‘No, of course not,’ she murmured as he turned his face into her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. ‘You were always gentle with me. That was why I couldn’t understand it. But then I thought about the cough that wouldn’t go, and I’d had a headache all Sunday and I was so tired all the time. Again, I thought, because of being awake at night, but we’d dozed all day, too, so it was silly. I thought it might be because I was so upset about my parents, but when I went to see them my mother took one look at me and burst into tears and told me I looked dreadful, and it was the first time I’d looked in the mirror for days, and I was chalk white under my tan, and I had black circles, and I knew then that it was more than that, that something must be dreadfully wrong.’
‘Was that when you went home to Bath?’
She shook her head. ‘No. No, that was later, after…’ She trailed off, and felt his arms tighten around her in silent support.
‘Later?’
‘My parents took me straight to see Phil Tremayne, Nick’s brother, and insisted he see me immediately. He took one look at me and sent me straight to the hospital.’
‘On the Monday morning.’
‘Yes. We got there—oh, I suppose it was about tenthirty? And they did the bloods and asked me to wait, and then the consultant haematologist called us into his room and told me he wanted to do a bone-marrow biopsy because he thought I had leukaemia.’
She felt the tension in him ratchet up a notch. ‘And?’
She closed her eyes, but she could still see everything—her parents’ faces, the kind, professional sympathy of the haematologist, the room where they took her for the bone-marrow aspiration.
‘He did it straight away,’ she said, oblivious to the tears that were trickling down her cheeks, ‘and by three I had my diagnosis—acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. And the treatment was going to take months, so obviously we couldn’t stay in Cornwall, because my father would have to go back to work and, anyway, Bath has a brilliant treatment unit, so they packed everything up into the car, and I wrote you the note,’ she said, trying hard to hold it together because writing that letter had been the hardest thing she’d had to do at that, oh, so difficult time, ‘and we dropped it into the beach house on the way home.’
‘But—why?’ he asked, his voice cracking. ‘Why didn’t you find me and tell me? I would have come with you. Why shut me out, Gemz? I needed to be with you, I would have stood by you, come with you to the hospital, held your hand, stayed at your bedside.’
‘Of course you would,’ she said sadly, hating the anguish in his voice and wondering even now if she’d do the same thing all over again, for him. ‘But you wouldn’t have gone to uni, and you would have sacrificed your chances of a medical career for me, and I couldn’t let you do that. I loved you too much to take that away from you.’
He shook his head. ‘We could have worked it out. I could have gone to uni in Bristol, just as I did, and visited you every day. I came to see you—did you know? Your parents told me you didn’t want to see me, and they turned me away.’
She nodded miserably. ‘I told them to.’
He stiffened and turned his head so she could see his eyes. ‘What? You were there?’
She nodded again. ‘In the sitting room. I saw you outside, and I wanted you so badly, Sam,’ she said, unable to hold back the tears. ‘I wanted you to hold me, to tell me it was all going to be all right, but it wouldn’t have been fair, and I looked so awful—I’d lost my hair again, and I was so thin, and I was feeling really sick, and I knew if you saw me you’d be angry with me for not telling you, and I couldn’t cope with it.’
‘No,’ he breathed raggedly, folding her against his heart. ‘Oh, no, my love, no. I would have held you. I wouldn’t have cared about your hair, or how thin you were or how awful you looked, and I wouldn’t have been angry.’
‘You were today.’
He sighed and closed his eyes. ‘I know. But that was different. Today I was angry because you’d taken away that choice from me, the choice I’d already made to be with you, to support you when things went wrong. But back then—Gemz, I made those vows meaning them, and I would have stood by you. It was a real commitment, and it didn’t matter that I was only young. I meant every word, and I meant it for ever.’
‘Did you? Or was it only because you wanted to sleep with me and I wouldn’t let you if we weren’t married?’
He exhaled sharply. ‘Is that what you thought? That I married you for sex?’ he asked, his voice horrified. ‘Dear God, Gemma—sex doesn’t matter that much.’
‘It does if you’re nineteen and impulsive. I thought it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing, a crazy idea. I thought you’d get over me. I really thought you would, that it had probably only been about sex—well at least, for you.’
He shook his head emphatically. ‘No! If I’d wanted sex, I’d have found it somewhere. But I’d already waited a year for you. All that last year, from the moment I met you, there was no one else—and there hasn’t been, in all this time. No one. Because you’re the only woman I want…’
His voice cracked again, and he rested his head against hers and dragged in a breath. ‘So what happened after the bone-marrow aspiration?’
‘We went back to Bath, and I was admitted the following morning. I had four cycles of chemo, over the next five months. I was meant to have five, but they couldn’t give me the last one because my immune system was so knocked off that it was taking too long to recover each time, and they were afraid they’d wipe it out completely, so they stopped, but I was ready to stop.’
He hung on tight, and she hung on back, remembering the time she would really, really rather forget.
‘Was it horrendous?’
‘Not horrendous,’ she said honestly, ‘but not good. I felt sick—not horrifically, but I had a sore mouth, and so I didn’t really want to eat or drink, so not being hungry was probably a bonus. And I was tired—so, so tired. I slept most of the time. And of course I lost my hair, and every time it started to grow back again, I’d have to go back in and have another cycle and it would fall out again. I’d go in for the infusion, then home for forty-eight hours, then back in, in isolation, until my bone marrow had recovered, then I’d have a week or two at home before the next time. And they checked my bone marrow every time, and after the first cycle I was in remission, which is what they expect, but they have to go on to make sure they’ve got every last cell.’
‘And have they?’ he asked, and she could feel the tension building in him as he waited for her reply.
‘Yes. I’ve been clear ever since, and they gave me the all-clear at five years, but they still test me every year—it’s only a blood test, but they keep checking, and they’ll do that for the rest of my life.’
‘So it never goes away? The fear, the possibility of it returning?’
‘Not really,’ she said, thinking about it. ‘I don’t tend to dwell on it, but I suppose it’s always there, and something like little Liam today brings it all right back.’ She sighed. ‘Poor Siobhan. I always thought my parents had a harder time of it than I did, especially my mother. It’s really tough on a mother. I can’t imagine what it must be like.’ And she might never have the chance to find out…
‘So what will happen to Liam? Will it be the same?’
‘Pretty much, I expect. They’ll do the bone-marrow aspiration tomorrow, and then if that confirms it’s ALL, they’d do other tests to establish exactly which sort, because that determines which drugs they use to target it. And he’ll have a series of treatments in a complex schedule over the next couple of years—it’s a longer treatment for children, but the hospital staff will get them through it. They’re fantastic. The nurses were brilliant to me.’
‘Is that why you went into nursing? You said the other day you lived with nurses for a while—is that what you meant? In the hospital?’ he asked, as if it had been puzzling him and he’d suddenly worked it out, and she nodded.
‘Mmm. I hardly saw the docto
rs, really, but the nurses were there with me all the time, hands-on and much more involved with my daily care, and it just seemed—I don’t know, more me, really. And it’s nothing to do with being clever. Everybody thinks if you’re clever enough you should be a doctor and not a nurse, but it’s so different, and you have to be clever to be a decent nurse especially these days, it’s got so complicated.’
‘You’re a brilliant nurse,’ he said softly. ‘Watching you today with Liam, knowing something was wrong but not knowing what, but just watching you with him, the way you got that blood from him when he was clearly terrified, but you just distracted him with the colour thing and he was too busy trying to prove you wrong to notice. And the way you dealt with the parents—you were fantastic. I’m not surprised she came to see you. I just wonder that they all don’t.’
‘Well, today was a little different. I’m not that nice to all of them.’ She laughed, but he just smiled.
‘I bet you are. It’s not in your nature to be nasty to anyone. You were even nice to Gary Lovelace.’
‘So were you.’
He gave a soft laugh. ‘Let’s face it, life was doing a pretty good job of having a go at him at that point, I didn’t need to do it, too.’
‘No.’
He held her quietly for a while, while she lay in his arms and let all the hurt seep away, and then he lowered his head and kissed her. ‘Come to bed,’ he murmured. ‘I want to make love to you.’
It was dark in the bedroom, the only light the pale shimmer of the moon across the sea in the distance, and they lay snuggled together, her head on his shoulder—the right shoulder, the one that didn’t hurt—and his left hand was trailing softly over her, his little finger stroking her skin, because he could still feel with that side of his hand and he wanted to feel her, needed to feel her, to make up for all the time they’d lost.
She was so soft, her skin like silk, and he turned his head and kissed her tenderly. ‘I love you,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you. You do believe me when I say I would have been, don’t you?’
Gemma nodded. ‘I know, and I’m so sorry I shut you out, but I did it for you, Sam, you have to believe that. You had your whole life, your career ahead of you. You’d worked so hard for it, your life had already been hard enough. You’d had your mother depending on you, your sisters and your little brother—for the first time since your early teens you were going to be free to do what you wanted to do, so how could I ask you to take me on as well? I couldn’t burden you, Sam. It wouldn’t have been fair.’
He’d never thought of it like that, and never would. He would never have walked away, because it—she—would never have been a burden. ‘It was my choice. It should have been my choice, Gemma.’
‘I know. I can see that now, and I let you down, because I didn’t understand about love then. And if I’d told you, we could have been together, then you wouldn’t have ended up in Africa, and you wouldn’t have been blown up and so badly hurt.’
‘I’m all right,’ he said, but she shook her head, her eyes filling with tears.
‘No, you’re not. And you won’t be, unlike me. Your leg’s always sore, your shoulder hurts if you move it too far out of its comfortable range, your hand can’t feel properly, so it makes your job and everything else difficult.’
‘And does that worry you?’
‘What?’
‘Does it worry you? That I’m—disabled?’
‘You’re not disabled! Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘I am. You said it yourself. My ankle will never be right, my leg will never be right, I’ll always have problems with my shoulder and permanent sensory deficit in my hand which affects what I can do career-wise—but would that stop you wanting to be with me? Would it make you walk away?’
She stared at him, horrified that he should even think it. ‘Sam, of course not!’
‘Then why did you think that I wouldn’t want to be with you? You were ill, Gemz. You could have died, and you denied me the chance to support you, to be with you.’
‘For you! And because of that, you went to Africa and got blown up.’
‘Because of my own stupid fault! The accident was all my fault, I should have taken more care. I had a duty to look after myself, and I failed. It’s not your fault that I was blown up, I should have paid attention. And I’m fine, I can live with it, but I can’t live without you, and I’m never letting you go again, whatever the future holds for us, because I can’t live without you. I need you so much.’
He turned her into his arms and held her tight. ‘Promise me you’ll stay with me. I can’t lose you again. I just can’t…’
His voice broke, and he felt the tears he’d held back for so long forcing their way out past his defences, but it didn’t matter because Gemma was holding him, and telling him it was all right, and she was crying, too, her tears hot on his shoulder, like healing rivers taking away the pain in his heart and filling it with love.
But she couldn’t promise this. Not yet. Not before he knew it all. ‘Sam, it may come back,’ she warned tearfully, easing away so she could look at him.
His gaze didn’t waver. ‘I know.’
‘I may die. I don’t think so, and I’m clear, but there’s no guarantee. And we may never have children—because of the chemo. And if that’s important to you, you need to know that there’s a real possibility I’m sterile. You need time to think about it, to work out what you want from a marriage, because I couldn’t bear it if we got back together again now and then a few years down the line you changed your mind because we couldn’t have children and you realised you wanted them more than me after all.’
‘No. No way. Of course I want children with you—but that’s the key. With you. And if you’re clear, you’re no more likely to get it back than I am. That’s not going to change my mind, my darling. None of that is going to change how I feel about you. Children are optional. You’re not. I need you—for as long as we’ve got together, I need you.’
‘Oh, Sam.’ She reached up and cradled his rough, stubbled face in her hand, feeling the rasp of it against her palm, real and solid. Her Sam. ‘I need you, too,’ she said unsteadily, tears falling again, ‘and I’ve missed you so much.’
‘No more,’ he said, drawing her back against his chest so she could hear the steady, even beat of his heart beneath her ear. ‘That’s all finished now. We’re starting again.’
For a moment they lay in silence, simply holding each other and treasuring the contact, then she said softly, ‘Sam—can we do it properly this time? Have a church wedding?’
He gave a low chuckle. ‘But we’re still married, sweetheart. We don’t need to get married again.’
She tipped her head back. ‘I know, but—I’d just like to do it properly, with our families, and our friends.’
He smiled. ‘In the church, I suppose?’
‘Can we? Have a church blessing?’
‘If that’s what you’d like.’
‘It is—on our wedding anniversary,’ she said, getting into it, because not having a proper wedding with their loved ones there to hear their vows in public was one of the things she’d always regretted. ‘Can we do that?’
‘Sure. And maybe this time, when I say my vows, you’ll trust me enough to believe me.’
‘Oh, Sam, I’m so sorry,’ she said, filled with endless regret.
‘I know. So am I. But we’re getting another chance, so let’s use it wisely, and talk to each other. Promise?’
She smiled at him, her eyes shining. ‘I promise.’
Their wedding anniversary dawned bright and clear, a glorious sunny day in early August.
They had breakfast together on the deck, watching the sun rise, and then she went to have a shower—and ended up with company, Sam smiling that sexy, lazy smile and lathering his hands and washing her, oh, so thoroughly all over, until she could hardly stand, and then carrying her back to bed and loving her until she came apart all over again, taking
him with her.
And then she smiled at him and said, ‘I’ve got something to give you.’
‘A wedding anniversary present?’ he said, puzzled when she went into the bathroom, but then she came out with a little white stick in her hand and gave it to him.
A pregnancy test stick. And it was positive.
He felt his eyes fill with tears, and he drew her into his arms and held her close, wondering why the hell being so happy should make him want to cry. But these last few months they’d shed a lot of tears together, for all the time they’d lost, and these—these were good tears.
‘I can’t wait to see you with our baby,’ she said. ‘You’ll be such a good father, Sam. We’re going to have a very lucky child.’
‘With a mother like you, it can’t fail,’ he said, hugging her hard and hanging on.
And then they were late, and she had so much to do she began to panic, and she sent him away.
‘Go! Go on, I want to do this properly, you’ll have to wait for me in the church, and Lauren’s going to come and help me dress, so scoot!’
He scooted, and went home to his mother’s house and found her dithering in a panic because he wasn’t dressed.
‘You’ll be late!’ she scolded, back to herself now, and he hugged her and grinned at Jamie and ran an eye over his suit.
‘Very smart. Never thought I’d see you in tails.’
‘It’s that woman you married, wanting to do everything properly,’ he said with a grin. ‘Go on, go and change or you’ll be late.’
‘You’re beginning to sound like Mum,’ he said drily, but he went and changed, because he couldn’t get there quick enough.
They walked up, leaving a reluctant Digger behind, and went through the little lychgate to where Jeff Saunders, the new vicar who’d replaced Daniel Kenner, was waiting for them.
And the church was packed, to his surprise. Gemma’s parents were waiting in the porch for him, and Gemma’s mother came up to him and hugged him.
‘I’m so sorry I sent you away. Please forgive me,’ she said, and he felt his eyes fill and hugged her back hard.
Caroline Anderson, Anne Fraser, Kate Hardy, Margaret McDonagh Page 15