‘I said that you’d go and watch the twins.’
‘What did Gemma say?’
‘She was relieved, I think.’
Cat let out her own sigh of relief. If Gemma was happy for her to go, then, really, things must be starting to look better for Nigel.
‘I thought he was going to die,’ she admitted.
‘I know you did.’
For the past couple of days, since the moment she’d heard Nigel swearing and cursing, she had honestly thought he would die, or that the Nigel she’d known was gone.
Now there was hope that he was on his way back.
‘Have your tea, then I’ll drive you. There’s no need to rush.’
‘Are you working?’
‘Just till five. Hamish worked last night and again tonight. I’m back in at nine tomorrow, but I can take half an hour to drop you at Gemma’s.’
Cat nodded. She was way too tired to drive.
He sat on the edge of the bed and she looked at him—unshaven and exhausted—and she could see the strain in his features, and whether or not she was allowed to ask, she did.
‘Is this hard on you too?’ They both knew she was referring to his late wife.
‘Yep.’ He took a drink of her tea and then handed it back to her.
‘Heather ended up in ICU and she hated me for it. She never said it, of course, but it was something she dreaded and not how she wanted it to be...’ He didn’t tell her any more and Cat sat there, not feeling slighted in the least. The sharing part was so incredibly hard at times. They’d been sort of thrust on each other by the baby.
That hurt Cat.
It was a niggle in her heart, a wound that gnawed.
That day when she’d thought he was cheating, instead of correcting her he had simply let her go—that was how much she had meant to him then, which made it hard to confide in him now.
‘I’m going to see Nigel,’ she said, ‘and get Gemma’s keys and things.’ She looked around the room—in two days she’d accumulated quite a lot of stuff. Toiletries, clothes, towels...
‘I’ll pack it up,’ he offered.
‘Thanks.’
She buzzed and was let into ICU, where Gemma sat with Nigel’s mum, but she stood up and gave Cat a hug.
‘How is he?’ Cat asked.
‘Well, he didn’t exactly open his eyes but he did sort of screw them up when I spoke to him,’ Gemma said. ‘He knows we’re all here.’
Cat went over and gave Nigel a kiss. ‘Hurry up and wake up,’ she whispered into his ear, ‘or she’ll start talking dirty to you again.’
‘He moved his eyes,’ Gemma said. ‘What did you just say?’
Cat laughed but she gave Nigel’s hand a big squeeze. ‘You keep getting better, okay?’ She turned to her friend. ‘Right, I’ll go and watch the twins...’
‘I feel awful, asking,’ Gemma said, because she could see how exhausted Cat was.
‘Please, don’t,’ Cat said.
‘My sister will be here tomorrow, I hope.’
‘It’s fine. Just stay with Nigel and don’t worry about anything else.’ She smiled at Nigel’s mum and headed out to where Dominic was waiting for her.
‘How old are the twins?’ Dominic asked as they walked to his car.
‘Two,’ Cat said.
‘Good luck!’ He smiled.
It felt strange, getting into a car with him again.
It was a different car from the one in Spain but there were coffee cups and papers and she looked around for a moment, remembering him taking her to Collserola and that morning.
She hadn’t known him then.
She didn’t really know him much better now.
Maybe Dominic was thinking the same thing, because he turned on the engine and reversed out of his parking space and, just when she was least expecting him to, he told her about the very moment his world had fallen apart, the split second that he’d known everything was about to change.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘HEATHER WAS A VET,’ Dominic said, and Cat turned and looked at him but didn’t respond, and he remembered that he liked that about her—she didn’t butt in or say unnecessary words.
‘We met at university. She was crazy about animals. Horses, dogs, cats, cows...but mainly horses. She was a staunch vegetarian. She’d given up trying to get me to be one. Almost. Really, I think she would have been vegan by now.’
Still, Cat said nothing.
‘We went out for years before we got engaged and it was a couple of years after that before we got married. I knew her very well, that’s the point I’m making.’
He turned briefly and Cat nodded.
‘One night she got up and, I don’t know why, I came downstairs and I found her eating a steak sandwich. It was one of my steaks that I’d cooked and was taking for lunch the next day.’ He managed a small laugh at the odd detail, yet it had been so very strange, just so completely out of character that he could remember to this day his confusion. ‘Heather got all cross when I pointed out that she was eating steak, and said she was starving and she’d just fancied it and when she saw it in the fridge she couldn’t resist it. I got that but it was bizarre, so unlike Heather. I thought maybe she had some sort of iron deficiency, or even that she was pregnant, perhaps. It was just a tiny thing that didn’t make sense but then there started to be more and more tiny things. A couple of days later we had an argument that came from nowhere. She was furious about something and to this day I can’t remember how it started. I just know that I had never seen her more angry. I knew then there was something very wrong.’
He gave a wry smile. ‘It’s very hard to say in the middle of an argument that I thought there might be something wrong with her... It would be like asking if she’d got PMT. But I knew that I wasn’t arguing with her. I could reason with Heather but she was suddenly like a stranger. Anyway, she huffed off to bed and went for a sleep and woke up and was back to being Heather.’
The satnav announced they had reached their destination and Cat looked up and realised they were outside Gemma’s, but she made no move to go in.
He’d told her more than she needed to know, but it was what he’d needed to tell her, so she understood.
‘The row scared me and it must have scared her enough that she went to a doctor, who took her seriously. She called me at work and said she was about to have a head CT and would I come down.’ He turned and looked at Cat. ‘I knew,’ Dominic said. ‘I knew even before she had the scan and so did Heather. We went from normal to dying in one week.’
‘No treatment?’
‘Chemo,’ Dominic said. ‘But it was dire and really with little prospect, so after four rounds she pulled the plug. She always said we treated animals with more dignity than humans and she was very clear about what she wanted.’
Bizarrely, Cat thought, even though she wanted to know, she also wanted to tell him to stop.
She wanted to put up her hand and say, ‘She died, I get it. I don’t need the details. I cannot bear your pain,’ but she sat there and looked at him and there wasn’t a tear on his face, just a depth in his voice, and she understood now his quip about Gordon.
He wasn’t mean at all—he was in agony and trying to hold on as he did what he had to.
Talk.
‘Well,’ Dominic said, and he reminded her a bit of Gemma, chatting away, as if she wasn’t dying inside. ‘We went on holiday, we thought we had a couple of months’ grace. She wanted to go to Stonehenge. I don’t know if it was a tumour making her wacky or just the way people go when they’re dying—you know, the universe, God and living in the moment—but Heather got obsessed with sunrises. We were staying in a little cottage and I woke up one morning and she wasn’t in bed. At first I thought she must have gone to get a drink or to th
e toilet but then I went looking for her. The front door was open. I drove around the streets and I met some guy who said he’d seen a woman being taken off in an ambulance...’ He stopped talking then because there was a tap at the window and it was Gemma’s mother, so cheery that the cavalry had arrived and she could go home.
Cat pressed open the window.
‘Not now!’ she snapped, and closed it again. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said to Dominic as Gemma’s mum did an indignant, affronted walk back inside.
‘The ambulance...’ Cat said, and Dominic nodded, very glad Cat had told the woman to go. He just had to tell this story all in one hit.
‘I called the local emergency department as I drove there but I never told them that she didn’t want any active resuscitation.’ He took a very big breath and his eyes silently begged her to say something.
‘I doubt they’d have listened to someone calling in over the phone. I wouldn’t have,’ Cat said. ‘I mean, I’d have listened and taken it in, but...’ She shook her head.
‘I didn’t even tell them, though. I still feel like I let her down there.’
‘You just weren’t ready for her to die.’
‘No, but I wish for her sake she had that morning. She got another three weeks and they were hell.’ He gave her a grim smile. ‘I could have told you all this at that lunch, nailed you to a wall like Gordon did...’
‘You couldn’t, though,’ Cat said. ‘I get why.’
Did she say it now?
Did she say, ‘Well, guess what happened to me!’
Of course she couldn’t. Anyway, Gemma’s dad was heading towards them.
‘I want to tell him to...’ Dominic said, and that made her smile.
‘So do I,’ Cat said. ‘But we won’t.’
‘No, we won’t. I’m going to go back to work,’ Dominic said. ‘You’re going to look after the twins and when you have time I’d like you to look up somewhere amazing for us to escape to the very second Nigel gets the all-clear.’
‘I shall.’
‘Go,’ he said, ‘and don’t give me that look.’
‘I shan’t,’ she said, and gave him a kiss on the cheek instead and then headed inside.
‘Sorry about that.’ Cat smiled at Gemma’s very offended mum. ‘That was a colleague from work and he’d just had some difficult news.’
Gemma’s parents were already putting on their coats.
Cat soon understood that possibly it wasn’t because she’d caused offence that they practically ran out of the house.
Two two-year-olds missing their parents and their routines.
Two two-year-olds who threw down their sandwiches because they didn’t know how to say they liked them cut in squares, not triangles.
Two two-year-olds who were like wriggling eels in the bath as Cat knelt on the floor beside them that night.
Yes, they all needed Nigel, Cat thought as she got them into pyjamas and started to shepherd them down the stairs for some milk.
She wasn’t a very good shepherd. One would go down, the other up, and she was too aching to carry them again.
‘Daddy!’ Rory squealed, when the key turned in the door.
‘Mummy!’ Marcus shouted, and the three of them stood there in slightly stunned surprise as Gemma came through the door.
‘Gemma!’
Cat’s heart just about stopped in terror as the twins thundered down the stairs and into their mum’s arms. Gemma burst into tears and dropped to her knees and cuddled them.
‘Is he...?’
‘He’s fine!’ Dominic came in, carrying an awful lot of bags, only to look up and see Cat frozen on the stairs.
‘Sorry,’ Gemma said. ‘I didn’t meant to scare you. I just lost it when I saw the boys.’
‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ she managed.
‘Nigel told me to come and get some rest.’
‘He’s talking?’
‘A bit.’ Gemma nodded. ‘Really, he’s asleep most of the time but he’s managing a few words and they’ve moved him out of Intensive Care.’ Gemma, after her little meltdown, was trying to sound all calm in front of the boys but Cat could hear the wobble in her friend’s voice. ‘It’s all looking good.’
‘Thank God.’
‘My sister should be here soon,’ Gemma said. ‘She’s in a taxi on her way from the airport, so I thought I’d have a night to settle these two a bit before I head back there again.’
Cat stayed and helped her with the boys and Dominic sat half-asleep in a chair. Finally the twins looked as if they might be ready to crash.
Gemma and Cat carried them up and put them in their little beds and stood watching them for a while.
‘I don’t know how I could do this without Nigel,’ Gemma said.
‘Well, you’re not going to have to find out.’
They went back down the stairs and Gemma told Cat to go home.
‘You’ll call me if you need me, though,’ Cat said, her hands on her back, trying to stretch her spine.
‘I shall, but once Angela gets here I should be fine. Thank you so much, Cat, and you too, Dominic.’ As they went to head out Gemma called into the night, ‘You’ll call me if you need me, won’t you, Cat?’
‘I shan’t be needing you for a while yet.’ Cat laughed but Dominic saw the slight frown on Gemma’s face.
‘Cat...’ Gemma strode towards them. ‘You and Dominic need to sort this out.’
‘Gemma!’ Cat warned.
‘No!’ Gemma was practically shouting. Wrung out, emotional, she just spilled out her thoughts right there on the street. ‘I just about lost my husband, and I’m telling you that there are moments in life that you can never get back, and if you don’t let him in—’
‘Gemma!’ Cat broke in. ‘We’ve got this, okay?’
‘Well, make sure you have,’ Gemma said, ‘because life changes in a second.’
Then she burst into tears again and Cat and Dominic saw her back to the house.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ she kept saying.
‘It’s fine.’
Cat just about drooped in relief when she saw the taxi pull up and Angela get out.
Finally they got into the car and Cat let out a tense breath. ‘God...’
‘She’s upset, she’s tired,’ Dominic said.
‘She’s interfering.’
And she knew she had to talk to him.
Just not tonight.
‘Are you coming in?’ she asked as they pulled up at her house.
‘Well, if I do, it’s for the night,’ he warned, ‘but that’s only because if I sit down I won’t get up again.’
‘And me.’
‘No wild sex,’ he said. ‘Because I don’t want you to be disappointed.’
‘You’re safe.’
They were so tired they didn’t even bother going through the motions of sitting down or making a drink. Instead, they scaled the stairs as if it were Everest.
‘Is your back sore?’
‘It’s killing me,’ Cat said. ‘The twins wanted to be carried all the time, they were so clingy...’
They got to the bedroom and she went to turn on the light but, of course, it didn’t work.
‘You had one job to do,’ she said, and they both laughed.
It would keep.
She went for a shower and came back into her dark bedroom, where Dominic was already in bed. The streetlight cast a slight orange glow and it was nice, so nice, to drop her towel and to get into her own bed, and she let out a lovely moan.
‘That feels good,’ she said.
‘You have a very comfortable bed,’ he commented.
‘I know.’ She sighed. Only, it didn’t feel very comfortable tonight. She lay on her back and
then turned and faced away from him.
‘Rub my back.’
‘I’m too tired,’ he said, but he rolled over and obliged.
It wasn’t sexual. It was intimate and blissful.
His fingers got right into the ache at the bottom of her spine and then moved up to the tight shoulders and then into her neck, and he remembered the spine that had greeted him on the day they’d met. He spoiled the thoughtful massage thing by getting a huge erection.
Cat kept feeling it, even as she tried to pretend not to notice the brush of it against the back of her thigh now and then.
Then it stopped being a massage and his mouth came onto her shoulders and she closed her eyes at the bliss.
Not too tired at all, as it turned out.
His fingers came around the front as he kissed her neck and explored breasts that were twice as large as the last time he’d felt them.
He examined the changes. The thick, ripe nipples and then down to the taut swell of her naked stomach, and he got to feel the baby move and kick into his palm. It was a treasured moment.
Then his hand moved down to the curve of fuller hips and Cat let out a moan.
She wasn’t too tired to move; she simply didn’t want to. She liked it that all she had to do was nudge her bottom back a fraction to deliver her consent and he slipped in and his own moan told her it was bliss for him as he was drawn into that wet warmth.
‘When I think of all those condoms I wasted on you,’ Dominic said. They had deep, lazy sex and she turned her head and their tongues mingled for a very long moment. Then he got back to the easy task of making her come.
Very easy, because with each measured thrust she felt him tense more, and pressing back on him, giving in to him, the pleasure meant Cat was over and about to be done with. He came very deep inside her and she gripped him back and dragged out more. All tension left them.
‘Now I’m comfortable,’ Cat said.
‘And me.’
They’d worked hard these past days for that long sleep.
But Dominic woke, as he once used to, just before sunrise.
He hadn’t done that in months.
On this morning, though, Cat’s long exhalation of breath and stirring of discomfort moved him from deeply asleep to half-awake and he lay there, feeling her stomach, which had been hard beneath his hand, soften.
The Baby of Their Dreams (Contemporary Medical Romance) Page 13
