by Ruth Dugdall
‘What the fuck does all that beeping mean?’
The nurse gives Dad a broad smile that digs into her thick foundation, and I wonder if the make-up is a mask to help her perform around distressed people. ‘All her vital signs are being measured, Mr Hawke. The bullet caused a bleed on her brain, which the surgeon managed to cauterise, and she has a fractured skull. That’s why she’s in an induced coma. We’re also using ice packs to keep her body temperature low to slow her metabolism.’
‘Is she in pain?’ I ask, still standing back.
Dad looks at me then, wide-eyed, as if he’d forgotten I was there, then he turns back to the nurse.
‘Well, is she?’ Dad demands, ignoring the nurse’s advice, his hand clenched.
Lauren hesitates. Her face is set in a forced half-smile. ‘The drip includes morphine, so she almost certainly isn’t. We really can’t be sure, when someone’s in a coma, how much they do feel. But she was lucky, Mr Hawke. If the bullet had travelled an inch to the right she’d have died.’
‘You call that luck?’ he growls. ‘This is a nightmare.’
We sit together in the hot room. Dad by the window, me by the door, you in the bed. I’m so exhausted by all that’s happened, I can’t fight it any more. I close my eyes and dip into sleep so quickly it’s as though I’ve been anaesthetised.
‘Cassandra? Sweetheart, wake up.’
I open my eyes, finally he’s here: Daniel. His dark hair falls into his brown eyes, he wraps me in his arms, and it feels like medicine. He’s wearing his usual outfit – loose navy joggers and a polo shirt with the Samphire Master logo. This is the man who cured you, then me. I’ve never needed him more than now.
‘Oh, darling, you poor thing. I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier, but I’m here now. Everything’s going to be okay.’
I believe him: he cures diseases when doctors have given up hope. If anyone can help us through this, it’s him. I sink into him, his minty, freshly showered scent, give in to what is being offered. With his arms around me, the world feels safer.
‘Can you help her out of any pain, Dan? Maybe some reiki healing?’
He releases me gently and moves to the bed, reaches a hand and places it on your leg, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, he says, ‘I can feel her fighting to stay with us. There was a moment I thought we’d lose her.’
‘When?’ My question comes from nowhere conscious.
‘Hmm?’ He lifts his eyes to meet mine, and I repeat the question.
‘When did you think we’d lose her?’
‘When she was in the operating theatre, of course.’
‘But you weren’t even here!’
He frowns, reaches forward so his hand cups my chin and I feel weak at his proximity. God help me, I love this man.
‘Your mum and I have a connection, Cass. I’ve been with you in spirit the whole time. That’s why I called Clive and asked him to come – I knew you needed support. But I had things to sort out: I did a pre-record of the radio show so I can be with you without interruption.’
He studies the bruises on your neck, the dressings on your head and throat where blood has seeped through, but he doesn’t seem shocked, just curious. Daniel always keeps his demeanour. I’ve never seen him cry and I’ve never heard him shout – he has a quiet authority that people respond to instinctively. It’s one of the many reasons I fell in love with him: my dizzy admiration for a personality trait I so completely lack.
Finally, he turns his attention back to me. The warmth in his brown eyes is so soothing, it’s almost indecent.
‘So,’ I finally say, ‘what was the pre-record?’
‘I interviewed a woman who has a brain tumour. The doctors believe she’s only got weeks to live, but they’re wrong. She’s healing.’ He says this neutrally, as if it isn’t a miracle, but there are people in Suffolk who owe him their lives. Each Christmas, we get gift hampers from his patients. He gets stopped in the streets by grateful relatives wanting to shake his hand. One of the people he saved was the female track cyclist who won triple gold at the last Olympics, one of them was me. ‘Then I drove to Norfolk, to see Victoria and explain that she wouldn’t be coming home for half-term after all. I thought it best to keep everything as normal as possible, so I took her and Dawn to that American diner they like so much. I hated to think of you going through everything here on your own, but I knew I had to do what was best for the family.’
Even though I’m being unreasonable, given how busy he’s been, I still feel he should have been with me. I punish him by saying, ‘Clive gave me some Prozac and some other drug. I don’t know what.’
Daniel respects Clive, and understands the need for psychiatry alongside his holistic approach, but he doesn’t approve of drugs. His therapy includes meditation and herbal remedies – Suffolk recipes that use samphire and go back to the Iceni. He’s cured everything from infertility to cancer, that’s why he has a regular show on Radio Suffolk, why the Studio is doing so well, and why Samphire Health Spa is such a wonderful idea. You believed that too, Mum, until last night.
‘Have the tablets helped, love?’ he asks, doubtfully.
‘It’s too early to say.’ Though I’m not crying, so something worked – maybe some trazodone made it to my bloodstream before I purged. ‘I feel tired, a bit flattened.’
‘I’m going to take you home to get some sleep,’ he says with determination, ‘then from tomorrow I’m putting you on my Samphire Strength juice programme. You’ve been through a traumatic experience: you need to heal from the inside out.’
I feel like one of his clients again, swept up in his conviction that he knows exactly what’s right for me. His hand covers mine, and I feel steadied.
Oh, Mum, look at you: pale face, half-covered by a mask, black hair matted with dried blood. You don’t move, only your eyelids flicker.
‘How can I leave her?’
‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘I promise it will all work out just fine.’
7
Cassandra
Back home, in our semi in a cul-de-sac on the edge of Greater Kenley, I wonder how everything can seem so perfect. Cream carpets, white walls, everything neat and in its place. How can the fact that you’re fighting for your life in hospital mean nothing here?
Daniel and I moved here when Victoria was a baby, just as a stepping stone. The longer-term plan has always been to open a health spa, so Daniel can help even more people. A dream you shared, and were helping to make a reality, at least until yesterday evening.
But if the house looks the same, the people within it are changed. Dad hasn’t spoken once since we left the hospital. He barely seems to know where he is. He sinks heavily into an armchair, his face as grey as his hair, his eyes half-closed with fatigue. He’s never seemed old before, as if his sixty-odd years have suddenly caught up with him in a matter of hours, showing in the lines on his jowls, the shadows under his eyes. Even after the stroke he didn’t look like this, it was only his right side that was affected, and I notice how he cups his right hand protectively to his chest as though the injury were new.
‘Oh, Dad . . .’ Unable to stand the tension any longer, I reach out to hug him, because that seems the right thing to do – it’s what they’d do in films – but he holds up his left hand to stop me.
‘That’s enough, Cassandra.’
He never could bear signs of affection – any love in his gnarly heart he reserved for you. He’s a man of few words and even fewer touches, but still I ache with longing for comfort. He won’t give any and he certainly doesn’t want mine. I don’t realise I’m crying until I feel the tears on my cheeks.
‘Come here, love.’ Daniel reaches for me, just as moments ago I reached for Dad, and I fall into his embrace. I catch the scent of another woman on his skin, but that’s not unusual. He works closely with women, their perfume is often on his clothes, but I trust him. Daniel works intimately with his clients. In the past, the boundaries got blurred. Like that Olymp
ian cyclist, who he healed so she could go on and win triple gold? She became his lover. They were going through a messy separation when he started working with me. I too was his client and then his lover. So sometimes I wonder about whoever he’s curing now, whether he’s attracted to them, even though he assures me I’m being silly. Jealousy is one of my demons. I’ve fought hard to master it, but sometimes I relapse.
‘Hector, you’re welcome to stay on the futon in the spare room,’ Daniel says, ‘just until the police finish their investigation at the farm.’
Dad doesn’t even thank him, but the spare room is where Daniel meditates every day. It’s where he keeps his folk art from India, propped against a wall, waiting until the Spa is open and he can put it on display. Where his golden Buddha lives, waiting serenely for its rightful home. The sanguine room is a small indication of what the Spa will look like, and I know it’s a sacrifice for him to give it up, even for a few nights. But Dad must stay with us, no one’s allowed at the farm while the police check that nothing suspicious took place.
Then I realise I don’t know where the dog is. In my feeble state, I can’t even remember his name. ‘Where’s the spaniel?’
‘Jet’s fine, love. Ash went to the farm a while ago to check on everything, and there’s a policeman watching the house. He told Ash a neighbour had taken Jet.’
Dad looks up. ‘What neighbour?’
‘Philip Godwin,’ Daniel says, and they exchange a look. Godwin is the head teacher at the local school, has been since I attended it. He’s also leading the campaign against the development plans, and he was at the farm yesterday, but they’re not friends. It would be hard to be friends with a man like Philip Godwin.
‘Well, if he knows, so will the whole village,’ says Dad. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t call the press.’
Daniel pulls a disgusted face. ‘He probably has Alfie Avon on speed dial. If he gets the notion that Maya’s suicide attempt is anything to do with the farm, he’ll use it for Save Our Countryside. No scruples, that man.’
Dad bristles. ‘It’s my campaign too, Dan. That’s why I’m working with Godwin. To protect the land.’
‘Which I always said was a bad idea.’ Daniel says it softly, but there’s steel behind each word. The farm’s future is important to him, we’ve got a stake in what happens – or at least we thought we did. ‘My radio show has a growing following, people need healing and the samphire is a miracle. The Spa is the key to saving our land: that’s the future.’
‘That land has been farmed on since the Iceni and you want to turn it into a spa! I’m working with Godwin, trying to get the Port Authority to see reason. Godwin invited Dave Feakes to a shoot yesterday, to show him what would be lost if Innocence Lane becomes a lorry park.’
Daniel is irritated. I can see the rising rhythm of his breathing, but he controls it well.
‘For God’s sake, Hector, the Port Authority want the farm because it’s a convenient location. You can’t change their minds with a few hot toddies and some dead birds! And Godwin doesn’t care about what’s right for you. I’ve told you before, Samphire Health Spa would attract a new clientele, and the publicity from the healing programmes would force the council to protect our land and the samphire growing there . . .’
‘It don’t matter what either of us want, do it?’ Dad’s voice is raised and his face is flushed with anger. ‘Maya agreed to sell the farm over to ’em anyway.’
Daniel breathes out deeply, trying to keep his own fury in check. He knows what happened yesterday. I called him from my car and told him that you’d decided to sell, but this is the first time it’s been mentioned.
‘A verbal agreement means nothing.’ He takes another deep breath and closes his eyes, calming his brain. ‘Now isn’t the time to talk about this, Hector. We should all get some sleep.’
Sleep. It’s a call to another place, somewhere I long to visit. I switch off and let the words float around me, thinking how much I want to lie down and close my eyes.
Daniel carries me upstairs, his strong arms cradling me as though I weigh nothing.
‘It’s all changed now,’ I say, sleepy and confused, my brain leaden with drug-induced lethargy, but trying to remember all that has happened in just a few hours, to make sense of it. Everyone is telling me you tried to kill yourself, but I can’t believe that. Yesterday I had an episode, a moment of delusion when oblivion seemed tempting, and you were so angry, Mum, so furious at my weakness, that I can’t believe you succumbed to the same flaw just a few hours later. I’m the weak one, not you. I need Daniel to heal me again.
‘Please look after me.’
He lays me down on our bed, sits next to me and unbuttons my blouse, unzips my skirt. I’m naked underneath. I move my hand to my chest, covering myself where my old scar sits, trying to explain. ‘When I woke, I couldn’t find my knickers or bra.’
He shushes me with a kiss, takes my hand and removes it from my breast, kissing the place I was trying to conceal. His other hand comes to rest on my thigh and he moves so he’s above me. He quickly pulls off his own clothes and touches me, so we’re skin on skin. I want to take his comfort and I move for him, under him, opening myself up, even though I can’t stop wondering about all the other women Daniel has loved. My jealous brain torments me with their ecstasies, oh, oh, oh. Imagined sounds that I drown out with my own as I cry out, giving in to the overwhelming love I feel for Daniel.
After we’ve made love, I feel revived, giddy even, as though your being so close to death has made me cling to life and all its pleasures.
Daniel wraps me in his pyjama top, then coaxes me downstairs to eat. It’s proper night now, pitch-black outside, and far too late for supper, but suddenly I’m starving. In the kitchen, nothing has changed. It’s spotless, except for a solitary bowl on the counter, a plastic container of linseed and nuts on the side, and a teaspoon by the sink. It was a lonely breakfast for Daniel this morning.
And look – Victoria’s homecoming cake. Still where I put it on Friday afternoon, beside the glass jars of pumpkin seeds and goji berries. Pink and sticky and sweet, untouched under clear plastic and coloured cardboard.
‘If you need some comfort food, what about a bowl of kefir? Or some miso soup?’ I shake my head. ‘Do you want a piece of that ?’
The cake isn’t mine to eat. ‘How was Victoria when you saw her?’
He leans forward to kiss the corner of my mouth. ‘She’s fine, love. Try not to worry so much – it’s not healthy. Dawn’s also staying at the school so they’re keeping each other company.’
Dawn is Victoria’s best friend. She was coming to stay for the week too. It’s easier that way, now Victoria doesn’t have friends in the area, and Dawn enjoys staying with us. So many plans, ruined.
‘They’ll be okay. They have each other. You didn’t mind me going to see them, did you?’
‘Of course not. It’s just – I miss her. I’d rather have her home . . .’ This is an old argument, one I lost two years ago.
‘I don’t think that’s wise, Cass, under the circumstances. Let’s focus on your mum, and see what happens. Okay?’
He saws off some sourdough bread, loads it with cashew butter, and I eat it fast. I wipe the crumbs from my lips and say, ‘I want to go back to the hospital to see how Mum is.’
‘It’s almost midnight, Cass. You’re disorientated, you’ve lost track of time. Go back tomorrow morning, that’s soon enough. You need to sleep now.’
I feel how true it is, the heaviness, the thin skin over my eyes weighed down, my limbs leaden, as if I’m already under blankets, already giving in. Sleepiness hits me so hard that I’m not sure I can manage the stairs. I want to be carried again, to be held close.
‘I’ll check on Hector before I turn in. I saw the light was still on in the spare room, but let’s get you into bed first.’
He speaks to me like I’m a child, and pathetic though it is, I like it. Up the stairs we go, Daniel at my side, supporting
my weight, as if my pain is physical, though if I slip, his guiding arm won’t be enough to stop me falling.
Daniel helps me back into bed. ‘In you get!’ he says, just like he used to say to Victoria when she was little, opening up the duvet like a doorway. He busies himself with collecting my blouse and skirt from the floor, discarded before we made love, folds them with studied care. He’s lost more than one member of staff over his fastidiousness. They thought he was controlling, but really, it’s the poise that comes with an ordered spiritual life. Not everyone understands that.
‘I’ll go check on Hector.’ He reaches for the handset to the phone on my bedside cabinet.
‘Leave it there, please. If the hospital calls, I want to be the first to know.’
Reluctantly, he replaces it.
When I’m alone, I listen.
I can hear Daniel talking to Dad in our spare room at the end of the hallway, a low rumble with bouts of silence. I know what he’s asking, and what Dad will reply: no, he doesn’t need anything. Nothing will help.
I’m hot and push the duvet aside, looking down at my body. Pale and saggy. Scarred. The stomach of a woman who had a child and didn’t do enough exercise afterwards, despite her partner owning a holistic gym. I was too busy enjoying Victoria.
Daniel could have chosen any woman he wanted. His lover before me was a world-class athlete and in the photos, I’ve seen how lean she is, how fit. But he isn’t superficial – he doesn’t just improve people’s bodies, he improves their lives. People travel miles to see him. He’s a healer, a reiki master, and an advocate of samphire juicing. People call his radio show for advice, doctors refer patients to his gym, people stop him in the supermarket with questions. And he never resents it; he always gives people what they need. Whenever hidden doubts surface, I know it’s my insecurity taking over – my fear that a wonderful man like him can’t really be happy with me. I never was confident, was I, Mum? Never learned to stand on my own two feet. If you die, I’ll have to start.