Eric and David looked at each other. To their testament they at least had the decency to look guilty. ‘We’ve been doing our best,’ Eric said slowly. ‘I’ve done what I can. I don’t know numbers very well and it’s been a bit of a muddle, but Charlie has been brilliant behind the bar and all the staff have stepped up and done their best as well.’
Penny started to shake. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,’ she began. ‘I need to know these things. What if something worse had happened? What if you’d died and I didn’t know and I could have helped and …’ The last two words came out in powerful sobs, and she stood back up from her plastic visitor’s chair to go to her uncle, holding his arm and bending down to hug him, crying onto his shoulder. He let her.
‘I’m sorry, Pen,’ he said, trying to move his body so he could rub her back, a move that he’d done to her her whole life whenever she was upset.
‘You can’t be sorry for being ill!’ she cried into his bedsheets.
‘I’m getting old, these things happen …’
‘You shouldn’t be working if your health is bad! Bloody hell!’ She realized, then, in an instant, why the pressure to take over had become stronger and stronger lately. He couldn’t run his own business – the business he’d spent his entire adult life building. He’d had a heart attack. And now another. The understanding of it all was dizzying. Penny felt sick. He’d been trying to tell her, in his own way, and every time Penny had accused him of trying to boss her around in her own life out of – what? Malice? His own interest? She’d been willingly deaf to the hints he’d tried to give her.
‘Well,’ Eric said. ‘He won’t be working now. The doctor says his heart muscle is very weak. He’s been lucky, but apparently it’s going to take several months for him to get better. The decision has been made for him.’
‘Okay,’ Penny nodded. ‘That’s good. Rest is good. You can do that, can’t you Davvy? You can rest?’
‘I’ve got no choice,’ said Uncle David.
‘Knock, knock,’ a gentle voice came at the door. ‘I don’t mean to intrude, but Penny – I brought you a hot chocolate.’ Penny had been lightly dozing and stirred slowly, taking it from Francesco with gratitude. ‘I thought you could use the sugar.’
‘Clever bean,’ said Eric, standing. ‘David, this is the Italian we’ve been hearing about. He was the one who got Penny up here, and in record time.’
‘Hi,’ said Francesco, extending a hand. ‘I’m so sorry for what happened.’
‘David,’ Uncle David said, limply giving a handshake.
‘I’m so pleased you’re okay.’
‘Thank you.’ Uncle David’s voice was still hollow. ‘Thank you for getting my girl here, too. I appreciate it.’
Francesco nodded in response and then read the mood of the room. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’ll leave you all to it. Penny – do you want me to call someone at the café? Stuart knows what’s going on and is just going to do coffee and cake service, but is there anything else I can tell him?’
Penny shook her head. ‘Whatever you think is best,’ she said, unable to even think about work. ‘I trust you.’
‘Sure. Okay. Well, feel better,’ Francesco said to David. Uncle David smiled.
When he’d gone, Uncle David said, ‘Nice man.’
‘Yeah,’ said Penny, sipping delicately at the drink he’d brought her. ‘He is.’
Later, waiting in the hall because Uncle David had nurses in his room running checks and fussing with blankets, Eric hugged Penny and told her, ‘I was so scared, Pen. I’m going to do whatever it takes to get him back to full health. I promise you.’ Eric and Uncle David had been together for eleven years now. He was as much a part of the family as they all were. Penny felt a stab of shame that she hadn’t thought to pick up the mantle and look after him in the same way Francesco had looked after her. All she could think about was her uncle – in her worry she forgot that Eric must have been beside himself, too. Uncle David and Eric lived for each other – she couldn’t imagine one without the other.
‘I’ll do anything to help,’ she said. ‘I can’t lose him, either. He’s all we have …’ She started to cry again, and Eric hugged her closer, crying too.
‘Sssssssh,’ he said, in between his own tears. ‘Ssssssssh. It’s okay. He’s going to be okay.’
They stood for a long time, gaining strength from each other as they cried it out. Uncle David had Eric. And, thankfully, Penny still had Uncle David. Whoever Penny had prayed to had spared her uncle and for that she was endlessly thankful. Without him, she’d be lost. It was unthinkable.
‘I want to take him to the coast for a bit,’ Eric explained, as they wandered the ward aimlessly, sitting feeling like too little action, even though there was nothing they could be doing. ‘To my sister’s holiday place. Rest. Sea air. No work.’
Penny nodded. ‘I think that’s a good idea,’ she replied. ‘The doctors made it very clear he needs to be kept away from that kitchen and I think the more miles between him and work, so much the better.’
‘The thing is …’ Eric started, and Penny understood. The thing was, was that somebody else needed to run The Red Panda.
‘You need me up here,’ Penny supplied.
‘I can’t think how else we might manage. We can’t sell it. Not right now. It would kill him. That place is his life’s work.’
‘I know,’ nodded Penny. She had tears in her eyes again. When would she stop crying?
‘And to be honest, after the start to the year we’ve had, business hasn’t been easy. So even if I could convince him to sell it, the books don’t look as good as usual. We just need a year or so to get all that lined up. Looking strong. Maybe then we could sell.’
Penny tried to think of another way to do it. Hiring somebody else, maybe, or … Well. Maybe those were the options: they hired somebody else, or they hired Penny, who had grown up there, and knew the village and the people and the kitchen and what her uncle had been trying to achieve all along.
She had the edges of a truth at the forefront of her mind, and the faintest notion that it was time for her to step up for her family – the way her family had stepped up for her – lingering on the outer parts of her consciousness. She wasn’t ready to agree to it yet, though. There was Bridges, and Francesco, and her life. But then, as they looped back to David’s room, she got it implicitly: what is all that for if I don’t have my uncle? she thought. And then: Oh, shit.
‘I’m just glad he’s going to be okay,’ Clementine said, sat beside Rima, and opposite Penny and Francesco. She was pale and the circles under her eyes looked like bruises. Penny assumed she looked no better. ‘I need to see him more. I’ve been a bad niece. Daughter. Person. I don’t see him enough.’
‘Hey,’ said Rima, her arm around her wife. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. You do your best. You call him when you’re away, you visit when you can.’
‘It’s not enough though, is it? I should love him harder.’
‘I should love him harder too,’ Penny cried, wrapping her arms around herself. ‘Oh, Clem, I just don’t know what to do. Like, it’s supposed to be a no-brainer: I go and take over the pub. If I loved him that’s what I would do, isn’t it?’
Clementine shrugged, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. ‘I can’t tell you what to do on that one,’ she stuttered. Her voice was kind, like she really felt sorry for Penny. ‘Nobody would expect you to uproot your life that way …’
‘Except they would. And if you were the sister who cooked, I’d expect you to do it.’
Clementine didn’t say anything to that.
‘I know I can do it. It’s a huge place, and I’d have to work twice as hard as I do. I just … I changed my mind about wanting that life. I know you understand that. I love Stoke Newington, now, and I love Bridges and my life there. I’d feel this way even if The Red Panda was next door. It’s a lot. A whole pub. A restaurant pub. I don’t want that anymore.’
She was letting it all out,
now, this stream of consciousness.
‘But he was there through everything, Clementine. He’s a dad and a mum and an uncle and a friend and a cheerleader. And I am so, so mad he’s putting me in this position, and what’s worse is that he hasn’t even asked me yet. Eric basically did, but I get a sense that they’re waiting for me to offer. I wonder if I can give it a year, or agree to do it for two. Until he is stronger and can decide if he wants to sell. Huh. Like that isn’t what Eric has wanted for years. Eric has wanted to sell and Uncle David has waited it out to see if he can convince me to take over, and now here we are … literally life or death. I can’t tell him I’m mad but I am. I am so, so mad he’d ask me to do this. Even though he isn’t asking. I’m so mad that I have to offer.’
The tears came harder, every atom of worry from the past twelve hours leaking from her eyes.
‘I’m so mad. But I’m so relieved.’
‘I’m going to go and find some tissues,’ Francesco soothed, understanding he was encroaching on a deeply personal family discussion. ‘Can I get anybody anything else?’ He knew Penny needed her sister right now, and it was better to excuse himself for a moment. The women all watched him head towards the hospital shop for fake supplies.
‘And then there’s Francesco,’ Penny hissed, her voice lowered. ‘It started to feel like something, and I know it still can be, in theory, but also he is there and I will be here and he works shifts and I’m going to be in charge and probably never get a day off and it’s just asking for heartbreak, isn’t it? I’d be heartbroken to leave him in London – but I don’t want to limp on with him until Christmas and then be heartbroken all over again.’
Clementine slid across to Penny’s side of the table and started to stroke her hair, like their mother used to do when they were small.
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘You could make it work. People do.’ Rima leaned across the table with both hands, each one grabbing a sister and doing the only thing she could: holding on tightly.
‘I’m just not strong enough, Clemmie. I don’t feel strong enough for any of it.’ Penny looked to the ceiling, the tiles of it blurring as she blinked away her misgivings. ‘But for Uncle David I have to pull myself together, don’t I? What is the point of love if your family is falling apart? Family first, right? Look at all he has done for us.’
‘It’s alright,’ Clementine whispered. ‘You don’t have to decide this now. It’s okay. Come on.’
But Penny did have to decide now. She had to decide so much in an instant, and yet, really, truly, the choice had already been made: of course she’d go and run The Red Panda. Of course she would.
‘And the surrogacy …’ Penny said, trailing off. She couldn’t stand to finish the sentence. Whatever trepidation she’d had around it, it was another choice made for her: it would have to wait.
‘I know,’ said Clementine. ‘But the offer isn’t going anywhere. Everything is figureoutable.’
Penny closed her eyes in Clementine’s lap. The tears dried up and she felt an eerie sense of numbness. Her uncle was alive – but there was so much more she would now be losing. She counted to five as she inhaled, and counted the same as she exhaled. It felt like the only thing she had any say over was that. Five in, five out. Five in, five out. She counted until she fell asleep in her sister’s lap.
9
‘You’re sure this is what you want?’
‘Yes.’
‘You want to stop seeing each other?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even though we already fell in friendship?’
Penny smiled. She was doing her best to do her best. Trying hard to do the right thing. It hurt, but she couldn’t see any other way.
‘But that’s just it, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Wasn’t that always the point? We can be friends.’
Francesco sat for a moment on Penny’s sofa, chewing his bottom lip and staring at the coffee table. ‘But,’ he said, plainly. ‘I don’t want to be friends. I want to be with you properly.’
Penny had paced up and down the flat, around and around, as she’d waited for him to arrive that evening. He’d stayed with her all day at the hospital and then driven her back that night, once they knew David would be okay. She’d told him in the car on the way down that she was thinking of going up to Havingley, in Derbyshire, to help out as her uncle recovered, but Francesco hadn’t fully understood that she meant that she would move there for the foreseeable future and have Stuart run Bridges. By the time she’d woken up that morning, what needed to happen next was crystal clear to her.
‘This makes no sense to me,’ Francesco said. He didn’t move to be beside her, or kiss her, or try to change her mind with his touch. All he had were his words, and already he knew they weren’t enough. Her body language had changed, she’d made something about herself harder already.
‘I promised I would never knowingly hurt you,’ Penny consoled. ‘And you promised to never knowingly hurt me. If we don’t end this now, one of us will get hurt. I just know it. I can’t …’ She refused to cry. Crying wouldn’t be fair on Francesco because then he’d want to reassure her, and she couldn’t make him do that. ‘I just don’t have it in me. This is all too much. I owe it to Uncle David to do this.’
She straightened up, and Francesco could see her literally pull herself together.
‘My mind is made up,’ she said. ‘This is the way it has to be. Let’s be friends. I want that desperately.’
Francesco was blindsided but what else was there to say?
‘Okay,’ was all he could manage, trying to be strong for her, not understanding that what Penny needed was for him to crumble and say he couldn’t live without her and that he’d come as well. She knew, of course, that that would never happen. They’d only been together three weeks. Not even a month. That would be crazy, to go with her. She couldn’t ask him to, and he couldn’t offer.
And so he didn’t say anything except okay.
Okay, even though it was anything but.
Things moved fast. Arrangements were made for Penny’s occasional stand-in chef Billy to take over the cooking at Bridges, and for Stu to run the day-to-day handling of the place. Penny would just about break even in what it would cost to pay everyone more to cover her time, but at least she wasn’t losing anything and the business could truck on without her. She told herself it was for a year – eighteen months, max. It took her a day and a half to decide what to take with her and what to leave behind, and Francesco organized a small hire car for her so she could drive up there herself, and then that was it. She would be leaving.
The day came. Francesco helped her move her things from the flat, and she thought, maybe naively, that he really was going to ask to come with her. It had been the best three weeks of her life before Uncle David’s heart attack, and then in the blink of an eye it had become a sort of waking nightmare in which the man who’d parented her was sick, her sister was unavoidably heading to the other side of the world again, Eric had missed his own birthday party and a man she really bloody fancied was a man she couldn’t now be with. If they’d been together only the tiniest bit longer – six weeks, say, or three months – then she’d have asked him. She would have said, ‘This is crazy, and I know it is, but: do you want an adventure?’
After they’d packed the car together, she opened the driver’s door and climbed in. Slamming it shut and starting the engine she could see Francesco and how sad he looked, and part of her thought he was going to do it. That he was going to say, ‘Penny, let me come with you.’
He didn’t though. He didn’t say anything. She wound the window down and croaked, ‘Everything is going to be fine.’ She wiped at her eyes. She hadn’t noticed when she’d started to cry. ‘Tell me it’s all going to be fine.’
‘It’s all going to be fine,’ Francesco said, smiling.
Her phone beeped. It was Sharon. I love you, brave friend, it said. Penny didn’t reply.
Stuart blew a kiss to her from beside Francesco and said, ‘Dri
ve safe, and text when you get there, okay?’
‘I will,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
Her gaze shifted to Francesco. ‘See you,’ she said.
Francesco raised a hand. ‘See you,’ he replied.
Penny pulled away from the kerb, heading slowly up the high street. She turned the corner and waited with her blinker on to pull out onto the main road. The traffic felt endless. She sat with tears now flowing freely only realizing she’d stopped the bravado of being strong when one dropped from her chin onto her hand, which she then saw was shaking. Moving this way, leaving everything behind – she’d had no choice. That’s what she told herself. Uncle David was her world, he was the only family she had left besides her sister, and if this is what he needed from her then this is what she had to do.
But at the same time, visions of Francesco doing it alongside her flashed through her mind.
The realization came. She didn’t know the details, but she needed to go back. It wasn’t like he was happy at his job, anyway – right?
‘Gah!’ she screamed, understanding that she really did have to ask him. He’d once told her he wanted to stay in London forever if he could, that he couldn’t bear the thought of moving again, but it didn’t matter what he said in response – life was too short not to ask. She knew that all too well, and she knew better than to think a connection like this could happen more than a handful of times in a person’s life. She bet that there were people out there for whom a connection like this had never happened and what? She wasn’t going to trust enough in it to turn around and at least enquire?
A car behind her honked and she made her choice. She pulled out onto the road in a right-hand swing that meant she had enough room to U-turn back down the road she’d just come from. Penny was only driving at fifteen miles per hour but she felt like she was hitting a hundred for all the adrenaline coursing through her.
‘This is crazy …’ she rehearsed under her breath. ‘Francesco! Come with me!’ she practised.
The car made the last corner turn back to Bridges and she could see him still out on the street in front. ‘I’m coming!’ she said under her breath. But then she could see that there was another person with him – a woman. She had long, wild, curly hair and skin the colour of a polished walnut. The woman was gesticulating with her hands and Francesco was gesticulating back, and in the middle of the road, far enough from them not to be able to hear but close enough to be able to see, Penny watched as the woman pushed her face against Francesco’s. Penny slowed to a halt. She waited for Francesco to pull away, for this to have been a mistake, for him to turn around and see her and understand that she’d done it – she’d come back for him. But that’s not what happened. Their faces stayed pressed together, and Francesco moved to push the woman up against the wall beside the café – Penny’s café – and before Penny could unpick the who or the what or the why or the how, she’d put the gear stick into reverse, checked her mirrors, and edged back around the corner to speed, as fast as she could, towards the M1 north. By the time she’d reached Toddington Services she’d convinced herself that she’d known all along Francesco would break her heart, and she was relieved she’d found out the truth about him sooner rather than later.
The Love Square Page 10