Chapter 34
But this afternoon, I’m driving the fifty miles to have a late lunch with my son and to meet Immi for the first time.
There’ll be four of us: Theo – who has just left to help his daughter with a flatpack wardrobe – Noah, Immi and myself.
We’ve left it a couple of months following another round of DNA testing – this time to confirm Angus’s belief that Theo is not Immi’s biological father – and now I can’t wait to meet her.
I’m settled at my desk in my study with a strong black coffee, missing both Theo and Noah, but relishing having the house to myself for a few hours.
‘Ms Piasecki? My name is Cynthia Parker. I’m calling from the Summer Wood Hospital in Readenhead. I’d be really grateful if you could ring me back on this number.’
Hospital? And Readenhead, a town on the road to Oxford?
My heart pounds and I know, I just know that something has happened to Theo.
This is just too much! After forty years, I can finally call Theo Mandeville my own, only to have him in a car accident on the way to building a fucking Ikea flatpack?
I press call back with trembling fingers.
‘Cynthia Parker? It’s Anna Piasecki. Is he all right? Is he all right…?’
‘Well, no, dear, that’s why I’m ringing. He says he has to speak to you. Says he can’t… you know… can’t pass over… without telling you…’
‘Telling me? Pass over?’ I shout down the phone. ‘What’s happened? Is he hurt?’ I’m still in my dressing gown but grab my car keys. ‘Just tell me where he is.’
‘You should be able to get here in time, dear,’ Cynthia says kindly, speaking slowly as if to a child.
‘Now, we’re on the Oxford road, just out of the town centre.
You can’t miss the hospice – it’s a big red-bricked building with a great big sign that says Summer Wood Hospice in bright yellow. As I say, you can’t miss it and…’
‘Hospice?’ I know I’m shouting, need to calm down. ‘Not a hospital?’
‘Hospital? No, no, dear.’ She gives a little chuckle. ‘We’re the town’s hospice. I’m a volunteer here. I hold hands… you know…?’
‘And Theo’s there? In a hospice? Not the hospital?’
‘Theo?’ Cynthia is momentarily silenced. ‘I’m sorry, dear, who’s Theo?’
Thank you, God, thank you, God.
Cynthia explains further, I spend half an hour getting ready, grab my coat and car keys once more and leave.
I’ve not seen him for such a long time; over twenty years at least, I reckon.
In fact, I was almost full term with Noah when he turned up one day, unannounced at my office.
I was delighted to see him, suggested we go out for lunch and catch up, but he was edgy, anxious, and it was obviously a shock for him to see I was about to become a mother.
I put his nervousness and his refusal to accompany me to lunch down to his fear that I might go in to labour any minute, and he’d have to grab towels and hot water and act as midwife.
‘Frank,’ I say, walking over to the bed, sitting down on the chair beside it and reaching for his hand. ‘I’m so sorry. I’d no idea.’
‘No, well, you never did keep in touch, did you?’ He has various tubes in his hands, and I see he’s connected to all sorts of paraphernalia and is finding it difficult to get the words out.
‘You moved around the country a lot,’ I apologise. ‘I knew you’d ended up in the south somewhere. I’ve sent Christmas cards when I’ve known your address… and birthday cards…’ I trail off, knowing I’ve not been the best friend, know that Frank has always had a bit of a thing for me.
‘You still have the same mobile number,’ he manages to get out and I nod.
Frank stares at me. His sunken eyes are lifeless, his face yellow and papery like ancient parchment. ‘You need to know, Anna,’ he whispers.
I move nearer. ‘What, Frank? What is it?’ I take his hand.
‘I… I killed Fliss.’
I recoil, my pulse racing.
‘Didn’t mean to. Need you to know that…’ He starts coughing, closes his eyes.
‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘Tell me, Frank.’
‘Out for a run. Training for some marathon… can’t remember. Still dark… you know? Wanted to get 20K in before…’ He breaks off, unable to catch his breath and I pass a glass of water, but he shakes it off impatiently.
‘Saw Fliss, on tow path. Didn’t get it… What she doing there at six in morning? All dressed up?’
‘And?’
‘Very drunk or taken something… Well, think she was… Kept falling over… High heels… laughed when she saw me. Laughed at my white legs, my knobbly knees in my scruffy shorts. Said I’d never have any chance with you…’
‘With me?’
‘With you, Anna. Laughed and sneered at me… Said why would the gorgeous Anna Piasecki lower herself to even look at me?’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Frank closes his eyes, lies back on his pillows and says nothing for a good thirty seconds. Eventually he opens his eyes and continues. ‘Laughing at me… saw red… I pushed her… canal lock… she fell in…’
‘What? And you didn’t help her?’ I stare, utterly shocked.
‘I told you.’ Frank is mulish, unrepentant. ‘She was laughing at me. Even as she was falling she was still taunting me, jeering at me, laughing. Thought she’d be OK… thought she’d pull herself out, get back home and tell you all about it… have a laugh together about me…’
‘From a canal lock?’ I can hardly get the words out. ‘You can’t get out of a canal lock…’
‘If she hadn’t been so out of it, she’d have climbed out somehow.’
I release my hand from Frank’s own, unable to bear contact with this man any longer.
And even though I feel sick to the very core, want to get up and leave without another word, I also accept he’s dying.
I manage to say, ‘I’d never have laughed at you, Frank.
You know, I don’t think I knew Fliss at all… not really…’
‘You always were a poor judge of character, Anna. Look how you carried on with that Roddy McClellan and that awful NUM man, as well as that posh bloke you were always running after. You’d have been far better with me. I’ve… waited… all these years… for you.’
I simply stare.
‘I was at the inquest. With you, Anna… and your dad… they said she fell into the canal through too much drink. Her own fault… it was her own fault…’ Frank nods his belief, his eyes closing again, but then whispers, ‘my fault… but your fault too, Anna… you wouldn’t let me be your friend…
always after that Mandeville bloke… It was your fault… ’
‘I think that’s enough.’ A nurse bustles forwards, checking the equipment, taking Frank’s pulse before turning to me. ‘Oh, I know you, don’t I?’ She smiles, stares, considering. ‘I know, you’re that actress? You were in that really weird TV drama? About four girls… students… back in the eighties?’
‘Something like that,’ I say. And leave.
Immi is everything I hoped she’d be. Exceptionally blonde and pretty, she’s a little shy and reticent to begin with, obviously weighing up this woman in front of her who’s usurped her mother in her father’s life.
But as the late lunch at Quod on Oxford’s High Street progresses, she opens up, chats about her course here at the university as well as her obvious love for both her big brother, Angus, and her father.
I watch as Immi takes my son’s hand in her own and I simply sit and remember.
Remember being a similar age to Noah and Immi now – slightly shy and inexperienced in the ways of the world – in a crowded burger joint in Leeds city centre.
I fancy I can still feel the biting wind Fliss and I had left outside, feel the cold of the sleety rain and my numb hands and see the ruined mess of the amateurish posters from the protest, the red ink running like cochineal on a child’s lovingly iced cupcake.
Fliss and I assumed the whole world was ours for the taking, and what futures we conjured up, knowing she and I would be friends forever, the bond between us too strong to be ever broken.
For a brief second I sense Fliss here with me now and I smile, wondering what she’s making of it all.
‘You’re smiling,’ Theo says, bringing me back to the present. ‘Have you got over the shock of Frank’s final words?’
‘I’m so glad we finally know the truth,’ I say, taking Theo’s hand. My love for this man and our son has never been greater, and we turn as one to our children, taking in their obvious need for each other: a bittersweet reminder of Theo and myself at their age.
Immi and Noah clearly want to be alone and soon they excuse themselves, wrap up in coats and scarves and say they’re off for a walk. If that’s all right with Theo and me?
Theo and I stand, kiss our children and say of course.
Then we sit once more, raise a glass to each other and Theo reaches for my hand.
‘I think, my darling Anna,’ he says, ‘everything now is more than all right, don’t you?’