Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
One of the things they’d debated was where to tell her.
A restaurant would be too public if she – inevitably – got upset.
The shared lounge in her accommodation wouldn’t be suitable for the same reason and her own bedroom was too small: they’d be standing there like sardines in a very sad tin. In the end, Ellen suggested a walk.
That made Grace laugh. ‘A good old family walk, do you remember, Dad?’
Robert grinned at her in the rear-view mirror. He was in the passenger seat, Ellen had insisted that she drive. ‘I certainly do. Every Sunday afternoon.’
‘It’ll be good for us.’ Grace used the high-pitched upper class accent she always used when she was imitating Ellen, even though it sounded nothing like her. ‘We shall walk every Sunday as a family.’
‘How long did that one last?’ Robert asked her.
‘Okay, you two. Very funny.’ They all liked to mock the many times she’d come up with a plan for them to do something together every week – Saturday badminton, Friday film night, Sunday walks – and then be the first one to forget to do it by about week three.
‘Anyway, scrap that idea, I don’t think you should be walking anywhere at the moment, Robert. ’
That sobered the mood in the car pretty quickly. With no better suggestion, she did reluctantly agree to collect Abigail from the campus and drive to a nearby country park on the strict understanding that they would find a bench somewhere quiet to talk to her.
When Abbie got in the car, she looked pale and lethargic. It was likely a case of burning the candle at both ends, but it made her seem so vulnerable, that Ellen dreaded her reaction to what was coming. ‘It’s good to see you, sweetheart.’
‘You, too, Mum. I’m sorry again about shouting down the phone.’
Abbie had sent a text to apologise the very next day, and so much had happened since, that Ellen had quite literally forgotten about it. ‘Don’t worry about that. It was my fault, too. All forgotten.’
The park they’d chosen was less than a ten-minute drive away and Grace did a sterling job of keeping the conversation on safe topics until they’d reached the park and found a bench beneath a large tree, secluded from the view of the main path.
As before, Ellen let Robert break the news, but this time she stayed right next to Abbie, with Grace behind her. Robert was on the other side and took hold of Abbie’s hands as he explained as simply as he could what was about to happen and why.
When she gasped, Ellen reached an arm around her trembling shoulders. Her voice was no more than a whisper. ‘Are you going to die, Dad? Please don’t die.’
‘Hey, hey. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to come through this.’
As she started to cry, Ellen pulled her close. How frail her body seemed as it was wracked with sobs. Grace reached out, too, and then Robert wrapped his strong arms around them all.
Abigail was quiet all the way home. When they got indoors, and she was hanging her coat up on the peg, Ellen noticed again how pale she looked. ‘Are you okay, sweetheart?’
She avoided Ellen’s eye. ‘I’m fine. I’m just worried about Dad.’
That was, of course, understandable and to be expected. But Ellen’s maternal instinct told her there was something more. ‘I know, love. But are you sure there’s not something else on your mind, too?’
Flushing pink, Abbie scowled, and tears burst from her eyes. ‘Can’t I just be worried about Dad? This is terrifying.’
As she ran up the stairs, Ellen started to follow her, but Grace caught her arm. ‘Leave her for now. I’m going to call Max and then I’ll go in and chat to her.’
Ellen watched her follow her sister up the stairs. Like they’d entered a time tunnel, it felt such a short time since this was normal, that they were both home here, in their bedrooms next door to one another. Sometimes the nostalgia for when they were young was almost a physical pain in her chest.
Tea. That’s what she needed. In the kitchen, as she waited for the kettle to boil, she ran her eyes down the whiteboard list of things she had to do. C all Katie. Book car valet. Buy nail polish remover. Inconsequential things that filled her life with a million tasks that didn’t matter.
By the time she got back to the sitting room, Robert was shifting through piles of papers and flicking through a ring binder. Pushing a few pages to the side, she slid his mug onto the table. ‘What are you doing?’
On a lined pad, he wrote something down. ‘I’m just making a list of all the bills that aren’t covered by direct debits. And the dates for the car MOT.’
She thought he’d stopped with this. ‘Please will you stop doing that?’
‘I need to.’
His voice was so sharp, it made her freeze for a moment. When he spoke again, it was softer. ‘I need to, Ellen. I have to have something else to think about.’
She sank down on the couch beside him. ‘It’s going to be okay tomorrow.’
When he looked up at her, for the first time she saw raw fear in his eyes. ‘It feels real, you know. Now that we’ve told the girls, it feels real.’
She’d felt the same thing coming home in the car this afternoon.
Glancing in her rear-view mirror, she’d seen Grace distracting Abigail by telling her a funny story from a night out.
Abbie tried to go along with it, but she’d looked as if she might collapse at any moment. ‘I know, love. I’m scared, too.’
He covered his face with his hands, pulling his palms down as if he could wipe the fear from his face. ‘I’m not ready, you know. I’ve still got so much life to live. We’ve got so much life to live. Together.’
In the last few days, every time Ellen had thought that she might lose him, she’d pushed it from her mind.
Now, with only hours to go before she needed to drive him to the hospital tomorrow morning, there was no getting away from it.
There was a possibility that he would go into that operating theatre and not come out.
She had to try and stay positive. ‘The odds are still really good, Robert. And you’ve got no choice. We’ve got no choice.’
He nodded. ‘I know that, but it doesn’t make it any easier.’
Was there any point trying to be a cheerleader? ‘I do understand, though. I feel like we’ve wasted so much time.’
That made him smile. ‘I’m not sure our parents would agree with you. I don’t think we could’ve got pregnant and married much earlier than we did.’
It was like he’d pressed a bruise. ‘Do you regret it? Starting a family so young? Getting married when we did?’
He shook his head. ‘Not for a minute.’
It was stupid of her to ask. What was he going to say?
Of course he’d tell her what she wanted to hear.
‘There are other things that I wish we’d done differently.
I wish we’d got round to the things we said we’d do.
Those holidays we’d said we’d take when the girls were grown, the meals out we promised ourselves. We did none of it.’
‘I know. I guess it always felt like there were other things that needed doing. Work or maintenance on the house.’
‘Dinners with colleagues you didn’t even like. Parties we didn’t want to go to. All the stuff I thought I should do meant that we didn’t do the things we wanted to do.’
He nodded, then something seemed to occur to him. ‘Did you really think I might be having an affair with Lucy? Or Charlotte? Seriously?’
She was embarrassed to think of it now. ‘I don’t know. I know it sounds crazy, but I was so confused about what was going on. And you’ve really been pulling away from me the last few months.’
‘I know, I think I was just up in my own head about it. Trying to work it out, trying to find a solution, a way to minimise the damage on your life and the girls’ lives.’
‘We’re a team, we should’ve worked it out together.’
He reached for her hands. ‘I’m sorry. About all of this. The keeping it secret and the fact you’ve got to go through all this worry. And the girls…’
His face creased and she tightened her grip on his hands. ‘None of this is your fault.’
For a few moments, they sat there in silence. Then his voice was so quiet that she could barely hear it. ‘I know that you don’t want to talk about it, but if the worst happens tomorrow and I don’t make it?—’
‘No!’ She’d said that word more in the last two days that in the previous year, but she couldn’t even begin to think about that happening. ‘Please don’t say it, Robert. I can’t bear it.’
He took a deep breath. ‘Well, I won’t say that. But I will say that I want you to have a friend. And Lucy and you were such good friends. She’d be there for you. I know it.’
Would she? ‘Maybe. I’ll consider it. But for now, I just want to focus on you.’
He smiled at her. ‘I think I want to focus on a chicken Madras.’
That she could do. ‘I’ll get the menu. I need to plug my phone in before the battery dies, too.’
The menus were pinned up inside a cupboard in the kitchen. She unpinned the one for their local Indian restaurant and then rifled through the drawer for a phone charger. Just as she plugged it in, it rang in her hand. It was a UK mobile number that she didn’t recognise. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi Ellen, it’s Lucy. I’m back in the UK, how’s things?’
She didn’t really want to go into everything, but Lucy had been kind. ‘Okay. We’ve told the girls.’
‘That must’ve been hard. I messaged Robert earlier and he mentioned that the operation was tomorrow.’
For all of Robert telling her that Lucy was her friend, it seemed very much as if it was Robert she was more interested in speaking to. ‘Yes. Our girls are both here tonight. We were about to order some dinner.’
‘Good. I was wondering if you’d like some company tomorrow? I know that you’ll be looking after everyone else and I thought I could come and look after you?’
That surprised her. ‘That’s very kind. But I have the girls here. I’ll be fine.’
Lucy didn’t give up. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Ellen. Robert asked me to keep an eye on you and check you were okay. I won’t be in your way, but I can come and make dinner or something. Just help out.’
And, just like she had done all those years ago, Ellen gave in to Lucy, did things her way. Muscle memory making her revert to being the follower. ‘Okay. Thanks. I’ll text you my address.’
As soon as she ended the call, she sent the address through before she forgot. Maybe it would be a good thing to have Lucy here tomorrow. Someone else in the house might force her and the girls not to wallow in fear and worry.
Still, it wasn’t lost on Ellen how ironic it was that Lucy would be here on a day that might change their whole lives. Because hadn’t she been there when Ellen’s life had been upended the first time?