Please Release Me (3 page)

Later, when Mummy came home, Sally was bursting to tell her what they’d found. She hurtled into Glenda as soon as she came in the door.

‘Hello darling,’ said Daddy, following his daughter out of the kitchen. He kissed his wife. ‘Sally, let Mummy get her coat off.’ He bent forward. ‘I’ll get Mummy into the living room, you go get the surprise.’

Sally zoomed off into the kitchen. The posy of forget-me-nots was in a small glass, with one of Sally’s hair ribbons tied round it. It was in the middle of the table, Sally had to drag a chair across so that she could reach. Daddy came in and made a cup of tea. He set a tray, with tea and a small cake they’d bought. ‘Okay Sal? Ready?’

Sally nodded and went into the living room where her mother was sitting in an armchair, rubbing her temples. ‘Happy Birthday Mummy.’ She presented her with the posy.

‘Oh Sally, they’re beautiful. Did you pick them? How lovely.’

‘We got them from the park. We would have got a gooder bunch, but the man came and shouted and we had to run away. It was such fun.’

Her mother glanced up at her father. ‘Really? From the park? What an adventure.’

‘Happy Birthday darling.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t get you the special things you deserve. But …’

Her mother gathered him and Sally to her. ‘I have all I need, right here.’ She kissed them both. Sally snuggled up on her lap. She looked up and caught the expression on her father’s face. Even at that age, she could see the despair in his features. But she couldn’t understand why it frightened her.

Peter woke up when a nurse shook him gently by the shoulder. ‘Peter, it’s nearly 9.30. Would you like us to make up a camp bed for you?’

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. He had been watching Sally. He couldn’t believe he’d nodded off. What if Sally had whispered something? He’d have missed it. ‘No. I’ll be off in a minute.’ The book had fallen on the floor. He retrieved it. Sally lay in exactly the same position as before, her chest rising and falling peacefully. ‘Did she say anything while I was asleep?’

There were CCTV cameras in all the rooms and Sally was hooked up to so many monitors that something would have gone off.

The nurse shook her head. ‘I’m sorry.’ She put her head to one side in a concerned manner. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to me to set up the bed for you?’

Peter covered up a yawn and stretched. ‘No. You will call me though, won’t you? If she says or does anything.’

‘Of course.’ She turned back to look at Sally for a moment, before giving Peter a smile. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then. I’m sorry to have woken you.’

‘No, no. That’s fine. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. It defeats the object of my being here.’

‘I’m sure Sally was grateful for the company,’ said the nurse.

Peter thought that was a ridiculous thing to say, but didn’t respond. What was the point? People needed to say something.

He pulled on his coat and tucked the book back into his pocket. ‘Bye, bye darling. I’ll come see you again tomorrow.’ He kissed her forehead and stroked her hair. ‘Maybe tomorrow you’ll talk to me.’ Another kiss. He turned back at the door to look at her lying there like a rag doll. ‘Night.’ He left the room, closing the door carefully behind him.

Someone was walking past and he almost walked into them when he started towards the lift. ‘Oh.’ It was the woman from earlier. They walked along the corridor, both heading for the same place, but not wanting to talk to each other. Peter looked at the ground as he walked. Well, this was awkward.

When the lift arrived, he let her go in first. She cleared her throat. ‘I was just at a meeting with the fundraising committee. We’re redecorating the common room on this floor this weekend. Would you like to help?’

Peter blinked. He hadn’t been expecting that. ‘Fundraising? Whatever for? This is a private hospice, surely the extortionate fees cover everything.’ Oh bugger. That made him sound tight. The place was expensive. He didn’t mind. He wanted his Sally to have the best care and comfort available.

She smiled. She was tall and had smooth skin the colour of latte. Her features were a delicate mix of Asian and Caucasian – high cheekbones, big eyes, wide mouth, sharp chin. It was her hair that caught his attention. It gleamed.

It occurred to him that she was quite beautiful, if a little grave. He wondered where that thought had come from.

‘Actually, it’s a social enterprise,’ she said. ‘The fee paying part of the hospital subsidises the West Wing.’

‘West wing?’ He was aware that there was another wing to the place. He had assumed it was more of the same.

‘Hedgehog House. Children’s Palliative and Respite care. It’s funded by the charity. The hospice donates all profits.’

Peter ran the words past his internal dictionary. Children. Palliative. Respite. ‘Oh.’ More of the same, yes, but sadder, somehow. ‘I hadn’t realised.’

‘I didn’t either when I started coming here. I used to wheel Mum out into the garden sometimes when the weather was nice, just so that she got to see the sun. We used to meet the families then.’

There was an awkward silence.

‘I’m Grace, by the way,’ she said

‘Peter.’

The lift door opened and they stepped out into the lobby. They walked out to the door together, Grace giving the security guard a wave as they passed.

‘So, what about it?’ she said as they reached the doors. ‘Will you help?’

Peter hesitated. He didn’t want to help. He wanted to be left alone. He was busy. He had a business to run. His wife was in a coma. Life was a ridiculous circus of work meetings, medical meetings and long, pointless evenings sitting next to Sally’s bed, waiting for her to wake up. It was exhausting. He didn’t have anything left to give anyone. ‘I don’t …’

Her disappointment showed on her face. It was as though she had a personal investment in making him join the cause. ‘I understand,’ she said. Her face resumed its stoical expression. ‘Well, it was nice to talk to you Peter. I hope … things get better.’

He felt like a selfish wanker, but he’d done the right thing. He was walking such a tightrope between coping and going mad with worry that he had to be careful. Too much stress and things could go very wrong. Sally was an orphan. She had no one else to depend on. He had to be there and be fit to look after her when she came round. He couldn’t make commitments he couldn’t keep.

He watched Grace walk, her plait swinging, across the car park. Yes. He had done the right thing. He sighed and went to his own car. So why did he feel like such a git?

Grace threw her keys into the little pot on the shelf that was there specifically for that purpose. It had once held the whole family’s keys, but now there were just hers. She hung her coat up and thought for the umpteenth time that she really should get round to throwing away her mother’s scarves that hung on the other pegs in the downstairs loo. It was on her list of things to tackle. She’d get round to it at some point.

It didn’t take her long to defrost a meal that she’d batch cooked at the weekend. It was so much nicer to have meals already done when she got home. When the microwave pinged, the soup was too hot. She left it to cool and put a sliced bagel in to toast. Watching the toaster, she thought about her encounter with Peter. Hah. So much for doing something bold and out of character. Well, she’d tried that and look how that turned out. Take that, Harry!

Walking around the common room had made her look at the familiar room in a different way. Suddenly, things that she’d never noticed before jumped out at her. The carpet showed tracks where feet and wheelchairs had rolled over it every day. The comfy chairs in front of the TV were worn from many different bottoms and knees and heads. The wallpaper and curtains were faded where the sun caught them. All this had always been there for her to see, yet she’d never noticed. It was as though she’d be walking through the area with blinkers on.

The sudden feeling that this wasn’t just about a common room hit her. This could just as well apply to her life. She’d been a carer for so long, first helping her mother with looking after her father, and then by herself, looking after her mother. When she’d finally allowed herself to put her mother into a hospice, she’d felt so bad that she’d spent every spare minute visiting. Somewhere in amongst all that she’d forgotten how to be young. Now it was almost too late to learn again.

The toaster popped. She gathered her food and sat at the table. As she ate her soup and bagel, she let her attention roam around the kitchen. This was another place that she’d got so used to that she’d stopped really seeing it. The walls were exactly as her mother had left them. The same cookbooks on the same shelves, sitting next to the same twee little tins.

Grace twisted around in her chair and surveyed the whole room. It could do with a repaint. Maybe a declutter. She thought about the terribly difficult to use knives and the wooden spoons so old they were starting to dissolve at the ends. She could do with a new set of cutlery too. She smiled to herself. She could go on a shopping spree. Now that sounded like so much more fun than dusting around knick-knacks that meant nothing to her anymore.

She finished her soup, washed up the bowl and spoon and left them drying next to her mug on the draining board. Her mother would have made her dry them up and put them away. It suddenly occurred to her that she only ever used one set of crockery. The same mug, bowl and spoon, the same one plate. She shook her head. How had she let this happen?

Photos of her at various ages hung on the wall along the stairs. Her parents had already been old when she arrived. Her mother in her forties, her father just past fifty. To them, she had been a late given gift. They had tried to document every bit of their happiness that they could. She had taken it for granted that everyone’s parents kept every single school photo and a folder full of every appearance in the nativity play, school poetry competition, whatever. They were a family. Wasn’t that what families did?

Normally, she would have gone straight to her room, had a shower and gone to bed. Today, she paused. The door to her parents’ room was shut. She rarely went in here, apart from to clean it when it came up on her cleaning routine. She opened the door and turned on the light. She had cleared her father’s wardrobe out after his funeral, so that her mother didn’t have to do it, but there were still photos and bits and bobs of his around the rooms. There was a photo of him as a young man, skinny and fresh off the boat from Sri Lanka. A photo of him, much older, standing next to his pretty English wife, both laughing. Grace picked up the photo of the three of them, her parents beaming, despite the shadows under their eyes, and herself; a tiny bundle in her mother’s arms. She sank down onto the bed.

She missed them. It was natural. Those last years had been such an endless treadmill of meals, medications, appointments, tantrums and frustrations, but she’d got used to that. So used to it, that she’d almost forgotten what it had been like before, when her parents were able. How sad to have lost all those trips to museums, bedtime stories, games of chase, where Daddy could never catch her because he was too wheezy after a few steps. Grace smiled. She missed them, but she didn’t have to preserve them in their old age. It wasn’t fair to any of them.

She was about to replace the photo back on the dressing table, where it had always lived, when she decided against it. Instead, she took it with her. She would put it somewhere in her room and remember them as they were then.

Later, in bed, she could just make out the shape of the photo on her bedside table. It made her feel better, somehow, as though a tiny parcel of weight had lifted. Grace smiled and closed her eyes.

Sally remembered a party. The room had been decorated in rich reds and creams. There were chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. She had to persuade a man to give her a ticket and had to pay a fortune to buy the dress, even second-hand. Charity shop? Hah. Rip-off merchants more like. The prices they charged for something they’d been given for free! Sally had haggled, but that bitch that ran the shop had stood firm. Charitable? Bollocks.

She checked the dress was clinging to her in all the right places and gave a little wiggle to make sure it swished properly. Excellent. Designer wear at high street prices. She supposed she couldn’t really complain. It was an investment. If tonight paid off, she could afford the real thing. She swept into the room and was marginally pissed off when heads did not turn instantly in her direction.

She grabbed a glass of orange juice off the tray as the waiter went past. Sipping it delicately, she scanned the room. The trouble with rich men was that most of them didn’t make it big until they were middle-aged. She could do the sugar daddy thing again, she supposed, but really, if she had to sleep with a man, it would be a massive help if he was attractive. She spotted Maurice Kemp, the securities guy. Too old. Jeremy Traynor, whole food retail – nearly bald. Seth Bridley … not bad looking. Decent value too, but suspiciously quiet. Rumour had it, he was gay but not out. Sally didn’t understand why he didn’t just come out and be done with it. Seth was talking to a tall, blond man in glasses. Sally narrowed her eyes. If Seth was flirting with this guy, he was certainly not responding. He seemed to be listening and smiling though.

Sally slinked a little closer. The man laughed at something Seth said. His face creased lightly at the eyes. His attention was on Seth, giving Sally ample time to study him. He was tall and handsome in a clean-cut sort of a way. Short blond hair, blue-grey eyes, chiselled jaw. It was the smile that was interesting. Smile lines that deep must mean that he did it a lot. She drained her glass, set it down and waited until there was another waiter bearing a tray near the man. She stood where the man could see and hear her, then pretended to try and fail to catch the attention of the waiter. A flicker on the eyes told her he’d spotted her. She ignored him for a moment before making eye contact.

‘Hi.’ She gave him her best smile. ‘I’m dying for a drink, but I can’t seem to catch the waiter’s attention. Could you …’ She looked up at him, pleading.

‘Oh, of course.’ He turned, raised a hand, and waved to the waiter. ‘Here you go.’ He handed a glass of champagne to Sally.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said.

‘No problem.’ There was that smile again. She found herself smiling back. It came naturally. She liked this man.

‘I’m Sally, Sally Cummings.’ She held out her hand. Hopefully the manner in which she said it, would encourage him to introduce himself in the same way.

He shook it. ‘I’m Peter Wesley.’

‘And what do you do Peter Wesley?’ Her mind churned through her internal who’s who file. Wesley. Something to do with IT. Not hugely wealthy, but had potential. Besides, she thought, taking in the broad shoulders and lack of paunch, he’s nice to look at. A quick glance at his left hand to double check he was single. Married men were lucrative, but she was twenty-five now. She needed to find someone before she had to start worrying about the aging process. Yes. He would do nicely.

‘I’m an IT consultant. I do mostly knowledge management.’ His gaze skimmed over her, resting fractionally on her hair when she flicked it over her shoulder. ‘How about you?’

‘I’m an estate agent,’ she said. By this time, Peter’s former companion had wandered off. They were standing together in a crowd. Perfect.

‘How funny,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for a house to buy at the moment.’

‘Fate.’

He seemed amused.

She gave him her most dazzling smile. ‘So, tell me, what sort of thing are you looking for?’

He explained what he was after. She translated in her head – a house big enough to leave his options open, but not so big that it suggested a family. Good money, but nothing ostentatious. He seemed to be looking at moving along the ladder from a bachelor pad to something more grown up. This all sounded very promising.