by Paige Toon
Because right then I know: the cancer is back.
Nick arrives soon after the ambulance leaves. He gathers me into a hug and I burst into tears, having somehow managed to hold it together until now. Luke is watching cartoons on the television in the living room.
‘Aw, Nell,’ Nick whispers, cradling my head in his hands and pressing a kiss to my forehead. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says in a gruff voice. ‘I’ll go and grab Luke. You heading straight to the hospital?’ He pulls away to stare at me.
I nod, brushing away a constant stream of tears.
He clasps my face once more and kisses my forehead again, squeezing my hand before letting me go.
My chest feels constricted as I watch Nick reappear with Luke in his arms. He’s almost five and certainly doesn’t need a carry from his daddy, but at times like these, a parent wants to keep their children close.
‘Shoes on, buddy.’ Nick plonks our son on his feet.
‘But I was going to do some gardening with Grandad,’ Luke says, his little brow furrowing with confusion.
Nick ruffles Luke’s light-blond curls. ‘You’re coming to the beach with me instead.’
‘YAY!’
‘Are you sure?’ I ask Nick. ‘I thought you had to work?’
‘I can go in later. Mum said she’ll have him this afternoon.’
‘Thank you,’ I mumble.
‘Are you going to be okay?’ he asks with concern. ‘Do you want me to drive you to the hospital?’
‘No, it’s better that I have the car. I’ll be all right.’
‘Okay. Big kiss for Mummy, buddy,’ Nick says merrily as I hurriedly dry my eyes and smile. He lifts Luke into his arms and dips him in my direction, making him giggle. He plants a sloppy, wet kiss on my cheek before Nick whisks him away, tickling his ribs as they head out the gate.
I listen to our son’s raucous laughter with a smile, but as soon as the gate clinks shut again, I crumble.
I need to get a few of Dad’s essentials together so I let myself into the annexe. We finally put an en suite in here, after Dad relocated to this room. He was struggling with the stairs, anyway, and it made sense for me to sleep in the room next to Luke. We’ve been living with Dad ever since the split.
Nick and I had three incredible years together.
I don’t mean the years themselves were incredible.
I mean it was incredible that we lasted three years.
Turns out that we are much better friends than lovers.
We tried to make it work, although the pregnancy came as a huge shock to both of us. It happened soon after I got back from Australia – a split condom that I didn’t take seriously enough to bother going to the GP for the morning-after pill.
It’s occurred to me that the same thing could have happened to Van and me when we were fifteen. If Dad hadn’t interrupted us, would we have become parents before our sixteenth birthdays? It’s a staggering thought.
Anyway, Nick asked me to marry him and everyone seemed so happy about it – his mum was beside herself! It really seemed to everyone that I was the one to tame Nicholas Castor.
We had a shotgun wedding, followed by a brilliant reception at The Boatman. All our friends came and Theresa and Christopher did up the place beautifully, with triple the amount of festoon lights than normal, and pastel pink-and-white lanterns and tissue-paper pompoms hanging everywhere.
Even my mum and Robert joined us for the celebrations. I’d followed Van’s advice and called her.
It was hard once the baby came, of course, but I thought we were managing quite well. Then, one day, I caught Nick flirting with our gorgeous new waitress. His mother got rid of her sharpish, but it was the start of something that wasn’t going to be suppressed.
I really didn’t want to end up hating him, but it was heading that way. We had countless arguments, followed by frank conversations, and we both shed a lot of tears. Eventually we decided that the best thing for Luke would be for us to part amicably and put all of our efforts into being good parents.
Having Luke meant that, once more, I had to put my life on hold. I never did make it back to London and I know I’m not going to now. Nick and Luke have such a great relationship, and I would never try to take my son away from his father. So I’m settled in Cornwall and in Cornwall I will stay. I’m still at The Boatman, but it works well with shifts and childcare. Theresa and Christopher help out a lot – they’re both semi-retired now and are the best ex-parents-in-law I could wish for. I consider myself lucky.
Sometimes I feel a pang when I realise that I let a glamorous magazine career slip through my fingers, but Luke gives me more joy than a job ever could.
The phone rings as I’m getting Dad’s toiletries from his bathroom.
‘Hello?’ I sniff.
‘Nell?’ It’s Van.
‘How did you know?’
‘Know what? I’m after your dad for a chat. What’s wrong?’
‘He’s in hospital. I think the cancer is back.’
‘Oh God, Nell…’
‘I thought he was dead! I have a horrible, horrible feeling. I think this could be it.’ It’s hard to speak for crying. ‘He didn’t tell me he’d been suffering. I heard him say it to the ambulance men. He obviously didn’t want me to worry, but he knew, Van, he knew!’
He listens in silence to me sobbing, and when he finally speaks, it’s with a husky voice. ‘I’ll talk to Sam. I want to be there this time.’
‘You can make a decision when we know more,’ I manage to say before ending the call and curling up into a ball on my father’s bed. I give myself a couple of minutes to get it all out and then pull myself together and grab the rest of Dad’s gear.
Van flies to the UK four days later. I go to collect him from the airport. I’ve been in and out of hospital non-stop. Dad’s prostate cancer has spread to his liver and bones – he’s riddled with it. There is nothing we can do this time; it’s all about pain management. He may only have weeks – no one knows. But he won’t be coming home.
I have a flashback as I stand in the arrivals hall, waiting for Van to appear. I remember him walking through those very doors when we were fifteen. He seemed like a stranger to me then – an alien. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that he had changed so much in five years.
Now it’s been over five and a half since we saw each other and we’ve both gone through major upheavals during that time. We’ve both become parents. Van has a little girl, Libby, who was born four months before Luke. He sends us photos – she has blue eyes and auburn hair and the cheekiest smile. She’s absolutely gorgeous and he dotes on her.
I didn’t know when Van first broke his news to me that Sam was already almost three months pregnant when he’d asked her to marry him. He’d popped the question days before Dad and I had flown out.
She’d told him that she’d think about it while he was in Port Lincoln with us, but in the end she declined. They broke up before the baby was born – her doing, not Van’s. He was gutted. Now they have a similar situation to Nick and me, although I have a feeling their relationship is a fair bit rockier.
Sam calls most of the shots where Van and Libby are concerned. She wanted to move back to Port Lincoln to be near her parents, so Van went too. He was always going to be a big part of Libby’s life, wherever she ended up, but at least he has family and friends in Port Lincoln – not to mention the ocean – so I think he’s happy. The last I heard, he was seeing someone called Cherie, but I don’t know if it’s serious.
Just then, the doors open and Van comes through. As his eyes scan the crowd, looking for me, I’m aware of my pulse speeding up. His hair is longer than it was, but is still quite short, and he has dark stubble that’s almost a beard. His eyes lock with mine, darkening as I step out from behind the barrier and walk towards him.
He drops his bag and draws me into his arms, holding me close against his broad chest. Last time, he was a ‘guy’. Now he feels like a man. My heart doesn’t recognise him. It
’s beating wildly, slamming against my ribcage.
Or maybe my heart does recognise him. Maybe it recognises him all too well.
I extricate myself before I’m ready to let go, turning away so he doesn’t see my tears.
I don’t ask him how his flight was – there will be time for small talk later. Right now, I need to get to the car without collapsing in a heap.
On the return journey, I fill him in on the latest news from the hospital. He wants to go straight there.
Dad is asleep when we arrive, so we sit quietly by his bed. When he rouses, the first thing he does is to look around for Van – I told him he was coming.
‘Van,’ he says, reaching for his hand. Van’s eyes fill as he clasps Dad’s hand with both of his and hunches forward over the bed. I decide to give them some time alone and leave the room.
Van is shattered when we get back to the cottage – he barely slept on the plane.
‘I’ve put you in the annexe,’ I tell him. ‘I hope that’s okay.’
I know he may not feel that comfortable sleeping in Dad’s bedroom, amongst Dad’s things, but I’ve tidied everything away as well as I could.
‘I might take a shower,’ he says.
‘At least there’s an en suite at last. I’ll see you in the kitchen when you’re ready. I’m going to put the food on.’
He joins me within fifteen minutes, his hair wet, but his stubble still very much in place.
‘Is this your look, now?’ I ask, boldly reaching up and brushing my fingers across his cheek.
‘Yeah.’ He shrugs and gives me a small smile.
‘What do you want to drink?’ I ask. ‘We’ve got beer, wine, cider, soft drink… I’m opening a bottle of red. I need a drink.’
‘I’m not surprised. I’ll join you on the red. Where’s the bottle? I’ll sort it.’
I choose one of the better bottles from the wine rack in the larder and hand it to him. He still knows where to find an opener and wine glasses.
‘That smells good,’ he comments, nodding at the oven as he makes short work of the cork. Sometimes I forget he worked as a bartender. He went back to tuna fishing when he returned to Port Lincoln, despite his earlier claim that he’d grown tired of it.
‘Steak and ale pie. Nick brought it over from the pub earlier,’ I reveal. ‘All I had to do was heat it up.’
‘That was nice of him.’
‘He comes through when I need him.’
I don’t think Van knows what to say to that. I take the glass of wine he offers and sit down at the table, pressing my hand against my forehead. I have such a headache coming on. The wine probably won’t help, but bugger it. Needs must.
‘How’s Sam?’ I ask. ‘Was she okay in the end about you coming here?’
‘Yeah, she was fine. Kicked up a bit of a stink about how she’d manage with childcare, but Libby’s at school and her mum will help.’
It’s August so Luke is on his summer holidays, but in Australia the big summer break doesn’t occur until Christmas.
‘What does she do these days?’
‘This and that. She still paints. Murals and stuff. Mostly she’s busy being Mum.’
Sam also has a second child by a different guy – another daughter, Brittney, age two. She’s not with Brittney’s father, either.
‘What about you?’ I ask. ‘Were you all right with getting time off work?’
‘Yeah, we’d finished harvesting so I was due a break.’
‘Is that different to what you used to do, bringing the nets full of tuna back in from the open ocean?’
‘It’s all part of the same job. Once we bring the fish in, they stay in holding cages to be fed up for four months. They’re harvested after that.’
I still don’t know what harvesting entails, but Van changes the subject before I can ask.
‘When am I going to meet Luke?’
‘I need to pick him up tomorrow afternoon.’ I reach for my glass. ‘I can’t believe I still haven’t met your daughter.’
‘Yeah, it probably wasn’t the time to drag her to the UK for a visit.’ His tone is flat, but then his expression crumples and he folds over, covering his face with his hands.
I put my glass down and go to him immediately, placing my hand on his back as he gulps back a sob.
‘I’m sorry,’ he gasps, straightening up and vigorously rubbing at his eyes.
There’s a lump in my throat the size of a golf ball, but I’m managing to hold it together.
‘I’ve only just realised that Geoff will never meet my daughter,’ he says.
Nope. Now I’m a goner, too.
The pie crust is burnt by the time we get around to taking dinner out of the oven. I don’t think either of us cares. We were going to struggle to eat, anyway.
After a while, we retire to the living room sofa with refilled glasses of wine.
‘How are you still awake?’ I ask him, dragging my fingers under my eyes to collect stray teardrops. They’re relentless. Van hasn’t broken down again, thankfully. I never could handle seeing his pain.
‘I don’t think I could sleep if I tried. I’ll probably conk out here after a couple more of these.’ He raises his glass.
‘You can if you want, although you won’t fit on the sofa. You didn’t when you were fifteen, either. I still remember Dad saying that he used to find you down here, using Scampi as a hot-water bottle.’
‘I miss that crazy pooch,’ he says nostalgically. ‘Libby is desperate for a dog, but it’s too hard with my job.’
‘How is she these days?’ I ask.
His smile lights up his face. ‘She’s awesome. So funny and sweet. She was worried about me when Sam told her that “Otherdad” was sick.’ He sees my quizzical expression and explains. ‘Sam once told her that I had family – another dad – over here in the UK. Libby got it into her head that his name was “Otherdad” and it was too cute to correct.’
‘That’s adorable,’ I say.
‘Yeah, she’s ridiculous.’
His voice is full of love.
‘How are things with Sam?’
He casts me a cynical look. ‘Same as always. Still unpredictable. She’s seeing some new guy now. We’ll see where that goes – probably nowhere. She’s a good mum, though. That’s all I care about.’
‘What about you? Are you still with Cherie?’ The wine definitely helps me to ask that question.
He frowns. ‘We broke up ages ago. I’m not seeing anyone. You?’
I shake my head. ‘It’s hard to meet people at the pub, which is ironic because enough men come through. But Nick and his parents are usually around so it wouldn’t feel right.’
We simultaneously raise our glasses to our lips. I don’t know if it has occurred to him, as well as me, that for the first time since we were fifteen, we’re both single at the same time.
I’m in no emotional state to dwell on that fact. I head upstairs to bed soon afterwards.
Thanks to Van, and no doubt the wine, my fear about Dad wasn’t all-consuming last night. But in the morning it hits me again that I’m on the verge of losing him, and I’m a mess when I go downstairs to the bathroom and halt in my tracks at the sight of Van at the kitchen table, sitting where Dad normally sits, complete with a mug of tea. He looks over his shoulder at me.
‘Hey,’ he says, scraping his chair out from the table with an almighty screech as he gets to his feet.
I cover my ears, unable to help laughing, but then I’m in his arms and misery submerges my amusement.
‘Shh,’ he murmurs into my hair as I clutch his waist, becoming aware once more of my heart skipping and skittering inside my chest.
I try to pull away from him, but he just holds me tighter and I give up, accepting the comfort for a bit longer. He seems reluctant to let me go when I finally extricate myself to go to the bathroom.
He’s made me a cup of tea by the time I re-emerge, my face freshly washed but still splotchy.
‘When do you want
to go to the hospital?’ he asks.
‘As soon as we’re ready,’ I reply. ‘I need to get back to pick up Luke this afternoon.’
Dad is about the same as yesterday – tired, but not in too much pain. He’s glad to see us, but talking seems to exhaust him. Van shows him photos of Libby to pass the time, and after a while he nods off, so we sit with him in silence until the doctor comes in and starts talking about moving him to a hospice. It’s very hard to get my head around that.
Dad awakes when we’re preparing to leave.
‘I’ve got to go and get Luke, Dad, okay? Shall I bring him to see you this evening?’
‘No, love, please don’t,’ he replies. ‘I don’t want him to remember me like this.’
How can I not cry when he says things like that?
‘Oh, Nelly. It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere, yet.’
‘I could stay?’ Van offers.
‘No, I should rest,’ Dad insists. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon. Don’t bring Luke,’ he repeats.
I’m still in tears as we walk to the car.
‘Do you want me to drive?’ Van offers.
‘Could you?’ I added him to my insurance before he came over.
‘Of course. Put Nick’s address in the satnav so you can chill out.’
It takes over an hour to get to Helford, but Van keeps me preoccupied by talking about his life in Australia. Once again, I’m riveted by the details of his job, learning about how he hand-catches every fish, some weighing eighty kilos and almost two metres long. During harvesting season, he manoeuvres six hundred tuna a day onto a conveyor belt that takes them up to a boat and, from there, they go to Japan. It’s no wonder he’s so fit.
In his time off, he works on an oyster farm in Coffin Bay, growing the oysters that we see in restaurants from tiny baby ‘spats’. Every day he takes a twenty-minute boat ride out to where the baskets are clipped onto lines and posts and then he cares for the oysters, grading them and bringing the sellable ones back in.
I’m able to picture the places he talks about – the pubs and the beaches – because I’ve been to them, and I’m glad that I had the chance to visit Van’s home town with Dad, even if I did feel kind of numb at the time. But when I mention how happy I am that my father got to spend some quality time with John – something he had always wanted to do – we both struggle to contain our emotions.