by Casey Watson
When Thursday afternoon came around, however, I was to get a wonderful reminder that attachments can reveal themselves in other ways.
Vicky and I spent a productive hour running through things together, and the more I talked to her the more I liked her, and the more I felt confident that here was someone who’d come through on any promise. Nearer my own age than Sarah, and having followed a roll your sleeves up and get on with it career in the health sector, she really couldn’t be better placed to head up this little family – the little family she’d always wanted to take care of, however overwhelming her enthusiasm in the early days. Once again – this happened often – I reflected on family life, and that families really did come in all sorts of unlikely configurations – all different, some surprising, but so many of them perfectly functional. And this one – right down to Snowball the virtual puppy and youngest member – looked like it could function as well as any other.
Abby flew in from school just as excited as I’d expected. She even stopped to hug her aunt before flying into the toilet. That would mean nothing to anyone else, but it blew me away. For as long as I could remember now, this had never happened. This was a first. She also came home with plans, which she’d clearly been thinking about all day.
‘Casey,’ she wanted to know once she’d done her hand washing (which happened afterwards), ‘I was wondering, do you think we could take Aunt Vicky to the woods before we have tea? I want to show her the frogspawn.’
‘But the frogspawn’s here,’ I said, confused. ‘You can show it to her now.’
‘No, not that frogspawn,’ she said. ‘I want to show her the rest of it. Show her where we got it. I’m sure it’ll still be there. And if it’s not there’ll be tadpoles anyway. Pleeease?’
I couldn’t think of a single reason why not. It was a lovely spring afternoon, and we’d been sitting at the table for ages. If Vicky wasn’t in a hurry to rush off – which it seemed she wasn’t – then why not? It would be good to stretch our legs. Though a thought occurred to me. Did Abby really even need or want me there?
‘You know,’ I said, ‘you don’t need me to come with you. You can take Aunt Vicky on your own if you like, while I start on tea. You’re such a big girl now. And you know the way.’
Abby shook her head. ‘No, I want you to come too,’ she said firmly. ‘Please, Casey?’
‘Well, I guess tea can wait,’ I said. ‘Go on, then. Get upstairs and get that uniform off. I’ll write a note for Mike, so that if he comes in he’ll know where we’ve gone.’
It was lovely going back into ‘our little wood’ (as I liked to think of it) and see it so transformed by the spring. There were a few bluebells still out, and the pungent scent of wild garlic, and, a far cry from the dripping, gloomy place we’d first brought Abby, it was full of growth, bright and verdant, in the dappled afternoon sun.
You could hear the stream babbling even before you could see it.
‘Careful here,’ Abby warned, grabbing my hand as we walked down the bank. ‘It gets steep here,’ she explained to Vicky, ‘so you have to be very careful and watch your step.’ But it was clearly no longer her own step she was watching. It was mine. ‘You’ll be okay,’ she continued, to Vicky, ‘but Casey has to be careful because she’d older.’
‘Hey, cheeky!’ I protested. ‘Less of the older, please, missy. I’ll have you know that not so very long ago I used to go rock climbing – real rock climbing, not over these tiddlers. And caving, as well. And,’ I huffed, ‘lots more besides.’
Abby gave me the sort of look that made it obvious she doubted that very much, but then spotted something that made her stop and lift her arm. ‘Stop here!’ she demanded, and then turned to us dramatically. ‘Because we’re here. I want to show you a secret,’ she added. ‘Both of you.’
She let my hand go, then, and leaned down towards the jumble of stones, then reached down and – to my surprise; I wasn’t even sure if she had her hand gel – manoeuvred two large, moss-covered rocks out of the way. She then pointed. ‘Can you see?’ We both peered down to look closer. She’d revealed a third one beneath them – a flat rock which was embedded in the muddy bank. ‘That,’ she said proudly, ‘will be there for ever.’ She then leaned even closer to inspect it, and gestured that we should. She stepped back, to let us see better. ‘Can you see what it says?’
Vicky and I shuffled closer to the edge and duly looked. Etched into the rock, in black marker pen, were some words. I read them aloud. ‘Kieron and Abby woz here. BFF.’
I then turned to Vicky. ‘As in Kieron, my son.’
Abby quickly replaced the rocks and put a finger to her lips. ‘But it’s a secret. We’re not really supposed to write on rocks. It was just a wild and crazy scheme of bonkersness, Casey.’
I laughed out loud, but she shushed me again, and then added, as an afterthought, ‘Oh, and if you don’t know what BFF means,’ she said proudly, ‘it actually means “best friends forever”.’
It was tricky balancing on the rocks by the stream that afternoon, but not half as hard as wrestling with my emotions. There were just too many of them, all at once, and in such a confined space. Thoughts about Abby, this poor isolated, different sort of child. This child who couldn’t connect with her peers in any way. This self-professed child who didn’t have friends, and now did, and it meant so much to her that she’d brought us here to prove it. Then there was Kieron, who also found it so hard sometimes to understand people, and for whom such an unlikely bond had been formed with this odd little girl. And who would miss her. Who was sad that she’d be gone. And about me, and what I’d said to him only the other day. Yet another mum-mantra, a few words to get him to feel positive instead of gloomy. And which actually – coincidentally – had turned out to be the right ones. This proved it. Endings aren’t always necessarily endings.
For Abby, Donna’s call came completely out of the blue. For us it was anything but.
It was two weekends later – the end of two frenetic weeks. A date had been arranged for Sarah’s discharge from hospital. The trial now finished, and with a comprehensive care package now in place, she would be returning home, with Vicky, the following weekend. She would have a full team of therapists allocated to her, as well as a nurse and a physiotherapist, both of whom, initially anyway, would visit her on a daily basis. Both Andy and Chelsea – and everyone else – had moved mountains; Chelsea in particular, Vicky told me, had spent literally hours with her – and Vicky too, so she knew how best to support her.
And that mattered. Sarah was so used to hiding her condition that it was almost a reflex to pretend all was well when it wasn’t. And it was important that she accept how things were, rather than how she wished them; as Chelsea had said, that’s what would keep her out of hospital.
Abby herself was scheduled to return a week later, to give her mum and aunt time to properly settle back in. The house needed to be cleaned from top to bottom, and specialist equipment installed, such as hoists, a stair lift and a whole range of small adaptations, not to mention a state-of-the-art wheelchair. Most importantly, however, it needed to be stripped of the accoutrements that had been put in place so that Abby could run things. That, to my mind, was the most important thing. It was time for Abby to reclaim her childhood.
And if we needed evidence of that importance, we were about to get it.
‘Hmm,’ she huffed, shaking her head after speaking to Donna. I’d called her specially to let her know the call was meant for her. ‘She wants me to go into work this afternoon. Just like that!’ She was actually quite cross. ‘Doesn’t she realise that I’m busy with my packing to go home?’ She put her hands on her hips, and I had to cover my mouth so she couldn’t see it. ‘Honestly,’ she said, ‘she’s got to get used to not having me around. She can’t rely on me all the time – I’ll be too busy!’
I kept my hand over my mouth till she was back upstairs, gone to fetch her pinny. Only then did I properly dare breathe out. Mike rolled his eyes. ‘And there
goes the little madam that we’ve grown to know and love, eh? Do you think we’ve created a monster?’
I laughed, though quite quietly, just in case she was listening. ‘Just call me Dr Frankenstein …’ I said to Mike.
As indignant as our little master chef was about being ‘put upon’, her face when we arrived at the café was a picture – marching into the café, pinafore tied neatly around her waist, hair tied too – in her regulation plaits. She stopped dead in her tracks as she tried to take it in, blinking, stunned, as the whole family shouted ‘Surprise!’
And not just our family – behind the cakes and balloons and ‘Good Luck Abby!’ banners, there was her mother, in her wheelchair, hair all done, make-up on, looking lovely. Taking our lead from Sarah, then Abby, then Vicky, then Donna, we all caved in and allowed ourselves to cry.
It was a wonderful afternoon, obviously, but also tinged with sadness. I knew Kieron was working hard to hold it all together, and it was sweet to see the way Abby clung on to her BFF, holding his hand, patting him and asking if he was okay. She was still a little mum – even if it was to a six foot two ‘boy’. And it wasn’t just Kieron’s welfare that she was concerned for, it seemed. That night, as I tucked her in, she pulled my ear close to her lips. ‘Casey,’ she said, ‘you’ll be okay when I’m gone, won’t you?’ And I could barely speak enough to reassure her that, yes, I would.
And then, somehow, it was time for her to actually physically leave us, and when the day dawned – as always happened, so why the hell didn’t I get used to it? – I had to steel myself all over again. Which I did, and it was fine, and it was over, but it really wasn’t. Because I’d overheard Kieron saying to Abby the very night before, endings weren’t always necessarily endings.
‘Don’t worry, love,’ consoled Mike as we trooped back inside, and he did what he always did – popped on the kettle. ‘I’m sure John Fulshaw will be back on the phone before you know it. Shall we take bets on how soon? Next week? Tomorrow?’
‘I know,’ I agreed, dredging up a smile. ‘You’re probably right.’ I mentally shook myself. Time to let go. ‘And I’m okay. Really.’ I reached into the dishwasher for some mugs. ‘And who knows what he’ll have for us. I wonder if it’ll be a boy or a girl next time?’
Mike folded his arms across his chest. ‘I don’t know, Case, but here’s what I’m thinking. It’ll either be a boy, or it’ll be a girl. I’d say it’s fifty-fifty, either way.’
We went to bed that night not realising that the ‘next time’ we’d joked about was actually right around the corner. And, as it turned out, even with that fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, we could never have guessed what was to come next …
Epilogue
Two years on, Vicky still takes care of Sarah and Abby, who is now twelve, in high school and doing well. Though her mother’s illness continues to make her home life challenging, the support they receive from Vicky, the NHS and social services means she is no longer isolated, and can live a full life.
She’s got something of a social life now too. And she has also been something of a star: we were recently invited to a special event for courageous children, in which Abby – having shared her story with a local young carers’ group she’s involved in – along with her Aunt Vicky, won a special award.
Naturally, Mike and I both attended. As, of course, did all the family. Particularly Kieron. BFF.
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Chapter 5
We drove straight from the airport to a beautiful lake, where we sat together outside a café, soaking up the heat of the late-summer sunshine. Kas was exactly the same as he’d been in Spain – just as relaxed and easy to talk to – and I felt immediately comfortable in his company.
We went back to the lake that evening, and as the air was cool once the sun had gone down, we sat inside a restaurant, where we talked and laughed together and the waiter smiled at me and called me ‘La bella signorina’. Everything seemed perfect.
After the meal, we went to a café to meet two of Kas’s friends, who were so nice to me I began to wonder what he’d told them about our relationship. At the café, we ate ice cream and drank brandy and when Kas and I were leaving, the two men stood up, kissed me on both cheeks like benevolent uncles and said ‘Arrivederci, Soffee’.
That night, in Kas’s apartment in an ancient, yellow-brick house a couple of miles from the centre of town, we made love for the first time, and afterwards Kas held me in his arms and I felt safe. I didn’t know whether I was falling in love with him; I certainly didn’t feel the way I used to do when I was with Erion, when a light seemed to shine from somewhere deep inside me, but maybe I’d been wrong and that hadn’t been love, whereas the feeling of security I had with Kas was.
For the rest of the weekend, we wandered around the city together, sat outside cafés drinking coffee or glasses of wine and ate our meals in restaurants that were full of the sound of laughter and where everyone seemed to talk at the same time. On the Saturday evening, we went to an elegant nightclub in the centre of town, which was decorated with lavish crystal chandeliers and carved-marble fountains and was quite unlike any nightclub I’d ever been to before. Home, with all its worries, seemed a million miles away.
We spent Sunday by the lake and when we returned to Kas’s flat in the early evening, I had an almost physical sense of contentment. Kas’s arm was resting lightly on my shoulders as he put his key in the lock of the front door, and I reached up to kiss his cheek before walking across the little hallway and into the bathroom.
When I came out again a few minutes later, Kas was in the kitchen. He had his back to the open doorway, but he turned as I stepped through it and looked at me with an expression I didn’t recognise and couldn’t read. Although he didn’t seem to be angry, there was a coldness in his eyes that made the skin on my scalp tingle and my heart began to race.
‘Is everything all right?’ I asked him. ‘Kas? Is something wrong?’ But instead of smiling and reassuring me, as I’d hoped he would do, he nodded his head towards the little wooden table under the window and said, in a voice that filled me with dread, ‘We need to talk.’
I pulled out a chair and sat down, expecting him to sit beside me, but he remained standing, with his back resting against the work surface, as he said, ‘There is a reason you are here.’ I looked up at him and smiled, but when he didn’t smile back at me, I felt my stomach contract sharply.
‘There is a reason,’ he said again, ‘and I am going to tell you what it is. First though, I have to ask you: do you love me?’
‘I think I do,’ I told him, trying to ignore the horrible sense of foreboding that had settled over me like a dark shadow. ‘I don’t know how people know when they love someone, but you’ve been there for me for so long that …’
He interrupted me, raising a hand impatiently and saying, ‘Well, if you love someone, you have to make sacrifices for them. We all have to make sacrifices for the people we love, and that’s why I asked you to come here: because there’s something you can do for me. There’s a sacrifice you can make to show me that you love me.’
He didn’t raise his voice at all, but I could feel his irritation and when he looked at me, his expression seemed to be almost one of disgust. He spoke slowly, as though explaining a very simple concept to a determinedly slow-witted child, and although I nodded to indicate that I understood what he was saying, I didn’t actually understand it at all.
When he spoke again, he sounded angry, in a way I’d never heard him sound before, and he barely glanced at me as he said, ‘As you say, I have always been there for you and now you must repay me by doing something for me.’
‘Okay,’ I told him. ‘You know I’d do anything I can to help you. But, please Kas, don’t look so serious. You’re making me nervous.’ And then I laughed, because I knew I didn’t have to be afraid. This was Kas, who never shouted, who ha
d been my best friend for the last four years and who I knew was the one man I could trust, apart from Erion.
‘I’ve got a debt that has to be paid,’ Kas said. ‘That’s why you are here. You are going to repay this debt for me.’
His eyes had become cold and there was a closed, hard expression on his face. But still I told myself there was nothing to be afraid of. After all, what possible reason could Kas have for being angry with me?
‘Of course I’d help you if I could,’ I told him. ‘But I hope I haven’t given you the impression that I’ve got money. I spend almost everything I earn, so I don’t even have any savings. I don’t know what …’
Again, he interrupted me and I could almost feel his irritation as he snapped, ‘This is what you’re here for. You are here to help me to repay this debt. This is why I asked you to come to Italy. It’s a sacrifice anyone would be happy to make for someone they loved.’
I felt sick. I couldn’t understand what Kas was really saying or why he’d suddenly become so coldly detached. My heart was pounding and tears had begun to spill over on to my cheeks. I wanted to say to him, ‘This isn’t the way we are together. Why are you speaking to me like this?’ But he was watching me with an expression so close to dislike that the words stayed locked inside my head.
‘I’m in trouble,’ he said. ‘I owe a hundred thousand Euros – to Mario in fact, one of the men you met at the bar after dinner the other night and found so charming. I have to pay this debt.’
‘Oh Kas, I’m so sorry!’ I cried, although if I’m being honest, I’d have to admit that my sympathy was mingled with relief at the realisation that he wasn’t angry with me after all. When he’d first mentioned a debt, I’d assumed he meant it figuratively, as he wasn’t at all the sort of person I’d have imagined getting into financial debt. He’d never talked in any detail about his work – only ever referring to it as ‘the import and export business’ – but he seemed to have a comfortable life and I suppose, if I’d thought about it at all, I’d have assumed he earned a fairly good income. But I knew enough about him to know how much he must have hated having to ask for help, so I tried not to sound surprised or pitying as I asked, ‘What happened?’