Where Love Lies (28 page)

You all, healthy people, can’t imagine the happiness which we epileptics feel during the second before our fit … I don’t know if this felicity lasts for seconds, hours or months, but believe me,
I would not exchange it for all the joys that life may bring
.

Dostoevsky

IT’S COOLER IN
Tillingford than it is in London; the air hangs less heavy and a breeze rustles the leaves. The common has been baked brown and dry. It’s Saturday lunchtime, and there’s a cricket game going on. Derek will be watching it in his portable chair, drinking tea that Molly has made him from a flask. Maybe Quinn’s with him; he joins his father sometimes. If I know
Quinn, he will probably want to continue with his normal life, even after what he discovered less than twenty-four hours ago.

But I’m not certain that I do know Quinn.

I hope he’s still angry, though. I’d rather he were angry than sad.

If he’s told anyone about discovering me and Ewan, it will be all over Tillingford by now.
Felicity Wickham left her husband for another man after only a year
of marriage
. They’ll love that piece of juicy news. I spot Irene Miller, the town gossip, leaving the cricket game and approaching me over the green, and I hurry to slip through the gate to Hope Cottage.

Our garden is vibrant with splashes of orange, red and purple. Despite the heat and the dryness elsewhere, here it still feels damp. Quinn’s bike rests against the side wall. I haven’t rung to
let him know I was coming; I wasn’t sure he’d want to speak to me. Now that it’s too late, I need to tell him the truth, the facts that I was too cowardly to tell him all along.

Somehow I thought that if I could work out who I was truly in love with, if I could work out what the scent of frangipani meant, that everything else would fall into place. I would decide it wasn’t relevant, re-commit
myself to Quinn, and everything would be fine. Or I would find bliss with Ewan. It would be cut and dried, no questions possible.

But that hasn’t happened. Love isn’t a single perfect moment, a whiff of scent, eyes meeting. Life goes on. People get hurt, memories are tarnished. There are connections and resentments, friends and families. Maybe every happily-ever-after is someone else’s broken
heart. Or maybe that’s too neat, even. Maybe the hearts just get broken, and that’s it.

I need to tell the truth, and say I’m sorry. I don’t know what comes next. I don’t hold out much hope of being forgiven. Maybe I will find Ewan and see if he was right about second chances. But I still wear Quinn’s ring, and I owe him an apology before I do anything else at all.

After only a few weeks away,
I feel like a stranger here, but not enough of one to use the front door. I’ve loved this garden. I’ve loved this man. I take a deep breath and walk along the side of the cottage to the back.

The kitchen table has been taken outside and it stands on the overgrown grass. The Wickhams are all sitting around it: Derek and Molly, Suz and Quinn. There’s a bright cloth spread on the table and there
are bowls of salad, a bottle of wine, a jug of lemonade. Someone has put tall hollyhocks in a vase. The sunshine pools on the grass, sparkles on the glassware. There’s no fifth chair. Molly, passing a dish of tomatoes, catches sight of me and lets out a little cry, and I know that Quinn has told them everything.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

Quinn stands up. Beside him, so does Derek, putting his hand
on his son’s shoulder. ‘You have some nerve coming here,’ Derek says.

‘Not very much,’ I admit. ‘I’m scared to death.’

‘You should be!’ screeches Molly and I turn to her, surprised. She’s jumped to her feet too, though she’s still holding the bowl of tomatoes. ‘How could you do this to Quinn? One year – one year! And you’re tired of him already?’

‘It’s not that. I’m not tired of him.’

‘Mum,’
says Suz quietly, ‘sit down.’

‘I didn’t mean to hurt Quinn. I didn’t mean to hurt any of you. I just had these feelings, and I had to follow them. I’ve been a coward. I should have told the truth from the start. It would have been less complicated.’

‘You should have stayed away from my boy!’

Molly’s face is fierce. This soft woman, the woman who chatters about nothing and sends sugar-sweet
greetings cards, looks as if she wants to tear my eyes out. Any minute the bowl of tomatoes is going to come flying at my head. I had no idea that she could be so passionate in defence of her young.

Good
, I think.
Good for you
. Irrationally, I want to smile at her and clap my hands.

I bow my head. ‘You’re right. I shouldn’t have married Quinn. I thought … I thought I could be happy with him.’

Quinn stands there, silent.

‘You need to get your things and get out,’ says Molly. ‘I’ll pack them up myself, with my own hands, and good riddance.’

Derek takes the tomato dish from his wife’s hand and puts it on the table, saying, ‘Molly, please.’

‘We welcomed you as part of the family,’ says Molly.

‘I know. You’ve been nothing but kind. But you know I’ve never fitted in.’

‘I knew you were
having doubts,’ says Suz, ‘but I didn’t think you would do something like this.’

I’ve started shaking. I’m going to take it all, everything they can fling at me, and then I’m going to walk away and I’m never coming back. Quinn isn’t even looking at me. Suz’s disappointment is a heavy weight in my stomach. The scent of the wildflowers in the garden is growing stronger, suffocating with sweetness.

‘I wasn’t one of you,’ I manage. ‘It wasn’t any of your faults. It wasn’t Quinn’s fault.’

‘I thought you were going to talk it through together,’ says Suz.

‘You don’t go running to another man!’ cries Molly. ‘It’s not what you do! Maybe in your mother’s world – that artistic world that’s so much better than ours. But not here. Not in my family, not to my
son
.’

My stomach’s churning, acid and
fire. The ground is unsteady under my feet. The flowers are growing, whitening into frangipani with golden hearts, and I’m becoming lighter somehow, lighter even though I’m burdened with guilt and regret.

‘I’ll just go.’

Lighter, so light I tumble up into the air.

From above, the Wickhams look like an army, foreshortened to dark heads and sun-kissed shoulders. Derek stands near his wife, Suz
folds her arms across her chest. Quinn stands straight beside the table filled with glistening food, bright colours, summer. They’re magnificent – the magnificent Wickhams – and I see myself in front of them, trembling, my hair dull in the light.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, though it comes from below me, where I am standing down there. How did I get up here? My lips are numb. Every breath saturated with
scent. ‘That’s all I came here to say.’

‘Felicity?’ says Suz. I see her step forward, bumping the table. Her glass of lemonade tips over. I see Quinn push aside his chair. My arms fly out, my legs collapse. I see my eyeballs roll up to where I am above everything, and for a moment I am staring myself in the face. And then I’m absorbed back down into my body and I’m on the grass. There are voices.
But as soon as they speak they’re being pulled away from me, drained away into nothing, into darkness, into memories that are gone, a disappearing brush of a finger.

THEY’D BEEN TALKING
about the weather breaking, about a hosepipe ban, about what was going to happen to the post office. About everything except for Felicity and his ruined marriage, although they were all thinking about her. So much so, that when she appeared in the garden, it seemed as if their thoughts had come to life.

Her hands were shaking; she kneaded them together and he didn’t
want to think about how alone she looked. His mother’s voice cracked and rang, full of anger. He remembered a long-ago picnic, some time when he was a child, when his mother and father had argued and he had sat on the blanket, pulling blades of grass from the earth as if it could stop the fear of it all being his fault, of everything being finished. The argument was over quickly but the fear stayed,
cocooned inside him, visiting him again at night, waiting for its time in the sun.

He stood beside the table listening to his mother. He was too old to let his mother defend him, but he didn’t seem to be able to speak. All night he’d been consumed with anger. He’d seen them over and over again: the man on top of his wife on the sofa, his hand up her skirt. Felicity’s arms around him. The blush
on her cheeks, her hands on his chest. Whenever he closed his eyes he could see them, or even worse, just afterwards, when Felicity had spotted him and had jumped up, pulling her blouse together, full of panic and guilt and yet still aroused from that man’s touch. That other man. The one she had gone after. The one she wanted more than she’d ever wanted him.

The anger burned at him, gnawed at
him. Almost more than what she’d done to him, he hated that she’d made him feel this way.

And here she was, trembling in their garden. He couldn’t quite connect this Felicity with that one in London yesterday. He supposed it was denial. It was habit. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and he wanted to go to her, despite the anger, despite the betrayal. He wanted to forget all about it and carry on as normal.
If he looked at her, he would.

So he didn’t look at her.

But out of the corner of his eye, he saw her fall.

She yelled wordlessly, a hoarse sound that was her and wasn’t. He ran forward. He couldn’t catch her before she hit the ground but he caught her afterwards as she lay there. She jerked and twitched, a rag doll pulled by invisible strings. Her eyes blinked, over and over; her mouth worked,
as if trying to say something important.

‘What’s happening?’ his mother cried.

‘It’s some kind of seizure,’ said Suz, who was kneeling beside him. Quinn held Felicity against him, cradling her in his arms, shielding her head from the ground.

‘Call 999,’ he said to his sister, and she pulled out her phone. Felicity’s face contorted and her body struck out, heels drumming on the grass his father
had watered. One hand, her left hand, the one with his ring, escaped and slapped the side of his arm. It wasn’t puppet strings but his anger making her jerk, helpless, possessed.

No, not his anger. It was a disease. Something wrong.

‘What is it?’ his mother asked. ‘Should we put something in her mouth? To stop her swallowing her tongue?’

He shook his head. Felicity was thinner than she had
been, but her brittle strength pushed at him in pulses, in twitches, testing its escape. He steadied her head but it twisted, by itself, and her breath panted against the side of his shirt. He felt it through the cotton. He was reminded of a baby rabbit, years ago, found by the side of the road, its leg broken, frightened out of its mind by the boy who was trying to help it. It had rolled its eyes,
scratched him with its needle claws, tried to run.

Time stretched, he knew it was stretching, knew it was only seconds but it felt like hours, enough time for him to know he wasn’t surprised by this seizure. That he’d always sensed there was this stranger inside Felicity, this being pulling the invisible strings. Her eyes fluttered closed, open, closed again; she made choking sounds but she wasn’t
choking, she was breathing, he could feel each breath. A silver thread of saliva hung from her lips and he brushed it away with his hand. Her dress had rumpled up over her knees so he pulled it down again.

‘They’re coming,’ Suz said behind them, and though he didn’t think Felicity heard, her body relaxed into heaviness.

‘Felicity,’ he said. She stared at him without recognition. ‘Felicity, can
you hear me?’

She wiped her mouth, rubbed her forehead. The crease appeared between her eyes that she got when she was thinking. Her mouth moved without sound and her eyes stared at him as if he were a stranger, as if he were a tree. No panic, no fear, only nothing. Every part of her was Felicity except she was not there.

One of his colleagues, years ago, had had epilepsy and he’d told them
matter-of-factly what to do if he had a fit: clear a space, keep him out of danger, don’t put anything in his mouth, talk to him, roll him onto his side if you could. Wait for it to be over. Don’t give him a drink until he could talk. Keep calm. Don’t worry. Put aside your anger and your fear.

‘Felicity,’ he said gently to her, ‘it’s me. Can you hear me?’

She sighed and closed her eyes. Quinn
held her and waited for it to be over.

I’M IN HOSPITAL
. I see the blue curtain around my bed and hear a conversation in another language, maybe Punjabi, happening on the other side of the curtain; it smells of disinfectant here and the sheets are stiff, and somewhere something is beeping and I have a tube coming out of my left arm, so where else could I be but in hospital?

But I don’t know how I got here. I’m not
wearing shoes. I’m lying on my side and Quinn is sitting beside me looking into my face. My first thought is,
That’s all right
. I close my eyes and go to sleep.

The next thing I know, he’s shaking me by the shoulder.

‘Are you awake?’ he asks. I am faintly surprised that he’s speaking in English, not Punjabi. ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘You’re Quinn Wickham. You used to want to be a spy.’ My voice
is hoarse.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Tired and thirsty.’ My muscles ache, too. I go back to sleep. There aren’t any dreams.

‘Mrs Wickham? Are you with us?’ A nurse is standing over me. I’d rather sleep but her voice is quite insistent so I say, ‘Yes.’

‘Can you smile for me, love? Good. Squeeze my hand? Now this one? How many fingers am I holding up? How about now? Can you tell me what day it
is? Who’s this charming young man with me? Just follow this light, will you? Now look straight ahead. Good.’

Did I pass? What was the test? I don’t usually pass tests. I’m not good at concentrating and even worse at spelling.

‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘Did I fall?’

‘You had a seizure,’ says Quinn. ‘You’re in hospital.’