by Primula Bond
‘You are Natalie Crane, aren’t you?’ She had a sunshine yellow voice, high and warm.
Natalie nodded. ‘I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry ...’
‘Oh, but you should. I’m glad you came. I’ve been hoping you might come. Will said ...’
‘Is Will here?’ Natalie interrupted. A few moments ago she’d been desperate to see him, but now she didn’t think she could bear it. She didn’t think she could bear the thought of seeing him beside this girl. She hadn’t thought it would be possible to feel any more pain, but it was. Oh God it was.
‘Will isn’t here, no. But hey, I shouldn’t be keeping you standing around on the doorstep. Where are my manners? Come in – please. I’ve been wanting to talk to you. In fact, I was going to ring you. But it’s all been a bit hectic. As I’m sure you can imagine.’
No, she couldn’t imagine. She had no idea what the girl was talking about.
‘I’m Lucy Cooper,’ the girl went on, giving her an unexpected smile, which seemed strangely familiar. ‘Will’s baby sister.’
‘You’re Will’s sister – he never said he had a sister.’
‘Why aren’t I surprised? He’s a tight-lipped bugger. Look, come in, why don’t you? I’m actually staying here at the moment. He’ll be back tomorrow, but he won’t be on his feet for a while. You know how men are when they’re ill.’
This whole thing was beginning to feel surreal, Natalie thought, as she followed Lucy into Will’s familiar kitchen, which looked as though a bomb had hit it.
‘’Scuse the mess,’ Lucy said cheerfully. ‘I’ve been cooking – and I always think it’s best to clear up at the end, don’t you?’
‘Er – yes.’ Natalie was feeling more bemused by the second. ‘Did you say Will was ill?’
‘Yeah, I did. He really hasn’t told you anything, has he? Oh bloody hell.’ For a moment she looked worried. Then she located the kettle from beneath a tea towel and filled it up at the sink. ‘I’ll make us a cuppa. Then I’ll tell you everything.’
Natalie was relieved to sit down, while Lucy, still chattering inconsequentially, made drinks. She tried to gather her thoughts. But she was none the wiser when Lucy finally sat in the armchair opposite her and put two steaming cups on the wagon wheel coffee table between them.
‘This is probably going to come as a shock,’ Lucy said, and for the first time there was seriousness in her voice. ‘But Will has cancer.’
The words hung like a time bomb between them. Natalie felt dizzy. In the last few hours her emotions had spun through anger, then lust, and then deep pain. Now things were beginning to feel slightly surreal. Maybe she was in shock.
‘I’m really sorry,’ Lucy added, chewing her bottom lip. ‘I thought he may have been economical with the truth – he’s like that – but I didn’t realise he hadn’t told you anything at all.’
‘What kind of cancer is it?’ Her voice didn’t sound like her own. ‘Is it ... I mean, how bad ...?’
‘He has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.’ Lucy shifted from her chair and came and sat on the settee beside Natalie. ‘It is bad, yes, but, well, he’s not actually dying or anything. It’s treatable and he has long periods of remission. He’d been in one until recently. He started getting symptoms again just after he met you – and they called him back for more chemotherapy.’
‘Oh my God.’ Natalie closed her eyes. There was suddenly so much that was falling into place. ‘Why on earth didn’t he tell me? I thought ... The stupid, stupid bastard ...’ She began to sob and she felt Lucy’s soft hand on her knee.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that. Me and my big mouth.’
The leather sofa creaked as Lucy got up and then came back again with a man-size box of tissues that Will kept in his spare room.
‘He is a stupid bastard,’ she said gently. ‘Stupid and proud. But he does have his reasons. Did he ever tell you about Kelly?’
‘The woman he nearly married?’ Natalie said.
‘Yeah – and boy did he have a lucky escape! He’d literally just bought her the ring when he was having some routine check at the doctor’s – something odd came up in his results and that’s how they found out he had Hodgkin’s. He hadn’t even had any symptoms before that.’
‘They split up soon after?’ she asked.
‘They split up the next day,’ Lucy said with a contemptuous toss of her dark curls. ‘She didn’t even wait for the proper diagnosis, just said she didn’t do illness and left him. Took his bloody ring with her, mind. He was devastated.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ Natalie felt a fierce protective anger curling up through her.
‘He hasn’t done relationships since then. Well, not proper ones. But when he spoke about you, well, I knew that he’d got involved. I could hear it in his voice. Even though he was trying to pretend it was nothing. That’s why I was going to phone you. I had a feeling you might feel as strongly as he did. But then you turned up. Which kind of proves my point, doesn’t it ...?’
Oh yeah, Natalie thought, praying that Lucy would never find out why she’d really turned up. Suddenly remembering Anton and realising that her mobile was still switched off, she flipped around in her bag, found it and switched it on.
Four missed calls. None of them from Anton. All from an unfamiliar number. Seemed like her blackmailer was trying to get in touch. Good. Let him stew. Waiting for her Lover didn’t seem very important any more.
‘He’ll absolutely kill me for doing it, but I could take you to see him if you like,’ Lucy was saying. ‘Visiting hours are over, but if they knew there were extenuating circumstances, I’m sure ...’
‘No,’ Natalie interrupted. ‘It’s all right,’ she added, seeing Lucy’s startled expression, ‘I will go and see him. But not now this minute. I think you should warn him I’m coming. I think that’s only fair.’
‘I guess that lets him off the hook then,’ Anton said, as they arrived back in central Bournemouth and he let them into Mick’s flat. He didn’t sound particularly happy about it. Not that she was surprised.
‘Which means you owe him an apology,’ she said quietly. ‘And so do I. Bloody hell, Anton, I never imagined it would be something like this. I thought he was just messing me about – at best that he was scared of commitment.’
Anton snorted. ‘Who says he isn’t? Just because he’s ill doesn’t mean he’s a wonderful person. He still lied to you. He’ll probably be pissed that you’ve rumbled him. In fact, I think you’re very sensible not to go chasing round to the hospital.’
She smiled despite herself. She knew he may be right. Will might not want to see her again. She was painfully aware of that. She was also painfully aware, despite Lucy’s reassurances he wasn’t dying, that he had a terminal illness. Whichever way you looked at it, the future was terribly uncertain. But her heart was too full of hope to be despondent. The thought of seeing Will, in whatever circumstances, gave her a wondrous lightness that had been absent too long.
‘Shit,’ Anton said, as he tripped over something metallic at the foot of the stairs. ‘Mind yourself, darling girl. There’s a whole pile of pipes just there. Mick mentioned he was having some work done to the flat.’
‘Central heating, by the look of it,’ she replied, stepping gingerly over them and reaching for the light. ‘That’ll improve his chances of selling it. We’re lucky he didn’t mind lending it to us again.’
‘Especially since we appear to have come on a wild goose chase,’ Anton said, as they went into the flat, which looked exactly as it had when they’d left it. Except it now had shiny new radiators dotted about.
‘I know. I’m sorry.’ She still felt as though she was dancing on clouds.
‘You are forgiven on condition you take me somewhere very expensive for supper,’ Anton said, picking up a piece of paper that was on the kitchen table. ‘Good grief, central heating isn’t cheap, these days, is it?’
‘It never was,’ she said, uncomfortably reminded of Patrick.<
br />
‘Hey – now that is a coincidence.’
‘What’s a coincidence? Where would you like to go for supper anyway – how about the Italian on Westover Road? Is that expensive enough for you?’
‘Isn’t Heatwaves Patrick’s company?’
‘Yes,’ she said, glancing up at him. ‘Why?’
He fluttered the piece of paper in his hand. ‘They fitted the central heating. I didn’t know they came this far south.’
‘Neither did I,’ she said. ‘But so what? Patrick can fit central heating wherever he likes.’ She frowned. ‘Actually, I think he moved to Winchester. That isn’t very far. It wouldn’t take him long to get here.’
Anton’s face darkened and suddenly she knew exactly what he was thinking.
‘Oh my God,’ she said quietly.
‘Maybe there’s a chance,’ Anton murmured, coming across the kitchen to stand beside her, ‘that this wasn’t such a wild goose chase after all.’
Chapter Nine
Natalie met Lucy in the hospital café at just after nine the next morning and they sat amid the clatter of plates and the smell of frying breakfasts – very healthy, Natalie thought. Not that she was planning on eating a breakfast. True to her word, Lucy had told Will that Natalie was coming to visit him and the prospect of seeing him had stolen her appetite and caused her heart to go into overdrive.
‘I also told him you were in complete possession of the facts so there was no point in him fobbing you off with some malarkey about not liking London,’ Lucy added with a wink.
‘What did he say?’
‘He wasn’t over pleased. But that’s tough. It’s about time he stopped running away.’ Lucy smirked and Natalie wished she had a sister like her. A sister to fight her corner. Although she was lucky; she’d always had Anton, who was pretty good at it. Right at this moment he was on his way to see Patrick, having already spoken to Mick about the set of keys he’d evidently forgotten he’d given to Natalie’s ex-husband.
It hadn’t occurred to Natalie that Patrick would have stolen her painting, but the more she thought about it the more sense it made. Especially the line about him destroying it if she didn’t give him £25,000. He had always wanted to destroy it. He didn’t know how much it was worth, neither did he care. The money was just a smokescreen. Maybe he wouldn’t have given it back even if she had paid up.
‘Will can’t leave until he’s seen the doctor,’ Lucy added. ‘So don’t worry about him escaping. You’ve got a captive audience. And he’s in a private room, so you can say what you like.’
Natalie nodded. ‘He can still throw me out.’
‘Trust me; he doesn’t want to throw you out. I know my brother and he loves the bones of you. He’s just been a little ...’ Lucy frowned as she stirred her coffee. ‘Let’s be kind and call it misguided.’
Natalie hoped she was right. As she got nearer to the ward, breathing in the dry smell of hospitals, her throat got dryer and her heart got louder and by the time she reached the door of Will’s private room, it was just her and her heart.
Then she was pushing open the door. And there he was. Sitting up in bed, a blanket lightly covering his knees. He was pale, and his face seemed a little gaunter than she remembered. Or was that her imagination because she knew he was ill?
‘Hey, you,’ she said.
‘Hi.’ His eyes were dark and the faintest of flushes smudged his face. ‘Game’s up then, I guess!’
‘Oh, Will.’ She was across the room in an instant. So much emotion crowding into her throat she couldn’t speak. Suddenly she didn’t care if he pushed her away. She just had to touch him. She just had to hold him one more time.
He didn’t push her away. He held her tightly against his chest so she could feel his breath in her hair. The scent of him, even underneath the scent of all things hospital, was so familiar, so right that she wanted to weep.
When she finally lifted her head she saw that he was smiling. ‘You’re not too angry with me?’ she said into his beautiful eyes.
‘No. I’m glad you came. It’s really good to see you.’
It was in the same moment that she noticed the thin hospital blanket was tenting ever so slightly over his nether regions, where it should have been flat. He caught her gaze. ‘Oh shit,’ he said. ‘As if there wasn’t enough shame already.’
‘There is nothing shameful about that,’ she said, slipping a hand beneath the blanket.
He gave a soft moan as she caught hold of him. ‘God, Natalie.’
‘Goddess will do.’ She closed her fingers around his hard warmth, joy sweeping through her at the familiar feel of him. ‘I didn’t expect to be doing this today.’ She gestured towards the door. ‘Does that lock?’
He shook his head.
‘Then we’ll have to be quick, won’t we?’
‘We can’t. There’ll be ... evidence ... Christ ...’ He broke off as she dipped her head beneath the blanket and ran her tongue in an experimental swipe along his length.
‘I’ll make sure there is no evidence to find,’ she murmured, before closing her mouth around the tip of him and sucking gently. And for the next few minutes neither of them had any coherent words to say at all.
Chapter Ten
‘I owe you an apology,’ Anton said. He’d been standing awkwardly in the lounge of Will’s flat since Natalie had let him in a few minutes earlier and he was clutching a bottle of expensive red wine. ‘Please don’t get up,’ he added, as Will made to rise off the sofa. ‘I’m not stopping. I just wanted to say my piece. I didn’t think you were good enough for her – but I was wrong!’
Will smiled and shot Natalie a glance. She was just behind Anton, and now she shook her head in bemusement. Anton hadn’t even let her take his coat;, he’d launched into his apology, straight after she’d led him to Will.
‘I’m not good enough for her,’ Will replied. ‘You’re quite right. You certainly don’t need to apologise.’
‘Not to mention the fact I thought you’d spirited away her painting.’ Anton’s voice grew a shade huskier – pale grey, Natalie decided. She could see how much this was costing him and she had never admired him more.
‘I would have spirited it away, if she’d let me,’ Will said. ‘But I’d have paid her for it. I still will, if it’s for sale.’
‘It’s not,’ Natalie said quickly, moving to stand beside Anton and touching his arm. ‘From now on, it stays in the gallery. I’m not even taking it to another exhibition – unless we’ve got state-of-the-art security.’
‘Or any security,’ Anton said drily. ‘Leaving it in an unalarmed shop was asking for trouble.’
‘Patrick probably did us a favour taking it,’ Natalie said. ‘At least we won’t be that stupid again.’
‘Patrick’s very lucky you’re not pressing charges,’ Will remarked. ‘Theft and blackmail are serious offences.’
‘He’s not a bad man,’ she said, looking between him and Anton. ‘Just misguided.’
‘Obsessive, you mean.’ Anton was evidently relieved the focus had moved away from him. ‘But he won’t be bothering Natalie any more. Mick and I made it crystal clear that if he ever went near her again he’d be in prison before you can say, “blackmail note”. Mick’s a Tai Chi expert,’ he added with a hint of pride.
‘What will you tell the police?’ Will asked.
‘That it was left outside the shop wrapped in brown paper packaging – which is partly true,’ Natalie said, looking at Anton. ‘They’re welcome to inspect the brown paper packaging. Are you sure you won’t stay for a drink with us?’
Anton cleared his throat again. ‘I’ve got things to do.’
‘People to see,’ Natalie finished. ‘You won’t mind if I don’t come back for a day or so?’
He shook his head. ‘I think I can manage. If the police do get edgy, I’ll call you, but my guess is they’ll be relieved the painting’s turned up and they can cross another unsolved crime off their list.’
‘Thank you.
’ She stepped forward and hugged him, and he hugged her back briefly, before pressing the wine into her hand. ‘Give my love to Mick,’ she said.
‘I shall, darling girl. I shall.’
‘The odd thing is that once I knew Patrick had my painting I didn’t worry about it any more,’ Natalie told Will when they were alone once more. ‘Which is ironic really because he’s one of the few people around that would actually destroy it. He’s always hated it.’
‘Because he felt threatened by it,’ Will said, stroking her hair. They were both lying on his sofa now and the afternoon sunshine streamed in on them, picking out the yellow and gold hues in the quilt that lightly covered them.
‘Patrick tried to own me and that painting was my way of telling him he didn’t,’ she said softly. ‘That’s what he hated. That’s what threatened him. I don’t think he’d have taken it if he hadn’t been presented with the perfect opportunity. Once he knew it was there – not properly protected – and once he had the keys, which he did because Mick gave them to him ages ago so he could give him a quote – well, it must have seemed too good a chance to miss.’
‘Let’s hope you’ve seen the last of him.’
‘I’m sure we have.’
Will coughed and she was instantly alert. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. Absolutely fine.’ He caught hold of her hand. ‘Listen to me, Natalie. Every little cough does not mean I have a problem. Well, no more than a tickly throat like the next person.’
She nodded. ‘Sorry. You must get enough of that.’
‘It’s one of the reasons I don’t tell people. The fact is, my love, my prognosis is better than the doctors first thought. A lot better.’
‘Thank God,’ she said.
‘My sentiments exactly.’ He smiled at her. ‘In some ways having Hodgkin’s has changed my approach to life. It’s taught me to treasure every moment. And the ones with you this summer have been some of the best of my life. Even with the chemo.’