Luckily, it was. ‘Cool, Dad,’ Jack had enthused.
‘There’s another under the tree,’ he’d added. ‘It’s rather breakable.’ He swallowed back the emotion in his throat. ‘Leave it until after I’ve gone.’
His father would have approved of the gift, Winston told himself, as he thanked Gemma and Joe for their hospitality and made arrangements to meet up with Jack the following day.
This, together with Rosie’s kiss (she’d definitely reciprocated!), had almost made him forget that there were still some more loose ends in his life that needed tying up.
‘I need to visit someone,’ he had told Rosie.
What he hadn’t added was that the person in question wasn’t expecting him.
Is this really the right thing to do? Winston asked himself, drawing up outside his wife’s house. Everything looked exactly the same, he noticed. Someone else must have clipped the yew hedge just as he used to. It was as though he’d never left.
The speech that he’d prepared during the last few weeks now seemed stupid as he knocked on the door. Maybe it would be best if he just turned round and left …
‘Winston!’ The boy’s face at the door broke into a grin. ‘Hi! Mum’s inside.’ A worried look passed across his face. ‘With Dad.’
So Marvyn was here! Then again, what had he expected? That daydream where the bastard had gone off again with someone else, leaving Melissa to realise that she’d loved Winston all along, now evaporated as Freddie led him into the sitting room.
There they were – Melissa sitting upright on the sofa, looking beautiful. She was holding a flute of champagne and wearing a silver necklace that he’d never seen before around her elegant throat. Marvyn was standing beside her in a navy jacket and beige trousers (the standard uniform around here), glaring at him.
‘What do you want?’
‘Marvyn.’ Melissa placed a hand on her first husband’s arm. ‘That’s rude.’
Marvyn was virtually snarling, reminding Winston of a sniffer dog they’d had once that had turned nasty. ‘How dare you intrude on a family day!’
Winston resisted the temptation to say that legally he still was family, even though Melissa had filed for divorce. ‘I was just passing so I brought round some presents.’
Alice, who’d been sitting with her back to him, texting furiously, now looked up. ‘You can put them under the tree,’ she announced coolly, as though he were a lowly Victorian manservant.
Winston braced himself. There was so much he could say. So much he could ask. Such as, how could Melissa have played around behind his back – and with her ex-husband at that? But now, as he placed the presents at the foot of the enormous Christmas tree decorated with blue and white lights with matching bows, the truth finally dawned.
He’d been used. Melissa hadn’t really loved him; she’d accepted him on the rebound. In reality, she was still in love with this awful man. If it hadn’t been for him, Winston, Marvyn might still have been with his mistress. There was nothing like a bit of jealousy to make someone change their mind.
‘Well, it was nice to see you, but I must go now,’ he announced as if they had invited him to stay.
Melissa’s beautiful dark eyes were on him, her expression unreadable. ‘Good idea,’ snapped Marvyn. Alice didn’t even bother looking up from her phone which, judging from the packaging around her, was brand new. She’d already got through two during the time he’d been with her mother.
‘Can you stay for a kick-around?’ asked Freddie hopefully. ‘Only Dad can’t—’
‘I’ll see you to the door,’ said Melissa quickly, but Marvyn had leaped to his feet.
‘I’ll do it.’ It was almost like being frogmarched out of a building that he’d broken into. They crossed the hall with its wooden floor which Winston had varnished when he was living here. ‘If you ever,’ said Marvyn, his voice low and threatening, ‘come here again, ‘I’ll sue you for harassment. Got it?’
Enough was enough. Winston swung round, his eyes blazing. ‘Just make sure you don’t mess her around again, do you hear me? You’re lucky to have a family. Look after it more carefully from now on.’
The look in Marvyn’s eyes showed he’d struck a chord. Horrible man! It took every ounce of strength not to punch him, but instead, Winston forced himself to back off.
As he started the engine, he looked up at the house. Was he imagining it, or was that Melissa at the window? Almost immediately, she disappeared.
‘It’s not working,’ Melissa had said when she’d announced she wanted a divorce, a few weeks ago. Maybe she was right. But he’d needed this visit to be certain, and now he was. Glancing down out of habit at his left wrist – it seemed weird not to have his father’s watch on – Winston drove slowly out of the drive and towards the motorway.
One down. One to go.
Back in November when Winston had first picked up the message on his answerphone, he’d felt a mixture of shock, fear and excitement. Nick’s mother? What did she want?
Mrs Thomas had been brief when he’d rung back. Would he come round, she wanted to know. There was something that she wanted to talk about.
So Winston had driven to the address in Harrow (a place he used to come to quite regularly for school matches) and found himself outside a neat terraced house in a pretty cul-de-sac with a green patch in the middle and a willow tree. It was just as Nick had described.
As he rang the bell of this modest house, Winston wondered what would have happened if Nick had stayed here. Would she have married and be living near here with two children? Would she …
He stopped himself as a shape loomed up through the glass door. A small, white-haired woman with a doughy face and an unexpectedly kind smile greeted him. ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ she said. ‘Please come in.’
Winston found himself being led into an L-shaped room with parquet flooring. Beyond that, he could see, was a small garden with a little wooden bench in the corner; again, just as Nick had described it. His first thought was that his old love was everywhere. On the mantelpiece. On the top of the piano. On the low pine side unit along the wall. Pictures of a toothy, skinny, dark-haired Nick in a green school uniform, smiling shyly at the camera. Pictures of a teenage boyish-looking Nick looking more confident in jeans, lounging against a farm gate. Pictures of Nick in a nurse’s uniform, proudly clutching a certificate. And pictures of Nick wearing her kit.
Her presence was so vivid that he almost had to put out a hand to steady himself.
His second thought was that Nick’s mother had brought him here to castigate him even further. Why else would she have that stack of clippings from newspapers and magazines on the coffee table in front of him? The top one bore a stark black headline: ‘How Many More Lives Will Be Lost Before Someone Sees Sense?’
‘Please sit down.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Thomas …’
‘Do call me Pam, won’t you? Would you like some tea?’
‘No, thanks.’ He glanced again at the cuttings, steeling himself for yet another inquisition.
‘I’ve been reading them again.’ She spoke as though it was some kind of secret vice. ‘My daughter didn’t want me to, but I felt I needed to after speaking to the vicar. There was a line in one of these interviews that really touched me.’ She reached out for the one on top. ‘May I read it to you?’
Once more, he braced himself. ‘When you lose a soldier, you live with it for the rest of your life.’
She lowered her glasses. Her eyes were a silky dark brown. Just like Nick’s. ‘That’s what you said to a journalist back in the summer, wasn’t it?’
He nodded, remembering the crowd of hacks who had bombarded him and Melissa at Heathrow after their honeymoon. Pam seemed to be studying him intently. ‘Why didn’t you check that the path was clear before allowing my daughter down it?’ she said softly.
They’d been through this so many times, both at the inquest and during interviews. But this woman deserved better. For a second Wins
ton closed his eyes. He was there. Back in Afghanistan. With Nick. Some dust from the road had got into her eyes and he was gently wiping it out with a handkerchief. The sun was so hot that it was hard to think straight. The constant dry crackling of distant guns was growing nearer. Children were playing – actually playing – on a bomb crater a few yards away, despite their warnings. Time was running out.
‘It seemed like a risk worth taking for the greater good,’ he said softly. ‘Now I can see that it wasn’t.’
Her eyes hadn’t left his. ‘You said before that Nick was aware of the risk. Are you sure of that?’ She glanced at the pictures. ‘This was her first military posting, Winston. She’d been nursing in England until then. Yes, she wanted adventure, but I’m not entirely sure that she realised how much danger she was putting herself in until she actually got there.’
There was a hint of a desperate sob in her voice. ‘I need to know,’ she said, sensing his hesitation. He could see now where her eldest daughter had got her steeliness from. And her compassion.
Winston addressed his words to the teenage Nick in the tortoiseshell frame. ‘I told her the odds. She said … she said that she wanted me to chance it. “We can’t not do anything.”’ The words were engraved in his mind. ‘That’s what she said.’
‘But did she die in vain or did she make a difference?’ Pam bit her lip. ‘I watched a programme the other month about a father whose son was killed in Afghanistan. He went back to see what it was like. I want to do that one day. I need to know, just as he did, if her life helped someone before it was snatched away.’
He could answer that one all right. ‘Nick,’ he replied, his voice firmer now, ‘was the kindest yet most efficient nurse I have ever come across. During the short time she was with us, she helped countless men with her gentle words and her skill. Children too.’ He paused, remembering. ‘There was one little boy whose arm had been blown off.’ He could see her now, kneeling next to him, speaking soothingly and stemming the flow of blood. ‘She saved his life, and afterwards, she went with him to find his family.’
That was something else he had been proud of: the way his men had done their best to bring torn families back together.
The older woman smiled. ‘I can’t tell you what that means to me, Winston.’ Then she reached out to touch his arm. ‘My other daughter is still very angry with you, but that is because she needs someone to blame. I’ve had more time and also I have my faith.’
She reached up to her throat and touched the small gold cross around her neck. ‘I also got in touch with the other Wren – the one who survived. She told me how courageous you were. How you put your own life at risk by trying to get my daughter out.’
Automatically, Winston reached up and touched the jagged scar on his neck.
‘I want you to know,’ she continued, ‘that I don’t hold you responsible any more, Winston.’
He swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘You can tell me that you will visit every now and then. You’re my last link, you see.’ Pam’s voice wavered slightly as she picked up the teapot.
I’m forgiven, thought Winston with a wave of relief. She’s forgiven me. He felt dizzy with gratitude.
‘Now tell me, do you take sugar? I’m afraid that was something Nicola didn’t tell me, although she did mention that you have a penchant for Bourbon biscuits. Or would you rather have a sandwich first?’
She gestured towards the tea tray with its plate of beautifully cut triangles. ‘Please, help yourself.’
He faltered. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t eat ham. I turned vegetarian after … after Nick.’
Pam nodded, biting her lip again as though reading his mind. ‘A biscuit then. By the way, how is your new marriage going?’
He almost choked at the unwelcome change in subject. ‘Not great.’ A huge lump suddenly grew in his throat, not just because of the large crumb that had lodged there. It would be easy to make some kind of general pleasantry, but after the frank conversation they’d just had, Winston felt he owed it to Nick’s mother to be honest.
‘Things are difficult, actually.’ He stirred his tea. ‘Melissa says I don’t know how to be married.’
Pam’s voice was stern. ‘And is she right?’
Winston had been over this so many times in his head that he no longer knew the answer. ‘Possibly. I’ve been on my own for so long that I probably don’t know how to share. I like to do things my way.’
Nick nodded at him through her mother’s eyes. ‘Recognising something is half the battle, don’t you think?’
All that had been six weeks ago. Since then he’d paid her two more visits and spoken to her several times on the phone. She was easy to talk to. Conversation usually revolved around Nick, although he had to get used to the way her mother referred to her daughter as Nicola. Sometimes they spoke about Pam’s life, which centred around the church and an amazing charity scheme called Talking Books, where volunteers such as Pam recorded news items onto memory sticks for the blind.
Pam was always asking questions too about Winston’s life and the fill-in jobs he’d been doing in London gyms to earn some money. He told her more about Melissa – and also his son. She encouraged him to accept the Christmas Day lunch invitation from Gemma so he could spend time with Jack. ‘Come on over to me afterwards,’ she’d suggested. ‘It will be nice to have the company. My other daughter has chosen to go abroad with friends.’ The hurt in her voice was all too clear. And no wonder. Christmas was a time for families.
‘We haven’t seen eye to eye recently,’ she added.
‘Because of me?’ Winston suddenly twigged.
‘She doesn’t approve of us meeting,’ Pam admitted. ‘I’m afraid she’s still coming to terms with all her emotions.’
I know the feeling, thought Winston. But maybe it was time to change. So somehow he found himself sitting on the edge of Pam’s soft pink velour sofa and telling her about his visit to Melissa that afternoon.
‘This first husband of hers sounds like a bully as well as a philanderer. It’s a fact of life that some women don’t realise they’re under someone else’s thumb until it’s too late.’
There was a quick glance at the photograph on the piano of a stern, dark-haired man with a moustache. So that’s where Nick had got her dark looks from. They hadn’t got on, Nick had confided soon after they’d met. ‘It was one of the reasons I joined the Wrens, I’m afraid. He’s a control freak. I had to get away.’
‘My husband died of heart failure, soon after Nicola,’ added Pam.
‘I’m sorry.’
She looked away. ‘Thank you. But marriage isn’t always a bed of roses. In our day, we kept going. It wasn’t always the right thing to do.’
Interesting …
‘More Christmas cake?’ She held out the plate, as if eager to change the subject. ‘Go on. It needs eating. Now tell me about your new job. Is it going all right?’
Winston nodded enthusiastically. The opening at a swish health club in Chelsea had come at just the right time. It wasn’t so much the money as the boost to his self-esteem. ‘Great.’
‘But it’s not the same as television?’
She was beginning to know him. ‘I really miss all that,’ he admitted. ‘I loved the adrenalin; the knowing that you were doing it live, so you couldn’t afford to make mistakes.’
Another nod. ‘We took your career from you, my other daughter and I. If it hadn’t been for those articles where we criticised you, you might not have lost your contract. No, don’t deny it. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ He was being gracious here and they both knew it. ‘Remember what Nick used to say?’
‘Never look back,’ they both said together in one voice. And then, rather to his surprise, Winston found himself in her arms, sobbing like a baby for the first time since it had happened.
Not just for Nick, or for Melissa and Rosie and what might have been. But for his parents too, a grief which he hadn’t been all
owed to let out as a child, because his grandmother and housemaster had told him to ‘be brave’.
Maybe, Winston suddenly realised, courage was the ability to show you were actually as fragile as everyone else, inside.
‘It’s all right,’ said Pam soothingly. ‘Let it all out. I understand. There’s just one thing I would say. Don’t go rushing into another relationship on the rebound.’ She patted his hand. ‘Allow yourself time to think.’
Just after New Year, Winston went to Heathrow to see off Jack and Rosie. He was really nervous about seeing her again after that Christmas kiss and he could tell she felt the same.
‘Can we have a few minutes to ourselves?’ he said quietly.
Rosie nodded tightly. ‘Jack, do you mind going over to that magazine stand and getting me a paper? Thanks.’
Then she turned to him. ‘We’ll have to be quick. I haven’t told Jack about us.’
Winston’s breath caught in his throat. ‘So there is an “us”?’
Her eyes darted to the news-stand and back to him. ‘I don’t know. I need more time.’
He put out his hand to touch her arm. Surprisingly, this time, he didn’t get the electric shock he’d had before.
‘Something’s happened,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve had a job offer from an American television channel. I’m not sure I’m going to take it, but it would mean moving to California.’
‘California?’ Her eyes widened.
‘I know. It would mean you giving up the villa, of course, and a complete change of education for Jack unless he went to boarding school in England.’
‘Boarding school?’ She stepped back. ‘Give up the villa? Do you really think you can just come back into my life and change everything?’
Too late, Winston realised he’d rushed her. Just as he’d rushed Nick. He couldn’t help it. If there was one thing he’d learned in the Royal Marines, it was that life could be here one minute and gone the next. You had to make each minute count. ‘There’s no need to make a decision now,’ he said.
After the Honeymoon Page 38