by Hilary Boyd
The waiter seated them looking out on to the winter sea and the blowy, deserted seafront. They both ordered coffee, then looked nervously at each other.
“Did you sleep?” William asked.
She nodded. “Surprisingly, I did.”
He smiled. “I didn’t.”
“So what did you need to explain?” She didn’t want to be drawn in by his charm.
“OK . . .” He paused. “Last night . . . it was horrible seeing you go and knowing you were thinking that I didn’t care for you. Of course I did.”
She noted the past tense again and steeled herself for this meeting to be over.
“I didn’t want to tell you. In fact, I was determined not to. But Alistair has persuaded me that I must.” He paused again, his hands clasped tightly in his lap, a slight frown on his face. “I’m ill.”
“Ill?” So she’d been right. “You’ve had a breakdown?”
He shook his head. “I wish it were that simple . . . not simple, I’m not implying depression is simple. But no, I’ve got cancer.”
Karen held her breath.
“Something called Multiple Myeloma. I’d never heard of it, but apparently it’s a sort of bone marrow cancer that affects the white blood cells.”
“Cancer? Oh, my God . . . is it serious?”
“Well, yes. It’s incurable, but they can do a lot to keep it under control. And they’ve caught mine reasonably early . . . which is lucky because there aren’t many symptoms at the beginning. All I had was backache.”
“When you say ‘incurable,’ what do you mean?” She realized she was trembling, stone cold from shock.
William shrugged. “Statistics are notoriously unreliable, as I’m sure you know, but around a third of people diagnosed live for five years, and more than fifteen percent for at least ten.”
“Five years?”
“I’m fit and reasonably young, I’ve got a good chance.”
“Oh, Will . . .” she was speechless.
“Please, don’t look at me like that, Karen. That’s what I hate, that terrible pity. I’m not dead yet.” His laugh held a tight, angry note.
“You can’t tell me something like that and expect me to cheer.”
“No, sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to come to terms with this for a few months now, and mostly I’m fine with it. Alistair’s helped with that. But sometimes the unfairness just gets me. Like now, with you.”
“Are you having chemo?”
“Not yet. But I will, and there’s the possibility of a stem cell transplant in the future, if I don’t respond to the drugs. It’s not such a bleak outlook, really.”
“And you didn’t tell me . . . why?”
William gave a long sigh. “I didn’t think it was fair. You don’t want to be saddled with a dying man. And what I said yesterday is still true. We were different people when you loved me. I’m not that person today. I couldn’t bear it if you only loved me because I was ill.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “You think I’d do that? Honestly? You think I’d pretend to love you just because you’ve got cancer?”
“No . . . not pretend, I didn’t mean that. But you might pity me, confuse that with love. It does such weird things to people.”
“When did you find out?” The build-up of sorrow and anger in Karen’s heart was making her feel light-headed.
“A week before I left Janey. I had some blood tests because I was feeling so tired and I had this chronic back pain, and they came back with this.”
“But why did you leave so suddenly?”
“I was quite deranged, I think. As I said, we had been discussing splitting up ever since Rachel left home. Things were pretty bad between us. But when I told her about the Multiple Myeloma, Janey was brilliant, said she’d stand by me, look after me, all the things you’d want someone to say. And at first I was relieved. I was so scared. But I knew she was only saying it because it was the right thing to do, not because she wanted to spend the next five or ten years looking after a man she no longer wanted to be with.”
“This was after the fête, that you found out?” Karen was trying to sort out the sequence of events. “After Janey tried to persuade me to back off?”
“Yes.”
“So she was still trying to fix your marriage then. Why are you so sure she doesn’t want to be with you now?”
“She wasn’t really trying to fix our marriage. She was just furious with me . . . quite rightly . . . because she knew I was in love with you. Her pride was hurt. But she’d made it perfectly clear for months that she no longer loved or respected me.” William met Karen’s gaze, his eyes full of sadness. “It was a nightmare. We were both very cruel to each other, especially when the filter of Rachel being at home had gone.”
“So all that she told Sheila about you walking out suddenly after breakfast and not telling her where you were going wasn’t true?”
“In parts it was. We’d had a terrible row the night before. I told her I wanted to leave, despite the cancer, for reasons I told you earlier. I thought we both deserved better.”
“Why did that make her so angry?”
“She thought I was being melodramatic and selfish. And she was offended that I was rejecting her offer of help.” He shook his head. “I think the truth was she wanted to see me differently. The cancer made me seem more heroic—and her more heroic for looking after me—but cancer isn’t heroic, it’s just cruel and random and hellish.”
“So you told her you were going to stay with Alistair.”
“No, I didn’t tell her that. She’s always hated Alistair, and my association with him. So it’s true, she didn’t know where I was going. I only told her afterward, coward that I am.”
“I see Janey’s point about Alistair, if he really is a convicted rapist.”
William didn’t reply immediately.
“Did he? Rape someone?”
He looked resigned at having to answer the question. “Alistair didn’t see it as rape, he and this young guy had been having a relationship for weeks before the accusation. But he blames himself totally because the boy was vulnerable and he knew it. He should never have gone there. It was only when the boy’s brother found out about the sex that the boy cried rape. But Alistair didn’t defend himself then or now. He feels it was a gross abuse of trust and he deserved to go to jail.”
“Abuse of trust . . . what you accused yourself of with me.”
“Yes, and it was, Karen. I took advantage of you, you must see that.”
“So if I’d cried rape after that night at the beach, you’d have felt I was justified?”
William frowned. “No . . . no, that was different. It wasn’t just sex . . . for me . . . I don’t know . . .”
Karen felt almost too tired to respond. Her head was spinning with all that William had told her. Dying. William was dying. Not now, not today, but his lifespan had been cut short. Part of her felt as Janey had felt—insulted that William had chosen Fisher, not her, to stand by him in his hour of need.
“Anyway,” William sighed. “That’s why I said I have nothing to offer you, Karen.”
“What might you have offered me if you hadn’t been diagnosed with this myeloma thing?” She asked almost forensically, to find out the answer rather than having any expectations.
William looked away. When he turned back, his eyes were brimming with tears. “We never had a chance, Karen.”
She didn’t answer. This man had inhabited her heart for so long, had appeared to take her into his own, yet he seemed so fearful of her, as if he must hold her at arm’s length at all cost.
“I’m sorry,” he said, brushing the tears from his eyes with an impatient gesture.
“I’m sorry too, Will. Sorry that you’re ill . . . and . . .” But she couldn’t finish. She stood up. “I’ve got to go . . . I can’t . . .” Her breath was caught in her throat, her eyes were burning. She just had to get away. He didn’t love her, that was all she knew for certain.
/> William got up too, ran after her as she pushed her way through a crowd of people coming in for breakfast. He caught her arm as she reached the stairs.
“Karen . . . please.”
But she kept on going, wrenching her arm away from his.
*
Karen drove at a reckless speed away from the shuttered town, as if the Devil were on her tail. She had no idea where she was going, she just drove, finding herself, a couple of hours later, outside Mike’s café. She pulled up on the promenade and sat in her car. The café would be closed, she knew that, and Mike probably still with his daughter. But she couldn’t go home yet. The empty house, the thought of everyone celebrating in the surrounding village, felt daunting to Karen. She knew she would sink. I’ll have a walk, sit with a cup of coffee somewhere, she thought.
It was raining, a damp, biting wind stinging her face as it came in off the sea. She pulled her hood over her head, hunched her shoulders, took off along the beach. But as she drew level with Mike’s place, the shutters were up. Peering in, she saw Mike in the process of taking the album prints off the walls.
“Hey, Karen!” He waved her in. It was almost as cold inside as it was outside; Mike still had on his leather jacket and scarf. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Karen looked around, not answering. “Are you decorating?”
He grinned. “Nope. Big news, I’ve sold the bugger. That’s why it’s so bleeding cold in here, the boiler’s on the blink. But hey, it’s someone else’s problem now.”
“Sold?” Their breath was like smoke on the air. “When did that happen?”
“Bloke came along and made an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“I didn’t know you were even thinking of selling.”
She began to help him with the prints, folding them in sheets of bubble wrap while he layered them into the cardboard box sitting on one of the café tables, sealing it with silver duct tape when it was full. She blew on her icy fingers.
“The truth is I’m bloody knackered by the place. When I closed up for the year and had time to think, I realized I was already dreading another season. It’s not been the same since Margie died. We were such a team, we made it work, but slogging on by myself is just that, a slog. It isn’t any fun. So when this bloke came along on spec, I thought why not? Get rid of it and start somewhere new. Somewhere I’m not always haunted by what it was like when Margie was alive.”
“Hope you got a good price.”
“Yeah, not bad, not bad at all.” Mike grinned. “Bloody brilliant, actually. He obviously wanted it and I wasn’t in a hurry, so . . .”
“Will you start another one, then?”
“A caff? No chance. Too much bloody trouble. Listen, let’s finish up here and go over the pub, get warm. Then I can tell you my plans and you can tell me what the hell you’re doing pitching up out of the blue on Boxing Day.”
*
They settled in the blissfully warm pub, Mike with a pint, Karen with a hot chocolate.
“You go first,” he said.
Karen sighed. “Oh, just more of the same old dreary saga.”
“Our friend the polisher?”
“None other.”
“Go on.”
“He’s got cancer. Multiple Myeloma.”
“You’re kidding. Seriously? Is it like, a bad cancer?”
“Yeah, pretty bad. It affects the blood cells. He was talking about survival statistics of five years, ten years . . . I didn’t really take it all in. He says it’s incurable but they can keep it under control.”
“Whoa, that’s pretty rough.” He eyed her cautiously. “How are you feeling about it?”
“I don’t know, Mike. I’m gutted, obviously. I can’t really believe it yet. But what upsets me, selfishly, is that he’s cut me out of the whole thing. He’s living with Fisher, this mentor person, and he wouldn’t even have told me if Fisher hadn’t persuaded him to. So he was just going to die without a single word of explanation, without ever seeing me again.” She burst into tears.
“Hey . . . hey, love, come here . . .” Mike pulled her toward him along the wooden pub bench and wrapped his arm around her shoulder.
For a while she couldn’t speak, she just sobbed quietly into his jumper.
“So he doesn’t want to see you again?” Mike asked, when she’d stopped crying and was sitting upright again, clutching her coat around her cold body, although the room itself was warm.
“Apparently not. He thinks what we had wasn’t real. I fell in love with a vicar, not with him, he claims.”
Mike frowned. “I don’t get it. What’s that got to do with cancer?”
“Oh, nothing. None of what he said made much sense. Basically, he doesn’t think I loved him, I loved him because he was a vicar. That’s number one. Then I suppose he doesn’t trust me to love him now because he thinks if I said I loved him it would only be because he was dying. Whatever, he’s freezing me out, clearly doesn’t want anything more to do with me.” She closed her eyes briefly.
“Sounds like he might be reacting to the illness. It must be a bloody shock to be told you’re in the checkout lounge.”
“If he loved me, though—”
“Yeah, but I sort of get it, the thing of not wanting the pity, not wanting to feel people are just being kind.”
“What’s wrong with people being kind, for God’s sake?”
Mike shrugged. “Did you still feel the same about him, seeing him again?”
“Yes . . . no . . . he didn’t give me the opportunity to really find out—” She stopped. “But I saw it in his eyes, Mike. He still has feelings for me, I know he does.”
Mike frowned.
“Don’t look so skeptical. He does, I saw it.”
“OK, I’m just saying he’s got a funny way of showing it.”
“You think he doesn’t love me?”
“Who am I to pass judgment? But maybe he doesn’t, Karen. You have to face the possibility.”
Karen didn’t reply. She remembered the deep, companionable silences on their beach walks, the electricity when they caught each other’s eye, the explosive desire that had existed between them when they had finally allowed it full rein. She had never felt so deeply about anyone before, and it defied reason. How could he not feel the same way?
“He said we never had a chance,” she muttered.
They sat in silence for a long time. Karen’s chocolate had gone cold on the table in front of her. Her stomach felt as if it were screwed as tight and small as a marble, she couldn’t even contemplate the drink.
“You really love him, don’t you?” Mike said softly.
“Yeah, well, it’s over now, so whether I do or not isn’t exactly relevant, is it?”
“Over, over? You won’t try to see him again? Even though he’s ill?”
“Nope. It’s over, over. End of. Kaput.” She looked up. “I’m worn out by him, Mike. He’s taken up a whole year of my life, for nothing. The cancer is horrible, but what can I do? You can’t ever make somebody love you if they’re determined not to.”
“True,” he said.
And they didn’t say any more for a while.
“So tell me about this plan of yours.” Karen firmly changed the subject.
“Sure you want to hear?”
“Of course. As long as it’s something that’ll cheer me up.”
“OK,” Mike began, on further prompting from Karen, taking a deep breath. “I’m going into cupcakes.”
“Right. Cupcakes as in a cupcake shop?”
“Yup.”
“Go on.”
“A place came up, at the far end of the front . . .” Mike pointed right. “Small, used to be a pasty shop, but the bloke died—probably from eating too many of his rubbish pasties—and his son was gagging to offload it. I reckon it’d be perfect for cupcakes. There’s a small kitchen in the back, and cupcakes are still trendy, they haven’t peaked yet. I’m thinking those families who came into the caff could pick up a cup
cake and a cold drink to take on the beach instead. And you can charge a mint for them.”
Karen thought about this. “Yeah, I can see that working. Would you cook them yourself?”
“Could do, to start with. Get someone to help out in the kitchen. Haven’t thought it through properly yet. But it’ll be way cheaper to run than the other place, and less knackering. I’ll have nine to five hours, and I’m up for an online business. People ordering stuff for kids’ parties, weddings, anniversaries and the like. No one can afford those huge posh cakes these days. I reckon it’s a winner.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “In fact, I was thinking of asking you if you’d be interested in coming in with me, doing the online side of the business . . . but I reckon it’s not the right time. You’ve got enough on your plate. Probably not your thing, anyway.”
Karen was taken aback. She thought for a moment. Cupcakes. The idea appealed to her.
“How would it work?”
Mike’s face brightened. “Not sure, haven’t really nailed the details yet. I don’t need your money, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t.”
“No, well, I was sort of hoping not to have to do this all on my own. I’m good at some things—like customer service—and I’m prepared to work all hours, as you know, but me and computers don’t get on, and I’m crap at marketing. The caff marketed itself. It was a monopoly, the only caff on the beach, so we never had to sell ourselves.”
“You’d be the only cupcake shop on the front,” Karen pointed out.
“True, but the shop won’t bring in enough on its own. And if the website’s going to be profitable, that’ll involve all sorts of marketing I know nothing about.”
“Not sure I do, either . . . but I’m kind of interested, Mike. I think I could find out what I need to know. Selling was my forte when I worked with my husband. And I was OK at it, although I say so myself.”
He laughed, suddenly visibly animated. “Wow . . . this could be good. But maybe you should go away and think about it, Karen. Give me a ring in a couple of days. I don’t want to rush you into anything.”