Out on a Limb (15 page)

We both turn to look. ‘Actually,’ Gabriel Ash says, ‘this is perfectly normal. People often don’t realise, but August is one of the wettest months of the year.’

‘Never!’ says Candice enthusiastically, clearly flushed with the thrill of having engaged him in conversation, and newly enamoured of precipitation generally.

‘But it’s going to be a lovely weekend,’ he adds.

‘Honest?’

H e winks at her. ‘Starting this very afternoon, as it happens. Remember. You heard it here first.’

I see him out soon after and I think, yes. It
is
going to be a lovely weekend. I shall make sure of it. I don’t know why, but seeing Gabriel Ash has put me in a good mood. Yes, I do. It’s because I can tell seeing me has put
him
in a good mood. That my news about his father has brightened his day. And on a day that probably needed some brightening too. I’ll bet he’ll be on the phone before I know it. I’ll bet he’ll be round to collect the box tonight. I know it’s not my business, and I know it’s not my family, but it’s made me feel that at least
something
positive has come out of all this. Perhaps some of it will rub off on me too.

‘God,’ Candice sighs, as he heads off down the stairs. ‘Why are all the good guys already taken?’

I smile at her naivety, even though I know it really isn’t. It’s simply rhetoric, and I often think the same thing myself. ‘But Candice, that’s just the point,’ I remind her. ‘They’re taken precisely
because
they’re good guys. That’s the way it works.’

‘I know,’ she says. ‘Ain’t life a bitch?’

No! Well, yes it is
sometimes
, I guess, but thinking such depressing and dispiriting thoughts is the absolute worst way to carry on. And not how I intend to, so, when I leave the clinic at five, it is with the firmest of firm intentions that I will start this upcoming lovely weekend a day early. Tomorrow’s my day off, after all. And true to Gabriel’s words, the rain has stopped, the clouds have all dispersed, and the puddles on the road are shrinking even as I watch. Yes, I think, I will sit in the garden and read a book. Better still, I will buy a bottle of wine on the way home. Or some Pimms. What the hell. Yes. And I might even buy a lime. I have nothing to do and nowhere to be. And Jake’s sleeping at Tom’s tonight, so I don’t even have to cook. I can prepare a feast of tortilla chips and salsa and cornichons, and mother will just have to lump it. And there’s a thought. Perhaps I will ring Dee and see if she’d like to come over. Perhaps I will even get-the-barbecue-out.

It’s with such pleasing thoughts uppermost in my mind that I pull my phone from my bag and switch it on.

It starts tootling and squeaking at me almost immediately. Two text messages, voicemail, the whole kit and caboodle. And an incoming call now, as well. Dee herself, in fact, I see. How very handy. Yes, we’ll have a barbecue, maybe. That is, if she’s not already got a prior date with Tim. Strange to think she’s been living exactly the same double life I have. Strange to adjust to the possibility that she might already have something else on. Thrilled as I am for her, tonight I hope she hasn’t. We can sit and talk babies while the sun sets.

‘It’s official,’ I tell her happily, as soon as I connect. ‘Straight from the weatherman’s lips, in fact. High pressure system moving in over the Atlantic. Hot dry and sunny in all parts all weekend.’

She doesn’t respond entirely as expected.

‘
There
you are,’ she says breathlessly. ‘I’ve been trying you for ages. I thought you’d want to know about Charlie.’

‘Charlie? What
about
Charlie?’ I ask her.

‘Abs, he’s had a heart attack,’ she says.

Chapter 15

W
HEN
I
GET TO
my car I spend a number of minutes just sitting in it, listening to the blood pounding in my ears. Charlie’s forty-six years old. Forty-five to fifty-five is heart attack territory. Charlie looking ill. Charlie looking pale. Charlie looking too thin, too drawn, too listless, too
not like Charlie,
and my ignorance and arrogance and sheer bloody stupidity had me thinking it was something I could put down to me.

Then I drive straight to the hospital, where I sit a few minutes more, berating myself. Hating myself. Perhaps I’m not so way off beam. Perhaps it
is
something to do with me. But then I berate myself further. I am – no, I
was
– just a symptom of his problems. But I feel culpable – guilty as charged – even so.

None of which has any bearing on the matter in hand, however, which is that I absolutely have to see him and make sure he’s okay. Though it doesn’t escape my notice that it’s now a little after six on a Thursday night, and the chances are that he already has a visitor or two, I have driven to the hospital to do exactly that and, try as I might to convince myself I shouldn’t, I don’t intend leaving until I’ve done so.

I think. I’m still in my A and P uniform, of course, so I’m at least reasonably well attired for the one woman covert SWAT Team exercise that I realise might have to form the basis of my getting to see Charlie without arousing suspicion. If anyone – okay, his family – wonders at my being in the hospital, they might reasonably suppose I still work here. I get out of the car and lock it, and make my way across the car park. Or if not, at least that I could be here in relation to work. Better, much better, than if he’d been down at the BUPA hospital. But then he always did say that, if he was a patient, right here, amongst friends, is where he’d want to be.

And doctors, on the whole, don’t tend to go private. Not for things like this. Not for big things. They don’t need to. They look after one another. There are precious few perks to an NHS career, but this, at least, thank God, is one of them.

All I know from Dee is that he was admitted to the Coronary Care Unit at some point yesterday evening. I know nothing more because she doesn’t either, apart from the fact – oh, thank
God
– that he’s still of this earth. She’s been off work today for an ante-natal appointment, and only knows what she knows because Carolyn mentioned it when she happened to call her earlier today.

When I finally fetch up on CCU, however, it’s to find, to my surprise, that he’s no longer there. The two nurses at the nurse station, busy with their current charges, direct me without fuss or questions to the relevant ward. Once there, however, my initial reconnaissance through the window in the door tells me nothing, as all the eight bed bays are curtained. No choice, then, but to go in and see for myself. The very worst that can happen is that the family will all be there, and if so, I can slink right back out again and wait.

Whatever. I go in. The Ward Sister, a young woman I’m only on nodding terms with (it’s a big hospital), doesn’t seem remotely fazed that I’m here to see Charlie, and it occurs to me that she probably doesn’t even know I no longer work here. And doubtless many of the orthopaedics team have been up here today already. She confirms he’s on his own, and then points me towards him.

He’s been put in a side room just off the main ward. A sunny nook, west facing, with a whole wall width of window, beneath which he’s sitting, not in bed, but in an armchair, reading the
Telegraph
. I mentally breathe out. Not in bed. Not on a monitor. Not wired up to anything. Bar the dressing gown and slippers, he could be a visitor himself.

The dressing gown, the slippers, the holdall in the corner. The newspaper. The box of tissues. The two paperbacks. The wash bag. The china mug. The box of fruit teabags on the table. Most of all, the box of fruit tea bags on the table. She’s been here already. Getting him sorted. Getting stuff in.
Looking after him
. The door’s open, but even so, I knock.

He turns around, and then looks surprised, and then smiles.

And then shakes his head. ‘See?’ he says. ‘Told you it would come to this, didn’t I?’

He says it so matter-of-factly, so calmly, so dispassionately, that I immediately find myself bursting into tears. Well, not bursting, exactly, because one tries not to burst, exclaim, squeak, wail, or otherwise make a spectacle of oneself in the presence of a sick person, but the net result is the same. I am suddenly a muddle of spouty tears, tight throat and facial contortions and in trying to tourniquet any impolite floods I am rendered incapable of speech. So instead, I gently push the door almost closed behind me and sit heavily down on the bed, snivelling.

Charlie puts down the paper and considers me. ‘It’s all right,’ he says gently. ‘I’m not going to die on you.’

Which completely undermines my first attempt at hysteria-management, and necessitates a hasty re-grouping. He reaches across to his bedside table and plucks a tissue from the box. Which I take from him. ‘I doe,’ I say. ‘I doe.’

He looks a little disappointed about that. ‘
How
d’you know?’ he says, narrowing his eyes.

I lower the tissue from my face and let good sense kick in automatically. ‘Because you’re
here
. They’d hardly let you leave CCU if you were critical, would they? Oh, but Charlie, I should have realised. I should have –’ And then I’m off on one again.

He plucks another tissue from the box and hands it to me. ‘I didn’t even have a heart attack, if that’s what you’ve been thinking.’

‘But Carolyn said –’

He shakes his head. ‘Just a nasty little bout of viral pericarditis. I’ll be off home tomorrow as long as my temperature’s down.’

I lower the tissue from my face again and exhale heavily. ‘Oh, thank
God
.’

‘Oh, I’ve done a fair bit of that, believe me,’ he says wryly. ‘I might even consider re-engaging with the Church. Anyway,’ he says briskly, ‘dry your face and come over here and give me a hug. I think I’m entitled, don’t you?’

So I step over the holdall and round the over-bed table on wheels, then bend down to let him wind his arms around my back. It’s an awkward sort of clinch, with him seated and me standing, but we’re long past the point where I might sit on his lap, and in some ways that makes it much nicer. He eventually lets me go, and once freed up and straightened, I lean down again and plant a kiss on the top of his head. His hair smells all hospitally and is warm against my lips.

That done, I go back and sit on the bed, not knowing quite what to say or do next.

‘So,’ he says, as if addressing a nervous patient. ‘How are you?’

‘I shouldn’t be here.’

‘You bloody should. I’ve been waiting and waiting. What kept you, anyway?’

‘I didn’t
know
.’

He touches my knee with a fingertip. ‘Hey, now, you. I’m only winding you up.’

‘Well, don’t. This isn’t funny, Charlie.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘It isn’t, is it?’ He lifts his arms and laces his fingers in the air above his head, then turns them palms upwards and stretches. ‘No,’ he says again. ‘But instructive, for all that.’

‘How do you mean?’

H e unlaces his hands again and sits forward, re-lacing them loosely between his knees. I realise I’ve never seen the dressing gown before. Never seen him in a dressing gown at all. Never seen this dressing-gowned version of the man I thought I knew. The one I knew always strode around naked as the day. I wonder if he’s left the flat now. I wonder if they’re all settled back living together again. I wonder, mainly, how he
really
feels about the future of his marriage, which is something I’ve never allowed myself to wonder about before. Not properly. Not truthfully. Not in the sense which that packet of fruit teabags has forced me to wonder about it. ‘God, I’m going to miss you,’ he says suddenly.

Like he hasn’t up to now. Like we haven’t already parted. Like, most of all, that he’s making a point. And then I have a thought. ‘Why? Are you going somewhere or something?’

He shakes his head. Then his eyes leave mine and he turns to scan the dark sky. It’s a clear night. And a bright one. With an almost full moon.

‘No,’ he says. ‘Just back, that’s all.’

‘You haven’t been anywhere.’

‘I’ve been with
you
, Abbie.’

‘Yes, I know that, but –’

He taps his temple. ‘But now it’s time to go back.’

‘Charlie, we already split up,’ I remind him.

‘No,’ he says. ‘There was no ‘we’ about it, Abbie. You left me.’

‘I never had you.’

‘But that’s just it. You did.’

‘No, Charlie. That’s not true. I had a bit of you. That’s all.’

‘And yet I had every last bit of you, didn’t I?’ I say nothing. ‘Which I should never have pursued and certainly didn’t deserve.’

There seems no answer to that, other than a knowing affirmative. Yes, he did. For a short while. And looking at him now, I realise, with relief, that I have no regrets about any of it. So I stand then, and join him in gazing out at the sky. Growing ultramarine now above the blackening buildings. I feel his hand reach for and clasp mine.

I turn. ‘ Is anyone likely to –’

He squeezes it. ‘Don’t panic, Mr Mainwaring. She’s not long left. To get some things. Pick up the kids and bring them down. We have at least twenty minutes.’

I almost laugh. ‘To do what, exactly?’

‘To give thanks and to reflect.’

I let my hand remain in his. ‘You’ve gone all strange,’ I say. ‘All philosophical. All, well, I don’t know…
funny
. ’

‘It’s probably the virus. Infected my hard drive.’ He turns then, to look at me. ‘Abbie,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘I’m very, very sorry,’ he says.

My eyes fill with tears again because though he’s said those words to me many, many times, this time I know he really means it.

‘For what?’ I ask him anyway.

‘For involving you in my mid-life crisis, I suppose.’

‘
Your
mid-life crisis? Tell me about it.’

‘What a pair we are,’ he says softly. ‘Eh?’

My turn to squeeze
his
hand now. ‘
Were
.’

I leave Charlie feeling lighter of heart than I have done in a long time. It’s the stupidest thing. Which is odd, not to mention pretty damn ironic. I’m all cried out, of course – long since all cried out about Charlie – but I thought when I came here that something terrible would happen. That I’d see him and, well, I don’t know, that I’d get sucked back in all over again. That I’d be all overcome and infatuated again. Compassion doesn’t mix well with sexual attraction. It’s too volatile a cocktail to be stable. But it hasn’t happened, and shocked as I am, I feel free.

Free, and also – perversely – as if this whole sorry shambles has actually been good for me. As if Charlie’s attentions, inappropriate as they may have been, have been a shot in the arm when I needed it most. An escape from my way-too-long post divorce purdah. Which is enough for me to begin to feel optimistic about the future, at any rate. And having been an optimist since birth, of course, also means that it doesn’t feel in the least unreasonable to suppose that my exit will be as uneventful as my entry, and free of any further Scott-Downing sightings. But that, in itself, is unreasonable. There is only one main corridor that links the wards with the main entrance, and as I know the family are en route back at some point, there is, of course, every likelihood that we’ll meet up.

Thus it’s no surprise really that we do. And with spectacularly bad timing, to boot. Thirty seconds sooner and I could have slunk off down the byway to X-ray. Twenty seconds later and I could have dived into the sluice room. As it was, I have made just sufficient progress down the corridor that I’m marooned in the bit of it that offers up no alternatives. The bit where all the admin offices are. Admin, of course, as I have had previous cause to consider, being that thing hospitals do only between nine and five.

They’re headed straight towards me. All of them.
En masse
. Charlie’s wife, Hamish, a smaller version of Hamish, and a tall young woman who is clearly her daughter. And as the distance between us shortens, I can see that Hamish – Hamish/Oliver? Oliver/Hamish – which? – who has obviously recognised me, is telling his mother who I am. No chance, therefore, to slide past without contact. I hope it’s not obvious I’ve been crying.

We draw level, mid-corridor. I take a deep breath. I smile.

It’s so obvious
she
has. ‘Hello,’ I say, straight at her, with a nod towards Hamish. ‘I’m Abbie McFadden. You must be Oliver’s mother.’ She nods but doesn’t speak. We don’t shake either. We’re two women, and women don’t shake hands. I don’t know why I know that but I suspect it’s something my mother drummed into me at a very early age. It’s an anachronism these days – why wouldn’t we? Why
shouldn’t
we? I idly wonder if the same drill has been passed on to her.

Charlie’s wife Claire is much taller than me, with artfully – and no doubt expensively – mussed hair. I force myself to meet her gaze, which is intelligent and focussed and quizzical. She has perfectly tweezered eyebrows. She is wearing a grey suit. I feel shabby and insignificant beside her. ‘I heard about –’ God – what do I say? Charlie? Mr Scott-Downing? Your husband? What?

‘…Charlie,’ is what I plump for, and there’s something in her answering expression that seems a little disapproving. And momentarily, much as I don’t want to, much less have the right to, I find it instinctively makes me disapproving of her. Because, really, it
is
the right form of address. We were colleagues. Okay, so he’s a lofty consultant and I’m a lowly physio, but that’s how
he
asked me – asked all of us – to address him. From day one. And so we all did.

But perhaps, were I her, I’d want to puff him up too. Want people like me to know their place around him. Around
them
? Keep their distance, at any rate. By some instinct? Or intuition? The benefit of experience? This woman is clearly not stupid. She must know how attractive a man Charlie is. How charismatic a man he is. How very
lucky
she is. And I decide, in an instant, recalling his words, that it’s
she
who’s undeserving. Of
him
. And also that I doubt she’s ever hugged him enough. That she doesn’t look
after
him properly. Outrageous, I know, and probably way off the mark, given that I know she’s a busy GP with enough problems of her own – least of all her straying husband, but even so, the thoughts tumble out regardless, thumbing their noses at propriety. I indicate behind me. ‘So I just popped by to see him.’