by Lucy Gordon
He wasn’t aware of falling but he knew he must have done when his head hit the floor. Half in and half out of consciousness, he saw the furniture looming over him, menacing.
He must reach the telephone in the hall and call for help. But there were lead weights on his limbs and it was a huge effort to move them. Slowly he dragged himself an inch forward, then another inch. The pounding in his head grew louder, like a drum banging.
He knew now that he was dying.
Blackness swamped him, he didn’t know how long for. He was partly drawn back by a scream.
‘Daddy, Daddy!’
Someone was shaking him. The mist cleared a little, just enough for him to make out a pink rabbit. He stared, trying to make some sense of it, then of the blue rabbit that appeared beside it.
‘Daddy!’
Nikki’s face appeared, frantic and tearful. The rabbits were on her pyjamas, he remembered. Yes, that was it. But why was she here when she should be upstairs, asleep? Laura would be annoyed that he wasn’t doing a better job of babysitting, but he wasn’t going to see Laura again. He was dying. He knew that.
Then he lost sight of her, but he could still hear her from the hall, screaming, ‘Ambulance! My daddy’s dying-’
With every moment it grew harder to breathe. It would be over soon. But Nikki was there again, plumping down on the floor beside him, crying to him.
‘They’re on their way, but they say you’ve got to be calm-if you fight for breath it gets harder. Try to be calm slowly-slowly-slowly-’
She wasn’t making any sense. He couldn’t breathe at all, never mind slowly. But gradually her voice seemed to penetrate his subconscious. Without meaning to, he ceased fighting and lay, his eyes on her, feeling the world slip away from him.
In the distance a bell shrilled-voices-strangers wearing green and yellow coming into the kitchen, kneeling beside him, Nikki talking through her tears. Someone fitted an oxygen mask over his face, and then he really did pass out.
Laura, returning home, found the house empty and a note on the kitchen table. Printed across the top was the word Paramedics. It said, ‘Your husband collapsed and was taken to Canning Hospital. Your daughter came with him.’
The roads were quiet and even in the cranky old car she made the hospital in a few minutes. Entering the Emergency department she saw Nikki almost at once. The little girl threw herself into her mother’s arms, sobbing wildly.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked tensely.
‘We’re not quite certain yet,’ a tired young woman doctor told her, ‘but your husband may have a nut allergy.
‘My-?’
‘Could you let us know his name? Your little girl just said “Daddy” when she called the ambulance.’
‘You did that?’ she looked at Nikki.
‘I woke up. There was a noise downstairs, a big clatter, and I went down. He was on the floor, choking, and he was a terrible colour-’
‘So she did exactly the right thing and called the ambulance,’ the doctor said. ‘Almost certainly saved his life. His throat swelled up so much that he was choking to death.’
‘The woman on the phone said I should try to calm him down,’ Nikki said, ‘and I did try, but I don’t know if it worked.’
‘The paramedics seem to think that it did,’ said the doctor. ‘You helped him a lot. We’ve inserted a tube into his windpipe and he’s breathing through that at the moment.’
‘Is he going to be all right?’ Laura asked in alarm.
‘I think so. I’ve given him an injection and it seems to be working. It would help if I knew the precise nature of the allergy.’
‘But I don’t know-’ she faltered.
‘He was eating the nut cake, Mummy,’ Nikki explained. ‘I know because he still had a bit in his hand, and there’s lots of different nuts in it.’
‘And he wouldn’t have started it if he’d known he was allergic,’ Laura said. ‘So there must have been something in there he’d never had before.’
‘Could I have his name please?’
‘Gino Farnese,’ she said in a daze. ‘Can I see him?’
‘Yes, of course, but I’m not sure that your little girl should see him as he is. He doesn’t look very nice right now.’
At these words Nikki clutched her mother more tightly, and her mouth set in mulish lines.
‘I’m sure he doesn’t,’ Laura said. ‘But I guess he must have looked pretty scary when he collapsed. Nikki didn’t lose her head, and I think she needs to see that he’s still with us.’
Despite her resolute words Laura almost cried out at the sight of Gino lying in the hospital bed. His face was still swollen and the tube in his neck looked brutal, although she knew it was keeping him alive. She bit her lips to keep back her emotion.
At that moment Gino opened his eyes and saw them. His swollen mouth moved in an attempt at speech.
‘Don’t talk,’ she said urgently. ‘I know everything that happened. Nikki told me.’
‘Mrs Baxter,’ he mouthed. ‘Baby-early-’
‘Her first grandchild is due,’ Laura remembered. ‘It came early? She had to go?’
By the way he relaxed she knew she’d got it right.
‘Nikki-’ His lips shaped Nikki’s name.
‘She found you and called the ambulance.’
‘Said-keep-calm-’
Gino’s eyes closed. He looked as if the effort had exhausted him.
Nikki climbed into Laura’s lap, and the two of them sat, arms entwined, silently watching the bed. Now that the first shock was abating, the place where it had been was filling up with horror as she realised how close to death Gino had come.
And it had happened without warning, out of the blue, because of a weakness he had never known that he had. Nothing and nobody was safe, she brooded. Life could snatch everything from you, just like that.
‘Is he really going to be all right?’ she asked a nurse who came in to glance at some charts.
‘His results are getting better all the time. The swelling’s going down and we’ll be able to take the tube out soon.’
‘Then I’ll come back tomorrow.’
‘Oh, no, Mummy-’ Nikki was up in arms at the thought that Gino could survive without her protection.
‘We must go home, darling.’
‘But he might die if we’re not here,’ Nikki sobbed.
‘No.’ It was a croak from the bed. Gino’s head was turned towards Nikki. ‘Not die,’ he whispered. ‘Because-of-you.’
‘He needs to sleep,’ Laura told Nikki. ‘We’ll come back tomorrow.’
But Nikki had one more thing to do before she was ready to leave. Carefully negotiating the tubes she edged forward and kissed Gino’s cheek.
‘’Night,’ she said.
‘’Night,’ he murmured.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them again the nurse was still there, but the other two had gone. She glanced up and smiled at him.
‘Your daughter’s a real character,’ she said. ‘You must be very proud of her.’
Your daughter. He frowned, wondering if the nurse had really said that, but he was too tired to think about it. He drifted into an unquiet dream.
They found Sadie and Claudia at home, having arrived so recently that they were still in their outdoor clothes.
‘We couldn’t think why the house was dark and empty,’ Sadie said. ‘Where did everyone vanish to?’
Laura told the story and they exclaimed over Gino’s misfortune and Nikki’s quick thinking.
‘But now it’s time to go back to bed,’ Laura said. ‘It’s two in the morning.’
As she got into bed Nikki said, ‘He is going to be all right, isn’t he?’
‘He is, now,’ Laura said, tucking her in. ‘Darling, did you really tell them he was your daddy?’
‘I suppose so. I just said the first thing that came into my head, about how he was choking to death, and our address. I didn’t think much about the rest.’
‘Darling, please don’t think of Gino as your father.’
‘It’s just-wouldn’t it be nice if-?’
Laura’s heart ached for her daughter, to whom life never gave anything she wanted.
‘It can’t happen, pet. Please don’t think about it.’
‘But he’s special,’ Nikki insisted.
‘Yes, he is. Very special. I know he’s your best friend-’
‘And yours too.’
‘And mine too. I hope he always will be, but he doesn’t belong to us, and he never can.’
Nikki didn’t argue further. At nine she could accept disappointment without rebellion, being so used to it.
She snuggled down and gave her mother a smile.
‘It would have been nice, though,’ she said, and closed her eyes.
‘Yes,’ Laura whispered. ‘It would.’
She held Nikki’s hand until the child fell asleep. As she slipped out of the room she heard the phone going in the hall downstairs.
She found Claudia taking the call, looking shocked.
‘It’s the hospital,’ she said. ‘They seem to think you’re Gino’s wife and they want you to go back as fast as you can. He’s taken a sudden turn for the worse, and they’re really worried.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
I T WAS good to be home. He’d missed the crimson sunsets and glowing colours of Tuscany. Even more, he’d missed the loving family that had always been his. His father, bellowing, jovial, mischievous, infinitely loving. And his brother Rinaldo, gruff, unyielding, withdrawn, but with a fierce power of love that had equalled their father’s.
Why had he left them?
Then he realised that nothing was quite as he remembered. He’d meant to come home, but home no longer existed. Where was his father? He looked around him for the farmhouse he loved, with its two incongruous flights of stone steps up the front.
But the landscape was a desert, and in the centre, strangely, was a funeral.
There was Rinaldo, his face full of rage and hostility. Why? And the fair-haired woman, watching them both across the open grave. Who was she? Surely he should know her? But there was a mystery about her that he couldn’t unravel.
Agitated voices reached him out of the mists. ‘His temperature’s shooting up again. We have to get it down fast. This wasn’t supposed to happen.’
No, it hadn’t been supposed to happen. He shouldn’t have fallen in love with Alex, because when they tossed a coin for her, Rinaldo had won. But he hadn’t wanted her, until it was too late for all of them and disaster had been inevitable.
Now he knew the woman watching them across the grave with cool, appraising eyes. She was Alex who had lit up his life and then left him desolate.
He and Alex had spent the first day of her trip together. He’d shown her the city of Florence, and then they’d driven out into the country to hire riding horses. That was how he remembered her best, laughing as she rode beside him through the sunlight.
He could feel that sunlight on him now, fierce, blazing, almost unbearably hot. She had flowered in that heat, becoming a woman of Italy, discovering that she belonged there.
He’d known then that he loved her, not like his other ‘light o’loves’, but finally, completely, with a total giving of himself, nothing held back. That was something he’d never felt able to do before, and it had fulfilled him.
After that there could be no other woman but her, and the knowledge filled him with joy. He’d seen that joy mirrored in her-or so he’d thought until the moment he found them together in Rinaldo’s bed, folded in each other’s arms.
He tried to shy away from that memory. It brought too much pain. But his mind insisted on forcing him to confront it, as though it was trying to convey an urgent message.
He saw them again, naked limbs entwined, lost in each other, and he knew there was something here that he’d failed to understand, but which he must understand if he were ever again to know peace.
There was her face again, blurred this time, but he could see that she was gazing at him sadly, anxiously. She’d looked like that at their last meeting, not the day of her wedding to Rinaldo, but before that, when they’d spoken alone, face to face, for the last time.
‘Be damned to the pair of you!’ he’d cried in his anguish, although she’d tried to make him understand that she hadn’t taken him seriously, had thought he was only playing at love. And it had been true to start with.
‘But then I found I was really in love with you.’
That was what he’d told her, and now he tried to say it again through parched, swollen lips. He wanted to make her understand.
‘Gino-Gino-’ Her voice reached him down long, echoing corridors.
‘Carissima-’
‘Gino try to wake up-look at me, please-’
‘I always loved-to look at you,’ he told her sadly. ‘Do you remember-that day in the barn, you were so beautiful-’
She was silent, but he could still feel her hands holding his.
‘I wanted to take you in my arms,’ he murmured. ‘I loved you so much.’
‘Did you?’ she whispered.
He thought she sounded almost wistful, but that must be part of his fevered madness.
‘You never knew,’ he murmured, ‘but I woke up thinking about you and went to bed thinking about you. Such dreams of you I had-I’d be ashamed to tell you-’
‘You could tell me now,’ she said softly.
‘You would be angry with me. I dreamed of holding you in my arms when we were naked-we made love-I had no right to think of you that way-’
‘Right has nothing to do with it,’ she said gently. ‘You love whom you love.’
‘That’s true. I couldn’t help loving you and I wanted everything with you. And when I held you, you were beautiful-as beautiful as I always knew you would be. And I told you that you were my love, for ever. I know I must never say that again, only think it. I can’t spend my life with you, but I can spend my life loving you.’
Through the mist he saw her shake her head.
‘That’s a long time,’ she said. ‘Time to forget and love again.’
His hands moved, holding hers.
‘You don’t understand. Why should I want to love again when I’ve found the perfect woman?’
‘No woman is perfect,’ she insisted, and he had the strange feeling that she was pleading with him. ‘There’s always someone else, who might be even better-’
‘Not for me.’
‘But suppose she loved you? Don’t you want to be loved as well as to give love-?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered, ‘I wanted that.’
‘Wouldn’t that be better than wasting your life on something that’s hopeless?’
‘Much better-common sense. But-not for me.’
He tightened his hand on hers, drawing it slowly up to his mouth so that his lips could lie against it.
‘Amor mio,’ he whispered. ‘Per tutta la vita.’
Her hand vanished as though she’d snatched it back. In the same moment her blurred face melted away, and he was alone in the burning darkness again.
It swirled around him, tossing him about violently, like a whirlwind. He tried to touch ground, but there was no ground, nothing to hold onto, no safety, no joy, only a world of fearsome nothingness.
Gradually the heat began to abate. The glowing Tuscan colours faded into hospital pastels, reality shuddered back into place, and he awoke to find himself in a cold world.
He saw the end of the bed, the pale green walls, and a mass of bleeping machinery. His neck hurt, but he managed to turn his head slowly, and saw Laura standing by the window, looking out.
‘Hello,’ he managed to say. The tube was gone from his neck but he was still hoarse.
She turned and smiled quickly, but her face was pale and distraught.
‘Hello,’ she said in a strained voice. ‘I’ll fetch someone.’
She left the room before he could speak, and from the corridor he heard her sa
y, ‘He’s come round.’
There were footsteps, a nurse appearing, smiling with relief. ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘You gave us a fright.’
‘Why, what happened?’
‘Just when we thought you were on the mend you took a bad turn. Your temperature shot right up again, and we called your wife back quickly, just in case. Let me check your temperature, although I can see it’s well down. Yes-that’s normal.’
After a few more checks the nurse left them. Gino wondered why Laura was keeping back from him, near the window.
‘Have you been with me all the time?’ he asked.
‘Most of it. They sent for me last night because Nikki said-er-she said you were her daddy, and they assumed we were either married or-’
‘Uh-huh! I guessed that.’
‘I didn’t tell them otherwise because if they think I’m your next of kin it makes things easier.’
‘Right. I’m glad they sent for you. I wouldn’t have liked to die alone.’
‘Gino, you’re not going to die.’
‘Not now. But I know how close to it I came.’
Laura nodded. ‘Yes, it got very scary. Would you like me to contact your family? After all, I’m not your next of kin, and maybe they should know?’
He was silent.
‘Give me a number to call,’ she suggested.
‘There’s no need,’ he said at last. ‘I’m past the worst now.’
‘But suppose you had died? How would I get in touch with them?’
‘There’s an address book in my room, but don’t use it now. I’m getting better and there’s no need.’ His voice was weak, but he spoke with a firmness that told her the subject was closed.
‘As you wish,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Dreadful. My throat feels as though I’ve swallowed thorns, and my brain is off the planet. I’m so light-headed I’m floating between two worlds.’
‘You had a terrible fever. You were delirious.’
‘Did I talk much?’ He didn’t look at her as he spoke.
‘A bit, but don’t ask me what you said. It was in Italian.’
She saw that some of his tension eased.
