How To Mend A Broken Heart

by Amy Andrews

  Because she was getting on that plane tomorrow. Just like she did every year.

  And most importantly, what if Jean wanted to talk about Ryan? What if she didn’t remember he was dead? Talked about him as if he was alive and just down for a nap?

  Tess looked at Fletcher. ‘What about…?’ She cleared her throat as a lump formed there. Even just saying it was beyond difficult. ‘What does she remember from…?’

  Fletcher watched the shimmer of emotion in Tess’s amber gaze as she struggled with her words. He shook his head. ‘She doesn’t remember him at all, Tess.’

  It had been a particularly difficult thing for Fletch to cope with. After Tess had refused to hear his name, his mother had been the only person he’d been able to talk openly with about Ryan.

  Now it was as if his son had never existed.

  ‘Her memory seems to stretch to about a year after we were married. As far as she’s concerned, we’ve just got back from Bora Bora.’

  Fletch had taken Tess to the tropical paradise for a surprise first wedding anniversary present. They’d lazed in their over-water bungalow all day. Making love, drinking cocktails and watching the multitude of colourful fish swim by their glass floor.

  He shrugged. ‘There’s an occasional recall of an event beyond that but it’s rare.’

  For a brief moment Tess envied Jean. The thought of forgetting how Ryan had felt in her arms or at her breast, forgetting the way his hair had stuck up in the middle from his double cowlick and how his giggle had filled the whole room. Forgetting that gut-wrenching day and all the empty days that had followed since.

  It sounded like bliss.

  The fantasy was shocking, wrong on so many levels, and she quickly moved to erase it from her mind. Jean was suffering from a debilitating disease that was ravaging her brain and would rob her of her most basic functions.

  There was no upside to that.

  And no justice in this world.

  Although she already knew that more intimately than most.

  Tess nodded. ‘Okay.’

  Fletch blinked at her easy capitulation. ‘Really?’

  ‘Sure.’ She frowned, his disbelief irksome. ‘For Jean.’ He should know she’d do anything for his mother. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’

  He shrugged. ‘Yes.’

  His bluntness hurt but she pushed it aside—it was, after all, a fair statement. She had been sneaking into the country once a year for the last nine years with only two paltry visits to Jean to defend herself against his conviction.

  But they’d agreed on a clean break.

  And she’d stuck to it.

  Eventually, so had he.

  She gave him a measured look. ‘It’s Jean.’

  Fletch nodded as the husky note in her voice didn’t mask her meaning. She wasn’t doing it for him.

  And that was certainly what he was counting on now.

  ‘Thank you.’ He gestured to his car. ‘Do you want to follow me?’

  Tess shook her head. ‘She’s at Trish’s, right? They still live in Indooroopilly?’

  Fletch shook his head. ‘No, she’s at my place for the moment.’

  Tess blinked. ‘You have a place in Brisbane?’

  Since their separation Fletch had moved to Canada, where he’d been heavily involved in research and travelling the world lecturing. Or at least the last time she’d heard, that had been where he’d been. It was suddenly weird having absolutely no idea where he lived—or any of the details of his life for the last nine years.

  She honestly hadn’t cared until today but it somehow seemed wrong now to know so little about someone whose life had been so closely entwined with hers for so long they may as well have been conjoined.

  When she thought about him, which she still did with uncomfortable regularity, it was always against the backdrop of their marital home. The ninety-year-old worker’s cottage they’d renovated together.

  Polished the floorboards, painted the walls, built the pergola.

  The house they’d brought Ryan home to as a newborn.

  ‘I’m renting an apartment on the river.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  Tess tamped down on her surprise. Fletch had always despised apartment living. Had loved the freedom of large living spaces and a back yard.

  But, then, a lot of things had changed over the last ten years.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll follow you.’

  Fletch nodded. ‘It’s only about a ten-minute drive. See you soon.’

  ‘Sure,’ Tess murmured, then walked on shaky legs to her car.

  Nine minutes later they drove into the underground car park of a swanky apartment block. She pulled her cheap hire car in beside his Jag in his guest car space. They didn’t talk as he ushered her to the lifts or while they waited for one to arrive.

  Tess stared at the floor, the doors, the ugly concrete walls of the chilly underground car park—what did one say, how did one act around one’s ex? An ex she’d deliberately put at a fifteen-thousand-kilometre distance?

  A lift arrived, promptly derailing her line of thought. He indicated for her to precede him, which she did, and then stood back as Fletch pushed the button for the nineteenth floor. More silence followed. Surely at least they could indulge in inane conversation for the duration of their time together?

  A sudden thought occurred to her and she looked at him leaning against the opposite wall. ‘How did you know I was going to be there today?’

  Fletch returned her look. ‘Because you’re there every year on the anniversary.’

  Tess blinked at his calm steady gaze. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because I watch you.’

  Another silence descended between them as her brain tried to compute what he’d just said. ‘You watch me?’

  He nodded. ‘Nine years ago you were leaving as I was arriving.’ He remembered how close he’d come to calling her name. ‘I thought you might come back the next year. You did. And the year after that. So now I…wait for you.’

  The lift dinged. The doors opened. Neither of them moved. The doors started to close and Fletch shot an arm out to push them open again. ‘After you,’ he murmured.

  Tess couldn’t move for a moment. She stared at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘I know you think that your grief is deeper than mine but he was my son too, Tess. I also like to visit on the anniversary.’

  Tessa flinched at the bitterness in his voice. And then again when the lift doors started beeping, protesting their prolonged open state. She walked out, dazed, conscious of Fletch slipping past her, leading the way down a long plush hallway with trendy inkspot carpeting. She followed slowly, still trying to get her head around Fletch’s revelation.

  She drew level with him, glancing up from the floor. ‘I meant why wait for me? Why not just visit for a while and leave?’

  Like she did.

  Fletch wished he knew the answer to that question. It was the same thing he told himself every year as he set out for the cemetery. Go, talk with Ryan for a bit, then leave.

  But he didn’t. He’d sit in his car and wait for her. Watch her kneel beside Ryan’s grave.

  Torture himself just a little bit more.

  He shrugged. ‘To see you.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘MUM, we’re home,’ Fletch called as he opened the door, checking behind him to see if Tess was following or still standing in the hallway like a stunned mullet.

  He wasn’t sure why he’d said what he’d said. Except it was the truth. He just hadn’t realised it until right that moment. He’d kidded himself that it was to check up on her but now he knew it was more.

  That there was part of him, no matter how hard he’d tried to move on, that just hadn’t.

  He walked into the apartment, throwing his keys on the hallstand. ‘Mother?’

  A voice came from the direction of the bathroom. ‘I’m in here, darling, there’s no need to shout.’ Jean appeared a moment later with a spray pack in one hand
and a mop in the other.

  ‘Mum, you don’t have to clean the apartment,’ Fletch said, trying to keep the exasperation and relief out of his voice as he unburdened her of her load.

  He didn’t like to leave his mother alone for too long these days. She seemed so frail and unsteady on her feet and he worried she might fall and injure herself while he was out.

  Especially if she was mopping floors.

  ‘I have a cleaning lady for that.’

  ‘Nonsense, darling, I have to make myself useful somehow. Now, is Tess working late or shall I put something on for tea for her tonight?’

  Tess stepped out of the shadow of the entranceway where she’d been frozen since Jean had entered the room. Jean, who had once been a towering Amazon of a woman and was now white-haired and stooped and looked like a puff of wind would blow her over.

  She sucked in a breath at the absurd urge to cry. ‘No, Jean, I’m here.’

  Jean looked over her son’s shoulder and smiled. ‘Oh, Tess! There you are!’ She hurried forward and pulled Tess into an effusive hug. ‘Goodness, you’re getting so skinny,’ Jean tutted, pulling back to look at her daughter-in-law. ‘And your hair! Did you have that done today? I love it!’

  Tess swallowed hard at the shimmer of moisture in Jean’s eyes as her mother-in-law wrapped her in another hug. She shut her eyes as she was sucked into a bizarre time warp where the last decade and all its horrible events just didn’t exist. She held tight to Jean’s bony shoulders.

  Her mother-in-law had become an old woman while she’d been away. Guilt clawed at her.

  ‘How about a cuppa?’ Jean said, finally letting Tess go.

  ‘Great idea, Mum,’ Fletch agreed. ‘Why don’t you take Tess through and I’ll get the tea?’

  Jean smiled and nodded. She turned to go then stopped, her smile dying as a look of confusion clouded her gaze. She looked at her son blankly.

  ‘Over there,’ Fletch murmured gently as he pointed to the corner of the open-plan living space where a leather three-piece suite, a coffee table and a large-screen television formed a lounge area.

  Jean’s gaze followed the direction of Fletch’s finger. It took a moment or two for the set-up to register. ‘Of course.’ She shook her head. ‘Come on, Tess. Tell me all about work today.’

  Tess moved off with Jean but not before her gaze locked with Fletch’s. She saw his despair and felt an answering flicker. No wonder Fletch had looked tired earlier—this had to be killing him.

  Jean patted the cushion beside her and asked, ‘How was the unit today, dear? Busy as usual?’

  Tess sat beside Jean, bringing her thoughts back to order. ‘I…’ She glanced at Fletch for direction.

  Since moving to England Tess had changed her speciality to geriatrics so nursing Alzheimer’s patients was part and parcel of what she did every day. But each patient was individual and responded differently to having their misstatements corrected.

  He nodded his head encouragingly, which didn’t really tell her very much. ‘I didn’t go to work today,’ she sidestepped. ‘It was my day off and I had…some business to attend to.’

  ‘Ah, well, no doubt Fletch will know. Fletch?’

  ‘It wasn’t too bad, Mum,’ Fletch said as he placed a tray with three steaming mugs on the coffee table and apportioned them. He sat on the nearby single-seater. ‘Still a lot of kids with the last of the winter bugs getting themselves into a pickle.’

  Tess picked up her mug and absently blew on it. So they were validating Jean’s false sense of reality? At this stage of her disease it was probably all that was left to do. Too many dementia patients became confused and distressed when confronted with their memory loss, and to what end? They were too far gone to realise what was happening to them.

  Jean sighed and looked from one to the other. ‘I’m so proud of both of you. It can’t be easy going to work each day looking after such sick little kiddies.’

  Tess squeezed Jean’s hand in response. What else could she do? She and Fletch hadn’t worked at St Rita’s Paediatric Intensive Care Unit together for ten years. Not since Ryan had died there. In fact, she hadn’t been able to return to that field of practice at all, hence her move to the other end of the spectrum altogether.

  Fletch changed the subject to the weather and they let Jean lead from there, navigating a maze of patchwork conversation—some lucid, some not so lucid. They got on to the spectacular view from the floor-to-ceiling glass doors, with Jean teasing Fletch about his fancy apartment. ‘I can’t believe you two got this thing. What happened to that gorgeous little cottage you were renovating?’

  Fletch smiled at his mother. ‘We sold it. Too much hard work.’

  ‘Oh, pish,’ Jean said, swatting her hand through the air. ‘As if you’re afraid of hard work.’

  Tess swallowed a lump as Jean, despite the dementia, looked at her son the way she always had, like he could hang the moon. Fletch’s father had died when he and his sister, Trish, had both been very young and Fletch had been the man of the house for a long time.

  ‘Gosh, Tess,’ Jean remarked, shaking her head. ‘Look how skinny you are! And where did that lovely tan go? I can’t believe how quickly that gorgeous tan of yours has faded. It hasn’t been that long since you’ve been back from Bora Bora.’

  Fletch felt the bleakness inside ratchet up another notch. The tan had gone to England and never come back!

  Jean held up an imperious finger. ‘Hold on a moment.’ And she scurried off towards the direction she’d originally come from.

  Tess felt exhausted with jet-lag and trying to keep up with Jean’s meandering conversation and rapid-fire subject changes. But not as exhausted as Fletch looked. ‘What medication is she on?’ she asked.

  Fletch rattled off a series of the most up-to-date dementia pills on the market. He shrugged. ‘They’ve held it at bay for many years but—’

  Jean bustled back in, interrupting them. ‘Here it is,’ she said, brandishing a book of some description. When she sat down and opened it Tess realised it was a photo album. The one she’d put together all those years ago after their return from Bora Bora.

  Fletch frowned as a hundred memories flooded his mind. He shook his head slightly at Tess’s questioning look. He’d had no idea his mother had this album. It, along with all the others, had been stored in one of the many boxes that he’d packed their marriage into after he and Tess had separated and she’d run away to the other side of the world.

  Maybe when he’d asked his mother to get rid of it all just prior to his move to Canada, she’d decided to keep a few souvenirs? He hadn’t really cared at the time how she’d made it disappear, just that it had. God knew, he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of going through it all himself, deciding what to keep and what to discard.

  Getting rid of it all, holus bolus, had been a much easier option.

  And yet here was a part of it, turning up like the proverbial bad penny. A full Technicolor reminder of how happy they’d been.

  ‘See, now look at you here,’ Jean said, pointing to Tess in a bikini on the beach. ‘Brown as a berry!’

  Tessa stared at the photograph, shocked by the sudden yank back into the past. She’d taken three photos from the ruins of their marriage—all of Ryan. Not that she’d been able to bear to look at them. They lived at the back of a cupboard she never opened.

  But it had been a long time since she’d seen ones of Fletch and herself.

  A stranger stared back at her. Yes, she was very tanned. She was also deliriously happy, obviously in love and blissfully unaware of the giant black hole hovering in her future. In fact, the woman in the photograph looked nothing like the woman she was today.

  And it had nothing to do with the tan.

  For a fleeting second, Tess wished she could jump into the photo, like Mary Poppins had jumped into that pavement painting, and give herself a good shake.

  If only she’d known then what she knew now.

  If only…

&nb
sp; ‘I think this is my favourite one,’ Jean said, flipping to one of Fletch, towel wrapped around his waist, elbows on the balcony railing, looking back over his shoulder and laughing into the camera, crystal waters behind him.

  Tessa stilled as she remembered she’d been fresh from the shower and naked when she’d taken that picture and the series of intimate photos that had followed—ones that had not made it into this album! She remembered making him lie on the bed and loosen his towel, snapping shots of every glorious inch of his body.

  Then he’d grappled the camera from her and returned the favour, asking her to pose for him and taking a set of photos a professional photographer would have been proud of. To this day the one on her stomach, looking over her shoulder with her hair flowing down her back, the sheet ruched around her bottom revealing only the slight rise of one cheek, was the best picture ever taken of her.

  She remembered being so turned on by their nude photo session they’d made love for hours afterwards, rolling and sighing and moaning to the gentle swish of the waves.

  She glanced at Fletch—did he remember?

  His gaze locked with hers, turning almost silver as heat flashed like a solar flare. It dropped to her mouth and she watched as his throat bobbed.

  ‘It’s my favourite too,’ Fletch murmured.

  Oh, yeah, he remembered.

  Tess sat through the rest of the album, desperately trying to claw back some control of her brain. Bora Bora was in the past—a long time in the past. She hadn’t come here to take a walk down memory lane, although she guessed to a degree that had been inevitable. Neither had she come to rekindle the sexual attraction that, prior to Ryan’s death, had always raged like an inferno between them.

  She’d come for Jean. To alleviate some anxiety and then turn around and go back to her perfectly fulfilling, asexual, far-away existence.

  Jean closed the album. ‘I think you two need to go back to Bora Bora. You’re both too tense.’ She patted Tess’s hand. ‘And pale.’

  Before Tess could answer, an alarm blared out and she jumped slightly at the same time Jean clutched at her chest and looked at Fletch anxiously.