lung, strength that Kimberley remembered seeing in Cheryl.

Leigh's patience and persistence were easing her mother's mind, in much the same way as the piano did in the open living room. Initially surprised to see one in Cheryl's home, Kimberley had grown used to hearing the Geordie play as soon as she returned from the hospital, emotions flowing out through delicate fingers.

She was in awe of the younger woman's skills, but utter shock had best described finding out Cheryl had started painting. There was an easel looking out the enormous French doors of the office into the backyard, brushes and paint tins around it, artwork either hanging on the walls or leaning against each other. Cheryl's small and identifiable signature was in the corner of each of the paintings, some of them bright and abstract like, some of them recreations of Leigh outside in the yard, some just indescribable and beautiful at the same time. She'd deemed Cheryl's t-shirt design the best all those years ago, much better than her graffiti style message, but she'd never imagined the Geordie to be hiding a full on artist inside of her. Her recovery had clearly brought the artist out into the open, some of the paintings dating back a few years.

Kimberley again feels sick thinking about Cheryl's breakdown, pushing the thought away as best she can. Being in the hospital had brought the incident to the forefront of her mind, Kimberley constantly seeing a broken Cheryl in the hospital bed instead of a sleeping Leigh. She couldn't shake the image when it came to her, knowing she'd been legless that very night, shagging Sam in the back of his ute in an effort to forget it was her birthday.

She can't shake the ill feeling now as she sits at Cheryl's piano, eyes glued to the slightly unfocused photo of her and the Geordie, the two of them smiling like idiots in what had become the last photo they'd posed for. It's barely a memory, Kimberley only now recalling it with the picture in her hands, with the evidence right in front of her. Cheryl had squished her face right up to hers the exact moment the flash had gone off, Kimberley remembering the two of them bursting into drunken giggles immediately after.

They were madly kissing each other in a bathroom cubicle twenty minutes later, well on the way to screwing up their friendship. The photo had been the start of it, the beginning of the mess they'd made, she'd made, and she can't keep herself from throwing the frame at the nearest wall, her tears coming half a second quicker than the resulting crash.