by Sibel Hodge
I pulled her towards me in a hug. She was taller than me, nearly six foot, and my head rested on her shoulder, her collarbone digging into my cheek.
‘I’m so sorry. What are you going to do?’
She didn’t say anything for a long time. We just stayed like that, holding each other. Then she pulled back.
‘He’s my life. I love him more than anything. So I’m not going to do anything. I can’t. I can’t lose him.’
I gave her what I hoped was a supportive smile.
‘What? Do you think that’s weak of me?’ She sniffed.
‘I . . .’ I didn’t know what it was. I was in shock. I couldn’t imagine Lucas having an affair. They always seemed so perfect for each other. They’d been together a year longer than Ethan and I, so that would make it twenty-seven years now. That’s no mean feat these days, when people change their partners as often as their mobile phones. ‘Maybe it’s not what you think. Maybe there’s some explanation for it.’
‘No, there’s no mistake.’ She stared out into the thick mature oaks and beech trees. Then she shook her head. ‘But I’ve decided. I’ve really decided I’m not going to do anything about it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. It will just blow over, I’m positive. I can’t lose him, Olivia. I just can’t. I’m not going to make him choose. I need him. Charlotte needs him. We’re his family.’
I thought about what I’d do if I found out Ethan was having an affair. I couldn’t just do nothing and let him carry on. I couldn’t handle knowing he was sleeping with someone else, thinking of someone else. Maybe even falling in love with someone else. It would always be there, wouldn’t it? The elephant in the room. Hanging over what you did and what you thought, until jealousy and suspicion sucked the life out of anything you had left. Because everything that you thought you knew − that you trusted, believed in − would be a lie, and I had a big thing about honesty. Ethan and I had never had any secrets. How can you have a relationship based on deception? And what about Anna? It would rock her world, too, but I would have to think about what was best for her.
‘I think it will just blow over,’ Nadia said again, but I didn’t know who she was trying to convince − me or herself.
‘Yes, of course it will,’ I said, going for supportive instead of judgemental. I suppose a lot of us don’t know what we’d do until we’re in that situation. I knew, though. I’d cut Ethan’s balls off and shove them down his throat. ‘Is Lucas coming back for the picnic this weekend?’
‘Yes.’ She glanced over at me and forced a slight smile. ‘Promise you won’t say anything to anyone. Not even Ethan.’
‘Oh, God, Nadia, you know we don’t have any secrets.’
‘Please.’ She gripped my arm tight, making me stop. ‘I don’t want Lucas finding out I know. They’re best mates, and if you tell Ethan, he’ll want to get involved.’
‘He won’t say anything to Lucas if I ask him not to.’
‘He’d probably punch him! No. This is private. This is my secret, not yours.’
I groaned, looking skyward. ‘OK.’ I just hoped she knew what she was doing, though.
‘Can you do me a favour?’
Poppy trotted back towards us with a stick in her mouth, closely followed by Minstrel, who was trying to jump on her back. She slobbered on my walking boot, keeping us company as we headed through the woods.
‘Of course. What?’
‘I was going to see Dad later, but I don’t feel up to it today. Is there any chance you can go instead?’
Since Lucas and Ethan were away such a lot with work, it was usually Nadia and I who took turns to visit Tom every few days. Chris went, too, of course, when he was working locally. Most of the time I didn’t mind seeing my father-in-law so much. I loved him, after all, and I wanted to make sure he was as happy as he could be, but sometimes it was tiring and frustrating and became more of a chore or duty than a pleasure.
‘I’m on the late shift today, but I’ll go in and see him when we’ve finished our walk.’ I worked part time as a practice nurse at the village doctor’s surgery, job sharing with another part-time nurse called Elaine. ‘I was going to go to the supermarket soon, but that will have to wait, I suppose. I got tied up with taking Anna clothes shopping yesterday and forgot to go. Just about managed to rustle up some stale toast for Anna’s breakfast. I’m such a bad mother.’
‘You’re not. Anyway, thank you.’ She turned around. ‘Let’s head back now. I’ve got accounts coming out of my ears. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to concentrate.’
Nadia worked as an accountant and office administrator from home, pretty much single-handedly running Tate Construction, the building firm Tom had started forty years ago. It was a family effort, with Ethan as the company’s architect and Chris as the project manager. She also did the accounts for several local children’s charities for free, and organised fund raisers for them. I don’t know how she juggled it all with Charlotte as well. I found it enough juggling five hours of work a day and looking after the house and Anna. Then again, I wasn’t a super-efficient organiser like Nadia, although sometimes I wished I was more like her. She always got the job done, whereas I was often late, forgot to organise Anna’s packed lunches in advance and missed appointments. Nadia was the complete opposite. Always early and had a week’s worth of dinner menus worked out in advance. She was three years older than me, so I’d never had much to do with her at school, but when I’d started going out with her brother, and then married him, we’d naturally become close over the years. She was like the big sister I’d always wanted. A natural nurturer, she organised all the family get-togethers and was the first one to step in and offer help if any of us needed it. The strong one. If she was an elephant, she’d be the matriarch, which was not surprising, really: Eve, her mum, had died of a sudden brain aneurism when Nadia was nine years old. Ethan was six at the time and Chris was three, so Nadia had naturally stepped into the role of caretaker, looking after her brothers, learning to cook − she’s an amazing cook, unlike me! − and generally helping her dad out in any way she could. I asked Nadia once how she’d kept it all together with such a huge responsibility from an early age, but she’d just said it was easier to be strong when other people needed her. Her craving to help others stopped her falling apart. Eve’s death eventually brought the Tates closer together, and they had a bond that went deeper than just being family. They were part of one another, and I was a part of them.
We said goodbye at the end of the path and I gave her another hug.
‘Will you be all right?’
‘I’ll have to be, won’t I?’
‘Oh, Nadia, I’m so sorry this is happening. I just—’
She shook her head to cut me off. ‘Don’t say anything. It’ll be fine. You’ll see. I’m glad I’ve got you to talk to, though. What would I do without you?’ She let me go and walked away, leaving me standing on the path, watching as her shoulders shook with the tears she was holding inside.
After settling Poppy in her basket in the kitchen, I drove into the nearby town of Dorchester. Mountain View nursing home was on the outskirts, set in three acres of lush, well-tended gardens. Tom had always loved working in his own garden at Tate Barn when he had any spare time, and he missed it now he was unable to. He had to settle for walks in the grounds these days instead. When I moved into my first house and got a garden of my own, I always wondered how he’d ever found the time, what with bringing up Chris, Ethan and Nadia single-handedly, running a busy construction business and looking after his own home. But he said gardening relaxed him. In a busy, chaotic world, it was his little haven where he could empty his mind of the stress and not have to think about any problems for a while.
As I stopped at a set of traffic lights, I glanced out the window and caught sight of a woman walking up the street. She was slim and busty, her clothes showing off h
er best assets. Her long hair bounced on her shoulders as she walked in very high − and very uncomfortable-looking − stilettos that defied the laws of gravity. She looked so much like my childhood friend Katie, who’d left the village ages ago, that the breath caught in my throat for a moment. Was that her? I hadn’t seen her in years. I craned my neck, trying to get a proper look as she hurried past on the opposite side of the road, just the back of her now visible on the busy street. The traffic lights changed and someone sounded their horn behind me. By the time I’d driven along, she’d disappeared. I shook my head. No, it couldn’t have been her.
My Mini crunched to a stop on the gravel car parking area at Mountain View, and I got out and walked up the steps to the reception.
‘Hi, Mrs Tate.’ Kelly, the very perky receptionist, smiled at me.
‘Hi, how are you?’ I smiled back and wrote in the visitors’ book, recording the same things as usual: my name and address, who I was there to see, my vehicle registration number and the time I’d arrived.
‘I’m pretty good, thanks. Just counting the days until my holiday now.’
‘How exciting. Where are you off to?’
‘Portugal. Have you ever been?’
‘No, but I hear it’s nice.’ I put the pen back on top of the book as her phone rang.
The smell of disinfectant, laced with pine, vomit, boiled carrots and a hint of lavender, hit my nostrils as I headed up the corridor to the nurses’ station in Tom’s wing. Eau de Nursing Home.
‘Hi, Mary. How is he?’ I asked the head nurse, who was looking down at a folder of notes on her desk.
She gave me a half smile and I immediately knew something was wrong.
‘What is it? Is Tom OK?’ I didn’t want any more bad news today.
‘Yes, he’s OK, it’s just . . . I wanted to talk to you before you pop in and see him.’
I leaned my hip against the desk.
‘For the last few days he’s been very agitated. More than usual, I mean. He says he’s having bad dreams, about a woman called Georgia.’
‘Well, as you know, he’s suffered from nightmares for years.’
‘Yes, but these seem different. When he wakes up afterwards, it takes us a long time to calm him down again, and he keeps saying Georgia is haunting him.’
‘Georgia?’ I frowned. ‘As far as I know, he doesn’t know anyone called Georgia.’
‘Ah, well, that’s what I wanted to ask. He said she’d gone missing.’
‘Missing?’ I pursed my lips, thinking. ‘No, it doesn’t ring any bells.’
‘I’m sure it’s just the usual confusion, but when he said she was missing, I wanted to check with you.’
I shook my head. ‘No, I’ve never heard him mention anything like that before. Did he say anything else about her?’
‘Not really.’
‘You know what he’s like. Sometimes when he watches TV, he thinks the characters are people he knows. Sometimes he doesn’t recognise the family anymore, or thinks Nadia is his wife and Ethan is his brother. I’m sure it’s nothing.’
‘The other day, he was convinced I was someone he went to school with.’ She nodded and rolled her eyes good-naturedly.
‘I’ll let you know if he says anything else, though.’ I headed past her desk to his room at the end of the corridor.
Every time I saw Tom, he seemed to shrink inside himself more. Once a tall, solidly built, active man, he was now stooped and colourless and bony. It broke my heart to see the changes this ravaging disease had forced upon him. I was a nurse, so I knew what death and illness looked like, but when it was someone you loved, it didn’t make you hardened to it. The worst thing was the slow, steady and relentless progression of a disease that would eventually be fatal. From the initial stages of attacking the part of the brain where memories are formed, over years it makes new memories harder to form. Then it spreads to different regions of the brain, killing cells and compromising function. The damage to the areas where emotions are processed then makes it harder for patients to control moods and feelings. Next it wreaks havoc on the senses, even causing hallucinations and delusions, and erasing the oldest and most precious memories of a person. In the last stages it destroys the area of the brain responsible for regulating breathing and the heart. For family members it can be horrific to watch the person you once knew literally change into someone else. Someone who was kind and compassionate can become vicious and bitter. Someone who was calm and happy can become angry and spiteful. Sometimes patients have no idea of their surroundings or loved ones. They can’t identify everyday items. They have trouble understanding what is being said or going on around them. They gradually lose their ability to walk, become incontinent, or exhibit unusual behaviour. The symptoms are heartbreaking.
Nowadays Tom’s lucid moments were outnumbered by the confusion, although he usually still recognised me. He was asleep, sitting in a comfy foam-padded high-backed chair in front of the window, overlooking the gardens. The newspaper was strewn messily over the surface of the small table in front of him, as if he’d become frustrated with it and flung it down in anger. Next to the paper was an intricately carved wooden box that Tom had made for Eve. It was designed with a secret compartment that could only be opened by sliding out and pushing in certain hidden parts of the design in a unique combination. Tom called it a magic box, and Anna had loved playing with it when she was a kid. I could never manage to open it but Anna always could.
‘Hi, Tom.’ I sat in an identical chair next to him and patted his hand. Loose skin hung from his fingers.
His eyelids fluttered open and it took him a moment to familiarise himself with his surroundings.
‘Olivia.’ He smiled warmly. ‘Nice to see you. You haven’t been here for ages.’
‘I came in two days ago, Tom.’ I patted his hand again and he gripped mine.
His eyes narrowed, as if he didn’t believe me. ‘Was that when you—’ He stopped mid-sentence.
I waited for a moment. He often forgot what he was talking about in the middle of a conversation, or forgot words. Sometimes he liked to be prompted; sometimes it made him angry.
When he didn’t carry on, I said, ‘When what, Tom?’
He picked at his trousers with a fingernail, rubbing the same spot over and over. ‘Fucking bastard.’ He stared down angrily at them.
Before the disease, I’d never heard Tom swear. Never seen him lose his temper, either. He was the most laid-back person I’d ever known. He never seemed to get stressed about anything. Not anymore, though.
‘That fucking bastard stole my trousers.’
I stroked his hand. ‘It’s OK, Tom. Don’t worry. I’m here, OK? I won’t let them take your trousers.’
He turned to me. ‘You sure? Because they sneak in here at night. No one thinks I know, but I bloody know. I’m not stupid.’
‘Of course you’re not stupid.’ I pointed out of the window to a rhododendron bush in full bloom, trying to distract him. ‘What’s the name of that bush, Tom?’ I knew it, but I wanted to try and calm him down.
‘That one?’ His face softened as he pointed a shaky finger towards it. ‘It’s a Rhododendron arborescens. I planted one in our garden once for Nadia. I took all the kids to the garden centre and got them to each pick out a cocktail they liked.’
I knew he didn’t really mean cocktail. He obviously meant plant.
‘Then we named the cocktail after them. Every birthday, I’d hide a present under their cocktail for them when they came back from school.’ He chuckled gently. ‘They used to love it.’
‘I bet they did. And do you remember doing your yearly Easter egg hunt for Anna and Charlotte? Hiding all that chocolate in the garden for them to find?’ Tom had enjoyed watching the girls screeching and giggling all round the garden so much, he’d done it right up until he sold the house to us, and even though they were ne
arly thirteen and seventeen now and a bit too old for it, Ethan and I still carried on the tradition Tom had started.
He smiled and nodded, but I didn’t know if my words had registered. ‘How’s Ryan?’
‘Who’s Ryan?’
He looked at me quizzically. ‘You know.’
‘No, Tom. Is he an old friend?’
‘He’s your son.’
‘I have a daughter. Anna – remember? She’s doing really well at school, although they’re breaking up for the summer holidays in a few days.’
‘I hope he calls you. It’s not nice when your children don’t keep in touch. You worry about them, don’t you?’
I always thought it was best not to dwell on the memories he now got wrong, so I steered him in another direction. ‘Charlotte’s studying hard for her exams. Next term she’ll be going to sixth form college. I can’t believe how fast the time goes.’
‘Fast,’ he repeated, nodding softly.
‘Mary said you’d mentioned someone called Georgia. Who’s she? I haven’t heard you talk about her before.’
He gripped my hand hard. ‘You have to find her. She’s haunting me.’
‘What do you mean?’
He jerked forward, eyes wide. ‘She won’t leave me alone.’
I rubbed his arm soothingly. ‘It’s OK, Tom. She’s not really here. It’s just me.’
‘No!’ He pushed my hand away.
‘Who is she, then? Why is she haunting you?’
‘When I go to sleep.’
‘It’s just a dream, that’s all. A recurring dream. I used to have one about—’ I stopped abruptly. I used to have one when I was eighteen, about people who wanted to kill me, chasing me through an abandoned hotel somewhere abroad. It had gone on for about two years in the end. But it was probably best not to mention something so miserable to him in case he fixated on it. ‘Anna’s been having one about finding a horse in the garden,’ I said instead. Yes, much more pleasant.
