Never Leaves Me Page 14

  Later, as he sat typing away, I took him a cup of coffee and examined the lock. It was a substantial mortice lock, with heavy brass plates on the edge of the door and the frame. The workman had made an excellent job of it, the doors were oak, expensive and heavy, Robin had stood over him supervising the job.

  ‘Big,’ I said, idly running my finger over the two large keys, which, still on a single ring, lay on his desk. ‘One for me?’ I picked them up and jangled them.

  ‘I’m a bit busy,’ he said, calmly taking the keys from my fingers and tucking them into his shirt pocket. He hardly looked at me.

  ‘Fine.’ I left the room and closed the door behind me.

  He stayed in his office all evening, I went to bed early and pretended to be asleep when he joined me.

  We never discussed the lock on his door again, he never gave me a key. He locked his office when he wasn’t in it; he valued his pupils’ confidentiality.

  ‘Did you check Robin’s desk?’

  Mum and Dad exchange glances.

  ‘Yes. I did,’ Mum says and pats my hand.

  ‘Okay.’ Robin must really want to get to the bottom of it too, if he’s allowing Mum into his office.

  ‘I wish I could be here for you tomorrow. With the staples.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ I’d quite forgotten about the staples coming out. I wish Mum hadn’t reminded me. ‘I hope it goes okay at the dentists.’

  Mum grimaces and rubs her jaw.

  When it’s time for them to leave, they’re subdued and so am I. I miss my little sister so much.

  We all miss Mads.

  ‘We should be ready to remove your staples in about half an hour?’ The very young nurse, I don’t know her name, is casual and smiling. Her head popped around the door, her body still in the corridor.

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  ‘I’ll come and get you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I mumble into my chest.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your mum coming?’

  ‘No. She can’t.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll hold your hand.’

  ‘Cool.’ I don’t feel cool. I feel sick.

  ‘It doesn’t hurt.’

  How the hell would she know? She barely looks old enough to be out on her own.

  The door closes and she’s gone. I hope Sally gets here soon. I imagine her sitting in the waiting room at the bunion clinic – I don’t know if such a thing exists – getting annoyed at the delay. She’s not the type to sit quietly and wait patiently, she’ll be asking when it’s her turn. What if she’s had her turn and they’ve sent her for tests, x-rays, scans, things like that? She could be hours.

  I remember, when I was about nine, I fell off a wall and broke my arm. The wall was part of a house that was being built around the corner. It was the weekend, no builders about; all the kids played on the building site. Health and safety wasn’t as strict then as it is now, there was no site fence to stop us getting in. We built castles with the sand, played snakes with coils of wire, moved bricks and blocks about, climbed the newly-built walls.

  ‘Don’t go up there, Juliette,’ Stephen said. It was long before Mads had been born, so he still called me Juliette.

  ‘I can if I want.’

  ‘Be careful. It’s too high. You’re too small.’

  I hated that. I knew I was small, I didn’t need reminding. I didn’t need him to point it out.

  ‘Scaredy cat,’ I called and the other kids joined in. ‘Scaredy cat. Scaredy cat.’

  I stood up on the wall to show how brave I was. None of the other kids were quite so brave, or stupid.

  Then I fell, tumbling and rolling onto my arm and cracking it against a broken block. I nearly passed out with the pain.

  Stephen took off his sweatshirt and tied it around me, pulling my arm into my chest. He’d been doing first-aid at cubs and pretended he knew all about broken bones, though it did ease the pain. He walked me home, his arm around my shoulders, me wailing and crying. He let us into the kitchen where we found Mum and Sally cutting out cushion covers on the table.

  Mum took one look at me and frowned.

  Stephen slowly undid the knot in his sweatshirt and my arm fell out, dropping in front of me. I howled. My hand was limp.

  Sally blamed Stephen; he was supposed to be looking after me. She pushed him out of the kitchen and marched him home. He was grounded for a week.

  I didn’t blame Stephen.

  Mum had to call Dad; she didn’t have her own car then. He couldn’t get away, so she called a taxi. At the hospital, we sat waiting in different departments; Accident and Emergency, x-ray, several others I can’t remember. It went on all afternoon. Finally, I was taken to the plaster room and I left with a cast that weighed a ton. Dad had finished work by the time we were done, he collected us and Mum moaned about how much the taxi journey had cost.

  It was the same arm that is injured now. Unlucky, that arm.

  I imagine Sally sitting in waiting rooms, just like that.

  Half an hour comes and goes and no one comes for me; no young nurse, no Sally.

  Another thirty minutes pass. Maybe they’ve forgotten. I’m reprieved. They can do it another day, when Mum can come.

  I feel much happier now. I’m sitting in the chair, both eyes closed, my head resting against the wing.

  The door bursts open; so much for my reprieve.

  I wait for the nurse to say something and when she doesn’t I slowly open my right eye, the left one is still not co-operating.

  ‘Stephen?’

  He looks solid and dependable. His hair is cropped short, his clothes are soft and casual.

  ‘Etty,’ he says, his voice gravelly.

  A single tear rolls down his left cheek.

  Eleven

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Do I sound ungrateful?

  ‘My mum’s held up downstairs. She sent me up instead. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m sorry because I know you didn’t want to see me.’

  I look at him, his sweet face, so earnest, so genuine.

  ‘It’s not that I didn’t want to see you, I didn’t want you to see me.’ I pause as he uses his knuckle to wipe away a tear from his cheek. ‘In this state.’ I add, pointing at my head, my leg, everywhere.

  I want him to say that I look fine, that it’s nothing, that I’ll soon be back to normal, but he doesn’t. He just stares at me.

  ‘I’m not that bad, am I?’ I attempt a laugh which could easily turn into a sob.

  ‘Etty.’ He steps forward, drops down to my level and grabs my hand; he pulls it up to his lips, letting them brush my skin. ‘I’ve been so worried.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I let my hand stay in his even though I know I shouldn’t. ‘There’s talk of me going home soon. Although, I must accomplish some things on my own, like washing myself, and walking.’ I follow my comment with another forced laugh.

  Stephen nods, his face solemn.

  ‘Anything I can do to help, anything, I’ll be there for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I pull my hand away now. What if Robin walked in? And I can just imagine Robin letting Stephen into our home to help. That will never happen. Just letting Mum in is a miracle.

  I glance around the room, embarrassed. Stephen stands up and peers at my head.

  ‘That’s a lot of staples.’

  I inhale through my nose and the sound carries around the room.

  ‘I’m sorry. That was tactless.’

  I don’t get a chance to respond because the young nurse’s face pops up in the door porthole. She beams at us before bringing a wheelchair in.

  ‘We ready?’ She positions the wheelchair in front of me; I would rather walk but have already proven I can’t. ‘Perhaps your husband could help you into the chair.’

  Stephen steps forward, puts his hands under my arms and helps me up. For a moment, we’re eye to eye and
we exchange a knowing glance. Or is that my imagination?

  Young nurse leads the way as Stephen pushes me around the corner to a little room. We go through the admin of checking that I am the correct person, then the gloves are pulled on and my head inspected. The tool to remove the staples, which looks like mini-pliers, is in the hand of the senior nurse. She introduces herself as Sharon; she will remove the staples.

  ‘You don’t need me, now you have your husband,’ young nurse says, and without waiting for a reply she pushes a chair into the back of Stephen’s knees and then she’s gone.

  ‘It shouldn’t hurt. Let me know if it does.’ Sharon pulls a bright lamp over my head. It feels warm on my shaven scalp.

  Stephen takes both my hands in his. I grip and tense myself. How can it not hurt? These are lumps are metal in my head.

  I feel a tug and hear a clink as the first one hits the metal bowl.

  ‘That didn’t hurt.’ I’m amazed.

  ‘No, it shouldn’t. Unless there’s infection. Which you don’t have.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Stephen mutters.

  Clink, clink, two more hit the bowl.

  ‘Some people do this themselves at home.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Obviously not when the staples are in their heads. That would be quite tricky.’ She stops speaking as three more hit the bowl in quick succession. ‘Or they get their relatives to do it.’ She glances at Stephen who doesn’t react.

  For a while nobody speaks, the silence in the room is broken only by the buzzing of the lamp and the clink of staples hitting the bowl.

  ‘There, last one.’ She drops it into bowl and then starts to examine my scalp. ‘Healed very well. They’ve been in a while. One or two were reluctant to come out.’ She laughs. ‘Didn’t hurt though, did it?’

  ‘No. No, it didn’t. Thank you.’ I let go of Stephen’s hands. He stands up and moves the chair aside.

  ‘You know the way back?’ Sharon asks Stephen.

  ‘I think so.’ He laughs; it’s about thirty feet away and around the corner. He grabs the wheelchair handles and manoeuvres me through the door.

  Once in my room I run my hand over my scalp.

  ‘How does it feel?’

  ‘Lumpy. But not so tight. How does it look?’

  He inspects my head, gently moving what’s left of my hair to have a good look.

  ‘Yeah. Lumpy.’ He pats my shoulders with both his hands. ‘Won’t show when your hair grows back.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘You didn’t correct the nurse when she thought I was your husband.’

  ‘Neither did you.’ With my good eye, I watch his face for a reaction. What am I expecting? I don’t know. ‘Too complicated to explain. They don’t care.’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose they do.’

  ‘And finally…’ Sally bursts into the room. ‘Oh, and news from your Mum, she’s had the troublesome bugger extracted.’

  ‘Poor Mum.’

  ‘It’s a back one, won’t show.’ Sally sits down and starts to go through her bag. ‘For you. Thought now you can see a bit, you might like this.’ She hands me a magazine. Beautiful Homes.

  ‘Thank you.’ Automatically I start to flick through it, I come across a garden picture.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Stephen and I chorus before laughing.

  We don’t have much of a garden at home. New houses have much smaller gardens than older ones. Ours is tiny and Robin had it paved over soon after we moved in, he’d done the same in his two-up-two down house too.

  ‘Can’t be doing with gardening,’ he explained to me.

  I came home from work one day and it was almost finished. He hadn’t even discussed it with me beforehand.

  ‘But I like greenery.’ I sounded like a sulky child.

  ‘Plant some pots then.’ That was the end of the conversation; he went into his study to salivate over his new computer. He was still in the process of setting it up then.

  I never did do those pots. My heart wasn’t in it. Dad potted me up a French Lavender for my birthday later that summer, assuming that it would join others – he didn’t know our garden was just block paving. The front was the same too.

  ‘Plenty of parking space. It’s always at a premium.’ Robin was pleased with himself.

  We’d paid the builders extra to pave the front, but I’d always assumed we’d have a back garden. Where would the children play? Of course, I didn’t know then that there would be no children. Robin hadn’t told me he was infertile, not then.

  In our little cul-de-sac of six houses, we were the first to move in. Our next-door neighbours were next. They moved in with a three-year-old and another one on the way. Naively, I imagined we would be in that position in the near future. How silly was I?

  I’ve often asked myself if I would have married Robin if I had known in the beginning that he couldn’t have children, and, perhaps even more pertinently, that he didn’t want children. I’d brought up adoption once I’d come to terms with never having my own, but Robin had been adamantly against it.

  ‘No, Juliette. I couldn’t even begin to consider it. I couldn’t love a child that wasn’t my own. No.’

  ‘But..’

  ‘No. Leave me if you don’t like it.’

  That was it, no further conversation, no discussion. Just no.

  He knew I loved him too much to leave him, to put a hypothetical child, a fantasy child, before him. Just as I knew he would never leave me. He told me so, frequently.

  So, I get on with life, I work hard, gain promotions and bonuses. Financially we are comfortable. We go on exotic holidays, have expensive cars. Robin has a silver Mercedes coupe – even though he rarely drives it. He likes me to drive him. I chose my cherry red Ford Focus which Robin derided, said it was a bit of a family car – a subconscious choice perhaps. But even he had to admit that it was a comfortable ride and useful for shopping.

  I don’t have that car now though. Do I?

  ‘Penny for them,’ Stephen’s voice brings me back to my hospital room.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You were miles away.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I turn another page in the magazine. Another lovely garden. I close it. ‘I hear you’re house-hunting.’

  ‘We saw a lovely one last night, didn’t we?’ Sally says, smiling at Stephen.

  ‘We did.’ He sounds sombre. ‘I suppose I should be going.’ He stands up, then leans down to hug me, kiss my cheek. I hug him back and it feels so comforting. That bond of childhood friendship never fades.

  I watch him leave, notice that as he shuts the door he looks sad, sadder than he has a right to.

  ‘Is Stephen okay?’ I ask Sally.

  She smiles. It’s that kind of odd smile that the smiler uses to mask another feeling.

  ‘He’s not ill, or something?’ My voice sounds as alarmed as I feel; I hadn’t expected that.

  ‘No, no. He’s fine. Don’t you worry about Stephen. You just concentrate on making a full recovery.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll do that.’ But I am worried about Stephen. I hope he’s okay. He’s my oldest friend, in fact, now I think about it, aside from Robin, he’s my only real friend. I have colleagues at work, people I go to lunch with, but I’m always careful what I say to them – I must maintain that air of professionalism. I suppose Stephen is the only person who knows the real me, besides Robin.

  Sally spends the afternoon with me, she watches me eat my lunch, declares it unfit for human consumption – which I don’t think is fair – then she slips out and brings me back a McDonald’s cheeseburger. And I scoff it; I hadn’t realised how hungry I was.

  ‘Ironic, isn’t it, that they have a McDonald’s in the hospital?’

  ‘Do they? I thought you were quick.’

  ‘Yes, constantly telling us not to eat junk food…’ she leaves the sentence unfinished and we laugh together. ‘I’ll take the rubbish away with me so you don’t get caught.’ We laugh again.

  ‘You can bring me ano
ther one any time you like. But, if I’m choosing, I’d prefer a Filet-o-Fish.’

  ‘Consider it done.’

  Not that Robin will approve if he finds out. He has a real thing about junk food; he’s probably right.

  We flick through the magazine and chat. To be honest, she wears me out. She tells me what a big step it is for Stephen to come back, to effectively start again.

  ‘He’s built quite a reputation in his field in Canada.’ Her face beams with pride.

  ‘Then why is he coming back?’ A thought suddenly occurs to me. ‘Are you okay? Your health, I mean?’

  ‘Oh yes. Strong as an ox.’ She flexes her arm muscles to prove the point. Sally has a wiry, muscular build; she looks as though she could pop out and build a wall. Now I think about it, I think she did rebuild her front garden wall after her husband left, because he’d never got around it. ‘But it will be lovely to have him back. In the same town.’ She smiles to herself, the delight is evident.

  ‘Then why did Stephen look so glum when he left? Is he worried about his new job?’

  ‘No. Not really. They headhunted him.’

  ‘Still it’s a big step, giving up a life in another country.’ I’m still puzzled as to why he’s doing it.

  ‘He’ll make a success of it. I’m delighted he’s staying.’

  ‘Oh yes. Me too.’ I genuinely am. Though I do wonder how often I’ll be able to see my friend. ‘It’s a woman.’ Why hadn’t that occurred to me before? It’s so obvious. ‘He’s got a girlfriend here.’

  ‘Yes, he has.’ Sally smiles.

  ‘It must be serious if he’s changing his life.’

  Sally nods, there’s a faraway look in her eyes.

  ‘Well, good. I’m surprised he never married when he was in Canada. I know he’s always wanted a family.’ For months, I thought he had taken Lucia, the girl from the party, to Canada with him; but he hadn’t. And, although I knew he’d had some very glamorous girlfriends in Canada – I’d seen them on his Facebook wall, yes, I admit I looked occasionally – none had been serious.

  Stephen has never been shy about what he wants out of life. I remember the family conversation like it was yesterday. It was the Christmas holidays, he was sixteen, I was fifteen, it was just before Robin came into my life. Over the years we hadn’t seen as much of each other as we had when we were younger, but over that Christmas break we’d spent a lot of time together, re-establishing our friendship.