A Perfect Husband

by Hilary Boyd

  She hadn’t said much, but there were no recriminations this time. She told him about the light on the roses, about her typing job, the sketches she’d done in the park. Said that her sister and brother-in-law were away. He explained about the food-truck venture, told her about the tiles in the bathroom, and that the newsagent on the corner – one he used to frequent in the past – had changed hands. They had basically chatted in much the same way they always had. And it meant more to Freddy than any passionate declaration of love.

  ‘Where are we, then, on the launch?’ Max was asking now, as they sat in his top-floor office.

  ‘Okay. I know you were thinking September, but I’ve had this idea. The London Film Festival kicks off the first week in October and I thought maybe we could piggyback on that. The town’s full of celebrities, festival-goers, and the students are back. They’re constructing a huge pop-up cinema in Embankment Gardens and we could pitch to put one of our trucks there, maybe borrow the venue for an hour or two before the screenings start for a quick glass of bubbly and a speech. Something along those lines.’

  Max’s look was encouraging, so Freddy went on, ‘It’s late notice for this sort of thing, but I’ve got some contacts at the BFI and at American Express, who are sponsoring it. I’m sure I can fix something up.’

  They talked on for another hour at least. Max was having trouble with the recipes, Julie insisting they must be healthy, Max insisting the point of Geordie food was that it was not. By the time Freddy emerged into the July drizzle, he felt slightly dazed. So determined was he to prove himself, he was promising stuff to his friend that he hoped to God he could deliver. His whole life rested on making the marketing and launch of the food trucks successful and he was already beginning to feel the old knockings of pressure churning in his stomach – and the urge to soothe that anxiety.

  *

  There were fewer than six people in that morning’s GA meeting. Not enough for Freddy to feel comfortably anonymous, even seated in the back row on the chair nearest to the door. But no one bothered him, beyond a few polite hellos. He recognized Deborah from before, but the well-dressed John was absent. Today it was a young guy, not more than twenty-five, Freddy guessed, who was sharing his problems with the group. He seemed too young to be in such dire trouble, but when Freddy thought back, he realized he had been gambling long before that. But there had been no FOBTs in those days, the nightmare fixed-odds machines on which this youth, trembling before them, had lost thousands he didn’t have in a frighteningly short space of time.

  Freddy had copied his father back then, with regular punts on the horses. It wasn’t till he got to London that he experienced the superior hit of the roulette tables. But even they had been recreational back then: he had never had a problem going home. Nor would it ever have occurred to him to steal – as the man in the meeting had – in order to gamble. Back then . . . He still resolutely refused to see himself as like those sad people at Gamblers Anonymous, blaming his recent fall from grace on the intense pressure he’d been under, one way and another, the hit an irresistible form of escape. It wasn’t stealing, as such, just borrowing – he always meant to return the money. And he would.

  But that part of his life was over. Lily had said she might come down later in the week. If he could just see her again, hold her . . .

  Chapter 45

  Seth Kramer had put Lily in touch with a psychotherapist friend of his, Janice Stevenson, who was interested in hiring her services for a paper she was writing. But she had put off making the phone call, her mind increasingly distracted the more contact she had with her husband.

  They were phoning each other every night now, and had been for most of the week. Freddy had expected her to come to London – she’d said she might – but she kept putting it off.

  Lily knew, despite what she’d protested to her family, that as soon as she and Freddy were alone together she would be lost. Theirs was a passionate relationship, had been right from the start, and it was such a long time since they’d made love. The look in his eyes, the kiss on the pavement in Banbury Road – swift though it had been – had reminded her body almost painfully of that.

  But could she go back to Freddy and start over as if nothing had happened? Did she even want to live in London again, after her peaceful sojourn in Oxford? Had she really missed that crazy social round, the pressure to look good, the long evenings in the company of people with whom she had little in common, the noise and pollution of the big city?

  When she thought of the alternative, however, of turning her back on Freddy March for ever, she had her answer. But the answer was equivocal. She was scared of him. Or, at least, scared of loving someone who could create such mayhem, then hide it so effectively. But the instant lure of his company, the way Lily’s body tingled at the thought of his touch, the cosy ease of their chats, all of these were stacking the scales in Freddy’s favour, drawing her slowly back in. She was almost shocked at how little she was prepared to resist Freddy’s onslaught.

  It could be for a few months, she told herself, as she walked back from Sainsbury’s on Friday morning with food for her sister and brother-in-law’s return at the weekend. I could insist on a trial period. I’ve nothing to lose, after all. Helen will be pleased to be rid of me. I can still work for Seth, take the train up every week. And if it’s clear that things aren’t right between us, I won’t be any worse off than I am now.

  *

  Lily unlocked the front door, feeling more at peace with herself than she had for a long time at the decision she’d come to, even a little excited. In the kitchen she began unpacking her shopping bag, loading the perishables into the fridge. Then she went through to the sitting room to retrieve her laptop from the coffee table. The room was still in darkness – she hadn’t yet drawn the curtains back. She noticed an unpleasantly acrid smell as she stumbled against something on the floor in the half-light. Then her eye caught a movement on the sofa and a small cry escaped her lips.

  The recumbent figure gave a low groan and she jumped back. Kit. Her nephew was curled on his side, hands pressed between his drawn-up knees, eyes closed, his greasy head resting on one of the orange cushions. For a moment Lily, trying to still her frantic heart, just watched him as he slept. In the weeks since she’d first encountered Kit again, he had become a cipher in her mind: a drug addict, a threat, a source of friction and pain. But sleep rendered him innocent again.

  Gently, she touched his shoulder. Kit jerked awake, sitting up in one continuous movement, his eyes wide and staring, his face, previously so undefended, now instantly wary. He looked filthy and smelt worse. ‘Aunty Lily,’ he said, blinking furiously, leaping to his feet.

  She should have been angry, given that the last time she’d seen him he’d caused her so much disruption, but she felt only compassion now: he looked so pathetic, so young. ‘Shall I make you tea . . . some toast?’

  Kit, hugging his arms around his body and shivering, although it was a warm day, shook his head, then changed his mind. ‘Tea’d be good.’

  He began to cough as he followed her through to the kitchen – a dry, rasping sound painful to hear, then hovered by the back door while the kettle boiled, as if securing his escape.

  ‘Where are they?’

  Lily frowned. ‘Away, in Austria. But you knew that.’

  Kit seemed befuddled.

  Glancing at him, Lily realized he looked ill – now she could see him in daylight. Not just the usual druggie pallor, his pasty skin was flushed, his eyes red and he was taking short, shallow breaths. ‘Sit down,’ she said. But he didn’t move. ‘Please.’ Approaching him slowly, in case he overreacted, she took his arm and led him to a chair. He didn’t object, and as soon as he was sitting he folded his arms on the table and dropped his head onto them. Lily pressed her hand to his forehead. He was burning up.

  Abandoning the tea, she tried to rouse him. ‘Kit, are you okay?’ No response
. ‘Kit? Kit . . . Listen, you’re not well. You need to see a doctor.’

  He raised his head for a second, eyes unfocused. ‘No, no doctor. Leave me alone. I’m okay. Not seeing a doctor,’ he muttered, before slumping back onto the table.

  Lily didn’t know what to do. Helen and David must have a GP, but she had no idea who it was. And if he wouldn’t go to the surgery, how could she make him? She rang Sara, but her daughter’s mobile went to voicemail. Seth was still in France. Dithering, she checked the side of the fridge for the GP’s details and found a dog-eared list of names and numbers, but with no explanation as to who they might be.

  She tried to rouse him again. ‘Kit?’ She rubbed his back firmly. ‘Kit, come on, you need to wake up. You’re ill. We have to find a doctor.’ She tried to get him to his feet, putting her arms under his and pulling him up. The stench of ammonia coming off his clothes was nauseating at such close quarters.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he said, jerking free with surprising strength, swiping his arm haphazardly in her direction. ‘Leave me the fuck alone.’

  Lily eventually managed to struggle with her nephew back to the sofa and make him as comfortable as he would allow. She propped him up on pillows to help with his cough and covered him with a light throw because, although his skin was burning hot, he was shivering and mumbling that he was freezing. She held a glass of water to his lips, desperate for him to drink something, but each time he swore at her and pushed it away. Rambling now, muttering words she couldn’t make out, which sounded angry and scared, she realized Kit was way beyond sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, or lying there until she could find a doctor to visit the house. He needed to go to hospital right away.

  *

  She sat on the narrow bench in the back of the ambulance as it blue-lighted its way through the lunchtime Oxford traffic to the John Radcliffe, cold with terror that Kit would die. Adam, the paramedic, had taken one look at her nephew, then hustled him onto a stretcher and into the ambulance, an oxygen mask clamped to his pallid face. But he wouldn’t answer her when she asked what was wrong with him. ‘He’ll be okay as soon as we get him to hospital,’ was all he would say.

  Her phone rang as they drove up the slope to the entrance. She thought it was Sara, for whom she’d left a message half an hour ago, and picked up immediately, the deafening noise of the siren making it hard to hear who was calling.

  ‘Hi,’ said Freddy’s voice.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ Lily said, disappointed he was not Sara, then immediately relieved she had someone to talk to about the situation.

  ‘I just had a meeting in Reading. I’m at the station,’ Freddy was saying, ‘and I thought I might keep on going and take you out for lunch. It’s only half an hour to Oxford . . .’ From the uncharacteristically tentative way Freddy spoke, she could tell he was nervous of her reply. ‘If you’re not—’

  ‘I’m with Kit, in an ambulance, going to the John Radcliffe,’ she interrupted. ‘I found him asleep on the sofa when I came back from shopping and when I woke him he was burning up, disoriented. Then he just collapsed. I couldn’t rouse him.’

  ‘Has he overdosed? Taken some dodgy smack, maybe?’

  Lily climbed down from the ambulance as they arrived in the bay and the paramedics began dragging Kit out, letting down the wheels of the gurney and pushing him through the swing doors into the emergency department. He did not seem to be moving as Lily hurried alongside. ‘Does heroin give you a fever and a cough?’

  ‘Don’t know much about it. But no, I wouldn’t think a fever and cough was typical.’

  ‘I thought maybe he’d got flu or something, but this is way, way worse. He’s really ill, Freddy.’

  ‘Listen, I’m on my way. I’ll be there in an hour, max,’ she heard him say.

  ‘No, no, that’s ridiculous. I can manage.’

  ‘On my way,’ he repeated, and hung up.

  *

  By the time the triage nurse had finished checking Kit he was barely responsive, unable to answer any of her questions, his breathing now very fast and shallow, his face bluish against his usual pallor. She went to fetch the doctor. After examining Kit, the man, who introduced himself as Nick – in his early thirties, fair, his blue scrubs straining against his plumpness – looked at Lily with a puzzled frown. ‘Is he . . . Where did you find him?’

  ‘Long story. He’s my nephew, his parents are away. But he’s a drug addict, he doesn’t live with us.’

  The doctor nodded – he’d seen it all. ‘Do you know what he’s taken?’

  ‘No. It’s usually heroin, I think.’

  Nick nodded again. ‘Is he allergic to anything? Antibiotics, for instance?’

  Feeling completely useless, Lily answered, ‘He said he couldn’t take methadone. He’s got asthma. But . . .’ She suddenly wondered if Kit had made that up.

  ‘So, penicillin?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Looking weary, the doctor began giving instructions to the nurse for an X-ray, tox screen and a string of other tests Lily was only familiar with from watching the odd medical drama on television.

  ‘We’ll have to admit him,’ Nick told her. ‘I suspect your nephew has pneumonia.’

  *

  ‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’ Freddy asked later.

  He had arrived, as promised, within the hour and Lily found herself ridiculously pleased to see him. They had spent the next hour or so standing and sitting about while Kit was being processed, cleaned up as much as was possible, his stinky clothes replaced by a pressed hospital gown, and carted off to the intensive care unit. Now they sat side by side with tea and a sandwich at one of the metal tables outside the M&S café on level two, late in the afternoon. The area was in shadow and Lily felt shivery in her thin cotton top. ‘Depends how he responds to the antibiotics, apparently. Pneumonia can be a killer. The nurse said his immune system will be shot, with his rough lifestyle. She said it’s too easy for addicts to pick up infections.’

  Lily felt Freddy’s arm go round her and she closed her eyes. ‘Please don’t let him die, Freddy.’

  ‘Kit’s tough, Lily. He must be to have survived this long.’

  ‘Helen and David will be devastated.’

  He squeezed her close. ‘Let’s not think like that. Just remember how incredibly lucky it was he came to you when he did. If he’d been on the streets he probably would be dead by now.’

  Lily nodded. She had phoned her sister several times and only managed to get hold of her fifteen minutes ago. They had been walking all day in the hills above the lake with no signal on their mobiles. Helen had been silent as Lily explained what had happened. It was the phone call, Lily knew, both she and David had dreaded every single day of their life. But she hadn’t envisaged being the one who would have to make it.

  ‘Maybe this’ll be the turning point,’ Freddy was saying. ‘The smack will be out of his system by the time he’s discharged.’

  ‘Out of his system, but not necessarily out of his head.’

  ‘No,’ Freddy agreed. ‘If he’s still looking for a way off the planet, it won’t make the slightest difference.’ He reached across and took Lily’s hand. ‘You did exactly the right thing, Lily. You saved his life.’

  She gave him a smile. ‘I’m not sure he’ll thank me.’

  Chapter 46

  ‘Are you going to stay?’ Freddy asked his wife, watching her pale, exhausted face as they stood outside the ICU. It was after midnight and they had spent the hours pacing the hospital corridors, drinking too much caffeine, watching the sleeping figure of Lily’s nephew, all strung up with drips and monitors in the high white bed. He had opened his eyes a couple of times as Lily sat by him, but they were glazed and blank. He hadn’t spoken or reacted at all to his aunt’s presence.

  ‘Dr Benjafield says he’s stable at the moment,’ Lily replied. ‘He says to go home, get a f
ew hours’ sleep. They’ll ring if there’s any change.’

  ‘So will you?’

  Lily shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. What if something happens when I’m not here?’

  ‘They’ve said they’ll call you.’

  She nodded. ‘I wish Helen and David would hurry up. I feel so responsible.’

  ‘When does their flight get in?’

  ‘Eight fifteen, Heathrow. They’re flying from Vienna – it was quicker than Salzburg, Helen said.’

  They stood staring through the glass at Kit’s sleeping figure. Freddy thought he looked more peaceful now, the previous facial twitching and restless limbs quieted by sedation. He barely knew the boy, Kit’s addiction having been well under way by the time Freddy came on the scene. But he had met him a couple of times in one of Kit’s short rehab windows and liked his quick mind, his wicked take on life.

  ‘What shall I do?’ Lily looked up at him, her light eyes bewildered. He pulled her into his arms and she rested with a sigh against his chest. Her closeness, the smell of her hair, the familiar contours of her body were heaven to Freddy, even in such difficult circumstances.

  ‘He’ll probably sleep now, won’t he? Maybe you should go home for a bit.’

  Lily stood back, pushing her fringe off her forehead. She gave a slow nod. They stared at each other, both knowing the question neither was able to ask.

  ‘I don’t want to leave you,’ Freddy eventually said.

  ‘I . . .’ She looked away.

  ‘If I come back with you, I’ll sleep on the sofa, obviously,’ he added, and was pleased that Lily’s second nod meant that she was willing for him to stay, and sad that she still seemed almost nervous of him, as if he were a threat that had to be managed.

  ‘I’ll be long gone by the time Helen and David arrive,’ he assured her.