by Hilary Boyd
‘I … don’t think I like it.’
‘Well, if you don’t want to sleep in it, I shall.’
She looked up at him, then gave a whispering laugh.
‘I think perhaps you should,’ she told him.
‘Need any help?’
Flora and Rene shook their heads. It took them an hour to make the bed and settle Dorothea in it. She barely seemed to make any impression as she lay there on the vast expanse, very still, her transparent skin as pale as the white sheet, her tiny frame hardly denting the alarmingly puffy air mattress.
‘So … is it comfy?’ Rene asked.
Dorothea turned her head on the pillow. ‘I … think so.’ She smiled at her friend, then her eyes closed and she slept.
‘This will make your life a lot easier,’ Rene whispered, as they left the room. Flora agreed, but Fin was coming home today, and her thoughts were elsewhere.
*
Fin grabbed her as soon as he came through the front door and hugged her close. He looked well, his eyes bright and laughing. Kissing her hard on the mouth, he dropped his hand down her back as he fondled her bottom, dragging her hard against his body.
‘God, I’ve missed you.’ He pulled back and looked at her. ‘How are you?’
She laughed, breathless from the onslaught. ‘I’m OK.’
‘How’s the old lady?’
‘Still alive, but she’s really weak now.’
Fin pulled her over to the sofa. For a change he didn’t seem interested in whether Dorothea’s death was imminent or not.
‘Can you tell how fit I am from a week in the mountains? I feel like a different person.’ He began to kiss her again.
It reminded Flora of those times when he used to come back from an expedition, leaping on her as soon as he came through the door, insatiably hungry for sex. And now she responded as she had then, giving herself over to the intense pleasure of his touch.
Later, as she lay in a warm bath, Fin standing propped in the doorway, a big grin on his handsome face, she felt torn. Sex with Fin was so confusing. Their bodies were such a perfect fit, always matching in desire, fulfilling each other’s passion. How could she reconcile such a synergy with their very different requirements for life?
CHAPTER 18
17 January
Dorothea’s flat had taken on a strange stillness. The old lady was sleeping for much of the day now. She was only sitting out for short periods, such as the time it took to make her bed each day with clean sheets; she spoke very little, having occasional bursts of conversation which quickly faded. Flora could see that she was retreating from the world, floating on her air mattress in the big bed, required to do nothing, go nowhere, perhaps dreaming of some distant past when she had lived and loved out there in the world. She seemed at peace.
‘How long do you think she can go on like this?’ Flora asked Dr Kent on one of his morning visits.
‘Hard to say. She seems comfortable. She’s being well looked after, fed what she needs … she could go on a while yet, although I don’t think she will.’
‘What happens if she gets some sort of infection … pneumonia, bronchitis? Rene’s told us that she’s got a living will, not to resuscitate etc, and to die at home. But does that mean we don’t give her antibiotics?’
The doctor thought for a moment. ‘In Dorothea’s case, if she gets pneumonia, I would advise antibiotics. Dying because you can’t breathe is a pretty traumatic way to go. And they won’t prolong her life noticeably, just make it more comfortable for her in the short term.’
Thank God Dorothea’s got Simon Kent as her doctor, Flora thought, remembering a number of bullying, arrogant members of the medical profession she’d had dealings with in the past. She knew they could trust him to put Dorothea’s sensibility first in any treatment he prescribed.
‘I’m off dancing tonight,’ he was saying. ‘Sure you don’t fancy another spin around the floor?’ His look was teasing, and almost tender.
‘I’d like to try it when I’m dressed properly one day.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Those socks were very fetching.’
Flora laughed. ‘Right. Well, you didn’t even have any on.’
‘Both a bit sartorially challenged perhaps.’
He suddenly seemed to collect himself.
‘Better get going.’
‘Thanks for dropping in.’
‘Just more of the same for Dorothea.’
*
‘What? Why are you looking at me like that?’
Flora had been upstairs on Saturday morning collecting some leftover stew her sister wasn’t going to eat because they were going to stay with friends for the weekend. She put the heavy blue Le Creuset pot down on the work surface before turning back to Fin, who was by the front door, holding a black plastic bag of rubbish.
‘I’ve just seen Prue. She told me. She said she’d promised you she wouldn’t, but she felt I ought to know.’
He seemed to go very still.
‘Did you really think she’d keep it secret?’ Her voice was leaden. She was furious with him, not only for begging money for his Nepal trip from her sister – and without asking her first – but because it showed how determined he was to go, regardless of her or the baby.
The colour had drained from Fin’s face. ‘Christ, I knew this would happen one day. Why the fuck did she tell you now? It’s ancient history for God’s sake.’ He seemed to be almost shaking. ‘We were just … it was mad …’ The rubbish bag thudded on the floor.
‘What was mad? What are you talking about?’ She felt her stomach turn over, the look on his face really scared her.
‘You said …’ he faltered. ‘What did Prue tell you?’
‘That you’d asked her to sponsor you to go to Nepal in September.’
Fin threw himself down on the sofa.
‘Oh … yeah. It just sort of came up in conversation and …’
‘What did you think I was talking about?’
He didn’t reply, just sat there, completely still, covering his face with his hands.
‘Fin?’
Finally he looked at her, his eyes pleading. ‘Please, forget about it, Flo. It’s nothing. I got confused. The Nepal trip … I should have told you. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I didn’t think you’d mind.’
She stood watching him. ‘Ancient history? What did you mean?’
‘Fuck … fuck …’ he muttered.
‘Tell me, for Christ’s sake.’
She waited, hardly able to get her breath.
‘OK …’ He let out a low groan. ‘OK, if you must know … Prue and I had a thing … years ago, before I went off …’
‘A thing?’ Flora whispered.
‘Yeah … it was just a mad moment. It meant nothing, Flo, honestly. We were both in a weird place and …’ He stopped, his eyes dull with despair.
‘Wait … are you telling me you had sex with my sister?’ She heard the words as she spoke them, as if they were coming out of someone else’s mouth.
He nodded dumbly.
‘You … you and Prue? I don’t believe you.’
When he didn’t answer, she found herself asking, ‘Once? Twice? How many times?’
‘Umm … not … I don’t know. A few times.’ He lurched upright, came towards her, tried to take her hands, but she quickly put them behind her.
‘Where? Where did you do it?’
‘Oh, God. Why does it matter where? It was a stupid, pointless thing that meant nothing to either of us. Please … please don’t look like that.’
‘Tell me where, Fin.’
‘Here. In the bedroom at the top of the house.’
Flora tried to clear her thoughts, but her brain seemed to have become fuzzy and slow, the information she’d requested made no sense.
‘When did you have the time? You were always away.’
He sighed heavily. ‘I came up on the bike …’
The image of Fin astride his Triumph, riding up to London to h
is clandestine liaisons with her sister, was too much for Flora. She felt suddenly lightheaded and dropped down to the sofa.
‘Flo?’ He was beside her, not daring to touch her, his face white with alarm. ‘Are you OK?’
‘How long did it go on for?’
‘Please, these details are pointless. Don’t torture yourself.’
She stared at him. ‘I need to know.’
But he wouldn’t answer her. He lay back on the sofa beside her, closed his eyes.
‘How long?’
‘About a year … but not very often. Hardly at all.’ His voice had taken on the monotonous tone of a zombie. He was no longer trying to persuade her to stop. ‘That’s the main reason why I left. She got angry with me when I said we should end it and I dreaded you finding out. I just had to get away.’
‘So it was nothing to do with me wanting a baby?’
‘The baby stuff made me realise what an appalling thing I was doing. I couldn’t be starting a family with you while I was … and I meant to come back in a couple of weeks. But then I thought that by that time she’d have told you herself and I didn’t dare.’
Flora was having trouble understanding. Like a slide show in her head, she watched snapshots from the year before he left: times when they themselves made passionate love; times when they walked by the sea hand in hand, scuffing the pebbles with the toes of their boots; times when they sat opposite each other drinking coffee in the café on the corner; times when he looked into her eyes and said ‘I love you.’ And all through these innocent images wove other, unspeakable ones; his square, callused hands cupping her sister’s breast as he did her own, his mouth against Prue’s carmined lips, her legs wound round his lean body. She heard the cry her sister must have made as she climaxed, echoing in her head like a fiend in the night.
‘Why?’ she asked, her voice cracking. ‘What was it …?’
‘Flo …’
She searched his face, pinning his gaze so that he couldn’t look away. She tried to read what he was thinking, but his grey eyes were fixed and unblinking. There was nothing there, nothing alive anyway.
‘You just can’t help yourself,’ she said.
There was what felt like a very long time when neither of them spoke or moved or even appeared to breathe.
‘What will you do about Prue?’
Flora shook her head slowly.
‘For Bel’s sake …’ He stopped, knowing, perhaps, that he was on dangerous ground.
She didn’t say anything. The scale of the betrayal from the two people who were supposed to love her more than anyone else in the world – except Bel perhaps – was too huge to comprehend.
‘Can you go away please,’ she begged him, knowing that she couldn’t hold on much longer with him in the same room.
‘Go away? Don’t say that. If I go, I know you’ll never speak to me again. We have to talk this through, Flo. Look at me. It was three years ago, a lifetime. It was just a sort of madness, a stupid mistake, not anything important. And we didn’t mean to hurt you … we both vowed you’d never ever find out. All of us had too much to lose.’ He paused. ‘We still do.’
But Flora barely heard what he said.
‘Please …’
‘I don’t want to leave you like this.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll come back in a couple of hours.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Are you chucking me out?’ The disbelief in his voice made her look up.
‘You really think I can be with you now that I know what you did with my own sister?’
He sank to his knees in front of her. ‘Flora, please … please don’t say that. You’re upset. You can’t throw away everything we’ve got together for some stupid mistake three years ago. We love each other. We’re having a baby together.’
At the word ‘baby’, Flora let out a long howl. Feral and tortured, the sound was foreign to her ears. But once started, she had no control over it. It was like a solid force pressing up through her body and out of her mouth. Fin shrank from it, staring at her in horror.
The silence that followed echoed with her cry. He got up.
‘Come on. I’m putting you to bed.’ He lifted her bodily off the sofa, cradling her like a baby and carried her through to the bedroom. The touch of his arms around her was an agony – it felt like the last time she would ever be held so close by him. Because, while half of her wanted to kill him for what he had done, the other half longed to sink against him and be safe, forget everything that he’d just told her.
*
Flora woke from a drugged sleep to the stark reality of Fin’s – and Prue’s – betrayal. She looked at the clock: ten past four. She’d slept for over two hours. The flat was silent. Heaving herself out of bed, she tiptoed, shivering, into the sitting room. It was suddenly much colder, nearly dark outside. She poured a glass of water and drank it straight down, then just stood there, propped against the draining board, with literally no idea what she should do.
Normally she would have called Prue. But she couldn’t do that, couldn’t even confront her sister about her betrayal until she got back from the country. And then only if she could talk to her without Bel hearing. That was one thing she did know. She had no desire whatsoever to break up her sister’s marriage and ruin Bel’s life. Neither Philip nor her niece would ever hear it from her.
Where’s Fin? she wondered. Had he taken off, as she’d requested, maybe to Inverness? If he came back, could she face him? She lay on the sofa in front of the TV, the duvet tight around her cold body. She didn’t care what she was watching – some old cowboy movie – she just wanted to get rid of the silence and stop herself from thinking.
Later, she made herself some toast, but the food choked her. She heard Prue and the family arriving back from the country, Bel shouting to her father as he went to park the car to bring her scarf from the back seat. She hoped none of them would drop in.
Round about ten o’clock, the door opened. Fin was standing in front of her, his face pink with cold, his hair shining wet from the icy drizzle that had been coming down all day.
‘Hi.’
She sat up, pleased, despite herself, to see him. Her solitude had begun to frighten her, to remind her of the days after Fin had left her before, when she had done just as she had today: lie almost immobile under the duvet, speaking to no one, for hours at a time.
Fin hovered, not even taking his pea coat off, obviously unsure of his welcome.
‘Can I stay tonight?’ he asked quietly.
She nodded, and saw the immediate relief on his face. Then, for the first time, she began to cry. Her sobs tore into the silence. Fin was beside her in a second, wrapping her in his arms, holding her head tight against his chest, rocking her to and fro as he too cried.
The ‘sorry, sorry, sorry’ that dropped into her hair meant nothing to her. Of course he was sorry – sorry for everything all the time. But he could say it till doomsday and it would never alter the fact that he loved himself and his mountains more than he loved her. Nor would it change the fact that she wanted more from a partner than he would ever be able to give. His affair with Prue might be the final nail in the coffin of their relationship, but she had to accept that it was only the last in a long line.
‘Have you eaten?’ he asked, looking down at her as he continued to hold her. She shook her head.
‘You must.’ He didn’t mention the baby, but she knew that was what he meant. ‘I’ll make you some scrambled eggs if you like.’
CHAPTER 19
21 January
The conditions on Monday morning were treacherous. The rain from the weekend had turned to light snow and frozen overnight into patches of ice, making the roads and pavements like a skating rink. Flora crept along the street to the bus stop, terrified she would fall.
Fin was leaving today.
‘Good weekend?’ Mary put the kettle on as soon as Flora arrived. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d make it through. Cold as a witch’s tit it was last night.’
‘How’s the new nurse?’
‘Lakme? Yeah, nice girl. Indian, young. She didn’t say much, seemed a bit shy. But Dorothea was perfectly happy when I came on. Not like she was before.’
‘So she’s safe with her? That’s all we need to know.’
‘I reckon so. And there’s none of that sugary bollocks we got from the evil Pia.’
Dorothea was having a good day. She’d sat out for a while in the morning and didn’t seem keen to go back to bed when Flora suggested it.
‘Will you … choose something,’ she suddenly asked Flora from her armchair.
‘Choose … what for?’
The old lady waved her hand around the room. ‘I’d like you to have something … of mine.’
‘That’s very kind, but I don’t think I should.’
‘Why ever not? I may get muddled a lot nowadays, but these are my things … aren’t they?’ She raised her eyebrow, her tiny, birdlike frame suddenly animated.
Flora laughed. ‘Of course. I just don’t want people thinking I’ve been taking advantage of you.’
‘If that were true, you wouldn’t … perhaps be the only person to do so.’
Does she mean Dominic? Flora wondered.
‘But you’ve been so kind to me,’ Dorothea added.
‘Well, I would love something to remember you by … not that I’ll ever forget you.’
Dorothea gave a self-conscious shake of her head. ‘I think … I should like to go back to bed now.’
*
When the old lady was asleep, Flora went into the nurses’ bedroom and curled up on top of the polyester duvet. She felt almost calm, as if the events of the previous day had happened to someone else. Fin will be packing his things now, she thought. He was going back to Inverness that night. Going, he said, until they’d both had time to think. And she held onto this. Not the end, she kept telling herself over and over. Not … not the end.
When she thought of her sister, she felt a helpless despair. Prue was her mainstay, her family, her rescuer, her friend. The cowardly part of her wondered why she should even tell her that she knew? What good would it do? Her sister would just repeat what Fin had said: it meant nothing, we were in a weird place, we never wanted to hurt you. All probably true, and all complete self-serving rubbish.
