Chapter 19
19
T he house felt too quiet as Fleur opened the front door to the cottage and sighed. She was very glad to be home. As she stepped inside, shutting the door behind her, the familiar scent of home wrapped around her—fresh laundry, the faint trace of Patrick’s aftershave maybe, the lingering hint of the slow cooker from the night before and the smell of lavender from a room scenter sitting on the dresser at the bottom of the stairs. Normally, the cottage smell felt comforting, warm, and good like home. Tonight, though, after the day Fleur had had, everything felt a bit off. Just like she did. She dropped her bag by the kitchen table, scooped her hair up in a band, and let out a long breath. What a day: all that mattered though was that Lucy was fine.
Popping the kettle under the tap, Fleur thought about what had occurred; she had sat in the hospital for what had felt like a lifetime, her mind cycling through every possibility, heart tight in her chest, waiting for someone to tell her something awful. But in the end, it had been fine and that hadn’t happened at all. A fainting spell, exhaustion, low blood sugar, dehydration. Nothing more, nothing less according to the powers that be, but still, panic had settled into Fleur’s bones, the way it always did when it came to Lucy. It didn’t matter that Lucy was a young adult living half here, half there, working, independent, grown up doing her own thing. She was still her daughter and when Fleur had seen her in the hospital bed, she had felt something inside her shatter. A sight no one ever wants to see whatever the circumstances.
Running the tap and pouring herself a glass of water while she waited for her tea to brew, Fleur took a slow sip of water and pondered the horrible day and how it had finished. In the end after a few discussions, Lucy had gone back to Ben’s after the hospital. It had made sense because it had been getting late—his place was closer, and if Lucy needed to go back to the hospital it would be easy. Meaning Fleur had driven home alone, telling herself it was fine and all was okay. That she would see Lucy the next day and they would laugh about it, make some sarcastic comment about hospitals and dramatic episodes, and move on. However, despite what any doctor had insisted or what the words on a discharge note said, Fleur still felt exceedingly unsettled as if someone had grabbed onto her cage and rattled it for a while just to see what happened.
After making her tea, she walked through to the living room, flicked on a lamp, and curled up on the sofa, pulling a blanket over her lap and just sat there for ages, listening to the hum of the house, staring at nothing in particular. She wasn’t even sure what she was feeling. Her emotions had moved on from the original dastardly, throat-grabbing panic in the hospital to a different feeling. Not relief really, because the weight of what ifs and the not knowing lingered, nope, it was something else. Something quieter, heavier, harder to explain. A weird, odd sensation of exhaustion and a come down from an emotional adrenaline-fuelled rush.
A tap on the front door made her nearly jump out of her skin. She heard Patrick’s voice from outside. ‘Sorry, I left my other bunch of keys at home because I brought the car, not the van.’
Fleur got up, unlocked the door, stepped back as Patrick walked in, already frowning slightly. ‘How was it? You okay? You look dreadful. What a nightmare. Sorry you had to go through that. How’s Luce?’
Fleur nodded automatically. ‘Yeah, she’s fine. I think we’re all just tired now.’
Patrick studied her for a second, then did what he always did and squeezed her shoulders and just like that, she felt the worry drop a fraction, the rattly cage stilled a little bit. ‘Talk to me, Champo. Tell me all of it.’
‘You know it all, really. There’s nothing much else to say. I feel so exhausted, so goodness knows how Lucy is feeling. I’m fine.’
Patrick raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t sound fine. Have to say you don’t look fine, either.’
‘It’s just seeing her like that and Ben totally overreacting. It’s made me feel very out of control. Even though she doesn’t seem to have anything wrong with her, even though I know she’s fine, I keep thinking—what if she wasn’t? What if next time it’s worse? What if they've completely overlooked something? Who really knows? You hear these stories, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, I’ve been thinking the same.’
Fleur squeezed her eyes shut for a second. ‘I still feel like I’m waiting for something to go wrong. She’s so much better now, but every time she seems okay, I get this nagging feeling in my gut. Like it’s all too good to be true. Like something’s going to come along and upend us, if that makes sense?’
Patrick nodded and flicked his eyes a few times. ‘You’ve been on high alert all day, anyone would be. It’s going to take a while for your brain to realise she’s okay. That you’re okay. Not being funny but Ben didn’t help. He catastrophized right from the word go. Funny bloke, really.’
Fleur let Patrick’s words sink in; they made sense, of course. For so long, Lucy had been her entire world. Every decision, every thought, every worry had revolved around making sure she was alright and she hated with a passion anything that rumbled that. Plus, Ben had made things a whole lot worse.
‘You don’t have to be on edge anymore from what you’ve told me.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘For starters, you finish that tea. Then, have a nice bath and go to bed. We’ll keep our phones on. Ben will be in touch if he needs to. I think we all need a good night's sleep here. Everything will look better tomorrow. You don’t worry. I’ll do everything.’
Fleur loved that. Someone else to just take over. Someone to run her a bath and make her feel okay. Fabulous. ‘Right. Sounds easy enough.’
Patrick joked and broke the very tight, horrid tension in the air. ‘I can supervise the bathing ritual, if you want.’
Fleur smiled. Patrick was right. She had to put the Lucy thing down to the fact that it was a blip. She couldn’t spend the next few months waiting for things to fall apart again. She’d done enough of that in the past already.
Patrick patted her knee. ‘I’ll go up and run the bath. Trust me on this Champo. Everything is going to be okay.’
Fleur felt the cage come to a complete standstill and loved having someone on her side. It had been a long time coming.