At Home With The Templetons (39 page)

Gracie could only wait, her hands clenched, praying for Nina to come in, come straight to her bedside, to hug her, to let her say sorry, to say it was an accident, to understand, the two of them feeling this together, loving Tom, helping each other, helping him, whatever the future was going to bring …

When Eleanor came in ten minutes later, she was on her own. Gracie tried to sit up. ‘I need to see them, Mum. I have to see Tom and Nina now. I wasn’t drunk. I promise I wasn’t. It was an accident. I have to tell Nina the truth.’ ‘She’s too upset to see you yet, Gracie. And they’re still not letting anyone but her see Tom.’

‘Is he all right?’

‘They don’t know yet.’

‘Is he going to die?’ Her voice rose. ‘Is that what you mean? Mum, no. He can’t ‘

‘Gracie, no, not that. It’s his spine. There’s serious damage. They think ‘

She couldn’t hear it yet. ‘Please, Mum, please. Ask Nina if I can see Tom. If I can see her. I need to talk to her too.’ She saw something in her mother’s face. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ ‘Gracie, we’re getting you and Spencer flown back to London tomorrow.’

‘But I need to talk to Nina first. I need to see Tom.’ ‘No, Gracie. I’m sorry, but it’s not possible.’

‘I have to.’

‘She won’t let you.’

‘But he’ll want to see me.’ ‘Gracie, he’s still unconscious.’

She sat up then, chilled by the tone in her mother’s voice, by the expression on her face. ‘You have to let me see him. Please, let me talk to Nina.’ ‘Gracie, I’m sorry, but you can’t. He’s being moved to another hospital this afternoon. One with a spinal unit. She has to make all the arrangements.’

‘But I need to see her. To see him.’ ‘Gracie, I’m sorry, but you can’t.’

She cried until her chest hurt even more, until there were no more tears, but it made no difference. Eleanor just said the same thing over and again.

The return to London was a nightmare, slow, painful, difficult. The days that followed were worse. Confined to the house, unable to put any weight on her ankle, she waited for a phone call from Nina, from Tom. All she could do was ask her mother again and again to please make contact, please help. She had to know he was all right. She had to talk to him. She didn’t understand. Why wasn’t her mother calling Nina? Why wasn’t Nina calling Eleanor? Gracie needed to tell her the truth. She hadn’t been drunk. It was an accident, a terrible accident.

Spencer came to her room a week later, the day he started work with the film company. His scratches were already healed. It was the first time they’d been alone together since the accident. He’d never acknowledged his part in it, the fact he’d been so drunk, his pulling at her hair. That didn’t matter to her. All that mattered now was Tom. ‘Have you heard anything, Spencer? Anything at all?’ He shook his head, not quite meeting her eye.

‘What is it? What do you know?’

‘No more than you do. Just what Mum told you. Nina doesn’t want to talk to any of us.’

‘For now? Just for now, do you mean? Or ever? Spencer, what do you know?’

But Spencer was gone.

A week later there was still no word. She made herself get out of her bed, ignoring the pain in her ankle, made her way downstairs to the kitchen where her mother was standing, staring out the window. ‘Is he dead, Mum? Is Tom dead and you’re just not telling me?’ She began to cry again. She couldn’t stop crying. She had to know something. She begged her mother to help her. To find out something. Anything.

It took another week of pleading before Eleanor asked an Italian-speaking teacher at her school to help. With Gracie beside her, the teacher rang all the major hospitals in and around Rome, pleading for information, asking for names of specialist clinics, spinal wards. On the seventh call to a clinic south of Rome, they found him. Yes, there was a Tom Donovan there. A young Australian m

an. Eleanor’s colleague asked as many questions as she could before the hospital clerk hung up. ‘He’s alive, Gracie. No brain damage. He’s conscious, talking. He’s got movement from the waist up, but there’s serious lower spinal damage. They’ve operated, but it’s too early to know the exact situation.’

Three days later, a letter arrived from Nina, addressed to Eleanor, not Gracie. No greeting, no signature. Just hard, black letters in the centre of a page.

My son will never walk again. We are in the process of arranging to bring him back to Australia. Tom and I want nothing more to do with your family. I will leave Templeton Hall immediately.

Gracie read the letter a dozen times, searching for something she knew wasn’t there. A message to her from Tom. He would want to talk to her, she knew he would. She had to talk to him. She needed to talk to him. She had to say sorry. Why wouldn’t Nina let her? Why wouldn’t her mother understand? Help her? She pleaded with her again, to travel to Rome with her, to see Nina and Tom before they left for Australia. ‘Gracie, it’s very difficult, I know, but we have to accept what she says. She’s his mother.’

‘But he was my -‘ Her what? Her boyfriend? Her almost fiance? She could see it in everyone’s eyes, not just her mother’s. You and Tom were just kids. It wasn’t serious. Put it behind you. It’s just one of those tragic things.

Eleanor was deaf to her pleading. ‘Gracie, there’s nothing more I can do. Nina couldn’t be any clearer. I’m sorry.’

But Gracie couldn’t understand Nina’s actions. She couldn’t understand her mother’s behaviour, either. She needed Eleanor to be on her side, to say, ‘I’ll keep phoning Nina, Gracie. Don’t worry, she’ll understand, once the shock passes.’ But her mother wouldn’t.

‘What did Nina say to you at the hospital?’ She remembered her mother’s expression, after the two of them had been talking, after Nina had been crying outside Gracie’s room that day. ‘Did you have a fight with Nina?’

Her mother’s face gave something away. Gracie saw it, a sudden emotion.

‘What did she say to you? Was it about me and Tom? Was she unhappy about us?’

‘She didn’t say anything.’ ‘She said something.’

‘Gracie, you saw her letter. Nina doesn’t want anything to do with us again: We have to respect that.’

How could she respect that? How could she even understand that? Nina had been her friend. That had been one of the extra, wonderful things about what had happened with Tom, knowing that Nina, her friend Nina, would be happy for them both. Hadn’t they been friends for so many years? How could she just cut them out of her life like this?

‘I’m going to go to Australia,’ she said, a week later. ‘I have to find him.’

‘Don’t, Gracie. Don’t make it any harder on yourself than it already is.’

‘I have to see him. I have to say sorry to him. Can’t I at least write to him?’

‘I don’t know where they are. All I know from our solicitor is she’s already moved out of the Hall.’

Someone had to know where they were. One day, when her mother was out, Gracie rang the Castlemaine police station. She asked for the inspector who’d been there when she was a child. He’d long retired, she was told. She didn’t know anyone else’s name. ‘I need to speak to someone who knows Nina Donovan. Nina and Tom Donovan.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m new to the area myself.’ He sounded young. ‘Who is this?’

She couldn’t give her name. She hung up then.

She thought of Nina’s sister in Cairns, then realised she didn’t know her surname or where she worked. There was no way of tracking her down. She tried hospitals in Victoria, in New South Wales, in South Australia. If Tom wasn’t at home yet, he might still be in a ward somewhere. No one would give out any information.

She tried the cricket academy in Adelaide. She’d decided to ask to speak to Tom’s friend Stuart Phillips. He would know, surely. A cheery female voice answered. Gracie’s heart started to thump. The lie came easily. ‘I’m calling from London, from the London Cricketer magazine. Could I please speak to Stuart Phillips?’

‘I’m sorry. Mr Phillips is on long-service leave. Can anyone else help you?’

She made herself ask. ‘I was hoping to get an update on Tom Donovan’s condition.’

‘Tom Donovan? Is he a coach here or a player?’ ‘A player. A bowler.’

‘I don’t know the name, sorry. Let me ask someone else.’ She heard the receptionist ask a person beside her. ‘Do you know anyone called Tom Donovan? Some magazine in London wants an update on him.’

‘Tom Donovan? Is he that guy crippled in the car accident overseas?’

Gracie hung up.

Her father came home to London to see her and Spencer. It didn’t help. Her mother greeted her father with such loathing Gracie wanted to scream at them both. ‘Forget about your problems for a minute, would you? Can’t you think about us, about me for once?’ From their shocked expressions she realised she’d said it aloud.

‘I’ll come back tomorrow, Gracie,’ Henry said. He let himself out.

He returned the next day when her mother was out, the timing deliberate, Gracie knew. He brought her a jigsaw, grapes, a bag of sweets, as if she was eight, in hospital having her tonsils out.

But if her mother couldn’t help her, perhaps her father could.

He and Nina had always got on well. ‘I need to talk to Tom, Dad. Talk to Nina. Can’t you help me find her? Find him? Ring the solicitor in Castlemaine? He’ll tell you where they are, surely.’

‘Gracie, I’m so sorry. No, I can’t. I’ve seen the letter. Nina’s made it clear how she feels.’

‘Please, Dad. I have to talk to her. I have to say sorry.’ ‘We’re all sorry, Gracie.’

But there was no one more sorry than Gracie herself. Tom would never walk again and it was her fault. She started writing to them, to Tom, to Nina, to both of them, many letters each week, sent to every address she could think of in the hope that even one would find its way to them. Heartfelt letters, filled with remorse, anguish, sorrow. She begged her mother to post them for her. She saw the

worry in her mother’s eyes. Two days later, she asked her aunt Hope as well. Hope had been a regular visitor since the accident. She’d even sat with Gracie sometimes, brought her lunch, magazines, books. Gracie grasped at any kindness on offer. To her relief, Hope agreed to post her letters too.

A month passed, then another. She should have been back at university but she couldn’t face it. She used her still-painful ankle as her excuse. The truth was the outside world seemed too frightening. She kept writing her letters, but there was still no word at all from Australia. Once her ankle finally healed and she could walk without crutches, she forced herself to go to the British Library to read the Australian newspapers, desperate to find some mention of him, of an accident in Italy involving a promising cricketer. If it had made the news, she couldn’t find it. Eleanor made her stop. ‘You’re tormenting yourself, Gracie.’ ‘It can’t end like this.’

‘It has to, Gracie. You have to accept it.’ She tried one more time. ‘Please, Mum. Can’t you try and find Nina? She was your friend. She’d talk to you. Please help her to understand. Please, Mum.’

‘I can’t, Gracie. I’m sorry, but I can’t.’

All Gracie could do was keep writing to him. If Nina wouldn’t answer her, perhaps Tom would, eventually. For the next two months, she sent two or three letters a week. She told him how much she cared about him. How

much she loved him. How she was thinking of him every day. How sorry she was. At night, every night, she kept trying to imagine him now, unable to walk, unable to run. The images tormented her. She tried to keep other pictures in her head. Tom on the boat to the Isle of Skye, pulling her up the stairs on to the top deck, the light of the water silver and magical. Him in that Italian piazza, face to the sun, his long legs stretched out. The feel of his skin, his body, against her in bed. Then those images made her feel even more distraught. There was no peaceful place in her mind any more.

A fifth month passed. She felt like her own life had stalled. She hadn’t gone back to university. She was still living at home. Everyone else seemed to be getting on with their lives. Spencer never mentioned the accident. All he talked about was his courier job and the film world. Her sisters’ lives were busy and productive too. Charlotte’s nanny-training business was going from strength to strength. Audrey had surprised the whole family with her news - she and her husband, Greg, had decided to move to New Zealand. She visited Gracie the day before their flight, so happy, so excited, talking non-stop. ‘I really hope you get back to university soon, Gracie,’ she’d said. ‘Have you thought about doing some voluntary work in the meantime? It might help take your mind off things.’

But Gracie couldn’t think of anything but the accident. What else was there to think about?

She knew her parents were especially worried about her. Her father rang once a fortnight, sent her even more postcards, as well as books and magazines from the countries and cities he was working in. They didn’t help. She found it impossible to read. She found everything difficult. She barely managed to speak to Charlotte or Audrey whenever they rang. What was the point? She could never make them understand. Her mother tried to help her see reason. ‘Gracie, it was a terrible accident, but accidents happen. You have to try to move on.’ But she couldn’t move on. How could she? There was nowhere for her to go.

She kept writing to Tom. A letter a week. Sometimes a page, sometimes more, pouring her heart out to him, telling him everything she could, even trying to cheer him up sometimes, with little stories, memories of their travelling together, anything to try to keep a connection between them. It became her job. She structured her day around it. She could spend hours on each letter, choosing the best words, redrafting each one until it was perfect. Every morning she checked the mat for the post, her fingers crossed, endlessly hopeful that today would be the day she would hear something, anything, back from him or from Nina. Anything. It was the silence that was killing her.

Six months after the accident, a letter arrived from Australia in the morning post. It was addressed to her. Nina’s handwriting. Eleanor had gone to the supermarket. Gracie was home alone. She was usually home. She’d formally withdrawn from university. She rarely ventured far from her neighbourhood: She found it too difficult travelling around London now. There were too many places that reminded her of Tom. She picked up the letter from the mat and held it in her hands. Her heart started thumping and her hands shook as she carefully, slowly opened it. She wanted it to be from Tom but Nina was the next best thing. It was two sentences, no greeting, no signature.