as much as anyone can. I’m sorry about it, Hels, I really am.’
‘Are you asking to come back?’
Now it was Darren’s turn for silence. He wriggled an index finger into the pile of the carpet and stared at the holes he was making.
‘We’ve been through all this,’ he whispered. ‘You know it’s not been right for ages. This is better for both of us.’ But then he rushed on, whip-quick, as if to head off any disagreement from her. ‘But the point is I can help you. And I want to. For the kids. And for us, for everything we were. You’ve got to let me, Hels.’
She shouldn’t have agreed, she thought later.
In truth, she didn’t agree. She didn’t say anything. But her silence was acquiescence enough.
She let him bring her a cup of tea and put the kids in front of a film. She let him sit on the single bed next to her, the weight and the smell of him on the homely sheets just as intoxicating and incongruous as it had been twenty-odd years earlier. She poured out the details of surgery and staging, metastasis and Macmillan nurses. She even told him about the green notes. He seemed perfectly happy with Barbara’s explanation about the teenage shoplifter. ‘There are some fucked-up weirdos in this world, Hels.’ He laughed. ‘That’s one thing you learn running a dating business.’
The words had come out of her like a dam burst, but Darren caught every last drop, and mopped them up and dealt with them like he mopped the tears from her cheeks. She didn’t even need to tell him where to find the tissues. Was it just a performance for her benefit? To persuade her to let him see more of the kids, or to soften her up for whatever he and Lauren were planning next? She felt she ought to be more cynical, but she was too exhausted and wrung out to do anything but accept the sympathy on offer.
Her friends were far away and had their own worries. They’d all drifted apart since they started having families – literally as well as metaphorically, as they had moved out in different directions to various London suburbs. She missed the gossip and the laughter, but Darren had always been her emotional anchor. In her twenties, she’d provided the shoulder to cry on as her friends went through dating disasters and relationship break-ups. Now, finally, she was the one in need and the only confidant she’d ever needed was the one whose betrayal was ripping her to shreds.
Eventually, after a snack with the kids and about four cups of tea, and after he’d taken off his socks because he always preferred bare feet, and after Helen had finished one box of Kleenex and, shamefully, got him to refill the screen wash on her car, he said he should go.
They agreed he’d have the kids on Thursday, assuming Barbara’s operation the day before had gone okay, and take them somewhere for the day. Both Barney and Alys had been very forbearing whilst their parents sat alone upstairs and that pricked at her – between her and Darren they were turning them into diplomats. On the doorstep, Darren paused awkwardly and she let him falter, but he turned away without a kiss, or a handshake, or any touch at all. She thought about the way they’d been in the bedroom and wondered if different rules applied there. Barney and Alys waved the Astra off quite happily, without asking any questions.
‘Was it nice to see Daddy?’ she asked.
They both nodded and ‘yes-yessed’ enthusiastically.
‘Daddy smelt happy,’ said Barney, quietly.
‘Really? What do you mean?’
But he just shrugged and tried to grab a piece of jigsaw from Alys’s hand.
It killed her that even Barney could see Darren was happier now. Happier having abandoned his family. Happier without her. Happier with carefree, bright-eyed, not-yet-thirty Lauren.
*
Neil went back to the hospital at seven the next morning. It was Wednesday already; tomorrow they’d have been away from home for a week and she had no idea when they’d be going back. She tried to occupy herself with washing the kids’ clothes and making a list of extras she should pick up for them from the supermarket, whilst waiting for news from the hospital. Neil sent a text when Barbara was going into theatre and then one when she came out; another when she’d started to come round from the anaesthetic and another when they’d let him in to see her in the recovery room. It had all gone ‘by the book’ he said, though Helen guessed those were Mr Eklund’s words, or someone else at the hospital. They’d get the first proper update on what they had found on the Thursday ward round, by which point it was expected that Barbara would be well enough to take it in.
It was early evening by the time Neil was able to report that Barbara was back on the ward. They’d planned for him to come home then, but when it came to it, he didn’t want to leave her alone. Eventually, Helen persuaded him that he should drive back around the kids’ bedtime and that she would go in and sit with Barbara through the night. When he came back and she saw him in the flesh, she was glad she’d insisted. He looked wearier than she remembered ever seeing him. The day had clearly taken everything he had to give.
As soon as she’d kissed the kids – both sleeping soundly, thank God – he was gently hurrying her out. She insisted on delaying long enough to make sure he ate the pasta bake she’d left for him, and wondered bleakly whether anyone would get so concerned about her by the time she was Barbara’s age.
It was going dark by the time Helen arrived, and the strange, unnatural half-light of the hospital corridors made her feel suddenly weary. Barbara was in a half-private cubicle set back from the main ward. The young nurse on night duty explained that visitors were allowed in tonight because she was just out of surgery. Soon she’d be moved into the ward itself and visiting hours would have to be observed.
The heels of Helen’s ankle boots clipped loudly on the few steps between the ward door and Barbara’s cubicle, and she peered anxiously into the gloom, hoping she’d not woken up any of the other patients. The nurse left as soon as Helen was settled in the chair, closing the ward door carefully behind her and slipping off, rubber-soled, into the shadows. Helen had no chance to ask her anything.
Barbara lay there like a storybook invalid, her head back against the semi-propped pillows, eyelids lowered and hands folded on the blanket. Her skin had an oniony look, translucent, papery, unhealthy. It was as if the operation had somehow removed a layer of her. Helen was shocked by the difference from the previous day, when she’d looked whole and wholesome – give or take the odd liver spot and the dark circles under her eyes.
She sat down in the plastic armchair and laid her hand over her mother’s. She couldn’t decide if Barbara was too cold or if she herself was too hot. Barbara’s eyelids didn’t flicker. By now, Helen had tuned in to the shallow sound of her breathing. She let herself fall into its rhythm.
Katy
The honeysuckle made no difference; Katy couldn’t tell them anything.
The builders and their machines had changed the very shape of the earth. It had been moulded and flattened and moulded again, like the sandpits in the infant school.
‘Well, did you come in to the left of the oak, or the right of the oak? The damn tree’s not moved!’ The sergeant with the moustache was making no effort to hide his annoyance.
Katy could remember
