Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-three
Jensen,
I’ve started this letter eight times and I’m still not sure I’m going to get it right. So I’m basically just going to say this: I’m so sorry. I made a huge error of judgment and lost sight of who I was, and I didn’t mean to hurt you in doing those things, but I did, and that’s something I’m going to have to live with. I get that you’ve moved on—and I truly hope you’re happy—but I just wanted you to know that I won’t be publishing what I wrote about you. None of it. I’m canceling the whole book. And I’m sorry if the flippant way I described a night that was actually very lovely caused you pain. You have shown me and my family nothing but kindness and I repaid you in the worst way possible.
I’m going to ask one thing: whatever you think of me, please don’t end your relationship with Bill. He had nothing to do with any of it, and he’s going through a rough time just now, and could really do with a friend. Your friendship especially.
I’m so sorry again.
Lila x
It has taken Lila all day to write this letter. She has sat staring at her pen, working and reworking the words, and every one of them still feels inadequate. It feels like the world is full of people betraying each other, or doing each other wrong, and when she finally commits the words to paper, she does so wanting to feel like she is not one of those people. That she can at least own her faults, and shoddy behavior, and apologize for them. She tries not to think about the other reason: that she is still haunted by the way Jensen looked at her, the way she feels his absence all the time. The proprietorial way in which his new girlfriend took his arm and steered him firmly away from her. She feels like the dumbest person in the universe, not because Gabriel fooled her, but because she had been too stupid to see what was right in front of her: this kind, funny, honest man, who had looked at her as if she was something great, and touched her as if she was revered. She keeps remembering the way it had been impossible to be anyone but herself when she was with him. The way he had made her laugh. The deep-rooted sense she had when he was around that everything was basically okay. What had she been thinking?
The wind has picked up during the day, and Lila walks to the postbox with her hair whipping around her face. The rain spits meanly from an angle that feels almost horizontal, and she puts her head down, feeling it reflects her mood. Now, without the distraction of her stupid, misguided infatuation, she is left with nothing but the knowledge of what she has done to a good man, and what she has thrown away.
She had read the letter to Eleanor before she sent it, and Eleanor had murmured, Good , good , in the way that a teacher might approve of a satisfactory piece of work. But a thought keeps nagging at her: why should Jensen trust her words when she has found it so easy to wound him with them before? Gabriel had found it easy to give her the words he thought she wanted—but they had been meaningless at best, misleading at worst. And this is the real reason she took so long to write a simple letter: she is no longer sure she trusts words either. They have become febrile, potentially inflammatory things. All that really matters is how someone makes you feel, and she has made Jensen feel terrible.
Dan had texted the previous evening saying that Marja had been admitted to hospital and he wouldn’t be able to take the girls for the foreseeable. It was a bald text, with no detail, and Lila had sighed inwardly, realizing that this was just another example of how his first family was going to come second from now on. She will tell the girls that he is very busy at work. There is no point in them knowing the degree to which he no longer makes them a priority. She will protect them from that as far as she is able.
She puts the letter into the postbox, and turns to go home, Truant hunched at her heels. He does not like wet weather, and casts baleful glances from the end of the lead. “I know, sweetie,” she murmurs to him, pulling up her collar. “You and me both.” Gabriel, Dan, Gene. So much effort involved in clearing up the damage that their fragile egos have wrought.
There is something exhilarating about the wind, though, she realizes, as she keeps walking: a harbinger of change, or energy. Lila lifts her face to it, feeling her cheeks tingle, watching the leaves chase each other in circles, the umbrellas of passersby turning themselves inside out. She thinks suddenly of what she had said to Gabriel outside the pub, the woman’s face when she had called her “Gorgeousa.” She lets out an involuntary giggle. Eleanor had hooted at that story.
A plastic bin skitters across the pavement in front of her, and she and Truant pause to let it pass. She will make her way through this particular storm. She has been through worse. She will persuade Bill to come home. She will find another way to earn some money and a cheaper place for them to live. She will survive, as she has always done. If these few months have reinforced one thing, it is the knowledge that the only person you can truly rely on is yourself. Lila straightens her shoulders, takes a deep breath and, with renewed determination in her stride, heads toward home.
···
The girls are oddly peaceful that evening. Perhaps the storm raging outside makes their little home feel cozier, or perhaps they’d just had a reasonable enough day not to bring the usual complaints and cries of unfairness home with them. Celie, who seems relieved that she doesn’t have to go to Dan’s for the foreseeable, is working on some kind of cartoon drawing. She covers it with her arm when Lila brings a mug of cocoa to her room, then pulls it back almost reluctantly and says it’s for Animation Club. Lila peers at the intricate line drawings and wants to punch the air with joy, but nods and says with a carefully calibrated level of approval that they look great, and tries not to be so enthusiastic that her daughter immediately changes her mind about them.
Violet is downstairs watching old episodes of Star Squadron Zero on YouTube. She has devoured a whole three seasons now, and Lila observes her from the corner of her eye while she cooks, hoping she’s watching because she enjoys the show and not just because she misses her grandfather. Lila has not been in touch with Gene since he left. What’s the point? She knows how this game goes—he will say sorry, charm the girls, worm his way back into the house for as long as it suits him, then up and leave again. They’re all better off without him. She cooks a roast chicken with mashed potatoes—the girls’ favorite—perhaps to reinforce the idea that they don’t need anyone else around to lead a good life. They eat companionably round the table, listening to the rain spatter on the windows, and Celie manages to last at least half an hour before she gets up and retreats to her room.
Lila is just finishing the washing-up when the call comes. It’s a number she doesn’t recognize, and at first she stares at her phone screen, debating whether or not to pick up. “Hello?” she says, peeling off her rubber gloves.
Penelope’s voice is breathless. “Oh, Lila. Thank goodness. You need to come to the hospital as quickly as you can. It’s Bill.”
···
Lila lurches her way around the house, trying to gather bag, keys, a coat, tailed by Truant, who has picked up the shift in atmosphere and is now clearly convinced of imminent apocalypse. She manages to get everything together, knocks on Celie’s door and opens it. Celie is still absorbed in her drawing and looks up as if she’s been pulled from a trance.
“I—I’ve got to pop out for a bit. Can you mind Violet?”
“Why? Where are you going?”
She doesn’t want to tell her daughter. She doesn’t want to convey any of what she had heard in Penelope’s voice—that undertow of dread and fear. A suspected heart attack, Penelope had said, a sob in her voice. She had gone round because he hadn’t answered his phone all afternoon and found him. The ambulance had taken so long, too long, to get there.
“I just—”
“Mum.” Celie is staring at her.
“It’s Bill. He’s not well. Penelope has gone with him to hospital. I didn’t want to worry you.”
She sees the fear in Celie’s face. “Penelope is with him. But I need to be there too.”
“Okay,” she says. “You go. Call me when you get there.”
There is something about her daughter’s bravery, the immediate resolve in her expression, even while her eyes are wide with anxiety, that makes Lila’s heart swell. She steps forward and gives Celie a swift, heartfelt hug, breathing in the scent of her hair, feeling her daughter’s hands link briefly around her waist.
“And tell him I love him.”
“I will. Of course I will. The moment I know anything I’ll call you. Will you be okay by yourself?”
Celie pulls back. “Mum. I’m sixteen.”
“I know. Just don’t answer the door. To anyone. If there’s a power cut, the fuse box is under the stairs. Call me and I’ll talk you through it. Or if it’s the whole street you’ll have to check online. Oh, and there are candles in the box under the sink. And don’t use the oven or light anything with a naked—”
“Mum. Go.”
Lila goes. She will drive to the hospital. It will be impossible to get a taxi in this weather. She prays that the old Mercedes will start. She shuts the front door, feeling the wind lift her hair, hearing its whistle in her ears. Then, as she turns, she stops dead on the front steps. The large plane tree that had stood at the edge of her drive, the tree whose branches had elegantly framed her house and that Jensen had warned her was listing, is horizontal, completely blocking the entrance to her driveway. It’s such an unlikely sight that at first she can barely take it in. Its longer branches are draped over the top of the Mercedes, obscuring the windows. Even to get to the pavement she will need to climb over the trunk.
Her brain is a blur. Think , she tells herself. Think . Dan is at the hospital with Marja. He’s not going to be able to help. Eleanor doesn’t have a car. She calls for an Uber. The app tells her that nobody is available in her area but, helpfully, they are still searching. She feels panic rising in her chest, lets out a fuck . Fuck! She screws her eyes shut, and counts to five.
And then she makes the call.
···
“Thank you so much for coming. I’m so sorry. I just…didn’t have anyone else I could call.”
“It’s fine.” Jensen doesn’t look like it’s fine. He doesn’t look at her as he speaks, just keeps his eyes straight ahead, as the windscreen wipers move steadily backward and forward. He had arrived within seven minutes of her calling, climbed out of the pickup truck, gazed pointedly at the fallen tree, then opened the passenger door for her to get in.
“I should have got someone to look at it. I just—with everything—it kind of got away from me.”
He doesn’t say anything. She has rarely seen anyone so focused on their driving.
According to her phone, it will take seventeen minutes for them to get to the hospital. Her whole body is vibrating with anxiety. She keeps hearing the fear in Penelope’s voice, pictures a thousand images behind the words “I found him.”
Please be okay, Bill , she wills him silently. Please just be okay. We can fix everything if you’ll just be okay.
“Where are the girls?” he says, as they approach the hospital.
“At home.”
“Is anyone with them?”
“No. But they’ll be fine. They have the dog. And Celie is under strict instructions not to open the door.”
He nods, swinging the truck past the barriers toward the main entrance. It sits, glowing, like the portal to a world of pain. He slows the truck, and comes to a halt. He still stares resolutely ahead, as if he cannot bear even to look at her. It makes something in her contract. “Thank you. Thank you so much. Again, I’m so sorry to have to ask, especially after everything.”
“Just let me know how he is,” he says. “And call if you need a ride back from the hospital.”
“I don’t want to bother you again. I’ve already disrupted your—”
“Just call,” he says shortly. He waits silently while she opens the door and climbs out of the truck. She runs in through the sliding doors, glancing back briefly to watch the tail lights disappear into the darkness.
···
Bill is in a room by himself on the third floor. It takes Lila a while to find it, jogging down the strip-lit corridors, weaving past the medics walking in groups or clutching folders to their chests. She finally locates him in Coronary Care, and sees him first through the small window on the door, lying immobile in a mask beneath a mass of wires, Penelope bent over at his side, her slim frame a question mark. She looks round as Lila walks in and Lila sees that she is holding Bill’s hand in both her own. Lila registers the near-silence, the intermittent bleep of the monitors.
“How is he?”
“Stable. They’ve given him a cardiac…cardiac catheterization? He’s having ECGs or EKGs or something. Oh, I can’t remember. Just lots of drugs.” Her voice is low and shaky.
Bill’s exposed chest looks old and gray, plastered with sticky patches from which wires project in a spaghetti tangle, covered from the waist in a light blanket. His face is largely obscured by the mask and he seems sedated. His fingers twitch periodically in Penelope’s, and she answers each twitch with a gentle squeeze.
“Oh, Lila. I thought I’d lost him.” Penelope starts to cry, silent tears that fall onto her sleeves. “They won’t even tell me if he’s going to be all right because I’m not…I’m not family.”
“Okay,” says Lila, trying to keep her voice calm as she takes in the awful reality of it. “Okay.”
Penelope straightens, struggles to pull herself together, gazing at Bill’s face. “I know—I know that everyone loves him. But it just feels so cruel to find your person after all this time alone, the person you just love, such a wonderful man, and then to have them snatched away. I can’t—I just can’t—” She breaks off, then composes herself. “I’m so sorry. How terribly selfish of me. I’m just a newcomer in his life and you all have known and loved—”
Lila puts her hand gently on Penelope’s shoulder. “Penelope. It’s fine. You’re allowed to feel the way you feel. We know you love him too.”
Lila stoops and kisses Bill’s forehead. He seems so removed from them, so far away, this man she has known almost her whole life. It is as if all the things that make him Bill, his upright stance, his air of purpose, the sense of safety he has always conveyed, have just evaporated, leaving this shell of an old, frail man. “I’ll find a doctor. I’ll—I’ll go and find one. I’ll be back.”
Lila lets herself out of the room, closing the door gently behind her. She stands for a moment, feeling overwhelmed, and then she walks to the nurses’ station. There are three women, one bent over a screen, entering something on a keyboard, the other two having a conversation in lowered voices.
“Hello,” she says. “Would it be possible for me to talk to someone about Bill McKenzie? Heart attack in Room C3. He was admitted this evening.” She pauses, then says firmly: “I’m his daughter.”
···
Lila spends several hours at the hospital, long enough to ensure that Bill is stable, to learn that he has suffered a myocardial infarction, that the length of time he waited for treatment has possibly been offset by the fact that he had had the presence of mind to take aspirin when he first started having chest pains, that they are waiting on the results of a battery of tests, including one for brain hemorrhage, and that they will let Lila know if anything changes. Only one person is allowed to stay in the room overnight, and it feels wrong to evict Penelope, especially as Lila has to get back to the girls, so she finally leaves, with Penelope promising to stay in touch.
Lila arrives back shortly before one a.m., numb and drained of all feeling. She cannot think beyond each step of her journey: the front desk at the hospital has a hotline to a taxi company and she thanks them politely for ordering one for her, and sits silently in the back of the car when it comes, staring at nothing out of the window. The storm has abated, just the odd gust of wind gently causing the bushes to sway, and piles of leaves to scatter in skittish bursts across the pavements. It is only as she approaches her street that she remembers the tree, but it feels like a ridiculous cosmic joke on top of everything that has happened. She tells herself that it, like so much else, can wait until tomorrow. Because Bill, the man who has been a father to her for nearly her whole life, Bill, the kindest, most consistent, the best of men, is lying in a hospital bed with no guarantee of recovery, and she doesn’t know what to say to her children, and that is all that matters.
“Just here, please,” she says, when they reach her part of the street, and rummages in her bag for money to pay the driver. When she hands it to him and tells him to keep the change he swivels to her, gives her a sympathetic smile, and says: “I hope they’re all right. Whoever it is.”
She looks up at him.
“No one wants picking up from the hospital at a quarter to one in the morning unless it’s bad news,” he says. “Good luck to you, mate.” A lump rises in her throat at the unexpected humanity. She manages to mutter a thank-you, and climbs out of the taxi. And it is then that she stops in confusion. The tree has gone. Her front door is in plain sight, as is her car. The enormous fallen tree has vanished so comprehensively that for a moment she wonders if she had imagined the whole thing. But, no, over to the right-hand side of her house, obscuring the garage doors, an enormous pile of logs bears the scars of a chainsaw. To the left a giant wigwam of branches. As she glances at the Mercedes, she can just detect a dent in the roof, visible in the glare of the sodium light from the lamppost on the pavement. Lila stares at the three things, not quite able to take them all in, then lets herself in through the front door.
Truant is the first to greet her, racing down the stairs, his tongue lolling, leaping up at her in delight that she has, against all odds, returned. She holds his soft face to hers for a moment, shushing him, but grateful for his presence in the too-still house. He follows her, bouncing with joy, as she goes to the kitchen, where she will make herself a cup of tea. It is the knee-jerk response to everything, she thinks distantly. Hot water and old leaves. Strange, really. But it’s all she wants right now, and with a big teaspoon of sugar in it.
She jumps when Jensen scrambles up from the kitchen chair. “Sorry,” he says, rubbing his face. “Didn’t mean to startle you. I must have nodded off.”
She’s so shocked to see him there that she cannot speak. His expression is briefly unguarded.
“I—I didn’t think the girls should be on their own. So I went home to pick up my chainsaw and just told Celie I’d be outside for the evening clearing the tree. Just, you know, so she had an adult around. And then when I finished she asked would I wait. I think she felt a little anxious, you know, with…everything.”
“You did that. The tree.”
He shrugs. “Well. It wasn’t really the time for you not to be able to get in and out of your house. How is he?”
It is then that tears rise. She swallows hard, trying to contain them. “Um. Hard to say just now. But they’re doing everything they can.” She looks up at the ceiling, willing herself to keep it together. “Heart attack, it turns out. Big one. Penelope’s still there with him.”
She cannot look at him. She keeps staring at the ceiling, blinking, trying to hold back the tears.
“Damn. I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head, mutely, compressing her lips.
There is a short silence.
“I—I’ll get off, then,” he says. He stands, and reaches for his jacket. “Just…didn’t know how long you’d be and I didn’t want…” She hears his voice and closes her eyes, suddenly too overwhelmed by his decency. It is too much, the thing that has finally broken her. And she presses her hands against her face and starts to cry, the tears that have somehow been dammed for this whole wretched evening, perhaps this whole awful, awful month. She rams her knuckles into her eye sockets and lets out a long, low howl. She cannot hold it in, she cannot bear it all, because it is too much, always too much, all the bloody time.
And after a moment she feels Jensen’s arm around her, at first tentative, and then more firmly, pulling her in, and she lets herself collapse onto the solidity of him, letting him hold her up as she cries, for Bill, for her daughters, for herself, for all of it. She cries and cries, her sobs hoarse in her ears, tears sliding unchecked down her cheeks, no longer even able to care what he might think, because it’s all lost anyway, all broken. And Jensen holds her, until the sobs become shudders, and intermittent tremors, and then, an age later, when she has sat down on the chair, and wiped ineffectually at her face with a handful of tissues, he puts a mug of tea in front of her, nods an acknowledgment of her garbled apologies, says he’ll be in touch about clearing the tree branches, and then quietly, so as not to wake the girls, he lets himself out.