One Small Act of Kindness

by Lucy Dillon

  ‘Did he think he’d grow out of it?’

  ‘Something like that. I mean, it seemed shocking at the time, but looking back, it was just your average adolescent drunken behaviour. I guess they were worried about where it might lead, not what it was.’

  ‘Understandable, really, when you consider the perfect little brother with the top grades, on the rugby team with his great hair.’

  She was expecting Jason to rise to the bait, but he didn’t. He stared blankly at the fresh bed, as if he was reconsidering the answer to that question. ‘Actually, Luke could have played for the county, but . . .’ He shrugged. ‘He wasn’t allowed to go for trials, because he was on detention at school. And after that, he skived games.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t want to be compared with you.’

  ‘Don’t know why – he was streets ahead of me. I was all right. I was fit. And I turned up to the practices. But Luke played like he wasn’t scared of anyone. He had this immense way of tackling, given he wasn’t a big lad.’ Jason looked up with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Funnily enough, Chopper was telling me a story about Luke the other night. It was some match the town team had a few years back – you know, the proper Longhampton RFC team, not the school. They’d lost a couple of players on a stag do. Luke had been in the club bar before the match with his mates – he knew everyone – and Mickey Giles, the captain, wanders in and asks him if he has size-ten feet, as a joke. He said he did, so Mickey chucks Luke some spare boots and asks if he wants to sit on the bench to make up the numbers.’

  ‘And he went on and scored the winning try.’

  ‘Not just the winning try but two tries on top of that.’ Jason raised his shoulders, then dropped them. ‘I’d never heard that story until the other night. Luke never told me. Mum probably didn’t even know. But it’s a great story, isn’t it? Pulling on his boots and playing. And then just sloping off into the night.’

  ‘On his motorbike.’

  ‘He didn’t have a bike. He had a Vauxhall Nova.’

  They gazed at each other over the smooth white duvet, as the scene unfolded in Libby’s imagination, collaged from family photos and her current Thursday-morning reading of the local paper to learn about her new adopted town. She pictured wiry Luke, a slight figure in mud-streaked shorts, the ragged roars of the scrubby rugby ground down by the station, with its sidings advertising car body shops and local scrap dealers, the blokeish camaraderie afterwards and the mutterings. Luke Corcoran. A wrong’un who tackled like a man twice his size.

  Libby hadn’t seen Luke since his unfortunate wedding to Suzanne. If Jason had a healthy blond farmer’s good looks, Luke was the opposite: smaller, darker, hollow-cheeked, handsome in a watchful, brooding way. If Jason had told her Luke and Suzanne had met in the special forces, not the Mercian Regiment, she wouldn’t have been surprised. Maybe they had.

  ‘You know, it’s weird,’ said Libby. ‘We’ve been married nearly five years and I still don’t feel as if I know anything about Luke at all.’

  ‘Welcome to the Corcoran family,’ said Jason, and chucked her the used bed linen.

  Mr Reynolds didn’t get round to Pippa until nearly five, and she was starting to worry that he’d changed his mind about discharging her.

  Libby hadn’t come back either, and that worried Pippa even more. Everything balanced so delicately on what other people decided; it made her stomach lurch every time she heard someone coming down the corridor towards her room.

  In the end, they both arrived at the same time, Libby with a bag of clothes, and Jonathan Reynolds with some forms, some leaflets and a nurse holding a bag of prescription medication.

  ‘We’ll see you next week,’ he said, once he’d run through the discharge procedure and the exercises he wanted her to do to coax back her memory. He tapped the forms with his pen. ‘Things will be mending, even if you can’t feel it. It’s always fascinating to see how different patients’ recovery arcs are. Hopefully those vague memories we managed to touch on will slowly knit together with more over the next few days. Don’t worry if you never remember the accident, though.’

  ‘I’m glad to be fascinating,’ said Pippa, ‘but I’m kind of looking forward to being normal again.’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t be long.’ He looked round. ‘Ah, your friend is here. Very good. I’ll leave you to it.’

  Once he and the nurse had left, Libby came in, bearing a bag. Again Pippa thought it said more about Libby than the clothes inside did: it was a big yellow one from Selfridges, the stiff paper kind that had obviously once held a pair of boots or a large handbag. Interesting that she’d kept it, not chucked it away.

  ‘I brought a few things,’ she said. ‘I thought we were roughly the same size.’

  ‘I don’t know about that!’ Pippa laughed. ‘You’re much thinner than me.’

  ‘Do you think so? I’d say you were smaller, if anything. We’re about the same height, but . . .’ Libby didn’t seem to be being overly modest.

  Pippa looked down at her own wrists. They were thin, knobbly. And her arms were also thinner than she felt they were in her head. She felt bigger than this.

  Could you do that? Could all those ridiculous Hollywood films have a grain of truth – get knocked unconscious and wake up in someone else’s brain? Sometimes her dreams felt as if they were someone else’s, but not while she was having them, only when she had a tangential reminder about them during the day. Hers and yet not hers.

  Pippa shut her eyes tightly. Things were definitely starting to move behind the dark curtain in her head, as if her brain was trying to fit things together. Slowly, piece by piece. And yet nothing firm. Nothing she could close her hand on.

  ‘I just brought some loose yoga things,’ Libby went on, ‘so it doesn’t hurt your ribs. There’s a vest and a wrap top, and whatever.’ She pulled some grey jersey things out of the bag and draped them on the bed. ‘There. See what fits. It’s quite warm outside. Summer’s on the way!’

  ‘That’s so kind,’ she said, touching the soft fabric. As she moved the top, she saw Libby had discreetly hidden some underwear in the folds, a pair of knickers and vest with a shelf bra inside. Thoughtful.

  Libby smiled, pleased. ‘No problem. I just thought earlier the only thing that made me feel halfway human when I had my gall bladder out was my cashmere pyjamas. Anyway, I’ll let you get changed and I suppose we’ll make a move. If you’re ready?’

  ‘Yes, all signed out.’ Pippa pointed to the pile of papers on her bedside table.

  They looked at each other, conscious of the oddness of the situation.

  Why do I feel I can trust Libby? Pippa thought. What is it about her that makes me relax, as if she knows me? Is it because she seems to trust me, whoever I am?

  I hope she can trust you, said a voice in her head, and she pushed it away.

  Libby drove like she talked: quickly and enthusiastically, and with a disregard for amber lights.

  ‘. . . so touch wood, the builders will be arriving at the start of the week. I’ll try to keep things quiet for you.’

  ‘Please don’t worry.’ Pippa stared at the scenery as they drove through Longhampton; none of it was familiar. ‘I don’t want to be in the way.’

  ‘You won’t, honestly. We don’t have enough guests at the moment for anyone to be in the way of anything.’

  They were leaving the town now, heading away from its red bricks and charity shops, out towards the fields and trees of the countryside, but before they’d gone much further, Libby went quiet and slowed down.

  ‘Do you . . . ?’ she began. ‘I mean, this is . . .’

  Pippa saw the painted sign indicating the Swan Hotel was up ahead and she realised that this must be where the accident had happened. The bend, the road, the big trees overhanging the road, the stone wall running alongside on the left . . .

  She racked her brain for a memory, bu
t there was nothing. Not even a worrying blank, just nothing. Without speaking, she shook her head.

  ‘Probably a good thing,’ said Libby, and indicated to turn into the car park.

  The Swan Hotel was nice but somehow smaller than Pippa had imagined from Libby’s bag and accent and general appearance; it was a solid, ivy-covered, three-storey Georgian house, with four ground-floor large sash windows, two either side of the front door.

  Not smaller, she corrected herself, as she got out of the car, but warmer. Friendlier. Tweedy and cosy, rather than the slick London boutique-style place she’d assumed it’d be.

  ‘It’s all a bit of a mess,’ Libby went on, escorting her over the gravel drive. ‘And I warn you now – my mother-in-law seems to have this fantasy that the hotel is actually in the Scottish Highlands, so if you’re allergic to tartan, you’d better hold your breath.’

  Someone was waiting at the front door, standing between the pillars: a small, brown-haired woman in a tweed skirt and beige jumper. As they came nearer, she lifted a hand in welcome and smiled.

  ‘Hello, Margaret!’ called Libby, then added, ‘Oh, watch out, Pippa – he’s a licker . . .’

  A low-slung dog came trotting out from behind Margaret and made straight for them, a black basset hound with ears that nearly touched the ground. He headed for Pippa, but she wasn’t scared; a funny feeling of comfort came over her, and she bent down, cautiously on account of her sore ribs, and let him sniff her hand with his leathery nose. She could feel the air moving with each powerful sniff; it was a curiously intimate sensation, the dog analysing her in ways she couldn’t know, drawing his own complex conclusions with each inhalation.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, as the huge black nose inspected her fingers, then her arm. The white-tipped tail swept from side to side happily. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Lord Bob Corcoran, but you can call him Bob,’ said Libby. ‘Or You Bloody Animal, which is what I call him. We’re great friends.’

  Pippa stroked Bob’s majestic head and gazed into his funny-sad face. ‘You are a very handsome man,’ she told him, and his deep brown eyes seemed to smile.

  ‘Blimey, that is the calmest I’ve seen him outside the hospital,’ said Libby. ‘You obviously smell of the PAT ward. He’s automatically therapising you.’

  ‘No, I’m good with dogs,’ said Pippa, without thinking. When Libby didn’t reply, she looked up, to see her pointing a knowing finger, her face wreathed in smiles. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re good with dogs. That’s a memory, right? A memory!’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Pippa stopped, her hand shaped to the curve of Bob’s skull. ‘It is.’ She tried to pin it down – which dog? When? A childhood dog? A friend’s? A recent one? – but the sensation slid away.

  Libby looked pleased. ‘Margaret will love that – Bob bringing your memory back. She’s already convinced he’s a better therapist than most of the nurses. Margaret! This is Pippa. Pippa, Margaret.’

  The older lady had approached across the gravel and now she held out a hand. ‘Hello, Pippa. So pleased you’ve made it here at last. Just a week late, eh?’

  There was a twinkle in her eye that surprised Pippa; she hadn’t expected it, after the way Libby had spoken about her mother-in-law. For some reason, she’d been expecting someone older, sadder. This lady was quite spry and friendly, her outfit toning, and finished with a scarf.

  ‘Thank you very much for letting me stay,’ she said. ‘I’m so grateful.’

  ‘Not at all! You’re most welcome, Pippa. Come on in. I’ve made some tea.’ Margaret gestured towards the hall with a gracious sweep of her hand and Pippa found herself being drawn in.

  The dog, Bob, followed Margaret into the hotel, and Libby and Pippa trailed after them both. Pippa’s first impressions of the place were borne out when she got inside: the place smelled like someone’s grandparents’ house; the air was musty with potpourri, and dark polished furniture, and dusty carpets, and slightly saggy sofas that dogs had been napping on when they shouldn’t. The sort of hotel you’d book into for a wedding nearby, one that served a huge English breakfast and had old copies of Country Life going back to the 1980s.

  The reception was dark – the rampant tartan Libby had warned her about wasn’t quite as bad as she’d expected, being limited to the Black Watch carpet – but it was cosy, and old-fashioned. A good-looking man in a blue checked shirt stood behind a polished oak reception counter, deep in discussion with someone on the phone – an old black phone, which fitted the country-house style. He was cradling his head in his hand, one elbow on the counter, and he was drilling a pen into the side of his head. When they came in, he stood up and made ‘Sorry, sorry!’ gestures at the phone.

  ‘Absolutely, Marek . . . No, won’t be a problem. Eight o’clock . . . OK, listen, I’ll have to go . . .’

  Pippa guessed it must be Jason: he was so exactly what she’d expected Libby’s husband to look like that it made her wonder if maybe she had been here before. He was tall, broad-shouldered and handsome – blond hair, lightly tanned face, an even white smile that suggested he’d worn braces as a teenager.

  The reception area seemed to close in as Pippa stared at him, trying to pin down the strange sense of having seen him before, until she had to look away when his smile grew a little fixed. He was familiar, she thought, her heartrate surging. Wasn’t he? That face was somewhere in the jumbled, locked filing cabinets of her memory, but she didn’t know where, or how, or . . .

  Exhaustion caught up with her and she felt Libby’s arm round her waist. Steadying her.

  ‘Tea!’ she said, and led her through to the lounge.

  Chapter Nine

  The builders arrived on Monday morning at eight o’clock on the dot, while Libby was coordinating two poached eggs and some toast for the nice Irish couple in room four (no dog), and Jason was restacking the dishwasher according to his preferred formula, while trying to stop Lord Bob pre-cleaning the plates.

  ‘The cavalry is here,’ Jason announced, peering out of the kitchen window. ‘Blimey, Marek’s sent an entire unit.’

  ‘Let me see.’ Libby put the timer on the windowsill and came to look.

  They watched as the building team disembarked from the black van parked up next to their Irish guests’ hire car – the only one in the car park apart from theirs. Libby felt a frisson of excitement mingled with a shiver of trepidation. Something about builders’ ability to reduce a room to bare-bricked chaos within minutes, leave it naked and vulnerable for weeks on end and then restore it apparently overnight, with the added frisson that they could leave at any moment for a ‘rush job in Beckenham’.

  ‘How did they get so many of them in there?’ Jason marvelled, as one builder after another emerged from the back, all wearing Marek’s black polo shirts. ‘It’s like a circus van of builders.’

  ‘How many has he sent? Seven, eight, nine . . . Blimey.’

  Jason reached for his checklist, room by room, of the work they’d agreed on. ‘I hope at least one of them speaks English. This would be a very good time for Pippa to remember she’s some sort of translator.’ He took a last slurp of coffee. ‘Is she up yet?’

  ‘No, she’s sleeping.’

  Pippa had slept most of the weekend, which Libby thought was probably a good thing: she still looked exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes, and big bruises, now turning a sickly yellowy-green, on her pale skin. Despite being in some pain from her ribs, she’d been a model guest, making endless conversation with a pleasingly perked-up Margaret about her garden (and her dog, and Longhampton, and Donald, and all the other things Jason and Libby had had to hear a lot of) and had offered to help Libby and Jason shift furniture out of the bedrooms, in preparation for the workmen’s arrival.

  Libby had said no, of course. ‘But you must wander around,’ she told her. ‘See if anything comes back to you.’

  Later, on
her way to make everyone some tea after a hard afternoon moving old beds, Libby had spotted Pippa tucked up on a sofa in the residents’ lounge, busily writing things down in her notebook. Her dark head was bent, and her legs were curled underneath her. Lord Bob was sprawled up against her slim calves, using them as an armrest. Pippa didn’t seem to mind, and occasionally her hand would reach out and absent-mindedly fondle his big ears.

  I wonder what she’s writing, Libby had thought. What’s she noticing about us? And the hotel – what’s she seeing here? Libby hoped she was doing her best impression of a confident manager, but when Pippa looked at her with those perceptive brown eyes, she worried that the real Libby was showing through: the Wandsworth wife who didn’t quite fit in with the others, the hotel owner who didn’t totally understand VAT. Something about the squint of concentration in Pippa’s expression, her need to extract the tiniest clue from everything in order to work out who she was, made Libby more conscious of herself at the same time.

  She’s not writing about you, Libby had told herself sharply. She’s writing about herself, who she is.

  And she’d pulled on a smile and poked her head round to offer Pippa some tea.

  ‘I said I’ll go and see to the builders,’ Jason repeated, as if talking to a very old or very deaf person.

  ‘What? Sorry, I was miles away.’

  ‘I know. Imagining your beautiful new bathrooms?’ He handed her the mug to put in the dishwasher – his faded Longhampton FC one. ‘Or trying to work out how many boxes of builder’s tea to get at the wholesaler?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Libby. She grinned, unable to contain her excitement. ‘It’s really happening, isn’t it?’

  Jason grabbed her arms and gave her a swift, soft kiss on the forehead as he went. ‘Exciting times, Mrs Corcoran! Our hotel!’

  Libby smiled, and her earlier trepidation vanished under Jason’s infectious enthusiasm. Our hotel.