by Dani Atkins
I looked at him curiously, wondering if I dared ask him who the second woman had been, if Colleen his wife had been the first. But then I heard the catchy theme tune of the programme the children were watching and realised we were about to be interrupted. That question would have to wait for another day. The hallway filled with the sound of two pairs of racing footsteps heading our way.
‘Perhaps I need to improve my wooing skills,’ said Mitch, getting to his feet. ‘And yes, they brought back “wooing” too, before you ask.’
I smiled.
‘Do you think I should bring Caitlin some flowers on our next date?’
‘Not sunflowers,’ I said, almost as surprised as he was by the way the words had shot out of me. I glanced over at the kitchen window ledge where the bunch he’d brought me that afternoon was displayed in his grandmother’s crystal vase.
‘No. Not sunflowers,’ he agreed.
‘Any news yet?’ asked my dad, strangely whispering down the phone, because that was what I was doing.
‘Not yet,’ I said, retreating to the darkness of my kitchen, to a spot where I could see Hope fast asleep in the second bedroom. ‘Ryan phoned briefly and asked if Hope could stay here tonight. I think he and Chloe had a lot they wanted to talk about.’
My father gave a small grunt of understanding. He was very fond of Chloe, I knew that, and for the first time I wasn’t upset by that realisation. ‘Did he say if they were going to have to operate?’
I thought back to Ryan’s voice, cracking with emotion, as he’d briefly summarised their appointment with the neurosurgeon. ‘It’s not looking good,’ he’d said. I suspected that he was crying by the time he’d hung up the phone. But what I really hadn’t been expecting was that so was I.
‘At least the doctors are pleased with you,’ my father said, his voice heavy with relief. ‘That’s something to be thankful for.’
‘They must be, if they don’t want to see me so frequently now.’
‘I just wish they knew . . . I just wish they could definitely say . . .’ His voice trailed away over the ground we had covered so many times before. Eventually, you had to stop asking the questions Why? and What if? when you realised no one had those answers.
‘I guess there are no guarantees in life, are there?’ said my father, sounding resigned.
I thought of a young blonde woman, facing an unknown and terrifying future and sighed sadly.
‘No, Dad, there aren’t. Life doesn’t work like that.’
Chloe
I slid the top drawer of the chest to a close, watching the three white envelopes slowly disappear from sight. They stood out starkly against the muted shades of the clothes they were resting on. They would be easy to find. Not least because the envelopes were fat and bulky, crammed with what should have been a lifetime of words, condensed down to just a few sheets of paper.
I looked around the bedroom one last time; noticed an almost invisible rumple on the covers of our large double bed, and crossed the room to twitch it flat. Would I ever see this room again?
Ryan had already taken down my small bag. He was probably loading it in the car right now. There hadn’t been much to pack. And anyway, in less than twenty-four hours my need for possessions could very well be at an end. Ryan refused to allow me to say things like that out loud, but he couldn’t stop me thinking them.
I stopped in the hallway and looked through the door of Hope’s bedroom. Elsa was curled up in a ball on the foot of her bed, but I couldn’t summon up the energy to turf her off. The doors of the pumpkin doll’s house were wide open, for Hope had been playing with it right up until the moment Ryan had taken her to school. I looked from the cat to the doll’s house and tried to remember a time when worrying about whose gift had pleased Hope more was even remotely important.
I walked to the head of the bed and picked up Hope’s pillow, burying my face in its depths and breathing in the smell of her. The cat looked at me curiously as the only sob I was going to allow myself that morning was muffled by goose down and feathers. I heard the sound of the front door closing, and knew it was time to go. I ran my hand lightly down the cat’s back, hearing her immediate throaty purr in response. ‘Take good care of her, Elsa,’ I whispered. ‘Make sure you’re always there when she needs you.’ My steps were heavy as I walked slowly from the room, hoping the cat would have more success with that task than I would.
Ryan was in full coping mode. He locked the back door, put down cat food, and set the dishwasher going, as though this was just any other morning. Which of course was exactly how we’d played it with Hope. Obviously she knew I was going into hospital, but over the last six months that sadly was no longer an unusual event.
‘Are you sleeping over?’ she’d asked me, chasing the last spoonful of her Rice Krispies around the bowl.
I smiled at the expression that she’d only recently learnt after spending nights at Maddie’s flat. Would she keep the flat on afterwards, I wondered. Maybe, for a while. Apparently she’d worked hard at making a lovely bedroom for Hope. I’d kept meaning to go and see it, but somehow I’d run out of time. But then I’d run out of time for so many other things too: to have a baby; to get my first grey hair; to celebrate a milestone anniversary. I shook my head. The list was too long and too sad to contemplate.
‘I might be away for a few days,’ was the answer I eventually decided to give Hope. And in a world where miracles really do happen, that might not be a lie. Patients following my kind of surgery were allowed home in what seemed like a ridiculously short amount of time. Or, alternatively, they never went home at all.
We didn’t say much on the drive to the hospital. By that time everything had been said, and what was left over was written in the letter I’d left for him anyway. He drove the entire journey one-handed, the other firmly gripping mine. It was probably irresponsible and dangerous, but we made it to the hospital in one piece.
Saying goodbye to Hope as she ran off to the car, all gazelle-thin legs and flying ponytail, was hard. I’d held her in my arms a little too hard and a little too long, in much the same way that Ryan had held me through the night.
We’d made love, both of us trying to hide the inescapable truth that we could be doing so for the very last time. It had been slow, and sweet and tender; the kind of lovemaking that was worthy of remembering. Hours later, when Ryan had thought I was asleep, I’d felt him slip quietly from our bed. The door to our en-suite bathroom opened and then closed, but the wooden panel wasn’t thick enough to mask the sound of his sobs. When eventually he’d come back to bed, he’d pulled me into the curve of his body, his arms locking tightly around me as though afraid someone would steal me away before morning. He whispered ‘I love you’ into my hair, not just once, but many times. I fell asleep to the words, as though they were a lullaby.
In the glare and bustle of the hospital it was hard to hold on to those moments of tenderness. They kept being pushed aside by an incoming tide of formalities which were required before major surgery. There were blood tests, a final MRI, and forms that had to be signed. My hand was shaking when I wrote my name, and the expression signing your life away had never felt more true as I passed the documents back to the nurse.
At lunchtime I sent Ryan down to the ground floor to buy us sandwiches that I knew neither of us would eat. He returned with the cellophane-wrapped packages and a suggestion.
‘Why don’t I get Maddie to collect Hope from school?’ That way I can stay with you all evening, or overnight if they let me.’
The way you’ve done so many times before, I thought sadly. But he’d been younger then, and there had been no daughter to be considered. Even so, it was harder than I expected to turn him down.
‘No. You have to go.’ I lifted one hand to gently cup his cheek. ‘When I fall asleep tonight, I need to know that Hope is safely tucked up in her own bed, with all her own things around her, and that you’re in our room beside her. If her whole world is about to change, I’d like to know that be
fore it did she was in a place surrounded by happy memories of the three of us.’
‘She’ll always have those.’ It was the closest he’d ever come to admitting that by this time tomorrow he might once again be a single parent. Except, of course . . . he never would be.
‘I wish you could see things the way I do. I think it would help you,’ I implored. Ryan shook his head, and I could sense his unspoken frustration. ‘Everything happens for a reason,’ I said quietly, wondering if he was any closer to accepting those words than he’d been a week ago, when I first voiced them.
Apparently not. ‘No, it doesn’t, Chloe. There isn’t some big cosmic master plan. Fate hasn’t orchestrated any of this. This is just random, unrelated shit, happening to the very best person in the whole world.’
I took his hand in mine and raised it to my lips, tenderly kissing his fingers. ‘I think you may be biased.’
He almost smiled then, but at the last moment his eye caught the clock on the wall and his face dropped. We were almost out of time. But then, if what I believed was true, we’d been running out of time for the last six years. Nothing was random. There was a reason for everything. The place we now found ourselves was exactly where we were always destined to be.
‘This isn’t inevitable, Chloe. You didn’t come into my life to fill a breach that was there because of Maddie. You weren’t serving a purpose that’s now over. You came into my life because we were meant to be together. We’re still meant to be together. Please don’t stop fighting to stay with us,’ he begged, his mouth turning to kiss the hollow of my palm. ‘Promise me that.’
‘You know I won’t,’ I said brokenly, gathering him into my arms for one final goodbye, before gently pushing him away. ‘Now go and collect our daughter from school. I’ll phone you both later to say goodnight.’
Ryan nodded, blinking back tears. I wondered how far he would get before he allowed them to fall.
I doubt that he’d even reached the lift before my own started.
Mr Owen didn’t look well. I could see that in the bright glare of early morning sunlight streaming through the window of my hospital room. His face looked drawn and he was pale enough to be mistaken for one of Maddie’s close relatives.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ I asked him ridiculously, as though our roles had suddenly been reversed. It felt like a reasonable question, as this was the man who would literally have my life in his hands that morning.
Mr Owen’s smile was slow in forming. ‘I have to admit, I didn’t get much sleep last night.’ That had to be one of the very last things you want to hear your neurosurgeon say. ‘I was up half the night thinking about this surgery, to be perfectly frank.’ Oh no, that was the last thing you wanted to hear.
He replaced the chart at the foot of my bed, but before leaving I saw his glance fall on the small framed photograph on my bedside locker. The surgeon’s unusually pale eyes softened, and crinkled at the edges like the blades of a fan, as he looked at Hope, Ryan and me on a happier occasion.
‘You have a lovely family,’ he said warmly. ‘Let’s get you back to them as quickly as possible, shall we?’
Those were words I definitely liked, and I kept them firmly fixed in my head like a mantra as they wheeled me down to the operating theatre.
Maddie
The plastic carrier bags were heavy and were cutting into my fingers as I walked along the pavement in the sunshine. I’d had to park quite a distance from the house, but that was fine. At least I wouldn’t be blocking the driveway in case he had to leave suddenly. In case there was an emergency.
I’d been nervous the very first time I had walked up the path to their front door, all those months ago, and I was nervous again. Same feeling, different reason.
Ryan looked dreadful, but no one wants to hear you say that, so I pretended the huge panda circles beneath his eyes were perfectly normal. He opened the door with his mobile phone in his hand, and for a moment I thought he was in the middle of a conversation, until I noticed that the screen was unlit. I wondered if he’d been holding the device all day, and imagined that he probably had.
‘I don’t want to intrude,’ I began, crossing his threshold and doing exactly that, ‘but I thought you might appreciate some company while you’re waiting.’
His smile was the same, but different, to the one I remembered so well. ‘Thank you, Maddie. That’s kind of you.’
I lifted both arms high to show him the two plastic carriers. ‘And I’ve brought you a couple of meals, in case you didn’t feel like making anything.’
His eyes widened incredulously. ‘You cooked a meal?’ Some things about me he clearly remembered only too well.
‘Well, technically Marks and Spencer cooked it. I’m more of a delivery girl here.’
The sound of his laughter seemed to surprise him almost as much as it did me. ‘Thank you. That was really thoughtful. I think there’s still some room in the fridge.’
I followed him to the kitchen and the large American-style refrigerator, whose shelves were stacked high with foil-covered casseroles and ceramic dishes. ‘Some of the school mums had the same idea,’ Ryan said, coming to stand beside me as we surveyed the loaded shelves. ‘I guess whatever happens, we’re not going to starve.’ Only someone who knew him well could hear his voice wasn’t quite steady.
‘Is there any news yet?’
Ryan shook his head, and a lock of blond hair fell across his eyes. It was still harder than it should be not to instinctively reach out and brush it back. Perhaps it always would be.
‘No, it’s too soon. The surgery started at nine, but they warned us it could take anything up to ten hours.’
We both looked towards the wall clock. Chloe’s ordeal was only a quarter of the way over. It was going to be a very long day.
He made us coffee, so strong that the spoon could practically stand up unaided. I sipped the bitter brew without complaint.
‘How was Hope this morning?’
The smile he kept exclusively for anything concerning our daughter crept back onto Ryan’s face. ‘She was fine. She spoke to Chloe, but she was anxious to get to school.’
‘Are you sure she’s mine?’ I asked, teasing out a second unexpected laugh from him.
‘It’s her school sports day tomorrow, so apparently they spend all of today practising.’
‘How hard can it be to balance an egg on a spoon?’ I questioned.
‘You’d be surprised. Although some of the parents take the whole thing way more seriously than the kids do,’ Ryan said wryly. ‘You are going tomorrow, aren’t you?’
‘Absolutely,’ I assured him. ‘Chloe made sure it was in my diary. She was certainly super-organised before she went into hospital.’
‘She always is,’ Ryan said, and the quiet pride and love in his voice was a small sharp stab, like the unexpected prick of a needle.
I finished my caffeine-heavy drink in silence and glanced at my watch, convinced much longer should have passed than the twenty minutes since the last time I checked. ‘Waiting sucks, doesn’t it?’
There was an expression on his face that made me realise, of all people, he knew that better than anyone. Which made what he had to say next all the more unexpected: ‘I’m sorry, Maddie.’ His voice was heavy with the weight of a thousand regrets.
‘What for?’
‘For not waiting.’
I was staring into the bottom of my empty cup, because all at once it seemed a safer place to look than into his eyes. ‘You did wait,’ I murmured.
‘I didn’t wait for long enough, did I? I broke my promise to you.’
I lifted my head at that, more shaken than I thought it was possible to be that he’d remembered that long-past conversation. ‘Wherever you are, whatever happens, I will always be there for you.’ Those words had haunted me in the months after I woke up. What I hadn’t realised until that moment was that they’d also haunted him.
‘It was a long time ago. We were two different people b
ack then.’
Ryan shook his head sadly, not allowing himself to be let off the hook. ‘I broke my word.’ He’d also broken my heart, but he didn’t need to hear that. Not today. Not ever, come to that. And now, unbelievably, he was living through a second nightmare, as another woman he loved fought to stay with him. How could that possibly be fair?
‘I forgive you,’ I said, knowing that was all I could say to lighten the load he’d been silently carrying since the night the hospital had phoned to tell him I’d come back. My hand reached across the breakfast bar and squeezed his, and for a moment the kitchen swirled with all the what-ifs and what-might-have-beens.
And then everything changed, as the phone he’d placed beside his cup juddered and began to ring. We both looked down at the screen, with twin expressions of shock. Two words glowed brightly above her photograph.
Chloe calling.
Chapter 20
Chloe
I lay on my hospital bed, smiling at my wiggling fingers, with all the fascination of a newborn baby. Everything still worked: my toes; my legs; everything. I got every question they asked me right. Admittedly, knowing my own name and what date it was didn’t exactly qualify me as a Mensa candidate, but it seemed to please the medical team nevertheless.
A jubilant-looking Mr Owen visited my bedside shortly after I was brought back from Recovery. Even before he opened his mouth I could tell by his face that the operation had been a success. What I hadn’t fully realised until he began to speak, was how amazingly well it had gone.
‘To have been able to remove a tumour of that size so easily and speedily . . . it’s practically unheard of,’ he declared, shaking his head slightly in disbelief. ‘It goes beyond textbook perfect,’ he said, looking like a man who’d won the surgical lottery. ‘If it didn’t sound so fanciful, I’d say it was practically a miracle – if you believe in such things.’
‘I most definitely do,’ I said, shivering slightly as I felt the fingers of serendipity graze lightly down my spine. ‘I’ve always believed in miracles.’