Falling For You (55 page)

They have done something very bad.

I let out a scream, and my voice pierces the dank air, it pierces the silence so loud a host of black birds fly up from their perches on the surrounding trees, croaking and cawing and scattering a shower of snow-drops as they go. And I walk, step by frozen step, closer to the bottom of the tree. And look up.

And I see what they have done.

They have hung him from the tree.

Lawrence
.
My Lawrence
. I can see his boots, covered in mud, but they are clearly his. I can see his head, hanging downwards, his face all battered and bruised. My hands go up to my mouth, but no other scream comes out. It stays stuck inside me. Oh. God. How could this happen?
How could it really happen, in real life?
It is like a bad dream. It is like a movie that you switch off when you get to the bad bit. It is what I had hoped so hard I’d never get to and yet ... I always feared I would. Now everything about the day goes far away. All the noises round me, they’re muted. Like I’ve been put inside a box, suddenly, a box which muffles all the sounds and blurs the sight of what happens next because I cannot bear it. Uncle Ty and DC Bright arrive. I see Ty’s face, shocked and horrified as he turns to look at me. I see him scramble onto Pilgrim’s back, standing up tall on his shoulders and take the rope from around Lawrence’s neck. He brings the body down and lays it gently, tenderly, on the woodland floor. I see his shoulders shaking, and after a bit I realise that Ty is crying. I see DC Bright stooping, feeling for a pulse. She doesn’t find one. I see her glance at her watch. I see the other police constable arrive, his face dark, determined, angry when he sees what’s been done here.

‘He didn’t win,’ I hear Rob Macrae’s voice as the handcuffs are put on him and his other son. That’s it. No remorse. Nothing.

‘No. You won’t either, mate.’ DC Milton says. I can see Pilgrim is weeping. I see it all from behind the muffled grey glass of my box.

And me ... I go and kneel down beside him now. I lay my head on his chest and close my eyes and wish that I could be in whatever place it is that Lawrence has gone to. That I wouldn’t have to be here anymore, without him. Because what is the point of being here, if he is gone? What would be the point of a single moment more on this dark, painful planet when people like Rob Macrae can live on and yet men like Lawrence must die? What is the point of it all?

To have lost him like this after I already lost him once, it is too cruel. It is not right. Why couldn’t we just have been together? Why couldn’t we have had a chance
? Why couldn’t I have the one thing I wanted more than any other thing?

 ‘Come on, Rose. You need to stand back now
,
’
t
he lady constable is saying gently. ‘You need to let them do their work.’ And the men from the ambulance that the police have had on standby on the lane are there already, opening up his collar, inserting some tube into his mouth, pumping his chest, trying hope against hope that they will bring him back to life. I hardly dare to believe that they will succeed.        

I only know that I will love him till I die and then some. I’ll love him till the ends of time and then some more. And nothing that Rob Macrae or his like can do will ever change that.

Ten months later

‘Hey, stranger!’ Shona’s voice at the other end of the phone is only slightly reproachful. ‘I haven’t heard from you for
ages
. I haven’t seen you since you flew back for the wedding.’

 ‘I know.’ I’ve got a little red sachet of Demerara sugar in my free hand and I’m turning it first one way and then the other on the cafe table. I can feel the little granules of sugar as they run past my fingers through the paper. It’s strangely soothing. The waitress clears the table next to me, glances over surreptitiously to see if I’ve finished my coffee yet. I’m sitting in the open market square and I can see all the stall-holders beginning to pack up for the day. Tired shoppers are starting to gather, searching for a free space. I catch her eye and she gives me a tight smile;
whoever it is you’re waiting for, they clearly aren’t showing up
, she’s thinking.

‘I’ve only just been back in the UK for five days,’ I pause, back on my phone call. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t make the christening, Shonie.’ 

‘I didn’t expect you to fly back from the States twice on my behalf,’ she huffs. That bit is understandable. There’s a moment’s silence and I imagine her adjusting the position of her baby boy on her lap. Thomas Tyler Moore. I hear a quiet sound at the other end I take to be a baby burping and Shona is back.

‘How
is
your dad doing, Rose?’ 

‘Amazingly well,’ I breathe. It’s true. ‘He’s surpassed everyone’s expectations. Carlotta isn’t even going to need to go out there and take my place.’

‘He’s mobile?’ Her surprise is palpable.

‘With a stick, currently. But yes. They reckon with time even that may go.’

‘
How
?’

‘It’s complicated but apparently a large part of the body’s malfunctioning is sometimes to do with a person’s system having gone into shock. Dad was very lucky. If there is no intrinsic lasting damage, sometimes things can be kick-started back into health again.’

‘That sounds ... miraculous.’

‘It’s not a total fix,’ I warn. ‘But it’s going to make a huge difference to his life. Huge.’

There’s a slight pause and then she ventures.

‘I see the house sold a few months ago. I heard you got a fair price for it,’ she notes. ‘And you ... you’re back in the UK permanently now? It’s so weird to think you’re in the UK and you aren’t
here
. How’s Uni going?’

‘Frenetic. Amazing. It’s Fresher’s week,’ I tell her. I’m trying to sound as enthusiastic as I’d like to feel. I’ve been throwing myself into it as much as I can, making the most of the opportunity, determined to put the past behind me.     

‘Tell me everything
.
’
S
he gives a deep conspiratorial laugh. ‘Been on any hot dates yet?’ I feel a flash of sadness at that. A group of Freshers, jostling together, are looking over at my table hopefully. The autumn breeze lifts the paper napkins from their holder, sends a bunch spinning out all over the ground. 

‘I’ve had an offer or two,’ I admit, but my voice sounds flat. It’s not like she thinks. Shona is unusual, the marrying kind, but people aren’t exactly pairing off here. ‘Everyone is really friendly.’ I peer into the froth inside my empty cup wondering why I even rang her just now, knowing full well as I did that she’d interrogate me, knowing that this is the real reason I haven’t properly been in contact with her for months. I could have emailed her from the States but I didn’t, I couldn’t bring myself to.

She interprets my silence the only way I know she can.

‘You haven’t forgotten him yet, have you?’ I bite my lip.
No
, I think.
I never will
.

‘Maybe I wanted him too much,’ I admit unhappily. ‘I’m not supposed to want anything that much or I’ll never get it.’ I never learn, do I?

‘You wanted your Cambridge offer very much, I take it?
You’re studying Law at Cambridge Rose
! You got that,’ she points out.

‘That’s true.’

‘You wanted to get out of Merry Ditton.’

‘I
did
, but .
.
.’

‘You wanted for your life to change and for some great news that would come along and help your dad...’ 

I put my hand to my mouth. I see suddenly that I have got everything I’d wished for that night I went into my mother’s room and made that spell. I got the offer letter. I got the hope I’d wanted, for Dad. I found my soul mate. All of these things. Everything I wished for, I got.

And everything is transient, changing as the seasons. Nothing that we get, can we keep. The tears run blindly down my face, I feel so sad. I feel so angry. After all we try so hard to strive for, we get to keep
nothing!

Except maybe love.

‘Shonie, I’m so sorry, I’ve got to go.’ I don’t want her to hear me weeping. I’m still in public, here. I don’t want her to remind me of any more things that will make me weep. 

I pull up my texts as soon as she’s gone and check the most recent one from
unknown
this morning. The one which asked me to come out here and have coffee at this time, this place. I’ve handed out my number to so many random people over the last few days, I have actually no idea who it is should have been turning up today. It could have been any number of people. I only came here because whoever it was had signed off L. x

L.

I run through a list of possible names in my head. Linda, Louise, Lorenzo, Lee ... a tear
drop falls into my cup making a big splash right in the middle of the froth and the waitress looks at me sympathetically  as she bustles past.

‘Can I get you anything else?’ she asks helpfully. I look up.

‘Not just yet. I’ll be leaving in a second ...’

I push my chair out as she hesitates, collecting my cup. As I bend to pick up my bag, I’m aware of someone coming and sitting softly down opposite me while my head is still lowered. I see his trainers slide in under the table and I feel a flash of annoyance. Whoever it is, they haven’t even waited for me to go. I’m going to tell him, when I sit upright again, that he can bugger off because this table isn’t free yet. I’m not going anywhere. I’m still waiting for L. But he’s placed something on the table, for me.  I see it the moment I look up.

It’s a white paper giraffe, fashioned delicately out of one of the napkins that went flying before.

A giraffe.

I catch his eye now and the shock of it, seeing him actually sitting there in front of me after all this time, it catches so hard in my throat I can’t even speak. I just stare at him. The dappled autumn sunlight catches the fine lines under his eyes. It catches the hint of auburn in his now very-short, almost shaven, hair. His face is clean-shaven, too, how I have not seen him before. He looks somehow, much younger.

‘
Lawrence
,’ I say, and my voice cracks.

It has been many months. Seven months, I know, since the case came to court, and I have not even been in this country. I swallow, trying to come to terms with it all. At the fact that after all this time he is here, sitting right in front of me, right now.  I’d wanted to see him before I left for the States with Dad but somehow a whole load of red tape had grown up between us.  Nobody seemed keen to make it easy.  I’d learned from a hospital volunteer that he’d spent a lot of time in recovery after they resuscitated him. He’d been in intensive care for weeks. By the time he came out me and Dad had left the country but I knew from Ty that Lawrence had pleaded guilty to causing injury. Still, he never responded to any attempt from me to contact him at all. When I flew over for Shona’s wedding I’d tried to reach him again but he never replied. I came to believe he didn’t want to. I told myself he must have a lot going on, with his own recovery and his father’s and Pilgrim’s upcoming trials. I knew he must have had a lot to cope with. The volunteer wrote to say he asked for my understanding, for my patience. He never wrote to ask for it, himself.  The months went by and my patience turned to resignation. He was so unwell, so tied up, and I was so far away, so taken up with all the new things Dad had to be learning
... I gave up expecting him to contact me.

I gave up hoping for it.

I don’t know if I even
want
him here in my life anymore.

I lean forward, and the sting of bitter tears are there again, waiting, in the back of my throat.  Still, I cannot speak. I lift up the giraffe he has placed in front of me, which was starting to slide across the table with the breeze. It seemed so sturdy, standing there, but when I pick it up, I feel its papery legs fluttering delicately beneath my fingers. It could blow away in an instant. I could crush it with little more than a careless look.

‘I heard you were back
.
’
H
is eyes are glistening strangely. ‘Your cousin Sam sent me a postcard.’

She did?

‘
I
sent you postcards,’ I remind him. ‘And letters.’  My fingers run over the smooth papery legs of the giraffe. ‘And emails.’ I even tried to call him, once or twice but he didn’t make it easy. He never came to the phone.

‘I got them. I still have them. Rose, I’m sorry. I wasn’t in a place to reply,’ he says. I can see from his face that this is true. I glance at his neck and the pink burn-mark is still faintly visible on his skin.  I blink, and a tear rolls down my cheek.  I stand up abruptly and the chair scrapes noisily behind me, making everyone turn to look. He looks down and I see him brush something from his cheek as he does so.

‘Are you free?’ I whisper.

‘I got ten months custodial sentence.’ He pauses awkwardly, then adds. ‘They took into account my circumstances Rose. They were lenient. Most of my time is being served at an open prison facility. I’m - on leave this weekend. I heard about Jack’s recovery, Rose, I came to seek you out, hoping that you still ...’ his voice fades away. He’s kept himself apprised then, all this time? He’s known what’s been happening in my life? ‘As long as I’m back by nine pm.’

He stands, then, his hands seeking my hands as I move in towards him, blindly, hungrily, remembering what I have had to endure, being without him for such a very long time. I didn’t know ... wasn’t at all sure whether it would ever be possible for us to take up where we left off. I know it now, though. I know it without either of us having to say another word.

‘And yes,’ he whispers into my ear, our hips bumping companionably as we move away together, undeniably a couple, and the Freshers who snatch up our table snigger something about ‘
getting a room’.

‘I
am
free, Rose.’  In the only way that really matters, he means. In his heart,
in his soul
. The autumn wind blows back my hair as I walk across the empty market square with him now. Only the flower-seller remains, smiling hopefully at the passers-by, his yellow dahlias standing proud in their plastic buckets. They remind me of a day long ago in a forgotten spring, a stiff breeze in a field and a bunch of yellow cowslips that called me first, titsy-totsy, to my love. But that is gone now, long past, what should have been our fate. And I know that I, like him, have also been set free.