Ignoring her spilled shopping, she flopped down onto the sofa and groaned. ‘Oh, Adam is there some new disaster created by Leblond and son? Lost your tarantula or arranged a rave for next Saturday?’ But when he just waited, very still, very grave, his eyes fixed on hers, she tailed off. ‘What?’ she asked softly, his manner making her realise this wasn’t the time for jokes.
His voice became low and very soft. He even took her hand in his good one. ‘I’m really sorry. But there’s some bad news.’
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She had an absurd desire to stroke them flat with her hand as if that would make bad news go away. ‘What?’
He hesitated. ‘Someone left a message on your answer machine. I didn’t answer when the phone rang, of course, but the machine kicked in and I couldn’t avoid hearing the message.’
Her heart flopped. ‘And how do you know what kind of news it is?’
His mouth twisted down at the corners. ‘It wasn’t difficult to recognise as bad news.’
She turned her head and regarded the phone. New and shiny, palest grey. The message-waiting light blinked red on the base. She swallowed. Shakily, she rose. Her heartbeat seemed to be in her eyes. Her throat. Her head. Vaguely, she was aware of Adam leaving the room, the sound of water whooshing into the kettle coming from the kitchen.
With an effort, she pressed the play button.
‘You have one new message.’ It was difficult to breathe while she waited out the statement of time and date, then the tone. A second’s silence before gentle crying. Then Cass’s voice, husky with tears. ‘Judith, I ring to give you news. This morning … this morning, Giorgio died. They think a clot blocked his heart. He felt nothing, of course, he died suddenly but calmly with his mama beside him.’ Cass began to sob in earnest. ‘May he sleep peacefully.’ Click. ‘End of message. You have no more messages.’
Dimly, over the rushing of blood in her ears, she became aware of Adam’s return and the shifting of the sofa as he lowered her onto the cushions, the clunk as he deposited coffee on the low table. The pungent smell hit the back of her throat. She reached out and pressed play again. And again. Then he gently stayed her hand.
Rather than face the truth of what she’d just heard, she let her mind slip off in pursuit of inconsequential thoughts about Adam using the china mugs she liked. They were Royal Albert; she’d bought them as seconds from a shop in London’s Piccadilly. He’d given her the white one with roses and taken pale blue with birds for himself. He knew how she took her coffee from the photoshoots they’d done together.
He held his left hand over hers on the mug until he was certain she was holding on securely and capable of lifting it to her lips. Then he was silent. Sipping his drink, watching her over the rim as she tried to drink.
‘You were close?’ he asked eventually.
She nodded. Despite the hot fluid, her teeth chattered, clicking on the rim of the mug. He slipped off the denim shirt he was wearing over his T-shirt and dropped it around her shoulders but even this warmth he tried to lend her seemed to simply drain away, leaving her shivering so hard it felt as if the sofa was vibrating.
‘Was he …’ He hesitated. ‘Was Giorgio the one?’
She nodded, again. Nodding too hard, like a child.
He breathed out a sigh and ran his hand over his hair. ‘So this is a terrible shock. I’m so sorry.’
For several moments she couldn’t speak, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe. It was as if a huge sob had turned to concrete in her throat. Giorgio! Oh Giorgio, Giorgio. Her eyes closed against dancing dots, red and black. Gradually, the sensation receded and her airway cleared.
She lifted her eyes to his. ‘This wasn’t entirely unanticipated.’ She dragged in a deep, quivering breath and said the word she’d refused to use until now, substituting the more comforting ‘unconscious’. ‘Giorgio was in a coma.’
Chapter Twelve
The words revolved around the hushed room.
Outside, children called to one another, a dog barked, a woman laughed.
She could almost feel Adam’s shock as she ploughed on. ‘The doctors had classified him as in a persistent vegetative state. I can give you chapter and verse on coma and PVS, how it’s decided what constitutes what, which expert disagrees with which. The way the patient can twitch, grimace or groan without stimulus but react not at all to what’s going on around him. I’ve read up on it.’ A lot. Exhaustively. Absorbed the results of this test case, that campaign, what the Pope said about how victims must be cared for. ‘He had a diving accident. It’s why I came back here.’
Those months since Giorgio had been airlifted to St Luke’s Hospital from the dive site at Ghar Lapsi, since Charlie Galea had turned up at her flat because he knew she had to be told, seemed both like only yesterday … and a lifetime ago.
All the if-onlys came crashing back. ‘If only I’d been Giorgio’s diving buddy that day, it could have been different. I’m more experienced and maybe I would have realised a motor craft was approaching. You can usually hear a whine from the engine and judge its proximity.’ Conscious that she’d begun babbling all the old stuff she’d told herself so many times she made herself take another of those long breaths. ‘But he surfaced and a jet ski hit him. There was a surface marker buoy to warn that there were divers down but some jet skiers are menaces. They aren’t licensed or safety trained – they just buy the damned machine and hurl themselves about.’
‘What happened to the jet skier?’ His voice echoed with compassion and she realised that his good hand had taken hers.
Bitterly, she laughed. ‘Nothing. He ran away in the confusion. You’d think you’d be safe from them at Ghar Lapsi – it’s a steep descent to the sea and it would be murder to carry a bloody jet ski down the steps. It’s not as if it were Mellieha Bay, a proper beach, where surface water sports are common. Accidents there are not unheard of – there was a girl killed last year. But some hooray had sailed his gin palace out from the yacht marina and anchored off Ghar Lapsi. Big boats often carry jet skis. The idiots came pounding in towards shore. They wanted to see the caves, I suppose. “Ghar” means cave. Probably they had no idea it was a dive site or that they shouldn’t come within the arm of rocks. Morons.’
She stared into her now empty coffee cup. ‘I finally got in to see Giorgio before I came home.’ She drew in a quavering breath. ‘To all intents and purposes, he’d gone. The damage where the jet ski hit his head was too much. He was a husk and only the machinery was keeping him breathing. His eyes were lifeless. So I left the island. Couldn’t bear to stay.’
‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was rich with sympathy.
Freeing her hand from his she jumped up to pace the room. ‘Before he met me, Giorgio didn’t dive. If not for me, he’d never have had the accident. He’d still be alive, breathing, laughing, smiling—’ Then she was crying, dry, painful sobs that scoured her throat and pleated her chest.
Warm arms threaded around her and her head fell forward onto Adam’s shoulder, as she disproved her previous resolve to shed no tears for Giorgio and cried out the questions those left behind have always asked. ‘Why? Why him? Why did he have to surface right there, right that instant? A few seconds more, a few seconds less. That’s all he needed. And I should have been there.’
The room grew dark around them.
Adam let her cry out her anguish in the depths of the sofa, fetching her a glass of water to ease her aching throat and a fat kitchen roll to absorb her tears. He squatted down beside her. ‘Shall I fetch someone to be with you? Your mother?’
She blew her nose. ‘Too old and frail.’
‘Your sister?’
She managed a wobbly smile. ‘Molly’s wonderful but I’m not sure I can bear her particular brand of sympathy at the moment. She’s a bit full-on.’
He hesitated before saying, ‘Then I’ll stay. I’d feel like hell, going home and leaving you like this.’
‘I’ve stopped crying. I’ll be all right.
’ But she couldn’t get the words out without her face crumpling anew.
He made a deep noise of concern. ‘I’ll sleep down here, just so you’re not alone in the house, tonight. I couldn’t just abandon you.’
She blew her nose for the millionth time. A heap of damp tissues was building on the carpet at her feet. No doubt it went attractively with a red nose and swollen eyes. ‘I’m going to get drunk. Obliterate the pain.’
‘Good idea.’ Evidently choosing to view this as an invitation, he pulled the curtains and switched on a light. ‘What booze have you got?’
She’d expected him to try to dissuade her rather than join in but, still trumpeting into a tissue, she led him through to the kitchen where they located a bottle of whisky in the fridge and two bottles of red wine in the under-stairs cupboard. He also discovered a tin of biscuits that Molly had given as a welcome-back-into-your-home gift and, back on the sofa, cajoled her into nibbling her way through two shortcakes. Then they began on the whisky, sloshing the twinkling amber brew into Judith’s favourite cut-glass tumblers that were heavy at the base and fragile at the rim. Seated side by side on the sofa, they propped their feet on the coffee table.
Judith tossed back her first glassful and squeaked a gasp at the scorching in her throat.
‘You unman me. Now I’ll have to do the same.’ Adam threw his back, too, then had to wipe his eyes on the back of his hand.
She poured refills, and sniffed. ‘Life is sometimes very crappy.’
‘Absolutely.’ His voice was deeper than usual, hoarse from the whisky.
For the millionth time, Judith blew her nose. ‘He didn’t deserve to die. He had a lot of life left.’
Adam had kicked his shoes off and his feet alongside hers on the table were encased in black ribbed socks without holes or pulls. It occurred to her that he was a comfortable person to be in proximity to; nothing about him was worn or stale. His shoulder touched hers just barely. It was comforting.
She groaned, twisting her whisky tumbler in her hand. When she began anew with, ‘I should have been with him that day, I could’ve—’
He interrupted her, turning in his seat so he could snare her with his gaze. ‘Did you make him happy? Were you good together?’
She thought of Giorgio’s face, the smile that had felt as if it were only for her, the way his dark eyes became darker as he pulled her into his arms. She nodded, biting her lip.
‘Then don’t “if only”,’ he suggested gently. ‘It’s pointless. If you loved each other, be glad. He chose to go diving without you that day and you can’t change his choice.’
It wasn’t bad advice. But so difficult to follow! Sombrely, she poured more whisky. When that had gone, she poured some more, talking incessantly about Malta and Giorgio, pouring it all out as she had done to no one else.
She wasn’t sleepy. She might be hollowed out and exhausted, aching with sorrow, but she felt as if she’d never sleep again. She could talk all night. She could tell Adam everything and anything that came into her head. Adam yawned occasionally but Judith just drank steadily, watching the room turn to blurs, feeling her brain sloshing gently within her skull, hearing her voice stretching and contracting as her tongue struggled to cope with S and other difficult letters. She told him about the lack of divorce in Malta – although people were trying to change that – and the last time she’d seen Giorgio in his hospital room. By the time she reached the confrontation with Maria Zammit her ears were hearing Adam’s replies slowly, making his voice thin and distant.
‘Why wouldn’t Giorgio’s family let you into the hospital?’ he asked.
She sighed. ‘I have no status in their eyes. Giorgio’s been separated from his wife for fourteen years but to them, and many others in Malta, marriage is for life.’
‘So they acknowledged only Giorgio’s wife who he hadn’t lived with for years, even when he was so injured?’ His voice held a note of disbelief.
She nodded. ‘It was all about respectability. Maria, Giorgio’s mother, was particularly hot on that. When Giorgio invited his parents to dinner and then produced me, Maria simply walked out. Agnello, his dad, shook his head and asked Giorgio why he had to hurt his mother like that – he had a wife till death, not till the marriage became difficult. After that, we carried on our relationship discreetly. Giorgio didn’t want to cause any more pain to his family than necessary.’
Adam shook his head, probably trying to clear it of whisky fumes. ‘He let you be treated like a dirty secret?’
She ran her tongue reflectively along the hard, thin rim of her glass. A dirty secret? It was an unusually blunt term, for Adam, but she could see why he’d say it. ‘I suppose so,’ she admitted. ‘I was angry, in the beginning. But if we’d tried to force the issue, what would we have achieved? We’d have been together, but Giorgio would’ve been estranged from his family, possibly including his two daughters. I couldn’t be responsible for that so I went along with the charade. I never met the kids,’ she added.
‘I see.’ But Adam pulled a face as if the idea were sour.
She sighed. ‘Don’t be too judgemental; his family were acting on what they believed in. In their eyes, I was a despicable interloper. They’re not alone in their attitudes – my own mother wasn’t thrilled when I left Tom. Mum also thinks marriage is for life and she was very tight-lipped about me ending things.’
He opened his eyes wide. ‘I’m getting confused about your relationships. You told me once you’d been married but I’d forgotten. Was that to Tom?’
‘I like to forget it, too, but, yes, I was married to Tom until he fell for Liza and I shipped out. It’s because of Tom that I have my lovely stepson, Kieran,’ she reminded him.
‘Tom must be stupid.’ He swirled whisky unsteadily in the depths of his crystal glass. ‘But at least you have someone else to blame for the break-up of your marriage. I don’t.’ He was in jeans today and his chestnut hair, in wings above his ears, fell over his eye, making him look laid back.
She wriggled to get more comfortable, slanting herself into the corner to face him. She remembered that he knew one or two things about separation and divorce. ‘Want to tell me about your downfall? I’ve done all the soul-baring till now.’ She’d drunk far too much to worry about being nosy.
He glugged some whisky, and reopened the biscuit tin. He’d been steadily feeding her biscuits without actually saying she needed to put something inside her stomach other than booze. After the shortcake, she’d eaten two bourbons, two custard creams and a digestive. Because he shook the tin at her again, she chose a ginger nut and a chocolate chip cookie then just held one in either hand with no appetite to eat them.
‘Shelley and I were married for a long time. Since I was twenty-one.’ He shrugged. ‘We started out as good friends – and we are still. Friendship turned out not to be enough.’ He gesticulated towards her with his chocolate digestive. ‘It wasn’t the love you’ve talked about, you and Giorgio. There was a lot of affection and when she brought the subject of marriage up it felt like a logical step. And I’d be able to sleep with her every night, which, frankly, was appealing. I suppose I mistook affection for love.’ He creased his brow. ‘Or it probably was love but not the right sort, the deep sort.’
She sniffed and blew her nose again. Her throat felt as if it were lined with hay and her eyes with sand. ‘But she must’ve thought she loved you, or she wouldn’t have wanted marriage.’
His eyes slid sideways, fastening themselves on her through a narrowing slit between his lids. ‘Not necessarily. I think we were young and young girls twenty-five years ago, in the eighties, operated on a fixed programme. If they went out with someone for a certain length of time, they got engaged. They got the sparkly ring and the party – they were the centre of attention.’
It was true, that had been the norm. Judith had been thirty before she married, when the nineties had just begun, and some of her contemporaries had been on their second marriage already by then.
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��And she’s always joked that it was because “Shelley Leblond” sounded glamorous and was a big improvement on Shelly Dobben, which sounded like a cart horse.’
‘Surely she didn’t marry you just for a cool name?’ Judith couldn’t imagine that. She’d have changed her name via Deed sooner than do so.
He shrugged. ‘She’s artistic. An interior designer. Things like that are important to her.’
As the biscuits she clutched were getting sticky, Judith put them down on the table and tried to brush crumbs from her fingers. The crumbs shot in all directions and some worked their way between the buttons of her grey-green top. She tried to flick them out with her fingers but stopped when she realised he was watching. It felt odd to be ferreting around her boobs with his gaze on her. ‘So did one of you find someone else?’ she queried.
He drew his eyes back up to her face. ‘No. But when I had my accident, Shelley found the whole thing very difficult.’
Judith shook her spinning head, trying to clear it, feeling that what he was telling her was important and required her to concentrate. ‘How do you mean?’
His eyes flattened and became dark. ‘She has a problem with ugliness.’
Chapter Thirteen
In those few, carefully chosen words, Judith caught a glimpse of his pain.
He went on, ‘Simply put, she couldn’t bear the sight of my hand. And as for touching her – forget it!’ He laughed, mirthlessly. ‘My occupational therapist warned me that I might need to “rethink my position in the marital bed” and “get used to doing things with the left hand that had always been done with the right”. Fat chance of that, as it turned out – Shelley didn’t want me anywhere near her.’
With a dart of anger towards the unknown Shelley Dobben Leblond, Judith deposited her whisky glass on the table with a thump. She enunciated carefully. ‘That’s not nice. Not supportive.’ She struggled for what she was trying to say. ‘Not wife-like.’
He stirred restlessly. ‘At least she was honest. Better that she told me candidly that she didn’t want to sleep with me any more. Can you imagine how humiliating it would have been to realise she was suffering in silence? Pitying me? Gritting her teeth but shrinking inside?’
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