Limits

by Susie Tate

  ‘Camilla.’ Valerie’s voice was sharper now. ‘Will you –’

  ‘Leave her a –’ Pav started, but stopped abruptly at Millie’s frown and the shake of her head. She turned to her mother and lifted her chin, her hands bunching into small fists at her sides.

  ‘How dare you try to blackmail me,’ she said, her voice clear and surprisingly loud.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talk –’

  ‘I used to think I was a weak person,’ Millie went on, taking a threatening step towards her parents and even raising a finger to point in their direction. It was only because Pav was standing so close that he could see the fine tremor in her hand. ‘But I’m not weak. To survive a childhood with two soulless people who do not give one single shit about me –’ Pav blinked at the swear word, then smiled. He knew Kira would rub off on her eventually ‘– and come out the other side … to even function. Well … I’m not weak, I’m … I’m bloody brave actually. And you can both go get … get stuffed.’ Pav would have preferred that she told them to go fuck themselves, but made allowances for her profanity inexperience. Next time.

  She spun around as her parents both spluttered out various protests. Pav ignored them all, stepped around the wheelchair, grasped Millie by the shoulders, and gave her a hard fast kiss on the lips. This predictably ramped up her parents’ annoyance, but both Pav and Millie had tuned them out. When Pav pulled back and searched her face she looked shocked for a moment; then a slow, wide smile emerged.

  ‘Forgive me?’ he whispered, and she laughed.

  ‘I think finding Gammy, racing around London and saving me from having to be on television supporting my …’ she took a deep breath and straightened her shoulder again before raising her voice slightly, ‘total arsehole of a father –’ this drew shocked gasps from around the room which only served to widen her smile even further ‘– I think that might have earned you enough brownie points in the forgiveness stakes.’ She lowered her voice again. ‘And I think I’m ready to believe that maybe … maybe you like me, just a little.’

  Pav rolled his eyes. ‘If risking life and limb to interrupt your Gran’s chair-aerobics session doesn’t prove how much I love you, then –’

  ‘You … you love me?’ For the second time that day Millie’s eyes shone with tears. The awe and wonder in her voice was nearly enough to unman Pav as well. Luckily, just as he felt the suspicious stinging sensation at the back of his own eyes, Gammy cut in.

  ‘Of course he loves you, crazy girl,’ she said, huffing impatiently and using her umbrella to give Pav a poke in the leg. ‘Now let’s get out of this place. My son and his screaming banshee are starting to give me a migraine. I’ll have to resort to taking my hearing aids out in a minute.’ Pav let out a short bark of laughter and moved to grip the handles of the wheelchair.

  ‘Fine, get out,’ Valerie shouted, her true colours emerging as she sensed defeat in the air. ‘You always were a spineless, ungrateful brat anyway. Your father can win this election without your help. The public aren’t going to care whether a nobody like you shows up or not.’

  ‘Well …’ All eyes swung to a small figure standing near the doorway that Pav was approaching. ‘As far as I know, your husband is only a candidate for leader of his party, not for the election. Not yet.’ The woman stepped forward into the room and smiled at Valerie and her husband, both of whom had gone a rather alarming shade of white. ‘I’m Rachel Mulholland by the way, political correspondent for the Herald. I must say if this is how the Morrisons go about their business I can’t wait for the press conference.’ She turned to Pav and Millie, gave them a wink, and then slipped out of the door ahead of them.

  By the time they had negotiated the doorway and corridor with the chair, leaving the muted, panicked tones of Mr and Mrs Morrison and their campaign team, Rachel had faded back into the depths of the press pack.

  ‘How much do you think she heard?’ Millie asked as they made their way to the exit.

  ‘Every word, dear,’ said Gammy from her chair. ‘She was watching us in the reception and followed us there. I don’t know. You young people really are the most unobservant sort. You would never have survived the Blitz. Come along.’ She tapped Pav smartly on the shin and he winced. ‘If we start back now I might catch the last few minutes of the residents’ meeting, and I want to complain about the downstairs toilet again. Betty spent a good thirty minutes looking for the loo roll the other day. Madness.’

  Chapter 33

  All she ever wanted

  ‘Can’t I just slip out now?’ Pav grumbled as Kira and Libby crowded him into his seat in the lecture theatre. ‘I’ll come to the next one, I swear.’

  ‘You say that every time,’ Kira said, shoving him towards a seat in the front row.

  ‘And why do I have to sit in the bloody front?’ he hissed. ‘I can’t even check my phone here.’

  ‘You are not sixteen years old, Pavlos,’ Libby said as Jamie strode over to them with a wide smile on his face. Why were all these lunatics so excited about another boring Grand Round? He rolled his eyes and fell into the seat in front of him. Kira sat on one side, and for some reason she was bouncing and tapping her foot, but then again Kira was weird in a variety of ways. Jamie and Libby sat on the other side, and he saw Don shuffle in to join them. It was the first time he’d been to a meeting in a long while. With Millie now able to work with the rest of the department better, he’d been semi-retired over the last few months.

  As the theatre began to fill, Pav frowned. What was he missing? Yes, you could get your mitts on the odd cheese sandwich at Grand Rounds, but that was never enough of a draw to get the whole hospital turning out. Then he turned to the entrance and blinked. El, Claire and Tara were walking into the large space together. El gave his group a small wave before scanning the crowd and biting her lip with what looked like worry.

  ‘What on earth … ?’ he muttered, noticing that the others seemed to think that three random women strolling into a hospital lecture theatre in the middle of the day was no big deal. He was about to say something to Jamie when the side door opened and a hush fell over the crowd. Millie stepped forward, then froze in place and blinked as she looked up at all the people. Pav half rose out of his seat to go to her, but Jamie’s strong arm pushed him down.

  ‘Leave her be, mate,’ he muttered under his breath. Pav shot him a filthy look and refocused on the stage. An image of Millie’s pale face before she crumbled into a heap and the sound of her head cracking against the wooden surface bloomed in his mind with perfect clarity. Leave her be, his arse. He wasn’t about to let her put herself through that again. He shook Jamie’s arm off and shoved him away, but was distracted by a sharp poke in his arm on the other side.

  ‘Stand down, Double D.,’ Kira told him in a harsh whisper. Over the last few months Pav had morphed from Dick Doc to Double D., which seemed to amuse Kira, as she already called Jamie Triple G. Pav had been most put out to find out that Triple G. stood for Gorgeous Grantham the Gasman. He’d proposed a comprise of Triple D. to Kira so that she could include adjectives such as ‘dishy’ but she laughed in his face, telling him his head was the size of a small planet already and that the last time any man was called dishy was in bad nineteen-sixties sitcoms. ‘She does not need you to go all Conan the Barbarian on her and drag her off the stage. Let her do this.’

  Pav frowned but settled back down into his seat, raising both hands in defeat. But he remained tense and ready to jump up should Millie’s eyes show any sign of rolling back into her head again.

  *****

  Millie scanned the crowd once more and took another deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. She focused on Anwar in the audience, who gave her an encouraging smile and a small thumbs up. The breathing techniques they had practiced were just to get her up on stage; other techniques would get her through actually speaking. But standing here and not shaking like a leaf still felt like an enormous victory in itself. She moved forward towards the micro
phone and gripped both sides of the lectern. Between them Anwar and Millie had decided that she should start with the PowerPoint presentation, and she clicked on the projector, which was already set up with her first slide. When her eyes met Pav’s she even managed to smile. He looked so cross and worried that she felt like climbing off the stage and kissing him right on the mouth in front of everyone. The fear that fuelled that worry for her was because he loved her.

  Millie was loved.

  Had she believed it right away? Well, no. Years of conditioning were tricky to undo all in one go. But gradually she’d started to trust. Yes, he’d said the words, and often, but it was more the way he showed her it was true. The way he stole her toothbrushes and her knickers to keep at his place so that she couldn’t use that as an excuse not to stay over. The way he wanted to be with her, even going as far as reading The Vagina Monologues so that he could come with her to book group – much to Kira’s annoyance. The way he came with her to visit Gammy every time if he wasn’t working, remembering to bring a bag of Werther’s Original and submitting to the new name of ‘Paul’, as Gammy found Pav ‘a bit too European for me, darling’.

  So much so that last night Millie even said it back. It might have been a whisper and it might have been in a post-sex cuddle when she thought he was asleep, but when his arm tightened around her, and judging from his smug grin this morning, she knew he’d heard her.

  ‘So I’m not sure how many of you were here for my last talk,’ she started, her voice cracking a little. She cleared her throat and pushed on. ‘I’m hoping this time around things will be a little less dramatic.’

  There was a light wave of encouraging laughter and Millie risked a small smile. After she’d been through the slides, explained the next upcoming article in the Lancet about her results, there was a barrage of questions. They’d practiced this, Libby, Kira and her. She knew what to expect. Even a snide remark from a jealous radiology trainee couldn’t put her off her stride. Once the questions had dried up she looked down at the lectern for a moment and took another deep breath before raising her eyes and fixing on her friends in the front row.

  ‘I wanted to finish by …’ Millie paused and closed her eyes briefly. An expectant hush fell over the hall. When she opened them again she focused on the people in the front row again: her people. After all these years Millie could finally say that she had her own people, ones who cared about her, even loved her.

  ‘I know that I haven’t been an easy person to work with or even …’ Her eyes dropped to the lectern for a moment before she looked up again and straightened her shoulders. ‘… or even a human being. I’ve heard the nicknames.’ There were a few uncomfortable murmurs in the crowd and she could see some of the audience shifting in their seats.

  ‘I’m not accusing or blaming any of you. I know none of you meant for me to hear, and I know I have lived up to my name “Nuclear Winter”. I’ve upset people, it wasn’t intentional but it has happened. I just … I didn’t want to be that way, but I was stuck; stuck within my limits, scared all the time.’ She took a deep breath and then stepped around the lectern and forward towards her friends.

  ‘Anxiety and phobias can rule your life if you let them. I know I’m not the only one who’s been crippled by it – even in this room there’ll be others; maybe not as extreme as me, but people whose lives are restricted, even if it’s just in small ways. What I wanted to say is that you can push through the limits you put on yourself. So … I’m sorry if the Nuclear Winter has upset you in the past. And I can’t promise she’s gone, not completely. But I want you all to know I’m working on it. CBT has always helped me, but what really made the difference was people. People who made me see I didn’t have to live within my limits, that I didn’t have to stay stuck where I was. That there was a way out.’ Millie fell silent and the entire lecture theatre followed suit.

  ‘So … thank you, Don, El, Kira, Libby, Jamie, Anwar, Claire, Tara and, of course, my Pavlos. At least … at least I hope he’s still my … oomph!’ She was cut off as Pav launched from his seat and nearly winded her in a hug that took her off her feet.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispered in his ear once she was able to fill her lungs again with much needed air. He pulled away just enough that he could look down at her, and grinned before kissing her, right in front of the entire lecture theatre. She smacked his arm and when he pulled back her face felt on fire.

  ‘I’ve still got some limits,’ she hissed. Pav laughed in the face of her residual rather-not-swap-spit-in-front-of-entire-hospital limits, and they were promptly swamped on all side by Millie’s friends. At least with the ensuing group hug she was shielded from the crowd, and Pav was distracted from doing anything even more inappropriate than he already had.

  It was Don who started the clapping. When Millie finally emerged from the arms of her friends she saw the audience on their feet. A year ago having so many eyes on her would have sent her into a flat panic, but now, with her hand in Pav’s, Kira administering a sloppy kiss on her cheek, Don’s hand on her shoulder, Jamie, Kira, Tara, El and Claire flanking her, now she just felt … loved.

  And really that’s all she ever wanted, anyway.

  Epilogue

  Loved, unconditionally

  ‘We’re willing to overlook the appalling way you’ve treated this family, Camilla, if you’re willing to be sensible.’

  Millie waited for the familiar shame and guilt to swell up inside her. Years of dealing with her parents had made it almost a conditioned response. But after a minute she realised that she just felt … annoyed. Not even angry. Not upset – just a little bit pissed off. She glanced over at her soon-to-be mother-in-law and sister-in-law’s red faces, and realised that, whilst she might not be furious, the rest of the room was spitting mad.

  Millie sighed. She needed a moment so she turned away from her mother and towards the full-length mirror on the wardrobe in front of her. El had been in seventh heaven since the moment Millie told her she was getting married and that she would need dresses. Lots of dresses. The number of bridesmaids she had settled on was ridiculous, even for a Greek wedding. But in the end she had to have Kira, Libby, Rosie, El herself, Pav’s sisters, Tara and Claire.

  The old Millie would have worried that it wasn’t normal to have that many bridesmaids, that people would think she was weird, that is wasn’t precisely right. The new Millie was so over the moon to even have women she could ask to walk up the aisle with her that she didn’t give a badger’s arse (one of the many Kira expressions she used now with some regularity) what anyone thought.

  Her dress was cream lace over fitted, strapless satin; her hair fell around her shoulders in its natural soft waves (Pav’s request), and she wore just a single flower in it, stolen from the bouquet after Rosie pitched a fit that Millie had to wear a tiara; the flower appeased her somewhat, but the six-year-old was still in grumpy mode. She’d only just stomped out of the room a minute ago, a second before Millie’s parents’ unexpected arrival.

  ‘And by sensible you mean … ?’

  ‘I’m going to walk you down the aisle,’ her father put in. ‘Then there’s a photographer who’ll –’

  ‘No.’

  Millie’s hands clenched into fists at her sides so hard she could feel the nails cutting into her palms.

  ‘No way.’

  ‘This rift has gone on long enough,’ her mother coaxed. ‘I don’t know what you think we’ve done to deserve this kind of treatment, darling.’

  Valerie Morrison was playing to her audience now. Millie could count on one hand the number of times she’d used an endearment with her before.

  ‘All we’ve ever done was want the best for you. I can’t understand why you would turn your back on us. We didn’t even know you were getting married today. We had to find out from the matron of Mother M.’s nursing home last week, and that was only because Matron assumed we would be transporting your grandmother to the wedding and she wanted to sort out timings. It probably didn’t occ
ur to a sensible woman like that, that the bride had excluded her own parents from the guest list.’

  ‘You’ve never been my parents,’ Millie said, her voice low with suppressed anger.

  ‘What a ridiculous thing to say. I –’

  ‘Before you needed me for the campaign we hadn’t spoken in over two years.’

  Valerie narrowed her eyes at Millie and clamped her mouth shut. A tic at her mother’s left eye heralded a probable loss of control.

  ‘You took a naturally shy, introverted child with a special gift and forced her through the education system so fast she was doing her A-levels at thirteen years old. You belittled her and ignored her until she was an anxiety-ridden adult with social phobia so severe she had trouble even ordering a coffee.’

  ‘Don’t blame us for your deficiencies, Camilla.’ Her mother’s voice had changed now. Gone was the disingenuous façade of hurt and concern. Anger turned her tone ugly and derisive. ‘You always were a bloody embarrassment. What sort of child can’t even attend a few simple functions without practically collapsing from stress. You’re weak; weak and pathetic and I –’

  The slap resounded around the large space and the room fell into shocked silence. Millie hadn’t even seen her mother-in-law-to-be move, but now Talia was standing in front of Valerie, breathing heavily after the exertion of leaving a livid handprint across the other woman’s face.

  ‘How dare you!’ shouted Valerie, clutching her cheek and shaking with outrage.

  ‘My God,’ David said, going to take his place near his wife, but in typical cowardly fashion he stood just behind her instead of at her side. ‘What on earth –?’

  ‘Get. Out.’ Talia said, her voice trembling with rage.

  ‘Now just hang on a damn minute,’ David blustered, but still took a small step back in the face of Talia’s rage. ‘This is between our daughter and us. I’ll not have some –’