The Love She Left Behind (21 page)

His violent flare of anger was almost immediately damped out by hopelessness. Nigel saw that Louise was as intractable to reason as she had been at eight, resisting his arguments against Father Christmas. When he had pointed out the price sticker that had been left on the box of his Scalextric, she had countered with a stubborn theory that your parents actually bought the presents from Father Christmas, maintaining that this only made more sense of the whole arrangement. Suddenly, Nigel longed to crawl under the table and rest. Perhaps the woolliness that he had ascribed to the combination of sleeplessness and humidity in fact signalled the beginning of a virus.

He flinched as Louise put the back of her hand against his clammy cheek. ‘Nidge. Do you remember trampolines?'

It was a game they used to play on his bed, long before Patrick, or St Kit's, jumping as high as they could, her down abetting his up. He remembered the wiry groan of the mattress, their laughter, and their mother coming in to put a stop to their pleasure in the guise of alarm over damage they were doing to the bed. Legs had been slapped and as the eldest he had got the blame, although, to be fair, it had probably been his idea.

Louise squeezed his hand again. Her skin was hot. ‘She's looking after us, Nidge. She always has.'

Above them, a heavy footfall thundered in the direction of the bathroom. Dodie. He realised it was high time to get the boys out of the house and into the pool.

That night, Nigel, pink-eyed with chlorine, debriefed Sophie over stringy hotel guinea fowl. The boys, duly exhausted by swimming, had been put to bed, the monitor displaying a flat
green line of silent bars where it sat on the table between them in the fashionably gloomy dining room. Listening to his account of the conversation with Louise, Sophie agreed that all kinds of trouble might lie ahead, but she was far more sanguine than him, which helped. She always helped. What a woman she was. Louise though, Louise: it was hardly the poor bitch's fault, and it shouldn't come as a surprise, but as he said to Sophie, she was as mad as a box of fucking frogs.

 

21 Today

You've got the key of the door,
You've never been
21
before

Happy
21
^st
Nigel,

With all our love,
Mum and Patrick xxxxxxxx

PS Travelling sounds wonderful.
Lucky you, wish we could get away!

PPS. Believe it or not, we've bought a new car!

 

O
N THE DAY
Holly was due to get back from hospital, Louise's excitement was tainted only by her nerves at confronting Patrick. She knew it would be all right, with Mum smiling down, but she also knew there was unpleasantness to face before everything was sorted. It was a relief at first that so much of the morning was taken up by the departure of the Shads, who had stayed an extra night so that Dodie could recover from her bout of food poisoning. Dodie had been holed up in the bathroom more or less until they were ready to leave, and Louise was determined to get in there and clean before she had to go and collect Holly. She was already fishing out the bucket and mop as the attentive Lucas helped Dodie out to their car, followed by Mia, carrying the bags. Patrick hung back sullenly in the hall as Louise backed out from the cupboard under the stairs, equipped to clean.

‘Oh Christ, what now?'

She joined Patrick at the door to look. Mia had spotted that one of the Shads' front tyres was sagging badly. Lucas, as Dodie drooped in the passenger seat, investigated the boot and announced they had neither pump nor spare. There was talk of the AA. Patrick groaned again, and withdrew to his study, swearing. Louise knew how foolish it would be to follow him in there now and attempt any sort of conversation. Outside, Mia was striding across the drive, watched by Lucas, heading towards the old garage. She seemed to know what she was doing. Louise decided to get on with the bathroom. Perhaps by the time she'd finished, Patrick would be in a more receptive mood.

The bathroom had indeed been left in a dreadful state. After Louise had tackled the toilet and was setting about the pungently splattered pedestal of the washbasin, she heard the sound of the Shads' car finally pulling away. Two down, one to go. But when she went back downstairs, there was no sign of Mia, either. Per
haps she had got a lift from Dodie and Lucas into Newquay? Now was the time, then. No excuses. The sleeping Jamie and the builders apart, it was just her and Patrick.

Patrick didn't like his breakfast early, Louise had come to learn that. He liked to wake his stomach up a bit with tea and fags, so although it was now turned eleven, she put some bacon on on the camping ring Mia had set up in the dining room. She fried an egg to accompany the bacon, made it look nice on the plate, coffee not tea, because he'd be ready to move on to his coffee now, and put it all on a tray for him. Brown sauce, not tomato. He preferred that with a fry-up.

Louise went to the study, knocked and barged the door with the tray.

‘Breakfast!' She heard herself but didn't mind. Her nerves had vanished now; she was on a mission. There was the usual smoke to cough against until you got used to it. Mum smiled up at her from that lovely photo, which Louise now dusted regularly when she got a chance at the empty study. She put the tray down on the desk.

‘Thought you might fancy it.'

Patrick glanced sidelong at the plate as he swiped the product of a rich, tearing cough into the handkerchief he pulled from his trouser pocket. She couldn't tell if he was still giving her the silent treatment or just exercising his usual morning mood.

‘Up to you,' Louise said. ‘Anyway, I wanted a word.'

He finished with a sniff. Her pulse frantic, she launched in. She didn't say anything about Kamila, but stuck to her need to keep Holly away from Leeds, and how the house being left to her and Nigel would enable her to do this, without, Louise stressed, affecting Patrick.

‘You can't stay here,' he said, when she'd finished. ‘I want you out of my house.'

He reached for his packet of cigarettes, his face blank to everything she'd just said.

‘It's our house now,' Louise maintained. Beyond them, in the kitchen, a mallet reverberated.

‘I'll call the fucking police if I have to.'

Despite the effect of her nerves, Louise realised she wasn't actually frightened of him any more.

‘Mum wants me to stay.'

Steadily, she told him about Kamila, about what Mum had passed on to her. If Patrick wouldn't listen properly it was his own lookout; the facts were the facts. On the desk, Mum, in her crown of flowers, averted her eyes, smiling that smile that kept a secret with the side of the picture frame, encouraging her. The top of Louise's head felt light, open, as though all the words she'd kept in there were finally free to spill out. By the time she got to what Mum had told her about the cancer, how Patrick should never have kept it from them and prevented her saying a proper goodbye, Patrick was gasping, hard breaths that made her worry he was having some kind of attack.

‘This is complete fucking nonsense!'

‘No, it's not.' She felt so calm. There was a far-away crumbling as a wall submitted to the pounding of the mallet.

‘You've always been a second-rate person, Louise . . .'

He had to stop. As he gulped a fat tear on to the scarred leather of the desk, Louise was tempted to tell him not to pipe his eye.

‘I don't know how many times I have to say this, but I knew nothing about her being ill. The first I knew was when the doctor came, out in the night, after she'd passed out at the supermarket—she was in terrible pain from her stomach. It was the first I knew. They took her into the hospital for tests. Nothing they could do. It was everywhere.'

‘But she says—'

‘She says nothing!' Patrick spat the words through the fingers caging his face. ‘She's dead and gone! There's nothing, you stupid bitch! It all ends in nothing!'

He was looking at her, finally. She was better than him. She'd always been better than him, even when he was somebody. And he was old now.

‘Well, you're entitled to your opinion,' she said. ‘But I'm telling you, Mum knew she was ill, even if you didn't.'

He barked, half-animal, half-laughter. ‘That's more believable,' he said. She was turned to leave. And then, ‘You know, she wished you'd never been born.'

It was pathetic. He was pathetic.

‘You're a bloody liar, you,' she said. Not said, but shouted at him. For the first time in her life. Leaving, she dared to slam the door.

An hour later, Louise scraped the dead breakfast into the bin and made Jamie a fresh one. He'd just come down. The study was empty; Patrick had gone out, using the front door so he didn't have to brave the chaos of the kitchen, then tramping past on the gravel, taking a route through the back garden. Good riddance, she thought, and got on with feeding Jamie. The sound of that door still made her jump a little after what had happened with Holly. That wouldn't leave her for a long time.

After Jamie had finished eating, she drove them both to the hospital. Holly was dressed, ready to go and excited. Louise should have been ecstatic, but even as she saw Holly's soft beam to Jamie, followed by her complaint to Louise that the jeans she'd brought for her the previous day weren't the right ones, she felt flat. They were forced to wait for the final sign-off from the registrar on duty, whose whereabouts were uncertainly rumoured. Fortunately, Jamie compensated for Louise's slump with his own high spirits, provoking Holly into ever more uncontrolled runs of their excluding laughter.

She wished you'd never been born.

Leaving them to it, Louise went to get herself a cappuccino from the machine outside the ward. As she watched the dismal froth spew erratically against the sides of the thin plastic cup, she recognised the shape of the bleakness that had come with her from the house. It wasn't just the row with Patrick. It was Mum. It was as though a hand holding hers, tight in a deep pocket, the way Louise used to hold Jamie and Hol's hands in her overcoat on the coldest days, big over small, had been withdrawn. She was on her own again. Just like that.

The wait for the registrar stretched on for almost another hour. Then there was a trip to the dispensary for Holly's painkillers and an unnecessary goodbye to her physio, who would be seeing her again in a few days as an outpatient. During all of these duties Louise was itching to get on the phone to Kamila. Surely Kamila could establish contact? It occurred to her that Kamila's untimely trip to the concert was what had disrupted the delicacy of the connection, and that, like faulty broadband, it might be restored.

When they got back from the hospital it was almost five and the builders were already outside, loading up their van. Mia was still nowhere to be seen. Louise, heading straight for the phone in the hall, felt a trill of gut panic as she realised Patrick wasn't back either. He never went for walks, usually. Anything could have happened to him, particularly if he'd taken a whisky bottle out with him, which was more than likely. Louise abandoned her call to Kamila.

‘We'd better go and look for him,' she told Jamie. ‘I'd never forgive myself if something's happened.'

The fact that Patrick had taken the garden path suggested the cliffs. Louise wondered if Patrick would ever hurt himself. It seemed unlikely, since he'd always been so protective of his health
and comfort, but if he'd drunk enough the result may well be the same. He'd enjoy laying it at her door, anyway.

Holly didn't object when Louise settled her in the den with a mug of tea and some snacks. During the journey from the hospital her own ebullience had dwindled, as though the unfamiliar exertion of the drive had worn her out. Louise promised they wouldn't be long, but Holly didn't seem to hear her over the TV. Still, Louise made sure her mobile was safe in her own cardigan pocket. It would be beyond Holly to haul herself as far as the landline in the hall.

It had been raining again, more or less since they'd started out for the hospital, and the ground was in an appalling state. She and Jamie looked for wellies that fitted from the collection in the back porch, but Jamie's feet were too big for any of them, so he had to manage with his trainers. Louise pulled on a muddied green pair that might have belonged to Mum. Stamping her heels down into the chilly rubber, she ached again with the loss of her. She had hoped that her return to the house might reunite them, but there was no change. She had gone, definitely.

Mum had loved Patrick more than anything in the world. Louise should have thought of that, shouldn't she, before she started upsetting him? It was a punishment.

‘Come on then, woman.' Jamie held the sagging back door open for her, his exposed sleeve already needled with rain.

It wasn't a day you'd have chosen for a walk. Louise's knees were already protesting on the gradual incline that marked the end of the garden and the overgrown start of the sunken cliff path. As they got to this first summit, Louise could see there were much steeper parts ahead of them, the white line of the path twisting thinly through the high grass like an old scar. There was no sign of Patrick in the view ahead, but there were enough vaga
ries for blind spots in the lee of the hills where he might be hidden, collapsed or worse. Louise kept looking over the cliff edge, down to the brutal grey rocks below and the frothing mustard sea, fearing to see a liverish scrap of his raincoat, hair fronding in the water. Oh, please God, no, none of them deserved that. She hadn't meant that.

Soon, the steady rain made it hard to see much further ahead than they were walking. The walking itself exhausted Louise, and her slowness made Jamie impatient.

‘What about there?' She had toiled to join him at a high point. To their right, the path forked on to a stumpy promontory surmounted by a white, domed building—a lookout, unlikely and municipal in the emptiness, squiggled with graffiti. Louise, who had got a stitch, struggled for the breath to reply. She had never come this far along the clifftops.