Chapter 39
Ivy
The past few days have been a blur of working in the caff, spending time with Flora, keeping the twins fed and on top of homework, and visiting Dawn as much as possible.
I know it’s not rational, but I have the sense that the less time I spend with her, the less safe she is.
She needs round-the-clock care, and if the care home can’t provide it, then I should be there to plug the gaps as much as is humanly possible—especially because she’s still in pain, and her cast is distressing her, and she’s not a happy bunny at all.
If I’m honest, I crave those brief stints with Flora.
Not just because her home is a heavenly escape from the great, steaming turd that is my life, or because cooking together or going food shopping is genuinely fun, or because she spills the tea on her love life—she and Harry kissed at his party, and they’re going for drinks this week—but because I feel closer to Xav when I’m in his home.
The only upside to things being this crazily, unrelentingly busy is that I have limited time to fixate on him.
It’s only when I crawl into bed, body exhausted and heart bruised, that I allow myself to remember how blissful it felt to have him wrapped around me the other night.
How safe I felt. How soundly I slept when I finally passed out.
He’s been so solicitous, checking in every day by text or phone call to see how I am, how Dawn is.
He’s the perfect gentleman, yet I can’t help but regret that our kind-of relationship had to end this way.
We have so little time left together, and I for one would rather have spent it in a bubble of escapism.
Instead, he knows all my grubby secrets, and it feels as if the chasm between our lives, the one our insane chemistry allowed us to ignore, is more gaping than ever.
I’m doing a morning shift in the caff when the bell sounds over the door.
Bill and Jan have been amazing, as always, letting me leave early most days to go visit Dawn.
They’ve also been feeding me up, and they make the girls come in for scrambled eggs before school, too.
Jan tells them they can’t conduct a day of learning on Rice Krispies alone.
I look up from the counter, where I’m bagging up an Uber Eats order. The caff’s been on Deliveroo for a while, but I’ve got them onto Uber Eats now too, and the order uplift has been decent. I’m glad I’ve been able to do this one small thing to repay them for all their kindness to me.
Xavier is striding towards me, looking like every woman’s fantasy in his lovely, smart coat, his aristocratic nose tinged pink with the cold.
There are a few punters in the caff, but he ignores them all.
He’s so purposeful that I wouldn’t put it past him to vault over the counter to reach me, so I scurry out from behind it.
He hauls me against him and wraps his arms around me, burying his face in my neck.
Wow. It’s not like I think Dave the street sweeper will out us in a casual chat with Selena Wentworth anytime soon, but still. Xav’s not my boyfriend, and we’d both do well to remember it in public. That’s what I tell myself, anyway, as I squeeze him back and snort him like a line of coke.
He releases me and plants a sweet kiss on my lips. Every time I get to see him, it feels like a miracle, and I can’t bear to think about how bad the withdrawal will be after he’s got married.
‘Did you drive down this morning?’ I ask him, brushing some hairs out of his eyes as if he were mine and not engaged to someone else.
‘I did. Big day today.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘I want to fill you in. Can you grab a few minutes with me?’
I glance back towards the kitchen, which is pretty quiet. ‘I’m sure that’s fine. I’ll just check with Jan. Fish-finger sandwich?’
‘Obviously.’
Once I’ve served him his brunch, I take a seat across from him at our usual table, wrapping my hands around my mug of tea.
‘So, how come it’s a big day?’
He blows out a breath. ‘I may have overstepped and taken matters into my own hands.’
‘Okay…’
He holds out a hand, palm up, and I take it. ‘I suspect this won’t go down well, but please believe me when I say I only want what’s best for you and your family.’
‘I’m getting nervous now,’ I say. I really am. He looks uncharacteristically nervous too.
‘Suffice it to say that I can’t stand by and let your stepmother spend however long she has left in the place she’s in. It’s not an option for me, feeling about you the way I do.’
He pauses to let that bombshell land, and boy does it land.
It detonates, flooding my body with warmth.
How his words can mean so much when we have no chance of a future together, I don’t know, but they do.
His eyes, so softly green and darkly feathered with lashes, beseech me to stay with him.
I can’t speak, so I give him a little nod.
‘I realise your hands are tied within the scope of the NHS, but mine aren’t. I started making calls the morning after you took me to see her, and, well, I’ve found a solution.’
‘What kind of solution?’ I whisper, not sure what to think, or feel, or hope for right now. I realise Xav has all sorts of power, access, that normal folks like me simply don’t have, but he’s not a magician. Neither does he owe me anything, despite his sweet words.
‘There’s a place in St John’s Wood. A private care home.
It specialises in advanced dementia care, but it’s the opposite of institutionalised.
It’s part of the Good Vibes franchise. They started out with a couple of hospices, but they branched out a couple of years ago.
’ He must see that I’m struggling to compute, for he squeezes my hand.
‘They have a space for Dawn. It’s not home, but it’s a beautiful building.
Very uplifting, excellent one-on-one care…
They offer everything from sensory experiences to visiting musicians.
They’re famous for their afternoon teas.
She’d never be alone, and she’d be in inspiring, homely surroundings. They can take her immediately.’
My eyes fill at this impossible picture he’s painting; my chin wobbles. ‘But it’s private,’ I manage.
‘Yes. To be clear, I would cover it, until… well, for as long as is needed.’
I full-on collapse into a fit of silent weeping then, my head dropping forward at the weight of it all: his outrageous generosity, and this fairytale offer, and the pain I feel every day at the knowledge that sweet, gentle Dawn is in that wipe-clean prison.
I can’t bear it. I can’t.
‘Sweetheart.’ He squeezes my hand, releasing it, and gets to his feet so he can drag his chair around to meet mine. Sitting back down next to me, he pulls me into his arms. Now it’s he who’s sweeping my hair off my face. He gazes into my eyes. ‘Are those good tears or bad tears?’
‘I don’t know,’ I mumble, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. ‘But I can’t accept. It’s way, way too much.’ A place like that must cost thousands of pounds a month.
‘I suspected you’d say that, but listen to me. I’m about to tell you some home truths, and I apologise for my lack of tact, but the truth of it is that we both know that Dawn doesn’t have more than a year or two left.’
It’s true. She doesn’t. And that’s the best-case scenario for a disease like LBD, especially given her advanced state.
‘And I think we also know that if she stays in that place, she’ll deteriorate further, either through more accidents or a simple lack of will to live. Again, I apologise for the harsh delivery.’
‘I know,’ I say.
‘Look. The De Vere Estate gives away an enormous amount to all sorts of causes, and I’m not nearly involved enough.
But the idea behind all that ring-fenced money is to be able to step in and assist families precisely like yours.
What would it mean to your sisters not to dread going to see their mum because they know she’s receiving the best possible care?
What kind of weight would it remove for you?
You told me that it tortures you, knowing that she’s in there.
Please don’t deprive her of her chance to live out her days in the most restorative surroundings we can provide for her. ’
I sigh. He’s right, of course. This isn’t about me, or my pride, or my awkwardness at accepting Xav’s family’s charity.
It’s about Dawn and her daily experience.
It’s about accepting this unimaginable gift on her behalf: the gift of simple pleasures, of company, of someone to read to her, of delightful surroundings and beautiful music and nourishing food.
The gift of regaining, impossibly, some quality of life while she still has the opportunity.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I admit with another sob. ‘It’s so much. It’s like a dream come true. I don’t know what to say,’ I repeat dumbly.
‘Say you’ll consider it? And come with me now and see it for yourself. It’s okay. I gave Jan a heads-up earlier.’
I gasp and lift my head. ‘Did you and Jan swap numbers?’
‘You bet.’ He winks. ‘She’s a lovely woman. And we have something very important in common. Very important.’
Judging by the way he’s looking at me, with such a wealth of emotion in his green eyes, there’s no doubt as to what—who—he means.
The Good Vibes Care Home is everything Xav promised and a million times more.
It’s situated in leafy gardens, in one corner of which there is an actual aromatherapy garden, on a quiet street in ultra-posh St John’s Wood.
The bedrooms feel like actual bedrooms and not prison cells, with big (locked) sash windows and pretty wallpaper and wooden floorboards.
There’s a hydrotherapy pool in the basement that has me wanting to go straight out and buy Dawn a swimming costume, and the public spaces are heavy on natural light and comfy sofas and groaning bookshelves.
Not a wipe-clean armchair in sight. And I swear the air smells as if someone’s baking banana bread.
I can’t believe places like this exist, that people like this exist. People who have put so much thought and effort into maintaining quality of life for those who’ve had so much of their reality robbed from them.
The few patients I’ve spotted seem serene, contented, hanging out with nurses who, at first glance, seem to be giving them their full attention.
One older lady is even getting her gnarly hands massaged. She seems miles away, but calm.
I imagine Dawn and me tucked into a pair of squishy armchairs by the window, reading together or listening to the string quartet that is allegedly a weekly fixture.
She could find contentment here, or some level of peace, at least. As could the girls and I.
Knowing that she’s being well cared for would alleviate that relentless, churning guilt I feel daily.
‘What do you think?’ Xav asks, pulling me down onto a sofa in one corner of the room.
I smile goofily at him. ‘I mean, it’s so perfect I can’t even. It’s like heaven.’
He nods, pleased. ‘You think she’d like it here?’
‘She would love it here.’ I press my lips together, not trusting myself to say more. My sinuses are burning. This place really does do what it says on the tin: I’m getting seriously good vibes. And it’s so up Dawn’s street it’s not funny.
‘Good. Let’s make a plan to get her out of the other place asap, then. These guys will send a community ambulance for her, and you can go with her, obviously.’
I love his optimism. ‘I can’t imagine we’ll be able to get her discharged from the other place anytime soon. You know what the NHS is like.’
‘The NHS can go fuck itself,’ he says briskly. ‘She hasn’t been sectioned, ergo they can’t refuse to let her go.’
Not for the first time, I wonder what it must be like to be Xavier, with so much money and influence that you aren’t even the slightest bit dependent on services like the NHS. It blows my mind.
‘I don’t know. I don’t want to cause trouble. We might need their help down the line.’
‘You won’t. I told you. I’m taking care of it now.’ He puts an arm around me, and I let my head drop onto his shoulder.
It’s addictive, the feeling of having Xavier take care of you.
It’s downright dangerous.
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ I say, twisting my hands. ‘This is… such an enormous thing to do for us. I’ll never be able to repay you.’
‘Sweetheart,’ he groans. ‘It’s not about that.
It’s about—can’t you see? I feel so bloody helpless here.
In four weeks, I have to walk away, forever, and I need to believe that we came into each other’s lives for a reason and that this isn’t just the universe fucking both of us over.
And what if this is the reason? It’s the one thing I can give you that will make your life better, and, honestly, I need that.
It will make it a tiny bit more bearable for me if I can know that I’ve done something to help your family—to take the pressure off you a little bit.
’ He shifts and brushes his mouth across my hair.
‘It’s the only thing, actually, that makes any of this bearable. So really, you’re doing me a favour.’
There aren’t words in a situation like this, where our emotions are so big, so scary, and our options are so limited.
It’s easy to believe Xav’s being his usual humble, self-deprecating self, but I suspect he’s telling the truth.
Even if this incredible gesture will change the lives of my entire family, I can also understand that for Xav, duty is everything.
I suspect it’s tearing him apart to know that executing his duty to his family will destroy me.
He may not be in a position to throw me over his horse and carry me off into the sunset, but there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s my knight in shining armour.