Chapter 30
THIRTY
When I go back to the hospital, Harriet’s doctor breaks the news that her breathing isn’t quite where they want it to be, so they’re going to keep her on oxygen one more day.
When I go into her room, she is sitting up reading her Kindle. ‘Have you heard?’ she asks, like it’s the end of her world. ‘I’m not getting out today!’
I tell her I know. I give her the cheese pie I took from breakfast. Then I tell her I know what happened with Aiden. ‘I understand you think he betrayed you, but he was trying to be a good guy. He realises he didn’t go about it the way he should have.’ I touch her hand. She draws hers back.
‘Well, nice to know whose side you’re on. Maybe you, Frank and Aiden should go off and be one big happy family.’
‘Okay, now you’re being a child. I’m not taking anyone’s side. I’m trying to be fair. He didn’t mean any harm. He thought he was doing the right thing. He’s very upset.’
‘I’m gutted for him.’
She sounds so much like me. ‘You’ve made your point. Believe me, he gets it. So, it’s time to move on from this now.’
My God, I sound like Frank. Who knew I would end up advocating for Aiden instead of wanting him to take a long walk off the face of the earth?
She looks disappointed in me. ‘What else do you suppose he’ll disregard my feelings over? Make a decision based on what’s best for him rather than for me?’ Her chest rattles. ‘Like you once told me, I didn’t really know him. You were right. And now what I do know, I don’t like.’ She hard-stares out of the window. I can see the bubble of a tear in her eye, can almost feel her willing it not to fall.
‘Then you have to talk to him,’ I say. ‘Either tell him it’s over or give him another chance.’
When she doesn’t answer, I say, ‘Harriet, Aiden is not a doormat. He’s not an extension of you. He’s an educated, proud, opinionated individual. I don’t think you’d be attracted to him otherwise.’ I search her face for signs I’m getting through to her, but she won’t look at me. ‘You’re going to have to take the good with the bad with that. And – honestly? I really don’t think you want to break up with him over this. You don’t have to commit to spending the rest of your life with him, but I’m not convinced ending things with him is what you really want to do either.’
She shoots me the side-eye. I’ve seen this look a million times and I know exactly what it means; she’s coming round to my way of thinking.
After a time, she says, ‘I don’t know.’
‘When you’re feeling better, you’ll probably see that this is not the end of the world – and maybe not the end of you guys.’
She fiddles with the edging of the blanket. After a long silence she says, ‘If I just forgive him, just like that, what message does that send? That all he has to do is wait a day, then everything will be back to normal?’
‘Talk to him,’ I tell her again. ‘Give him at least that much of a chance.’
I am clearly good at giving out relationship advice, but not so good at taking my own.
The side-eye again. ‘He can pop in later if he likes.’
When I taxi back to the hotel, I do what has to be done. I text Rupert.
Harriet in hospital in Greece. Thought u might like to know. She’s going to be fine. She got a cold and it turned to pneumonia.
I perch on the end of my bed. Reaching out to him, after three months of avoiding him, gives me that same rush of dread as the day I stood on the beach in Santa Monica and told him that I wasn’t going back to England with him. That fear of him saying something to weaken my resolve, guilt me into going back to him. Time should have eliminated that worry. And yet here I am with the same fear.
Fifteen seconds later, my phone rings.
‘Finally!’ he says. ‘At long sodding last she contacts me!’ He sounds almost breathless. I can almost feel his heart beating down the line. ‘You thought I might like to know? Like I’m just some sort of… random human being, instead of her father, the person who helped bring her into this world? You thought I might like to know?’
I open my mouth to speak, but he isn’t done.
‘You didn’t tell me our daughter might not be coming home. Didn’t even tell me she had a serious boyfriend! You don’t answer any of my calls. You rent yourself somewhere to live on the other side of the world. You didn’t even tell me when you’re coming home?—’
‘I did,’ I say. ‘We said three months.’
‘No, Moira, we didn’t say three months. You said three months. You said you needed time to think. I never agreed to it. You just left me with no say in the matter…’ He sounds so wounded, like his pet gerbil just died. ‘It’s absurd. I mean, who just decides not to come home?’
‘Someone who thinks her husband is screwing someone else, maybe?’
Silence. Then… ‘Not this again. You’re doing this to me again ?’
I seethe. ‘Of course, let’s make this all about you. Here’s me thinking your first question might have been how is our daughter.’
‘Of course, that’s my first question!’ he says, in exasperation. There’s a contrite beat, then, ‘How is she?’
I try to put my anger aside, and just focus on Harriet. I tell him briefly what happened. I say I flew out because I thought they were getting married. I tell him I know Aiden contacted him, and all hell has broken loose because he did that.
‘Good grief!’ he says, when I’m done. ‘This is a nightmare.’
I can picture him mussing his hair. One of those quirks of his where he does it for so long while he’s thinking about something, that it goes from being a cute affectation to making him look like he’s got a head lice infestation.
‘You should have told me,’ he says, a bit calmer. ‘I mean, I get some stranger calling me with an American accent saying he’s in love with my daughter, and that they want to be together to finish their degrees… She can’t have known him more than two minutes.’
‘Six weeks.’
‘How do you fall in love in six weeks?’ He shakes his head. ‘And you kept it to yourself? Not a single message? I’ve been trying to call you for days! Couldn’t you have picked up? What if I was dying? If I’d been hit by a truck? Or your parents. What if I was ringing with bad news?’ He takes the stridence out of his tone again. ‘How d’you think this makes me feel, Moira? How is that either normal or reasonable conduct?’
He’s right in that I didn’t once consider bad news. But I say, ‘Under the circumstances, I don’t think you’re the person to talk about reasonable conduct. I mean, who shows up at Nat’s office to flog their sob story? Someone you barely even know?’
‘It was my last-ditch attempt to get through to you! How else was I supposed to get around the stonewall?’
My heart hammers, and as messed up as it is, I almost feel a little sorry for him. ‘I rang about Harriet,’ I say. ‘I didn’t ring to fight.’
‘Who is fighting?’ His voice quavers. ‘In fact, why don’t you ask yourself who is stoking all of this? Because I think you’ll find it’s you, not me, Moira.’
‘Stoking?’ Did he say stoking? I get up and walk to the window. A young couple is standing on the pool deck, gazing out at the caldera. They take a moment to kiss. I watch them, let it bring me back to some sort of baseline. ‘I am not stoking anything,’ I say, calmly. ‘I’m reacting the only way I know how, and the way any woman would.’
There is no venom in my tone, only sadness. I am sadder than I thought I had capacity. Rupert and I became a sinking ship, and a part of me – the skipper, the sticker – wants to tow us to shore. Because on some level that is what I’ve done my whole life; I have navigated us away from trouble, steered us around the iceberg without even calling out that the iceberg is there. A tiny part of me still thinks it might be easier to fix what’s broken than to build a new boat.
For some crazy reason my mind flies to Frank. It flies there, and it locks there for a time; it takes me right off course.
Out of the window, the young couple are making a move. I watch how he holds her hand and leads her to the steps, how she briefly dunches his bicep with her head. The honesty of them. Second chance romances, to use Nat’s term, are way more complicated than first love.
‘Are you still there?’ He speaks into the radio silence.
I tell him that I am. There is another choked silence. Then he says, ‘Everyone is asking where you are. Even the postman. Can you imagine? The bloody postman thought you might have died.’
I can tell he’s overcome with emotion, which makes me press my head with the heel of my hand.
‘I didn’t cheat,’ he says, soberly. ‘I have told you that a thousand times. I want you to come home, Moy. I need you to come home. Nothing’s the same without you.’
I rub a hand around the back of my neck, the tension has me in a vice. I think of what Aiden said about Harriet suffering because of all of this, more than she will admit. Deep down, is she secretly rooting for me to forgive him? Am I going to be the one who is the bad guy, if I don’t? But then I hear a little voice inside my own head. Recommit, and there goes the rest of your life … I picture my parents. The benign little couple in the living room, watching Coronation Street together in practically the same chairs for forty years. My mother, lobotomised by her choices.
‘I’m going to fly out,’ he says, unsurely. ‘I need to see Harriet, and you and I need to talk.’
My mind darts to Frank again. Our unfinished conversation in the hot tub. My need to set the record straight. ‘No,’ I hear myself saying. ‘That would be a terrible idea. Harriet needs to get better. If you come, you’re going to upset her and that’s the last thing we should be doing right now.’
I wait. Please, please don’t say you’re coming or I’m going to implode.
‘Alright then,’ he says, after an agonising moment. ‘If you really think it’s going to make things worse, I won’t.’ I can hear the little-boy-lost quality in his voice.
Oh, thank God. Thank you, God.
‘But promise me you’ll keep me in the loop and that you’ll at least think about coming home, given you’re already only a few hours away. So we can sit down and have a proper conversation, face to face.’
‘I promise I’ll keep you in the loop,’ I say.