Chapter 26
26
SUNDAY, 6 JULY, 2025 – HONG KONG
Moira
‘Okay, watch the steps,’ Carina said, as they got outside the hospital and into the blinding sunlight.
‘Is that a joke?’ Moira asked, one eyebrow raised, thinking it was a bit too soon to be mocking the afflicted. Carina took a second to get her point, then dissolved into a fit of giggles. ‘No! Sorry – I genuinely mean it, look!’
Moira’s gaze went a few metres ahead, to where her friend was pointing, and yes, there were indeed two steps down from the hospital entrance to the ground.
Carina’s laughter suddenly became infectious, and Moira began laughing so hard she had to reach for the handrail beside her – a motion that was a day late and a mighty headache short, apparently.
‘Oh God, that hurts. Don’t make me laugh. Don’t make me laugh.’
The descent into hysteria took hold, but somewhere along the line between comedic relief and anxiety over what could have been, the laughter morphed into big fat droplets of tears.
And those hurt too.
Moira took a deep breath, then exhaled, then paused for a moment to gather herself and formulate a way to express what she was feeling. ‘I was so scared, Carina,’ she whispered when she finally found the words. ‘I got such a fright when I woke up in there yesterday. And I’m so grateful to be in one piece, but now I’m going from happy to sad to relieved to scared to weepy all in the same five minutes. This is like the bloody menopause all over again.’
Moira was grateful when Carina hugged her gingerly, careful to avoid the bruises. ‘I know, darling. You gave us a fright too. But the doctors have said you’re fine, so let’s just get back to the hotel, put our feet up and be glad it all turned out fine. And you might want to avoid stairs for a while – you clearly can’t be trusted. Right, the car is just over there…’
Moira looked up to see several vehicles parked in a pick-up zone a few metres away, with one of the drivers coming towards them. Then she looked again. And again. ‘Jesus, that bloke is the spitting image of my… my…’
Now her emotional pendulum had swung right round to joyful. ‘Ollie!’ she gasped, as her son reached her and hugged her gently.
‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it. You’re a sight for sore eyes. And a sore head. What are you doing here?’
‘Couldn’t live without you, Ma. And the studio sent me to see if you’d be interested in a bit of stunt work.’ Ollie had well and truly inherited her need to handle stress, anxiety and scary moments with humour.
‘I’m too expensive for them,’ she told him, her smile so wide it was making her cheeks hurt.
And his happiness, or maybe it was relief, was coming right back at her. ‘Come on, Ma – let’s get you into the car.’
Half an hour later, they were approaching the foyer of the hotel. He’d filled her in on the Facetime call they’d been having when she fell – she had no recollection of it at all – and then told her how he’d cancelled his flight to the UK and flown straight here instead, how Stevie had found him in the lobby, and how panicked he’d been until he’d found out she was going to be okay.
‘Me too, son. Me too. But I’m fine now, and you’re a busy man, so if you need to go…’ She let that hang there. Much as it was wonderful to have him here, she’d never been a burden to her son, or asked him to take care of her, and she wasn’t going to start now.
‘Meh, it’s no big deal. I thought I’d just wait and come back with you in a couple of days. Make sure you don’t do any more stunt work.’
The thought of him staying warmed her soul. ‘Does that mean you’ve upgraded me to all that business class nonsense on the flight home too? Because, you know, I don’t approve. Although I do like the swanky cutlery.’
As they drew into the foyer, Moira spotted Stevie waiting there, waving to them. As soon as she got out of the car, the younger woman threw her arms around her. Moira still found it hard to believe that this time last week they didn’t even know each other. Now she felt like family.
‘I’m so glad you’re okay!’
‘Me too, love. And thank you. I hear you stopped me falling any further and then took care of me until the medics got there.’
‘It was the least I could do after suggesting going there in the first place. I’m so sorry about that.’
In the car, Carina had told Moira that Stevie was racked with guilt, so she made sure to wave that comment away. ‘Don’t be daft. It was pretty spectacular right up until I decided on a bit of gymnastics. And besides, it made the cavalry come,’ she said, gesturing to Ollie. ‘So it was worth it.’
‘Thanks, Moira. I’m guessing you’re going to take it easy for the rest of the day? I was going to go to the gym, but I can leave it until later if you want to have lunch?’
‘You go ahead, love. I’m looking forward to a bath and a nap this afternoon. Why don’t we meet up later for dinner?’
Stevie kissed her on the cheek. ‘Sounds like a good plan. Right, I’ll head off…’
‘Actually, if it’s all right with you, I’ll come join you?’ Ollie suggested. Moira knew he had to work out daily to keep his body looking like a sixteenth century Scottish warrior in the show. ‘The gym is next to the pool?’
Stevie nodded. ‘It sure is. I’ll see you there.’
She went off, leaving Carina and Ollie to walk across the busy lobby with Moira.
She’d gone a few steps when she had a thought. ‘Hang on, I just need to check something at reception first.’
‘Do you mind if I go on up to my room? I just need to nip to the loo, so I’ll come knock on your door later,’ Carina said, giving her another hug and then heading in the direction of the lifts.
Ollie was happy to wait with her for a couple of minutes until a receptionist was free.
‘Can I help you, madam?’
‘Yes, I’m in the penthouse, Room 810, and I just wondered if there have been any calls for me. My name is Moira Chiles.’
The gent checked something on his screen. ‘No, madame…’
Her heart sank. Tracking Nate down had been too good to be true.
‘But we did call your room earlier, because there’s a gentleman over by the bar who asked us to let you know he was here.’
‘A gentleman by the…’ her words trailed off, as she turned around, and no, he wasn’t at the bar. He was walking towards her. He was almost here. Yes, it was him.
‘Hello, Moira.’
This time it wasn’t the bang on the head that was making her dizzy.
‘Nate.’ She was smiling, staring, speechless. If this was a movie, there would be fireworks. Nate. Here. Now.
Time froze for seconds, until she managed to snap herself out of it. ‘Oh, we’re in the way.’ She took a few steps to the side to free up the reception desk, Ollie and Nate doing the same. Then she stared at him again.
‘Sorry! My manners. Ollie, this is an old friend, Nate Wilde.’ Ollie was grinning as he watched her, and Moira knew that it was because he’d never seen her flustered or stuck for words.
‘And Nate, this is my son, Ollie?—’
‘Chiles,’ Nate finished the sentence. ‘I watch you on Clansman. It’s a great show. I never made the connection with the names. To be honest, even though you play a Scot in the show, I just assumed you were American and great at accents.’
Moira immediately thought how she used to love this about him. The easy way he chatted to anyone, whether it was a backpacker checking into the hotel or… well, or a famous TV star who just happened to be her son.
‘Don’t let my mum hear you say that,’ Ollie laughed. ‘She’s a bit territorial.’
Moira jokingly pursed her lips, but she was glad of the chance the conversation was giving her to find a way to breathe again. And to take in every detail of the man she’d once loved.
The long hair was gone. Now it was short, but still there. Grey. He used to look like a surfer from the front of Sports Illustrated . Now he was more ‘Ideas for Christmas Gifts for Dads’ from the front of the John Lewis c atalogue. But it suited him. Handsome and cool – that was his vibe, as Ollie would say. Absolutely fricking gorgeous, is what she would say. Every nerve under her skin was standing to attention, causing full body goosebumps while her stomach was doing somersaults. He was beautiful. Perfect. So strange and yet so familiar. And now his eyes were back on hers.
‘Sorry it’s taken me so long to contact you. I was in Singapore on business and only got your message when I landed this morning.’
‘That’s okay. I’m just glad you got it.’
‘I thought maybe we could talk?’ he suggested, and Moira saw Ollie’s surprise ramp up another notch. This was excruciating enough, without worrying about her son’s amused reactions.
‘Ollie, weren’t you going to the gym with Stevie?’
‘I sure was.’
‘Then why don’t you go on. Nate, why don’t we go up to my room?’
She realised that could be taken the wrong way and immediately blustered, ‘It’s a suite. With a couch and a terrace!’ Ah, she was making a tit of herself, so she leaned into it with an exasperated, ‘And a mini-bar that I’m feeling a dire need for right now.’
‘I think that sounds pretty good.’ Nate agreed, and she saw that easy smile again. More goosebumps. Lord, she was a wreck. She wanted to hug him. To hold him. To tell him it was incredible to see him again. But she had no idea how he was feeling, so – against every habit of a lifetime – she acted with polite restraint.
She led the way, with Ollie getting off at the floor below hers, saying goodbye to Nate and giving her a cheeky wave that made her summon her very best expression of disapproval. Her and Nate went the rest of the way in silence, nothing said until they were in the suite. ‘Beer?’ she asked him, heading for the mini-bar.
‘Sounds good.’
She pulled out one for herself too. Medicinal purposes. When she gave it to him their hands touched, and she felt a jolt of something that she hadn’t experienced in a long time. Longing. But still, the restraint was in charge of her actions.
There were a few moments of silence, staring at each other, until he spoke first.
‘It’s so good to see you.’
She motioned to him to join her on the sofa. ‘It’s good to see you too,’ she said, as both of them sat on the couch, facing each other, half a sofa of of space between them.
Another pause.
‘You know, I had loads of things rehearsed to say,’ he admitted. ‘Can’t think of any of them now.’
‘Shall I give you some hints? How about you hit me with “Where have you been for the last thirty-odd years?” Or, “You’re a complete cow for running out on me that night.”’
He grinned. ‘Yeah, sure. I’ll start with that.’
‘Okay. Then I’ll start with “I’m sorry”.’
‘I’ll take it. Am I allowed to ask what happened?’
She went with the truth. ‘I got offered an audition for my dream job. I knew I wouldn’t be able to go if I had to tell you to your face, so I did the cowardly thing and bolted.’
‘Did you get the part?’
‘I did. A year, touring the UK with The Rocky Horror Show. ’
She’d always wondered what this meeting would look like. Would he be furious? Resentful? Bitter? But now, there was nothing but calm acceptance as he took that in.
‘I always knew you’d make it.’
‘I don’t know that I made it, but it was maybe the best year of my career.’
‘And you never thought about coming back when the year was done?’ Ouch. Arrow to the heart.
‘I did,’ she answered honestly. ‘About a month before it ended, I wrote to you at the hotel, but no reply.’
‘I’d left by then.’
‘I figured. I should have written long before then but I didn’t trust myself. I was heartbroken to leave you, you have to know that. And it would have taken just one moment of thinking about you to make me come back. So I think that… ah, we were stupid when we were young, but resilient too. I think that’s why I compartmentalised it all, focused on making the reason I left worthwhile. I just concentrated on work and told myself I’d get back to you one day.’
‘But you didn’t…’
‘No. When you didn’t reply, I told myself you’d moved on. You’d got over me and gone off to surf at sunrise somewhere exotic.’ Would she have come back if he was still there? She didn’t know. Maybe. But he hadn’t, and then The Rocky Horror Show had led to other gigs, and then she’d just got busy, until…
She told him all about it. A couple of years of work until she’d gone on holiday to Tenerife, and had a brief holiday romance that had led to Ollie and a whole new life. She’d given up theatre, become a mum, supported them by singing in pubs and clubs, until Ollie went to college to study drama and she’d gone off to work on the cruise lines.
‘You never married?’ he asked. Second arrow to the heart.
‘No. Working and bringing up Ollie took all my time.’
She realised she’d been doing most of the talking. Her mouth always went on to overdrive when she was nervous.
‘Enough about me. Tell me about you. Married?’
‘Divorced.’
A comment she’d made at the start of the week came back to her.
‘How many times?’
‘Once.’
‘Ah, I had my money on four. Maybe five. Did you meet your wife when you were travelling? What countries did you go to?’
‘Erm, I never actually left.’ That stunned her, so she said nothing as he went on, clearly a bit uncomfortable. ‘I waited a few months to see if you’d come back, and then… I met my ex-wife. Her father owned the building that our hotel was in. We dated for a while and then married a year later. By that time I was working for her father’s real estate company and in the years before the territory was handed back over to China, a lot of property changed hands. Right place at the right time. Eventually I set up my own company, worked day and night for a lot of years to make it a success. Ended up buying the hotel building from him, and then I sold it to the company that has it now.’
‘Wait, so the free-spirited surfer who wanted to watch the sunrise in Bali…’
‘He sold out.’ He admitted, almost apologetically.
Moira’s mind was whirring. He hadn’t left. His longing to travel had been the reason he wouldn’t come back to Glasgow with her, and yet he’d given that dream up to settle down with someone else. A large chunk fell off the rock of guilt that had been on her shoulders for thirty-four years. And was she imagining it, or now that her nervousness had begun to settle, did this feel easy? Warm. Just like before… She was just thinking that when her body betrayed her with an irrepressible yawn.
‘You’re tired. I’ll go…’
Shit! He clearly thought he was boring her.
‘No, it’s not that. It’s just that I was in hospital last night. I fell… Hang on, let me go back to the start.’
She fired off a text to the others, saying she was going to skip dinner, and then she rewound to the beginning. Over the next couple of hours, they switched to tea and ordered food from room service as she told him about the fall at the steps, then they moved on to why she was here, the letter, about Carina, and then finally, she told him about Lisa.
‘Oh no,’ he groaned. She could see he was visibly upset, and she understood – Nate and Lisa had been such good friends. ‘And that’s how we met Stevie. Her daughter. She’s here in the hotel with us. She found the letter and came here to tell us about her mum. It’s the craziest thing. Lisa had never told her that she’d lived here, or that she was a singer, or about us. Nothing. And the Lisa that Stevie describes is so different to the one that we knew. It’s been incredible getting to know Stevie but it’s raised so many questions for the poor lass that we don’t have answers to. We just can’t fathom how Lisa could have lived two completely separate lives. And looking back to that last month here, in hindsight, we should have tried to figure out what was going on. She changed so much in that final few weeks. And then suddenly deciding to go back to Ireland? Why didn’t we make her tell us why? She just blew off our questions and you know what she was like… she hated talking about personal stuff. My heart aches for Stevie because we have no answers for her and it’s all just impossible to understand.’
He sat with that for a couple of moments before he spoke. ‘I think I’d like to speak to Stevie. Do you think that would be okay?’
‘I’m sure it would. She’s in room 610, if you want to give her a call.’ Moira checked her watch. ‘Although, she’s probably out for dinner right now. Maybe you could call her tomorrow.’
Before she could say anything else, another yawn crept up on her. Bloody hell, her body was letting her down. She didn’t want this to end. This moment. Just him. Her.
‘I’m going to go and let you sleep,’ he said, and she wondered if she heard a tug of reluctance. No, she was imagining it. It was just an incredibly comfy couch. It had been so long since she’d felt attracted to a man, her hormones were playing tricks on her mind.
He got up, and she followed him to the door, heart thudding. Hormones again. She was going to have to go back on the HRT.
‘It’s been so good seeing you, Moira. I’m glad you came back. Even if it was three decades later.’
‘Me too.’
He put his hand on the doorknob, then stopped, turned back to her.
‘I know this is crazy, but do you think there’s any world where you could stay longer, so we could maybe get to know each other again? Maybe a month or two?’
An involuntary groan gave the answer before she found the words. She wanted to. She truly did. Every swirling hormone in her body wanted to be here with him, to touch him, to talk to him all night long. But…
‘I can’t. The drama school I’m running now… It opens on the first of September. There’s no way I can take any more time off, probably for the next year or so.’
He gave her a rueful smile. ‘Bad timing again, I guess.’
‘Bad timing,’ she agreed, sadly. She thought he was going to leave it there, but no.
‘Do you ever regret not coming back?’ he asked.
Moira felt a lump begin to form in her throat as she nodded.
‘Sometimes. But then I think maybe it just turned out how it was supposed to. I loved you so much, Nate, but I guess, at the end of the day, there was a little piece of me that wanted a man who would change his life for me. Who would give up his dreams for me. Not the other way around.’ Even as she said that, she knew it was true. In the end, she’d surrendered her dreams to be a mum, because it was the right thing to do for her son. Because that’s what you did for someone you truly adored. Maybe her and Nate just hadn’t loved each other enough to do that. Or maybe they’d just been too young to make the right decision.
She could see that his sad smile came straight from his heart as he nodded. ‘You deserved that, Moira. I wish I’d realised that at the time.’
‘Me too.’
He reached over, kissed her softly, his thumb tracing her cheek the way it had once done every time their lips met. ‘Goodbye, Moira. You take care.’
‘You too, Nate.’
After he left, she put her forehead against the door, and stayed there until the tears stopped falling. Youth, her family and her dreams had been her excuses for walking away from him last time. Could she live with herself if she let him go again?