Forgotten

by Susan Lewis

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said weakly, as David put a drink in his hand. When he looked up and saw the sadness in David’s eyes he almost couldn’t bear it. ‘I’m so, so sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I was afraid … It …’ He took a breath to try and straighten his thoughts. ‘You’re sure?’ he asked croakily. ‘There can’t be any mistake?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ David told him, sitting down with his own drink.

  They were in his and Lisa’s London flat, but there was no sign of her, so Miles was left to wonder how she had taken the news. ‘This must be very hard for … for your wife,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I think it is,’ David agreed. His smile was briefly edged in bitterness, but there was no hint of it in his tone as he said, ‘She doesn’t talk about it much. I wish she would, but maybe she thinks telling me anything is a waste of time now, I’ll just forget, so what’s the point?’

  Miles’s eyes were incredulous. ‘I can’t believe she feels like that,’ he argued.

  David sighed. ‘No, I’m sure you’re right, and self-pity isn’t commendable, is it, so let’s try to forget I said that.’ His eyebrows rose ironically. ‘Probably easier for me than for you,’ he joked.

  Even if it had been funny, Miles knew he’d never have been able to laugh. ‘Where is she?’ he asked. ‘I thought you were both going to be here this evening?’

  ‘We were, but she’s had a tough day. Her sister left for … Hong Kong this afternoon, which is something she’s been dreading. She said she was going shopping, but I’m hoping she’ll have dropped in to see one of her friends.’

  Miles nodded. ‘So what happens next?’ he asked. ‘Are you going to carry on … ? I mean, do you have … ?’ Was it OK to ask these questions? ‘… any idea how much longer you’ll be able to?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  Though David’s expression had become impenetrable, it wasn’t difficult for Miles to imagine the sense of outrage and helplessness he must be feeling, knowing that all his dreams and ambitions were being snuffed out like candles. What must it be like to see all the doors closing before you could even reach them? To know that life would continue along the same path for everyone else, while for you there was only an irreversible downward spiral to the end?

  David’s eyes seemed to soften as they returned to Miles. ‘I hope you understand this is … Well, it’s … A man of your talents and experience …’ He clenched a hand in frustration. ‘I can think of several Ministers already who’ll be fighting over you once they find out you’re … you know.’

  Miles could hardly respond. What was there to say? As far as he was concerned no one else came even close to David’s unselfconscious style of politics and lightning understanding of a situation, though he had to admit it was a while since he’d seen this in full operation. Quite suddenly it felt as though all the light was draining from his life. He didn’t know what to do, or where to go from here.

  ‘We’ll need to work out how we’re going to handle my departure,’ David was saying, after glancing at the notebook he’d just opened. ‘I admit it’s not something I’m looking forward to. If I could I’d make myself disappear, if only to spare my loved ones. No, that’s not true, I’d like to spare myself too. And you. Do you think you’re up to dealing with it? Maybe you’d rather get out now, rather than be …’ His voice broke on a wave of emotion and he pressed his fingers to his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said raggedly.

  ‘I’ll be there for you, David, for as long as you need me,’ Miles told him, his voice thick with feeling.

  David swallowed hard and nodded. ‘I hope you realise that I’d never have got as far as I have without you,’ he said. ‘Of course you know that, but I want you to know that I know it too. You’ve been like a son to me, Miles. I’m a very fortunate man to have had you heading my team. Am I embarrassing you?’

  ‘No, yes,’ Miles answered, ‘but it works both ways, and it’s a long way from over.’

  At that David’s eyes went down. ‘Is it?’ he said quietly. ‘Who knows?’ Then in a stronger voice he said, ‘Back to my departure: obviously we should make Ted Astley, the Party chairman, our first port of call, so a decision can be made on the best date for a by-election.’

  Was he reading aloud? Or just making it sound that way? Then the word by-election registered, and though Miles knew he should be handling this better than he was, it was hard when he kept seeing so many repercussions heading their way.

  Realising David had fallen silent, he looked up to find himself being regarded with David’s habitual amused curiosity. It was so familiar and reassuring that Miles almost heaved a sigh of relief. None of it was real. It was an elaborate joke, albeit in very poor taste.

  ‘How would you feel about that?’ David prompted.

  ‘I’m sorry … I didn’t catch what you said. Something …’ He cleared his throat. ‘Something about the by-election?’

  ‘I asked if you’d be interested in standing,’ David repeated.

  Miles went very still as the world seemed to tilt and dip away from him.

  ‘You’d have my full support, of course,’ David continued, ‘and I can’t imagine there being too many objections from the Party bigwigs.’

  Aware of a distant stirring deep inside him, Miles said, ‘But this isn’t the time to be … I mean OK, maybe one day, further down the line …’

  ‘We all have to change our plans when circumstances dictate,’ David reminded him, ‘and I believe you’d make a fine MP. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a swift rise through the ranks, knowing your skill and … mm yes …’ He glanced at his notebook again. ‘We’ve got a couple of very good … I don’t … It …’ He looked down the hall towards the front door as though expecting it to open.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Miles asked, feeling a horrible coldness coming over him. Could he be experiencing one of the mini-strokes he’d mentioned? If he was, what should he do?

  David nodded distractedly. Then, appearing to register the book in his hands, he looked at it again, but whatever was written there didn’t seem to be helping any more.

  Miles couldn’t think what to say. This was the last thing he’d expected when he’d come here this evening. In fact, all he’d prepared himself for was a preliminary chat about the parliamentary agenda for the next few weeks. ‘Would you like me to call Lisa?’ he offered.

  David seemed puzzled. ‘No, her sister left today,’ he said, as though it were an answer. ‘She needs some time alone. Will you have another drink? I think I will.’

  Miles thought he would too.

  Several minutes later, with two more large Scotches in front of them, Miles was watching David fiddling about with his iPhone.

  ‘I’ve made notes here,’ David told him, turning the phone so Miles could see. ‘It’s part of my backup to be sure I’ve covered everything. I’ve started to make a habit of doing this. It’s recommended, you know, for people with dementia.’ There was the bitterness again, as fleeting as it was understandable.

  Miles said, ‘Can I ask … ? Are they giving you any treatment?’

  David nodded. ‘Yes, but there’s no cure. I expect you know that though, don’t you?’

  As David’s eyes dropped back to his notes Miles’s heart was pounding with horror. ‘Yes, I do,’ he answered quietly. ‘My grandmother has Alzheimer’s.’

  David looked up, appearing surprised and confused. ‘Have you told me that before?’ he asked.

  Miles shook his head.

  ‘Oh dear. Well, I’m very sorry to hear it. Where is she?’

  ‘In a care home not far from my parents. They go to see her a couple of times a month. She doesn’t know who they are, though.’

  ‘A care home,’ David repeated. Then, after writing something in his notebook, ‘Shall we start drawing up some plans of how we proceed from here?’

  It was over an hour later that Lisa returned to find them engrossed in their ‘extrication strategy’, as they were calling it, with David looking at least a couple of sheets
to the wind.

  ‘Hello Miles,’ she said, as he shot ridiculously to his feet. ‘How are you?’

  She looked exhausted, he was thinking, and wished there was something he could do to make her feel better. ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ he replied, ‘but very upset by the news, of course.’

  She nodded, and going to drop a kiss on David’s head, she said, ‘I think you’ve had enough for today, my darling. Time to shower and think about dinner.’

  ‘But we’re in the middle of things here,’ he protested.

  ‘It’s OK, I can come back tomorrow,’ Miles assured him.

  ‘Why don’t you stay for something to eat?’ David invited.

  Miles’s eyes went to Lisa, but she wasn’t giving him a lead, so he said, ‘I’ve already got plans, thank you.’

  ‘Are you going by taxi?’ Lisa asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, ‘I’ll walk down with you.’

  As soon as they were out on the street Miles said, ‘I’m so sorry this is happening.’

  Her smile seemed distant. ‘Did he talk to you about standing in the by-election?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘Good. So what do you think?’

  ‘Well, I’m flattered, of course, but filling David’s shoes …’

  ‘We’ll give you our support.’

  ‘Thank you, but …’ He was embarrassingly close to tears. ‘I’m finding it hard to talk about this now,’ he confessed.

  At that she seemed at a loss and only dropped her head.

  Resisting the urge to reach for her hand, he said, ‘I’m sorry. Your sister going probably couldn’t have come at a worse time. Does she know about David? Yes, of course …’

  ‘No, she doesn’t. I’ll tell her after she’s been there for a while. It would have made it too difficult for her to leave if I’d told her now.’

  He swallowed hard, searching for something else to say. ‘You seem … very alone,’ he blurted and immediately felt himself starting to colour. ‘I’m sorry, that was inappropriate. I …’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said with the ghost of a smile. ‘I’m just tired, but not alone.’ Then, after taking a breath, ‘I should probably let you go now. I just wanted to be sure he’d remembered what he needed to discuss with you, and to ask if you’d mind keeping, you know, all this to yourself for now, until we’re ready to go public.’

  ‘Of course,’ he assured her. ‘You know you can rely on me for discretion. Like you, I have his best interests at heart.’

  Seeming to appreciate his words, she put a hand to his cheek as she said, ‘I don’t know how much you’d guessed before he told you, but even so, this has been a blow for you, hasn’t it? I know how fond you are of him.’

  With his throat tightening, Miles put his hand over hers and held it. ‘We’ll do our best for him,’ he said softly.

  She managed another smile. ‘Yes, we will,’ she said. ‘He’ll be in your hands while he’s in London. It gives me confidence to know that.’

  With feeling, Miles said, ‘And I won’t let him down. I promise. Or you. If there’s ever anything you need, if you want to talk, or you think there’s something I can do, you only have to pick up the phone.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘That’s very kind.’ She turned to glance up at the windows, but there was no sign of David. ‘I should go up now,’ she said, ‘he’ll know we’re down here talking about him and he’ll want to hear everything we said when I go back.’

  Wishing he could use her hand to pull her into his arms, Miles looked up at the windows too, and said, ‘I meant what I said, if you need a friend … I know you probably have dozens, but I’d be honoured to count myself amongst them.’

  With a more genuine-seeming smile, she turned back to him, saying, ‘You’re very sweet, thank you. To tell you the truth … Well, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I think Rosalind could be more in need right now than I am.’

  Though it wasn’t the answer he’d hoped for, he had no trouble believing it. ‘I’ll give her a call,’ he promised.

  When she started to move away he kept hold of her hand. ‘There is just one thing before you go,’ he said.

  She turned back, but he could tell that wherever her thoughts were, they were no longer with him, and realising he was right on the verge of making a fool of himself, he let her go. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, and after watching her walk back through the front door he went on his way to hail a cab.

  She really didn’t need to know now that David’s enemies were once again at work trying to discredit him, or how they were, once again, using her to achieve it. The fact that they’d dug some woman out of the past to accuse Lisa of stealing her husband was scheduled, he’d been told, to make the front page of one of the Sunday tabloids this week.

  It wouldn’t happen, he decided. He was going to make sure of that, and taking out his mobile he connected to one of his sources. ‘Tell the editor,’ he said, ‘that if he pulls the story, I’ll have a much bigger exclusive for him further down the line,’ and clicking off he went on walking, feeling very uncomfortable about using David’s condition to try to protect him and his wife, but what else was he to do?

  It was just over a week later that David threw open Lisa’s study door saying, ‘Put on your coat, I want you to come with me.’

  Looking up from the email she was writing to Amy, Lisa said, ‘Where to?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ he replied mysteriously, and after throwing her one of his more roguish smiles he went off to get in the car.

  To Lisa’s relief, apart from a few absent-minded moments and a heated exchange with a telemarketer the day before, he’d been in quite good spirits recently, indicating, she’d decided, that there had been no dreaded infarcts in his brain lately, so he was, for the time being at least, seeming much more like his normal self. Even the post-diagnostic visit from the memory nurse two days ago hadn’t seemed to get him down. If anything, the way she’d arrived wreathed in smiles and as pregnant with information as she was with a baby had seemed to lighten his mood, which had come as a relief because she’d fully expected the awful reminder to send him crashing into a depression. For her part Lisa had found it difficult to get the visit out of her mind, in particular the outrageous way both she and David had behaved. It was the mention of a dementia cafe that had done it. Lisa had sensed straight away that David was about to laugh, and when he started to lose it there was nothing she could do to hold herself back.

  Amazingly, the nurse, Jackie, hadn’t been in the least bit fazed. In fact she’d dutifully chortled along with them, saying, ‘Yes, it can be lots of fun at these monthly get-togethers, you just wait and see.’

  By then both Lisa and David were close to helpless, and the way Jackie was bouncing around so joyously wasn’t helping matters at all.

  ‘It can be a great source of support and comfort to laugh and chat with others,’ she chuckled on. ‘They’ll all be experiencing the very issues that, sooner or later, you’ll have to be dealing with too. They’ll explain how they’re coping, and give you some handy hints on the best ways to distract someone who’s pacing, or wandering, or trying to express themselves without much success.

  ‘It’s important,’ she ran on, apparently still not in the least flustered by their childish hilarity, ‘to know how to create a safe haven for your husband, because there will be times when he feels disoriented and insecure and won’t be able to say why.’

  Lisa looked at David and when he gave her a wink she lost it again.

  ‘The people at the cafe will have come across all sorts of things that you probably can’t even imagine right now, or don’t want to,’ Jackie burbled on in her bizarrely jolly way, ‘and I wouldn’t blame you for that. It’s a very good idea to appreciate this time you have together, especially with David being so lucid and understanding of his own situation. But at the same time we have to be mindful of the things that need to be done. For example, have you contacted the DVLA yet?’


  ‘I have,’ Lisa assured her.

  ‘And what about a solicitor to organise the power of attorney and living will? I expect Dr Manning explained about that, did she?’

  Since David seemed to have stopped listening, Lisa said, ‘Yes, we’ve been to see someone, so it’s all in hand.’

  Jackie then went on to inform them about future visits and how regularly they’d happen, plus the importance of going to their GP whenever they felt worried or baffled by a new turn of events. She concluded with another upbeat sell of all the support groups and websites they might find useful, by which time David had ceased to find anything funny and was looking distinctly fed up with it all.

  However, he’d bounced back in next to no time, and now, apparently jazzed by his secret mission, he was driving them out of their lane and down the hill to head deeper into the constituency, instead of towards town which was what Lisa had been expecting.

  ‘I’d really like to know where we’re going,’ she told him as they motored on through the villages and out into open countryside.

  ‘I want to introduce you to some friends of mine,’ he replied. ‘Well, I’ve only met them a couple of times, but I think it will be good for you to meet them too.’

  Turning cold as the suspicion of what could be happening crept over her, she turned to look at him. ‘David, I don’t think this is a good idea,’ she said darkly.

  ‘But you don’t know where we’re going.’

  ‘I think I do. You’re taking me to Burnham Down, aren’t you?’

  He cast her a quick look, apparently impressed. ‘Yes, I am,’ he confirmed. ‘I didn’t know you’d heard of it.’