by Fay Keenan
‘You were in an accident, my love. You’re in hospital.’ Matthew choked on the last words, and swallowed hard.
‘I want to go home.’
‘You will soon, I promise.’
‘Where’s Flynn? Is he OK?’
Matthew considered the question for just a split second too long.
‘Daddy? Please tell me Flynn’s OK. Please!’ She tried to sit up but was thwarted by the many wires and tubes.
‘He’s fine, Merry.’
‘You’re not just saying that?’
Matthew shook his head. ‘I promise you… he’s fine.’
Meredith sank back against the pillows again. ‘It wasn’t his fault. Please, Dad, it wasn’t his fault!’
‘Ssh, sweetheart. Not now. Let me go and get the doctor.’ Matthew stroked Meredith’s forehead gently. ‘We’ll worry about that later.’
‘But Dad, please. Listen to me.’ Meredith groaned as the headache made stars shoot across her vision. ‘How long have I been here?’
‘Long enough, my darling.’ Matthew went to stand up, but Meredith grabbed his hand in a surprisingly strong grip.
‘When can I go home?’ she asked.
Matthew smiled slightly. ‘Soon, my darling, I promise.’ He kissed the back of her hand. ‘Mum’s come over to see you.’
Despite everything, Meredith looked wary and a flicker of humour crossed her face. ‘No way. Did I nearly die or something?’
Matthew couldn’t speak. He cleared his throat. ‘Something like that.’
‘Well, for god’s sake, keep her away for a bit,’ Meredith replied. ‘Or I might change my mind about recovering!’
‘Don’t you dare!’ Matthew groaned. He desperately wanted to take his daughter in his arms but, mindful of her injuries, settled for kissing her hand again.
‘Can I see Anna?’
‘Soon,’ Matthew said. ‘She’s dying to see you.’ He winced at his poor choice of words.
‘Dad,’ Meredith’s voice cracked. ‘Don’t leave me… please.’
‘I promise I won’t,’ Matthew’s own voice trembled. ‘Just let me get the doctor.’ He stood up on legs that threatened to collapse and walked for the door of the small hospital room. As he left, Meredith closed her eyes again, exhausted.
Dazed, Matthew wandered from Meredith’s room and out into the corridor. His daughter, his precious, darling child had woken up, and his head and heart were in a whirl. Immediately, he whipped out his phone and started to punch out Anna’s number. As he was pressing the last digit, a waft of the sharp, tangy scent in which Tara habitually drenched herself reached him. He shoved his phone away.
‘How is she?’ Tara asked. ‘Any change?’
Matthew swallowed hard. ‘She’s awake.’
‘Oh my god!’ Even under her tan, Tara paled. Dashing past him, unsteady in her high-heeled boots, she burst through the door of Meredith’s room. As the door closed behind her, Matthew heard one of them crying. For a split second he debated whether or not to go into the room and check Meredith was all right; but he stopped himself. Tara might have her faults, but she was still Meredith’s mother.
Reaching into his pocket for his mobile, he once again keyed in Anna’s number. She answered on the second ring. Sinking down onto one of the plastic chairs in the corridor, he told Anna the news, and then the exhaustion finally took him. As he ended the call, he looked up to find Ms Burke, Meredith’s surgeon, staring down at him.
‘I think it’s about time you and Meredith’s mother got some proper rest,’ the doctor said gently, but firmly. ‘Go home and get some sleep tonight.’
‘I can’t leave her,’ Matthew said flatly. ‘What if she wakes in the night and I’m not there? What if she’s frightened? What if—’ his mind finished the thought, even though his voice couldn’t.
Ms Burke gave a small smile. ‘She’ll be checked on every half an hour now she’s awake, and they’ll move her down to a general ward when we’re happy with her progress. She’s come through the worst of it, Mr Carter.’ She looked down at her clipboard briefly and nodded. ‘The most important thing now is that you’re in a state to support her over the next few days. Go home. Get some sleep and a hot shower. Come back in the morning.’
‘Doctor’s orders?’ Matthew said wearily.
‘Yep.’
As the doctor moved away to check on her other patients, Tara came back out to the corridor. She looked red-eyed but hugely relieved, and for the first time since she’d arrived, Matthew realised how hard it had been for her.
‘Her surgeon’s told us to go home and get some rest,’ Matthew said as Tara reached him.
‘I want to stay with her,’ Tara replied quickly. ‘One of us should.’
Matthew glanced at Meredith’s door to make sure it was closed again. ‘I think the doctor might have a point. I don’t want to leave any more than you do, but for tonight, I think we will need to.’ Fighting with himself for a moment, he eventually continued. ‘You’d better come home with me. It’s too late to go trailing round Bristol for a hotel room.’
Tara looked surprised. ‘OK. But we’ll be back first thing?’
‘Of course.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘But let’s stay with her as long as they’ll let us. I’d like to see her safely off to sleep, at least.’
38
Almost blind with exhaustion, Matthew drove himself and Tara back to Cowslip Barn. It didn’t escape either of them, as they turned into the driveway, that this was a jaundiced replaying of the first few days of their marriage.
‘I’ll make the bed up in the spare room,’ Matthew said as he turned the engine off. ‘I take it you can still remember where that is.’
‘Of course.’ Tara pushed open the Land Rover’s rickety door. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow, just as soon as I can book into somewhere nearer the hospital.’
Matthew hoped his sigh of relief wasn’t too obvious. On legs that felt too tired to carry him, he walked up and opened the front door. Good sense told him to go straight to bed, but the craving for a stiff whisky overrode that. Wandering into the living room, he went straight to the bottle on the sideboard and poured a large measure.
Following him into the room, Tara looked around. ‘Just as I remember,’ she said, picking up a bundle of Mendip Times magazines and shifting them from the armchair to the already crowded coffee table in front of the fire. ‘I see you’ve got rid of Aunt Maria’s sideboard, though.’ She gestured to where the whisky bottle sat. ‘What’s that, Ikea?’
‘She was your aunt, not mine – didn’t seem relevant to keep it after you walked out.’
‘Oh, Matt, don’t be tetchy,’ Tara chided. ‘Surely we can suspend hostilities now Meredith’s out of danger.’ She eyed the proofs of the latest marketing literature for the company that were spread out on the overcrowded coffee table. ‘You’ve done well, these past few years. Jack must be proud.’
Matthew said nothing, just took another gulp of his whisky.
Tara stood still, eyes roving over the room. ‘This brings back memories,’ she said eventually.
‘Old memories,’ Matthew said gruffly.
Slowly, deliberately, Tara approached him. She reached a lazy hand out and touched Matthew’s fingers that were clenched tightly around the whisky glass.
‘Certain things never really die,’ Tara murmured.
This time the silence between them was heavy, expectant. Matthew could feel the tension coursing through his body. In the dim light he could see the sharp contours of Tara’s cheekbones, a little too close to the surface these days. As she edged closer to him, tilting her head upwards so her lips were a whisper from his, he could feel her breath against his jaw.
‘If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, you can stop right now,’ Matthew said. ‘We’re done. Over. Were a long time ago.’
‘Is that what you really want?’ Tara was undeterred. ‘After all, it’s been so long.’
‘Believe it or not, it too
k me a long time to get over you,’ Matthew growled. ‘I can forgive you for leaving me; God knows you had good reason to at times, but to leave Meredith…’ Deliberately putting some distance between them, he walked over to the living room window.
‘Oh, spare me the emotional blackmail!’ Tara retorted. ‘You were always her favourite – my leaving just cemented that cosy little setup. And now it seems that you’re busy sorting out a replacement mommy for her with that dowdy little tea shop owner of yours.’ Turning away from him, giving him the full benefit of her long, lithe figure in profile, she walked to the sideboard poured herself a generous whisky.
‘And why shouldn’t I be happy?’ Matthew’s voice raised. ‘You destroyed me when you left! You chose the one person to sleep with who would cause maximum damage both to me and the rest of the family.’ Slamming down his glass on the windowsill, he fought to compose himself. ‘In all this time, in all these years, I only ever wanted to ask you one thing, Tara. Why? Why him?’
‘Who could blame me, when all I ever saw of you was your back as you walked out of the door?’ Tara closed the distance between them again. ‘What kind of a marriage was that? And don’t even think about trying to pull Meredith in on your self-righteous guilt trip. I’m surprised you even knew who she was by the end of our marriage.’
‘I was working!’ Matthew yelled. ‘Everything I did, all the hours I put in, were for you and Meredith, to keep this roof over our heads, to guarantee our future together. Can’t you see that?’
‘Bullshit. It was never about me and Meredith and you know it.’ Tara slammed back her whisky. ‘The only reason you worked so hard was to prove to your old man that you could do the job. Let’s face it, we both know Jonathan was your dad’s favourite, and you went out of your way to try to prove you could run the business better than he ever would.’
‘And let’s not forget how much of a favourite of yours he was, too.’
The sound of Tara’s long-nailed fingers making impact on Matthew’s cheek resonated off the cottage walls. Before she could drop her hand, Matthew had grabbed it.
‘That’s typical of you.’ Still holding her hand, he brought his face in close to hers. ‘I’m glad you left me and Meredith. If you’d ever tried to hit her like that, I’d have sent you packing anyway.’
Before Matthew had a chance to exhale, Tara pulled his face to hers. The kiss was enough to take them to the bedroom, where years of separation were stripped away in a matter of moments. Their coupling was as frenzied as it was passionate, and as Matthew came, he felt a wave of darkness and desolation. It was a union riddled with a horrifying inevitability.
‘What have we done?’ he muttered, pulling away as Tara tried to reach out for him.
‘I would have thought that was obvious.’ Rolling over, trying to regain the ascendancy, Tara ran a lazy hand over Matthew’s bare chest.
‘Fuck…’ Matthew moaned throwing an arm over his face. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’
‘Well, I’d have preferred making love, but whatever.’
‘Love?’ Matthew chuckled humourlessly. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’
‘You loved me once,’ Tara said softly, though her voice had a dangerous edge. ‘Enough to marry me and create our daughter. Does that count for nothing?’
‘It did. A long time ago. But it’s over, Tara.’ Even as he said it, he could feel the prison doors clanging shut as the guilt hit him.
‘You’ve got a funny way of showing it, if that little performance was anything to go by.’
‘Consider it a proper goodbye,’ Matthew replied, disgusted with himself.
‘Is that what you want?’
‘It’s the choice you made when you left me. And yes. It is what I want.’ Matthew threw the bed sheet aside, pulled on his jeans and with shaking hands buckled the belt. ‘I’ll be in the spare room. I want you out of here tomorrow morning.’
‘You could stay,’ she purred, trying to regain the ascendency. ‘After all, it’s hardly gentlemanly to leave a lady alone after making love.’
‘I don’t see a lady,’ Matthew said. ‘Just an expert at pushing my buttons.’ Feeling a wave of dizziness, and nearly knocked sideways by revulsion, he contemplated his ex-wife.
‘You weren’t complaining ten minutes ago,’ Tara retorted. She raised her arms above her head so Matthew could see her full, still pert breasts.
Matthew averted his eyes. ‘I should have known better.’
‘Really, Matt, it’s a little late for that,’ Tara replied. But the bleak look on Matthew’s face was enough to make Tara realise Matthew was serious. ‘We’ll talk in the morning.’
‘I don’t think so.’ The bile rose in Matthew’s throat as the full realisation of what he and Tara had done hit him square on. ‘I’ll take you back to the hospital with me in the morning, but then I suggest you make alternative arrangements for the rest of your time here.’
As he left the bedroom, he felt a chill wind slip through the open window and wrap itself around his bare flesh. If Anna had been the summer breeze in his life, Tara was the hurricane bent on total destruction.
39
That night, the relief Anna felt at hearing Meredith had awoken was only slightly tempered by the fact that, as the sound of the church clock striking eleven drifted through the air, she realised Matthew hadn’t replied to the goodnight text she’d sent him. She’d grown accustomed to a late night exchange of messages, and she felt the faintest prickle of unease as she pulled back her bed sheets and tried to surrender to sleep.
In truth, Anna was having a conflict of her own. She still couldn’t quite shake the feelings of disquiet that had dogged her since Matthew had confronted Flynn. She’d never met the boy who had been driving the car that killed her husband, but she imagined Matthew’s reaction to Flynn was not so far off the mark of what hers would have been. But the ease at which he’d thrown that at her, the starkness of his accusation, made her feel nauseous.
And then there was Tara.
Anna had tried to steel herself against the inevitable feelings of jealousy that being in the vicinity of Matthew’s ex-wife would bring, but she couldn’t help comparing Matthew’s past love to his present one. And no matter how much she tried to ignore her misgivings they always came back stronger. Knowing Matthew loved her, and feeling secure in that love were evidently two very different things.
‘He was so blunt,’ she’d said to Charlotte, over a glass of wine earlier that evening. ‘I know he was angry, and god knows he had provocation, coming face to face with Flynn so soon after the accident, but, I don’t know, I guess I expected better of him.’
Charlotte had smiled ruefully and topped up their glasses. ‘You’re the one who’s always saying you’d prefer people not to pussyfoot around the subject of James,’ she’d said. ‘Can’t you just chalk it up to massive amounts of emotional stress and move on? I mean, his daughter was lying unconscious in a hospital bed at the time, and the boy who put her there was right in front of him. Frankly, Flynn’s lucky Matthew didn’t deck him.’
‘I know it sounds like I’m being oversensitive,’ Anna took a sip of her wine, ‘but I can’t shake this feeling of… I don’t know, does dread sound a bit melodramatic?’
Charlotte raised an eyebrow. ‘There’s something else you’re not telling me.’
‘What do you mean?’ Anna studiously avoided Charlotte’s gaze.
‘Oh, come on, Anna, you can’t tell me that Tara turning up here hasn’t got you a little flustered. Christ, if it was me, I’d be sticking pins in a Chanel-dressed voodoo doll by now!’
‘Well, she’s going to be here, isn’t she?’ Anna replied, trying to sound more reasonable than she felt. ‘After all, she is Meredith’s mother.’
‘Just because Merry’s a sweetheart doesn’t mean you have to like her mother.’
‘I’ve not really had enough contact with her to form an opinion,’ Anna hedged, trying to forget Tara’s calculating gaze, her effortless elegance.
‘Oh
, please!’ Charlotte rolled her eyes. ‘You really expect me to believe you’re not at all bothered that your new boyfriend’s ex-wife and the mother of his beloved child turning up here doesn’t make you, at the very least, a little bit tetchy?’
Sometimes Anna cursed Charlotte’s ability to read her so accurately. ‘Well, maybe it is a bit weird,’ she conceded. ‘But we’re all adults, we can cope.’
‘And now that you’ve got the standard, I’m down with it all response out of the way, would you care to tell me how you’re really feeling?’
Anna sighed. ‘You’re not going to let this go, are you?’ She picked up her own wine glass. ‘OK. Perhaps I am a little bit… uneasy… about Tara being here.’
‘Well, no one can blame you for that,’ Charlotte said stoutly. ‘It’s bound to throw even the most secure woman to have the ex turning up on the doorstep.’ She paused. ‘How did Matthew react to being in the same room as her again?’
‘I’m not sure. She arrived as Meredith was being wheeled down to have some tests done. He kissed her on the cheek and then I just, sort of, left.’
‘So far, so civilised,’ Charlotte said. ‘I suppose they’ve both been staying at the hospital, have they?’
Anna nodded. ‘Neither of them wanted to leave while Meredith was still unconscious. Now she’s woken up, perhaps…’
‘Perhaps the Bitch Queen might bugger off?’
‘I was actually going to say, perhaps Matthew might be able to come home and get a bit of proper rest,’ Anna countered. ‘I’m worried he’s going to lose his mind, being cooped up in the hospital for so long.’
‘And the fact he’s been in close quarters with Tara isn’t bothering you at all?’
‘They divorced years ago; there can’t be anything left between them, surely.’
Charlotte refrained from comment.
‘What?’ Anna replied to the unfamiliar silence. ‘Come on, spit it out. What are you thinking?’
‘You’ve spent months now telling me Mr Broody has been coming over all passionate and actually communicating with you, and now he seems to have clammed up again now the old ex-wife’s back on the scene.’
