Secrets and Shadows, page 41
‘Oh, good – and I must show you the pictures I took at Glendrochatt. Some of them are hilarious. There’s a terribly funny one of Bunty dancing reels.’
It was easy to chat away about Glendrochatt and all their new mutual friends but there was something about Louisa that disturbed him though he couldn’t quite define what it was. She was always sassy and amusing – but this was different. There was a sort of hectic gaiety about her, a reckless glint in her eyes that made him wonder if she’d already had too much to drink. He was surprised he hadn’t noticed before how very thin she was, but in her figure-hugging top and flimsy skirt she looked as slender as a willow wand.
They had delicious cold tomato soup, curried chicken and a strawberry tart, sitting in Louisa’s pretty kitchen-cum-living room, with the French windows to the garden open.
‘What a delicious dinner – really up to Glendrochatt standards, and that’s saying something!’
‘We’ve got a brilliant local deli,’ said Louisa with a grin. ‘Don’t delude yourself that I’ve been slaving over a hot stove. That’s not my style at all.’
‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ he said, laughing at her.
They talked about all sorts of subjects and an unperceptive fly on the wall might have thought they were both having a thoroughly pleasant evening. Louisa was particularly good company, sharp and funny and out to please, and Christopher did his best to be entertaining and appreciative without sending out the wrong messages – a difficult balancing act to achieve. But all the time a tension lay beneath the surface. How odd love is, thought Christopher. Here is this very attractive woman issuing an unmistakable invitation to me that any man would envy, but which I’m not going to take up because my heart is firmly on the other side of the Atlantic.
‘Coffee?’ asked Louisa.
Christopher looked at his watch. ‘No thank you, not for me. You’ve given me a wonderful evening, Louisa, I’ve really enjoyed it, but now I must be getting back.’ He got to his feet.
‘Don’t go,’ she said, and there was a pleading urgency about her that made him deeply uneasy. ‘Stay for the night, Christopher – just this once. Please don’t go.’
‘I must,’ he said gently. ‘You know that. I’ve enjoyed being with you very much and I think you’re lovely, Louisa. I’m incredibly flattered you should want me to stay, but I couldn’t do that to Marnie . . . and I don’t really think you could either. We would both regret it.’
‘Don’t say that!’ she said passionately. ‘I know I’m behaving badly. I know I shouldn’t be doing this but I can’t help it.’ She looked as if she might cry. Then she whispered, so quietly that he could hardly hear her: ‘It may be my last chance.’
At that moment the telephone rang. Louisa hesitated for a moment and then answered it.
‘Oh, hello,’ he heard her say. ‘No, of course it’s not too late for me. It’s very kind of you to ring at this time, though. Oh, I see. Yes. Please tell me then . . .’ There was a long pause while she listened intently to whoever was speaking the other end. Christopher saw her put a hand on the back of a chair as though to steady herself. All the colour had drained out of her face. She almost seemed to shrink and wither before his eyes like a winter apple.
‘Yes, I see,’ she said finally. ‘I understand . . . I’ll see you tomorrow then. Ten o’clock. I’ll be there. No, I’m not alone – there is someone here with me. Thanks for telling me.’
When she put the telephone down she sank on to a chair at the table and buried her head in her hands.
‘Louisa . . . whatever is it? Tell me what’s happened.’ He was appalled by the look on her face.
She looked up at him, face ashen, eyes enormous. She was shaking.
‘It’s happened,’ she said. ‘What I’ve always dreaded. It’s got me at last. That was my oncologist, the dear, lovely man who’s seen me through so much, ringing me with the result of a scan. My cancer has metastasised. It’s gone to my liver. It’s gone everywhere.’
Christopher knelt beside her and held her for a long time while she suddenly wept, great racking sobs that felt to him as if they would wrench her fragile frame apart.
‘I am so frightened,’ she whispered at last. ‘So terribly frightened. I don’t feel ready to die.’
‘Did he say that?’
‘Not in so many words . . . but I know too much after living under the shadow of this thing for ten years. He said “not good news this time, I’m afraid” and that he’d like to see me again tomorrow and discuss what he calls “any possible options”. I went for a routine check-up last week and they weren’t happy – shadows on the X-ray, they said, might have to check the bloods again, just to be safe, probably nothing to worry about . . . all that guff . . . and so they did more blood tests and a full scan. Now he’s rung me with the results.’
‘Would you like a drink? Can I get you anything?’
She gave a watery smile. ‘I’d love a cup of tea – just good strong builder’s variety. It might help pull me together. I’m so sorry to do this to you, Christopher.’
‘For God’s sake! I’m glad to be here with you.’
He made two mugs of tea and they went and sat on the sofa together and he listened while she told him how the cancer had returned three years ago after a long remission; it hadn’t been directly related to the original Hodgkinson’s, though they’d always warned her that that put her at greater risk of getting other types of cancer. This time it had been breast cancer. She’d had a partial mastectomy, a reconstruction and radiotherapy and thought she’d beaten it again. All the signs had been good. ‘There have been one or two niggles just lately – not symptoms exactly, nothing I could pin down, but I told myself I was fine. Now I suddenly feel so very tired of being brave,’ she said wearily.
He remembered Marnie finding the dead owl and telling him about Louisa’s dream, and it made him go cold.
‘Do your parents know?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Not yet. It’s only happened in the last week. I’ll have to tell them now, of course, but they’ve been through so much with me that I didn’t want to worry them unless I needed to.’
‘Don’t shut them out,’ he said. ‘Their help will be in trying to help you.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m well aware of that, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I’ll ring them in the morning.’
‘What about Adam?’ he asked tentatively. ‘He obviously still loves you. He’ll want to support you over this.’
‘I know that too,’ she said. ‘Darling, faithful Adam . . . who I’ve relied on and taken for granted for years. This will be terrible for him too. I will tell him, of course – but I don’t want anyone else to know just yet. I couldn’t cope with other people’s reactions and emotions at the moment – you’ve no idea how difficult that is. It’d just be too much. I’ve got to get sorted in my own head first. Promise me you won’t tell anyone.’
‘What can I do?’ he asked. ‘Would you like me to ring Adam now to see if he could come back and be with you?’
‘We wouldn’t get him. He won’t have his mobile switched on and I don’t want to leave a message tonight. Talk to me, Christopher,’ she said. ‘Just talk to me about something, anything . . . anything except cancer.’
So he told her about childhood holidays, about long-ago, gap year travels and later university escapades, and she listened and laughed and asked questions until suddenly he realised she’d fallen asleep, in the way a small child can fall asleep, literally between one word and the next. He found a coat hanging in the hall and covered her with it. She looked absurdly young and desperately vulnerable and his heart turned over with sadness as he looked at her . . . but not, he thought, with love. Whatever the mysterious alchemy is that ignites a fuse between a particular man and woman, it had not sparked that special fire between him and Louisa – or not as far as he was concerned. He wondered what he ought to do. Clearly she could not be left to wake – perhaps hours later – only to find herself alone when she would have to face again, after temporary oblivion, the frightening reality of what was happening to her.
He stacked the plates and put them in the dishwasher, making as little clatter as he could, but she slept on, so he fetched the paper intending to read it, but found he could neither concentrate nor see properly in the dimmed lighting. As he didn’t want to put the overhead light on for fear of waking her, he sat in the semi-darkness and pondered about the future, for himself, for Marnie, and for gallant, wayward Louisa, sleeping beside him.
He heard a clock strike midnight, so he reckoned it would be seven o’clock in the evening for Marnie, whether she was in New York or Toronto. She would be expecting a call. He had told her he would ring her as soon as he got back to the flat after dinner and report on the evening, but this was no moment to be asked for explanations. His mobile was switched off, and when he turned it on he saw that he had one missed call. He pressed 121 and listened to Marnie’s voice, teasing but a little anxious too, he thought. ‘Hi there – what a very long supper you’re having! Ring me soon. Have lots to tell you. Love you.’ His heart sank. He decided to text Marnie and try to forestall any conversation with her until the morning. He punched in a brief message saying that something unavoidable and unexpected had cropped up and he would call her tomorrow. He thought she would find it extremely bothering and imagined all her defence mechanisms springing into action as she read it. Thinking of you. Don’t forget I love you, he added, and hoped she would believe him.
Louisa woke in the small hours, and, as Christopher had guessed, the misery of remembering what had happened was almost worse than being told for the first time. But she was touchingly grateful to find him still there.
‘You should go to bed properly now,’ he said.
‘Will you stay with me?’ she asked. ‘I know I ought not to ask it of you but I promise I won’t cause any trouble now.’ She gave him a wobbly little smile. ‘I just don’t think I could bear to be alone tonight and I think Marnie would understand though I promise not to tell her if you’d rather not. Please?’
‘Of course I’ll stay with you,’ he said. ‘Marnie certainly wouldn’t want me to leave you like this. Of course she’ll understand.’ He hoped this was true.
‘You could sleep on the spare room bed,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid it’s not properly made up but there’s a duvet on it.’ She looked at him sadly, knowing he would never now give her the one thing she had thought she wanted from him, but deeply grateful for his presence and support. He followed her up the stairs and she came and kissed him goodnight, and thanked him and clung to him. He held her to him for a minute, fighting an urge to respond to her more fully.
‘Don’t give up, Louisa,’ he said urgently. ‘You’ve beaten this thing before . . . you can do it again. People do make extraordinary recoveries from cancer against all the odds. I know that from my doctor brother-in-law. Anything can happen.’
‘Even dying,’ she said, with a bleak attempt at humour. ‘We’re always telling each other “Don’t worry, it may never happen” and most of the things that secretly scare us witless won’t . . . but dying will happen one day to all of us. It’s just that I don’t feel nearly ready for it yet.’
‘Perhaps one never does,’ he said, aching for her, feeling helplessly inadequate to bring reassurance. ‘Have you got anything you can take . . . a sleeping pill or something?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. I will do that . . . but will you wake me in the morning in case I oversleep? I have to get up to go to the hospital.’
‘I will.’
He watched her go into her room, knowing that, pill or no pill, she would probably cry herself to sleep.
In the morning, as promised, Christopher went to check on Louisa. He had in fact looked in on her twice during what had been left of the night, and listened – but there had been no sound and she appeared to be sleeping.
Now he tapped at her half-open door twice, and then put his head round it. ‘Louisa?’ She was curled up in a tight little ball and didn’t move. For an awful moment he wondered how many sleeping pills she might have taken.
‘Louisa . . .’ he said again, louder, and was mightily relieved when she moaned softly and stirred. ‘It’s just after seven. I promised I’d wake you. You have to go to the hospital.’ He hated reminding her.
‘Adam?’ she asked sleepily.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it’s Christopher. I’m still here.’
She sat up suddenly, blonde hair tousled. She had nothing on and he couldn’t help noticing again how thin she was – painfully, scarily thin. He looked away quickly. She pulled the duvet up to her chin.
‘Christopher? Oh, of course . . . I . . . I remember now.’ He could see from her face that recollection was flooding painfully back.
‘I’ll get you a mug of tea,’ he said.
When he went back upstairs with it, she was sitting on the edge of her bed with a dressing gown on and had brushed her hair. He felt very rumpled, scruffy and unshaven.
‘Did you sleep?’
‘I took a pill as you suggested – went out like a light. Christopher?’
‘Yes?’
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Thanks for everything.’
‘It was nothing. Wish I could have done more. Is there anything else I can do?’
‘No, I’ll be fine . . . but perhaps you could just hang on while I have a shower and answer the phone if it goes? It might be the hospital and I wouldn’t want to miss the call. Dr Allandale said he’d get someone to ring early if the appointment had to be changed.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and wait downstairs.’
When he got down to the kitchen, he hesitated for a moment, then picked up the telephone and rang Adam.
There were no more messages on his mobile but he wondered what there would be on the answering machine in the flat. Not that there was anything he could do yet anyway, he thought. It would be two thirty in the morning for Marnie.
He could hear the sound of water running upstairs when the telephone in the kitchen did ring. He picked it up. ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Hello?’ But there was a click and the line went dead.
‘Who was that?’ asked Louisa, coming down a few minutes later.
‘I don’t know. I dialled 1471 but it was one of those “we do not have the number” calls.’
‘Oh well, thanks anyway. I’ll ring the hospital to check just in case.’
‘Darling Louisa,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve rung Adam. He’s on his way. I’ll just wait till he comes.’
At that moment the doorbell rang. Louisa ran to answer it and flung herself into Adam’s arms. Christopher quietly slipped away.
He walked to the bus stop at the end of the road with a very heavy heart; wondering what the future had in store for Louisa.
When he got back to his flat he went straight to the answering machine. It showed three missed calls, but no messages had been left. He knew with a deadly inner certainty who the early morning caller had been . . . and why she would have been ringing Louisa’s house first thing in the morning, UK time.
Chapter Thirty-two
The trip to Toronto had been an unqualified success on many different levels. Marnie had thoroughly enjoyed the companionship of her father – she didn’t think she could remember a time when she’d ever before had him all to herself for twenty-four hours, or felt so close to him.
She’d spent the first night with him and her stepmother, Toni, in their New York apartment and enjoyed seeing her three half-brothers, only the youngest of whom was also Toni’s child. She was fond of them all in a semi-detached way, very different from the Piper family’s full-on commitment to each other, and got on reasonably well with all of them – so long as they didn’t have to be together for too long.
‘Dad,’ she’d said suddenly, soon after they’d taken off for Toronto, ‘in all your adventurous life, have you ever had a feeling of certainty that you’ve met your soulmate?’
Her father gave her a quizzical look and rubbed his chin. ‘Soulmate? I guess I could be a bit of a late developer in the soul department.’ He chuckled. ‘I’ve been a bit more of a body man myself,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I think Toni and I rub along pretty well – ten years together coming up, would you believe? Never would have thought I’d last that long with one woman, but soulmates? I dunno about that. I take it you think you’ve met such a rare creature, young lady?’
‘I think I have.’
‘Better put some salt on his tail then,’ he said, drily.
She looked at him sideways, gauging his mood. ‘He’s done time,’ she said.
Her father threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘Oh, Marnie-Jane,’ he said. ‘You never cease to astonish me. Here I am chasing rainbows with you on one of the most unlikely, crazy, romantic enterprises that’s ever come my way, and you choose this moment to tell me you’ve taken up with a criminal!’
‘I didn’t say he was a criminal,’ said Marnie indignantly, but greatly relieved that her volatile parent had reacted with such good humour. ‘I said he’d been to prison.’
‘What did he do then? You don’t usually get put inside without some reason.’
So she told him all – or nearly all – she could about Christopher Piper: about how they had met and where, on the first stage of her search for the house that had lived in her head for twenty years; about Christopher’s death by dangerous driving charge and his spell in gaol; about his past career and his intended new one and about the fact that he’d been with her when she’d found Eilean Dobhran – and that she loved him. ‘Six months ago I still couldn’t have imagined I’d be feeling like this about anyone,’ she said, ‘only I know now that this time it is quite, quite different. This is real.’
