Darling
Page 23
Until the New Year. They came, in the end: Demarcus, as I knew he would, asking for his boy, and Jade. They arrived within minutes of Thomas leaving for work, always bloody watching and waiting for their moment, Jade running out from the car after Dem, crying too, which was a bit unnecessary.
‘Give him to us, now, or do we need to come in?’ His voice scuffed harder than gravel.
All three of us knew the answer. Still, I tried to catch her eye, begged her with a smile, but she was crying too much to say anything. But even as I stood shocked by them, by her tears, I knew what had to come. So I rushed to pack my son’s rucksack and a bag in five minutes flat and told him we had a great surprise.
Dem loves my boy, and Stevie is enjoying the longest ever Daddy-holiday, at least until I can figure out where to go from here. Even Thomas thought it made sense, when he came home and I told him what had happened. He said it would be best for our boy to get away from the sadness that was hanging thick in the air despite us, along with Lola’s faded scent and the unending cellar dust.
No choice. As I folded Stevie’s clothes I dared not stop to think how hard I had tried, or to wonder whether he had enough of his favourite things; whether there would be anything he might miss.
I will get my son back one day, I know. Have no doubt about that.
I even sorted out my shattered phone, so we can text and call each other. There was one photo on there that I had never seen, the last one on the roll. No idea when they took it. Lola and Stevie messing about in a selfie: bare-faced, unwatched, laughing.
And Thomas? I love him, just as I have always loved him.
Just as I loved him when I first saw him.
He didn’t remember me.
We were both going down. The lift in St Foillan’s went up and down, like all lifts. But only hospital lifts going down can echo your own private plummeting. This lift was never empty, but that day it was, except for the two of us. Three, in fact, as Lola was there: a white-haired wisp with questioning eyes.
Floor 7. I got in, without Cara. She was gone, and all I had to show for her were some pastel cotton clothes in a plastic bag, clothes she would not need now; so tiny, as if they could go unnoticed. A knitted jumper – it was mid-December – smaller than a handkerchief. My mouth was tight, working itself into a silent fury at its useless words. Harder words still jingling around my cane-rowed head from Jade, who had gone on at me about the ward-borrowed medicines she had found in my bathroom.
I know what’s right for my baby, I had said.
Jade was not a mother, she could not possibly have known.
My likkle Jade, she too faas yunno! But she’s a gud gyal.
She saw the light, in the end, or at least faded her chatter out. Twenty-three months and my baby girl had been so sick. She had needed me, she still needed me and I could not, cannot, bear to think of some lonesome, over-crowded heaven where she must wait, alone or with sharp-toothed ghosts from the past, needing me. No, she was just gone.
Floor 6. In they came. The dark-haired man and the little girl. Afternoon, he said. Tonsils, he said, as if proud. She’ll need rest, I said, pulling the bag closer to my chest. I should know, I’m a nurse.
I love nurses, he said.
Then he, this man, this well-crafted man with his sharp cuffs and planed vowels and soldering gaze, spoke of a pressurised service and angels and long hours and an ageing population and how lucky we all were – he didn’t know, about Cara, how could he? – and I just looked at him. La.
I love nurses, he had said. We had both known what he meant but then it was the ground floor and he was gone, and the dead weight in my heart would have to wait.
Years later, to get away for a while, I would go to a little café up the road called Andante. The man from the hospital lift would sometimes be sitting there, with one coffee and no newspaper. Just waiting, waiting. I knew straight off it was him. Turned out even his surname was meant for me; for all of us.
I ran to the supermarket, the morning after the Brexit vote. Not just for cigarettes, but for him. I saw him, far off, and I ran. I ran towards my one chance to be reborn.
He didn’t remember me, but I already knew those cuffs, that hair; I knew he loved me. And I was right, wasn’t I?
We met and we met; we married, and we lost Lola. But we are still here.
As is Will Benton. The police did call him soon after pulling in our tattooed friend. But the boy has a silver-plated tongue: a friendly chat, a form filled in, and then he was right back on his smooth road to a smooth future. They say he wants to backpack around the Far East before Durham.
We still plan to construct our stuperbous new home. We will build Lola into the bricks day by day; paint her in, day by day. Little memories that might otherwise fade, thoughtful words that will not be denied, laughs we must still share. We’ve gone for a redevelopment of an existing home, a wrecked mansion only twenty minutes away. In my mind I am already at work. Before the diggers go in, before the scaffolding can come, in my head I re-lay the foundations. I repoint the walls and lay on hardy bricks where the old ones have crumbled away. No fake holes will sit in our tiles, enough real voids out there without creating an artwork of imagined ones; they will be all new-fired clay. The landings will speak up and the doors will protect and the walls will be silent and strong. A skylight room up top, L-shaped, where we can misname the stars.
And then, of course, we must not overlook those other important opportunities to make life better. Maybe a holiday, a chance to wrap myself in searing warmth. Maybe nursing, which I might now go back to part-time; I’ve been looking for just the right thing. The longing to heal never leaves you.
Love always wins.
For an accessible version of the above image, please see here
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my agent, Joanna Swainson, for her sound judgement, smartness and flair, her kind guidance and her confidence in me.
To my editor, Anna Kelly, without whose exceptional instincts, discernment, patience and enthusiasm Darling simply would not be; my most sincere thanks. Also, many thanks to Michelle Kane and Katie Fulford; to Heike Schüssler for the remarkable cover; to Anne O’Brien for copy-editing and Amber Burlinson for proofreading; to Tara Al Azzawi, Fran Fabriczki and the whole team at 4th Estate, HarperCollins.
To Mrs Kaminik, wherever you may be: you turned the light of learning up brighter than I had ever hoped. To King’s College London for cementing in me such a love of literature that I dared not write for years and, later, could only rest when I did dare to write. To my one-time Arts Council ‘prize’, Catherine Johnson: mentor, role model and the first writer I ever met. To my first editor, Rowan Pelling, for the joyful break into publishing short fiction which changed my life.
A special thank you to my dear friend, Anna Christofis, for being the first person to tell me, long ago, that I ought to be a writer. Then, soon after, to insist – quite emphatically – that I already was. And so, I wrote: heaven. Most recently, for having read Darling several times, and for feeding back each time with generous and galvanising praise.
To Robert Peett for his advice, encouragement, adroit criticism, wit and friendship over the years. They have all helped to shape me as a writer.
To Alister Veitch and Susie Little for their gracious early readings of the novel. To Emily Reay for her final-draft reading (and for a youthful exuberance to equal that of her mother, Fiona).
Thanks again to Susie, and to Tamandra Christmas-Baxter, for above-and-beyond friendships, ones that have helped keep this particular show on the road for more years than I care to mention. Tamandra, for the writing retreat at LPF that saved me, I can never thank you enough; to Jane Lloyd-Evans for embracing every last thing about Darling (and for that epic Antipodean brunch); to the ‘Queenbees’ Miranda Glover, Lucy Cavendish, Jennie Walmsley and Anne Tuite-Dalton for years of creativity-firing, inspiring friendship; to Nicky Macdonald and Jeannie McGeehin for their long-standing encouragement of my desire to wr
ite; to every last one of my friends for all their support.
A sincere thank you to Muscular Dystrophy UK for providing information that assisted with my research.
Finally, to family. To Mum, Patricia, with whom it all started: for the love, sacrifice and fathomless care. Thank you for a lifetime of extraordinary nurturing (and for answering endless questions about matters Jamaican). Soon come.
To my late father, Dr. Okon Tom Nkere-Uwem, I will forever be grateful for your erudition and your belief that education was paramount. I only now understand how brave you were.
To Emma and Charlie, thank you for forgiving this bizarre business of mine that is writing. The many hours in my Writing Room and other, stranger, locations; the half-burnt dinners and half-baked eccentricities … Thank you for your faith and for allowing me, your stepmum, to love you.
To my husband, Peter, who has always said ‘follow your dream’ and backed it up with every kind of support imaginable. None of this would have been possible without you; all my love and heartfelt thanks. We did it: Happy Days.
About the Author
Rachel Edwards lives in Oxfordshire with her husband, stepdaughter and stepson. She was inspired to write Darling after being subjected to racist abuse a few days after the 2016 EU referendum. This is her first novel.
About the Publisher
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Elm Forest Herald
19th January 2017
HOME CARE NURSE WANTED
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