Echoes of Love (12 page)
Authors: Rosie Rushton
‘Why?’
‘Because, by the time I got back, my mother had put him in a home.’
His voice cracked with emotion and he turned away, picked a stick up from the ground and hurled it into the surrounding bushes.
‘A home? But I don’t understand.’
Felix took a deep breath, swallowed hard and looked at her straight in the eyes. ‘My dad’s sixty-eight,’ he said, ‘and he’s got Alzheimer’s disease. In the
six months I was away, he went downhill so fast that, by the time I got home, he didn’t even know who I was.’
Anna had sat and listened as it all spilled out – how he blamed his mother for not caring for his dad at home, how he thought politics meant more to her than her own husband.
‘I am just so angry about the whole thing. Dad deserves better; he was the one I could depend on when I was growing up, you see. My sister went off to work in America, and Oscar was rarely
home, but Dad was always there. Mum on the other hand was always disappearing on some protest or mission. Greenham, Faslane – you name it she was there. Me and Dad, we were like a
team.’
He picked at a piece of loose bark on the log. ‘I’m sorry I went off on one last Saturday, though,’ he admitted, standing up and pulling Anna to her feet.
‘I was worried when I didn’t hear from you,’ Anna replied.
‘I was going to phone and then you know what? On Sunday, Mum announces that actually she’s not going to come with me to see Dad that day after all because there’s some meeting
of Churches Together in Fleckford and she reckons it’ll do her profile good to be seen there. Can you believe it? Parading at church, pretending to be holier than thou . . .’ He kicked
the trunk of a nearby tree.‘ . . . just because it looked good – hypocritical or what? So I went on my own.’
‘And . . .?’
Felix shook his head. ‘He looks like my dad but it’s not him any more. He can’t keep track of a conversation and when you mention people he’s known for years, he just
stares at you blankly. He’s got much worse since he’s been in the home. It wouldn’t have happened so fast if he’d been with us.’
Anna felt it best to say nothing.
‘Anyway,’ Felix went on, ‘let’s not talk about it any more, OK? We’ve only got a short time before I’ll be going away. Let’s make the most of it. Just
the two of us.’
And despite the fact that Anna was up to her eyes in revision for AS-levels, they had. When the holidays ended, she got up at five every morning to work so that she could meet
Felix after school; and she even skived off in the middle of the day – something that not even Sixth Formers were allowed to do unless by what the Head called ‘prior arrangement under
extenuating circumstances’. Of course, the circumstances were extenuating; time with Felix was running out. She hated the thought that he would be gone – but had to admit that she
quite enjoyed being something of a celebrity, especially since for once it had nothing to do with her father. The fact that Felix met her at the school gates most days and sent her emails and
texts heavy with double meaning gave her instant street cred and fascination value.
‘That is one sexy guy,’ Shannon commented. ‘If you weren’t my mate, I’d fight you for him!’
‘So when’s he going away?’ Lauren asked pointedly. ‘I’d like to know so I can prepare for your moping about, you know stock up on tissues and stuff!’
That day came all too quickly. They’d agreed to meet for one last time at the crack of dawn that morning down by Kellynch Lake, before Felix met up with Zac and headed
off to Lympstone and Anna went to school.
‘I love you, Anna,’ he had whispered, his lips caressing her neck and brushing across her cheek. ‘I’ve never felt like this about anyone before.’
‘And I love you too,’ she had murmured, her whole body quivering as he pulled her towards him.
‘Don’t cry,’ he said, knotting her scarf more tightly round her neck as she shivered in the chill breeze. ‘Remember, it’s only three weeks till Families Day. You
will come? Promise?’
‘Just you try stopping me,’ she had replied. ‘I’ll be counting the days.’
And then he had pulled her down on to the grass under a canopy of newly budding ash and beech trees, and kissed her with a hunger and intensity that sent shivers of electricity through her
body.
‘Don’t forget me,’ he mumbled, his voice thick with emotion.
‘I never will, never ever,’ she replied.
And that, she thought now, was one promise she had never broken.
CHAPTER 7
‘There is nothing so bad as separation . . .’
( Jane Austen
, Persuasion
)
T
HE THREE WEEKS BETWEEN
F
ELIX LEAVING AND ANNA
going to see him at Lympstone had been agony. Anna had tried to lose herself in
her school work and music, but whatever she did and wherever she went, Felix was in her mind twenty-four seven. For the first couple of days, his texts had been full of how many press ups
he’d done and how he was learning close quarter combat, but then the messages got shorter and shorter, till by the end of the second week all she got was
Speed march today – too
tired to speak
and, on a couple of occasions, she got no text at all.
‘Don’t worry,’ Phoebe had reassured her when Anna confessed that she was worried that Felix wasn’t missing her at all. ‘Zac’s just the same – Mum sends
him loads of texts and all she gets back is,
All OK here
. I guess there’s no chance of Gaby coming down for Families Day,’ she ventured.
Anna shook her head. She had tried to persuade her, because Felix had said that Zac still missed her like crazy. For once, Gaby had been honest with Anna.
‘I can’t do it,’ she had admitted. ‘I mean, it was a bit of a laugh, and he was fun to hang out with – like concerts and parties and stuff; but I can’t get
all heavy about it. I can’t do all the waiting at home, and worrying myself sick about him. And besides, you know what? I met this boy at Sophie’s party – he works for
Zing!
magazine and that’s much more me than all this war stuff.’
So, in the end, Anna had travelled to Lympstone with Mrs Harville and Phoebe. Felix had told her that no one else from his family was coming – his father obviously couldn’t, his
brother and sister led their own lives now, and his mother just wasn’t interested. Mrs Harville hated driving long distances and so they went by train. Most of the journey was taken up with
Phoebe dithering about whether to ditch Jamie (‘He is just
too
good and
too
nice’) or stick with him till the summer because his family were hinting that they might take
her to their house in Umbria in August. When she wasn’t talking about Jamie, she was arguing with her mother who had been unwise enough to comment that she wished Phoebe had put on a nice
dress like Anna, to which Phoebe replied that jeans were just fine for Families Day and no way was she going to dress up and look like an over-iced cupcake. That made Anna worry that she had
overdone it, but when they changed on to the branch line at Exeter, they found themselves surrounded by lots of anxious-looking parents, chattering children and several girls like herself, all
dressed in their posh dresses and all trying to look nonchalant and laid-back – but clearly as keyed up and excited as Anna was.
And then they were there, and Felix was waiting for her and they kissed with the kind of eager desperation that comes from wanting time to stand still and the moment never to end. Anna closed
her eyes, breathing in the musky smell of him and relishing the way he gently swept the hair back from her face and kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips . . .
‘It’s so good to see you,’ he murmured, as Zac dragged his mum and sister off. ‘Look, there are a load of displays and stuff, and then later on, a talk all about how they
look after us, and what happens when we get deployed – but really you don’t have to . . .’
‘I want to go,’ Anna said firmly. ‘I want to know every last detail about what’s happening to you.’
Catching the fleeting look of gratitude on his face, she took a deep breath. ‘Is it hard – I mean, with all this going on around you?’ She gestured to the groups of parents
hugging their sons. ‘Your mum not being here, I mean?’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t go there,’ he said with a slight edge to his voice. ‘You’re here and that’s what matters.’
‘Well, I’ve got a surprise for you,’ Anna told him, fingering the tickets for the
Sugar Lumps
New Year concert at the O
2
that she blown her monthly allowance
on. ‘Do you want it now or . . .?’
‘Later,’ Felix grinned. ‘Come on, let me show you round and then you can watch what it’s really like to be in training!’
Half an hour later, Anna was standing in the sunshine, watching Felix and several other recruits attempt the assault course. The instructor acting as their guide pointed out
the obstacles while others yelled encouragement – and occasionally expletives – at those taking part. Felix had tackled the swing bridge and the gate vault and was running towards the
ten-metre wall when he stumbled to his knees.
‘Come on, Felix, go, go, go!’ A sharp-featured, fair-haired woman in a scarlet coat and black knee-length boots elbowed her way in front of Anna, craning her neck as Felix, panting
hard, staggered to his feet and began scaling the wall.
‘Yes!’ The woman punched the air with both hands and Anna was aware of flash bulbs going off behind her. Just then, the woman turned and looked at Anna apologetically. ‘Sorry,
I didn’t mean to barge in front of you – just that, seeing my son . . .’
‘Your son? You mean – oh! You’re Cassandra Wentworth!’ Anna gasped. ‘But Felix said you weren’t coming?’ The words were out before she’d had the
chance to think.
‘What do you mean, Felix said . . . Oh my goodness! Don’t tell me you’re the new girlfriend he’s been going on about?’ She peered at Anna through heavily mascaraed
eyelashes in much the same way as one might examine an exhibit in a museum. ‘So you’re this paragon of female perfection!’ she commented with wry amusement. ‘The girl who is
everything his mother is not.’
‘I – er – I’m sure he’ll be over the moon that you’re here,’ Anna mumbled, hardly knowing how to respond.
‘I doubt it,’ his mother replied equably, glancing down the assault course where Felix was nearing the last obstacle. ‘At the moment, I can’t do anything right in his
eyes. It was wrong that I didn’t want to come, and now I’ve turned up you can bet that’ll be wrong too.’ She pulled a face. ‘I guess that’s the price one pays
for motherhood,’ she murmured.
Anna thought she made being a mum sound like a particularly nasty dose of flu. She also knew she should be pleased that Cassandra had decided to show up but in reality she was furious; she could
hardly snog Felix with his mother hovering in the background and it would be weeks until she saw him again.
‘He told me you’re standing for Parliament,’ Anna said, trying to get on to safer ground.
‘That’s right!’ Cassandra became very animated. ‘You see before you the Independent candidate for Muckleborough and Bythorn.’
‘So you think you’ll oust the Lib Dems?’ Anna commented. ‘But surely the Conservatives look set fair to . . .’
‘Not since their candidate blotted his copybook with that rather sleazy moment in Corfu,’ Cassandra muttered. ‘Not to mention the first-class flights and chauffeur-driven limo
courtesy of the taxpayer. But . . . are you telling me you’re interested in politics? Felix never said. Mind you, Felix never says much these days. So – how do you feel about this crazy
idea of his?’
‘What? Wanting to join the Marines?’
Cassandra nodded. ‘So you think it’s crazy?’ she asked.
‘No, what I meant was . . . well, of course, if I’m selfish, I wish he’d chosen another career . . . but on the other hand . . .’
‘Of course you do.’ Cassandra nodded. ‘And you haven’t been able to dissuade him?’
‘I didn’t try,’ Anna replied. ‘I mean, if this is what really gets him going, makes him happy . . .’
‘But what about your relationship? I mean, do you see you two having a future together?’
Anna was feeling more and more uncomfortable. If she said yes, she’d sound too eager, and if she said no, she’d be lying.