to introduce herself and to change one of the packs of fluid that drained into Ted’s arm.
‘How is he?’ I asked softly, thinking of the monitors at the nursing station.
‘There’s no change.’
That meant there was no deterioration. I smiled my leaping gratitude at her.
At nine o’clock I told Lola and Jack that they should go home. It was over an hour’s drive and Jack had school in the morning.
‘Aren’t you coming?’ Jack asked.
‘I’ll stay here a little longer. Lola will see you into bed.’ I glanced at her over his head and she nodded. ‘Or if you’d rather, you can go to Caz and Graham’s.’
‘No,’ Jack said at once.
Lola bent over and kissed her grandfather’s forehead, then touched her fingertips to his lips. ‘See you later, Grandad,’ she whispered.
Jack touched the small steeple of bedclothes over his feet and snatched his hand back. ‘Bye,’ he mumbled. He followed his sister to the door and then hovered, torn between the impulse to rush back to Ted’s side and the need to keep his own distance from me and his sister. Sometimes Jack was so transparent I thought I could read his hurt and put everything right for him so easily; at others I was afraid I hardly knew him. ‘Bye,’ he said again. Lola was leading and he followed her.
‘Drive carefully,’ I warned automatically. ‘I love you both.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
I sat down yet again. An hour dragged by and Ted rolled his head on the pillows and feebly shifted his legs. The Night Sister suddenly appeared with the first nurse. They moved rapidly around him, checking his fluids, and the tubes and wires that led into him, and calling him by his name.
‘What’s happened? What’s wrong?’ My voice was sharp and loud.
‘There are some new signs. The doctor’s coming.’
I was squeezed out of my place at his side. Ted’s eyes were wide open now and I could see how much it hurt him to breathe.
‘Dad? Dad, I’m here … I …’
I couldn’t finish what I was saying because the doctor arrived and I was edged further away to make room for him. I stood obediently outside the room with my arms wrapped round my chest. The old men were mostly asleep although pools of light lapped one or two of the beds. I waited until the doctor came out again. He was wearing a dark-blue shirt under his white coat and a name tag that read Dr Raj Srinivasar. I saw all this in a split second. He indicated that we should step a little distance away.
‘Doctor?’
‘I’m sorry. The undamaged portion of your father’s heart muscle has been working very hard since the attack and we have been helping him as far as possible with drugs to stimulate the heart’s natural rhythm. But I am afraid even this is gradually failing him now. I think Dr Bennett explained?’
I bent my head. ‘Yes.’
It had been human but utterly vain to hope, of course. I wanted the doctor to go away and take the nurses with him, and leave the two of us together. Dr Srinivasar knew this, because when I had composed my face and turned back to Ted he was lying quietly, alone again, under a dim light. I closed the door of the little room and took my place in the chair once more. I thought there were fewer wires clipped to him now and the levels of liquid in the bags hanging over his head didn’t change.
He was awake and he didn’t look as if he was in pain. Keeping him comfortable, Dr Bennett called it. Ted licked his lips and his neck muscles worked as if to squeeze words out of his ruined heart. ‘You’ve been a good girl,’ he whispered.
Automatically, defensively, keeping my long-learned distance I muttered, ‘Not really.’
I wasn’t ready for Ted’s praise and in my unpreparedness I couldn’t have assured him in return that he had been a good father.
I would have snatched my answer back if only I could, but Ted surprised me. He let his head fall further back against the pillows and laughed. It was a small coughing echo of his old laugh, but still there was no mistaking it. He said one more thing after that, on a long breath. I thought it was ‘my girl’.
As the minutes ebbed and I waited I knew that now it was too late for us to make our spoken allowances to each other. He lay with his eyes closed and the rise and fall of his chest grew shallower until I could no longer see it. I pressed my face against his cheek. Tears began to run out of my eyes and into the sheet. I put my arm under his shoulder as if I were going to lift him up and held him close against me. If I could have lifted him properly and carried him across the divide before laying him down again to rest, I would have done it. As I wept I told him, the angry words and the bitter words threading with the words of love, that I loved him and I hated the childhood he had given me, and I would always love him. He didn’t answer and I didn’t expect him to. I knew that he was dead.
I sat with him for a little while; then there seemed no point in staying when Ted himself had gone. I took the framed photograph off the locker and tucked it under his arm where he could hold it close to his heart. Then I kissed him on the forehead and touched his lips with my fingers, as Lola had done. I closed the door of the room very quietly.
Dr Srinivasar and the Night Sister were waiting for me.
‘I’m sorry,’ the doctor said. He shook my hand, very formally.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
The Sister put her arm round my shoulders and led me into the empty visitors’ room. ‘Would you like to sit in peace for a while? Let me bring you a cup of tea?’
I shook my head. ‘No, thank you, Sister.’
‘There is a chapel in the hospital.’
I shook my head again. Ted had never been very godly and I took after him.
There was only one place I wanted to be and that was at home. We established that I would come back to complete the formalities relating to the death and I thanked her for everything that had been done for my father. I went out once more to the car park, now deserted under a heavy dark sky, climbed into my car and drove back dry-eyed to London.
Lola was waiting up for me. I told her that Ted Thompson was dead, then we sat down and cried for him together.
The room was light and bare, with tall, plain windows. Rows of wooden seats faced a pair of non-committal flower arrangements on either side of a secular-looking lectern. The atmosphere was subdued, naturally enough, but also utilitarian. The light-wood coffin under a purple drape was utilitarian too, which was inappropriate for Ted, whose life had been many things but never that. And at the same time as I was thinking about the crematorium chapel and the flowers, and the coffin I had selected with the undertakers’ discreet guidance, I was also reflecting that Ted wouldn’t have cared what arrangements were made for his funeral. Or would have affected not to.
‘I haven’t got to sit through it, have I?’ I could hear him
