by Lucy Dillon
‘Can you do the flowers, Georgina?’ Janet offered her the paper-wrapped bunch. ‘You do these things so much better than me,’ she added, in a transparent but well-meant attempt to be pleasant.
Gina crouched down and stuck the flowers they’d brought into the holes of Terry’s flower holder: white carnations, Mum’s favourite, and cloud-like gypsophila to fill in the gaps. She worked quickly and neatly, snapping the stems to make a ball of white petals, a summer snowball on the plain granite.
‘Very nice. Makes him look loved,’ said Janet, when she’d finished.
‘Because he was,’ said Gina. ‘Well loved.’
After a moment’s appreciation, she stepped back, and they walked down the long path together. Janet put her arm through Gina’s, and a different sort of atmosphere settled between them. A happier, more conciliatory one.
‘I’m sorry about before, Georgina,’ she started, rather self-consciously. ‘I didn’t mean to make you feel worse about this business with Stuart having a baby. It’s only because I don’t want you to miss out.’
Gina started to say, on autopilot, that she didn’t feel as if she was missing out, but she stopped herself. If Janet was trying to be honest, she should too. ‘I know,’ she said instead. ‘But it’s difficult, Mum.’
Now Stuart was removed from the equation, Gina didn’t know how she felt about children. For a long time she’d just felt grateful to have beaten that round of cancer; any more seemed like tempting Fate. And something with Stuart had always stopped her broodiness.
Suddenly she wasn’t sure what she thought. It made her light-headed. The new horizon of possibilities, balanced on the other side by the pinprick reminder she had every morning when she took her Tamoxifen. Life wasn’t infinite. It wasn’t endless. She didn’t have all the time in the world. Maybe she should be more grateful for what she did have.
‘Of course it’s difficult.’ Janet patted her arm. ‘Having a child . . . it’s like cutting out your heart and letting someone carry it around with them for the rest of your life. But you don’t even think twice about it. All you ever want is for them to be happy. It’s . . . Oh, I can’t explain it very well. You’re a part of me.’ She blew her nose with a loud parp. ‘You always will be.’
And a part of Dad. The thought went through her mind, and the mood was soft enough that Gina found herself saying what she was thinking for once, instead of biting it back. ‘Mum,’ she said. ‘Is there a reason we don’t go and put flowers on Dad’s grave?’
Janet tucked the tissue back up her sleeve. ‘Because he’s not buried anywhere. He was cremated and scattered.’
‘There isn’t a memorial stone?’
‘No. He always said he didn’t want a grave for people to cry over. He was a soldier, Georgina. They’re tough like that.’
‘Is there a plaque in the regimental HQ, though?’ Gina persisted.
‘No.’ Janet was walking more quickly.
‘But if he died on duty . . .’
‘He died while he was with the SAS. That’s why we’ve got no details. It’s security.’
‘But . . .’
The mood had changed again. They were by the car, and as Janet went to get into the passenger side, Gina saw the tight set of her lips. ‘Georgina, if I could bring myself not to ask, I think you could too.’
‘But he was my dad.’ It came out before she could stop it. ‘I don’t see why it’s so awful to want to talk about him. Terry never used to mind. It’s not like it affects what I felt for Terry.’
Janet stopped and glared over the roof of the car. ‘Today, of all days. This is Terry’s day, not . . . Huw’s.’
Gina was about to argue back, then thought, Shut up, Gina. That had been a good moment there, and she’d spoiled it.
Janet stared at her, her lips pressing together as if she were struggling with a thought that wouldn’t come right in her head. The wind picked up, rustling the leaves around the churchyard, lifting her blonde curls. She was wearing her best pearl earrings, the ones Terry had given her for their wedding.
She’s still really young, Gina thought. Fifty-six. Far too young to be widowed twice – before she was even fifty. Far too young to be reminded about two graves, for God’s sake. An impulse to do something nice came over her.
‘Do you want to go and get an ice cream?’ she asked. ‘Banana split and all the trimmings?’
It was something Terry had always suggested after a run out – taking what he called ‘the long cut home’ via the Italian ice-cream parlour by Longhampton station. Sometimes the offer was made with indulgent good humour, more often in desperation over the sound of mother-daughter sniping.
Janet stopped frowning, and her expression softened. ‘Yes,’ she said, with a smile that made her look younger. ‘And a scoop in a coupe for me.’
Gina heard Terry say it into the rear-view mirror, his kind eyes smiling at her in the red leather back seat.
‘A scoop in a coupe it is,’ said Gina, and got into the car.
Chapter Eighteen
ITEM: a hospital wrist tag
Oxford, 12th June 2001
Kit’s in a private hospital. It’s very different from the NHS A&E department to which they were airlifted after the accident, but the second Gina sets foot in the echoing foyer the taste in her mouth comes flooding back – the calmly rushing staff, the smell of disinfectant and human fear.
She grips the carrier-bag with her offerings in it: magazines, some grapes, CDs of their favourite music. She wasn’t sure what to bring, what Kit might be up to enjoying, because no one will tell her exactly how he is, but she didn’t want to bring anything that gave the wrong message. She wants her presents to say, You’re going to be fine.
The presents have to say that because Gina can’t believe anything will be fine again. Her brain is foggy with grief and shock, not helped by the codeine she’s on for her broken collarbone. Nothing feels real, but that’s not a problem because she still hopes that at some point she’ll wake up and this will all have been a dream.
She shuffles on the plastic seat outside his room and adjusts her shoulder brace, which is digging into her bruises. The nurse went in five minutes ago and hasn’t come out. Gina wonders if they’re having to cover Kit up, or prepare him, and a cold sensation runs across her skin.
The nurse reappears and she leaps up with a wince.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting – we’re short-staffed today.’ She’s a young trainee nurse, flustered with too much to do. ‘I can’t find Mrs Atherton. I think she’s been sent for a lie-down by the doctor. She hasn’t left since Christopher was brought in.’
Gina’s secretly relieved: she’s not sure she can handle Anita’s grief on top of her own. She doesn’t know what to say. She hopes just talking to someone who loves Kit too might be a comfort. ‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘I can keep him company.’
‘Are you family?’ The nurse is checking her notes.
Everything in Gina is screaming, No, I’m his girlfriend, but some Naomi-ish instinct makes her say, ‘Yes.’ She has to get inside that room. Even it means lying.
‘That’s fine then,’ says the nurse, and opens the door. ‘Just till your mum gets back. Ring the bell if you need me.’
‘Thanks,’ says Gina, and she goes in.
It’s a big white room, full of light, and there are vases of flowers everywhere. Pink lilies, orange roses. Jarringly bright in the whiteness, not smelling of anything. In the middle of the room is a white hospital bed, surrounded with cold metal machines, and inside, tucked up under the blanket like a six-foot tall child, is Kit.
A cold hand clutches Gina’s innards and grips her so hard she’s scared she’s going to lose control of her bladder.
His eyes are closed and circled with dark shadows. His long lashes seem even longer now he’s so pale, but his beautiful hair’s been shaved to a pale golden suede for wires to be attached under the stretchy bandage that covers part of his head. He doesn’t move when she comes in. But the
machines keep humming and flickering, and Gina stares at his chest until she sees it rise almost imperceptibly, then fall, holding her own breath until she see his.
Her head fills with loud, violent emotions that she feels too small to contain. It’s so unfair. She’s never seen Kit so still. Even when he was asleep he seemed to glow with energy. Now he’s there, but he’s not. He’s different.
‘Kit,’ she breathes, perching on the chair by the bed. ‘It’s me. Gina.’
Of course there’s no response, and Gina hates herself. What did she think? That he would spring up, that she would wake him with a kiss? Already the hope she’s been nursing for the past days seems like the relic of a stupider time: Kit looks lucky not to be dead, as she overheard her mother say, while she was slipping in and out of anaesthesia.
Her eyes skim the room, looking for clues about his condition. The monitors seem linked to everything. He has breathing equipment, as well as a heart monitor; that can’t be good.
Gina notices that there’s no stubble on his soft jaw. It only takes a day or two for a scratchy layer to speckle his smooth skin. One weekend they’d spent the whole time in bed and she’d joked she’d seen it grow. Someone’s been shaving it for him.
Her heart aches with irrational jealousy and she touches his hand. It’s cool.
‘Kit, I’ve brought you some music,’ she whispers, reaching into her bag. ‘I’ve made you a compilation of all our songs, in case you can hear them. Well, I know you can hear them. And I’ll come every week, and read to you. Whatever you want. Travel guides, if you like. I’ve made a list of those plantation houses we were going to visit on our driving tour. We can still do that.’
Tears are running down her face at the cruelty with which that dream was crumpled and tossed aside in one careless second.
‘I’m here,’ she whispers. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I promise. We’ll get through this. You’re strong and I’ll do everything I can and—’
The door opens and Gina hears an audible gasp – she turns, realising it’s not the nurse.
Anita Atherton, Kit’s mother, is standing by the doorway, staring at Gina with a look of such absolute fury and disgust that her skin feels as if it’s burning.
Gina opens her mouth, but already she knows she was wrong about Anita too: there’s no way Anita wants her comfort. She looks about ready to kill her.
Her hooded brown eyes are boring into Gina’s the way Kit’s did, with the confidence that comes from Oxford conversations and smart dinners with well-connected friends. Gina hopes Anita can see her love for Kit, but she’s terrified the woman can see her gnawing fear too – that she won’t be strong enough, that she’ll fail Kit in the same way she’s failed her mother, drowning and cut-off in her own overwhelming grief. A grief she had stirred up even more by her actions.
She juts her chin. Be brave, she tells herself. You’re doing the right thing.
‘Please leave,’ says Anita, polite but determined.
‘Can’t I stay five minutes? I’ve brought him some music, some things to keep him connected. I can read to him, if you want, while you’re taking a break . . .’
Anita is across the room in a flash, and takes hold of Gina’s upper arm, with a grip that would hurt if Gina was taking any notice. She looks down at the hand stupidly. Anita’s long fingers are banded by rings – gold and diamonds and artistic lumps of semi-precious stones. She’d been fascinated by them at the dinner table, that time Kit had her to stay; the way they flashed and sparkled as Anita’s hands waved in witty debate with her guests.
‘I’m sorry, but no one would answer my calls,’ Gina babbles. ‘I can come at a different time if this isn’t convenient.’
Anita is marching her to the door. Gina can barely believe it. ‘It’s me,’ she says, bewildered. ‘It’s Gina.’
‘I know. Please leave,’ says Anita, in the coldest voice Gina has ever heard.
Gina takes one last long look at Kit, tucked in the white bed, and remembers it all: his smooth chest, and his confident hands, never still, making every nerve in her tingle, jumping together at gigs, crushed in the moshpit, talking and talking into the night, their conversations ebbing and flowing between deep, urgent kisses and then silent exploration of each other’s bodies, waking and sleeping together. The smell of his sweat and the heavy warmth of his arm thrown over her, never wanting to let her go.
That’s all gone. Like a book that’s finished, the characters are still in her head, but there will be no more story. It’s over. Gina wishes she knew what to do now, in these precious last seconds, but she doesn’t. They’ve already gone.
Anita is closing the door in her face.
Weeks had now passed since Gina had reported her bike as stolen, and there was still no sign of it turning up. More to the point, no one had come forward to claim Buzz, so he was officially handed over to Four Oaks as a stray to be rehomed.
Although, as Rachel observed, Buzz was looking less and less like a stray each day. He spent Mondays and Tuesdays in the Stone Green Projects office with Gina, supposedly to help his slow rehabilitation with strangers, but really because his quiet company under her desk while she worked made him the best kind of office mate, barring the occasional digestive indiscretion. At lunchtime Gina turned off her laptop instead of working through, and they stretched their legs together along the canal, where the tall green nettles were getting lush in the warmer weather and the ducks were even prettier close up than when she’d watched them through her window.
At night, Buzz still crept into her room after she’d gone to bed, not before, and curled up by the door to sleep. Gina was sometimes woken by the sound of him scrabbling and kicking as if in a nightmare, his muffled whimpers cutting straight through her, but they seemed to be lessening as his ribs became sleek and the snowflake patches of white on his grey coat began to shine. She’d begun to stick her Polaroids on the back wall of the sitting room, alongside the list of a hundred things, and already Gina could see the difference between the first picture of Buzz – him sleeping with his nose laid carefully along his paws – and the latest of him happily licking tomato ketchup off his nose.
It made her happy to think she’d helped bring the light back into his eyes, but also guilty that at some point Rachel would find a home for him and she’d have to let him go.
It hadn’t taken much for Rachel to persuade Gina to become his official fosterer, and as part of the deal she had to take him up to the vet for his microchip, vaccinations, and any other care George the vet thought he’d need to persuade someone to adopt a third-hand failed greyhound.
George had the sort of reassuring countryman presence that could have calmed a rampaging elephant but even so, Gina could see Buzz was quivering as George ran his hands over the greyhound’s legs, feeling for old injuries. Every so often, Buzz would glance in her direction for reassurance, and his fearful expression tugged at her heart.
‘Is he in reasonable nick?’ Gina stroked Buzz’s trembling haunches while George pulled back his lips and pressed his gums. ‘I think he’s put on a bit of weight since I got him.’
‘I can see – that brindle’s really starting to come out in his coat. Pretty snowflakes too, very unusual. You’ll be a handsome chap before long.’ George stroked Buzz’s narrow head. ‘Well, his teeth are pretty terrible and we’ll have to start from the beginning with vaccinations but he’s not the worst greyhound I’ve seen.’
Gina’s mind shied away from what that might mean. ‘Are they all as nervous as him?’
‘No. Normally greys are pretty easy-going. Poor Buzz must have had a rough time of it for him to be so scared of men. But he’ll get there. I reckon he’s about five, so he’s got a good seven or eight years of better life to enjoy. Worth waiting for, eh, lad?’
Gina stroked Buzz’s knobbly spine and felt him lean into her, a sign of affection that she’d started to enjoy. She’d rescued him from that old life. Cheap, for the price of a bike she’d never wanted. ‘Rachel said he mig
ht have been badly treated in the past. Shouldn’t he be with someone who knows how to deal with traumatised greyhounds?’
‘He seems to be doing all right with you,’ said George. ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing.’
‘But I’m not doing anything.’
He smiled, and his craggy face softened into a surprising sensitivity. George had kind eyes; Gina found herself being soothed in the same way that Buzz obviously did. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘nothing’s absolutely the right thing to do.’
Gina had just got Buzz clipped into the car harness now fixed to the rear seat of her Golf and was about to set off home when her phone rang.
It was Nick. As she picked up the call, Gina inwardly hoped there wasn’t a new problem over at Langley St Michael. She and Lorcan had spent most of that morning talking to a specialist electrician about the best way to tackle the ancient wiring system that coiled around the Magistrate’s House, like electric cobwebs. Lights had a habit of blowing all round the house, and nothing seemed linked to anything else on the enormous antiquated fuse box.
Amanda’s architect was proposing an elaborate system of recessed spotlights and remotely controllable dimmers that the electrician had immediately explained wouldn’t work, and might not meet building regulations. Nick had been fascinated by the technicalities, and Gina had left Lorcan explaining it to him in his patient Irish accent, drawing big diagrams on the back of some lining paper. Gina was pretty sure it was going to cost a small fortune, and whether or not Amanda would be prepared to pay it for a rental property, she didn’t know.
‘Hello,’ said Nick. ‘Are you still at the vet’s?’
‘Just finished,’ she said. ‘Did Lorcan manage to explain the magic of electricity to you?’
‘Hello? Lighting is something I actually understand, missy,’ said Nick. ‘I feel as if I owe it to the house to know what I’m doing to it.’