Chapter 36
Ivy
Ican’t help but see the care home, with its scruffy driveway and huge, unnecessarily graphic crucifix, through Xav’s eyes as he ushers me out of the cab and up to the front door of the convent.
The fare was almost fifty quid, which I feel sick about, though I know he’ll brush it off. He’s lovely like that.
I also feel sick about what reality will hit me when I walk through the doors, even if Dawn’s had it way worse than me this evening.
Still, I can’t deny that having Xav here is comforting.
I’m used to dealing with this shit on my own, to being the strong one for the twins, and having his physical presence and emotional support is kind of like having a big, fluffy blanket wrapped around me.
There is no us. We have no future. But he still seems to feel compelled to look after me.
He’s such a man of duty, of values, that even when a girl who gets in the way of him executing that duty comes along, he can’t help himself.
He wants to be my knight in shining armour, and I’m ashamed to say I’m not strong enough to refuse. Not this evening, anyway.
We trudge up the front steps, Xav holding my hand as though I might collapse if he doesn’t.
He looks so out of place here in his smart navy coat and camel scarf.
Like a model for some luxury brand. He and Selena were so well matched at the party, and his night is ending in the anus of London with me and my poor, broken stepmum and a flock of nuns. Just what he needs.
‘Are you Catholic?’ he murmurs with an alarmed glance at the seven-foot Jesus writhing in agony on the grassy patch.
It’s a ridiculous enough question to bring a watery smile to my face. ‘No. In case you couldn’t have guessed.’
‘You never know. It might have turned you the other way.’
I’m not about to tell him that the closest I’ve come to being Catholic is letting some kinky fucker who clearly has religious trauma to work through rail me in the actual, real-life confessional Alchemy has in its basement.
‘It’s affiliated with the NHS,’ I explain.
‘It’s run by working nuns, but they take NHS patients.
We got lucky.’ There’s no reality in which it’s ‘lucky’ to end up in a place like this, but we did well to get a bed anywhere.
Dementia care in London is endlessly oversubscribed and underfunded, as my family has discovered the hard way over the past couple of years.
The smell hits me as soon as we walk in: the stench of industrial cleaner so strong that it even broke through Dawn’s fog the day we moved her in.
Everything is wipe-clean in here—gloss-painted walls and old lino floors.
I lead Xav over to the tiny reception desk staffed by a nun so old she’ll probably end up as a patient soon.
Most of the nuns in here are bare-headed, but this one has on a Sound of Music-level headdress.
‘I’m Ivy Cooper,’ I tell her. She’s processed the twins and me several times before, but she always seems a bit vague. ‘I got a call to say my stepmum, Dawn Cooper, has been injured.’
She squints at me over the top of her glasses. ‘Visiting hours are finished, dear. Come back tomorrow.’ Her accent is as strong as if she only left the west of Ireland yesterday.
The panic rises in my throat. I’ve been imagining the awfulness of what Dawn’s been through today—the bruising, the fracture.
Her agony, her distress, at having been to A&E and back.
God, she must not have known what on earth was going on.
I have to see her. Even if she doesn’t know who the fuck I am, I won’t be able to sleep tonight until I’ve laid eyes on her and reassured myself that she’s okay and not in too much pain.
‘But the person I spoke to on the phone said—’ I try to rein in the tears that didn’t subside throughout the cab ride here, despite my best efforts to pull myself together. I blame Xav, and his beautiful kisses, and his beautiful soul, for making me feel like it was okay to fall apart all over him.
He squeezes my hand more tightly and straightens up beside me.
‘Mrs Cooper has been injured while in your care, sister. Her family relies on this institution to provide that care, and in the event of its catastrophic failure, we reserve the right to see her for ourselves to ensure that she is safe and well.’ He pauses. ‘It’s not a request.’
She purses her lips together, gives him a look that suggests she won’t be praying for him anytime soon, and pushes herself up to standing. She’s weirdly limber.
Oh, Jesus fuck. Clearly, everyone in this country is still conditioned from birth to hear an aristocratic voice and think, Shit, better obey. It’s a weird genetic hangover from centuries ago, when aristocrats actually mattered, and usually I’d have a major issue with it.
But not tonight.
Tonight, I’m just grateful that there’s someone this mean old bag respects. And I’m equally grateful that Xav has my back, that he’s wheeled out his best pompous arse impression for me and Dawn. Even if I’m all too aware these days that it’s only that. An impression.
Especially then.
When I lay eyes on Dawn, I can’t hold in a little whimper of horror, because Jesus Christ, she looks like she went a few rounds with Rocky Balboa. I clap my free hand over my mouth—Xav hasn’t let go of the other one—and try to remember to breathe as I take her in.
Her face is a mess. An absolute mess. Bandages over her nose.
A split lip with a couple of butterfly stitches on it.
And they weren’t kidding about those black eyes.
Really, they’re black and purple and yellow.
She’s fast asleep, lying on her back in one of the new lemon-yellow nightgowns I bought her from Primark when we moved her in here.
Worst of all, her fractured wrist is in a short cast, her arm folded over her chest in a sling as if she’s a baby bird with a broken wing.
That’s exactly what she looks like in this bed, in fact.
Tiny and fragile and birdlike. Her bones must be so frail—her wrist didn’t stand a chance.
I haven’t been able to persuade her to let me dye her hair since August, so it’s two-tone.
Chestnut brown on the bottom, with a wide stripe of drab grey on the top.
The bed has guardrails up, and they’ve put these thick plastic mats around it. They look identical to the ones we used to use at school gymnastics. I’m not sure they’d do much to break her fall, but it’s something, I suppose.
‘She’s being checked hourly by our nurses,’ the elderly nun says behind me. ‘She has a slight concussion, so we’re monitoring her regularly.’ Her tone sounds defensive, and I’m glad that she feels the need to defend her institution to Xav if not to me.
I swallow and turn to her. ‘How did it happen?’
‘I wasn’t on duty, but I hear that she was left sitting in her chair with the walker in front of her.
She got up, and…’ She spreads her hands wide.
‘We’re not quite sure. Either she lost her balance, or she pushed the walker away.
It was on its side when she was found. We’re reviewing the CCTV footage. ’
‘How long before someone found her?’ I ask with difficulty. I can’t bear to imagine Dawn face-planting on this hard floor and having to fucking lie there in excruciating pain and without help.
‘Immediately.’ She purses her lips together as if she knows what she has to say is hard to hear. ‘She was screaming, you see.’
I let my head drop forward in defeat. I just cannot.
This isn’t a life. Dawn’s brain is giving up on her.
Her body’s giving up on her. What the fuck is she supposed to do?
I swear, if I didn’t have Rose and Lily to look after, I’d put a pillow over her face and take the consequences, because this is a fate worse than death for one of the kindest humans I’ve ever known.
‘Would you like to sit with her for a bit?’ Xav asks softly, and I nod. I know she’s fast asleep, but I can’t walk away from her and leave her like this. Not just yet, anyway.
He squeezes my hand before releasing it. I’ve noticed he always does that. He never just pulls it away. ‘Sister, can you please tell me where I can grab a couple of chairs?’
I stand there and gaze at her in horror while Xav goes off with the nun.
He returns a few moments later—alone, thank fuck—with two stackable plastic chairs and sets them next to the bed, lowering me gently into the one nearest to Dawn’s face as if I, too, am an injured baby bird.
Once we’re sitting, he takes my hand and places it on his thigh, fixing it in place with his own hand.
I’m not really in the best headspace to compute that Xav now knows the thing I’ve tried so hard to keep from him, that he’s crossed over from that elite, escapist bubble he occupies—both in my head and IRL—and into the messy, shabby survival bubble of doom where I hang out.
I know I shouldn’t care. We won’t be together in a few weeks, after all.
But when it feels as though everything has been taken from you, then all you have left is your self-respect and your self-reliance, and it’s very hard to surrender those. It’s very hard indeed.
Especially to a man who used to look at you as if you were every filthy fantasy he’d ever had and is now looking at you with pity in his eyes.
So I won’t think about any of it now. I won’t think about the fact that he’ll remember me as Ivy, that girl who could set his dick on fire but whose family life was a shitshow of epic proportions.
I’ll just focus on the warmth of his hand on mine and the taut muscles of his thigh under my fingers.
I’ll focus on his immense kindness. And I’ll focus on the fact that, for once, I’m not sitting by Dawn’s bedside alone.
For the next few minutes, I have the most perfect man in the world in my corner. A fairytale prince has made his way into this nightmare, and my reality has the tiniest sprinkling of fairy dust because of it.