Chapter 35
Phoebe grips her grandmother’s hand tightly, trying to transmit everything she can’t find the words to say out loud to her through the strength of the squeeze. Not that her nan would notice if she did manage to say everything she needs to say; her eyes are closed as she lies in the hospital bed looking incredibly small beneath the blanket. There are wires and tubes attached to her and every beep of the monitors makes Phoebe jump, terrified that it might be the sign that her grandmother is slipping away.
She hadn’t trusted herself to do the long drive down to Cornwall on her motorbike, especially with the sun beginning to set and with her hands shaking and head spinning. She’d caught the train, stopping quickly by her flat to chuck some things in a bag. She isn’t certain how long she’ll stay for. Nothing feels certain right now, not with the doctors and nurses coming by regularly but with no new news. Her mum and dad are sitting in plastic chairs by the bedside, holding hands, their expressions solemn. Phoebe crouches by the bed because she wants to be as close as she can to her grandmother. With her spare hand, she gnaws at the edge of her fingernails, anxiety coursing through her body.
Phoebe’s older brother, Seth, had been there when Phoebe arrived but had to get back to help his wife get their kids to bed so gave her a tight hug and asked them to keep him informed.
‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t get here earlier,’ she says, her voice hoarse as she turns to face her mum. ‘And I’m so sorry I never called back like I said I would. I feel awful.’
‘That’s OK, love,’ her mum says faintly, her expression distant. ‘I know how busy you are.’
‘But I should never be too busy for you,’ she says, her voice breaking. ‘I’m a terrible granddaughter.’
‘You’re too hard on yourself, love. Your nan knows you love her, even if you haven’t spoken in a while.’
But the guilt doesn’t go away.
‘It’s getting late,’ says her father, looking at this watch. ‘I think we should all head home for the night.’
Phoebe can see her mum’s hesitation.
‘They’ll phone us if there are any changes,’ her dad says, softly but firmly. ‘We could all do with some sleep.’
So, eventually, they kiss her nan goodbye and leave the hospital.
Phoebe ends up tumbling into her childhood bed, thinking she won’t be able to sleep, but exhaustion quickly pulls her under.
It takes a moment to adjust to her surroundings when she wakes the next morning, tuning in to the distant sound of the sea and looking up at the Hello Kitty posters on her old bedroom walls. The room has been turned into a home office, but her single bed remains, along with the posters on the far wall behind her dad’s desk and bookshelves.
A light tapping on her door makes her sit up. The door opens and her father pokes his head inside. He looks surprisingly fresh-faced given the hour.
‘Morning, Phoebs. Meet me downstairs in five minutes? We’re going out.’
‘To the hospital?’ she asks, sitting up even straighter and scrabbling for her clothes. ‘Has there been news?’
But to her surprise, he shakes his head. ‘Not the hospital yet. You’ll see. Five minutes.’
By the time she’s downstairs in her jeans and an old T-shirt, her dad is waiting by the door, carrying two bags. He says nothing, simply leads her outside, chucks the bags in the boot of the car and opens the passenger door for her.
She’s too sad and sleepy to protest, so climbs in, wishing they’d at least had time to make a coffee. As they set off, Phoebe leans her face against the cool glass, watching the fields flash past and letting the wind tangle her hair as it blows in from her dad’s open window. He tunes in to Classic FM and hums quietly.
‘How’s Max?’ he asks suddenly.
After everything that’s happened, Phoebe doesn’t have the energy to lie.
‘Actually, we broke up. About a week or so ago. He moved out.’
Her father nods, eyes not veering from the road. ‘Thank you for telling me.’
She frowns slightly. ‘You don’t sound surprised.’
Her father checks his mirror as he signals and turns off the main road and down a lane bordered by high, bushy hedgerows. Songbirds dart out from the undergrowth as they pass.
‘When your mum couldn’t get hold of you after your nan’s fall, she tried Max.’
‘Ah.’
‘She explained why she was calling. He was pretty surprised to hear from her. He explained that you two had broken up.’
‘He didn’t tell me. I haven’t heard from him at all.’ Even though he knew her grandmother was in the hospital? Even though he knew how much Phoebe adores her? She clenches her fists, digging her nails into her palm.
Without even looking at her, her father reaches one hand to her lap and quietly unclenches her hand, giving her fingers a little squeeze before returning his hand to the steering wheel.
‘You’re better off without him, love.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’
‘That’s OK. You would have done eventually.’
Why hadn’t she told them as soon as he left?
‘I think I was embarrassed.’
‘You have nothing to be embarrassed about.’
‘Even though I’m terrible at relationships?’
‘You are not terrible at relationships. You just haven’t met the right person yet.’
She knows her dad is one of the most biased people in the world, but it still feels good, his unwavering belief in her. As he turns left and the car slows, it hits her where they are heading. Another winding lane and then the car is pulling to a halt, tyres crunching on gravel.
‘Dad, what are we doing here? We should get to the hospital.’
‘We’ll go in a bit. But first we need to do this. You need this. I can see it in your face and the way you haven’t stopped chewing on your nails since you arrived.’
She looks down at her hands and the livid red that rims her bitten fingernails.
‘I’m just worried about Nan. And the break-up has been shit.’
‘It’s not just that, though,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘I’ve noticed it for a while. You haven’t been looking after yourself. You need a break. Come on.’
He opens the door and, once she’s out too, he throws her one of the bags, slinging the other over his shoulders. Phoebe is hit by a blast of salty air and the sound of seagulls wheeling in the sky above them. Around them are a few other cars, but mostly the car park is empty. A sandy path leads towards the dunes, where marram grass waves in the brisk morning breeze.
‘Shoes off, Phoebe Harrison.’ He is already leaning to pull off his own deck shoes, so Phoebe does the same, knowing there’s no point arguing with him.
As soon as she feels the sand between her bare toes, memories come rushing back of trips to the beach as a child. Running carefree on the sand, racing into the salty waves and swimming until her teeth chattered and her limbs ached.
He leads the way and Phoebe follows in silence. For a while, they are surrounded by sand and grass and sheltered from the wind. And then they reach the summit of the dunes and the view opens up before them: a long stretch of sandy beach dotted with shells and seaweed and a wide, open sea, glinting in the morning light. There’s something about the view that makes Phoebe feel as though her chest is opening.
‘Pretty good, huh?’ says her father, turning to catch her expression.
‘Pretty good. It always has been.’
‘You haven’t been back in a while though.’
‘No.’
‘Come on, let’s go down to our usual spot.’
They head for a section of sand that’s far enough away from the car park to always be quiet, and where the steep slope of the dunes creates shelter from the sea wind. They drop their bags, her father sitting down and gesturing for her to join him. He scoots closer and wraps an arm around her shoulders. She leans her head against him, remembering all the times they sat like this when she was little, him providing a human windbreak when it was particularly wild on the beach, Phoebe on one side of him and Seth on the other.
But as she thinks of it, other memories come rushing into her mind too, recollections of days from her childhood that were very much not beach days.
‘I remember coming here by myself one morning when I was recovering from my first depressive episode,’ her father says suddenly, as if sensing the thoughts that have entered Phoebe’s mind. ‘We used to come here as a family a lot too, of course, but there was something about coming here early in the morning to watch the sea alone that I found very soothing. I still do it most days. I particularly like it on the wet and wild ones. More often than not, the weather will blow through before too long and the sun will come out.’
As her father speaks, Phoebe’s fingers reach subconsciously to her arm, tracing the letters of her tattoo the way she so often does. This too shall pass. It’s something her father used to repeat to himself on the tough days, something that helped him through when the clouds descended.
But Phoebe has never forgotten the times before he found the help he needed, back when his depression was just an unnamed darkness that would descend at random on their lives. It started happening when she was around six years old. One day, her dad just stopped getting out of bed and going to work.
‘Your daddy smells funny,’ a friend of hers said when she came over to play after school. Her father was sitting on the sofa in his dressing gown as he had been for several days. Phoebe wasn’t sure of the last time he had showered and she quickly learnt not to invite her friends over.
She and Seth started referring to their dad as Normal Dad and Sad Dad. Normal Dad made pancakes at the weekend that he’d make a show of flipping extra high. Normal Dad took them to the beach and told them the different names of all the seabirds. Sad Dad would stare at the telly with a glazed expression on his face, barely noticing if they spoke or changed the channel.
One day, on one of the Sad Dad days, Phoebe came home from school to find a woman in a uniform sitting in the kitchen with her father. They were drinking tea together and talking. Nurse Lois became a regular fixture in their lives for a while and Phoebe wasn’t sure how, but gradually her father grew brighter. He started shaving, returned to work part-time, started making pancakes again.
When Phoebe and Seth were a little older, her parents opened up about their dad’s illness. They told them about the medication he now took, the therapy he’d received and the mental health nurses who had helped him get back on his feet.
‘They saved my life,’ her father said once, his eyes growing misty. And Phoebe never forgot it. She knew right then and there, at age eleven, what she wanted to do with her life. If someone could do that for her dad, then she wanted to do that for someone else. It would be her way of thanking the universe for the fact that the world still had her dad in it.
‘Recently, when I’ve been coming down here, I’ve been thinking a lot about you,’ her father continues. ‘I’ve been worried about you, Phoebe. It’s made me beyond proud the way you’ve chosen to spend your life and all that you do to help other people – people like me.’ His voice wavers slightly, but he regains control. ‘But you need a balance.’
‘My boss said something similar yesterday.’
‘Maybe she knows what she’s talking about. And maybe so does your dad. You need places and moments where you can let go and unwind – preferably among good people. That’s something that has helped me over the years.’
When Phoebe was a teenager her father decided to switch permanently to part-time hours, thanks to her mum getting a big promotion at work. At first, Phoebe could sense her dad was apprehensive about not being the breadwinner anymore, but her mum had talked him around. She loved her job and had always been able to compartmentalise, work not following her home the way it did for him. In his new-found free time, Phoebe’s dad took on more of the household chores, always being the one to pick Phoebe and Seth up from their various clubs and cooking dinner for the family each night – an activity he seemed to find soothing.
And he took up a whole range of hobbies. At the time, she and Seth used to tease him about it, laughing at his new golfing gear and fishing waders. But, looking back, she can see that he was doing everything she advises her patients to do when they’re struggling. He built networks for himself, finding friends he could chat to while playing golf, or sit in companionable silence with while they fished without ever really expecting to catch anything.
‘I’ve actually started swimming at my local river,’ she says. Just saying it brings to mind the peaceful green water and the people she has met there. A sense of calm immediately wraps around her.
Her dad’s face spreads into a smile.
‘You loved swimming so much when you were little.’
‘Turns out I still love it.’
‘Well, that’s a relief …’ He leans back and fishes around in one of the bags, throwing a swimming costume at her and grabbing a pair of trunks for himself. ‘That one’s your mum’s – hopefully it will fit. Come on, we’re going in.’
‘So that’s what you had planned.’
‘When I saw you at the hospital, you looked like you could do with a swim.’
Phoebe smiles to herself, remembering Sandra saying that to her the first time they met.
They get changed quickly and then race each other down to the water. Her dad reaches out for her hand and they run like that into the waves.