Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [130]
‘How’s the job going?’
He had been about to climb in, and her question had startled him a little. ‘It’s okay.’
Lucy nodded. ‘I’m glad.’
That night, Lucy couldn’t sleep. At about three a.m. she gave up, and made herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. The house felt unnaturally quiet and still. She sat to drink it in the dark living room. She wondered where Natalie and Tom were. A stab of pure envy ran through her. She wanted what they had more than she had ever wanted anything, yet she had never been further away from it. She remembered New Year’s Eve, lying entwined with Patrick on the sofa, half listening for the chimes of Big Ben. Sitting here, opposite Alec, after the holiday. What a bloody mess.
For the next hour, she wandered from room to room, barefoot and weepy, looking at photographs, remembering conversations, playing out scenes from their past in this home. Grieving. It was almost five in the morning, and light outside – birdsong erupting – when she curled up in Ed’s bed, under the Power Rangers duvet, and fell asleep.
Anna and Nicholas
The nurses started their ward rounds just before seven. It seemed absurd to Nicholas. What’s their bloody hurry? he thought. It’s not like any of us have somewhere to get to, is it? Can’t a bloke get a sodding lie-in? Suppose you were dying of something. You’d be thrilled, wouldn’t you, to be woken up with the dawn, lots of lovely extra time to think about shuffling off your mortal coil?
He swore a lot more inside his head, these days. He could get quite steamed up in here, when he wanted to. And being woken so early was one of the things that got him that way. He was tired, for God’s sake. Why couldn’t he sleep?
Anna didn’t usually come until ten. By then he was glad to see her. She always brought him a copy of The Times. She read him the cricket and the letters page, and then they did the crossword together. Which meant, of course, that Anna did the crossword while he nodded and slurred approval or disapproval as appropriate, which allowed her the affectation that they did it together. She’d always been quicker-witted than him. And now…
She was so well. The other day Natalie had said, when she’d popped in on her way to meet Tom, that she thought Anna was rather enjoying having someone to look after again. Nicholas wasn’t sure that wasn’t a slightly simplistic view. Maybe he was flattering himself – and, God knows, with him looking like this, no one else was going to – but he thought that what she was enjoying was only in part a purpose and the fulfilment of practical needs. They were having happy times together again. Simple, happy times. He was alive. He was recovering. Slowly, sure. And, yes, maybe he’d never be as good as he was before. And maybe the next ‘big one’ was bigger and marching inexorably his way. He might die, he knew. At any time. But so what? So might any of us. He might have lost Anna last year, or Bridget having Toby in January. He might lose anyone at any time. So might everyone. This focused the mind, he found. Funny, because everyone else believed that it fuddled it beyond recognition. But Nicholas was still in here. And he was sitting, with his wife, for hours every day. And sometimes they might go for the longest time without talking about anything except what nine down and two across were, but that was okay.
And if she did like the caring? Then that was okay too, because he liked being cared for. He pitied some of the other poor buggers he’d seen. They looked a mess, and they didn’t get enough to eat because the catering staff couldn’t have cared less if they ate or not, and whipped their trays away while some of them still had the first spoonful heading mouthwards. Anna brought him things from home. Titbits from the Marks & Spencer food hall. And flowers. A new bunch twice a week.
Natalie’s postcard was propped up against the vase – freesias