Fast Friends (54 page)

‘Of course not,’ said the nurse soothingly, ‘I wasn’t
going to
suggest you did. Why don’t you call
a friend and ask them to
come here
and pick up your house keys, then they can go to
your home and bring you
whatever you need. Address book, a change of clothes, that sort of thing.’

‘
Of course,’ said
Camilla, glancing down at the amethyst
silk
dress with its glittering belt and matching high-heeled
shoes. ‘Different
clothes. We were going out tonight,’ she added, needing to offer some kind of
explanation, her pale tear-stained
face
dreadfully at odds with the bright glamour of her outfit.
‘To celebrate
being married for six months . .

Loulou arrived at ten o’clock, equally
pale and shocked.
Camilla’s
words had barely been discernible over the phone,
but as soon as she was able to
understand what had happened
she had
left Lili with Simon at the flat, jumped into his car and come straight to the
hospital.

‘Oh, you poor thing, you poor, poor thing,’ she murmured,
holding Camilla tightly in her slender arms as her
friend gave
way to her first real tears and collapsed in a storm of
heaving, grief-stricken sobs. They were in the waiting-room since Loulou
couldn’t enter the intensive care unit which only
permitted visits from relatives. Camilla, persuaded outside for a few
minutes whilst a team of doctors carried out some
tests, was
frantic to get back to Matt.

‘It’s so awful, he’s just lying there and he looks OK, but
he’s unconscious,’ she sobbed, her tears soaking Loulou’s shirt. ‘Oh
Lou, I just don’t know what to do . . . I feel so
helpless but I
can’t bear to leave him
and the doctor told me to be prepared
for the worst. If Matt dies . . .
if he
dies . .

Loulou, tears streaming down her own
cheeks, clasped
Camilla’s
hands tightly between her own. ‘He won’t die,’ she
said fiercely. ‘He’s got so much to
live for. Matt can’t die, he’ll
get better. Now tell me what you want me to bring from the
house. I’ll phone Jack and tell him
what’s happened so he can
keep the
kids with him for a few more days.’

‘
Phone numbers. In the
book by the telephone. I’ve got to
call Matt’s family.’

‘
I’ll phone them if you
like,’ said Loulou, her mind racing.
The
awful task was clearly quite beyond Camilla’s capabilities at
present. ‘And you need an overnight bag. I’ll find
everything.
You go back in there and stay with Matt. I’ll be back in
about an hour and a half’

The nightmare worsened.

By the time Loulou returned the
doctors were carrying out
more tests, this time designed to assess brain function. When she
was shown into the tiny office where Camilla was sitting
in an
attitude of total shock and despair,
she didn’t know what she
could possibly do except stay with her.

‘
I got through to Matt’s
parents,’ she said, inwardly reliving
the
terrible minutes when she had had to break the news to
them. ‘They’re
flying out tonight on Concorde.’

‘
They might be too late,’
said Camilla quietly, too far gone
now
even for tears. ‘Lou, it’s all happening so fast. I can’t keep
up. I can’t
understand what they’re telling me half the time.

Reporters keep phoning up wanting to know how Matt is and
the nurses
just say critical. But one of the doctors brought me in
here and asked me if I knew how Matt felt about kidney
transplants. He wants me to consider it and I
simply can’t
concentrate . .

Her voice trailed away as she turned
to gaze out of the
window. Below them,
the city glittered with lights beneath an
indigo
sky. Loulou sat down beside her and tried to take her
hand, but Camilla
was twisting her wedding-ring jerkily round and round.

‘I don’t
know
how Matt feels about kidney
transplants,’ she went on despairingly, ‘and I can’t ask him because he’s
unconscious. Oh Lou, how can I live without him if he dies?’

Loulou swallowed hard and this time
could not reassure
Camilla that Matt wasn’t
going to die. But praying — and at the same time sure that she was doing the
right thing — she said
slowly, ‘You’re his
wife, you know him best, but if you really
can’t think about it at the
moment I’ll tell you. I know Matt well enough to be able to say that if he did
have to die he would want his organs to be donated to someone else who needs
them. Of
course he would, Cami. He wouldn’t
hesitate for a single second.
He’d be happy to think that he could help
other people.’

Camilla nodded and pushed her hair wearily away from her
face. ‘You’re right. I’ll tell the doctor when he comes back that
they can have whatever they want.’ Glancing at the
overnight
bag which Loulou had dropped
on to the table, she added, ‘It
looks as if I might not need that, after
all. When they’ve finished doing the tests they’ll come and tell me. They’ve
said that I can
stay with him for a little
while afterwards to say goodbye . . . if
I have to . . . It hasn’t happened yet. Maybe there’ll be a
miracle
. .

But the consultant’s grave expression
when he entered the
room
told Camilla at once that there had been no miracle.
Slowly, and with great compassion, he
explained to Camilla
that Matt’s injury had been so devastating that there was no
possible hope that he could ever
recover. The brain function
tests, which had been carried out by two separate teams of
doctors, proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that all
brain
function had ceased. He was terribly
sorry to have to break
such tragic news to her .. .

Camilla held up her hand, the one
with the wedding-ring on
the third
finger. "Thank you for being so kind. I know that Matt
would want . . .’ She hesitated, swallowing hard,
then said,
‘Would have wanted his organs donated for transplant
purposes. Do I have to sign any form for that?’

‘I have a form here. I’m sure you’ll gain some comfort in
the
months ahead from the knowledge that your
husband’s tragic
death hasn’t been
completely in vain. Thanks to him, and to
you, Mrs Lewis, others will
live.’

Silently, Camilla took the fountain pen from his fingers
and signed the form. Then she rose unsteadily to her feet and looked at Loulou.
‘Will you wait here for me?’

Beyond words, the solid ache in her throat almost
unbearable, Loulou nodded.

‘
Are you sure you want
to go back in there, Mrs Lewis?’
asked
the consultant with evident concern. Camilla stared at
him in
astonishment.

‘
Oh, I’m quite sure. I
didn’t tell him earlier . . . I was saving
it as a surprise for him when he woke up . . . but I have to let
him
know now. He would have been so proud. You see, I’m pregnant. I’m going to have
Matt’s baby.’

Chapter 41

Small, icy waves lapped against the rocky shoreline with
lazy
irregularity. When the tide eventually
receded a crescent of
silver sand
would arc across the bay, glistening in the late
afternoon sunlight, and
Camilla would take Rocky for a walk across to the little town of Drumlachan.

But for now, while the tide was still in and most of the
sand
hidden, she was content to sit in the
old wooden rocking-chair
in the warm shelter of the glass conservatory
which fronted the cottage, and allow her mind to wander.

It had to be a step forward, she realized, to be able to
allow
such thoughts. Now, almost a year after Matt’s death she could cope with
them, but for many months it had been a physical impossibility. Fighting the
memories, willing herself not to remember those so very happy times, she had
backed away as
much as possible, withdrawing
like a snail into its shell from
the pain they so acutely evoked.

But at last, it seemed, that pain was beginning to recede.
She could remember Matt without being engulfed by grief. Having told herself
over and over again that she was lucky to have had him and to have been that
happy for a short time was better than never having known him at all, she was
managing to overcome the bitterness she felt at such tragic unfairness, and such
terrible, terrible waste.

The guilt too, had been overwhelming at first. In the days
following the funeral, now mercifully hazy in her mind, she had become
convinced that the accident had been her fault. If Matt hadn’t been driving
back along that particular road and at that particular moment,
to be with
her,
there would have been no
accident.
If she hadn’t told him not to stay with his friends in
the clubhouse he
would still be alive.

And nothing anyone could say to her
had been able to
persuade her otherwise.

Losing the baby a few days later, miscarrying in the same
hospital where Matt had died, had convinced her
still further. That her last link with Matt had been broken, wrenched from
her grief-stricken body with vicious clawing spasms
of pain,
had proved to her beyond all doubt that she had been to blame.
The miscarriage was her punishment. She didn’t
deserve to
give birth to his child.

Calmly now, she rocked in her chair and gazed out over the
blue-green water bordering the west coast of Scotland. Rocky,
dozing in the shade, stirred slightly as Camilla
reached for the
iced spritzer on the table beside her.

It had taken a long time before she
had believed what
everyone
had told her, had realized that guilt was a natural
extension of grief and that the
accident had not, after all, been
her fault. Until recently, every time someone had said, ‘Time heals all
wounds’, she had wanted to hit them. It had seemed
like a conspiracy to keep her alive, and she had known
that they were lying, trying to make her feel better. Haunted by grief and
guilt and the most appalling loneliness, she had
refused to
listen to them, hating everyone for lying to her. Nothing
could make her feel better. Matt was dead. He was no longer with her. How could
she ever feel better, knowing that?

But
somehow, like a very slowly unfolding miracle, she
^u
nderstood now
that some degree of recovery was possible.

And Squirrel’s Gate, the tiny cottage
perched on the edge of
the sea
three miles from the small Scottish town of Drumlachan, had played its part in
the healing process. Remote, backed by
purple
mountains and fronted by water, it had been offered to her by a friend of Matt’s
who would be away in California for
that
time. Initially planning to stay for just a couple of weeks –
the solitude and silence had been what Camilla had
craved
following the ghastly crowding
of her life in the first weeks
after
Matt’s death – she had closeted herself there for almost
two months.
Toby and Charlotte had come to stay throughout
August with Marty joining them for the second fortnight. When
it had been time for them to return to school for
the autumn
term Camilla had gone back
with them, but the house in
Belgravia brought back such vivid memories
of Matt that it had been an effort to remain there. Toby and Charlotte
understood
what had happened, but when
Marty, who had no comprehension
of death, ran from room to room in the
house shouting, ‘Where
Matt?’, Camilla had
been consumed each time with fresh,
unbearable grief.

So she had stayed in London with the children on alternate
weeks. On those Friday afternoons, as soon
as she had kissed
them goodbye at Jack’s
house, she would drive up to Scotland
and retreat into silence.

As autumn passed and winter drew
closer, the cottage became
more
demanding and she welcomed the diversions. The plumbing was erratic, the
central heating system downright temperamental and the electricity supply
extremely susceptible to the
vagaries of the
weather. In December, when the bad weather
came, snow obliterated the
tiny lane leading to the cottage and
banked
around it like an eiderdown. Kept busy from morning
until night digging
the snow away from the door, cooking by candlelight over a tiny paraffin stove
and battling to keep warm,
Camilla had no
time to think of anything else. When the children
were there, she was
equally diverted but maintaining a pretence of cheerfulness for a week at a
time was an appalling strain and much as she loved them it was a relief to be
able to return to her
own thoughts and weep
as much as she wanted without
interruption when they weren’t there.