A Hundred Pieces of Me (52 page)

And then her stomach lurches again. ‘If Terry pulls through.’

‘He’ll pull through,’ says Kit. ‘The quiet ones are the strongest.’

‘I don’t want to lose another dad,’ she says, in a voice that sounds so small she’s not even sure she’s said it aloud.

She sees Terry in the garage, oily fingers fixing this car. Her, taking him for granted. Why does everything break?

Instead she looks down at the map. They need to get onto the A40 and from there it’s straight home, but the Mini isn’t used to fast roads: it shakes worryingly and the steering wheel vibrates. The few times she’s taken it on the motorway, Gina’s stuck to the slow lane where she can feel the car tramlining on the lorries’ tracks.

‘Can you stay?’ she asks. Kit’s starting an internship at some banking firm on Monday; it’s very prestigious. He beat hundreds of people to get it. Anita’s telling everyone, apparently, even though Kit wanted to do something ‘more media’.

‘I wish I could,’ he says. ‘Maybe tonight. But I’ll have to be back on Monday. You know, for work.’

‘OK.’

‘Gina,’ says Kit. He’s fiddling with his right hand, steering with the flat of his left wrist as he tries to get something off.

‘Careful,’ she says, as they get perilously close to the centre line.

‘I’m fine.’ He grabs the wheel again. ‘Hold out your hand.’

She does and he drops something into it. Something warm and heavy. It’s his ring, the gold signet ring he wears on his little finger. It was his granddad’s.

Gina looks at Kit, heart in her mouth. Is this . . .? Does he . . .? She wishes she wasn’t so drunk, that she was more ready for this moment rushing up at her.

‘Gina,’ he says, glancing sideways, looking for somewhere to pull over, but there are no lay-bys on this stretch of road.

‘Kit, be careful,’ she says. ‘Please be careful.’

‘I am.’

Gina is holding her breath. It’s all too loud. Too fast. This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen. She wants this moment to slow down so she can appreciate it.

The road clears, and Kit turns to her. He’s smiling. Gina thinks she’s never seen him look so handsome, as if he’s been carved out of marble.

‘Gina, I love you,’ he says. ‘And I want you to wear this and remember that—’

Gina never hears the end of that sentence because without warning a tractor pulls out of a turning ahead, and as Kit fights to avoid it, the little car spins.

And spins and spins and spins, like a space shuttle returning to earth too fast, until it leaves the road and smashes into a tree, scattering glass and metal and smoke across the grassy bank.

Kit’s ring bounces into the footwell of the car, then falls into the sheared-off wheel arch, and from there onto the churned mud where it’s crushed by the weight of the crumpled Mini grinding it into the earth.

He was waiting for her when she arrived. Gina didn’t need to scan the restaurant to find Kit this time: he’d chosen a table near the entrance and was facing the door so he could catch her eye when she walked in.

She thought he seemed older than the last time she’d seen him, more solid and flesh-and-blood. The fineness of his features had settled into a sandy handsomeness, his hair paler and a little longer. He was still in a suit but it fitted him better, less like the suit of armour it had been last time. His wide-spaced eyes and long nose were very Oxford, she thought. Kit had finally turned into the Oxford academic his mother had hoped he’d be.

He raised a hand. Gina detected a trace of anxiety in his expression, replaced by a tentative smile when she waved from the door. It surprised her to see him anxious, after how sharp he’d been last time.

‘Hello,’ she said, as she slid into her seat, with no kisses. ‘It’s nice to see you.’

As usual, Gina had thought a bit about what she was going to say on the train, but the hour she’d just spent walking through the streets of Oxford had swept everything out of her head. She hadn’t expected the melancholy nostalgia of seeing the familiar landmarks with a new set of students running through them, drunk and euphoric at the end of their exams. New shops she didn’t recognise next to old sandwich bars and academic outfitters; London chains where she remembered independents.

It was as if she’d never been there, or as if she’d been there in a dream, floating through, leaving no trace. Sad, and reassuring at the same time.

‘It’s nice to see you, too,’ said Kit. ‘I did wonder if I’d ever see you again. After the last time we met. I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, look, that was my fault,’ she started. ‘It wasn’t the right time to see you. I’d just had some . . .’

Kit put his hand on hers, and they both flinched at the contact, then smiled awkwardly.

Gina didn’t pull hers away; he didn’t move his. Eventually he patted hers and broke the contact. She felt a shimmer of sadness mixed with relief.

‘Let’s get it out of the way. I’m sorry for being so rude and self-righteous when I saw you last. You were ill. I was . . . horrible. It was unforgivably mean and I regret it.’

‘I didn’t say anything the way I wanted to either.’ She fiddled with the spoon in front of her. ‘It probably came across as offensive, looking you up just because I was ill myself.’

‘Actually, that wasn’t what made me so mean,’ said Kit. ‘I was going through a really driven phase. You weren’t the only person I steamrollered.’

‘Yeah, yeah, it’s not you, it’s me. That old cliché,’ said Gina, without thinking, and he smiled wryly.

‘I discussed it with my therapist afterwards – what exactly made me so angry with you. I think it was just that I didn’t want to hear you say sorry. You were so desperate to say sorry. It’s the one word I couldn’t cope with at the time. Sorry meant it was your fault, and it wasn’t.’

Gina looked up. Kit’s brow was furrowed with awkwardness, and suddenly he seemed far more like the man she’d known, the boyfriend who’d taken such delight in discovering new things with her.

He took a long breath, then blew out his cheeks, as if gathering his thoughts in the right order.

Gina said nothing. It didn’t feel odd to launch straight into this conversation, with no polite preamble about the weather or work. It felt as if they’d been waiting thirteen years for the right moment, and now it was here.

‘It took me a lot longer to come to terms with the accident than it did to recover physically,’ he said. ‘Everyone blamed everything else – you for being drunk, the car for being too old, the traffic, the weather, British roads, everything. Everyone who came round to see me had someone else to blame. In the end, I saw this very perceptive counsellor who said that as long as I thought like that I was never going to let go of it and move on with my life because I’d always be the victim.’

‘But it
was
someone’s fault,’ said Gina. ‘It wasn’t an Act of God. If it was anyone’s fault it was mine.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Your mum does.’

Kit shrugged. ‘I’m sure your mum thinks it was mine. Mums need someone to blame and they’re never going to blame you. Dad agreed with the counsellor. His counsellor said something similar. We spent a lot of time in counselling, my family. Did you get any?’

Gina shook her head. She’d had two sessions with a woman who was very sympathetic, then tried to make it all about her dead father, something Gina didn’t feel was helpful. Janet had refused all offers of counselling and thrown herself into gardening and keeping Terry’s half of their bedroom exactly as it was.

‘Is that why she sent my letters back? Did you even know I’d written?’

Kit picked up the teaspoon on his coffee saucer. ‘To be honest, I told her to do that. I didn’t want to be reminded that I’d screwed your life up too. I thought it was better that I just didn’t see you than you come once a week, then once a month, then twice a year.’

‘But—’ Gina started.

‘You were twenty-one,’ said Kit. ‘And I couldn’t even get my head around never walking again. I couldn’t think about what I’d just lost. Mum only told me much later how long you wrote for, though. I felt terrible. Thinking of you writing and never getting a reply.’

The news made Gina feel cold. It went against everything she’d always assumed: Kit really
had
turned away from her. He hadn’t wanted her letters.

‘But if
you
’d told me not to write, I’d have stopped,’ she said. ‘I assumed your mum was keeping us apart because she hated me for ruining your life.’ She winced. ‘God, that sounds so melodramatic now. So self-centred.’

‘It’s not. You were romantic. Your letters always felt like hearing you talk, you put so much of yourself into them. But I guess I didn’t want to be reminded of all that, once that life had gone. And come on. We were kids. If you can’t be melodramatic then . . .’

‘Sorry,’ said Gina. The letters were in her handbag now. Should she even mention they were there? When she’d emailed to arrange this meeting she hadn’t mentioned them; now she was beginning to be glad she hadn’t.

Kit was talking again. ‘While we’re doing apologies, I’m sorry you got a hard time from Mum. She was over-protective to begin with – she did as much as she could herself, but we had to have nurses in, and physios, the whole lot. I feel bad about it now because I got this reputation for being brave and positive about my disability, but that was mainly because she didn’t let anyone see me when I was an angry mess.’ He looked rueful. ‘I was a really angry mess. But I didn’t want anyone to see that because everyone kept going on about how brave I was. I felt like I’d be letting them down if I was anything else.’

Gina finally felt a tug of recognition. ‘I know. My mum doesn’t really have a clue about how bad chemo was because Stuart, my, um, my ex-husband, never let her see. He was the only person who sat through it with me. Him and Naomi. She still thinks I made a bit of a fuss – I remember her asking how I was feeling when I’d just left the house after three straight days of throwing up every time I moved my head. I told her that the last round had been so agonising that I’d actually wondered how much worse dying would feel, and she told me I’d get nowhere with that attitude.’

Kit flashed the understanding grimace of survivor humour Gina knew too well from the occasional support group she’d been to after her discharge from the cancer unit. ‘There’s always someone who was
literally
about to die until he
literally
decided to pull his socks up, right?’

‘Or took herbal remedies. Or started drinking nothing but pomegranate juice.’

‘Yeah, magic pomegranates, thanks. Someone tell the NHS.’

He managed a laugh, and Gina felt the ghost of their old familiarity. Like the buildings outside, it reminded her of an older time, a different one. Something that had been nice when it was alive, but was gone.

‘Should we get something to eat?’ he asked. ‘Since we’re here?’

The waitress had been circling their table for a while and was now approaching again. Kit gave her a ‘Two minutes?’ signal that spoke of lots of lunches out, and turned back to Gina, his eyebrow raised.

‘Um . . .’ She struggled for a moment: she hadn’t meant this to be a long meeting, just long enough to hand over the letters, but it hadn’t turned out as she’d expected. Kit wasn’t angry or bitter like last time, and part of her did want to stay.

Maybe if she stayed, she’d know whether or not to give him the letters.

‘I’d like to catch up,’ he added. ‘You threw in an ex-husband there that I don’t remember hearing about.’ He smiled, and something about the hopeful look in his eyes, as if he too wanted to close the circle, tipped the balance.

‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’ she said, when the waitress had gone with their orders. ‘Coming back.’

‘How do you mean?’ Kit regarded her over the top of his coffee cup.

‘Well, Oxford. It’s like a backdrop to a play. It’s so unchanging and beautiful. Every new student who arrives thinks they’re special, but really you’re just passing through. Nothing changes because you’re too small to change it.’ Gina groped for the right words. ‘I don’t mean to sound negative. It wasn’t a bad feeling, just . . . When I walked through college, I think I expected to be blown away with memories, but in a way it was a relief when I wasn’t. It was just a very lovely place. Where someone I once was, was once.’

He smiled. ‘The idea is that
you
’re the one who’s meant to be changed by college, not the other way round. Unless you’re Shelley or Margaret Thatcher or someone.’

That wasn’t what the old Kit would have said. He’d have put himself in the same bracket.

‘That’s probably true,’ she said. ‘If it was
too
nice, we’d never leave.’

‘I suppose it’s different for me – I’ve been here all the time,’ said Kit. ‘My office is just down the road.’

‘Do you get used to seeing all the new students and thinking, Oh, my God, they look so young?’

Now he looked wry. ‘No.’

‘Good,’ said Gina. ‘They made me feel very old today.’

‘You don’t look old,’ he said. ‘We’re not old.’

‘We are, though. We’re at that point where we really should know what we’re doing. It struck me walking down here – in my head I felt like one of the students, but they probably looked at me and saw a grown-up. When does that stop?’ Dur, she thought. What a dumb thing to say to a married father of two, with his own business.
Stop projecting.