From Christmas to Eternity

by Caroline Anderson

  ‘Mmm. Apparently.’

  He felt her hand slide down inside his jeans and circle him, her eyes alight with mischief and desire, and he sucked in his breath.

  ‘Hussy.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  The children were upstairs in bed, asleep, and there was nothing to stop them, nobody to see. He put the brush down and turned back to her, smiling, and finished what she’d started.

  * * *

  There.

  It was finished. Two coats of emulsion on all the walls in the kitchen and utility, and tomorrow he could start on the girls’ bedroom.

  They washed the brushes and roller, changed into their night clothes and went and sat down in the sitting room with a glass of wine.

  ‘Well done,’ she said with a smile. ‘That was a good idea.’

  ‘Talking about painting?’

  Her smiled widened. ‘All of it. Especially that bit. But it does look nice. And it was fun doing it together.’

  ‘Still talking about painting?’ he said, and she laughed and punched his arm gently.

  ‘Girls’ room tomorrow,’ he said, and her smile faded.

  ‘No! There’s too much to do before you can paint their room, Andy. It’s full of stuff, and they need to sort it out. You can’t just pile it all in a heap in the middle and sling a dustsheet over it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they need to clear it up,’ she repeated. ‘They have to learn—if they want it painted, they clear it up and put their toys away. And anyway, isn’t Julie coming?’

  ‘Yes. Damn.’ He sighed shortly, and rammed a hand through his hair without thinking and winced. ‘I’ll do it after.’

  ‘No! Andy, please, listen to me! Where’s the fire?’

  He sighed again, a longer sigh this time, and slumped back against the sofa. Lord, he was tired. ‘OK. Do it another day.’

  ‘You do that. You need to pace yourself.’

  ‘I’m fine, Luce. Don’t fuss me. I’m bored. I can’t do—nothing. Going crazy.’

  ‘I know.’ She reached out her hand and laid it on his leg. ‘Why don’t we do something else together tomorrow?’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Taking Lottie swimming. She loves it, and it’s much easier with help. She’s a bit of a wriggler and she could roll off the changing mat and fall on the floor now. I can’t take my eyes off her.’

  ‘Can’t change with you.’

  ‘You can. They have family changing rooms.’

  They did? He didn’t know that—because he’d never been swimming with her? He hadn’t, he realised. He had in the summer, when they’d spent a few days at Center Parcs, but not here at home in Yoxburgh.

  ‘OK,’ he agreed. It might be nice to go swimming and burn up a few lengths in the pool. He was getting flabby and unfit with all the sitting around, and he hated it.

  He opened a puzzle book and tackled a simple crossword, but he couldn’t think of any of the answers. Well, not many. Still, at least he could read the clues now and they made sense. He tried another one, then tackled the Sudoku puzzle over the page, but he just couldn’t get it.

  He was tired, he realised. He could have done it in the morning, but now it just defeated him, so he threw the book back on the coffee table, put his feet up and went to sleep.

  * * *

  Idiot. He’d exhausted himself.

  Lucy sighed softly and went and made herself a cup of tea in her smart new kitchen. It smelt strange, but in a good way, and he’d done a good job, but at what cost?

  He really needed to learn to pace himself better, but he never had, he always worked at things until he’d burned out.

  Well, no, that wasn’t true. Before his parents died he’d been more relaxed, but since then he’d been—obsessive?

  Strong word, but maybe the right one. It had definitely changed him, changed his attitude to a lot of things. Nothing was ever left to chance now, and she sensed it was a backlash from the chaotic and random childhood his parents had inflicted on him.

  He’d always been a grafter, though, ever since she’d known him. It was just the way he was, but he needed to take it easy now. She’d have to keep an eye on him, stop him overdoing it in future. She took her tea back into the sitting room, curled up in the other corner of the sofa and channel-hopped until bedtime. Then she turned off the television and leant over.

  ‘Hey, sleepyhead,’ she said, shaking him gently, and he opened his eyes and stared at her blankly for a moment.

  ‘Oh. I was asleep. Sorry.’

  ‘Come on, it’s time for bed.’

  He got stiffly to his feet, his right arm and neck aching from the painting. He flexed his shoulder, cupping it in his hand, and she slid her fingers under his and rubbed it.

  ‘You’ve overdone it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he admitted. ‘Swimming will help.’

  ‘Or I can give you a massage.’

  ‘In bed?’

  ‘If you’re good.’

  He smiled lazily. ‘I’m always good.’

  ‘Cocky, too.’

  The smile turned into a grin. Suddenly he wasn’t feeling so tired, after all...

  * * *

  Baby-swimming, he remembered belatedly, wasn’t really swimming at all.

  Mostly it involved kneeling in the shallow water of the baby pool, swooshing Lottie back and forth in the water while she shrieked with glee and splashed her hands. And drank it.

  Every time her face got close to the water, her tongue came out and she tasted it. And then a child jumped in and a tidal wave sloshed over her head and she came up smiling.

  ‘She doesn’t care, does she?’ he said, slightly surprised, but Lucy just shrugged.

  ‘She’s used to it. We come nearly every week, if we can, and I bring the girls in the holidays.’

  It was a whole other way of life, he realised, and he’d missed it all because he’d been at work. Crazily, he felt excluded, and he turned the baby in his arms and hugged her. She beamed and blew a noisy wet raspberry on his shoulder, making him laugh, and then he looked up and met Lucy’s eyes.

  The expression in them warmed his heart, and he gave her a slow, smiley wink. She smiled back and held out her arms, and he turned the baby round. ‘Where’s Mummy?’ he asked, and started forwards, holding her out in front of him. ‘Catch Mummy.’

  Mummy dutifully made a scaredy face and swam backwards, but they caught her easily and Lottie squealed with delight and snuggled her little arms around Lucy’s neck and hugged her.

  It brought a lump to his throat, and he suddenly felt overwhelmed.

  ‘I’m going to swim,’ he said, and left them to it, retreating to the emotionless monotony of the big pool where he carved his way up and down until his muscles screamed and his lungs were gasping.

  Then he hauled himself out and nearly fell over, his legs buckling slightly under his weight. He was astonished at how exhausted he felt, how incredibly heavy. He’d been deceived by the buoyancy of the water. So, so unfit.

  He looked for Lucy, and saw her in the little café overlooking the pool. She’d changed and was giving Lottie her bottle, and he glanced at the clock and realised he’d been swimming for nearly an hour. No wonder they’d given up on him.

  Guilty and frustrated, he changed quickly and joined them.

  ‘Sorry. Forgot the time,’ he said. ‘Want a coffee?’

  ‘Please. I didn’t bring my purse, and I couldn’t get your attention.’

  She watched him as he walked to the counter and ordered their coffees, something he wouldn’t have been happy doing even a week ago. So much progress, and yet he seemed curiously restless and unsettled since they’d got back from London.

  Take the decorating, for instance. And the puzzles and crosswo
rds—he’d become obsessed with them. Still, it was paying off in the improvement to his language skills, but the swimming? He’d been driving hard, pushing himself with every length, and she’d watched the frustration burning through him with every stroke.

  Because David had suggested he should do puzzles and SLT and keep himself fit? Probably. And Andy being Andy, he was doing it his way—flat out. His parents had a lot to answer for.

  She sighed and sat Lottie up, wiping a dribble of milk off her chin, and she craned her neck as she caught sight of him. ‘Da-da,’ she said, and Lucy smiled wryly and handed her to him once he’d put the coffee down.

  ‘Your turn, I think,’ she said, and sat back with her coffee and watching him bonding with his little girl while his coffee grew cold, forgotten.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘SO WHAT was that about?’ she asked as they walked home. ‘All that power-swimming? Were you trying to kill yourself?’

  ‘Sorry. I just felt a bit—crowded.’

  Crowded? By his eight month old daughter? When he was used to a frantically busy ED department? She nearly laughed, but she was still cross.

  No, not cross. She’d been cross, when he’d taken himself off to the big pool to swim for ages, but when she’d gone to look for him and seen the driven way he was tearing up and down in the water, she’d been worried. And now he said he’d felt crowded.

  Was this why he’d been taking himself away from the family so much, because he’d found it all a little uncomfortable?

  ‘How, crowded?’ she asked, unable to work it out and not wanting to let it rest.

  ‘I don’t know. Just—emotional.’

  And he didn’t show his emotions easily, she knew that. Especially in public.

  ‘Hey,’ she said softly, hugging his arm as he pushed the buggy up the hill. ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘No, it’s not. I said I’d help, but I didn’t. I just feel—I don’t know. Useless.’

  ‘Oh, Andy, you aren’t useless! Of course you aren’t useless! You did a brilliant job of painting the kitchen and utility yesterday—’

  ‘You were mad with me.’

  ‘No, I was just a bit surprised, and worried for you, really. I didn’t want you overdoing it.’

  He had overdone it. He knew that. He’d overdone it in the pool, too, but he had to push himself. It was what he did, and he didn’t know any other way.

  ‘What if I don’t get better, Luce?’ he asked bleakly. ‘What if I can’t go back to work?’

  ‘You will be able to! You heard David—you’re making great progress.’

  ‘Not great enough. Better, but not right yet. Nothing like.’

  ‘You always were impatient, weren’t you? You want everything done yesterday. It’ll come. You just have to wait.’

  So he waited.

  He worked at his exercises, he listened to the radio while he painted the girls’ bedroom once they’d cleared it up, and he started jogging again, taking Stanley out for a run in the morning instead of just a walk. He and the dog got fitter, the house got painted, but still he wasn’t right.

  ‘When can I go back to work?’ he asked Julie one day after his SLT session.

  ‘I can’t say. It’s not a straight line graph, Andy. You’re working hard at it, but your brain won’t recover faster than it’s able to.’

  ‘Christmas?’

  ‘I can’t say. Possibly.’

  ‘But—unlikely.’

  ‘Realistically, I think so. It’s only three weeks away.’

  It was?

  That surprised him. He hadn’t registered the passage of the days, but he’d seen Lucy dressing Megan up in something for the nativity play at school, so of course it was coming.

  ‘You’re getting there, Andy. You’ve made huge strides, and I’m impressed with how conscientious you’ve been. Don’t get despondent. It’ll happen when it’s ready.’

  If one more person told him that, he’d scream.

  He showed her out, then went and found Lucy.

  ‘About Christmas.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Are your parents coming?’

  ‘I haven’t even thought about it,’ she told him. ‘I had thought they might, but that was before...’

  She tailed off, and he raised a wry eyebrow.

  ‘Before you kicked me out?’ he said, the memory still raw.

  She closed her eyes briefly and nodded. ‘But now—well, I don’t know. What do you want to do?’

  ‘Stay here. Just us.’

  ‘That would be nice. We hardly saw you last year, or the year before.’

  ‘I’ll be here this year,’ he said, not as a promise, but because it seemed less and less likely that he’d be anywhere else at this slow and frustrating rate.

  ‘Good,’ she said, kissing his cheek as she reached up to a cupboard to put the mugs away. ‘Talking of Christmas, do you want to go shopping? I haven’t even started yet, and I’m normally done by now.’

  Christmas shopping? He hadn’t done it for years—two, at least. She’d got everything, including her own present. He’d asked her what she wanted, told her to get it and last year he hadn’t even wrapped it.

  Deluged with guilt, he smiled at her. ‘Yeah. Let’s go shopping. Now.’

  * * *

  ‘Dr Gallagher?’

  They were walking along the main street looking in the shops when the voice stopped them, and Lucy turned.

  ‘Excuse me. I’m sorry to intrude, but—is this your husband, by any chance?’

  Lucy stared at the man for a second, then registered. ‘Oh, hello. Sorry, I didn’t—yes, he is my husband. Andy, this is Mr Darby. I told you I’d met him. You were with his mother when she died.’

  The man held out his hand. ‘I wanted to thank you, sir, for everything you tried to do for my mother. Their car was hit by a tree and my father was killed instantly, but my mother was taken to the hospital and they told me you worked tirelessly to try and save her. You probably don’t even remember her.’

  He shook his hand, remembering another hand he’d held, frail and gnarled, with three well-worn rings on her finger, symbols of a loving relationship with the husband she’d just lost. His last patient—ever?

  ‘Of course I remember her. She was a real lady. Very worried about your father. Kept asking for him. We tried, but there was nothing we could do, no more that could have been done. So sorry we couldn’t save her,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘Don’t be. Without my father she would have been utterly lost, and they’d had a good life—very happy. They’d always said they wanted to go together.’

  He nodded. His parents had said the same thing. They’d had a good life, spent all of it having fun, and none at all dedicated to the trivial details like wills or bank records, but they’d died happy. Maybe they’d had it right, after all?

  ‘Still tough, losing them both together. I’m glad you stopped us. I hate loose ends, but I was ill and couldn’t talk to you.’

  ‘Yes, they said. I hope you’ve recovered? I expect your wife’s been looking after you? She’s an excellent doctor.’

  He smiled ruefully, touched by his concern. ‘Yes, she is, and I’m getting there, thank you.’

  ‘Well, I won’t hold you up. Have a good Christmas with your family.’

  ‘We will. And you.’

  They watched him walk away, and Andy let out a long, slow breath. There was so much more he could have said, so much more he should have said, but because it mattered, the words had flown, yet again, like startled birds from a tree at dusk, and left him almost monosyllabic and stumbling.

  Damn.

  ‘Nice man,’ Lucy said. ‘His mother obviously made a real impression on you.’

  He nodded. ‘Mmm. R
eal lady, even though she was dying. You could tell that. Hard for the family, though. It’s tough losing both parents, even if it makes them happy.’

  ‘You found it really tough, didn’t you?’

  He nodded. ‘Just such a mess, as well.’

  ‘I remember. It took you nearly a year to sort out the paperwork.’

  Which was why his affairs were so meticulously sorted, he thought. One less thing for him to have worried about in the last few weeks. Just in case anything unforeseen had happened...

  They walked on, strolling past a jewellers, and he glanced in the window. They had a display of antique rings, just the sort of thing that Lucy loved. She didn’t even look at the window, though, just kept on walking, talking about the children and what they should get them.

  Well, he knew what he was getting her. Seeing Jean Darby’s son had jogged his conscience, and tomorrow, while she was at work, he’d buy it.

  Whatever ‘it’ turned out to be. He’d know when he saw it.

  The shops were heaving, the good old Christmas songs being belted out in every one, and he found himself singing along. Odd, how he could sing all the words fluently, when he struggled to say them on demand.

  A different part of his brain, Julie had told him, and it seemed she was right, because after they came out of one of the shops he carried on singing softly, and Lucy gave him a quizzical smile.

  ‘You sound happy.’

  He grinned, the plan forming in his mind. ‘I am. It’s fun. What’s next?’

  They managed to get most of the presents on her list, but not all, and the following day Lucy announced that she was going to a big toy shop on the outskirts of a nearby town.

  ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘No, don’t think so. I’ve got to do my SLT and other stuff. You go. I’ll have Lottie, if you like.’

  ‘Sure?’

  He smiled. ‘Yes, I’m sure. We’ll muddle through together.’

  ‘You haven’t seen my engagement ring, have you, by the way? I took it off in the bathroom last night when I was bathing Lottie and I can’t find it.’

  ‘No. I’ll look for it. It’ll be somewhere.’