by Kate Long
‘Go on, then.’
I followed him into the kitchen and he flicked on the light. I said, ‘Aren’t you tired at all?’
‘Nope. I run on adrenalin. I’m like a panther.’
‘There’s not enough meat on you to make a panther. Weasel, maybe. So what was up with Gemma? Can you say?’
Walshy set the toaster off, then settled at the table opposite me. ‘She had a bad summer. I mean, a bad one.’
‘Did she? How come? She texted she was fed up one time but she didn’t go into details. I thought she was just bored.’
‘I think the situation wasn’t reducible to text-speak.’
‘So what’s happened?’
‘Basically, her mum’s giving her a load of grief about coming out, and her dad’s just following the same line because that’s what he always does. They’ve been fairly shitty about it. Wouldn’t let her tell their friends. Monitored her calls, tried to find out who’d “turned” her so they could “take action”. Wanted her to go and see a psychiatrist in case she could be “straightened out”.’
‘No way!’
‘Apparently yes.’
‘Jesus. I’m amazed. I thought they were cool. Gemma told me at the end of term she was pretty sure her parents would just accept it.’
Walshy rubbed his eyes. ‘If I told my dad I was a woofter, he’d go into meltdown. Chuck me out, disinherit me, the works. Mind you, I say that: perhaps he’d be OK after it had sunk in. Who knows? I guess it’s one of those calls you can’t judge till it happens. You tend to lose perspective here because the uni’s so liberal, but out in the real world there are nutters setting off bombs outside gay bars. Society’s phobic, by and large.’
‘Depressing-Thought for the Day.’
The toast popped up.
I said, ‘I wish she’d confided in me.’
‘She would have done, sooner or later. I think she was concerned about your dad and stuff, didn’t want to lay on any extra hassle. Anyway, I’ve told her she can move her girlfriend in if that’ll help. I presume you’re OK with that?’
‘Girlfriend?’ I hadn’t seen that coming.
‘I thought you’d be fine. This is Gemma we’re talking about. Your mate.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Sorry, course I am. Of course. Anyway, it’s your house, blimey, you invite who you want. It’s just, we’ve never even met her, and Roz might not be that comfortable with it. Which I know is Roz’s problem, but then again she was here first and we all have to live alongside each other . . .’
As I was speaking, Walshy got up and began to assemble crockery, knives, spreads. ‘Roz isn’t here any more.’
‘What?’
‘She’s gone.’
It took a moment for me to process the information. ‘You mean, isn’t part of the house? Eh? How have I missed this?’ It was true I’d not seen her since I’d been back, but that was less than a week and I’d assumed she’d just been round at Gareth’s. The door of her room had been closed so I had no idea if she’d moved her stuff.
‘We haven’t wanted to bother you, what with things being so crap at home.’
‘Well, you should have! She’s not chucked in the course, has she, gone back to her parents? Shit, is the baby OK?’ I’d blurted it out before I’d realised.
‘It’s all right, she told us. We know.’
‘And what? What’s happened?’
‘There is no baby, Chaz.’
The news fell with a thud across my chest.
‘How?’
Walshy came back to the table. He set the plates down carefully.
‘She couldn’t go through with it. She went home, had a chat with her mum – didn’t tell her dad, he still doesn’t know – and talked it over again with Gareth. In the end she decided on an abortion.’
‘When?’
‘Middle of the summer. She came back here to have it, away from the village, from people she knew.’ He paused to bite into his toast.
‘But we were texting then.’ I tried to remember what messages we’d exchanged. Some of mine had gone unanswered, I was vaguely aware. I’d assumed she was busy, hadn’t thought too much of it. Then there’d been a gap, then Dad’s accident, and now it dawned on me, nothing for weeks. ‘Jesus. I can’t believe she didn’t say anything.’
‘She’s been too frightened to tell you. Well . . .’ He saw my expression. ‘Not frightened. Worried. About how you’d react.’
‘Me?’
‘Because of Will. You having done the whole birth thing, she thought you’d be angry with her.’
I swallowed. ‘No. Angry? No! Where is she now?’
‘Gareth wanted her to move in with him. Which is something she’s been angling for, so that’s kind of worked out. I saw her last week, at the union. She’s coping OK and she says to tell you hi. And sorry.’
Sorry. I stared at the toast and felt sick. Frightened of me! How could she ever have thought I’d condemn her over something so difficult? Oh, Roz.
I grasped Walshy’s sleeve, the silk slippery and cool under my fingertips. ‘Did you say I wouldn’t judge her? Did you say “Charlotte’s a friend, she wouldn’t think that way”?’
He nodded, his mouth full of toast.
‘Because this is awful. I have to talk to her, let her know she got me wrong. I wish she’d rung me. I’d have come over. God, what a thing to have to go through on your own.’
‘She wasn’t on her own.’
‘Did Gareth—?’
‘It was me, actually. I took her to the clinic.’
‘You?’
He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t planned. I was around anyway. Dad’s girlfriend was being spectacularly annoying, so I’d come back to York to get out of the way. Then Roz turned up in tears. Gareth was supposed to be taking her but they’d had a big fight. She didn’t want to go alone. I offered. That’s it.’
‘That can’t have been it. How did she cope? What was the clinic like?’
‘Like, you know, a clinic. All I had to do was sit and wait. Then I drove her home and supplied room service for the rest of the day. Afterwards Gareth came round and they made up and he took her back to his. No big deal.’
It bloody is a big deal, I thought, because never in a million years would I have put you down for a mission like that. Sensible, supportive Walshy? I’ve had you so wrong. Beneath all the backchat and posing, you’re actually pretty solid and it’s creeping me out. Go back to being flip, you bastard. Then we all know where we stand.
‘And is Roz really OK? Was she very upset? Has she let her tutors know? I can’t believe nobody told me what was going on. Walshy, I’ve got to see her.’
He shoved the plate of toast in my direction. ‘Go round there today.’
‘I can’t. It’s Will’s birthday. I’ve to be in Bank Top by dinnertime.’
‘That’s you scuppered, then.’
‘I could ring. I could call her from the train. Or text and say I’ll be round tomorrow and wait for her to reply. Check out how she sounds. She will want to see me, won’t she? What do you think?’
Walshy stretched and yawned extravagantly. ‘God, you girls do get yourselves in a tizz. Course she’ll want to see you. Just save her a party bag and a balloon. Bit of cake and coloured icing. That should fix it.’
And I thought, Yep, that’s the Walsh we’re used to. Normal crassness has been resumed.
They moved him off the HDU and onto a general surgical ward, which I suppose was progress. Everyone else in the annexe was having hip replacements, into theatre one day and tottering about the next, home within the week. Meanwhile my ex-husband’s lying there looking like death. ‘How long before he walks?’ I’d asked the consultant when I finally managed to collar him.
‘It depends,’ he said.
‘On what?’
‘On whether he gets an infection, how he responds to physio, how well the bone grafts take, how well the artificial joints bed in. Many factors.’
Hedging their bets at every opportunity.
I couldn’t get a proper tale out of anyone. But I used to watch these old gimmers hobbling gamely up and down and I thought, How’s Steve ever going to use crutches when he’s only got one good leg and his arm’s buggered?
This morning I’d popped into the hospital early because I’d all Will’s party food to organise and his presents to wrap and the house to make decent. Madam wouldn’t be turning up till most of the work was done. Half the night I’d lain awake going through my lists, fretting. Truth be told, I hadn’t slept right since the accident. Nevertheless, this hour was Steve’s. I’d sit and read the paper to him and cut his nails, trim his moustache, anything he wanted.
There was a trolley coming through as I walked into the ward. I flattened myself against the wall to let it pass. Then, would you believe it, another trolley appeared coming in the opposite direction so we had a minute of negotiating which one was going to back up and how that might be achieved in the narrow space available. I stood pinned between the nurses’ desk and a mobile drugs unit, and turned my gaze respectfully away from the prone old man in front of me. His shrunken frame under the waffle blanket reminded me too much of Nan. Instead I squinted across to Steve’s bed to see if there were any medics in attendance or if the curtains were drawn.
What I saw made me catch my breath. A woman – forties, big-boned, blonde, leather-jacketed – was sitting in the visitor’s chair, holding Steve’s hand. Lusanna, it had to be. We’d exchanged a few words on the phone but I’d never met her in the flesh.
Immediately I felt my heart speed up. She was talking away and she kept smiling, that weak, fake smile you see all round hospitals, people straining to hide their awkwardness. I’d used it myself.
Steve’s eyes were open but he didn’t seem to be saying much back. I watched Lusanna bend to pick something out of her bag, saw the slight crepiness of the skin at her cleavage.
All at once the trolley rolled past leaving me exposed and panicked. Without stopping to check if I’d been noticed, I turned and hurried back to the waiting room by the entrance, closing the glass door behind me.
Get a grip, I told myself. Just go over there and say hello. This is stupid, hiding. What reason have you got to hide, anyway?
And I had no answer to that. Except for, mentally and physically, I was at rock-bottom, stressed and tired with permanently ratty hair and no make-up and some infuriating break-out of spots – spots! Like some bloody teenager! – on my chin. So I hadn’t the energy to be bright and polite to this strange woman, whatever she was to Steve. Heck, it was taking everything I had simply to keep up with the ordinary day-to-day trauma.
It wasn’t that I was jealous, it wasn’t some competition. Of course his girlfriend could come and visit him now he was on a public ward. I was bound to run into her sooner or later. She could take some of the strain off me because quite frankly I was meeting myself coming back. Passing Will from pillar to post, fielding phone calls. It was hellishly time-consuming, visiting every day. Let Lusanna run some of his errands, buy him his lip-salve and prune juice and bike mags and wet wipes.
Then suddenly, dear God, what a shock, there was her big pale face peering through the glass panel of the waiting-room door. She spotted me and grimaced. I gripped my newspaper.
She was coming in, and I would have to deal with her.
Close up I thought she too looked tired, with puffy skin under her eyes and the tell-tale signs of yesterday’s mascara. She was slightly shorter than me and wore her fair hair loose and girlish. It didn’t suit her.
‘You know who I am,’ were her opening words.
‘Yes, I do. Nice to meet you at last. I’m sorry you couldn’t come before. It was close family only on the HDU, that’s the rule. The nurses are dead strict.’
‘’S’OK.’
‘What I’m saying is, you know, it wasn’t anything against you. You can visit whenever you want now. Give me a break. Steve’ll like that. It’ll make a change for him. I bet he’s fed up of staring at me day after day.’
I’d expected her to go, ‘No, no, I’m sure he isn’t,’ out of politeness, but she just shuffled her feet. We stood there, eyeballing each other. Her leather jacket creaked in the quiet of the room.
She said, ‘I’m not great with hospitals.’
‘Neither is he, if it comes to it. Mind you, the first few days he was so poorly he didn’t know where he was. They had him so drugged up he was convinced they were stripping down motorbikes next to his bed. It’ll be better for him when he can sit up and watch TV, distract himself.’
‘I’d only been dating him a few weeks.’
‘Yes, I know that. He was very fond of you, though,’ I said, amazing myself at my own generosity.
‘Was he?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Oh. He’s been telling me what you’ve been up to, Karen. How you never miss a visit and you always bring something to cheer him up. That you’ve washed his hair, put his deodorant on for him. Personal stuff.’
‘Well, it had to be done. You can see that, can’t you?’
‘But you’re good at that kind of thing. I know you looked after your mum for years. He said how devoted you were.’ Her eyes kept sliding over my face, then away again. ‘Like, you know, some people are born to be carers.’
‘It’s not something you choose.’
Outside in the corridor someone was battling a coughing fit.
‘No. But the thing is, I don’t know if I – I think you have to be a certain type of person.’ These last five words she dragged out with a kind of angry emphasis.
Ah, hang on, I thought. I get it now. I understand what you’re after. And no, I’m not going to help you spell it out. Let’s see if you can do that on your own, let’s see if you have the guts to tell me that you’re out of here, that you plan to walk away from him just when he needs every friend he’s got.
‘Yes, Lusanna?’
‘Well, what it is – you know when he’s discharged? How bad’s he going to be?’
‘They’re not sure. He’ll be in a wheelchair, that’s definite; they won’t say how long for. He won’t be able to use his arm. What’s your house like? Is it suitable for a disabled person?’
Her eyes widened in alarm. ‘It’s old. Narrow. A wheelchair wouldn’t fit through the doors.’
‘Don’t worry about that. You can get special lightweight ones.’ I deliberately made my tone bright, matter-of-fact. ‘Steve’s pretty slim, so there won’t be an issue there. Social Services’ll provide one. Plus they’ll come and fit ramps and grab-rails for you, toilet frames. They’ll do an assessment. Or alternatively, you could move into his place. Whatever suits you best. You work from home, don’t you, so it should be manageable.’
‘No. I can’t do it, Karen.’
‘Can’t do what?’
‘I can’t take him. I can’t be looking after him when he’s discharged. I’m sorry, I can’t.’
‘Oh, right. So where does that leave him?’
‘Could you take him on?’
‘Me, love? No. I’ve a young child to care for. It’s impossible.’
‘He could go in a home or something for a bit.’ She looked uncertain. ‘I just can’t do it.’
‘So you said.’
Something in her face hardened. ‘You’re the one. It’s you he thinks of as his wife. The whole way he goes on about you. You’re the only person he can really stand to have around him right now. You’re the one he wants.’
I think I understood from the moment I saw him spreadeagled in the road that he’d be coming home to me. Still I fought her. I was so disgusted by her attitude. ‘Lusanna, we’re divorced. I’ve a toddler to bring up, a job to go back to, a college course I want to apply for. Steve’s not my responsibility.’
‘Well, he’s certainly not mine!’
God, I could have smacked her for that. In fact, unconsciously I tensed my arm muscles ready, and a rush of adrenalin washed over me.
She was quicker, though. Now she’d said what s
he needed to, she whipped round and grabbed the door handle.
‘What are you doing? Running away?’ I said as she blundered out. I followed, furious, shouting down the corridor after her: ‘We could all run away, love.’
She jabbed at the lift button, then abandoned the idea and headed for the stairs.
‘And don’t think I’m going to tell him for you,’ I called. ‘Tell him you’ve chucked him because he’s disabled.’
She never looked back. The fire door slammed behind her, and even through its thickness I could hear her boots skittering down the steps. I imagined her hurrying through the main entrance, across the car park, fumbling for her keys. Driving home to a silent house.
The lift pinged open; no one got out. I realised the newspaper I’d been holding was limp with sweat.
You can exit Bank Top station via a concrete slipway that leads onto the back streets of Harrop. Quicker, though, if you’re village-bound, to head in the opposite direction and cut diagonally across the fields where Nan used to take me blackberrying. Unless it’s raining this is quite a nice walk: past the willow pond where Ginny Greenteeth the water-witch hung out, past the golf course where we once saw a man get hit on the back by a flying ball, over the stile which one spectacular summer was covered in ladybirds, and out onto the bypass. You can do it in ten minutes, though it used to take me and Nan about an hour by the time we’d filled our plastic tubs with fruit.
As I got down off the train I wasn’t paying much attention to anything. My mind was occupied mainly with Will and the trike I’d bought him, and how this year, at three, he’d be unwrapping his presents with purpose and understanding. I thought of his little beaming face and how cute it would be to watch him learn to pedal. Perhaps Mum could borrow the school video camera again and film the attempts I’d miss. She could even take it into hospital and show Dad. I must remember to ask her about it.
I was about to shimmy through the kissing gate when I became aware of someone from the slipway end of the platform shouting my name. I turned round and, unbelievably, it was Daniel, striding towards me on his long stork legs. A shock went through me. I had to blink a couple of times.