She needed a hotel that had a night staff so she could telephone and sort it out person to person. She kept shying away from the option a bruised, battered and subdued Will had given her, which was to use her key to the apartment and sleep there.
Maybe she’d just continue sitting here instead, not making the decision.
Her mind drifted. Aaron had been trying to contact her. She’d read his text several times but by the time she’d finished talking to Will’s parents, who were in a different time zone on holiday and were trying to change flights, and reassuring Asila’s husband, who was haunting the hospital corridors in tears and seemed totally incapable of retaining any information the nursing staff gave him, it had already been late. She was reluctant to risk waking Aaron with a call so had left a text: I’m OK but Will, Renée and some of my erstwhile colleagues have been hurt in a car crash, some quite badly. She felt unequal to the task of explaining why she’d travelled to be with Will – she’d been wondering about it herself and her only conclusion had been that he’d caught her at a low moment and provided proof that there was somewhere she was needed and wanted – so she just added: I’ll be in contact. xxx
While she’d been sitting here, she’d thought of Aaron a lot: his ready smile, the way he moved, the heat of him when he made love to her. The odd mixture of reliability and free-spiritedness that was him, living in his cottage on the clifftop.
Was there a place for her in his life? Or in Nelson’s Bar at all?
She’d been careful not to be presumptuous about moving in on his space but he’d apparently agreed to share his home with Lee and Daisy. They were his family and she was not, and she was trying not to feel it was a reflection of the scale of her importance to him, but it was making her consider alternatives. The Roundhouse was out; the B&B was out. A house in Thornham or Titchwell, just a few miles from Nelson’s Bar, would be her best option. It would be an easy drive to perform her caretaking duties, or they could advertise for someone to take over at the end of the summer. Clancy could get a different job or throw herself into another business. Then, if things didn’t work out with Aaron, they wouldn’t be falling over each other in the village or having to deal with each other at Roundhouse Row.
It was a slightly odd thing to realise, but it might be that having a life that was easy to separate from Aaron’s would be the key to keeping him in it.
Having a plan of sorts woke her up a bit. She stirred herself to get up and leave, grabbing her car keys as she left the hospital in search of her car, then she drove to the apartment and let herself in to fall on the blue velvet sofa that a few years ago she’d chosen with Will.
As she tried to sleep, she remembered telling Aaron about her relationship with Will, about how their supposed love had been something that built up gradually, over time, and that she found it hard to believe in the kind that took you by surprise in a month or a week. Sleep seemed to get further away instead of closer as she suspected that the empty feeling in the pit of her stomach was nothing to do with missing dinner. It was missing Aaron.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tense and apprehensive, Aaron was up early on Thursday. His first job was to check his mobile for messages from Clancy or Lee.
Nothing from Lee but his heart hopped to see the text from Clancy. Then he was disappointed to see how brief it was. I’ll be in contact. Did that mean she didn’t expect him to contact her? A glance at his bedside clock told him it was early for a call but he replied to the text: Sorry to hear about the accident. Are you at a hospital? Let me know when I can ring you. xxx
He checked Lee and Daisy’s rooms but was unsurprised to see them empty and undisturbed. He was equally unsurprised that when his landline rang at seven, his usual breakfast time on a workday, that the caller was his mother, voice hushed with strain. ‘Have you heard anything from Lee? When Dad came in after his late shift he said to wait until he woke up at lunchtime and we’d talk then, but do you think we should call the police?’
Aaron’s heart turned over at even discussing that prospect. ‘Surely Lee’s too devoted a dad to have taken Daisy with him if he meant himself harm?’
Yvonne sniffed. ‘So … does that mean Lee and Daisy are somewhere with Alice?’
Then Aaron heard Fergus’s calm voice in the background, regardless that he could have had very little sleep. After a few moments he came on the line. ‘It’s too early to panic. Let’s give him time to contact us at least.’
Aaron agreed. He tried ringing both Lee and Clancy, to no avail, and then rearranged his work so he could be at home today. He had a plan to put together for a prospective customer and he could do that at his kitchen table, keeping close company with the phones.
It was actually approaching lunchtime when his mobile finally rang and Clancy flashed up on the screen. Warmth raced through him. He burst out, ‘Clancy?’ just as Lee and Daisy walked through the door, smiling and looking relaxed, backpacks on their backs.
‘Where’s Clancy?’ demanded Daisy, letting go of Lee’s hand so she could skip up and down on the floorboards yodelling, ‘Clanceeeeee, Clanceeeeee, Clanceee-eee-eee.’ Nelson joined in with a few skips of his own, barking.
Though relief thundered through him at the sight of his brother and his niece quite obviously safe and well, Aaron was not going to put Clancy off this time. He pointed at Lee and hissed, ‘Stay there!’ then stuck a finger in his ear to try and hear Clancy on the phone. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes.’ She sounded reassuringly familiar and composed. ‘Sorry I didn’t get back to you last night. I was up till all hours and then I overslept. Will escaped the accident with cuts and bruises but Renée and Monty are still unconscious. Asila’s come round but has concussion. They’ve all got upper body injuries – ribs, shoulders and clavicles. Monty has a broken leg, too.’ She dropped her voice. ‘They hope that Will and Renée’s baby is going to be OK. There’s a normal heartbeat, the baby’s moving and there’s no bleeding but they’re going to keep her under close observation. At least she wasn’t behind the steering wheel. They were all in the car together because they were coming home from some shindig Renée’s company had put on. Hang on.’
Her voice receded while she spoke to someone. It was muffled but sounded like, ‘Yes, I will, but just give me a minute.’ Her voice returned. ‘Will’s in shock. His parents are on holiday but they’re trying to get flights home. His sister Mel’s just rung to say she’s walking from the tube station and I said I’d drive her to the hospital. Asila’s husband got to the hospital last night, and Monty’s mum. Tracey was the only one from IsVid not involved because she’s on holiday too.’
‘I hope everyone recovers quickly,’ he said automatically, his stomach dropping at picturing Clancy with Will – even a Will who was probably going out of his mind about his wife and baby. He and Clancy used to share their lives and Aaron felt jealousy creep across him. Vaguely, he was aware of Lee taking Daisy out of the kitchen, followed by the sound of the TV in the sitting room.
Clancy was still speaking. ‘Will was trapped in the car with everyone bleeding and unconscious. It must have been horrific.’
He agreed, hating himself for minding the caring note to her voice, the familiarity when she talked about Will’s family and her old friends and colleagues. He wanted to check she was coming back from London but now was not the time to turn possessive, even if he did think, in the circumstances, Will was frigging lucky that Clancy would drop everything to support him.
‘Anyway, I have to tell you something before Mel arrives,’ she went on. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got Harry and Rory again.’
‘Why?’ he asked blankly.
She half-laughed. ‘Crazy, right? I was throwing my bag in the car when they came up. Harry was upset. He said someone suggested to Jordy that Harry’s gay so Jordy asked him outright. He said yes.’
‘Cue Jordy to explode,’ Aaron sighed, running his fingers through his hair in exasperation at the dramas going on all around him. ‘I discovered last n
ight that Jordy had found out, but not the details.’
‘Jordy’s explosion was pretty comprehensive, by Harry’s account,’ she said sombrely. ‘Lots of shouting and slamming about. Poor kid was crying, with Rory trying to comfort him. When he heard I was going to London Harry pleaded to come so I gave them ten minutes to grab their stuff. They did it in eight. I’m sorry,’ she added. ‘I feel as if I’m sticking my oar in with Harry and Rory but I just felt they needed someone.’ She sounded almost defiant.
‘Thanks for being that someone,’ Aaron said. ‘But I’m worried what will happen to them next.’
‘Me, too!’ she agreed. ‘In the immediate short term they’re OK because they’re in the spare room of the apartment. They were very helpful last night finding their way here to fetch clothes and stuff for Will and Renée. It gave them something to focus on other than Jordy’s pyrotechnics.’
Aaron leaned on the kitchen wall, feeling its coolness through the fabric of his T-shirt. She’d said ‘here’ so did that mean she’d stayed in the apartment too? He was shocked by the weakness that sent a tremor through him. ‘Do you think Harry will come home with you?’ he asked experimentally.
‘I don’t know.’ She sighed. ‘Home’s got to be more than just a roof over your head. Harry has that in Nelson’s Bar but it doesn’t make him happy. Here, he’s got nothing but Rory, but that seems enough. Although,’ she added, when he didn’t immediately come up with a reply to that, ‘I’m not suggesting it would be fun for them to be homeless in London. Let’s just see what the next few days bring.’
‘Has Will been discharged from hospital?’ Aaron wondered just how many rooms the apartment had and where Clancy was sleeping.
‘Not yet,’ she said briefly. Then, ‘Mel’s just coming in. Can you do me a favour and let Harry’s parents know he’s safe and with me again? Rory’s rung his mum, who’s mega pissed off at Jordy, I understand, but I can’t get Harry to ring home.’
‘Of course. Thanks for looking out for him when you’re helping others through their crises too.’ He tried to imagine her day yesterday, miles away in a hospital he’d never seen with people who used to be very important to her. ‘And look after yourself—’
‘Sorry, I’m getting a beep, someone else is trying to get through,’ she broke in. ‘You look after yourself too.’
Then she was gone.
Slowly, Aaron replaced the handset. It was only when he turned and saw Lee was watching that he remembered he had anything else to deal with. He shook his mind onto a different crisis. ‘You’re obviously OK,’ he said to Lee, crossing the room to give him a hard, brotherly hug. ‘We’ve all been worried sick at you doing a vanishing act.’
Lee looked sheepish. ‘Sorry. I did the diva thing again. Mum rang here to check on me once too often and so I got a late booking at a guesthouse in Wells and took Daisy to build a few sandcastles while the sunshine lasts. I was anxious so I turned my phone off. I overreacted but I felt everything closing in on me. I should at least have left you a note.’
Aaron nodded, knowing with sick certainty that ‘everything closing in on me’ was Lee-speak for ‘I was perilously close to completely losing my shit’.
‘Problem is, Mum did find a note,’ he said gently, and filled his brother in about its contents.
‘Crap! That must have fallen out of my stuff when I was moving here. I haven’t felt like that lately. I think it’s just a bit of venting left over from when I’d realised Beth wasn’t bothered about being part of Daisy’s life. I am such a fuck-up.’ Looking helpless, Lee ran a hand over his hair.
‘There’s something else.’ Aaron hated to complicate the delicate situation but didn’t see any option. ‘Apparently, Alice has left Hugo. When you vanished at the same time …’
Lee’s hand dropped. ‘Alice has left Hugo?’ he said blankly. ‘So where’s she gone?’
Aaron could only shrug. ‘I didn’t have a chance to ask Clancy if she knew anything before she rang off just now. She’s coping with her own dramas.’ Which there was no point in heaping on Lee at this second. ‘You ring Mum. I want a word with Jordy and Anabelle.’
He pulled on a sweatshirt over his T-shirt and, deciding to leave Nelson behind in case Jordy got loud and Nelson met aggression with aggression, he let himself out into the bright and breezy day and set off across the village.
As he strode along the dusty footpath that took him through the jumble of tiled cottages that was Trader’s Place as a short cut to Droody Road, he replayed the conversation with Clancy. Home’s got to be more than just a roof over your head. Harry has that in Nelson’s Bar but it doesn’t make him happy. Then something about Rory. In parallel, he heard her making a remark in relation to herself. I don’t have a home. It wasn’t hard to join up the dots but he wasn’t sure he liked the picture.
He arrived at Jordy and Anabelle’s place, half hidden behind the green crinkled leaves of a hornbeam hedge, and knocked at the kitchen door. He was answered in a second, Jordy throwing it open, expression turning belligerent as he saw Aaron. ‘Oh, yeah, getting involved again, are you?’
He stumped back into the house, leaving Aaron to follow him into the kitchen where Anabelle stood by the table, her skin a contrasting pallor to Jordy’s angry, dull red.
Aaron went straight to the point. ‘I thought you’d like to know that Harry’s safe. He’s in London again. With Rory and Clancy.’
Jordy slapped the kitchen worktop, lips thinned and teeth gritted. ‘What the fuck is it with her? She gave him a lift last time he sneaked off.’
Opting not to address that, Aaron kept on speaking. ‘The main thing is he has a roof over his head, at least for a few days. I’ll keep in touch with Clancy—’ would he ever ‘—and tell you if that changes.’
With a bellow, Jordy bulldozed his way across the kitchen to grab Aaron’s arm. ‘That bitch Clancy—’
‘Careful,’ Aaron hissed, feeling his fists clenching at his sides.
‘But what’s she got to do with Harry?’ Jordy bellowed, though he loosened his grip.
‘She cares, I suppose.’ Aaron kept his temper with difficulty. He wasn’t a parent and felt unsuited to the job of mediator. Clancy had asked him to do this though, and Harry saw him as an ally. ‘He’s your son, man. You can’t only love him if he’s exactly what you want him to be.’
Anabelle spoke for the first time since Aaron had entered. She gazed at Jordy. ‘It’s time we called it a day.’
‘Called what a day, Belly?’ he demanded in the impatient voice Aaron had heard him use with her so often.
Anabelle drew herself up. ‘Us. We’ve reached the end of the road, Jordy. I’m leaving you.’ She sounded perfectly composed.
Jordy stared at her in shocked, awful silence, the colour draining from his entire face, even his lips as Aaron watched helplessly, unsure if he should go or stay. ‘Is there another man or something?’ he managed at length.
‘Yes,’ Anabelle answered with a firm nod. ‘It’s a man who cares about me. Living with him will be different. He won’t call me Belly.’ She gave a tired smile. ‘He’ll call me Mum. I’m leaving you for my son. He’s my son. He’s entitled to be whoever he is. I’ve been thinking about doing this for ages,’ she added, ‘and now you’ve completely chased Harry away you’ve made up my mind. I’ll rent a house in Leicester. Harry and Rory can come to live with me, at least for a while, and then they’ll be safe. Harry can go to uni and Rory and I will find jobs.’
Though he appeared to have brought the situation down on himself, Aaron suddenly felt sorry for Jordy, whose mouth opened and closed as his brain refused to supply him with the words that would keep his wife, keep his life.
Even Anabelle was gazing at Jordy with compassion. ‘All you had to do was accept your own son,’ she said. Then she hugged Aaron hard and thanked him for bringing them the news. She patted Jordy’s shoulder as she passed. ‘I’m going to pack. It won’t take long.’
After several long moments, Aaron cleared his
throat. ‘Do you want me to stay, Jordy? If you want to talk or anything—’
‘No.’ Jordy turned and looked up the hallway after his wife. ‘No. No. Just leave me be.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Will was discharged from hospital on Friday morning. His sister Mel had slept in his bed at the apartment then left this morning when his parents had returned from holiday in the Maldives to the welcome news that Renée had regained consciousness. The baby inside her had been declared safe, so far as could be determined.
Still, Will seemed unable to leave the hospital. It was as if he felt that the moment he took his eyes off Renée she’d slip away.
Renée’s and Will’s parents were in with Renée now but, barring complications, it was expected she’d be discharged in a couple of days, as would Monty and Asila. When the parents came out from Renée’s room and Will could go in, Clancy planned to slip away. The accident had happened on Wednesday afternoon so she’d been hanging around holding people’s hands in waiting rooms and corridors for the better part of two days. She felt as if she must smell like a hospital.
Beside her, Will stirred, as if sensing her withdrawal. ‘I can never thank you enough for being here, Clancy. Most women would have told me to get knotted, after what I did.’
‘You can get knotted if you like,’ Clancy offered generously, giving him a quick smile. ‘It won’t change who you’re in love with.’ Black eyes and a broken nose had temporarily marred his looks but he’d barely mentioned his own injuries in his anguish over Renée and the baby.
He smiled, crookedly. ‘I did love you, Clancy, in a way.’
The words didn’t even cause her a pang. ‘And I loved you, Will, in a way. It’s not the way you love Renée though.’ She knew that now.
A Summer to Remember Page 28