‘And so you fixed me.’
‘You didn’t need fixing.’
‘We all need fixing, Scottie, in some way …’
He kissed her gently.
‘I wanted to tell you at the beginning. I felt like I should. But what we had … it was so … I don’t know, it sounds stupid. So pure. Clean. I felt better. I didn’t want to dirty us up with it.’
‘I wish you had.’
‘And I’m sorry I didn’t.’
‘And Ethan?’
‘I don’t know. He scared me. That stuff with Arthur. The running away. What happened with that girl …’
‘We talked about that.’
‘I know it isn’t the same but … all that irresponsibility. That loose-cannon thing. It scares me. It scares me that young men can get like that.’
She spun around, her face earnest. ‘You see, I don’t think the guy who did that to me at the party was “a bad guy”. I bet you he’s a responsible citizen now. Probably married, probably a father. Probably pays his taxes and coaches Little League and gives to good causes. I think he was out of control. I think he was colossally, dangerously out of control. That’s the part that frightens me. I think good people do bad things, and I think bad people do good things.’
Scott understood.
‘So I don’t think Ethan is a bad kid. I think he’s at risk of being a good kid doing bad things. That’s what frightens me.’
‘I get it.’
‘Do you? Do you?’
He held her close, like he’d never let her go, murmuring into her hair that he did. She relaxed and grew heavy in his arms, but he leant back against the bed, and held on.
45
Charlie slept fitfully, and rose early, troubled by the events of the last couple of days. Things had started so well, and he’d been so pleased. Now the cracks were starting to show, and he felt like he was losing control of everything, not succeeding in any of his objectives. He found Laura in the front garden, where the early sun was strongest. She was sitting on a teak bench, still in her pyjamas, her legs clutched to her chest, her dressing-gown wrapped tightly around her, her chin resting on her knees. He’d seen her through the window, as he came down the stairs, and ached on her behalf. He went into the kitchen to make two mugs of tea.
Outside, he put a hand on her shoulder. She laid her cheek on it. ‘Hi, Dad.’ Her voice was quiet, tired-sounding.
‘Hi, love. May I sit?’
‘Please.’ She smiled at him, and took the mug he offered her. ‘Thanks.’
For a moment, they were quiet, listening to the birdsong.
‘Not for the first time, it must be said, I do so wish your mum was here.’
She didn’t answer straight away. Then, ‘Me too.’ Laura’s words almost caught in her throat. Emotion was terribly close to the surface.
Charlie turned his head and watched her precious face. ‘You miss her almost as much as I do, I think.’
‘Oh, Dad.’ She slumped into his side, like a little girl.
He put an arm around her, making himself as strong and firm as he could. He thought she might be crying. ‘Do you think she’d know what to do?’
Laura raised her head and smiled, but her eyes were full of tears. ‘I think she’d know what to say …’
Charlie saw the distinction. ‘She was like a sorcerer. That’s how I thought of her. Or some kind of sage. There were times when I was in real danger of not being able to make a single decision without her – except at work – and I just deferred. Deferred like I breathed. Why wouldn’t I? She was invariably right. And just wiser than me. She’d be doing stuff around the house, you know, cooking and cleaning, or we’d be walking … and she was always thinking, always problem-solving. Whether it was about one of you kids or something else. I swear to God, if she was in charge of the country, we wouldn’t be going to hell in a handcart.’
She laughed ruefully. ‘You’re right.’
‘When she was dying, I wanted to take notes.’
Laura stared at him. He never talked about that time. Never had. ‘What do you mean?’
‘While she could talk, before she got too addled by the morphine, she was still doing it. Thinking about things. Speaking her wisdom. I did – I wished I’d got a notebook with me.’
Laura remembered the hospice as if it had all happened yesterday. When she’d first been given the news that further treatment would only be palliative, that she was now terminal, Daphne hadn’t wanted to go: she’d wanted to stay at home, and they had promised her that she could. Macmillan nurses came for a while – wonderful, kind women, who’d made the unbearable seem almost bearable. In the end, though, she’d whispered to Laura that she’d been wrong – she didn’t want to die in their home after all. ‘He’ll be staying here, your dad, and I don’t want him seeing my ghost in every corner.’
They’d all dreaded the hospice but, of course, as everyone who used one seemed eventually to realize, the staff were calm and compassionate, in a peaceful place. There was a sense of safety about them. They knew what they were doing. She’d timed it well. Of course. While she remained at home, she was always able to get up, for at least part of the day, to wash and dress, to look and seem much like herself, to drink a cup of tea with visitors who knew not to stay for too long or ask too much. To take Ethan onto her lap and read to him so that he wasn’t afraid of her. Once she entered hospice care, the will to normality ebbed gently away, and within just a week or so, she was sleeping more than she was awake, then unconscious more than she was asleep, and then, so gently that it almost came down to a change in the rise and fall of her chest, and the small change to the sound of her breath, not there at all.
She’d never seemed to be in real pain, not the kind they couldn’t control, and Laura had been so very grateful for that. She wasn’t sure any of them – Dad especially – could have borne to see her live from drug dose to drug dose, wretched with agony, as some people still seemed to have to die even in the twenty-first century. It was more that she had faded.
‘What kind of notes?’
Charlie chuckled softly. ‘Oh, all sorts. Recipes.’ He lost himself in memory. ‘She was worried I wouldn’t eat properly. Reminders. Like I’d never find my way to the doctor or the optician or the dentist without her there to remind me. Random thoughts. What I ought to plant in the spring. How I needed to get rid of socks when they went thin, before they were holey. And she talked about you guys a lot. More than anything else. What she thought. What she wanted for you all. What I was to tell you.’
Laura smiled. It was very Mum. ‘She was a control freak.’
Charlie agreed. ‘Of the very, very best kind. She didn’t want to leave you.’
‘Or you.’
He laughed. ‘Oh, she was quite fierce about that. Didn’t allow herself an iota of self-pity, and didn’t want me to. She said there was nothing less attractive than wallowing.’
Laura knew differently. Even in her last weeks and days, Mum had wanted to shield him. She’d cried, twisting a handkerchief, with Laura. Wished it was otherwise with Laura. Mourned for the old age she wasn’t going to get with the man she adored. Issued instructions about Charlie to Laura. He had just never known. Laura laid her hand across her father’s, keeping the promises she’d made all those years ago, and letting her dad speak his own truth about his dying wife.