Always You (29 page)

Her body shook like a leaf and she barely managed to contain the tears that threatened to spill out. ‘Oh, Cahal, please say you forgive me.’

‘Come here.’ He pulled her to him roughly and hugged her tight. ‘Of course I forgive you.’ She pressed her face into his hot, hard chest, and silent tears streamed down her face.

‘Does Becky know?’ he said.

Sarah sniffed. ‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘We talked. She’s okay about it.’

He kissed the top of her head and held her tighter still. ‘I don’t blame you for anything, Sarah. I blame my father for all of this. You ever heard of the butterfly effect?’

She looked up into his face. ‘If a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, it can cause a hurricane in another.’

‘Exactly,’ he said, wiping her tears away with his thumb. ‘The effects of what my father did all those years ago have rippled down the years, and left us where we are today.’

She placed a hand on his chest and felt the beat of his heart, steady and strong. ‘Thank God we found each other again.’

His expression darkened. ‘But if we’d never been forced apart in the first place, we wouldn’t have married other people, had kids with them and we wouldn’t now be where we are, with my family on the other side of the world and yours here.’

She tried to close her ears. She did not want to hear. Talking about it did not change anything, though she wished with all her heart that it would. She put her hand on the back of his head and pulled his face down. She kissed him long and hard on the lips, as more silent tears crept out the corners of her eyes.

He pulled away and she sat up straight. ‘I’ll wait for you, Sarah. You do know that. I’ll wait until we can be together and I don’t care how long that takes.’

‘Please, Cahal, don’t,’ she said, choking up. She placed a finger over his lips. ‘I can’t bear to think it, let alone talk about it.’

‘We have to face up to reality, my darling, even though it breaks my heart.’

‘Well, I don’t want to, not now, not ever,’ she blurted out childishly, tears streaming down her face. She threw himself into his arms. ‘I can’t bear it.’

The nursing home was quiet and still, all the residents tucked up in bed for the night. In Evelyn’s room the blind was drawn and a single lamp burned on the bedside table casting a golden glow on the shrunken, motionless figure in the bed. Evelyn lay as if asleep, her mouth open, her head tilted back, her face grey as dust. Her breath was audible in the silence, raspy and laboured, every inhalation a gargantuan effort, every exhalation a relief to Ian who sat on a chair by her bed.

The get-well cards and the flowers were all gone from the room, the hope that she might recover from this last bout of pneumonia quietly surrendered weeks ago. There was no hope now, only the reality of the minutes ticking by, each one of which might take her. But she was a fighter. Every time she breathed in, he held his breath expecting it to be her last. But then the air would come out again and she lived a moment longer.

The door opened and Sarah slipped quietly into the room with a fearful glance at Evelyn. She went over and held Evelyn’s hand for a long time, then released it and sat down on a chair on the other side of the bed. ‘I just checked with Dad,’ she whispered, setting her bag on the floor. ‘The kids are fine. They can stay there as long as …’ Her gaze travelled to Evelyn’s ashen face. '… as it takes.’

He rubbed his eyes, dry and itchy from watching. Sarah said softly, ‘You haven’t eaten all day. Jolanta’s on duty tonight. She’ll make you a sandwich or something. Shall I go and ask?’

He shook his head. ‘Dr Glover said he thought it would be tonight. I can’t see her going on like this much longer, can you?’

He glanced at Sarah and her bottom lip wobbled and he could see from the way her jaw worked that it took every ounce of control to stop herself from breaking down in tears. ‘No, Ian, I can’t.’

He nodded and bit the inside of his cheek. Everything that needed to be done was done. The arrangements with the funeral directors were all made. It felt as if time itself had stopped, suspended like Evelyn, between life and death.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said and put his hands over his face. It was unbearable. Every rasping breath raked across his brain like chalk on a blackboard. Why wouldn’t God take her? ‘Why does she have to suffer so?’

‘I don’t think she feels any pain,’ said Sarah firmly. ‘Not with the morphine.’

Panic filled his chest, sending his heart racing, sweating his palms. ‘I’m afraid, Sarah.’

‘Don’t be. She needs you to be strong now.’

He felt so useless. He could not help his mother now. Evelyn breathed in and Ian closed his eyes and waited. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. No sound, just silence pressing down like a dead weight. He opened his eyes, leapt out of the seat and leaned over his mother’s body, his heart pounding, his body bathed in sweat.

And then it came, the crackle of breath leaving her body once more.

Sarah, who had jumped to her feet at the same time as Ian, stared at him across the bed, her hand on her heart, her eyes wide. ‘Dr Glover said that the last thing to go is the hearing, Ian.’

‘Okay.’ Blood pumped round his veins too fast, making it hard to think clearly, to think at all. He felt a change in the room. Tension crackled like electricity. His chest felt like it was being flattened by an enormous weight, making it hard to breathe in the stuffy room. He took his mother’s limp hand in his. It felt like ice. ‘Her hand is so cold, Sarah.’

‘Shall I leave you?’ said Sarah, moving towards the door.

Without taking his eyes off Evelyn, he said, ‘No. Stay. Please.’

He leaned close and whispered in his mother’s ear. ‘It’s Ian here. I love you, Mum. I love you so much. You are the best mum in the world and I’m going to miss you very much.’

Sarah stifled a sob and Evelyn breathed in once more, but shallower than before. And then the agonising wait before the breath left her body once more, gurgling like water down a plughole.

She breathed in. Ian held his breath and steeled himself for the horrible rattling sound of her breath coming out. But this time, the long seconds ticked by. Her chest stilled and she breathed no more.

He breathed out slowly and the tension in the room dissipated, replaced by a calm sort of peace. The worst had finally happened. It was over. He stood for a long time, composed and grave, with her cold hand in his. When he was absolutely certain she was gone, he arranged her hand gently on the bedspread and looked at Sarah. ‘What am I going to do without her?’

‘I’m sorry, Ian.’ Tears streaked her face but she was calm. She came round to his side of the bed and held out her arms. He stepped into her embrace and her arms closed round him, like a soft and gentle blanket. He hugged her back, pressing his face into her fine, sweet-smelling hair. And then the sobs came, jerking his whole body, a release of the tension that had built up like a pressure cooker these past months. He cried for a long time and she simply held him, wordlessly, the two of them united at last, not in love but in grief.

Later, after the doctor had been and they were waiting for the funeral director, they sat in the empty day room, with a cold grey dawn cracking the edge of the world. Ian held a mug of untouched tea in his hand. ‘It’s strange,’ he said to Sarah, ‘I knew the moment she died. Not because she stopped breathing … it was more than that. She, her spirit I suppose I mean, was there one moment and the next it was gone. And the body lying on the bed … it wasn’t her.’

Sarah looked into her mug of tea. Her face was grey as the dawn, her lips pale. ‘I was there when Mum died and I felt it too. I remember I turned to Dad – and this sounds weird but it’s true – I was kind of elated. I said,
She’s not here, Dad. She’s gone
. I was glad because, after all the suffering, I knew her soul was free.’

Ian nodded. ‘I know what you mean. And I know Mum’s gone to a better place.’

Sarah smiled, though her eyes were wet with tears. ‘Yes, Ian, I’m quite certain of that.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Dad’ll be up by now. I’d better ring and let him and Aunt Vi know.’ She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a mobile, the little gold ring Cahal Mulvenna had given her glinting on her finger. ‘I’ll make the call outside.’

He thought back to the last proper conversation he’d had with Evelyn when he finally realised that Sarah was lost to him forever. ‘Sarah?’

She’d almost reached the door. She stopped and turned round. ‘Yes?’

‘Are you still seeing Cahal?’

She hesitated. He had never asked her about him, not since he’d come back from Australia. ‘Yes,’ she said cautiously. ‘Why?’

‘I just wondered. Doesn’t he go back to Australia soon?’

She looked at the floor. ‘Yes.’

‘And what are your … your plans after that?’

She shrugged and said tonelessly, ‘We’ll stay in touch. See each other during the holidays, I suppose. Wait till the kids grow up.’

‘And then?’

‘Then we’ll be together.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘The way we should have been from the very start.’

Ian flinched, steeled himself and said, ‘And he’ll wait for you?’

‘He says he will. I’ll definitely wait for him.’ She smiled through the tears streaming down her face. ‘But who knows what the future holds? You see, Cahal and I found out something that changes everything.’

‘I know. Your Dad told me. But I knew about the rape long before that.’

Sarah stared at him in astonishment. ‘How come?’

He scratched the back of his neck. ‘I overheard your dad and my dad speaking about it when you started dating Cahal Mulvenna at uni.’

Sarah put a hand to her heart. ‘You knew all these years and you never told me?’

He lifted his shoulders. He had felt guilty knowing when Sarah hadn’t, but he also admired and respected Vi for her stoicism. ‘It wasn’t my secret to tell, Sarah. If your aunt had wanted you to know, she would’ve told you, wouldn’t she?’

Sarah bowed her head. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘You mustn’t blame her – or your Dad – for not telling you. Or for holding it against Cahal Mulvenna.’

‘I don’t blame them. And neither does Cahal, though it’s turned his whole world upside down. Even if he was willing to leave his kids for me – and I’d never ask him to do that – he can never settle here. Not after this. Aunt Vi can’t bear the sight of him. He reminds her too much of his father.’ She sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. ‘So you see, it’s really rather hopeless.’

*

Two weeks later, Sarah pulled up in front of Ian’s house and her anxiety for him went up another notch. The grass was six inches high and the borders were knee-deep in weeds. He had always been a house-proud man but, since Evelyn’s death two weeks ago, he’d completely lost interest in everything domestic.

Her heart ached with grief, not only for Evelyn, but for a future that had slipped through her grasp like sand. For tonight, in the early evening, Cahal would fly to London and, from there, on to Australia. She would not be there to see him off.

She bent over the steering wheel and a long, low wail of anguish escaped her. Fighting for breath with lungs that no longer had the will to work, she waited for her chest to implode with the unbearable pain. But it did not. Slowly, amazingly, the intense ache ebbed away, to be replaced with a dull, dead feeling between her breasts.

A single bronze leaf, crisp and dry, fell onto the windscreen of the car. It clung to the window wiper for a few moments, then blew away. Against the fence dividing Ian’s house from the neighbours, the roses were all blown, heads bent as if in shame, their pink and yellow petals scattered across the unkempt garden. All around her death was on the march.

She took a deep breath, dug her nails into the palm of her hand and told herself to buck up. Even though her heart felt like it might crack in two, she had to be strong. It might be many long, lonely years before she and Cahal could be together, but she must take comfort from knowing that he lived and he was hers. Theirs would not be a life lived together after all, but lived apart. The Claddagh ring glowed amber in the afternoon sunshine, a reminder not so much of a promise made but one thwarted.

Maybe happiness had never been her destiny. Her future, it seemed, would bear more resemblance to her aunt’s than she had ever dreamed possible. Her life would be one of duty, after all, a life where the happiness of others – her beloved children and Ian – would come before her own. And she must find a way to live that life with gratitude and serenity, taking joy where she could find it.

Pulling herself together, she got out of the car and retrieved a plastic bag from the boot. She let herself in the side gate and hooked the bag on the handle of the back door. She was just in the process of popping a note through the front door, when it opened, making her jump back in surprise.

‘Hello,’ said Ian, dressed in loose-fitting jeans and a grubby polo shirt.

‘Ian! Aren’t you working today?’ she said, feeling a little guilty for having timed her visit with the express intention of avoiding him. As for herself, she’d arranged to work from home today because she couldn’t bear being in the office knowing that Cahal was somewhere in the building clearing out his desk.

‘I didn’t feel like going in.’ His face was unshaven, his eyes bloodshot and swollen. If she didn’t know him better, she would’ve thought he’d been drinking. But then what must she look like? She’d hardly slept for weeks and spent most of today in tears.

‘I left Molly’s PE things on the back door,’ she said. ‘She forgot to pack them. She won’t be allowed to do the fun run at school tomorrow without them.’ It was because of the children she hauled herself out of bed every morning and carried on as if her world was not coming to an end.

‘Thanks.’

‘Molly has art after school and Lewis is going to Matt’s for a play. You’ve to pick them both up at five.’

‘Yeah, I haven’t forgotten. Have they been okay?’

‘Molly was crying again last night but she’s okay now. We had a long talk about Evelyn. I don’t think it’s affected Lewis as much.’ She regarded him thoughtfully, wondering if he was up to looking after the children. ‘I’m worried about you, Ian,’ she said gently. ‘Maybe you should try to get back to work. A bit of routine might help.’

He shrugged and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. ‘Maybe in a day or two. I’ve been … I’ve had a lot to think about.’

‘Of course. Look, if you’re not up to it, I’m sure Dad and Aunt Vi would take the kids.’

‘No, I want to see them. It helps,’ he said simply.

There was an awkward silence and he said, ‘Won’t you come in?’

‘I can’t. I’m working from home and I really need to get on.’

‘Please. I have something for you.’

She glanced at the car, and then back at Ian’s wretched face. All she wanted to do was go home and curl up on the sofa and drink herself into oblivion. But she wasn’t the only one suffering.

The coffee table was hidden under old papers, half-drunk mugs of tea and smoky bacon crisp packets – Ian’s favourite snacks. The white marble mantelpiece and the gilt side table were littered with condolence cards. Sarah perched on the white sofa and placed her hands on her knees while Ian went off to make them both tea. She’d only been inside the house on a few occasions and she’d never felt comfortable. It was too perfect and too white. Now that Raquel was gone the décor felt too frivolous for a single man.

Ian came in carrying a mug in each hand. He kicked the door closed with his foot and handed her a mug. ‘She didn’t even send a sympathy card.’

Sarah stared at him uncomprehending and he said, ‘Raquel.’

She hadn’t come to the funeral either. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, thinking that her dislike of Raquel had been well-founded after all. No matter what had gone on between her and Ian, she should’ve been there.

He sat down opposite her on a matching armchair and set his mug on a glass side table. ‘Cahal’s due to go back to Australia soon, isn’t he?’

She eyed him warily. Oh God. Surely he wasn’t thinking that with Cahal off the scene, there was hope of a reconciliation between them? She looked into the mug. Her hands were shaking, sending little ripples across the surface of the tea.

Last night she’d lain awake in Cahal’s bed, his arm wrapped tightly round her waist, listening to the sound of his breathing and the creaks of the house. All night her emotions lurched from rage to despair and, when she finally fell into a doze around 6 in the morning, she awoke an hour later, consumed by sadness and the awful knowledge that no matter how she raged against the injustice of their circumstances, she and Cahal were powerless to change it.