Chapter Thirty-two
It’s funny, the things you can know with your head and not with your heart.
In my head, I know that Gran is old, and that one day she will die. But I think there’s also a part of me that is fully expecting her to live for ever.
I know that she’s made it through surgery, because Ruth tells me when I phone her back. I know that she’s in hospital recovering. But I’m still picturing her in Glenhaven. Like my brain can’t quite process the idea that she’s somewhere else again.
I know that things change, but my heart hasn’t quite caught up.
Declan drives us to the hotel. For the first hour, he is quiet, as though knowing instinctively that I’m feeling too overwhelmed to engage with anything. After a while, though, he begins to talk.
‘One of the first times I came into the bookshop, I found your gran sitting on the beanbag in the corner,’ he says slowly, as though giving me time to react.
I don’t say anything, and he glances at me again before continuing.
‘She looked up as the bell rang, and when I opened my mouth to speak she told me I had to wait until the end of the chapter. I just stood there.’ He shakes his head and laughs softly.
‘For five full minutes, I stood there. And when she’d finished she looked up and told me it was a cliffhanger and that I should probably grab a book to read next to her because she was diving in for another chapter. ’
A tear tracks down my cheek, but I don’t wipe it away.
‘She shuffled over and we read side by side on that beanbag for almost twenty minutes,’ he says.
He falls quiet again, and I reach out to rest my hand on his leg. He doesn’t look down, just loops his fingers through mine.
It’s like that for the rest of the drive – moments of quiet, interspersed with stories about his experiences in the bookshop.
In a corner of my brain, I realise that our last minutes are trickling away. I haven’t really processed what happened in the clearing, or the fact that the tour is finished. That our pause is almost over. But there’s no space to dwell on any of it; I’m too consumed by my worry about Gran.
It’s late afternoon when we pull into the airport hotel. Declan checks us in, then walks with me to the room. He hesitates outside.
‘Do you want me to stay with you a while?’ he asks softly. ‘Just to sit?’
I know it will probably make everything harder tomorrow, but right now I don’t care. I don’t want him to leave. ‘Yes, please.’
I’m too tired to do much apart from climb into bed with my clothes on.
Declan hesitates again, then sits on the bed beside me.
He rests a hand on my back, making small, soothing circles with his fingertips.
After what might be five minutes or an hour, he clears his throat, then he starts talking about the different types of trees he knows until I fall asleep.
When I wake, it’s dark outside. I can feel Declan’s warm, solid presence behind me, and his arm is wrapped across my body, as though shielding me from the outside world.
I should get up. I should go and sit in one of the awful red armchairs in the corner of the room. I promised I only wanted a pause, but I know that at this point every moment I spend with him is only going to increase the heartache when he’s gone.
I wriggle back into his warmth. He murmurs something in his sleep, pulling his arm tighter round me and I drift back into sleep.
It’s early morning when I wake again. I can see the sun beginning to peek over the horizon.
I don’t know how long I lie there, watching as activity begins, as planes begin to take off.
It’s so neat, so efficient. The plane gets ready to leave, it flies away and the airport waves goodbye then moves on to the next plane.
Once the plane is gone, the airport isn’t thinking about it any more. It becomes another airport’s problem.
At least, I think that’s what happens. To be honest, I’m not really sure how air-traffic control works.
I’m desperate to be in the hospital with Gran.
But it’s also the last place I feel like being.
I don’t want to see her hurt, to see another slice of her vulnerability.
I want to hold on to the memories I have of her running around the bookshop and telling stories, of asking people questions, not to have them slowly erased with this new reality.
And even that thought feels horribly, hideously selfish.
When Declan wakes just before six, he sits bolt upright. ‘Sorry,’ he says, his voice husky and his hair a mess. ‘I didn’t mean to fall asleep. How are you doing?’
‘Fine,’ I tell him, but we both know it’s a lie.
He nods, squeezes my hand, then stands up and starts packing.
As though ten seconds is all he needs to be a fully functioning person.
We’re ready to go fifteen minutes later, like he knows without talking that I’ll want to be at the airport early, no matter that our flight doesn’t leave for another three hours.
I fall asleep on the plane and Declan doesn’t tease me about snoring when I wake up. He doesn’t even raise his eyebrows at me. It makes things more real somehow, and the hollowness in my stomach widens.
‘You didn’t mention my snoring,’ I say hoarsely, and it’s the first thing I’ve said since we got on the plane.
It’s such a ridiculous thing to say, and Declan just studies me for a while.
There’s a tenderness in his expression, and I wonder whether he’s called Tessa about the article in Read, Repeat yet. Yesterday feels like a lifetime ago.
‘I didn’t realise you were sleeping,’ I think I hear him say before I drift off again. ‘I thought there was a bear on the plane so I was trying to be as quiet as possible.’
Declan and Jed are collecting the luggage while Bri and I wait by the door. She’s organised a car to take me from the airport to the hospital and when I try to thank her, she hugs me so tightly I think my ribs might crack.
‘I’ll call you next week,’ she says. ‘Declan will be packing for his move, so I should have plenty of time in the next few weeks.’
My brain is so foggy that it takes me a second to register what she’s said. ‘Sorry, what?’ I say. ‘What move?’
Bri frowns. ‘You know, to Mayfield?’ she says. ‘I thought he said he took you there?’
Mayfield . Where his dad lived. Where Declan held my hand.
A twelve-hour drive from here.
‘Declan’s moving to Mayfield?’ The words feel sluggish, like I can’t quite get them out.
Bri freezes, her eyes going wide. ‘Crap. Oh crap, I’m sorry, Clarrie, I thought you knew.’ There’s pity in her eyes, and my head is spinning. It’s too much, all at once.
Declan’s moving. I can’t process the information; I don’t have space to work out what I even think about it. But he doesn’t owe me anything. He said his life was complicated. This was a pause . It was never going to be anything more.
I still feel it like a punch in the gut.
‘No, I . . . I didn’t realise.’
I can already feel the tears prickling at the corner of my eyes.
Gran’s in hospital. I just have to focus on that right now.
‘Oh, Clarrie,’ says Bri. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s fine, Bri,’ I say, in response to her horrified expression as Jed and Declan return with everyone’s bags. ‘I’m fine. I just need to get going, to see Gran. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?’ I manage a watery smile and turn to Jed, trying to push aside my thoughts about the man beside him.
The stern affection on Jed’s face is a relief.
His farewell is less effusive but no less warm, and I manage to hug him without bursting into tears.
Then he opens the bum bag he was wearing on the plane that I probably subconsciously assumed was carrying his travel documents and valuables.
Instead, it’s just filled with feathers.
He pulls one out and presses it into my palm, and the tears that were threatening spill down my cheeks.
‘I’ll take you spotlighting around here sometime,’ he says. ‘There are a few great spots an hour out of the city.’
I nod. ‘Thanks, Jed,’ I say, my voice only cracking slightly, and he gives me a brisk hug.
Then it’s just Declan standing in front of me, green eyes sharp on mine.
The airport flickers and fades for a second, and Declan’s eyes feel like a waypoint, the same as they did in the crowd yesterday.
But this was just a pause.
We’re not dating. The pause is over, and he doesn’t owe me anything.
‘Bri told me you’re moving,’ I whisper.
Declan inhales sharply. He closes his eyes. ‘Clarrie, I—’
‘I think it will suit you,’ I continue. ‘Mayfield.’
Declan searches my eyes. His expression is unreadable. He opens his mouth, but before he can speak I cut him off again.
‘I have to go,’ I say. ‘But thanks for the tour. All the best with the move.’
Then I turn round and walk back out into reality.
The hospital smells the same way that all hospitals seem to smell. As though someone mixed cleaning products, sadness and hope and invented a hospital-scented air freshener that’s distributed worldwide.
The corridors are white with bright lights and faded paint, and when I enquire at the front desk they direct me to the fourth floor.
I take the stairs, because I can’t stand the idea of being stationary, and I’m pretty sure that two weeks in the forest doing moderate amounts of walking qualifies me as the kind of person who takes the stairs.
The fourth-floor ward is quiet but not still, footsteps and soft voices and beeping machines all rolling together in a constant soundtrack. Gran is in the last room on the left.
The first thing I see when I walk in is a posy of cheerful, bright-coloured flowers on the table beside her bed. I wonder how many bouquets of flowers a hospital throws out each week.
Gran is in bed, tucked under crisp, white sheets. She looks small in a way that I’ve never seen her, even in the last two years since she went into Glenhaven. She’s hooked up to a few different machines, but her face is peaceful.