by Rhoda Baxter
‘No problem. It was … interesting.’
She smiled and got out of the car. Despite her assurances to Peter, she still felt woozy. She really, really needed to start carrying sweets in her bag again. She managed to get through the gate at a fairly normal pace, focusing intently on her destination, but she missed the doorstep and stumbled, landing with her hands against the door. There were footsteps and Peter was beside her.
‘I think I should see you in,’ he said, taking her elbow.
Grace didn’t argue. Despite her light-headedness, she was suddenly very aware of how close he was. She could smell his aftershave and a hint of sweat. His hand on her arm felt hot. If she closed her eyes now she could lean against him and pretend he was always there for her. She took a deep breath and forced herself to concentrate on opening her own front door. She felt an irrational spark of relief when Peter stepped in behind her.
Chapter Eight
Peter shut the door behind them, his arm still around Grace. She was trying to keep upright, but he could feel her weight against his shoulder. How strange to feel another human being lean against him again. Her hair brushed against his jaw, making him experience a thrill of contact. He pulled his concentration back to the problem at hand. ‘What do you need?’
‘Cup of tea and something sugary,’ she said.
He led her into the living room and helped her sit down on one of the big armchairs. ‘And your kitchen is?’
‘That way,’ she pointed through the linking doorway. Her hand was still shaking, she pulled it back and cradled it defensively against her chest. ‘It’s the sugar low. The adrenaline takes it out of you. I’m so sorry.’
‘You sit down and direct me,’ said Peter. ‘I’ll make the tea.’ Before she could protest, he said, ‘No arguing.’
‘Kettle, teabags. Biscuits in the cupboard,’ she said, pointing.
Peter busied himself making tea. It was strange doing something so domestic in someone else’s kitchen. When he turned around, he could see her watching him through the open doorway. She looked floppy somehow, as though all tension had drained out of her. ‘What would you have done if I hadn’t waited?’ he said, a little more sharply than he’d intended. ‘If you’d collapsed and been alone.’
‘I’d have managed. I always do.’
He found a packet of biscuits and took them through to her.
‘It’s not been this bad before.’ She devoured two biscuits in quick succession and closed her eyes. Her honey-toned skin was grey and two islands of colour stood out on her cheeks.
Her head tilted back and Peter had a momentary fear that she’d fainted. He was about to move, when she sighed. He watched her and caught himself admiring her long, slim neck. Her hands lay flat on the arms of the chair, she had delicate fingers … He tore himself away from looking at her and returned to the kitchen and to making tea. ‘How do you take your tea?’ he asked, over his shoulder.
‘Milk,’ she said. She didn’t open her eyes.
Even pale and unwell, she was entrancing. The whole abseiling experience had hit her really hard. But he had no doubt that she could handle it. She probably didn’t need him there. Except, he wanted to be there. He told himself it was the novelty of being needed by someone who could open their eyes and respond. Part of him knew he wasn’t fooling anyone. ‘Tea, madam.’ He put it down on the coffee table between them.
She opened her eyes and smiled at him. ‘You are an angel.’
‘So I’ve been told.’ He grinned and plonked himself on the sofa opposite her.
Grace took a sip and visibly improved. ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘I really needed that. Thank you.’ Her eyes were a clear and brown. Peter caught her gaze. They stared at each other for a moment until Grace looked down. Peter felt a flush of embarrassment. He should be careful. This woman was beautiful, but he had a wife. He forced an image of Sally into his mind, trying to picture the happy-go-lucky blonde that had whisked him off his feet. He kept seeing the pallid figure in the hospital bed instead.
Grace didn’t seem to notice anything amiss, so that was okay. She held the packet of biscuits out to him, no plates, nothing. Sally would have insisted on having the proper equipment. He remembered her digging out an old dinner service that his mother had pressed on him and dusting off the delicate plates, exclaiming that she couldn’t believe he’d never used them. He took a couple of biscuits, smiling faintly to himself.
‘What?’ said Grace. ‘Did I say something odd?’
‘I was just thinking that Sally would have insisted on side plates.’
Grace frowned. ‘I suppose I should use them. I broke a couple of my mum’s ones, so now I don’t dare. I just use the Hoover on the sofa every few weeks.’ She seemed to be recovering with each passing minute. She sat up straighter and tucked her feet under her. The open packet of biscuits went on the table between them. ‘Silly really. It’s not like Mum’s going to complain.’
‘Sally wanted white calf skin sofas. I wasn’t allowed to eat anything messy on them anyway.’ He was still smiling at the memory of it. At the time he’d found it endearing that she made such a fuss of his house. He barely went into the living room these days, let alone sat on the expensive sofa. He preferred to gulp down his reheated meals at the kitchen table.
There was a moment of silence as they both munched on their biscuits. Finally, Grace said, ‘It looks weird in here without mum’s knickknacks.’
Peter looked round and saw the patches on the walls from where pictures had been removed. The mantelpiece was bare. The mirror above the fireplace was yellowing slightly at the rim, and reflected a bright square of wallpaper that had been protected by a picture.
‘I’ve been clearing out mum’s things, bit by bit. It’s a bit sad, really,’ said Grace. ‘But not as hard as I expected.’
‘Really?’ He thought she looked melancholy. ‘I’d have thought it would be quite a wrench.’
She shrugged. ‘The things don’t make the place theirs. The memories do. All the things were doing was reminding me of them so that I couldn’t let go.’ She gave a small smile that only accentuated how full her lips were. ‘I guess it was a bit like being haunted.’
Peter stared at the patch of wallpaper reflected in the mirror. One thing removed to leave something bright that had been hidden. ‘When Sally first … after the accident, I used to sometimes wish she could haunt me. Just so that I could hear her voice again. Except … of course, she isn’t dead.’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry. Don’t mind me. I’m talking crap.’
‘I think I see what you mean.’ Grace dunked her biscuit in her tea. ‘She’s not technically dead, but to all intents and purposes …’
‘It feels like she is,’ he finished the sentence for her. ‘People always say, “where there’s life there’s hope” and “you’ve got to keep on keeping on” and “have faith.” I guess they’re right.’
‘You need to grieve,’ said Grace, matter-of-factly.
He stared at her. He’d thought she understood. ‘But she’s not dead,’ he said slowly, as though she were an idiot.
Grace met his gaze. ‘I mean you need to grieve the future you lost. You were married, you were going to have a life together and now it’s gone. We all have a mental picture of the perfect future. You’ve lost yours. You need to let yourself grieve for that.’
Peter frowned. Was that what he had been doing over the past year? Snatching emotions from the dead weight of weariness? Anger, denial, fear, despair. But not acceptance. Never acceptance. How could you accept something when you didn’t know what it was? Sally could wake up. Or she could die. Until she did one or the other he was stuck in this limbo. Not widowed. Not married. Not anything.
‘If she wakes up,’ said Grace, ‘what damage is there likely to be?’ She didn’t skirt around the issue. Again, it was refreshing. Why did no one e
lse talk to him about it like this? As though it was something that could be identified and sorted out efficiently and calmly, rather than a monumental calamity that invoked only pity.
‘Don’t know. She had a lot of trauma to the head, which is why they kept her in a medically induced coma for so long, to help her recover. They said she had healed better than they expected … but then they phased out the drugs and … she didn’t wake up. Until she wakes up, there’s no way of knowing how badly her brain was affected.’ He sighed. ‘I’m told it’s very unlikely she’ll be the person she was before.’
‘Oh. That sucks.’ Grace made a little movement as though she was thinking of getting out of her chair and coming towards him, but then she seemed to change her mind and settle back down again. ‘I’m sorry.’
Peter shrugged. ‘Shit happens.’
‘Certainly does.’
‘The worst is not being able to prepare for it. If I knew … I could start getting ready. But all I can do it carry on day after day, not knowing.’
Grace nodded. ‘The dreaded parallel planning.’
Peter said, ‘Exactly.’
Grace said, ‘It makes it sound like there’s a parallel universe running alongside doesn’t it? One where they’re dead.’ She looked up, her gaze travelling to the spaces where the knickknacks had been again. ‘Or still alive.’
There was silence as they both retreated into their own thoughts.
‘When you were looking after your parents … Did you ever have … thoughts,’ said Peter suddenly.
‘Er … yeah.’ Grace looked amused. ‘I have thoughts.’
‘Sorry, that’s not how I meant it. I meant … thoughts you weren’t … proud of.’ It was a question he’d wanted to ask a lot of people. Something he hadn’t dared voice in front of counsellors. He hated that the thoughts even entered his head, but they were always there, in the background. ‘I wish Sally would die, so that I can be free.’
This time Grace’s smile had no mirth to it. Her eyes lost focus, as though she were looking at something he couldn’t see. ‘When my Dad was having a crappy day and was angry and hurting, I used to wish it would end … one way or another. I was younger then … I wanted my life to be normal. Like other people’s. You know, go out, get drunk, meet friends, maybe meet someone …’ She didn’t look up. She tapped her mug with a fingernail, the light pinging noise seemed to fill the room. ‘After he died, I tried to get back into it, but by then my Mum was ill.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘It was different with her. She … wanted to die. I wanted her to stay alive because otherwise there would be just me. It’s bad enough being lonely. I didn’t want to be alone as well.’ She stopped talking and sniffed.
He could see that her eyes had filled up with tears. Looking around, he spotted a box of tissues and got up to hand them to her.
She wiped her eyes with ferocity, leaving a red mark on her cheek. Peter fought the urge to step across and hug her. He sat back down, allowing himself to sink into the sofa again. He had to think of Sally. Sally always cried tidily. Sniffs, dabs, tears. None of this noisy nose blowing, make-up running stuff.
‘Sorry about that. It’s the combination of throwing stuff out and talking about depressing things.’ Grace crumpled up the tissue, took aim at the bin … and missed. She stood up, took a moment to steady herself and strode to the bin to put the tissue in. ‘All better now, see,’ she said. ‘More tea?’
‘Yes please.’ He was grateful for the break in the conversation. Grace seemed surer on her feet now. So another cuppa and he would go. He leaned back against the squashy sofa. It was surprisingly warm and comfortable. It didn’t squeak when he moved either, which was a bonus. He felt some tension drain out of him, as though someone had lifted a weight from his shoulders. Unburdened. Is this what people meant when they said that? He was supposed to lighten his worries by talking to therapists, but none of them had made him comfortable enough for him to ask them the questions that worried him most. In one afternoon, Grace had got under his defences with seemingly no effort. He leaned his head back against the cushions and confessed to himself that perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he wanted her to get under his defences.
It was odd to be attracted to someone again. In a way it was nice to know that he could still feel something other than tired and miserable. But it was dangerous to indulge. He was a married man. His wife was in a coma. What if she stayed in her coma? Would he have to be celibate forever?
Grace watched the steam rising as the kettle boiled. She was still feeling weak, but she could hide it better now. All she had to do was persuade Peter it was fine and he would leave. It had been embarrassing enough when she collapsed like that at the abseil, but what happened at the front door was just silly. She should have braced herself against the door, so that he could drive off. She would only have had to hold up for a few more seconds. She sighed and threw teabags into fresh mugs. The mugs were a random assortment of branded freebies that she’d found at the back of a cupboard. Forgotten relics from her days at university. Looking at them reminded her of being younger.
The kitchen looked different now that she’d started giving stuff away. She’d left a few photos up, but most of the cookbooks were gone, along with the teapots that used to live on the windowsill and her father’s paperback collection. It was a wrench, but cathartic too. She had found a few things that she knew she could never part with. A drawing of an aeroplane wing that her father had sketched on the back of a shopping list, she remembered his voice, patiently explaining about air speeds and lift. A photo of her mother laughing that she’d taken when she was twelve, which had a thumb shadowing the corner, so that it never made it into an album. These she knew she would keep. Maybe even frame them. It was as though she was purging the house of the unhappy memories of her parents in their old age and rediscovering them as they had been when she was a child.
If she were superstitious, she would have said it was her parents trying to tell her to move on. She smiled. Moving on was good.
She hadn’t expected the abseil to stress her out like that. It wasn’t as though it had been really dangerous. How stupid to forget that she might have an anxiety attack. If she’d been expecting it, she would have been able to prepare for it. Thank goodness for Peter for giving her a lift. She poured water into the mugs and prodded the tea bags, making the tea seep out.
Peter seemed to be helping her move on in more ways than one. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this way about a man. But he was married. He saw her as just some woman he’d befriended at the hospice. There was no chance of her getting any nearer to him than that.
She reflected that she shouldn’t want to anyway. Sneaking off with someone whilst his wife was in a coma was just a bit too sordid for her. That wasn’t the sort of person she was. But it didn’t stop her wanting him.
‘Do you want more biscuits?’ she said, over her shoulder.
There was no response. Wondering whether he’d somehow slipped out to get away from her, she went back to the living room to find him asleep on the sofa, head flung back against the cushions. The late afternoon sun cast his face in planes of light and dark. She snatched a moment of indulgence and took in the perfection of his profile, the hint of gold on his long eyelashes, the little worry lines that were in sharp contrast to the crow’s feet at the sides of his eyes.
Her hands flexed with the urge to touch him and stroke the ridge of his cheekbone and feel the evening stubble. To run her fingers through his sensible blonde hair. But that was an indulgence too far. She clenched her fists and turned away. Peter was not for her. She may as well enjoy being his friend. It was the best she was going to get.
Peter had no idea how long he’d been asleep. He woke up to find the room in semi darkness. For a moment he wondered where he was. The sofa was hot and embracing. That might explain the dream. He’d had dreams like
that when he’d first met Sally. This time they featured Grace. He rubbed a hand over his face and slowly sat up.
He was still in Grace’s living room. The light was on in the kitchen and he could see Grace moving around. The radio was on. She was dancing a little as she leaned against the counter, reading something. She seemed to glow in the yellow light of the kitchen. He watched her for a moment, trapped between reality and the dream of a few moments ago, when she’d been wrapped around him. She was beautiful and he wanted her so much it was almost a physical ache now. He squeezed his eyes shut. This had to stop. It was lust, that was all. The best thing he could do was get away.
He made his way to the kitchen, feeling bleary from afternoon sleep. ‘I should head off.’
Grace turned. A bit of his dream sprang back into his mind. He tried to focus on something else. Anything.
‘Stay for dinner?’ She pointed at a pan on the hob. ‘I’ve made enough for two.’
He hesitated.
‘It’s only pasta and pesto,’ she said, misunderstanding. ‘Nothing special. So, don’t feel you have to.’
‘Excuse me a minute. I really need to wake up properly.’ He hurried off to the bathroom where he splashed his face with cold water. He glared at himself in the mirror and told himself to pull himself together. He liked Grace and found her attractive. Fine. He was allowed to look. But he couldn’t put himself in the position that he felt anything more than a passing attraction. He had to think of Sally. A small voice pointed out that he rarely thought about anything BUT Sally, but he squashed the thought. He should go home. Staying for tea until she recovered was acceptable. Dinner, probably not. He nodded at his reflection. ‘Go home Peter.’
When he returned to the kitchen, he could smell the pesto. His stomach rumbled. It was such a clean basil smell. But he had to be strong. ‘Thanks for the offer of dinner, but I really had better head off,’ he said. He picked up his jacket, which he’d slung over the back of the chair.