The Lie, page 9
‘Michael doesn’t trust people like normal people do,’ Romy was saying. ‘He’s never been dependent on anyone.’ She took a large gulp of wine. ‘I’ve got to find a carer tough enough to withstand his will, but kind enough to look after him properly.’
Finch nodded, and decided that, much as he would love to save Romy from her fate, he knew, as clearly as he knew his own name, that she would end up managing her ex’s rehab.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she said, her face a picture of despair. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘Maybe you shouldn’t fight it, Romy. From what you’ve said, you can’t walk away – neither Michael nor Leo could manage if you did.’ He paused. ‘If we’re being practical, perhaps you could set a time limit for yourself. Say, a month. So you move back into the flat and hire trustworthy help, settle Michael with all the aids he needs to walk and feed and shower, get him started with physio, sort out his medication …’
Romy was staring at him, a small smile playing around her mouth. ‘Impressive. Would you like to take over?’
Finch pulled a face, remembering the hassle of persuading his fierce mother to give him power-of-attorney, having fights with her grouchy GP, getting his head round her daily medication, dealing with her clucking – albeit well-meaning – friends, who kept offering conflicting advice. He hadn’t had a clue what he was doing but it had worked out all right in the end. And he’d managed to make the last months of his mother’s life as comfortable as was possible, and worry-free.
He sipped some wine. ‘Better to organize it like a campaign than fight it and end up feeling guilty.’ He wondered, as he spoke, what on earth he was doing persuading the woman he thought he was falling for to spend such extended time with her ex. The newness of their relationship made it feel very fragile.
Romy stretched and yawned. ‘God, I’m so tired,’ she said.
‘Shall I drive you home? Or you could stay here … No pressure,’ he added, not wanting her to think he was expecting sex, or taking advantage of her when she was so upset.
She seemed to be considering his offers. Then she met his gaze. ‘Would you mind if I stayed? Don’t think I’ve even got the energy to make it home.’
Romy fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. A person sleeping is so vulnerable that Finch almost felt guilty as he watched her. He had watched Nell sleeping when she was very ill, always convinced she wouldn’t wake again. But this was different. It was as if he were being given special privileges in seeing her long lashes fluttering on her cheeks, her hair falling over her eyes, her lips twitching slightly – as if she was talking to someone in her dreams.
When she woke in the night, she cried out, and Finch took her in his arms. She was trembling. He stroked her head, kissed her hair, told her it would be all right – as if she were a child. And she fell asleep again almost immediately. But he did not. He was struggling with a childish jealousy. Yes, Romy had clearly been keen to see him last night. And it was understandable that her thoughts would be consumed with Michael at a time like this. But he was filled with foreboding. Is she really doing this solely to protect her son?
17
‘Will you go back first thing?’ Finch asked, as they sat at his kitchen table on Sunday night, dazed and pleasantly tired from an afternoon on the beach. He had made a cheese and parsley omelette, tossed some leaves in dressing and toasted chunks of stale baguette. Setting the plates on the table, he poured them some wine.
Romy nodded. She had thought she was hungry, but the food seemed to stick in her throat. She was dreading going back to the flat. It wasn’t her home now, but it was obviously so familiar – especially with Rex in residence – that being there seemed to wipe out the months since she had left, negate the gains she had made without Michael in her life. Her gaze wandered round the room and settled on one of the many photos of Finch’s pretty, smiling wife that seemed to surround them, reminding her that she was not the only one with a past that was, perhaps, hard to leave behind. ‘Tell me about Nell,’ she said, anxious to divert her painfully circular thoughts. ‘What was she like?’
For a moment, Finch looked as if he might refuse. But then she saw his expression lighten. ‘I don’t know where to start. I’ve spent so much time since she died idealizing her that I’ve sort of lost the balance of who she really was.’
Romy had asked herself many times in the past week how she would feel if Michael died. She knew one thing: she didn’t want to remember him under the pervasive shadow of that letter. ‘I’m not sure what’s wrong with idealizing someone you love, especially when they can’t disappoint you any more,’ she said.
She noticed Finch’s fleeting frown and realized she had sounded bitter. ‘That didn’t come out quite right.’ She let out a long sigh. ‘Michael and I are not like you and Nell, as I’m sure you’ve worked out.’
‘But you loved him.’
Tears pricked behind her eyes. ‘Of course I loved him.’
Neither spoke for a while.
Then Romy said, ‘Your past is so pure and uncomplicated, however painful it was losing Nell.’
Finch’s mouth tightened. ‘What is it about your marriage that makes you so angry?’ he asked, his brown eyes perplexed.
Romy flinched. ‘I’m not angry,’ she said, the lie making her flush.
Finch gave a small shrug and reached across the table, laying his hand over hers. Romy had to bite her lip hard to stop herself crying from frustration. She was not only upset about what had happened historically between her and Michael. She was also upset with his current – albeit unwitting – insinuation into her relationship with Finch. She’d been enjoying the feeling recently that this was her time to make decisions about how she spent her days, and with whom. Perhaps be a bit selfish. But the family she had thought was on the way to independence was once more calling …
Rex and Leo were in the kitchen when Romy returned to the flat on Monday morning. Rex was frying eggs, waving a spatula at Leo as he loudly made some point.
Their backs were to the door and they didn’t hear their mother come in. For a moment she just stood and watched them, seeing them, almost for the first time, as grown men. Her mind went back to tea after school at the same kitchen table. She had always insisted on toast and jam, biscuits and fruit while they debriefed about their school day. That was the moment – fresh from the coalface – when she’d heard amusing vignettes of teachers, learnt about friendship conflicts, success or failure in tests and on the sports field before they disappeared into their bedrooms and became buried in their homework. She’d loved that time – the cosy, predictable routine, the knowledge she built up about her boys’ lives. Knowledge she’d always felt sad that Michael didn’t share.
‘Hey, Mum.’ Leo sprang up and came to give her a hug.
‘Want a fried egg?’ Rex asked, lifting the pan from the hob before coming to kiss her.
She shook her head, then made herself a cup of coffee and joined them at the table.
‘Have a nice weekend?’ Rex asked, mouth full of toast. Romy thought he looked a bit rough, his tan beginning to fade. Suffering from too much alcohol and not enough sleep, she decided, although she couldn’t bring herself to disapprove. She could hardly talk.
‘Lovely,’ she said, unable to hide her pleasure. She quickly bent her head to take a sip from her cup. When she looked up, she saw Leo, his eyes quietly appraising. Rex was too busy with his breakfast to notice.
‘How’s Dad?’
‘Much the same,’ Rex said.
‘Did you speak to the doctors?’
‘No one’s around at weekends. There’s a meeting about him this morning, according to Super Nurse, with the stroke-management team. We’ll find out more when we go in. But …’ he glanced at Leo ‘… from what I understand, they seem to be saying he can be discharged soon.’
Romy’s stomach flipped. She stared at her sons. ‘I know there’s been a lot of discussion about his rehab, but surely he’s not ready to come home yet.’ Although, through her panic, she vaguely remembered someone telling her that stroke patients did better at home.
Rex sighed. ‘Honestly? You wouldn’t think so to look at him, Mum,’ he said. ‘But they say there isn’t anything wrong with him now – meaning he’s not critically ill, I suppose.’
Nobody spoke.
‘They basically told us that as soon as we’ve organized what Staff Nurse Weeks calls his “ care package ”, he can be out – even as early as the end of the week.’ Leo gave an anxious grimace.
‘This week?’ Romy shook her head. She couldn’t think, couldn’t focus, couldn’t decide what she should worry about first. Because even while understanding perfectly well that Michael was coming home, being responsible for the care of such a damaged person still seemed a bit unreal, something that would happen eventually but not yet, not so soon. It reminded her of the terror of bringing Leo home, two days after he was born. She’d been convinced that without the nurses’ reassuring support she would do something dreadful and the vulnerable little bundle in her arms would suffer. Michael wasn’t a baby, obviously, but he was perhaps equally vulnerable.
‘They’re sending someone round to assess the flat, tell us what equipment we need,’ Leo said. ‘Like grab rails for the shower and a seat, so he can sit when he’s washing.’
‘And Anezka?’
Leo shrugged. ‘I doubt she’ll stick around once he’s home.’
‘So sad for your father,’ Romy said.
For a moment they didn’t speak. Rex messed with some spilt coffee and drew it across the table in a figure of eight. Romy wanted to slap his hand away, as she would have done when he was a child, but she stopped herself.
‘Well, boys,’ she said, straightening her shoulders and summoning every ounce of strength in her body, ‘looks like it’s down to us. So we’d better get on with it.’ Finch’s military master plan rang in her ears. She would do this. She would make it work for them all. And she would try not to think about all the things she was missing out on at home, try not to worry about how her defection would impact on her burgeoning relationship with Finch.
18
When Romy glanced at Bettina, she saw her friend shake her head slightly, her eyes narrowing with disapproval.
Romy didn’t need her friend’s help, though, when it came to Magda. The Hungarian woman, in her fifties, was charmless and tough. She would probably be very efficient – there was nothing she didn’t know about strokes – but not necessarily kind.
When the woman had been dispatched, Romy flopped down next to Bettina and sighed.
‘That’s the fourth. They’re all so …’ She cast her mind back through the people she’d interviewed.
‘Grim?’ Bettina offered, pulling a face as she flicked her blonde fringe off her tanned face. She ran an upmarket bakery in Hastings with her Swiss husband, Jost, but she’d taken Thursday off to help choose a live-in carer for Michael.
‘I’m trying to put myself in Michael’s position, imagine myself in bed, feeling rough, and the door opens and in walks Magda.’
They started to giggle.
‘It might motivate him to get out of bed really, really quickly.’
‘Or send him straight back under the duvet.’
They fell into a subdued silence.
‘Well, we’ve got Daniel next. I have high hopes for him,’ Bettina said, ‘even if I am biased.’ Daniel, twenty-five, was the son of a friend of Jost. He’d just finished his master’s in mental health and wanted a job in London for a while before going back to Switzerland. ‘And he might be better with a man looking after him ‒ a guy would be stronger, for a start, lugging Michael about. And it’ll be less embarrassing for Michael.’
Romy nodded. She wasn’t sure. ‘He’s a bit overqualified to be a carer.’
‘He seems happy with the idea … and if you think he’s suitable, you wouldn’t need to stick around too long.’
Romy had told Bettina how cornered she felt by the situation. But since knowing the date for Michael’s discharge – the following Monday – she had thrown all her energies into the task in hand. Finch was right: it made her feel calmer.
The final brick had fallen out of the wall of her resistance the other day, when she’d been sitting beside Michael in the blue hospital chair while he slept. She had been reading, when suddenly she’d felt his eyes on her.
For a moment he stared at her, as if he were trying to focus. Then he said, ‘I’m finished, Romy,’ as he unsuccessfully bit back the tears. With his good arm he had indicated his body beneath the sheet. ‘Have you ever seen a one-armed, one-legged silk who can’t remember the day of the week?’
When Romy didn’t immediately reply, shocked he should see himself in such terms, Michael had given her one of his knowing smiles and turned away.
She quickly pulled herself together. ‘Don’t say that, Michael. You’re improving every day, even if you can’t see it.’ She heard the false brightness in her tone, and finished more gently, ‘It’ll just take time.’
Michael nodded wearily. He’d heard it all before. Then he reached for her hand and clung to it, his eyes anguished as he met her gaze and a torrent of words came spilling out in his slow, compromised speech. ‘I’m so frightened, Romy. For the first time in my life … I can’t manage even the simplest thing. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what the hell’s going to happen to me.’ He swallowed with effort, furiously rubbing the tears from his face.
Romy had found her heart breaking. Since Michael’s stroke, all she had been able to think about was what this meant to her, what she would have to do and how much she didn’t want to do it. But now she fully focused on Michael’s predicament. How truly terrifying it must feel – for anybody, let alone a man as proud and independent as Michael – to be so reduced, so helpless.
‘I’m going to help you, Michael,’ she heard herself saying, as if the words came out of someone else’s mouth. ‘I’ll stay with you for a while, and we’ll get people in, organize things. Leo will be around too. You’ll be managing without us in no time.’ It sounded so simple as she said it. And so untrue.
Michael blinked, a slow frown forming on his forehead. ‘You’re going to be there?’ he asked, as if he hadn’t heard right.
She nodded.
‘You’d do that for me?’ he said, his face crumpling again.
Romy felt her own eyes pricking. This was a man she had loved so much, once. Really worshipped. Part of me still does, she admitted silently, reminding herself that the notion of leaving her marriage had never even crossed her mind – despite the common marital grouses – until that envelope had dropped through the letter box.
She patted his hand as it rested on the arm of her chair. ‘Of course I will. Just concentrate on getting better, Michael. Things will seem much brighter when you’re in your own bed again.’
Am I so selfish, she asked herself, as she left the ward to get a cup of tea, that I can’t give him a few weeks of my life in his hour of need? What was she scared of? That she would never leave again? My life will still be there, in Sussex, when Michael no longer needs me, she told herself firmly.
The doorbell rang, startling both women, and they jumped up.
Daniel was of medium height and willow-slim, his dark-blond hair cut very short, his fair skin glowing with health. He had a pleasant face, the glance from his light blue eyes shy at first. He looked incredibly young to Romy – even younger than Rex, whom she would have hesitated to leave in sole charge of any sick person. Will he really be able to cope with a cantankerous stroke patient 24/7? she wondered, as she made more coffee and left Bettina chatting to Daniel.
But the boy seemed very confident as Romy filled him in on Michael’s condition and what would be required of him – not that she really had a clue what to expect when her husband came home.
She hired Daniel on the spot, and she and Bettina went out for lunch round the corner to celebrate. He would start on Monday, Michael’s first day home, the only catch being that he didn’t want to move in for another two weeks, when Andreas, his boyfriend, went back to Denmark and they gave up their rented flat. But he agreed to work eight to eight, five days a week until then. Which meant Romy would have to be there during the night at first, and fill in at weekends – or get someone else, like Leo, to do it so she could go home, see Finch – but she was so grateful that she had found someone of his calibre that she didn’t quibble.
When she got back to the flat to wait for the man who was going to install the grab rail in the shower, she called Finch. His phone went to voicemail and she wondered what he was doing. Probably running, she thought, with a smile, imagining his look of intense concentration, the flush on his cheeks as he splashed around the harbour road and wishing she could be there with him.
‘I hope to be down tomorrow or Saturday,’ she said in her message, not sure if she could expect Finch to drop everything for her flying visit. But as she sat on the edge of Michael’s bed, remembering she had to get a super king-size waterproof mattress cover before Monday, her phone rang.
‘Hi,’ she said, so happy to hear his voice.
‘I’m in town tomorrow night,’ Finch said. ‘Got a dinner in the City. So, we could meet up on Saturday morning. Or you could brave another chilly night in the sex-palace?’
Romy laughed. She very much wanted to see him. And she longed to get away from the flat. It felt as if the place were on tenterhooks, waiting for Michael’s return in strained silence. ‘Won’t you be late back from your dinner?’
‘They usually finish promptly at ten thirty – the old buffers have to get back to the shires. I could be there by eleven, but that’s probably too late for you.’
‘Eleven’s fine,’ she said quickly, having the uneasy sense that she should grab all the moments she could with Finch before she became trapped in the relentless cycle of Michael’s care.
