by Penny Parkes
She gathered up their rubbish and grinned, knowing exactly how to get a little colour back into Lizzie’s cheeks. ‘Retail therapy, anyone? I know it’s only a hospital gift shop, but—’ She didn’t need to say any more. Lizzie was on her feet in an instant.
‘Excellent suggestion, Graham. Shall we say a budget of a fiver, most ridiculous purchase wins?’
‘So like Dan,’ Grace murmured to Holly with a smile, as Lizzie dashed across the main concourse and they trailed in her wake.
Lizzie, as usual, didn’t miss a trick. It had been a moment of hesitation, that was all. But as Holly’s eyes had fallen on the rack of tiny babygros, still white and pristine on their miniature coat hangers, she’d felt such a tug of longing it must have been written all over her face.
Lizzie’s eyes widened in disbelief as she took in the possible implications and stared at Holly’s stomach. ‘You’re not . . . ?’
Holly shook her head. ‘No. I’m not!’ She laughed nervously, caught on the hop, not only by her friend but also the gamut of emotions assaulting her. ‘But would it be so very bad if I was? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Well, it would be the ghost of our new-found freedom if you were,’ retorted Lizzie with feeling. ‘Why on earth would you want to go back there?’ She talked about it as though it were a dodgy holiday resort they’d endured together. ‘We’ve just got through the hideous bit and now we get to enjoy our families as they grow up. Surely you can’t want to go back to leaky boobs and exploding nappies again?’
Holly shrugged, struggling to put how she felt into words. ‘It’s different for you. You and Will and your kids have got your happy ever after, haven’t you?’
Lizzie frowned. ‘I think we’ll brush over the insensitivity of calling my unfocused search for the Meaning of Life a happy ending and focus on the What The Hell? Is Taffy pressuring you into this?’ Lizzie looked genuinely perturbed at the thought. ‘Last we spoke, you were grumpy as hell about the world and his wife wanting you to get married again and now we’re talking babies . . . What happened to keeping your independence?’
Holly had tried so hard to explain to Lizzie about her reluctance to remarry – obviously she still hadn’t succeeded. It had nothing to do with independence – she simply couldn’t bring herself to make a commitment that had proven to mean nothing. To her mind, the fact that she and Taffy chose to be together every single day meant so much more than a marriage certificate. And if they chose to have children, so what? Were the children of parents wearing a wedding ring necessarily happier?
She pointedly chose to ignore the little voice in her head that suggested they actually might be. That security might mean more to a child, than her own stance of ‘fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me’.
‘It’s nothing really,’ she reassured Lizzie. ‘I’ve just been thinking about it. One day. Maybe. Who knows?’ Holly didn’t know where all this was coming from, she certainly hadn’t planned to share any of these thoughts with anyone.
‘Let’s have a little walk down memory lane then, shall we?’ Lizzie said as she caught hold of Holly’s hand and pulled her into the adjoining maternity section of the shop, the strangled cries of a tantrumming toddler immediately assaulting them. ‘Best contraceptive in the world coming in here.’ Lizzie grinned. ‘Right. Let’s start at the nipple pads and work our way down to those enormous pants.’
Chapter 34
Dan scrolled down the application form on his computer and wished there was more he could do to help.
Candace sat before him, with bloodshot eyes and mascara streaked down her face. She rocked gently in the chair, looking so much older and more fragile than he had ever realised. It was as though the make-up, the hairspray and the forced (and probably fake) bonhomie had been the only things holding her together.
The massive conflict of interest with this particular patient was definitely clouding his judgement – it wasn’t something he hadn’t experienced before, though. Living in Larkford, every patient was also a neighbour or a friend or, sometimes more uncomfortably, an enemy. But how did you begin to categorise the mother of your ex-girlfriend, who didn’t appear to have realised that the ‘ex’ part was even in play?
‘Do you think Julia will find out?’ she asked tentatively, raising her gaze to Dan’s face, the hope flaring briefly.
‘It’s a small town,’ Dan prevaricated gently. People always talked about addicts having to hit rock bottom, about alcoholism being a ‘self-diagnosed disease’ and that there was no point forcing them to get help until they were willing to admit they had a problem. The issue Dan had with that perspective, was how many lives were wasted, in a prolonged and public cry for help.
If Candace had wanted to, she could have quietly mainlined a bottle of gin in the privacy of her own home. By choosing The Kingsley Arms as her stage, she had essentially – like a teenager on the lam – been asking to be seen.
The fact that she had been seen by the local press was an unfortunate development. The fact that there was now a series of photographs charting her descent into an alcohol-fuelled rant probably more so.
Dan could only be grateful for the fact that he himself had been having an awful morning and had popped over for a swift half at lunchtime. The irony was not lost on him.
He clicked on several menus and sighed. ‘There’s an amazing facility nearby – one of the best – but they can’t take you for a few days. I’m tempted to say let’s just wait, because the alternative is a little, shall we say, grittier?’ He leaned forward and his heart went out to the woman in front of him – her husband gone, her daughter clearly pushed beyond her tolerance with this situation. ‘I’d normally suggest family support and daily AA meetings and to try and get you into the best facility possible, but I’m not sure that’s an option, is it?’
‘I’m not sure family support is on the table,’ she said. ‘I may have burned one or two bridges this week, this month, this year . . .’
‘I could go with you, to the AA meetings, if you’d like,’ Dan offered, wondering why he felt moved to do so. It wasn’t as though he was trying to win back Julia’s affection.
Even clutching the mug of industrial strength black coffee that Lucy had made for her, Candace was nothing if not astute. ‘Now, why on earth would you want to do that?’ she asked, her eyes narrowed and her brain sluggishly working it through. ‘I’m drunk, not stupid, Dr Carter. Did you think I hadn’t noticed your absence? It seems to me, that you two aren’t being exactly honest with each other. Are you still in love with my daughter?’
Dan blushed awkwardly, unused to being on the receiving end of the questions in his patient consultations. ‘Truthfully? Yes. I think I’ll always be a little bit in love with her. But we are not good for each other, Candace. I am not my best self when we’re together and I think Julia would say the same.’
‘Well, I know that she is not her best self when I’m around – I can tell you that for a fact.’ She stared at him appraisingly. ‘If we’re being candid, then at least tell me this. Is she right? Am I the reason you left?’
Dan mouthed helplessly. What could he possibly say – that Julia’s Pavlovian response to her mother’s presence had shown him an entirely new side to her personality that scared him senseless? That her ambition and constant desire to prove herself made him flinch? He took a deep breath and managed to compose himself. ‘It’s been a long time brewing,’ he said tactfully.
‘Now,’ he continued, turning the conversation back to the constructive, ‘I’m going to get Jade to draw some bloods and send them off – you might need a little support nutritionally and she’s amazing at handling that side of things. And then we’ll get you over to Sunnyside – you may not be able to check in for a few days, but if we ask nicely you can join in their daily programme as an outpatient. And, I could be wrong, but I think the support there is exactly what you need.’
‘Whatever you say, Dr Carter,’ Candace replied, her own ability to
decide anything at all seemingly languishing under the bottle of Hendricks, the triple espresso and a desire to turn back the clock. ‘But perhaps you could be the one to tell my daughter?’
‘I’m so sorry to rope you into this as well,’ Dan said under his breath as Julia took a short break from yelling at them to answer an urgent phone call. It was the end of a very long day and they were all keen to get home. ‘I may have misjudged the best way to handle all this.’
‘You think?’ said Holly tiredly.
Dan gave her a sharp look. ‘Listen, Graham, I’m still feeling my way through all of this. I tried all the negotiating tricks I used in the Army, but Julia is pretty formidable. I swear some days it would be easier haggling with the Taliban.’
‘Dan!’ said Holly, a little shocked at the bitterness in his voice.
‘What?’ he replied defensively. ‘You know I love the daft mare to pieces, but my God, has she been hard to live with. It’s like she turned into an angry teenager with no rational thought processes the moment her mother turned up. And she wasn’t exactly low-maintenance before.’
He stopped himself going further with one glance at Holly’s face, knowing he’d overstepped the mark and was in danger of dividing her loyalties. And it wasn’t as though he hadn’t been warned; Taffy and Holly had both been supportive when he chose to reunite with Julia, but they had both quietly expressed their concern. If there was a Happily Ever After ending to the story, then brilliant. Their concerns had been more focused on, well, this exact scenario, to be precise.
It wasn’t just a relationship at stake; this affected everybody’s working life too.
‘I’d hoped it might be easier if we told her together, more supportive, I guess?’ The question mark hung in the air and they both knew that he’d got this one wrong. Rather than feeling that they were both there for her, Julia had lashed out as though they had ganged up on her.
Julia hung up the phone and, to her credit, attempted to compose herself before she re-joined them. ‘That was my agent, in case you were wondering. She was keen to know how the tabloids got hold of photographs of my mother comatose in a local bar. The Kingsley Arms, apparently. And apparently,’ she spat the word out with a barely suppressed fury, ‘a local doctor, friend of the family no less, came and picked her up. Sounding familiar?’
Dan tried to hold his ground with Julia, urging himself not to look away first, but he failed. He did, however, manage to locate his crumbling resolve whilst staring at his boots. For some reason the sight of his sturdy ‘desert’ boots gave him a little nudge – after all, if he could cope with being an army doctor and the subsequent years of flashbacks, he could cope with a furious ex-girlfriend. Especially when he knew that everything he had done, he had done to help her, with the very best of intentions.
He cleared his throat. ‘Let’s get this clear, shall we? And then maybe we can let poor Holly out of this hideous conversation that, let’s face it, has nothing to do with her.’
Julia flushed and shot Holly a filthy look. ‘Well it seems to me that Holly was the one who drove my mother to a rehab facility for an afternoon of therapy and didn’t bother to tell me about it. So, yeah, it seems like she might just be involved.’
Dan sighed and ran his hand over the buzz-cut that had recently regrown on his scalp. The haircut, the boots, the feeling of being under siege: all he needed now was exploding IEDs and he’d be having another PTSD relapse rather than dealing with the job in hand.
Fighting the urge to shout, he sat down and splayed his hands in a universal gesture of submission. ‘Come and talk to us, Jules. This must be incredibly hard. I did ask Holly to help, yes. But mainly because I hoped she would bring a little objectivity to the problem. Something that you and I both lack at the moment.’
Julia softened slightly, but she still prickled with a static energy that was unnerving at best and a little terrifying at worst. Dan rather wished he hadn’t stayed up late last night reading Stephen King.
Dan gave Holly a nudge. ‘You get off home, Holls. God knows what Taffy’s cooking up for the twins’ tea. Unless you want them addicted to scampi, I’d steer him well away from the catering detail.’ When Holly looked hesitantly at Julia, Dan stood up and opened the door, making the decision for her. ‘Seriously, Holls. I can handle this and any questions Julia has about her mother’s care. Thanks for staying, though.’ He dropped his voice. ‘I’m so sorry for dragging you into this. My mistake.’
Holly looked as though she was about to protest, but after a moment’s hesitation, she took Julia’s silence as consent and left the room.
Almost immediately after the door closed, Julia let rip and Dan could only hope that everyone else in the building was long gone. As she un-bottled all her fears and frustrations, Dan felt oddly removed.
He was sympathetic, of course – up to a point – although seeing his smart, brittle ex-girlfriend unravel before his very eyes was somewhat disturbing. It was also, he realised, somehow inevitable.
‘Why couldn’t you just let me handle this myself?’ she hissed at him eventually, when none of her other loaded barbs had elicited a response. ‘You knew how I felt. I’d told you over and over and over how I felt – but you still welcomed her here – to my home – to Larkford – to my sanctuary. You just threw a grenade into my life and you expect me to believe you were doing it to help?’
Dan was torn. He wanted to defend himself and his choices, to remind her that this situation had taken on a momentum all of its own the minute her father had absconded; but the part of him that still loved her, just wanted to give her a hug and let her cry. Maybe if she’d done a little more crying over the years, he thought, instead of stubbornly papering over the cracks, she wouldn’t be on the brink of unravelling now?
‘She gave an interview to the press, did you know that? While she was drunk out of her mind at The Kingsley Arms and before you swept in yet again on your sodding white horse. That’s why my agent called.’
Dan felt detached as he watched the spittle settle on Julia’s bottom lip, her hair deranged and her shift dress crumpled after a long day. The ambiguity must have been written on his face because for the first time, Julia drew breath and there was a flash of genuine fear in her eyes. Did she realise that she’d gone too far, he wondered.
Maybe there really was no such thing as a ‘civilised’ breakup? Certainly all the hurt and pain seemed to be channelling itself into this conversation: was this the blow-up row that was long overdue? All their unspoken issues seemed to be bubbling to the surface – Candace providing the leverage to open their own personal can of worms.
‘When are you going to accept that you can’t control everyone around you,’ Dan said in that calm, disconnected tone that signified to anyone who knew him that, under the surface, he was seething. ‘Your friends, who love you, tried to help your mother, who – let’s be frank – was in need of a little support. Is there just a small chance that you’re angry with yourself for not being there, or is it just the interruption to your stellar career that’s bothering you?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with ambition, Dan,’ Julia spat. ‘Maybe you should try it sometime?’
‘There is something to be said for an ambition that benefits the greater good, you know,’ Dan retorted. ‘The whole community will benefit from my Health in the Community Scheme – and you know what, Jules? That makes me feel pretty good when I go to sleep at night. What do you think about? Ratings figures?’
She glared at him. ‘Well, excuse me for not wanting to settle. Some of us can see beyond the edge of the valley, you know.’
‘Do you mean settle, or is it settling down that’s so terrifying for you?’ asked Dan – his anger giving him the courage to address the question that had been niggling him for days.
‘I’m not done yet. Can’t you see that?’ Julia shouted back, all inhibitions discarded. ‘I don’t want to settle . . .’ There was a telling flush that gripped her neck as she realised what she’d said.
‘Well, I have no desire to be somebody’s consolation prize,’ Dan said coldly. ‘So, I guess we made the right decision. I don’t want the kind of relationship where you love me so much you can lash out at me with all your grievances. I’m not your mum. I’m not your dad. And if you stop to think for just a moment, you would recognise that all my intentions were good. Everything I’ve done was to try and help you.
‘I made sure she was safe, I made sure she was taken care of and supported. And yes, I drafted in Holly – your friend – to help me. Whatever you may think of our relationship, and you can hate me if you want to, Jules, you cannot deny the facts. We all love you and we’re here to help – no matter how scared or angry or helpless you feel.’ He shrugged and for a moment wondered whether he had the strength to deal with this. ‘Let’s just call it a night. We can work out what to do next in the morning.’
She said nothing. Her face was pale and her teeth worried at her bottom lip, tearing the fragile skin in her distress. ‘I can’t believe you and Holly got her admitted to the clinic without even talking to me,’ she said eventually in a small voice. There was an edge to her tone that made Dan wonder if she was actually more annoyed that he had succeeded where she had failed.
Dan nodded. ‘We did. But in the end, it wasn’t your choice to make. Your mum knew she’d hit rock bottom the moment she spilled her guts to that journalist. It was your mum who asked me for help, Jules. She knew you were too close to the situation and she probably knew how angry you’d be when you heard what she’d done. There’s no easy way to handle this, so Holly and I just went for simplicity. She can have some time there to take advice and consider her options. You can maybe take a break from worrying where she is every minute of the day – seems to me like it might be long overdue.’
‘There you go again – telling me what’s good for me. Don’t you realise that’s the worst part of being an alcoholic’s daughter? The helplessness – the not knowing what’s going to happen next and always, always, expecting the worst – that’s what gets you. And now, here you are, claiming to be my friend – whatever that means – but still taking away all my choices. Am I supposed to be grateful?’
