Chapter 39 Kate
KATE
A ministering angel shall my sister be.
“The dowitcher’s back.” Linda looks up from where she is weeding.
Kate smiles slightly. She has come around the side of the house to the garden, as Linda had suggested when she asked Kate over for coffee.
Linda gets to her feet, unbending slowly and stretching. “I’m getting too old for this.”
“Is Leonard back at the hide?”
“Oh, yes. He will be gone for hours.” Linda doesn’t sound too distressed by this prospect.
It isn’t long before they are sitting together on a bench, legs stretched out.
A tray of coffee and cake sits on the small table in front of them.
The garden of grasses is sheltered and warm in the mid-May sunshine.
Kate tips her head back, watching the birds overhead.
A buzzard wheels slowly in the blue sky.
“Have you heard from anyone?” she asks Linda.
“I was going to ask you the same . . . Bardy?”
“I think he’s doing okay. I think it really upset him when that young boy died.”
“The lad in the car?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve seen him?” Linda inquires.
“No, I spoke to him on the phone.”
“And how’s Lou doing?”
Kate brightens. “Better. He is in a normal ward, and they are letting him out tomorrow. No lasting damage, just an awful lot of bruising. His kids have gone home.”
Linda smiles. “So it will be back to Bardy and Lou.”
And Hana. She seemed to be there a lot when Kate had been in touch with Bardy.
Linda continues, “Leonard told me they are definitely charging the driver. He was drunk, and I think he was showing off to the lad in the car.”
“God, that is so sad. Pathetic too.”
“Have you heard from Pia and Satya?” Linda asks.
“Yes, we’ve had coffee a couple of times.
” Is she imagining it, or are they already returning to the old ways?
Maybe not Pia so much. Telling Kate about the refugee she couldn’t save seems to have softened Pia somehow.
But Satya? After talking a bit about the issues she and Jack are facing, she seems to have shut down again.
She’s not sure that talking about it has really solved anything.
Kate grins suddenly as she remembers something. “You’re not going to believe this, but Pia’s joined Brenda’s book club.”
“Really?”
“Yep, she didn’t exactly say she’d apologized to her, but she did say she wanted to get to know her better.”
“Before you know it, Pia and Noy will be wearing matching Brenda knits,” Linda suggests.
“I’d pay to see that,” Kate laughs, “still, I think Tay being upset really made an impression. It did make me think that Pia and Tay are a bit alike. Both can be reserved, but also quite tough.” For a moment, she thinks of telling Linda Pia’s story, but decides it isn’t for her to tell.
“Uzma was nice,” Linda muses.
“Her friend?”
“So chatty, and she teased Tay a lot. You wouldn’t have thought they would have got on, but I think she is so over the top, she makes Tay relax.”
“Is Tay okay, though? I was worried when she saw Lou get hit.”
Linda sighs. “Oh, I think Tay has seen an awful lot worse than that.”
“Her mom?”
Linda nods.
Sitting in the warm sunshine and eating apple cake, Kate thinks maybe she should tell Linda about JoJo Rose.
On the other hand, it feels like it couldn’t matter less, so why bother?
Instead, she says, “This really is a beautiful garden, Linda.” The more she looks, the more she sees it isn’t just grasses, but subtle, gray, blue, and white foliage, and flowers are planted in swathes, almost like waves washing the pale stone pathways.
The walls are placed to provide protection from the wind, while also allowing glimpses of the sand dunes beyond.
She doesn’t think she has ever seen a garden so suited to its environment.
Linda looks around. “It’s early days, but it’s coming on.” She laughs, “Bardy would be proud of me. It is the one thing I don’t rush, and I am quite happy to see how things naturally emerge and develop.”
“A creative gardener,” Kate suggests, smiling.
“And what about you and Bardy?”
Kate is startled. “What?! There is no me and Bardy.”
Linda tuts. “The two of you are as bad as each other. Well, how about the man from the pub? The tall one.”
“Oh, I don’t know. When Lou was still in the ICU, it didn’t seem right to go to London with him.”
“And now?”
Kate has absolutely no idea, so she shrugs. Simon had said he understood. But had he been a bit short with her? He definitely was texting less.
Linda changes tack, and Kate is grateful. “I wish Leonard had a friendship like Lou and Bardy’s.”
“Does he have many friends?”
“More than you would think,” Linda replies, chuckling.
“I like Leonard,” Kate protests.
“I know. And you girls did such a good job. He really is making an effort with his hearing aids. Keeps telling me how good they are now.” Linda raises her eyes to heaven.
“I didn’t tell you I saw Lou and Bardy at the hospital, the night it happened. I think I didn’t know what else to do. In the end, I didn’t go in, but I heard Bardy talking to Lou.” The image of Bardy holding Lou’s hand comes back to her.
Why does she want to cry?
She knows why.
Kate can’t speak for the threat of tears.
“What is it?” Linda sits up straighter on the bench.
How could she have thought JoJo Rose was what she wanted to talk about? It was always this. This guilt. Letting her sister down.
Kate makes an effort to speak. “It brought back the night Alice died. And how I wasn’t there for her at the end.
I keep coming back to that thought.” Kate looks up at the now-empty sky.
“Alice never seemed to ask anything of me. Maybe because I was so much younger. The one thing I tried to do for her was to be there for her at the end. When she got ill and . . .”
“Yes, I know you had her moved to be near you. You didn’t let Alice down, Kate.”
“How can you say that when I wasn’t there for her at the very end? I had gone out with friends for the night, and we ended up back at a friend’s house, talking.” Kate can feel the tears forming in earnest.
“But you saw her a lot, I am sure of that.”
“Yes, but I didn’t get there in time. I’d fallen asleep and they’d left me on the sofa tucked up under a blanket. So, it was a while before I realized the hospice had called.”
“Oh, Kate, some people need to die on their own. They cannot do it with their loved ones around them. For Alice, maybe your pain would have been too much for her. Maybe she wanted to spare you that. Alice might have been trying to give you a final gift.”
“But I wanted to help her. I wish I could have comforted her. For her to be alone, with no one to hold her hand. It breaks my heart.”
“Oh, my poor girl, Alice wasn’t alone. Someone did hold her hand,” and with this, Linda reaches out and enfolds Kate’s hand in her own.
Kate can feel the warmth, the dry skin, the plumpness of it, and she understands this is the comfort her sister would have known.
She leans her head against Linda’s shoulder and lets the tears fall.
With her other hand, Linda gently strokes Kate’s arm, just as she had stroked her sister’s as the last breath left her body in a slow, sad sigh.