The Runaway Wife

by Rowan Coleman

  “I do, not for you, for me. I need to say I am sorry over and over again as many times as I can. Please allow that. Allow me to ease my conscience just a little.”

  “Morning!” A large and altogether too cheerful male nurse bustled into the room, trampling over the moment before Rose could say anything in reply.

  “Look who’s up and about, then?” he said brightly to John. “You’re nil by mouth till the doctor’s seen you, but I can bring you a cuppa if you like, love?” he said, looking at Rose, who nodded gratefully.

  “I will be leaving shortly,” John told the nurse, waving his hand at the door. “If you could bring me the form . . .”

  “Dad!” Rose shook her head. “No, you will not. You will not leave. You will see what you can do to stay with me for as long as possible.”

  “She’s right, you know,” the nurse said, still sounding breezy. “These last few weeks you’ll have with your loved ones are the ones that will mean the most. Don’t be in a hurry to give up whatever time you can get.”

  John sighed, leaning his head back against the pillow. “Very well.”

  “Now stay there. I’m going to phone Maddie, tell her how you are,” Rose said.

  “Don’t tell her about . . . ” John said anxiously.

  “I won’t, not yet,” Rose replied, wondering how she was going to explain any of this to her daughter. “Not until we know more. But Maddie isn’t like most children. The more she knows the less she worries. So when we know something, then I’ll talk to her. Now stay put.”

  “It’s not like I’m about to abseil out the window,” John said.

  • • •

  “How is he?” Frasier’s voice stopped Rose dead in her tracks as she walked down the hospital corridor. Slowly she turned round to set eyes on him, standing a few feet away from her, his face etched with concern. Forcing herself to stay put, and not run to him and beg him to put his arms around her, which is what she wanted most in all the world, Rose drew her shoulders back and lifted her chin just a little.

  You are not that woman anymore, Rose reminded herself in her father’s voice. You don’t need a man to look after you, not even Frasier. You can and you will stand alone.

  “They don’t really know yet,” she said, the exhaustion sounding in her voice. “I’ve only just found out about the cancer. I’m not sure—no one seems to be—what this latest collapse means . . .” She stopped talking as her voice came dangerously close to breaking.

  “Rose,” Frasier kept his distance, running his fingers through his fair hair, “I’m sorry that I knew and didn’t tell you. Your father really didn’t want you to know. He didn’t want you to feel that you had to stay, had to forgive him.”

  “I know.” Rose nodded wearily, too exhausted to be angry. “I understand that. I can’t say I wouldn’t rather have known. But I understand why you did what you did.”

  “Thank you,” Frasier said, carefully mannered, distant again. More of a stranger to her in that moment than he had been all those years ago on the first morning they had met.

  “Rose?” The nurse who had offered her tea called her name. “The doctor’s ready to talk to you and your dad now.”

  • • •

  It was a long and silent drive back to Storm Cottage, and Rose would rather have done it with Tilda, but she had had to leave at some point late in the night, to make arrangements for her shop today. So it was Frasier who volunteered to take her back home, so she’d have a night to prepare for John’s return.

  “So he’s coming home,” Frasier said, as he opened the front door of the cottage for Rose, switching on all the lights. “That’s good news.”

  “He’s coming home to die,” Rose said bleakly as she walked into the small still room, which seemed so empty without him in it. “Inoperable, that’s what they said. Untreatable now. All they can do is give him pain relief and the best quality of life possible. I’m losing him all over again.”

  She leant against the kitchen table, trying desperately to stop her shoulders from shaking, longing to be touched, comforted. But the only other person there stayed exactly where he was.

  “I know it must seem that way,” Frasier said, clearly struggling to know what to say now that their relationship had been reestablished once again, “but try to think of it as time, precious time to—”

  “Frasier,” Rose cut across him, exhausted, mustering only the will to turn and face him. “Please, don’t try to tell me to think of this time we have together as a gift. It isn’t a gift, it’s a punishment, it’s a cruel trick, but it’s not a gift. I was foolish enough to think I’d found a new start in life, a place to be happy, people to be happy with, but I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

  “No,” Frasier insisted. “Rose, I . . . got swept up in the moment, between you and me. I suppose I wanted to believe the fairy tale as much as you did. And that was wrong. I shouldn’t have done that to you, and I shouldn’t have blamed you for what happened with Ted—”

  “Nothing happened with me and Ted!” Rose exclaimed, a brief burst of anger propelling her forward a few steps.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” Frasier said, backing away. “It’s none of my business. I was stupid to let myself get carried away, to get involved with you when I knew in my heart that you weren’t ready. You’ve been through so much, you have so much yet to face.”

  “Isn’t it up to me to decide what I can cope with?” Rose asked him tightly. “This isn’t about me, Frasier, it’s about you, changing your mind in the cold light of day.”

  Frasier did not contradict her. “I think it was the painting, and seeing you again, and, oh, I don’t know. I’m just an old romantic,” he said, remorse on his face. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. But I want you to know that I am here for you and John. I will be your friend as long as you will have me.”

  Rose stared into his handsome face, desperate to slap him smartly around it. But she couldn’t. There was no time to be self-indulgent. Now she had to think of John, and Maddie, whom she’d promised to pick up from Jenny’s before bedtime.

  “Come with me,” she said, taking a bunch of keys from a drawer in the kitchen.

  Frasier followed her to the barn, where she unlocked three padlocks until they came at last to John’s room of private work.

  “Dad needs something to focus on,” she said, wavering at the last moment over what she was about to do. “Something to keep him going. His private work is in here. He doesn’t want me to see this yet, so you go in. You look at it and see if it’s good enough and if there is enough.”

  “Enough for what?” Frasier asked her.

  “Enough to mount an exhibition,” Rose said, “of the work that means the most to him and gives him his true identity as an artist. I want you to exhibit him in your gallery, show the world what a truly great painter he is, at last. I want you to give him back his self-respect.”

  “Right,” Frasier said, looking at the closed door uncertainly. “He would rip my head off if he knew what I was doing.”

  “Well,” Rose said, finding the ghost of a smile, “there’s always a bright side.”

  • • •

  It seemed like an age that Rose was waiting in the vast empty middle room, staring up at the shafts of late afternoon sun that streamed in through the skylights, as she watched the particles of dust that danced and spun in its wake. Then at last she heard Frasier emerge from the room behind her, pulling the door closed and shutting the padlock firmly.

  “No?” Rose asked him.

  Frasier was silent for a moment, and then quite without warning he scooped her up in his arms and twirled her around twice, before setting her, a little unsteadily, back on her feet.

  “Sorry,” he said, realizing too late how inappropriate he’d been. “I just had to—”

  “Um, just tell me,” Rose said, angered once again by the way he was with her.

  “Brilliant,” Frasier said simply, happily. “Brilliant, epic, personal, emotional, ground-breaking, cuttin
g edge, true, true works of genius. It will be the greatest exhibition that I have ever mounted, and I’m going to make sure that the whole world is there to see it.”

  “Good,” Rose said. “That is wonderful. Now we just have to work out a way to break it to Dad.”

  Chapter

  Seventeen

  It had been three days since John had been allowed home, and when he arrived, chauffeured by Frasier, his house was considerably different from when he’d left it. The study, which was to have been Rose’s room for the time being, had been cleaned from top to bottom, his bed had been brought down, and a commode sat discreetly in the corner, which Rose knew that John would hate, so she asked Tilda to explain it to him so that he wouldn’t have to think he was a burden to Rose. Rose had ordered a new bed, which had been delivered and installed in her father’s bedroom, and she and Tilda had spent quite some time transferring all of his belongings, the piles of books and magazines, the photos, pictures and prints that he surrounded himself with, down from the bedroom to the study. It wasn’t exactly that they had developed a friendship, or any particular warmth between the two of them, it was more that they had a common purpose: to make John’s last weeks with them as comfortable and as peaceful as possible. No, there was no growth of affection between Rose and Tilda, more just an absence of animosity, which both of them seemed content to live with for now.

  The doctors had made it quite clear that there was no further treatment now available to John, that all they could do for him was offer him pain relief and therapy to make his life as comfortable as possible. They’d removed the obstruction in his bowel while he’d been in hospital, and Rose was pleased to see that helped ease the constant expression of pain that seemed engraved on his face. He had some color again and had looked more at ease when she’d gone to see him the previous night to explain that she’d moved the rooms and done her best to make everything just as she thought he would like it.

  “I rather thought I’d get to say when I decided I couldn’t make the stairs,” John said a little churlishly. “But thank you, I know you are trying to help. What helps me the most is knowing that you will be there. It’s more than I deserve.”

  What neither Frasier nor Rose had mentioned to him was their plan to exhibit his private work. Frasier said there were things he had to get in place first. He’d have to clear the gallery of its planned events for the next couple of months, which meant placating other painters and mobilizing an army of PR and marketing executives. They couldn’t risk waiting until there was a window in the schedule or for the usual lead time of publicizing an event like this, but neither could they afford to open without as much fanfare as possible. Between them, Rose and Frasier had decided, late one night, over a glass of wine in the kitchen at Storm Cottage, that they would tell John only when most of the work had already been done.

  Tensions had eased considerably between Rose and Frasier, his anger at discovering her liaison with Ted now neatly tucked away behind his polite, concerned smile and friendly attentions. Not since the moment that Frasier had brought her back to Storm Cottage had either one of them mentioned the words they’d said, the promises they’d made to each other in those few idyllic hours that night. The hope that there had been, the happiness—it was as if none of it had ever happened, as if Frasier had cut those twenty-four hours out of his life without a second thought, his life with Cecily, and the gallery, and worrying about John closing over that one night and the following stormy morning with cool, calm waters.

  Whenever Rose had had a second to think about herself since then she even questioned whether any of it had ever happened, or if it was just a figment of her fevered imagination, a dream so vivid, so longed for, that she had believed it to be real. In any case, it seemed like the best policy was simply to leave things as they were. If indeed she had been within touching distance of a life with Frasier, then the moment had passed, and perhaps it had less to do with her misdemeanor and much more to do with his waking up with cold feet and looking for a way to back out.

  After some wrangling, she decided finally that she had to tell Maddie what was happening before John arrived home. It seemed too unfair not to, to expect the child to be robbed quite suddenly of someone she had come to care about, without a moment to prepare. Rose had been a lot older than Maddie when her mother had died, but still she remembered how she would have given anything to know that Marian was playing out her last days. To know, to savor every last moment with her, and to not waste a second on boredom or bad feeling. Perhaps it would be too much for Maddie to bear, but Rose had come to realize over the last few weeks that her daughter was really a remarkable person, coping with a world that must seem almost impossible to live in with a stoicism beyond her years.

  “Granddad’s coming home,” Rose said to Maddie, who’d been making him an excessively colorful welcome home card earlier that morning. “Frasier and Tilda have gone to collect him. Want to help me make him some soup?”

  “Yes!” Maddie said, jumping up, her hands smothered in poster paint. “And then Granddad and I can get back to work again, and you can sort me out a school, and I can practice being good at friends.”

  “I’m not sure he’ll be up to working, not in the barn,” Rose said. “He’s had an operation, so he’s still very sore and he’s very, very sick, Maddie.”

  “I know,” Maddie said. “Ambulances don’t come for you unless you are very, very sick.”

  “The thing is,” Rose said, handing Maddie some potatoes to peel, with no idea how to phrase what she needed to say, other than just saying it. “The thing is, Granddad won’t ever get better.”

  “Well, he is old,” Maddie said. “Old people are slower.”

  “No, I mean, he’s not ever going to be like he was before the ambulance came. He’s very ill, and . . . I thought you should know, you should be ready when he . . . because quite soon he . . .”

  Rose had been unable to finish the sentence, sobs constricting her throat and tears streaming down her cheeks. Turning away from Maddie, she tried to hide her own grief, to keep it in check until there was time for it, but she failed.

  “Granddad is going to die,” Maddie stated, rubbing the palm of her hand across Rose’s back. “How soon?”

  “Soon,” Rose said. “We don’t know exactly. Hopefully he will have a few weeks, months even. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “It’s OK,” Maddie said quite calmly, picking up the potato peeler and setting about skinning the potatoes. She hadn’t spoken more than two words about it to Rose since, certainly not about how she felt, and Rose worried that she’d done the wrong thing in telling her, but when John arrived back, leaning heavily on Frasier, Maddie had gone directly to him and put her arms around his waist.

  “I’m sorry about you dying, Granddad,” she said. “I love you.”

  “Me too,” John said, masking his surprise with a gruff cough. “Me too.”

  “Still,” Maddie said, taking his hand and holding it as Frasier helped him over to his armchair, “we’ve got weeks and weeks, months even, so let’s not think about it. OK?”

  “OK,” John said, as he settled painfully into the chair and took the still wet card that Maddie handed him, a portrait of him, painting in his barn, looking exactly as grim and gruff as he did when he worked.

  “It says get well soon,” Maddie said apologetically. “I didn’t know you were going to die when I made it.”

  “It’s lovely,” John said, repressing a grim smile as he looked at his granddaughter. “Just like you.”

  “Thanks,” Maddie said. “I’ve made you some soup too. Mum helped, slightly.”

  Frasier and Tilda stayed, spooning the soup out of bowls, seated around John in his armchair. John ate very little, and at one point almost spilt what was left in his lap, as he nodded off, listening to Frasier talking about the value of exhibiting new work and how it enriched an artist’s life and reputation.

  “Granddad!” Maddie’s voice roused him, a
s she saved the bowl from tilting too far on his tray and lifted it off his lap.

  “I think perhaps I’d better go to bed,” John said, leaning his head against the back of the chair. “It’s these pills they’ve given me, I expect. I’ll give it a day or two and then see how I get on without them.”

  “Dad, you can’t just stop taking them,” Rose said.

  “She’s right,” Tilda said anxiously. “You can’t just ignore the doctors, John.”

  “I can do what I bloody like. It’s my body,” John snapped. “I know I’d rather spend what time I’ve got left awake and not snoring my head off.”

  “Granddad,” Maddie said, biting her lip, “if you go to sleep, you will wake up, won’t you?”

  “I will do my best,” John promised her as Frasier helped him to his feet.

  “I’ll watch you, then,” Maddie said. “Poke you if you stop breathing or anything.”

  “Maddie,” John said gently, resting his palm on the top of her head, “what happened to not thinking about it?”

  “I’m not thinking about it,” Maddie said. “I’m just being vigilant.”

  “Here.” John reached into his pocket and pulled out a key. “You can have the barn as your studio now. I’m giving it to you. You go over there now and start working for both of us. That will be the best way to make sure I wake up again. I’ll be worrying about the mess you’ll be making in my barn too much not to.”

  “OK!” Maddie said with delight, racing off at top speed without even pausing to close the cottage door behind her.

  “I’m not really sure a seven-year-old should be given free rein over an entire barn,” Rose said anxiously, caught between her maternal worry and the look of joy on Maddie’s face.

  “Nonsense,” John said, as he made his way into the bedroom with Frasier’s assistance. “Children are too coddled these days. Besides, running riot in a barn is better than sitting vigil over my deathbed, don’t you agree?”

  “I really thought I was doing the right thing, telling her,” Rose said, making John comfortable as Frasier and Tilda discreetly left the room.