Finding You (25 page)
Authors: Giselle Green
Then she asks, ‘Do you want me to ask my Mum or Alys to come look after Hadyn for us? You want me up there with you?’ She isn’t giving me eye contact—she’s still angry—but she is offering. In the face of such adversity, that she would put our differences aside to help me, that means a lot, more than she will ever know, but ...
‘Your mum can’t cope with him. You know she can’t and Alys ...’
‘I’ll bring him then,’ she states quietly. ‘We’ll all go.’
‘No.’ I shake my head, though I want to say
yes, please, please come with me
. ‘I have to drive fast now or I might miss my father; I can’t wait. And there is no need—I just need to go by myself. Rob will be there by the morning; I won’t be alone.’ I put my hand out to her arm again and she moves away.
‘All right, then. If you don’t need us there, we won’t go.’
‘It’s not that I don’t want you, J.’
‘It’s okay.’ She holds up her hands. ‘You go.’ Her voice is so quiet and strangely controlled now, I feel even worse than when she was yelling at me. ‘You do what you need to do, okay? I understand that.’
‘J, about what you said earlier ... about the Hermosa clinic, I need to explain to you ...’
She holds up her hands again and I am silenced.
‘We’ll talk again when you get back, okay? You need to go now, and if you’re going to be on the road for several hours in these conditions, I don’t think we should discuss this anymore. You might ... get upset and not pay attention and have an accident,’ she says, strangely pragmatic now, and I have to accept it.
‘Will you ring your mum or someone ... have someone here with you while I’m gone?’ I beg. I don’t want to leave her like this, either. Not after I have upset her, not like this.
‘We’ll be
fine
, Charlie.’ She picks up some more bits of glass, very quiet and subdued all of a sudden. ‘What do you imagine is going to happen, eh?’ She gets up to go and fetch a bigger box and a spare plastic bag from the drawer now, completely engrossed in her task, picking up all the mess.
Is this like all the mess that we’re making of our lives,
I think.
In the end, I don’t bother packing a suitcase. I don’t have anything to eat. I just ... go to the door. Downstairs, Julia’s busied herself with some task and she is stiff and distant again, barely looks up when I go to say goodbye. I know she won’t give me a kiss before I leave. I don’t deserve one, I think. At the top of the stairs, a small noise makes me look up and there he is, his wide eyes looking spooked and confused at the goings-on. Did we wake him with our quarrel? Would we really be doing this to each other if there wasn’t already so much going on, I wonder. At the door, lingering, I call out to her brokenly.
‘Look after our son for me.’
She doesn’t reply, just gives me a weary look as much to say,
don’t I always?
But a déjà vu spooks me. I made the same request of her the night I left the two of them in Spain and went away before.
By the time I saw Julia again, our son was gone.
33 - Julia
It has rained all night, and I have heard every single drop of it fall. In the bathroom upstairs, there’s been a steady drip-drip-drip going through into the small hours, echoing round the loud and cavernous place that is now my heart. Charlie’s gone. He took the car and left about ten o’clock. I think. I wanted him gone. I wanted every sight and sound of him gone even though it tore me in two for him to go, but I couldn’t bear it. He’s done the one thing I asked him—
I begged him
—when we first came back, that we should never do to each other. That we should never lie to each other, never keep things from each other, that whatever has gone and whatever may come, we should be honest about it. Honesty I could bear, whatever it unearthed. I know I could.
But finding this out about Charlie—
this way
—it has hurt. An hour or so back, it was hurting me in every breath of air I took into my chest. It was hurting me deep in my muscles and my stomach and in the back of my neck; I felt so stiff somehow, left behind, stuffed like a wooden doll full of confusion and grief, but now I feel ... not like me anymore. As if the real me has flown away somewhere, somewhere up high and safe where all this rain that’s falling outside, all these storms going on in my head and my heart, they can’t hurt me because it’s as if it’s happening to someone else and I’m just watching.
I’ve felt like this before, haven’t I? I know where. It brings it all back, losing my baby, losing him when that was the most unthinkable thing that could happen, and yet ... Hadyn is back, he is here, and I’m also aware of the part of me that’s still trying now, for the sake of our son, still valiantly struggling to keep on functioning.
Our rowing woke Hadyn. After Charlie left, he bumped down the stairs one by one on his bottom till he got to the end. There was nothing for it. I had to let him stay there with me, watching Thomas DVDs till even he couldn’t hold out anymore. And all the while I sat there with him, one arm held lightly around our little boy, there were so many things going through my head, all the colours of the rainbow of every emotion, I thought I would explode with it.
The anger came first, red as volcanic lava flowing out of the top of my head, streaming down the mountainside of my limbs. I kept thinking:
no wonder Lourdes was so smug when we met up for coffee in the afternoon.
Of course she would have been. The bitch. She had known something that I hadn’t known. She’d been savouring it, hadn’t she? All the while that we’d been sitting there, me trying to be civil because I was there on a mission for my boy, on a mission fuelled by my love, she must have been thinking how innocent and naïve her rival for Charlie’s affection was. That I was a complete schmuck and an idiot.
If I had known anything, there was no way I’d ever have turned up asking her for her help, would I?
Has he told you
? She’d spewed out, her words glittering with malice like sugar crystals poisoned in the bowl.
Do you know
, she’d drawled silkily ...
about Charlie and me
?
No. Of course I had not known. Because I had trusted him, hadn’t I? He’d told me—again— that he wanted to marry me, and I’d readily believed that things could work out between us. The thought of it—how my trust had been betrayed by both of them, but by him—
most of all by him
, because he is the one who counts—it rose up in my gullet, threatening to choke me and Hadyn kept turning his head, his little eyes worried and on high alert, for once not impassive but looking right at me as I choked back the tears.
Ah, God.
I got up eventually and closed the curtains against the night. By one a.m., Hadyn was dull-eyed but somehow on tenterhooks still. I carried him up to bed because
I
needed to go to bed. All that wind and weather, battering against my windows and the thought snuck in, twisting in my guts
, Charlie’s out there, driving in this,
and somewhere in my heart, I hoped he’d stopped for shelter, prayed that it was better wherever he was on the motorway because despite it all, he was still the love of my life. And he mattered. Even despite what he’d done to me. Even despite the fact that, after tonight, we would no longer be together. And that small, quiet part of me, the part that was not angry but which still held the love I felt for Charlie in a sacred, inviolable place, also prayed for him. That he might get to his father in time, to say goodbye; that he might not have left his departure so much till the eleventh hour that he ended up missing him by a hair’s breadth. I hadn’t argued with him, had I, when he’d said he needed to go up there on his own? I’d offered, but I’d felt ... he already knew in his heart what he needed to do.
And, as the winds subside outside, the garden quietening, adjusting to the damage in these first few moments after the storm, increasingly, so do I.
I know that we cannot stay together after this. I can’t do it. I realised that even while we were still talking, still here together in the evening. It came to me. No matter how angry I was, no matter how mad I was at him, even more than that, I’d felt this sadness like a huge ball, filling up my whole chest. Because we were over. On our anniversary, too. No matter how much I loved Charlie and still wanted to be with him now, what was the point? There was no point being with someone who could hurt me this much. So this whole ... fantasy of our perfect lives, big home, beautiful baby, the couple who have everything ... maybe it’s been exposed.
Maybe it’s all been ... nothing but an illusion.
And now, the rainbow of my heart turns from blue to a dull and dreadful yellow, shot through with little jagged peaks of fear because that has brought
her
back into my mind again, hasn’t it? Illusion. And what I am going to do about her? Because in amongst all this, there’s still the threat hanging over me—closer now than ever—that the next thing that’ll happen is that Charlie will insist on taking Hadyn off to Atlanta.
He
will.
I’d hoped—maybe I’d still be able to persuade him—we could take things slowly and he’d
listen
to me. I’d had news of Illusion to share with him, hadn’t I? She’d been a good mama. That much at least, the scheming Lourdes had been prepared to confirm. So. That means the trauma theory is flawed, possibly dangerous. It means ... Hadyn mustn’t go there. I mustn’t let him go. And there is only one way I know to prove it.
At two a.m., still awake, I tiptoe down the stairs to find my laptop. The storm is no longer raging outside, but I can see through the kitchen window that my trees have been bent over so far backwards, I’m sure at least some of them must have snapped. After all, how much pummelling is it possible to take?
I open up my browser. It helps a little to have this task to focus on. It’s helping me not to fall into the shock that comes with realising that, once again, my life has fallen apart. I type in:
LaPiedra
, Spain
, location
.
Nothing. I rub at my eyes, frustrated at the stupidity of
that
. Do not tell me now, please, that LaPiedra does not exist? But there are no hits. Not for what I want. There’s a load of links to a gemstone company—
piedra
means
stone
in Spanish—and a few other random things like a boy band and what seems to be a new type of exercise regime, but no map, dammit. Maybe something’s wrong with the computer tonight. These things happen. The place exists, all right. I saw reference to it in that paper online, and Lourdes already confirmed her cousin lives in the outskirts, didn’t she? It’s three-thirty a.m. My computer tells me that it is the seventh of June already ...
already
? Naseem is flying out today, then. He’d made it clear that I could go with him, if I wished, that he’d help me, but ... I shiver now, realising the enormity of what it is I’m about to take on.
How can we have come to it so soon. I thought I might have had a little longer.
And yet ... given that Charlie is out tonight, that he’ll be away for the next few days at this rate and possibly not expect any communication from me in the meantime, perhaps this is the best time to do it after all? I open up my emails and message Naseem, hoping that I am not too late to take advantage of his offer because this is not something that I want to do on my own. Naseem will help me; he’s a whiz kid on computer-type things, he’s got all sorts of sat-nav on his phone too, better than most people, for places all over the globe, he’s shown me. Wherever it is, this place LaPiedra, I will find it. And I will find her.
And then we shall see whatever we shall see.
34 - Charlie
I have never wanted to leave home less than I did tonight. Will Julia ever believe that? To leave her as I did—
on our anniversary
—without a chance to properly explain, Christ, what must she be thinking? Two hours out of London and the dark motorway stretches ahead of me interminably, like my regrets. I know what she’s thinking, because she said it, didn’t she?
If you and Lourdes were trying to get pregnant ...
Is that what she thinks? Dear God, that must have stung, but I have no idea what it was that Lourdes actually said to her,
knowing Lourdes, what she must have implied to her ...
and J gave me no chance to explain.
My fault. I don’t deny that. All this time since we’ve been back together, I could have brought it up. I could’ve told her. I wanted it to be over with, to be free and clear of it, but ... even if I had, would the truth have been any more palatable as far as she was concerned? Probably not. No, it would probably have not. Would she really have been so happy to learn that her hero had feet of clay, after all? How, in one moment of jealous stupidity and maybe in my own way, while I was still running away last year from my own grief at our lost child, I went and let her so badly down?
Would she?
I let her down then, and now. I flick my wipers to double-time as a torrent of stormwater hits my windscreen, blurring the road ahead. I’ve done just exactly what she said I would: left her in the lurch just as things have suddenly come to such a crisis point between us.
I’ve left her alone
. That’s how she’ll see it, my coming away tonight. I know that. She made it clear to me soon after we got back home from Spain, how she feared that I was a runner, how she feared I was a guy who would never stick around when the going got tough. That’s what she said. I haven’t forgotten, and the memory still rankles because that isn’t true of what I’m doing tonight.
I’m not running from you, Julia. I’m not driving all the way up to Yorkshire in this gale because I want to run away from what I did or from how much you are hurting, don’t you see that?
My father is
dying
.
He’s dying, and tonight—if I make it up there in time—may be the last words of goodbye I ever say to him. They just may.
That thought bumps around, pinging hollowly off the edges of my mind like the water off my windscreen at this speed. I’ve kept my foot on the gas despite the rain because I know I have to get there. I have to hurry now. This one last thing to do for him, and there is no more time. I’m running out of time, and there are so many things I have yet to say to him. I know that there are—there must be—though I can’t remember any of them right now because the road is so wet, so slippery, and I have to keep all my attention on the road, the clock ticking by the minutes so fast, my brain hurting with the effort of concentration, driving in this when there is so little time and I left her in distress, and my baby crying on the stairs.
I stomp on the brakes, hard, aware of the flare of half a dozen red brake lights up ahead. What’s happening? I can barely see. Visibility is appalling under these conditions; someone will have veered off the road. Fallen asleep, maybe? Pray God, no accident, though. No injured party needing my assistance because tonight, I need to keep my focus on my own goal.
That’s why I left you at home, Julia. Don’t you see? I’d have needed someone to support me, a hand to hold, tonight. Maybe a shoulder to cry on. You’d have offered that, but then you would have needed ... something else: my undivided attention or explanations, apologies, closure. You’d have needed that, and by God, you’d have deserved it, but I could not have done that for you, my love. How could I have been available to give you that tonight?
Not tonight
. My father ...
He’s dying, Rolli said.
What does that mean? I have witnessed death a thousand times; I should know what it means. Am I not a surgeon? Should I not be prepared,
better prepared than most
, for this moment? I had been precious little prepared when we’d believed we’d lost our son. Is it because in his case, there had been no chance for goodbyes? Well. This much I will rectify tonight. This goodbye will be done properly, even though—I wipe my dripping nose with my sleeve—I find now that I think on it that I scarcely feel I know what that will mean, either.
The thought is sobering. Have I never said a proper goodbye, then?
In my life?
Surely, I rack my brains, my eyes glued to the road ahead (no accident here, thank heaven, just the volume of traffic, even at this hour and in this weather). Surely I must have said a painful goodbye before to
someone or something
significant in my life? Agustina, perhaps. She meant so much to me. I was there with the others in the room when she drew her last breath, but did I really feel it? My son had so recently been lost to me. I was still numb. When I think back on it now, I do not believe that I did.
And now ... is it possible that I have just lost my relationship with Julia, too?
That
hurts. I ease my foot off the gas a little, feeling the wheels aquaplaning beneath me.
Why did you do it, Lourdes
? You didn’t have to tell her. I would have done it, myself, in time.
Why speak of it?
I have never understood women at all, though I try. Why would Lourdes, my oldest friend, have done that to me? Is it because she was jealous of Julia, I wonder now. Could that be it? The miles on the road ahead of me drag on. It is so dark, the road pulls all the unexamined thoughts out of the corners of my mind.
Perhaps I gave her cause to be? Mea culpa, I could have given Lourdes hope even though I never intended to. She was still interested. Last year, she made that plain enough. I could have slept with her so easily, though I chose not to. Still, I had accepted her comfort and friendship. In my state of loss, how easy it had been to fall back into the easy companionship that we’d always had, how easily—I see now—she could have mistaken that for something more. Clearly, she had been expecting something more. Had she really believed that it would be so easy to win me back, that my feelings for Julia were all rooted in the fact that she’d borne me a son?
They were not, but...
Is that, I wonder now, the real reason why Lourdes had brought up the idea of us visiting the Hermosa Clinic?
You mourn your baby, and I’d do anything to take that sorrow away,
she’d whispered in my ear as we’d sat down together on a park bench one day. It had happened just after Abuela passed away, the week before the funeral. How cold the air had been that morning, the shadow of a storm across the bay and my heart had been full of jangled ends of all the loves in my life which had been left unfinished, bleeding and incomplete.
What if
, her lips had brushed, warm against my ear,
what if Julia was already pregnant when she met you, though? She had a husband before, they tell me. You mourn your son, my love, but what if ... he was never yours in the first place? Would you mourn so much, then?
Can you imagine, Julia, how confused my heart had been just then? How badly I had wanted to cut out all the hurt I was feeling around so many things, around Hadyn and around Abuela and around
us
? I’d wanted to cut it all out.
I’m a surgeon. That’s what I do, cut out the bits that hurt, the bits that are broken, causing all the pain -
and then she came along and offered me what sounded like a solution.
If Hadyn were not mine, I would not have lost my son. I would not hurt so much. So I went with her to Hermosa. I took ... I took his baby brush with remnants of his hairs on it for his DNA, I remember, wiping at my eyes now because they will not stop, those tears at the memory of what I did, they will not stop. I went with Lourdes to Hermosa and I took a paternity test.
Oh, foolish, foolish, gullible man that I was. I didn’t see at that moment that it would solve nothing. That it would save me not a whit of pain, nothing, because I already loved that boy to the core of my being.
I already loved him;
how could anything change that? He was already mine. I was already his. Nothing was ever going to alter that, and I couldn’t run away from the pain of losing him no matter what I did.
Afterwards, I told Lourdes this. That I had made a mistake. That I would always love and respect her as a friend but I’d made a huge error in going. I didn’t want those results. I didn’t need them. I told her that whatever the genetics of it, I’d always consider him my son. And that it would always be you who I loved, J. I couldn’t go back on that, pretend any different. That’s why I left her, that day of Agustina’s funeral at the church when someone told me they’d spotted you at the park. That’s why I came back to find you, Julia. That’s why I still need to mend whatever’s broken between us and, if you can find it in your heart to forgive me, I pray that it is not too late, that we still can.
I wipe my eyes on my sleeve again, wishing that tonight I did not have to be alone, that I could have taken Julia’s suggestion and brought her with me and then ... I make a new decision. Tomorrow in the morning, first thing, I will ring her. I will ask her to come up and once she gets here, whether she’s keen to hear me out or not, I will explain, tell her everything that happened, how a momentary madness took over me last year. Hang on for just a few more hours, Julia, and I will lay it all out for you. What I did, and why. I see more clearly than ever,
why
. How much I have regretted it.
The rain clears momentarily. Miraculously, just in time for me to see the road sign ahead, I take the Junction 38 turn-off from the M1. In just thirty or so minutes from now, maybe forty, I should be at the Oldham Ring Road. From there, it us only a short, fifteen-to-twenty-minute trip to Huddersfield General Infirmary where my father is. I know I have a lot of things to put right with people just now.
I am going to start with him.
