Chapter 36 #2
‘You could probably press charges, you know,’ he says quietly.
‘Maybe.’
‘Let’s see what the footage shows. I could help.’
I sigh. In Xav’s world, all wrongs get righted. In my world, unfairness is a given. A fact of life. ‘What’s it going to show, though? That she was left alone and fell over? That’s no one’s fault. That’s just bad luck.’
‘She should be under twenty-four-hour supervision if her motor skills and her cognitive skills are that compromised.’
I love that he’s advocating for Dawn after a quick LBD crash course from me in the cab. I really do. But he’s living in cloud cuckoo land.
‘This isn’t some swanky private hospital with round-the-clock care. They’re doing the best they can, but there’s no way it’s one-to-one staff to patients. They’re seriously short-staffed. Honestly, we were lucky to get a bed.’
He presses down harder on my hand. ‘That’s unbelievably shit.’
‘Yeah. It is. But there are so many people out there waiting for beds, you wouldn’t believe it.
’ So many families just like ours, coping the best they can and making unimaginable sacrifices to care for their loved ones in a fashion that’s way above their pay grade.
Kids being carers, missing school, forgoing a normal childhood.
Patients being sedated far beyond what’s safe so that their family members can leave them alone while they go out to earn a living. It’s a heartbreaking reality.
He’s silent for a moment. Then he says, ‘Will you tell me about her? She was a librarian, is that right?’
I let my gaze roam over her face, over all the cuts and bruises and burst blood vessels.
‘That’s right. When she met Dad, she was a librarian at one of the local libraries, but eventually she got her dream job—to be a school librarian.
She was amazing at it. She lobbied really hard to bring in all these books that her school didn’t approve of.
She pretty much believed you could read your way to a full education. ’
When I glance at him, he’s smiling at me, but he looks emotional. ‘Not a bad belief. Did she foist that on you, too?’
‘You bet.’ I swallow. ‘Dad died when I was in lower sixth, and the teachers tried to get me back on track, but I messed up too badly. So I dropped out. But Dawn was relentless. So my education is basically books and art.’ I shrug, and he nudges me gently with his shoulder.
‘Sounds like mine.’
I smile. He’s ridiculous—and very sweet.
‘How did your dad die, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘Aneurysm. He just keeled over on his round one day. He was a postman.’
‘Jesus. He must have been young?’
‘Fifty-two.’
He releases my hand so he can wrap an arm around and tuck me into his side as tightly as he can.
It feels nice and warm. I’m a bit cold in this coat and my skimpy dress, but I don’t want to say anything because I know Xav will insist I take his coat.
He twists a little in his chair, and I look up at him.
His eyes are so softly, wonderfully green, like the mossy carpet on the floor of the forest I’d live in if I were a fairytale princess.
‘Sweetheart. I want to say’—he blows out a breath—‘that the hand you’ve been dealt is awful.
Tragic beyond belief. No one should have to go through what you’ve been through.
No one. And the way you’ve handled it is incredible.
So admirable. I just wish you hadn’t had to deal with it all on your own.
’ I shrug again, but he shakes his head.
‘No. I’m serious. You need to hear it. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.
’ His smile grows soft. ‘Your former boss, Gen, told me you were basically the most incredible human being she knew. And now I know why.’
I can feel my chin wobbling, and I hate it.
I hate it because staying strong is so exhausting all on its own, but letting yourself collapse and then trying to rebuild all that resilience is way fucking harder.
It’s like when you keep the central heating off as much as possible and you find out that sometimes, when it’s really cold, it’s actually cheaper to keep it on low than turn it off, because it’s more expensive to heat the flat up from cold.
I mean, who the hell would work that out for themselves?
I may not be a boiler expert, but I have managed to work out for myself that letting myself collapse is a hell of a lot more expensive than holding my shit together.
‘Do you want to know how Dad and Dawn met?’ I ask Xav in a shaky voice as he leans his forehead against my temple.
I don’t want him to think I’m some tragic figure, some Tiny Tim caricature.
I can’t bear it if he assumes my life has just been an endless slog, that there hasn’t been happiness and love—so much love—along the way.
He smiles. I can feel it. ‘I’d love to.’
‘It’s a really cool story. I personally think it belongs in a romcom. So he used to be a postie, like I said. Thirty-four years of service to Royal Mail. They paid for his funeral. They were really nice about it all.’
‘I should bloody well think so,’ Xav says sternly.
I pull away a little so I can watch his face as I tell the story.
‘Anyway, Dawn was working at a library in North Kensington, and one day Dad was on parcel delivery duty, so he was in a van. He preferred to walk, said it kept him fit. He was one of those weird postmen you see who wear shorts all year round. But that day, he was in the van. And Dawn had ordered lots of new books to the library’—I screw up my nose to try to keep the tears at bay, but my sinuses are stinging like nobody’s business—‘and Dad was the one who brought them into reception on a set of wheels.
‘So, the person on reception called Dawn, and she came to get them. Dad said he didn’t want her carrying heavy boxes, so he wheeled them through to the fiction section and put them up on a table for her.
He always said that he couldn’t help but notice what great legs she had.
She started opening them while he was still there, and she kept taking out all these romance books—like those old-style bodice-rippers with the cheesy covers, you know?
He made some comment to cover his awkwardness like bloody hell, you’ll have the pensioners flocking to that lot, and they started chatting.
Then he asked her if he could take her out for a drink one evening when she got off work, and the rest was history. ’
Beside us, Dawn shifts in the bed. I look over at her, and I could swear there’s the flicker of a smile on her face.
‘That’s an amazing story,’ Xav says. ‘Seriously incredible. It could definitely be a movie.’
I smile at him. ‘I think so.’
‘Do you think she heard it?’
‘Who knows, but I like to think so.’ I hesitate.
‘This might sound weird, but I tell her stuff like this when I visit. If I’m not reading to her, that is.
I tell her our memories, and the ones I learnt from Dad.
I want her to know I still remember.’ I tell them to the twins too, but I don’t say so, obviously.
‘Not weird at all,’ he says. ‘I think it’s so important… to share these memories, you know? To celebrate them. After all, what the hell is it all for? And I can tell you now, this is one area you’re getting very right compared to the de Veres.’
He tells me about a guy he works with, whose dad died recently and who Xav feels made the end of his father’s life a beautiful time.
He tells me he’s worried that they haven’t done the same in his family, that they’re brushing all their lived experiences under the carpet in favour of matters of succession and estate planning.
Not for the first time, I understand that the money and stature of the de Vere family acts like a kind of armour, an insulator against the stuff that’s rough and gritty.
That Xav may be rich as sin, but that my fucked-up existence of injustice and pain and loss and worry is far more real than his family’s creepily sanitary life.
‘We can sit here and share Dawn’s memories with her for as long as you want,’ Xav says, ‘on one condition. When you’re ready to head home, take me with you.’
Well, that’s clearly not happening. I shudder to think of him setting foot in our shithole of a flat and coming face to face with Lily and Rose. I’ll find a way to get myself home when the time comes, and he can go back to his sister and his fiancée.
We stay another forty minutes. I tell Xav some more stories about Dawn and Dad, mainly in case Dawn can hear and understand them, and then I read her a few pages of Rebecca for good measure. She’s been remarkably peaceful since we’ve been here, but I’m sure the pain meds are helping her sleep.
The same nun is still on duty when we pass through reception. Bless her, she seems a bit old to be doing the night shift.
‘Well, goodnight, then,’ I say to her.
She looks up and frowns at me, and I think for a moment that she’s forgotten who I am. But then she says, ‘Make sure those sisters of yours pray for their mammy tonight, you hear me? Only our Heavenly Father can help her now.’