by Della Galton
‘No, they’re not. I read a survey the other day. Apparently one in four people know when they’re walking up the aisle that they’re making a big mistake.’
‘Why on earth do they go through with it then?’
‘Lots of reasons. Family pressure’s big apparently. Or because one or both of them think it’s what’s expected of them. Or because they’ve got caught up in the excitement of planning the wedding and are now having second thoughts but are too scared of letting everyone down to pull out.’
Clara had thought about family pressure a lot lately and how it could contribute to people doing things they didn’t want to do. Like her trying to talk Grandad out of wanting a divorce and then virtually kidnapping him. And she thought about how cut off he must have felt, down in Weymouth at Jim’s, while their family lunches and birthday parties went on without him. Could all of that, possibly, have contributed to what was happening now?
She knew Mum had been to see him and she and Rosanna had been too, but they hadn’t seen him as much as they’d seen Gran. Because it had seemed that Gran was the injured party, which she was, of course, but they had all made judgements, hadn’t they. What did anyone really know about what went on in other people’s marriages?
She was terrified that they had all inadvertently contributed to the heart attacks and how Grandad might now be going to die without knowing how much Gran loved him. How much they all loved him.
These dark thoughts swirled and raced through her mind in between the little flurries of conversation that were whisked up like dust clouds of dry sand on the beach by a southwesterly wind. Everyone was trying to be positive.
‘He’s going to get through this. He’s a tough old goat.’ That was Dad.
‘He is. He’s too stubborn to let some little old heart attack finish him.’ That was Rosanna. ‘His heart’s as big as a house,’ she added.
‘Why hasn’t anyone come to speak to us?’ It was Gran who voiced the question that no one else dared to ask.
‘No news is good news,’ Mum said, stroking her arm.
‘Do you think they’ve forgotten us?’ That was Rosanna. ‘Dad, maybe you should go and ask.’
Dad coughed and put his hands in his pockets. ‘I don’t want to stop them doing their job – you know – stuff for him, keeping him safe. I don’t want to get in the way of that…’
It was what had kept them all in this room, patiently waiting, Clara thought. No one wanted to stop the medical staff from saving his life. And it was true that no news was good news.
She wondered if Foxy was all right in the car. It wasn’t hot. It was almost nine and she’d left the windows open a crack, but she decided to go and check her out anyway. It was better than waiting here in this airless room. As soon as there was news, someone would come and tell them and Rosanna could text her.
A few minutes later, she was back in the multistorey. Foxy was fine; she was curled up in her fabric basket, her nose tucked between her paws, but she didn’t take much persuasion to go for a stroll around the perimeter of the car park.
A text beeped on Clara’s phone, but it turned out to be Phil, letting her know that the stag night was going well. No dramas; James, the groom wasn’t even getting that drunk. Before the arrival of the wedding party, they had worried about that after the Curly Wurly disaster, which they had eventually concluded was most likely down to someone spiking Micky Tucker’s drink. It was the only possible explanation. He had said himself that it had tasted stronger the further down the glass he had got. ‘No one will be spiking our groom’s drink,’ Phil had told her with a steely look in his eyes. ‘I’ve primed all the staff. We’ll be making absolutely sure he drinks only what he intends to – and not a unit more. I’ve got the staff on drink-watching shifts.’
‘Will that work?’ She had asked.
‘It will for as long as he’s in any of the public areas. What he does in his room is his own affair, but he won’t have his drink spiked on my watch.’
Clara texted him to thank him. She didn’t tell him she was at the hospital. He’d have enough on his plate, discreetly supervising the stag night.
She put Foxy in the car and went back to the family room. ‘Still no news?’
Mum shook her head. ‘I’d have thought they’d have told us something by now.’
Clara agreed, but what did she know? She really only knew what she had watched on television – the drama of soaps or ‘reality’ TV. Everything happened much quicker on television.
Until now she’d known nothing at all about the actual reality, which was: the smell of dry air, punctuated by the sanitised hand gel that she had put on her hands again when she’d come back in, an insurance policy against the terrors of superbugs; the uncomfortable chairs; the out-of-date magazines and time passing in elongated seconds and minutes and hours.
Her FunFit said it was just before ten thirty. She had been here barely two hours. But time was made longer because of the helplessness of knowing they could do nothing but wait.
‘We are going to have to ask someone, aren’t we?’ It was Mum this time who broached the subject. ‘Even if we just ask someone on the nurses’ station. It’s not like he’s having surgery, is it? Someone must know how he’s doing.’
‘I’ll go,’ Gran said, standing up. ‘I need the toilet anyway. I’ll find someone. They’ll tell me, won’t they? I am his next of kin.’
Mum nodded. Clara was about to accompany her grandmother to find a visitors’ loo – no one seemed to think there was one on this floor – when the door suddenly opened. Everyone’s heads snapped round as the young nurse became the focus of their attention. Staff Nurse Helen Jakes. In the seconds before she came fully into the room, Clara tried to work out if a staff nurse was senior enough to be the giver of bad news.
‘Mr Price is stable,’ she said. ‘We will be monitoring him closely. But he’s conscious.’ She looked around and her eyes settled on Gran. ‘He’s asking for you, Mrs Price.’
Gran seemed to change in a moment from a defeated shadow into a flickering image of the feisty woman she usually was, like a photo on a laptop coming gradually into focus when there’s a slow connection.
She looked at Mum, and then around at the rest of her family, and her shoulders straightened a little more. ‘I’d better go and see what he wants then, hadn’t I!’
With a quick nod at Dad, Mum went with her, and when the door closed behind them, they all let out a collective breath.
‘Thank God,’ Dad said.
‘I thought we’d lost him.’ Rosanna was wiping tears from her face. ‘I know it’s mad to cry now. But I can’t help it.’
Clara produced an unopened mini pack of tissues and she went and sat on the bench next to her. ‘It’s never mad to cry.’
Rosanna sniffed and tried to get one out, but her fingers weren’t working properly. ‘Why do they make these things so bloody difficult to open?’
‘Give it here,’ Dad said, sitting down on her other side. ‘You need an old person to open things.’ He winked.
‘You’re not even remotely old,’ Clara told him.
‘Well, I feel bloody old today.’ He ripped the cellophane off the tissues with brute force and half of them fell on the floor.
They all giggled and it was like an escape valve of tension. Laughter and tears. Clara wasn’t sure which were the closest to overwhelming her as she bent to pick up the discarded tissues.
‘Group hug,’ Rosanna said, putting her arms around both of them and pulling them close.
Clara rested her head against her elder sister’s shoulder. She was wearing what she called one of her Mummy tops because it had the softest, snuggest fleece for children to cuddle into. Clara could smell the faint scent of Jimmy Choo embedded in its fibres, mixed with the scent of product on Rosanna’s hair, and she closed her eyes and thought about families and love and hope. And the black threat of divorce seemed to shrink like some banished demon and she thought surely it couldn’t survive any more. Not n
ow. Not here in the brightness and light of all this love.
24
It was almost midnight before Rosanna left the hospital with Mum and Dad. Everyone had been in to see Grandad, who was now sleeping. Gran had wanted to stay a bit longer. ‘I know they say he’s going to be OK, but I don’t want to leave him,’ she had said. ‘Just in case they’re wrong. You don’t need to wait, angel,’ she had told Clara. ‘I’ll get a taxi.’
Rosanna and Clara had exchanged glances, a tacit agreement passing between them. Gran shouldn’t stay behind all on her own; Clara would wait with her. She was the sensible choice. Rosanna needed to get back for Sophie and Tom, and Mum and Dad looked worn out.
So Clara waited, while Gran went to see Grandad one more time before coming back to the visitors’ room, where Clara finally managed to persuade her that she would be more use to Grandad when he was awake the following day. That he would need his rest and that she should get some rest too, and Gran had finally agreed to leave the hospital.
On the way back, closeted in the cool darkness of the car, she told Clara falteringly about the events that had led up to the heart attack.
‘You knew what he was coming round to tell me, didn’t you?’ she said as Clara drove. ‘You knew he’d decided that we should have a permanent separation.’
‘He said something about that, yes,’ Clara said, because she was too tired to pretend. She ached from head to foot with emotional exhaustion.
‘I agreed with him,’ Gran said. ‘I was shocked as hell, but I wasn’t going to disagree. I was right up there on my stubborn high horse with my nose stuck up in the air. Proud as a bloody peacock.’ She huffed out a sigh. ‘If that’s not too many clichés for you. I wasn’t going to back down. Not when he was in the wrong. Oh, Clara, I can’t believe that pride and stubbornness nearly separated us permanently. But it’s amazing how the realisation that there may be no going back, no second chances, puts things so sharply in perspective.’
She sniffed and Clara glanced at her and saw tears on her face. Now, she was bent forward and heaving her giant bag onto her lap and rummaging for a handkerchief. Gran didn’t do tissues. There was a flash of white as she found a man-size one and blew her nose.
‘I haven’t told your mother,’ she added quietly. ‘Or your sister. The divorce part, I mean. They still think he came round for peace talks.’
Clara gripped the steering wheel. ‘Peace talks, huh. So when did you decide that peace talks were the way forward?’
‘I decided that as soon as I saw him lying on the bathroom floor with his lips all blue, fighting for breath. I can’t imagine life without him. Not permanently. That’s the truth of it.’ She blew her nose again. ‘I didn’t tell him, though, properly that no way would we have a divorce until about an hour ago. That’s why I couldn’t leave. Not until I’d told him. Not until I was sure he understood.’
‘And how do you know he understood?’
‘He squeezed my hand and he winked. Well, he didn’t wink as such, it was more that he opened one eye briefly – the opposite of a wink, I suppose – but he knew what I was talking about. I’m sure of it.’ There was a little gap and she added softly, ‘I did tell him I loved him when we were on the way to the hospital. I told him over and over, and he said it too. And he said he was sorry. He kept saying that.’
‘I’m so pleased.’ Clara felt as though a tight band of worry had been loosened, as she stopped for a red light at some roadworks and turned to look at her grandmother. ‘I hated the thought of you splitting up. We all did, Gran. But none of us wanted to interfere.’
‘Your sister interfered. Sending me all those Sids.’ Gran sounded more amused than irritated.
‘Yes, I suppose she did.’
‘She probably thought it was reverse psychology, silly mare. She probably thought I’d fling up my hands in horror and say I’d never look at any man but your grandad.’ She gave a little snort – somewhere between outrage and amusement.
Clara considered this. The traffic lights were taking forever.
‘I’ve always done the opposite of what people expected me to do,’ Gran added. ‘It’s a bad habit.’ She stole a glance at Clara. ‘You’ve got a bit of that about you, too, haven’t you? We are very alike.’
‘Have I? Grandad told me I was the diplomat of the family. He said you both thought I was going to be a politician when I grew up.’
‘You can be a diplomatic hothead. Look at the Prime Minister.’ Gran had always been a fan of Boris Johnson.
Clara felt laughter bubbling up – possibly it was borderline hysteria. ‘Boris – diplomatic? If you say so, Gran!’
The lights finally changed.
Twenty minutes later, they were back at Church Knowle and Clara went into the house long enough to see that her grandmother was settled.
‘Try and get some sleep. And give Grandad my love when you see him tomorrow.’
‘I will.’ Gran gripped her hand. ‘Thank you, angel. Thank you for being you. Don’t ever change.’
Clara finally arrived back at the bungalow in the early hours and woke up a disgruntled Foxy, who had been curled up snugly again in her felt basket, blissfully unaware of the night’s drama.
Her body told her it was still night-time, it was certainly still dark, but her FunFit told her that in barely five hours it would be time to get up and prepare for the day, which was going to be a long one.
The Bluebell’s first wedding. A prime target for their saboteur – she dreaded to think what would happen if anything went wrong with Mr Scargill's only daughter’s only wedding. He was paying a fortune for the dream venue, for the beautiful lighthouse honeymoon suite for the couple’s first night. He was paying a fortune for Isobel Scargill to have her perfect day.
Clara had planned to get an early night and be fresh in the morning so that she was fully up to making sure this happened, but right now she felt as though she’d been wrestled into an old-fashioned wringer and rolled back and forth a few times. Her eyes were gritty with tiredness.
She crawled into bed, set her alarm and sank into oblivion – and her alarm woke her up again after what seemed like barely ten seconds of sleep. It tugged her out of a dream in which Gran and Grandad were dancing on a deserted beach. Gran was wearing a white satin wedding dress and Grandad was wearing a top hat and tails and behind them a tsunami was rolling in from some distant point on the horizon. As it got closer, Clara was screaming at them to run, but both of them had switched off their hearing aids and neither of them heard her. They just whirled faster and faster on the sand.
When Clara finally woke up, she was shaking. That was the second time in as many weeks she had dreamt about a tsunami. Was her life really that much out of control?
‘No, it isn’t,’ she told Foxy, as, bleary-eyed, she got up, showered and dressed and rang the hospital, who said her grandfather had not only had a good night, he’d eaten breakfast. Thank goodness for that.
It was too early to wake Gran, and Mum was probably in bed still, but she messaged her with the good news and said she would phone her later.
Thank goodness for make-up, she thought as she did her best to camouflage her tired face. And thank goodness for dogs who listened attentively – in case there was any mention of food (in Foxy’s case) and didn’t answer back with smart alec remarks about being a hot-headed diplomat. No way was she as stroppy and as stubborn as her grandmother. If she’d had a lovely man like Grandad in her life, she would never have let him go. But then Grandad had strayed. He had thought the grass was greener. Gran had every right to be upset and disappointed, she decided. Grandad, although a good man, had made a mistake, but he had almost paid very dearly for it.
Clara padded around barefoot in the kitchen and made coffee. It was only when she was at the front door ready to leave that she spotted the postcard just to the left of the mat. It must have arrived yesterday and she’d missed it somehow.
She stooped to pick it up and saw a picture of Tokyo. Turning it over i
n her hand, she spotted Will’s familiar loopy writing. Not that he’d written much.
Having a wonderful time. Hope your job’s going well!!!
That was it. There wasn’t even a signature.
She wondered how he knew where she was living and then remembered he’d asked for her address the last time they’d met. It was odd that he had put so many exclamation marks after the word ‘well’. He’d dotted the last one so hard, there was a small dent in the postcard. Should she be reading anything into those exclamation marks? Apart from the fact he was still angry with her for taking the job – even from halfway across the world.
She sighed and remembered what Rosanna had once said – ‘hell hath no fury like a man scorned’. Will may have been responsible for Lighthousegate, but there was no way he could have done any of the other stuff. Not from afar.
She left the postcard propped up on the radiator in the hall.
‘Today is going to be perfect,’ she told an uninterested Foxy as she let them both out of the front door.
It was certainly perfect weather for a wedding, she thought, glancing up at the clear sky, where just a few wispy clouds were hanging lazily in the blue. That was a good omen. The weather being the one thing that she hadn’t been able to arrange.
It wasn’t just December that had red berries. They were abundant in October too. Maybe climate change had disrupted all the seasons because there were baby snails everywhere as well.
The baby snails climbed up the outside wall of Kate’s bungalow. Every time she went out of the front door, Clara saw a couple of them on their way up. Where were they all going? She had wondered occasionally whether she should take them off very gently and put them on the grass. They would surely be better off there.
This morning, she had decided against it. Lately, she had interfered enough in things that were not her business. She felt as though God, or fate – or whatever you wanted to call it – had let her off with a warning last night. She did not want to push her luck.