Falling For You (45 page)

‘Oh, what’s the use?’ I mutter as I walk over to the door. ‘What’s the use when what it boils down to is - you’re as stubborn and hell-bent as Mum ever was? Nothing I say is ever going to make any difference to you, is it? Nothing I say is ever going to get you to shift. I might as well face it.’

‘Rose...’

I keep on walking.
I tried, Lawrence. I knew he wouldn’t want to hear any of it
. I can feel the hunch of my shoulders, as I walk away, holding in the pain of my defeat. When Lawrence comes in -
if
he ever comes in - I will just have to take him upstairs and we’ll explain it all to Dad together.

 ‘I really need to take that bath now...’

 ‘There’s something else’ Dad admits in a small, almost hesitant voice as I reach the door. ‘Something came for you while you were away, Love.’

What now?

‘I think it - might be the letter you were waiting for. Your Uni letter.  Matt Dougal spotted it over at next door’s - he was up there dropping Pilgrim off home, apparently. They were going to throw it out. He insisted on bringing it over for you... it came just after you left here, Christmas Day.’

My letter? ‘Where is it?’ I can feel the blood draining from my legs at the thought. It’s here then? It came.

‘It’s on the dresser. Over there.’

I never saw it when I came in. I wasn’t looking out for it. My letter. Oh, God.

I go over and pick it up without really seeing it. Is it the one? My heart is going ten to the dozen. Will it contain the offer I’ve been longing for? I know he’s expecting me to tear it open it but something perverse in me doesn’t want to do that right now, even though I know he’s waiting. I put it in my pocket and I hear his quiet gasp of disappointment behind me. I don’t want to open it because I’ve finally realised the truth.

It doesn’t matter, does it? It doesn’t matter what that letter says because Dad is going to be stuck here for the rest of his life, and I will, too.

Rose will have figured out by now that I’m not coming.

I look up as the couple with their teenagers and the guys we saw larking about on the way down arrive to lend a fresh set of hands.

‘Bloody rain,’ the older guy grins at me. It’s only intermittent at the moment, sudden blowy gusts but it seems to have ruined their sledging plans. I see one of the younger guys look over at me curiously. He’d be about my age. He reckons he knows me, maybe, but I’m not hanging about to give him the chance to find out. I’ve been here the best part of an hour already. I look back at the fallen tree. We’ve got the damn thing most of the way off the path now. I need to get on.

I make my excuses to the group and the tractor guy comes up with something generic about me being in a hurry to get back to my girl.
If only you knew the truth
, mate. I give him a high-five and he seems satisfied that I’ve done my share. The community police lady makes some regretful noise about ‘
mince-pies and coffee at hers when we’re done’
. She assures me I’d still be welcome to join them. I tell her I wish that I could, and it’s almost true. It’d be better than where I’m going now, that’s for sure.  She smiles at me from under her lashes the way some women do and it occurs to me - with some regret - that if I hadn’t spent the last five years living practically as a hermit I’d have done all right with the ladies.

But right now, there is Rose. And Rose’s
d
ad. She’ll still be waiting, I know. And I did promise her. She might even have told him by now. I feel a small curiosity at that; at how her old man might have taken it, the thought of
me
.  How exactly might she have put it to him? And then - would she have told him all of it, I mean, the bit about her and me, or would she have left that part out? I don’t want to go down there to Clare Farm and that’s the truth. It’s a few short minutes from the lane, that’s all.  But all the way down, this scenario keeps flashing into my mind; if Rose has spilled it all out - to Ty and the rest of her family, the relatives will all be baying for my blood by now.  They’ll have called the fuzz. The police will be there, probably, waiting for me or they’ll be on their way. I shrug my collar closer up against my face as I walk. If they take me in now then I’ll never get the chance to speak to her dad like she wanted me to. If they take me in now, I’ll be throwing all Sunny’s chances away for
nothing
, Rose. 

I stick my hands deep into my pockets as I walk, making myself keep going straight down, because my legs don’t want to go this way anymore. I can hear my own heart racing, feel it pulsing in my chest and my throat, feel all my limbs trembling with adrenalin, because I shouldn’t be here, I don’t want to be here, risking discovery with every moment; I’m ready to run.  And now that I’m standing here in her front yard I cannot find the courage to knock on her front door.  The door of their home.  I take off my gloves and my palms are sweating underneath, all clammy and wet. The long icicles, like frozen daggers reaching down from the guttering along the front, remind me of prison bars. I want to pick up a brick and knock them all off, free her somehow from the prison I have put her in, free him,
free myself
, but I don’t touch them.

Where are you
, Rose? I scan the upstairs windows, desperate for some glimpse of her.  I stare at the closed front door, at the trail of footprints outside which she must have made so recently, the edges of it being melted away by the rain. The downstairs curtains are still drawn, even at this late hour. A thin line of smoke struggles up from the chimney breast but there’s a wind getting up now, pushing it this way and that. I can hear the hissing of the rain as it lands on the frozen ground, the uneasy sound of the gusts blowing through the trees.  And then there’s a faint rapping on the window.

When I look up, my first hopes that it might be her are immediately dashed. It’s just an old guy, sitting at one of the upstairs windows, probably wondering who I am.  An old guy.

I swallow down the bile that comes up to my throat then. In any other place, I wouldn’t have recognised my neighbour; we never had anything to do with the Clares, but I know who he is. Without knowing his face, I know my victim. His action, calling me back by rapping at the window, has stopped me in my tracks, sent a shot of fear right into my core. What does he want? What could he possibly want? Does he know who I am? He can’t know unless she’s told him. It was dark that night five years ago and I’ve grown up into a man, changed beyond all recognition. No, he can’t know me unless Rose has said - but what does he want?

He raps again, insistently now, loudly. I can make out his gnarled hands in their fingerless mittens. They look like a child’s hands might do, poised beseechingly at the window. For all that he can rap at me, he can’t actually
do
anything. He can’t move. He’s helpless. His mouth, twisted in strange shapes as he tries to form some words I cannot hear, make him look grotesque somehow, remind me of a ghost at the window. Now he’s got my attention he makes a quick motion with his head, ‘
come up here’
. He wants me up there? It’s what I’ve come for, after all. It’s him I’ve come to see, at her behest, but...

No
.

The fear that grips me now is like nothing else, it’s like nothing in this life. Now that I’ve seen him I realise he can’t possibly want me here, not me, no matter what she thinks. He’s calling me because he doesn’t know who I am. She hasn’t told him yet, has she? He doesn’t know I have no business in his house. Besides, I have no time. I have not the will. Why should I go up to him? What for? I didn’t want to. When I was with her, she made it seem so clear, what I had to do but now ... I need to wake up, get myself out of here. It’s the only way. I turn my back to the old man, my sodden boots sinking into the slushy snow and he raps one more time.

This time, just once.  Forlorn, as if he realises he is going to be ignored and I feel a shot of anger on his behalf. Why the hell has he been left all alone? Abandoned.  Forgotten about. I feel a sharp pain go through my heart at the memory of what that feels like.
Where’s Rose
? Surely one of his people could go up to him. He doesn’t need
me
. I turn back, unwillingly, and he makes eye contact with me again.

Up here, he beckons, his mouth opening and shutting like a fish, gagging and gasping.  Oh, I see what it is.   He can’t catch his breath, can he?  Fuck
, fuck
, there isn’t time … there isn’t time for him and there isn’t time for me, either.    

And yet, here I am, taking the steps on the fire escape up to his door two at a time. The fire-door, leading in to his bedroom, is stiff - is clearly never, ever used. Perhaps surprisingly, it is unlocked
. Quick, calmly,
my professional training kicks in
, check his vital signs, what does he want, what does he need?
I step inside, my heart hammering loud as a steam train, into his room. Blinking in the dim light, I take in his bed which is unmade, the wilting chrysanthemums in a vase, two unfinished mugs of tea on his cabinet. I take it all in at a glance, in a millisecond, and then the nebuliser that’s fallen to the floor, well out of his reach. I pick it up and insert it into his mouth gently, my hand supporting the back of his neck.

 ‘Nice and easy does it, sir. Deep, long breaths, you know the way …’ and he’s gulping in the puffs, his eyes tight shut with the pain and the effort of it till the nebuliser does its work, opens up his airways and then suddenly - there he is, he’s back.  All done.  Easy-peasy.  I look at him and I see he’s looking at me expectantly, his hair parted neatly to one side in an old-fashioned kind of way. He looks so harmless, and gentle, her father.  So helpless.

‘Damn thing slipped from my hand,’ he says. His voice, cracked and faint but still well-heeled, comes as a shock. It’s not the same voice I hear coming at me sometimes in my nightmares
.

‘Would you be so good as to open up that window for me, young man?’ he asks shyly.

‘The … um …?’ Who does he even think I am, I wonder? He doesn’t know me? I glance at the window and it’s one of the old-fashioned types, a sash window. The sill is wide and deep, would have been painted white once, a long time ago. I can see the cracks in the wood from here. Like him, the whole room feels worn out.    

‘It’s cold,’ I warn.

‘That’s what they always say
.
’
H
is voice is beguilingly gentle. ‘It’s
cold
. But it’s been a while since I last felt the crisp air on my face.’ I look at him, guilty, as he continues; ‘Not been out of this house since September.’ Then he adds, frowning, ‘we are still in December, aren’t we?’

I nod. Go over and attempt to pull up his window a few inches. The radiator just underneath it is working overtime, boiling to my touch. The window pane doesn’t budge.

‘There’s a catch,’ he says, and his words dance around inside my brain, shocking me, making me think this might be some kind of trick.
What’s the catch? That the police are waiting for me downstairs? That someone else is waiting to take me in?

‘Where?’  I say but I spot what he’s talking about even as I ask it. It’s a little wooden catch. As I undo it, I think; what am I even doing here? Going out of my way to open up the window for this guy. Someone will see it, or they’ll hear it go up. This is what Rose wanted but all I can think right now is that if they catch me here I’ll be flung in jail for sure.
What am I doing? 

I need to get out of here, yes, but for some reason I don’t move. He breathes in long and deeply, the moment the outside air surges in; to me, it is merely cold, to him it is fresh, a relief from the stale air in his room which is musty and smells of some sort of liniment. I stand by the radiator, enjoying the warmth while he enjoys the cold. After a while, he says a shocking thing;

‘Have you ever been in prison, young man?’ I blanche. ‘No, no of course you haven’t.’ He smiles apologetically. ‘But it must be like this, no?’ He indicates his own body. ‘No chance to do …all the things…’

‘I can imagine.’ I say dumbly.

‘Years ago, I’d have told you …’
H
e points to his wheelchair - ‘something like this was my worst fear. Always a very active man, you know. Not having freedom of movement - been the worst thing.’

‘I’m sorry,’

‘They say it’s cold, but the real reason they won’t open up the window for me is that my suspicious sister-in-law doesn’t trust I won’t topple myself out of it.’ He delivers this all with a small smile.

‘Any reason why she shouldn’t?’ I ask, cringing.

‘None whatsoever, young man.’

I glance towards his bedside cabinet.

‘Look, do you need a drink of water or something? I’ve got to...’

He smiles. ‘No, thank you. Saw you come back with Rose just now
.
’
H
e leans forward on his chair curiously. ‘I saw you brought my girl back to me. I want to thank you, for that
.
’
H
is voice wobbles a bit, betraying his feelings.  I lift up my hands depreciatingly, uncomfortable at his gratitude. Uncomfortable, in fact, at being in his presence at all and I feel a wave of shame wash over me.

‘No problem.’
You have nothing to thank me for; everything to blame me for,
I think. ‘Rose not around?’