Heather nods. ‘I’d better fill you in on that,’ she says. ‘I guess she won’t mind.’ She halts as her fresh coffee appears. She smiles her thanks and waits till the waitress is out of earshot again. ‘The thing is,’ she says, dropping a sugar cube with a plop into her cup, ‘she recently took up again with a creep who did the dirty on her a few years ago.’
Bill tops up his tea. Say nothing. Keep your trap shut for once.
‘Well, as of last night, that’s all finished. He’s getting back with an old girlfriend – and turns out it’s not for the first time. He sure sounds like some piece of work.’
Bill digests this news in silence.
‘And can you believe he did it over the phone? Hadn’t the guts to face her.’
‘So she’s not moving?’
‘For sure she’s not.’
‘And the restaurant?’
‘Well, I think it’s a fairly safe bet that it’s not closing. She’ll be happy about that, at least. The thought of having to sell it was killing her.’
So she’s staying put, going nowhere. The man who got a second chance has thrown it back at her. The Food of Love will continue to open its doors, five days a week. It’s all good news, on the face of it. ‘How is she?’
Heather grimaces. ‘Pretty miserable.’
He thinks of the voicemail she left on his phone. Even though she’d just been dumped, she’d taken the time to go to the home to tell him about Astrid. And maybe, like Heather said, to make her peace with him – and how had he responded? With a curt text that didn’t even have her name in it. And he’d ignored her earlier letter, completely ignored it.
Heather finishes her coffee and gets to her feet. ‘I’ve got errands to run before I collect Lottie from school. I want to get a killer nightdress for Astrid, for one. Please think about coming back to us, Bill. Promise me you’ll consider it, for Emily’s sake.’
‘I will.’
After she’s gone he finishes his tea and wonders what to do next. It’s a quarter past noon, and he has an afternoon to kill.
He could go to The Food of Love for a bowl of soup.
She might not want to see him – it would be nothing more than he deserves. But he could thank her for her letter, and for calling to tell him about Astrid. He could do that much, at least. The more he thinks about it, the more he wants to see her. Aches to see her.
He’ll go. If he doesn’t he’ll be left wondering, and kicking himself. If she makes it clear that he’s ruined things between them, he’ll take the hint and stay away for good.
It’s ten to one as he approaches the street. The place will be full enough: Fridays are generally busy. If there’s no space at the table, he’ll wait.
But it’s not full, it’s closed. For the first time that he can remember, the restaurant is closed on a Friday. He reads the short note on the door.
Unforeseen circumstances. Another way of saying she’s too sad to open up today. It’s too impossible for her to be cheerful today.
He steps back to look at the upstairs windows. She sleeps at the front because she likes to hear the sounds of the street when she wakes. He knows this because she said it once. Now the curtains are closed.
He takes out his phone and listens again to her voice. Bill, it’s Emily. I have news about Astrid. Please give me a call. Should he place a call to her now, and risk waking her if she’s asleep?
No. He’ll leave her alone. He’ll go home and paint the front garden wall, which he’s been threatening to do for ages. The paint has been sitting in the shed for at least two months. He’ll bring out the radio; he’ll turn it up loud. It’ll blot out thoughts of Astrid and Christine, and Emily.
But none of that happens.
He spots the green jacket from three houses away. Waiting by the front door, like she always does. He stops on the path, uncertain whether to turn back or face her. Why is she here? What does she want from him now? Did she not understand what he said to her?
He resumes walking, more slowly. He must make it clear; he must stay strong. He will not allow her into the house; he will stick to his resolution. Even though she didn’t cause injury to Astrid, she robbed her. She betrayed Astrid’s trust, and her father’s too.
She doesn’t wait for him by the door. As soon as he opens the gate she hurries towards him. ‘I brought this,’ she says, thrusting something, a necklace, at him. ‘I took it from your friend’s house. I got money too, but that’s gone.’
He regards the string of pearls, cold as stone in his hands. He looks back at his daughter. Stay strong. Claire said that in her last email, but she meant it differently.
And then, and then, and then, her face collapses, he sees everything in it soften and fall, and then, and then, and then, she says the words he has waited for so long to hear.
‘Dad, I’m sorry. I want to – I want to get well. I don’t want to be this person any more. I’m so sorry about that lady. Will you help me?’
And without stopping to think, without checking to see if anyone is looking, without even being aware of what he’s doing, he slips the necklace into his pocket and reaches out and pulls her towards him. He lowers his face to bury it in her unwashed hair, and holds her close.
‘I will,’ he says, full of elation and terror and hope. ‘I will.’
Dear Claire,
Quite a lot has happened. I won’t go into it all. I just wanted to tell you that my daughter has asked for help. She spent last night in her old room for the first time in over eight years, and I’ve managed to find a place that will take her in. I’m afraid to think this might be the turning point, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
Thank you for your support.
Please wish us luck.
John
Dear John,
I am so happy to hear this news, thank you so much for letting me know. You are right to be cautious. There’s no guarantee that your daughter’s life will now turn around, but as you say she has taken that first important, precious step, and I know you will do everything in your power to help and support her. You ask me to wish you luck, and I do with all my heart. I wish you both all the luck and courage and strength in the world, and my hope, my fervent hope, is that things will work out, and all will be well, and you’ll both be happy again.
Do let me know how it goes. I’ll be waiting to hear, with fingers tightly crossed. You are not alone in this.
Your friend,
Claire xx
Astrid
AS THE DAYS PASS AND SHE WAITS FOR HER BODY TO heal, lying in her hospital bed, people tell her things.
‘I’m doing OK,’ Emily tells her. ‘After the shock wore off, I realised it would never have worked out. We would never have made it, not with him feeling he was settling for second best, and I don’t want to be someone’s second best. And it means I won’t be leaving here, I won’t be selling up, which I’m really happy about.’
And because she sees the loneliness and disappointment and resignation in Emily’s face, Astrid tells her about the person who cares very deeply for her, and for whom she would never be second best. ‘He thinks he’s not worthy of you,’ she says. ‘He thinks he’s too old, and too troubled – I told you about his daughter. And maybe he’s right, maybe he’s not the one for you, but he’s a good man, and he deserves someone like you.’
‘Bill?’ Emily says. ‘Bill doesn’t have those kinds of feelings for me. We were friends, but he walked away with no explanation.’
‘He is your friend,’ Astrid insists. ‘He walked away because he couldn’t bear the thought of you with someone else. He walked away because he didn’t want to burden you with his problems.’
‘Bill,’ Emily repeats, her thoughts going somewhere Astrid can’t follow. Enough to have planted the seed in her head. Leave it there, let it put down roots – and maybe, in time, it will bloom.
‘It was Christine,’ Bill tells her quietly, the following day. ‘She was the one who burgled your house. She took your ke
y and let herself in. I tracked her down because I – well, I thought she might have done it, and I was right. I told her I didn’t want any more to do with her, but she came to the house later and gave me this—’ and Astrid gives a cry of joy as Mutti’s necklace finds its way back to her.
‘She took money too,’ Bill says. ‘That’s gone, but I’ll repay it. It’s the least I can do. It would never have happened if I hadn’t sent her to you.’
‘The money isn’t important,’ Astrid replies. ‘She returned all I need,’ and because she sees his shame and wants to take it away, she lays a hand on his and tells him the truth about her family, so he can understand how much the necklace means to her, how precious the gift he has just given her.
His face changes as she speaks. It fills with compassion, driving the shame from it. ‘My God,’ he says quietly, when she finishes, ‘such a burden for a young child to bear,’ and they sit in silence for some time while he digests it.
‘Astrid,’ he says then, ‘she’s trying to get well. Christine. They’ve taken her into a centre in Galway for twenty-eight days.’
‘Bill, that’s wonderful news. I’m so glad to hear it.’
‘Yes … maybe … Could I ask you to wait until she comes out before you give her name to the guards? Could you do that for me?’
Oh, poor man. Poor man. The entreaty, the worry in his face, when he should be concentrating all his efforts on hoping for a good outcome. ‘Bill, I won’t be reporting her. If the guards ask me, I’m going to say I don’t want to pursue it. I’m going to put it behind me, and you must try to do that too. Let it go, let all of it go now.’
And he thanks her with a catch in his voice, and she sees the fragile hope in his eyes. And she hopes too, hopes that the girl will be able to stay strong, and fight the addiction when it torments her.
‘When will they let you home?’ he asks.
‘I’m not allowed home,’ she replies. ‘Not immediately. They’re looking for a respite place for a few weeks. They say I can’t be alone in the house. It’s not safe, not till I’m fully recovered.’
Do you have family you could go to? the doctor asked, and Astrid thought of her nephew who wasn’t really her nephew, and his wife and three small children, and his house with no spare room, and she said no. The thought of moving into an institution, however efficiently run, does not appeal in the least. At almost ninety-two she’s afraid, she’s terrified, that once installed there she will never get out, never live again in her little house, feeding her soul with the renewed beauty of her garden.
She voices her fears to Bill. She tries to make a joke of it – ‘Once they have me, they might decide to keep me’ – and the following evening he returns with a woman Astrid has never met.
‘My next-door neighbour,’ he says. ‘Carmel Twomey. She wanted to come and see you.’
The woman, short and sturdy, her brown hair sprinkled with grey and cut in a blunt bob, smiles at her. ‘I hear you might need somewhere to go for a few weeks,’ she says. ‘I’d be very happy to have you stay in my house. I was a nurse in my day but I’m retired now, with too much time on my hands. I’m a widow, and my son lives with his family in Scotland, so I’d be glad of the company. Just something for you to consider.’
And Astrid understands that this is Bill’s way of saying thank you, so she tells Carmel that she would be delighted to accept her generous offer, and she marvels once again at the kindness of strangers.
When Bill appears again the following evening, she enquires, as innocently as she can, if he’s been back to The Food of Love.
‘I called a few days ago,’ he says, cheeks going pink, ‘but it was closed.’
‘Yes, poor Emily. You heard about her romance finishing?’
He nods. ‘Have you spoken with her?’
‘She visits me when she can in the afternoons. She’s sadder and wiser. She needs her friends around her now. Do drop back again, Bill. I know she’ll be glad to see you. She’s very fond of you, you know.’
Planting a seed in another head, doing her best to bring happiness to two good people.
‘I’ve cleaned up the house,’ Heather tells her the next day. ‘It’s all set for you to move back in when you’re able. I’ve taken the liberty of replacing a few bits and pieces in the kitchen.’
‘Thank you so much,’ Astrid says, reaching for her purse, but Heather tells her to stop right there, in a voice that causes the heads of Astrid’s three roommates to turn simultaneously towards her.
‘Listen,’ Heather goes on, at a more reasonable volume, ‘I don’t generally mention it, and you can keep it to yourself, but I’m actually stinking rich, a trust fund my folks set up’ – flapping it away with a careless hand – ‘probably to ease their guilty consciences. So I can well afford a new teapot and a few cups. And what’s more, I’ve replaced your record collection too, so there.’
‘My – music?’
‘Yes. I had all the sleeves so it was easy, and it gave me a total kick to source them all on the net, so please don’t be too proud to accept them.’
More kindness, more than she deserves. ‘And this beautiful nightdress too. You’re too good, Heather.’
‘Ha – far from it! When are they letting you out?’
‘The day after tomorrow.’ She tells Heather of Bill’s neighbour’s offer, and Heather claps her hands and declares herself delighted. ‘Everything’s working out!’
And then, the night before she’s discharged into the care of Carmel Twomey, she has another visitor.
‘You mightn’t remember me. I’m one of the paramedics who came on the scene and brought you here. My name’s Shane, and my boy Eoin delivers your paper. I just thought I’d say hi, and glad to see you’re on the mend.’
Eoin’s father. She has seen his face before. She searches about in her memory until it releases the information.
‘You’ve taken out your earring,’ she says, and he looks at her in bemusement.
‘We shared the table at The Food of Love one lunchtime,’ she says. ‘A few months ago. You overheard me saying I was from Austria, and you told me you’d been there on holidays. You said you didn’t like the memorial.’
She watches the change that comes into his face. ‘I remember,’ he says. ‘I knew it upset you, when you left straight after. I’m sorry. I don’t always think before I speak.’
She shakes her head. ‘You just stirred up a few things. It wasn’t your fault, you weren’t to know. Thank you for looking after me.’
‘Heather asked me,’ he says then, ‘to lose the earring, I mean,’ and Astrid realises that this is the man who has brought the recent glow into Heather’s face, the man who took time off work to ferry Heather and Lottie to and from the airport. This is the man who visited Lottie’s classroom to tell them what a paramedic does, and who brings food for Lottie’s kitten whenever he calls to take her mother out.
‘Heather looked after your father,’ she says, putting all the pieces together.
‘She did. He was very fond of her.’
His son Eoin is polite and friendly, and his daughter, according to Heather, is a sweet girl, and may just be the making of Emily’s brother Daniel, who by all accounts – well, mostly Heather’s – is a terrible womaniser, and needs to find someone to stop all that.
‘Your marriage,’ she says, because when one is almost ninety-three one can take such liberties, and Shane tells her that he has begun the process of ending it. ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she says. ‘Heather is a dear friend.’
‘She’s safe with me,’ he promises, and she is inclined to believe him.
‘I hear you met Shane,’ Heather says the next morning, as they wait for the doctor to sign Astrid’s discharge form and let her go.
‘I think he just might deserve you,’ Astrid tells her, and Heather squeezes her hand.
The doctor gives her the crutch she’s been using for her hobbles up and down the corridor. ‘Keep up the short walks,’ he says, ‘a few times a day. Yo
ur GP has been put in the picture and will be in touch, and we’ll have you back here for a check-up in a few weeks.’
‘Will I walk again without the crutch?’ she asks.
He regards her over his spectacles. ‘I suspect that you could do anything you put your mind to,’ he replies. ‘I’ve met few people with your resilience and your positive outlook, and they’re what count. Your mobility will come back. Just take it slowly.’
Take it slowly, as if she has a choice. ‘Thank you,’ she says to him, and ‘Thank you’ to the nurses who tended her, and ‘Thank you’ to the porter who puts her into a wheelchair and pushes it to Heather’s car, and ‘Thank you’ to Heather who ferries her to Carmel’s house. She is thankful for so much.
‘Now,’ Carmel says, ushering her into the warm kitchen, ‘I’ve made a tea brack, so you can have a slice of that with a cuppa, to keep you going till lunch. You’ll be pleased to hear that you’re sleeping downstairs – I got Bill and another neighbour to bring down one of the spare beds and set it up in the dining room. Well, I call it a dining room, but I haven’t dined there since my Harry died, and even then we only used it if we had company. Have a seat while I make the tea.’
Astrid hasn’t heard a word. ‘Your garden,’ she murmurs, gazing through the window.
‘Oh, do you like it? I must say I’m rather proud of it.’
Astrid takes in the patio paved with limestone slabs, a little cast-iron table and pair of chairs perched in its centre; the three large pots by the wall holding wisteria and azalea and begonias; the raised bed of herbs that cascade over their wooden border; the rockery, full of clambering dianthus and aubrietia and campanula; the little stone-edged pond, dotted with lilies and flanked by a trio of fishing gnomes; the curving path that leads down to the Japanese Acer, with its blaze of red foliage. ‘It’s beautiful, just beautiful.’
Carmel comes to stand beside her. ‘You’re a gardener.’
‘I am – well, I was. Now I have a man who comes.’
‘Would we take our tea outside?’ Carmel asks. ‘I could get you a blanket.’
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