Three Secrets

by Clare Boyd

  Mostly, his life was that simple: one step after another, pared down to eating, sleeping, physiotherapy and visits from family after lunch. The drips had been taken down one by one in the early weeks, to be replaced by oral pain relief and steroids, which he would take in a little paper cup at mealtimes. He had been moved from the HDU to the Rookwood spinal injury ward, to a bed with the sea view. And, unlike many of his fellow patients, he had avoided any bad skin problems or pneumonia or any of the other complications that came with paraplegia. With the exception of one urinary infection last week, and constipation – for which he had endured the humiliation of intrusive digit manipulation from one of the nurses to stimulate his bowel movements, and a manual evacuation of his stool – he had stayed in relatively good health. The frustrating spasms in his legs were ongoing but, now, he could successfully control his bladder and bowel with carefully managed procedures, and he could move from bed to wheelchair to the toilet smoothly, which was a huge achievement. Everything he did was about incremental steps towards recovery. He was working towards independence and acceptance, while keeping his sanity in the process.

  Now, after only fifteen weeks, he had become institutionalised. Having spent his previous life happy in his own company, holed up in his shed, writing freely, eating at random times, avoiding structure, he was being forced into the monotony of a well-established system. And he wasn’t fighting it.

  In the mornings, he no longer resented the brutally early wake-up calls from the night nurses, who would burst in through the curtains and shout good morning and drop his pills on his bed table. He had even learnt to go back to sleep until he was woken at 7.30 a.m. by the noise and chatter and the smell of coffee. He looked forward to his synthetic breakfast roll and jellied marmalade every morning, which he would eat with a black Americano while watching the BBC news.

  Breakfast was the only meal that was wholly edible. The food at lunch and supper was so bad he would take photographs of it to send to Harry. Harry would send back photographs of the wholesome pies that their new housekeeper – and John’s soon-to-be carer – Martha would make for them. These photos would make John laugh and reassure him that the children were being well taken care of.

  He, too, was being well cared for. He had built good relationships with the friendlier nurses, particularly an Australian nurse called Becky. The short bursts of banter and human contact peppered the swathes of time that he would spend alone. He was so grateful to them for their matter-of-fact kindliness during the daily humiliations and struggles of his new state. They never showed pity. John loathed pity.

  Twice a week after breakfast, Dr Rahman, the specialist consultant, would visit him. Every day his physiotherapists, either Dave or Sarah, would accompany him down to the gym or the hydropool for his repetitive, and always painful, exercises.

  After lunch, he would expect visitors. If they were not due, he would feel anxious about how to fill the slow-moving hours until bedtime. Mostly, he would listen to audiobooks on his iPod. These books saved him when he thought he might lose his mind. As did his notepad, which lay on his bedside, into which he would jot down how he was feeling. It was more like a diary than work. Sometimes, he would write in it to quell the panic that would rise in him when he experienced desperate urges to get up and run from the hospital. He wondered if he would refer to these desperate scribbles in the future: once a writer, always a writer, and trauma was an opportunity for copy. But specific projects and deadlines were a distant memory, and his work on Billy Stupid had been handed over to another writer for the final edits months ago.

  He had different goals now.

  To walk again.

  His sleep was riddled with dreams of walking. Those light-filled, dream-state steps – barefoot across grass, or the energised pumping of his legs in a sprint down a street – would be devastating to wake up from; when he remembered where he was and what had happened. In those dark, frightening moments, staring into the shadowy hospital room, he would relive the utter shock and desolation of hearing the diagnosis from the doctor in the HDU. He would replay the strange body language of Dr Alba, who had looked down at his own feet before telling John that his chances of walking again were ‘slim to none’. When these memories came to him, in the dead of night, John would feel alone in the world, and too scared to go back to sleep. At those times, he missed Francesca more than ever, and he missed home. The only way he could drop off again would be to listen to his books.

  ‘Dad? Do you think that ending is a cheat, or what?’ Harry asked, reminding John of where he was.

  ‘Such a cheat,’ John nodded, realising he had not registered a word of his son’s enthusiastic ramblings about the science fiction novel.

  Harry looked wounded and sad.

  ‘Sorry. Please tell me again.’

  Harry gave a monotone, lacklustre précis of the plot. A precious moment to connect with Harry had passed John by and he regretted zoning out; he cursed the medication that muddied his concentration.

  ‘How’s Mum?’

  ‘Okay.’ Harry shrugged.

  ‘What did she need from the shops?’

  ‘Not sure.’

  ‘Martha still treating you well?’

  Harry smiled. ‘She’s really nice.’

  ‘That pavlova looked good enough for “Bake Off”,’ John said, remembering one of Harry’s photographs.

  ‘And she’s awesome at maths,’ Harry said.

  Olivia chimed in: ‘She is, Dad. Much better than you.’

  John laughed. ‘I’m brilliant at maths.’

  ‘No, you’re not!’ Beatrice giggled.

  ‘Okay, ask me a question then.’

  ‘What’s five plus a thousand hundred?’ Beatrice asked earnestly.

  ‘Umm, let me see, that’s so easy, that’d be five gazillion trillion.’

  Beatrice looked over to Olivia, for confirmation that this was correct.

  Olivia grinned. ‘There’s no such number.’

  John noted that Olivia had not shouted at Beatrice for her made-up number. He wondered how they were getting on, and yearned to be at home to break up their fighting. The two hours per day he would spend with them in this hospital was a phony situation. He felt disassociated from their daily struggles. It left a gaping hole in his life. In these two hours, he was desperate to reconnect. He lived for it.

  He wanted to know whether Beatrice’s fickle best friend was playing with her at breaktimes; whether Olivia’s dance teacher had played Chopin, which she loved, or jazz, which she hated; whether Harry was still sitting next to the lovely Isobel on the school bus. All these questions he would know by being there in their daily lives, all of the little details adding up to the bigger picture of their happiness or unhappiness. None of which they could answer in retrospect. Beatrice could never relay details of her week to order. If he brought up jazz with Olivia, she would become anxious and it would ruin her mood.

  And Harry would be too bashful to tell him about Isobel in front of the girls.

  Instead, John would pay lip service to his past role as their day-to-day carer by asking them if they were eating their greens or closing their drawers or picking up their wet towels. But he wasn’t the one standing over them to make sure they did. In fact, he might never be able to stand over them ever again, or tell them off about the petty rubbish that used to bother him. He could not imagine caring about wet towels or closed drawers ever again. He couldn’t imagine caring about anything beyond existing.

  For now, for another month, he was closeted in the routines of patient life. Nurses were there for him at the push of a button, meals were cooked for him, physiotherapy was only a few corridors away. The need to self-motivate had been taken away from him. Often, he would try to picture life in the outside world again, but it was such an exhausting prospect, part of him wished he could stay in limbo, in this hospital, forever.

  He had heard inspirational stories about paraplegics winning Olympic medals or climbing mountains, but he decided that h
e was not made of such strong stuff.

  When he considered his future, he fantasised about disappearing completely. He could find himself an adapted flat somewhere far from home and live life as a loner. The battle towards some form of compromised normality at the Round House seemed pointless. His past stamping ground would be a reminder of everything he had lost.

  ‘Mum will be back any minute,’ he reminded them.

  ‘Uh.’ Beatrice sighed heavily. ‘I don’t want to leave you, Daddy.’

  Olivia climbed off the bed and sat on Harry’s knee.

  ‘What are you up to tomorrow?’ John asked.

  Harry groaned. ‘We’re going to Rupert and Susie’s for lunch.’

  John did not particularly like Rupert or Susie.

  ‘I feel for you lot. Thank god I don’t have to go to.’

  There were some advantages to his situation. He decided that he would never go to Rupert and Susie’s for lunch ever again. The thought was liberating. But it was fleeting. What worth did any kind of freedom have when he would not be free to see Francesca and Alice? He did not know where they had moved to, or how they were. His parents had refused to begin the process of negotiating access to Alice until he was home and well enough. Harry, Olivia and Beatrice still did not know they had a new sibling.

  ‘Anna is such a brat,’ Harry said, referring to Rupert and Susie’s one child, who was Beatrice’s age.

  ‘Yeah, she so is, Dad,’ Beatrice cried, jumping off the bed, wiggling her bottom and sticking her nose in the air. ‘She walks like this.’

  Everyone laughed. Beatrice got over-excited and pulled down her jeans and blew a raspberry.

  ‘Okay, that’s enough, young lady,’ John said, but as he said it, he noticed a large, dark bruise on her thigh. ‘How did you do that, Bea?’

  Beatrice pulled her jeans up quickly. ‘Don’t know.’

  John looked to Harry and Olivia, but neither of them could look him in the eye.

  ‘Tell me, please.’

  ‘She didn’t do it by purpose,’ Beatrice said.

  Nervy pains shot down John’s spine. ‘Who didn’t do it by purpose?’

  Olivia spoke up. ‘Bea was screaming her head off, as usual, and Mum got cross and pulled her out of the bath, but then Bea wriggled and she slipped out of Mum’s hands and onto the side. I saw everything.’

  John had to lean his head back on the bed and lower his bed a little to get rid of the dizziness. ‘Has Mum been cross a lot?’

  Harry said, ‘Yes.’

  In unison, Olivia and Beatrice said, ‘No.’

  ‘The girls are scared of saying anything,’ Harry added.

  ‘You can always tell your dad anything, you know that.’

  ‘She made us swear not to tell you, Daddy,’ Olivia said.

  ‘Not to tell me what, Olive?’ John asked.

  Harry explained. ‘How much she shouts. She finds the weekends really stressful.’

  ‘She shouts, like, ALL the time, and cries a lot,’ Olivia said, leaning back into Harry, whose arms tightened around her. Beatrice snuggled into her big brother’s neck. The three of them seemed closer than ever, and as much as he should have been comforted, he sensed that the closeness was born out of need.

  ‘I try to make sure you’re good, don’t I?’ Harry said, tickling Beatrice’s ribs.

  ‘That’s not your job,’ John replied.

  He lay there, engulfed by rage, heady with it. And as his mind teemed with ways he could try to protect them remotely, Dilys appeared through the door in a flourish of January sale shopping bags.

  ‘I’ve got presents for everyone!’ she cried.

  The two girls rushed to the bags and unlaced the ribbons and delved into the tissue-paper to gasp at sparkly clothes and colourful stationery.

  John glanced over at Harry, who raised his eyebrows at him. John managed to whisper, ‘I’ll be home in four weeks. Hang on in there,’ John said.

  Harry nodded, tears gathering in his eyes.

  ‘What did you get Daddy?’ Beatrice asked her mother, a new dress stretched over her jumper and jeans.

  Dilys’ blue eyes rested on John. ‘Well, poor Daddy can’t wear anything in here, can he?’

  ‘He doesn’t go around naked, Mum,’ Harry snapped.

  ‘Don’t be so rude, Harry,’ Dilys shot back. ‘He’s become so rude, John, it’s unbelievable. I wouldn’t have dared talk back to my parents when I was his age.’

  ‘It’s okay. I don’t need presents,’ John said, trying to calm the situation.

  He knew then that Dilys did not see him as he was before. In her eyes, he was a disabled person who did not need nice clothes. He was not the John she married, he was a paraplegic.

  Three days later, he got a package in the post. Harry had sent him a new pair of Nike jogging bottoms and a white T-shirt. The note said: ‘Miss you, Dad. Love, Harry x’

  For the next four weeks, John worked harder in his physiotherapy sessions than he had ever thought possible. He might not be able to win medals or climb mountains, but he was determined to become the dad he had been before his accident. His children needed him, and he was not going to let them down.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Francesca

  ‘Scooter or bike?’

  ‘Scooter.’

  ‘Theo’s taking his bike.’

  ‘Okay. Bike.’

  ‘Got your gloves?’

  Alice pulled out her Hello Kitty mittens from her pocket.

  ‘And hat?’

  ‘Don’t want to wear my hat.’

  ‘You have to. We’re going to the beach. It’s windy and freezing.’

  ‘No.’ Alice threw the hat at the front door. There had been many little outbursts and temper tantrums since we had moved. She had settled in well at the local school, and made friends, like Theo, but at home she was taking out her anger on me. I didn’t blame her for it. She had been through so much.

  As I reached down for her hat, a bundle of letters fluttered through the letterbox onto my head, making Alice laugh.

  Laughing too, I flicked through them absent-mindedly.

  One was a cream envelope with a water-mark. The elegant writing was in black fountain pen. The company stamp was too light to read. I turned it over to open it, forgetting that we were already late for meeting Theo and his mother, Jo, a new friend.

  ‘Let’s go, Mummy!

  ‘One minute,’ I replied hoarsely, choked with fear.

  Without opening it, I knew the letter was from Patrick Tennant’s solicitor. I had been expecting it, but I had hoped that it would never come. It was like a blast of freezing air in my face. The contents of this letter could hold the horrors of legal battles and demands for shared custody. In the hospital, after his accident, John had talked about visitation rights, which I would encourage, but I knew what the Tennants were capable of and the power they liked to wield.

  ‘Come on!’ Alice tugged at my coat. ‘Mummy!’

  ‘Stop it, Alice,’ I snapped. ‘This is important.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Alice leapt up to try to grab it from me.

  ‘Please, Alice.’

  Infuriated by her pestering, I thrust it into the zipped pocket of my handbag, away from her, and out of my sight.

  As we hurried through the streets to the café on the promenade, in the icy March wind, I noticed I had a fluttery stomach every time I thought of the letter’s portent.

  The letter did not only contain my fears, it held the promise of seeing John.

  Theo and Alice were biking on the promenade, up and down, past the tall windows of the café, inside which Jo and I were sitting.

  The letter was in my handbag at my feet. It was pregnant with change; it threatened both a fight, and it offered hope. I was finding it hard to concentrate on Jo, whom I liked very much. She was talking about the renovations to their B&B, ‘Sea House’, which she and her husband, Doug, had set up. She was easy company. We saw each other regularly and I had a feeli
ng we were becoming good friends. Obviously, nobody could replace Lucy, who continued to be a pillar of strength for me, but Lucy seemed faraway in London. A local friend, like Jo, was a blessing. Yet, I hadn’t been brave enough to tell her about the mess of my life. Of course, she knew that Robert had died, but that was it. If I told her the rest, I risked scaring her off.

  ‘I found some old typewriters at Ardingly that I thought would look great on the shelves, but Doug went mental. He told me I was a hoarder.’

  ‘Were they expensive?’

  ‘No! A fiver each. And they’re beautiful.’

  ‘Very “Lifestyle”, next to all your clothbound books.’

  ‘You see? I knew you’d get it. And we do get writers and creative types sometimes.’

  ‘The sea view, I guess.’ I looked out at the angry sea and thought of John. ‘Robert’s brother is a writer,’ I added.

  ‘Would I have heard of him?’

  ‘Doubt it. John Tennant. He’s written kids’ TV for years. He’s talented, though.’

  I stirred my coffee, thinking about his film script, and wondered if he would ever work on it again.

  ‘Send him down to Sea House!’

  ‘I don’t talk to him any more.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

  I didn’t know whether it was the letter at my feet or the sea air, or Jo’s friendly face, but I wanted to talk about John. Months had gone by since his accident, and I pined for him. Having imagined that the physical separation would become easier with time, I found that my isolation had only increased my want. Our separation began to feel more like penance than good sense.