The Lie of Love (4 page)

‘Sweetie,’ Darcy called softly.

Sophie turned and gave her a
bright smile. ‘I didn’t know you were home.’

‘I think a bomb could go off
outside and the only thing you’d hear is
Pinky
Pie
planning her next party,’ Darcy smiled as she took a seat at the foot of her
bed. ‘I know this is a good bit, but do you mind if we pause it for a moment
while I talk to you about something?’

Sophie pushed herself slowly up
to sit. Darcy resisted the urge to assist her, knowing that Sophie wanted to do
it herself.  Reaching for the remote control at her side, she clicked the
programme off and turned expectantly to face Darcy.

‘You don’t complain much about
your legs, or about the fact that you have to use your wheelchair or sticks
whenever you need to get around, but I also know that your legs hurt you more
than you tell me they do…’ Darcy began, fighting back tears as the words she
spoke made her daughter’s suffering suddenly and painfully real to her. It had
become such an everyday trial that she realised most of the time she hardly
attached to it the significance it deserved, only planned the practicalities of
getting her daughter through life. ‘And your daddy and I want to do something
to help you.’

‘Is that what you were talking
about at dinner last night?’

‘Yes. So you know that I think
I’ve found a way we can help you?’

‘A long way
off.
Where Disney is.’

Darcy sniffed and smiled through
the blur of her tears.
‘Exactly.
Where
Disney is.
It’s going to be quite hard work to get the money we need to go
and even harder work for you when we get there. I want to ask you if
that’s
ok with you. You’ll be able to walk and run like
other children if it all works out.’

‘Not exactly like other
children.’

‘No… but better
than you can now.
And maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much either.’

Sophie’s gaze travelled to the
window, thoughtful for a moment. ‘Will we be able to go to Disney?’ she asked,
turning back.

Darcy smoothed a hair from her
forehead. ‘I’m sure we could manage to squeeze it in before your operation if you
really want to go.’

Sophie nodded eagerly. ‘I want to
see all the princesses.
And the fireworks.
And Mickey Mouse.
Taylor
went last year with her dad and she said it was amazing.’

‘But you want the operation too?’
Darcy asked
,
worried that the gravity of what she was
asking her daughter to do had been lost in the sparkling promise of a magical
make-believe kingdom.  She desperately needed Sophie to understand, to
accept the challenge with her eyes open, because otherwise, Darcy felt it was
just another torture that she was imposing on her, and Sophie’s life as it was
now seemed to be comprised almost entirely of those. Sophie had not asked to be
born as she was, she had not asked to be in constant pain, she had not been
given the choice of whether to patiently endure hours of hospital procedures
and clinic visits. Just for once, Darcy wanted to be able to offer her a real
choice, one that mattered. 

Sophie glanced at a small,
compact wheelchair, folded neatly in the corner of the room, and then back at
Darcy with her wide blue eyes, full of trust and hope. ‘I’ll be able to walk
like Jake?’

‘Maybe.’
Darcy grabbed her hand and kissed it. ‘Nobody can promise but we can do our
best and so will the doctors. And I would never ask you to try something if there
wasn’t a little bit of a good feeling about it, you know that, don’t you?’

‘I’d be able to walk around
Disney?’

‘One day perhaps.
If we went back there again… but not this time.’

‘Will Jake come with us?
And Daddy?’

‘Of course.
If we left Daddy at home he’d burn the house down making his supper.’

Sophie giggled and reached for
her remote control. ‘Ok then.’

‘That means yes?’

Sophie clicked a button and tinny
music filled the room again. ‘Yes. I want to try to walk.’

Darcy heaved a sigh of relief.
But in many ways, she realised now that the most difficult conversation of that
day might just turn out to be the easiest. Now that she had persuaded Amanda,
Sophie and half convinced
Ged
to come on board, she had to speak to her son. Jake had always done his best to
be a good boy, but at twelve now, teen hormones beginning to pump around his
system and a sister who regularly took every iota of everyone’s attention from
him and his own growing pains, Jake was fast becoming a troubled soul. Recently
he had been involved in one or two playground incidents and the headmaster of
his high school had called Darcy and
Ged
in to inform
them that he was having problems adjusting to school life in what he called
‘the big pond’.

‘I’m just going to talk to Jake,
and then I’ll make us some dinner that isn’t burnt,’ she said as she rose from
the end of Sophie’s bed. ‘So I’ll come and get you when it’s ready.’

‘Ok, mummy,’ Sophie replied
without looking away from the TV.

Closing the door softly, Darcy
went across the hall to Jake’s room. From behind the closed door she could hear
laughter and the tinny voice of his best friend, Brandon, presumably coming
from the speakers of his
iPad
. She knocked gently and
pushed open the door.

‘Jake… can I have a word?’

Jake almost rolled his eyes and
then seemed to think better of it. He nodded tersely.

‘Bran, I’ve got to go for a min,’
he said to the screen of his tablet. Without waiting for a reply, he closed the
conversation app.

‘I expect you’ve been wondering
what your dad and I were discussing yesterday at dinner…’ Darcy began. Jake
merely shrugged carelessly.

‘Something
about going to
America
for Sophie.
I’m cool with that.’

‘You don’t know what it is.’

‘America
will be good though.’

Darcy pursed her lips. ‘It’s not going
to be a holiday, Jake…’

‘Yeah, but it’ll be hot and I
expect there’ll be a pool coz there are pools everywhere in America and I can
tell Brandon that I’ve been to Florida and that’s ok with me.’ As Darcy
grappled for an answer, he cut in again. ‘Can we go to Universal Studios?’

‘I don’t know… I suppose we might
be able to…’

‘Cool. No problem then,
Mum.  Do I have to be with Sophie all the time when she wanders around
looking at lame stuff?’

‘Jake… it isn’t really the first
thing I’ve considered. This trip is about getting Sophie some help first and
foremost and if we have time to do other things –’

‘That’s alright, I bet Dad will
take me if you’re busy with
Soph
.’ Jake pulled his
tablet over and unlocked it with a swipe of his finger, locating the chat app
he had been previously using with no effort at all. The next sound was that of
the dialling tone, and then Brandon’s
voice. ‘Guess what…’ Jake began, ‘we’re going to Florida!’

‘Cool…’ Brandon
started an enthused reply, but Darcy didn’t get to hear the rest of it. She
assumed she had been dismissed from further discussion and left him to it.

Closing the
door behind her, she frowned.  She wasn’t sure if Jake had really
understood the importance of what they were about to embark on as a family and
the pressures it would put them all under. She wasn’t sure either of her
children did.  Was that a good thing or not? Perhaps, in hindsight, it
was. Perhaps she didn’t either, now that she thought about it properly. Perhaps
if she really did, she might just run and cover her ears too.

The next few days saw the weather return to the vaguely
disappointing blanket of heavy skies that Britain was more used to seeing in
early summer, rather than the forge that had cooked the bay over the previous
days.  The sea against the Cobb turned from a spangled teal to jagged
waves of grey, thundering against the ancient stones as the tide beat its
endless cycle of advance and retreat.  Darcy, for one, found it a
relief.  Heat didn’t bring out the best in her, and she had a lot to do so
she needed to be at her best. One of those things was a visit to an old friend,
or rather, acquaintance, Julia Simmons. True to her word, Amanda had been to
see her and had arranged for the three of them to meet over coffee to see what
Julia could do for the campaign.  Julia had been more than happy to hold
the meeting at her house.  Darcy had considered more than once the idea
that Harry would likely be there, as he was home from university for the
summer. She felt strangely disquieted by the idea, though she couldn’t say why.

‘Ladies!’
Julia dragged open an oak front door, panelled with ornate panes of stained
glass. It looked reclaimed, Darcy thought with the merest hint of envy. This
was the sort of front door she’d love to have, rather than the functional
plastic that adorned her own frontage, but
Ged
had always favoured function over what he
considered
sentimental old-fashioned
tat
(his exact words). Darcy
found it hard to argue; at the end of the day, he paid the bills.
‘How lovely to see you again.’

Julia pulled the door open
further to let them in, unfurling the house’s own peculiar aroma. Darcy had
always remarked how every home had its own smell, and in the case of close
friends and family, she could almost tell you which home she had arrived at
merely by breathing it in, even if she had been taken there blindfolded. From
Julia’s dwelling she got beeswax polish, cinnamon, coffee, and the vague
mustiness of a very old house.

Darcy and Amanda followed Julia
down the hallway and into a kitchen dominated by a huge red
Aga
,
housed in a nook that must have once been the fireplace. The rest of the room
was decorated in muted browns and beiges, rustic looking real wood freestanding
units and warm red quarry tiles on the floor. It was a room that looked as
though it had not had a facelift for some time, but while it was old and lived
in, it also looked scrupulously clean, loved and welcoming.  Julia nodded
in the direction of an oak dining table and chairs in the centre of the room.

‘Take a seat and I’ll get us some
coffee… I don’t know about you two, but I simply can’t think straight without
caffeine.’

‘Amen to that,’ Amanda said as
she hung her jacket on the back of her chair and took a seat.  After
rummaging in her huge handbag for a moment, she produced a pristine blue folder
bound with an elastic fasten, the words SOPHIE’S STEPS CAMPAIGN IDEAS
emblazoned on the front in precise and stylish handwriting. She placed the
folder on the table and clicked on a pen, which she laid across it in readiness.
Darcy resisted the impulse to raise her eyebrows. She was more grateful for her
friend’s help than she could say, even if it did come with an extra dollop of
over-zealous exactness.

‘I can’t tell you how grateful I
am that you’re getting involved, Julia,’ Darcy said as Julia stood at the sink
filling the kettle.

‘Oh, it’s nothing. I think it’s a
wonderful ambition for little Sophie. There are mothers in this world who don’t
give a damn if their children eat or not, so when I run into one who cares enough
to make such a grand gesture in a bid to give her child the best future
possible, how can I refuse to help?’

‘A lot of people would,’ Amanda
cut in.

‘Well…’ Julia placed the kettle
on the base and flicked it on, ‘I’m willing to bet that a lot more people than
you imagine will want to help. I don’t think the milk of human kindness has
gone off just yet.’

‘Just a bit on the turn,’ Amanda
grinned.

‘You can do wonderful things with
milk on the turn,’ Julia laughed. She sat across from them, elbows on the
table, chin resting on her fists. For a woman in her fifties, her expression
made her look remarkably like a naughty schoolgirl. Darcy could see where her
son, Harry, got his smiling blue eyes and dark hair from, although Julia’s was
now more steel grey than black. ‘So, where do you see me fitting in with your
plans?’

‘We thought you might be able to
tell us that,’ Darcy said. ‘Anything you want to do, any time you want to give,
any gesture, big or small, is appreciated.  Amanda says you’ve done lots of
fundraising in the past, so could we perhaps steal an idea or two from other
events you’ve done?’

‘I’m sure you could. You’d be
surprised at how many ways you can dress up a raffle.’ As the kettle clicked
off, Julia got up and poured boiling water into a
cafetiere
already prepped with a healthy dose of rich smelling coffee.  

Just then, the sound of a loud,
theatrical yawn came from the kitchen door and Harry appeared, grinning and
scratching a hand through his tousled hair. ‘If there’s coffee spare I’ll have
some, Mum.’

Julia looked round and shot a
critical look up and down his frame. ‘You can have a cup, but how about you go
and get some clothes on when we have visitors.’

‘I’ll drink it upstairs if my nakedness
bothers you,’ he said lazily, glancing down at his checked boxer shorts, bare
feet and naked torso, and then looking back at her with a disinterested raising
of his eyebrow.  Darcy found herself mesmerised by his lean, bronzed
torso, and his next action of running an idle hand down it and scratching in
languid circles at his navel had her biting her lip in a bid not to sigh. 
What was this weird reaction he elicited in her? She had never been the toy boy
type before, in fact, she had barely looked at other men whilst she had been
married to
Ged
, but she was
suddenly fired by a strange heat when this boy was near.

‘Just get dressed,’ Julia sighed.
‘We have guests and it’s gone ten so there’s no need for you to be walking
around in your boxers.’