Grace thought about her own friends. They fell into two camps: those who worried about her, dropped her a line, called her, offered help or just sat with her in silence in the kitchen, and those who had simply disappeared, silently receding into thin air, hidden behind a cloak of discomfort. ‘What did you say to him?’
‘Nothing.’ Huw shook his head. ‘I just punched him, punched him in the face, and then I left.’
She found his frankness shocking and yet strangely reassuring. It was almost a relief that he wasn’t trying to tell her it would all be better in time, that time was a great healer. He was acknowledging quite the opposite and she appreciated his honesty. That sort of insight could only come from someone who spoke from experience.
‘Do you miss teaching English?’ She pulled her pashmina tighter around her neck to block the cold whistle of wind that blew up from the river.
‘Yes, sometimes I do. I used to love it. I write now, that’s how I spend my evenings when I’m not burning things.’ He poked the fire and the flames roared.
‘What do you write?’
He shifted on the canvas seat. ‘All sorts – poetry, ideas, plans. I’m still waiting for inspiration for the great novel.’
‘They say we all have one in us.’
‘They do and I think that’s true. Don’t you?’ he asked.
‘Sometimes. I think it takes courage to put your thoughts and ideas on paper and show them to strangers. It takes a confidence I know I don’t have – it’d be like opening up my diary and inviting the world to take a look. I’m not sure I could do that. Not sure if what I write could ever be good enough or if anyone would want to read it.’ She shrugged.
‘What do you write?’ She had caught Huw’s interest.
‘Oh…’ She sat up straight. ‘Not novels, or even stories, really. More snippets, ideas, funny things. Things to make Chloe laugh or because sometimes it feels like the easiest way to make sense of stuff.’
‘I get that.’ He nodded. ‘Do you have other kids?’ he asked as he pulled the pole from the fire and removed the fish, using a fork to skewer them onto two paper plates.
Grace took the plate he offered and put it on her lap. ‘No. I didn’t fall pregnant with Chloe until I was a little older. I thought it would be good to get further up the career ladder before I had children. I guess that’s part of my sadness, that I didn’t have her earlier, get to be her mum for longer. I keep thinking about that. I thought it was important that we had a house and a pretty room for her and all that stuff, but actually I just wish I’d had her younger and held her more.’
‘Ah, the great “if only”… Trust me, that can send you mad.’
‘I think I’m already there,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t know if having other children would make it better or worse right now. I think I would hold them that little bit tighter and be distracted by them and they would be a reason to keep going, give me hope, I suppose. But also I like the fact that I can just curl up and switch off; there’s no one relying on me or needing me to keep it together.’ Tom’s image flashed into her mind. ‘It’s so recent; it’s still very hard for me. It’s very hard for me to talk about or even to think about it. I’m numb.’
‘That doesn’t really change with time; you just get better at hiding it. I’ve learnt not to punch people, no matter how much better it might make me feel.’
Grace let out a laugh, a short burst of joyfulness that flew from her. It was a sound that she’d forgotten; it felt alien. Immediately, she placed her hand guiltily over her mouth. I’m sorry I laughed, Chloe. I’m not happy, I’m not! I miss you. I’m sorry.
Huw clearly felt no pressure to fill each silence with noise or meaningless small talk. He simply let her cry. His words, when they came, were carefully chosen.
‘It doesn’t get easier, Grace, so I’m not going to tell you that it does. It will never be easy. It’s like living with a big black hole in your world, but it gets okay for you to remember, not so painful.’ He unconsciously placed his hand over his heart. ‘It’s as if the you that you were before gets replaced with a new you. How you feel, the hurt, the pain, the longing, the sadness, it becomes part of you and you kind of grow to fit the new you, where all those terrible feelings and that energy-sapping grief are your new normal.’ He looked across at her. ‘Does that make any sense?’
Grace nodded. This was kind of what she expected: never to recover, but that time would take away the sour smell of grief that right now invaded her every breath.
‘Are you married?’ he asked nonchalantly.
The question floored her rather more than it should have. A simple yes or no would have sufficed.
‘Yes, to Tom. He’s at home.’ She thought for a second about how best to describe the state they were in. ‘We’ve kind of fallen apart. It’s as if we’re too injured to help each other. I can’t take on caring for him, helping him. I know how terrible that sounds, and it makes me feel terrible. I don’t like myself for it, but it’s like I don’t have anything spare.’
‘Because you don’t,’ Huw said. He sat up straight. ‘You should eat your fish and then go to sleep.’
He sounded concerned in a paternal way. Grace was touched. She felt a flicker of guilt as she pictured Tom.
Biting into the blackened flesh of the trout, she knew that if her heart weren’t so heavy and her mind so distracted, it might taste good. But all food turned to ash in her mouth these days. She didn’t want to enjoy food, she didn’t want to enjoy anything. How had he phrased it? ‘I don’t want to get out of bed, don’t want to see anyone.’ That was exactly how she felt, all the time. It was some comfort to be with someone who understood this, someone who wasn’t Tom.
Grace laid the empty plate on the ground and patted Monty on the flank. ‘Night night, Monty.’ He was a little too close to the fire and she could smell the slight singe to his fur.
‘Thanks for supper.’ She spoke over her shoulder as she made her way across the field, leaving the warm orange glow behind her.
‘Don’t forget to feed Bertha!’ he called after her into the darkness.
Grace nodded and let herself into The Old Sheep Shed.
12
In the UK, sepsis kills more people than breast, bowel and prostate cancer combined
A few days later, Grace was woken by a light rapping on the door. She stumbled from the bed, gathering her cardigan around her trunk and lifted the latch to see Huw standing on the steps.
‘Thought you might like to come with me,’ he said with an edge of indifference that she’d learnt was just his manner. He began to back away from the building.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked, yawning.
‘Into Hay-on-Wye.’ He gestured down the valley. ‘Got to pick up some bits and bobs, and I usually have a fry-up. If you fancy it.’
Grace nodded. Why not.
‘Leaving in ten minutes,’ he called, without looking at her, as he strode across the field towards the cottage.
Eleven minutes later, with her hair still damp from her speedy shower, Grace climbed into the Land Rover, zipped up her fleece and put her rucksack on her lap. ‘Where’s Monty?’
‘In the back. I think he’s sulking cos you’re coming along.’ He shook his head in mock exasperation.
‘Oh. I thought he liked me.’
‘Don’t take it personally, but he prefers it when it’s just the two of us. Prefers it when I only have him to talk to. Plus you ate his fish.’
Grace smiled. She wound down the window, which juddered. Clogged, she suspected, by muck, judging by the smears of muddy water and paw marks on the glass.
There was something purifying about the air in the valley; it tasted sweet and as it flowed through her body and dried her hair in its gentle breeze, she felt calm, clearer-headed than she had in an age. It was as if she was hidden away from the real world, without the intrusion of email or television, or family members popping by. Not that she hadn’t appreciated her mum and dad’s concern, she had of
course, but it was a relief not to have to sit quietly around the kitchen table with them like she had back home, a relief to be left alone with her thoughts.
‘I was thinking about what you said the other night. In fact I spent all day yesterday thinking about my life now, and about what you said, how feeling like this is my new normal.’
He gave a small nod, started the engine and swung the Land Rover round.
Grace let out a deep sigh. ‘And it helped. I’ve been waiting to feel… better, if you like. But knowing that I might never feel better has made me accept it and, strangely, that’s actually made me feel less desperate, a bit. You know, like having a bad, bad pain and you can’t function because of it, but then you find out it’s never going to go away, so you have two choices. You can either lie in a darkened room and do nothing, forever. Or you can try and carry on, and learn to live with it.’
‘That’s pretty much the size of it.’ Huw glanced at her before turning out onto the drive. ‘And you do look a bit better, you’ve got a bit of colour.’
‘I’m going to call Tom later. I need to speak to him. He thinks I ran out on him. I guess he was right.’ She felt a little embarrassed; this man was a stranger and yet she felt comfortable sharing her innermost thoughts with him. She decided that it was because he was a stranger that this was possible.
‘Oh, wow! That’s a little more than a cowshed – it’s a massive barn!’ Grace stared at the shell of the building Huw was restoring. She couldn’t see it from The Old Sheep Shed because it was hidden from view by the cottage and the copse. It sat at the top of the ridge, a long, low structure whose wooden rafters formed intricate patterns and were currently patched with tarpaulin.
‘Yes, but it’s what we used to call the cowshed. It’s going to be beautiful, with a huge inglenook fireplace, a Welsh-slate floor, an Aga in the open-plan kitchen and a mezzanine library deck. There’ll be a couple of bedrooms and a huge terrace with a view over the whole valley. Plus a herb garden out the back in raised planters that will provide colour from wherever you look from inside. Leanne always wanted raised planters. She drew pictures and wrote a list of all the flowers she wanted and why.’
‘That sounds amazing. What will you do – live in it?’ she asked as she gazed at it.
Huw shook his head. ‘I’m not sure really. It’s about six months away from being finished so I’ve got time to decide. I was going to live in it, but I’m thinking maybe I’ll sell it and live off the proceeds while I write that great novel. Plus I kind of like living in my nan’s house. It’s where all my memories are. It’d be weird for me to abandon the cottage; I don’t think she’d like it.’
‘That sounds like a plan then.’ Grace liked the simplicity of it.
Huw didn’t respond. He was a man wary of making plans, knowing how quickly they could go awry.
The Land Rover trundled towards the town, between hedgerows that allowed only occasional glimpses of the valley below. Huw raised his hand in a wave at nearly every car they passed, the drivers of which did likewise. It felt like a proper community.
When they reached Hay-on-Wye, Grace craned her neck to peer out of the window at the steep and winding cobbled streets. She spotted several inviting-looking teashops and coffee houses among the higgledy-piggledy buildings that were clustered along the pavements. Signs swung from iron arrows or chains, nearly all of them advertising books of some sort – antique books, collectable books, children’s books, historical books.
‘What do you do here if you don’t like cake or books?’ she asked with a small smile.
‘You move,’ Huw said dryly.
He pulled up and parked the Land Rover next to the pretty clocktower with its distinctive ornate bellcote. The whole place was picture-postcard perfect.
Huw jumped from the cab and whistled as he tapped his thigh. Monty fell into step. ‘I need to go up to Jones’s Hardware and pick up some strimmer lines. Do you want to take a wander and I’ll see you back here, and then if you like we can go get some breakfast?’
‘Sure. I need a supermarket.’ Grace pictured the empty bread bag, the contents of which had kept her in toast since she’d arrived. ‘Thanks for getting that food in for me by the way.’
‘There’s Pugh’s up round the corner, best bread in Hay.’
Grace watched his waxed jacket disappear up the road as she slung her rucksack onto her shoulder and set off to explore. She voluntarily stepped off the kerb to allow walkers in their heavy boots and spattered gaiters to pass, and she gazed into several bookshop windows, wishing she had the concentration to read. She liked the anonymity of being in a strange town. No one here knew who she was or what she’d been through; no one was whispering about her or nudging their friends with their elbows, and there was no morbid fascination about how she looked or acted. It was a relief not to have to worry about her effect on others, how, just by catching sight of her, people who knew her would be forced to contemplate what would happen if the shadow of sepsis fell over their lives.
Grace pottered in Pugh’s lovely store, filling her basket with two freshly baked sourdough loaves, three bottles of wine, a couple of warm cherry bakewell muffins and a large wheel of soft Welsh goat’s cheese wrapped in waxed paper. Carrying her cargo, she made her way back towards the car, thinking that actually she could eat breakfast. The bite of her hip bone against her palm that morning had reminded her that she needed to eat; she was thin, too thin. She arrived at the car and leant on the passenger door, happy to feel the rays of spring sunshine on her face.
A woman stopped on the pavement in front of her; she looked tired. Her greasy blonde hair was pulled into a tight ponytail and loose tendrils fell about her pallid face. She was pushing a buggy with a little girl, a toddler, sitting back against the curve of the chair. Grace found the distraction of the woman irresistible, wanting to watch her with a strange curiosity. I used to be a mum like you. I had a little girl like that.
She watched as the young mother suddenly bent forward, screeching at the top of the toddler’s head. The child, as far as Grace could decipher, was guilty of asking repeatedly for sweets. In her anger the mother jerked the pushchair handles to the right once or twice, to make the pushchair shake. Grace had to restrain herself from intervening, from marching up to the woman and explaining that her daughter had been taken from her and that she would give anything to have her with her, demanding sweets, chattering inanely about nothing much in particular. Even if that meant she ate a ton of sweets, she would give anything, anything in the whole wide world to be in that situation.
Grace remembered the morning before Chloe had gone into hospital; she had wanted something to eat. Tom had reassured her with promises of ice cream when it was all over. She pictured Chloe nodding against her dad’s T-shirt, gripping Dr Panda in her little fist. And what did you do, Grace? You went to call Jayney. You put work first. She was hungry and a little nervous and you went outside to make a call. Why didn’t you hold her tight, stay with her? Why didn’t you tell her she didn’t have to go? Why didn’t you listen to her, properly listen and keep her home?
Grace watched as the little girl in the buggy began to cry, before defiantly pulling off one of her flashing trainers along with her pink sock and flinging them onto the pavement.
And that was all it took. The sight of a chubby little foot with five perfect toes dangling in the air – it was enough to transport her back to the hall floor in the early morning, where vomit sat in a triangular stain across the wall and Tom was shouting, screaming. She saw the soft edge of Chloe’s nightdress, resting on her shins, and those little feet…
‘I’m sorry, Chloe! I should have just held you and kept you with me, but I didn’t know! I didn’t know!’ Grace was only vaguely aware that she was shouting as she cried. As the strength left her legs, she slid down the side of the car and ended up slumped on the cold pavement with her head leaning towards the front wheel.
The young mother stared at her, then yanked at her little girl’s pushc
hair to get her away from the strange woman on the ground. Grace placed her head in her hands and sobbed, unable to control the sadness that flowed from her.
She was suddenly conscious of Monty’s soft muzzle against her arm. She opened her eyes as Huw ran towards her.
Huw dropped down onto the ground and placed his arm around her back. ‘Come on, let’s get you into the car. It’s okay.’
He seemed to care little that people had gathered on the pavement, confused and fascinated by the spectacle. Monty barked in concern and backed away from the duo. Huw helped Grace stand and manhandled her up into the passenger seat. Grace flopped over until her head was practically on her knees and continued to cry, oblivious to anything else.
Huw drove steadily without speaking until he turned into Gael Ffydd Cottage and killed the engine. He jumped down and whistled for Monty, who knew the drill. Opening the passenger door, Huw undid the seatbelt and took her arm.
‘Come on, Grace, let’s get you inside.’ He caught her as, with her eyes closed, she almost fell from the cab. With his arm across her back, he guided her along the path towards The Old Sheep Shed one last time. She leant heavily against him as he helped her up the pretty steps and pushed the door.
Stumbling towards the bed, Grace let herself tumble onto the soft mattress. She lay where she fell, uncaring about the hair that spread in a tawny sheet across her face, or the fact the she was still wearing her trainers.
Huw pottered in the kitchen area, putting the cheese in the fridge and the rest of the produce on the sideboard. He fed Bertha with several fat logs and flicked the grate before disappearing outside and returning almost immediately with the fishing stool from the garden. Monty loped in and lay on the floor at the end of the bed and Huw closed the door behind him.
Slowly Huw unfolded the fishing stool by the side of the bed, sat down, leant his back against the wall and stretched out his legs. ‘Go to sleep, Grace. I shall sit here until you wake up.’
Three-And-A-Half Heartbeats Page 14