A Million Dreams

by Dani Atkins

  Liam shrugged. ‘I never really bothered after Anna.’ There was so much more behind that sentence than just a decision not to decorate his house with tinsel and holly, but it wasn’t the right moment to delve deeper. I’d already fallen through thin ice once before when mentioning his late wife; I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

  ‘Tim was always like a little kid at Christmas. We’d have decorations up as soon as the advent calendar was opened.’ Liam smiled, but I could see he thought we’d been a little strange. ‘He’d be rehearsing carol concerts from around October and would be humming them in his sleep for months.’ I laughed softly at the memory. ‘I’ve always felt he’d be disappointed if I didn’t celebrate Christmas the way we always did together.’

  Liam made a small sound that defied interpretation.

  *

  The windscreen wipers were soporific, and combined with the mesmerising snow shower we were driving through, I was more than half asleep by the time we arrived at Liam’s home. He hadn’t been exaggerating about not ‘doing’ Christmas. His was the only house in the street not festooned with twinkling lights or inflatable Santas and reindeers on the front lawn. ‘The neighbourhood kids probably call me Scrooge behind my back,’ he joked, watching as I marvelled at the row of houses competing to get the largest electricity bill in January.

  A Christmas junkie was probably the very last person he’d ever choose as a houseguest, I realised, as we entered the warmth of his hallway. But someone who did seem pleased to see me was Sally, his dog – or rather Anna’s dog. The terrier stuck close to my heels, as though superglued there, even trotting up the stairs behind us when Liam showed me to the bedroom that was to be mine for the next week or so.

  ‘Bed. Wardrobe. Chest of drawers,’ Liam pointed out like an awkward estate agent. ‘And the bathroom’s just opposite.’ It was odd to see him stripped of his usual confident air. I suspected there hadn’t been many guests who’d stayed under this roof since Anna had passed away.

  Liam turned to leave me to unpack, calling the dog to follow him, but the terrier had other ideas. Settling herself on the rug beside the bed, she was putting on a good show of being totally deaf. Liam sighed theatrically, and it was almost impossible not to laugh. I bent down and fondled the dog’s ears. ‘Can she stay for a bit? I’ve always loved dogs.’

  Liam turned towards the door, shaking his head at his pet. ‘She clearly prefers your company to mine,’ he said without rancour. He paused at the doorway as a question occurred to him. ‘If you love dogs so much, why don’t you have one? Have mine,’ he offered with a laugh.

  Sally’s chocolate-button eyes were practically rolling in her head as I scratched a spot between her ears. ‘I couldn’t when Tim was alive. He suffered terribly with all kinds of allergies.’

  ‘But afterwards?’ Liam prompted.

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know, really. The shop. The responsibility.’ They weren’t good enough excuses, but how could I explain the irrational fear of living a life different to the one I had before, a life that held no trace of Tim in it, when I didn’t even understand that myself? ‘I grew up on the coast and when I was younger I used to dream of one day living in a cottage beside the sea, with maybe two or three dogs, and taking long walks along windswept beaches.’ Even to my ears, my voice sounded sad and wistful.

  ‘You should do it. Life’s too short not to follow your dreams.’

  Our eyes met and an unspoken acknowledgement was read and received, without a single word being said.

  *

  I slept a great deal during the first three days of my stay, which made me either the very best or the very worst kind of houseguest. Liam was still going into the office for a few hours each day. He said they were winding down for Christmas, but I suspected his reduced working hours were because of me. Despite reassuring him I was perfectly capable of sitting on a settee for most of the day without a responsible adult in the house, I could tell he was taking his duties as a carer very seriously.

  On the fourth day I was alone in the kitchen, rummaging for the makings of a fresh cup of coffee, when the sound of someone unlocking the back door startled me. I jumped violently, spilling a sizeable puddle of coffee onto the worktop.

  ‘Gosh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,’ said a woman I’d never seen before. She walked into the kitchen and shut the door firmly behind her. For a burglar, she was awfully polite. Sally raced across the floor to greet her, her claws skittering over the tiles in her haste, so I guessed the woman was a frequent visitor.

  ‘I’m Gina, from next door,’ she explained, as she bent down to rub the terrier’s head. The dog clearly loved all women, or missed its first owner dreadfully, I realised with a pang of sadness. ‘I usually pop in a couple of times a day when Liam is at work to let Sally have a run in the garden or take her for a walk.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, reaching for a cloth to swab the mess I’d made before it dripped onto the floor.

  ‘Here, let me do that for you!’ exclaimed Gina, practically racing over, presumably to take the cloth from my hand. There was something odd about the way she was looking at me, as though I was in danger of collapsing at the smallest exertion. I realised then that Sally wasn’t the only reason she was there.

  ‘Has Liam asked you to check up on me?’

  His neighbour turned a delightful shade of pink. Lying was something Gina clearly didn’t do often – or well – because she was really bad at it.

  ‘No. Not at all. Goodness me, no. Well, perhaps he might have mentioned… Oh, okay, yes. He did ask me to pop in every couple of hours, just to make sure…’ She had cracked like a nut, and I hadn’t even been trying that hard. ‘But I was happy to do it. Really happy,’ she said with curious emphasis. ‘We’re all just so delighted that Liam has finally found someone.’

  So many questions jumped into my head, I hardly knew which one to ask first. ‘We? Who exactly are the “we”?’

  Gina swept her hand meaningfully in the direction of the road outside. ‘All of us. We all moved in around the same time. What happened to Anna was such a tragedy, and we’ve been waiting a very long time for Liam to move on with his life. We can’t tell you how happy everyone is that he finally has.’

  ‘I’m not… Liam and I aren’t… We’re just friends.’

  Poor Gina went even redder at her gaffe, which almost made me feel like pretending we were a couple before the poor woman combusted with embarrassment. Her eyes dropped to my hands, still busily working on the coffee puddle, and spotted the thin gold wedding band.

  ‘Oh, gosh. I’m so sorry. What a complete idiot I am. You’re married.’

  Often I still said ‘yes’ to that statement, because it felt so much closer to the truth than a denial. But not today. ‘I’m widowed,’ I corrected. ‘My husband passed away five years ago.’

  Even while Gina was offering me her condolences, I could see a kernel of hope had reappeared in her eyes. Instead of quashing those rumours, I suspected all I’d actually done was put extra fuel on the fire.

  *

  I didn’t mention the visit until much later that evening, even though it had been on my mind throughout the day. It was one more vaguely unsettling thought to add to the troublesome ones already niggling quietly away at the back of my head, like mice gnawing through cables. Everything still felt vaguely off-kilter and slightly wrong. As though the compass I’d been following was suddenly spinning wildly. I put these weird sensations down to the lingering after-effects of the anaesthetic, although, despite extensive googling, I couldn’t find similar instances on the internet. I just hoped this odd feeling of unease – which kept waking me up in a state of panic in the middle of the night – would soon wear off.

  ‘So, I met your neighbour Gina today.’

  A tiny muscle twitched fleetingly beside Liam’s right eye, but he managed to sound believably casual. ‘She lets Sally out during the day for me.’ I could see he hoped that would be the end of this particular conv
ersation.

  ‘And babysits your visitors too, when required.’ I wasn’t really cross; it was quite sweet how he worried about me, so I don’t know why I was making him feel guilty. We were sitting in front of his fire, on a scattered bed of floor cushions, which I found more comfortable than a chair as my wounds began to heal. ‘Thank you for worrying about me, Liam, but it’s really not necessary. I actually feel so much better, I could probably go back home and leave you and Sally to have Christmas in peace.’

  ‘No!’

  I think he was as startled as I was that his reply had come out so sharply it sounded almost like a command. The room was lit by two low-wattage table lamps, but even by their dim light I could see the small flush on his face.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘Even if you do feel better, don’t go.’

  My lips suddenly felt really dry and I licked them nervously, until I saw him looking at them in a way that started to make the room feel really warm.

  ‘You can’t go, anyway,’ he said, thankfully finding just the right bantering tone to lighten what had suddenly become quite a strange moment. ‘I ordered a huge turkey from the butcher yesterday, and I have absolutely no idea how to cook it, or use my own oven come to that.’

  ‘Oh, well. When you put it like that, how could I possibly leave?’

  42

  Izzy

  It was almost midnight when I crept back down the stairs, Noah’s undelivered stocking still in my hand, instead of at the foot of his bed where it ought to be. He should have been exhausted, because I certainly was. But there’s something about Christmas Eve that chases sleep away from bone-tired children, even those who’ve only been discharged from hospital that afternoon.

  ‘Not sleepy, kiddo?’ I asked, snuggling the duvet a little tighter beneath his chin. Noah turned his head away from the window with its undrawn curtains; it was how he always liked them on this night.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ he said solemnly.

  My heart melted, knowing this could very well be the last year he’d be a true believer. ‘For Santa?’ I asked, looking through the window at the crisp, clear December sky. It was filled with a storybook moon, full and impossibly white, a perfect backdrop for a sleigh.

  ‘For the Christmas magic to start,’ Noah corrected in a whisper.

  It’s already here, I thought, as I bent down to kiss his forehead gently. It started when the doctors said you were well enough to come home. That’s all the magic Pete and I could possibly have wished for.

  ‘Well, magic only happens once little boys fall asleep,’ I declared, wondering how many parents all over the world were saying something very similar at that exact moment.

  Noah’s small harrumph was full of doubt that I had my facts right, but he dutifully snuggled a little further down beneath the covers. ‘Night night, Mummy. I love you.’

  ‘I love you too, sweetheart. Sleep tight.’

  *

  ‘Still awake,’ I declared as I entered the lounge. But there was no one there to hear me. I glanced towards the settee where Pete had wearily collapsed after his last trip to check on Noah. The cushions on his favourite seat had permanently moulded into a Pete-sized dent a long time ago. That imprint had haunted me during the months we’d been apart, and more than once I’d pummelled the resistant foam with angry fists, tears rolling down my face, as I tried to reshape not just the seat, but also my life without him. I’d never managed to do either very successfully.

  I turned to leave the room, noticing as I did that Pete had been busy during my absence. The previously clean fireplace flagstones were now covered with a light film of soot, into which several large boot prints had been left. I was still smiling as I entered the kitchen and saw that phase two of Pete’s plan was underway. He was nibbling up and down the length of an enormous carrot, sinking his teeth into the vegetable in a manner I guess he imagined a reindeer might do. He stopped when he saw me, running his tongue over his lips to capture any stray carrot debris. How wrong was it that I should find that so unexpectedly sexy?

  ‘Asleep?’ he asked hopefully, placing the carrot back on the plate alongside a drained glass of milk and scattered mince pie crumbs.

  ‘Not even close,’ I sighed, pulling out a kitchen chair and lowering myself onto it like someone twice my age. As I did, I noticed the trail of sooty footprints on the kitchen tiles leading to the table.

  Pete grinned, looking closer to Noah’s age than a man in his thirties had a right to. ‘I’ll clean it all up in the morning. I just wanted to go to town this year.’ He paused for a moment and I caught a fleeting sadness in his eyes, which I don’t think I was supposed to have seen. ‘I missed doing all of this last year.’

  ‘Noah did too,’ I admitted sadly. As much as I’d tried to fill Pete’s shoes during our separation, there was a bond between father and son that no one could ever match. For a brief moment, I wondered what kind of dad Beth’s husband, Tim, would have been. I guessed we’d learn more about him once Noah was well enough to meet Beth. I parcelled up that thought and shoved it into a corner of my mind so it couldn’t ruin our first night back home.

  ‘I imagine I won’t be doing any of this next year,’ Pete said regretfully as he repositioned the Christmas props on the table.

  ‘Because you’re moving out again?’ I had no idea where that question had come from. But perhaps when you’re tired and distracted, buried fears have a way of erupting like escaping lava.

  Pete turned two shades paler at my words and his eyes looked troubled. ‘Well, actually, what I meant was that Noah would probably be too old to buy into any of this. But… I guess you’re right. I suppose it’s something we should be thinking about.’

  No I’m not. I’m not right at all. I have no idea why I said that, because it’s not what I want to happen. I don’t even want to think about it. The words were all there, screaming deafeningly in my head, but somehow I couldn’t unlock my voice to release them.

  ‘We never said this was a long-term solution,’ Pete continued, carelessly crushing my fragile dreams with his pragmatism. ‘And now with the court case a thing of the past, and Noah’s transplant a success, he—’

  ‘—still needs you,’ I completed on a rush. ‘Sick or well, he still needs you here.’

  Pete was so still, it was almost as though he was frozen. His hand moved just a fraction, as though it wanted to reach out to me, but he wouldn’t let it.

  ‘You and I can’t live together just for the sake of Noah, Eliza. We both deserve something more than that.’ His use of my full name wasn’t lost on me. If I needed further proof of just how important this conversation had suddenly become, there it was. ‘Sometimes you can’t turn back the clock to how things were before.’

  I wondered which ‘before’ he was talking about. Before Noah got sick? Before we learnt he wasn’t our son? Or before we called time on a marriage we should have fought a damn sight harder to save? The fault for that lay with both of us; it was the unspoken spectre that slipped in and out of the shadows, but never entirely went away.

  I got jerkily to my feet, turning away from him so he wouldn’t see the tears that were starting to roll down my cheeks.

  ‘At least you’ll get your spare room back,’ he said, trying to make a joke out of something that wasn’t even remotely funny. I spun around so fast that the room actually swam out of focus for a moment. Perhaps I needed that centrifugal force to finally release the words lodged in my throat.

  ‘It’s not the spare room I want back again,’ I said, lifting up my head even as I threw my pride down at his feet.

  Where we were now was partly down to me. Pete had reached out several times over the past months, trying to mend the broken bits of us, but each time I’d held him back, unable or unwilling to focus on anything except Noah’s health. Three times he’d pulled me into his arms and three times I’d backed away. The pain in his eyes had been real, and it had haunted me for days, but I hadn’t been ready then. And now when I finally was, I might
have left it too late.

  Suddenly, I could feel the shackles I’d locked myself up in springing open. I didn’t have to wait for Pete to tell me he wanted me again. I could tell him, because it was the truth and it always had been.

  Our eyes met and held.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said, my voice shaky and almost unrecognisable.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t go. Don’t move out. Don’t give up on us. And please don’t stop loving me… because I never stopped loving you.’

  His smile was slow but worth every moment of agony that it took as I waited for it to change his face. He was suddenly the boy I’d met and fallen for all those years ago, as well as the man I wanted to end my days with.

  ‘I got it so wrong last year,’ I continued. ‘I was an idiot for pushing you away and telling you to move out. It was never what I wanted.’ Why had it taken me so long to finally find the courage to tell him that?

  Pete shook his head, taking his share of the blame as he slowly closed the gap between us. ‘I should never have gone. I was so busy trying to fix everything that I didn’t see the most precious thing in the world was breaking right in front of me.’ His eyes were bright as they held mine. ‘I’ve spent every day since then trying to find my way back to you.’

  He stood before me then, his heart open and vulnerable, as was mine. We’d kissed a thousand times before, but never like that. Never with such desperation, such longing, such feeling.

  ‘Oh God, I’m never letting you go again,’ Pete said huskily into my hair when eventually we broke apart. ‘Nothing has made sense in my life since I stopped being your husband.’

  I reached up on tiptoe to recapture his lips, confessing as I did: ‘You never stopped being my husband, not in here.’ I held my hand against my heart, which was racing as if I’d run a marathon. In a way, it felt as though we both had; a gruelling long aching journey to get back to the place we should never have left.