Just Breathe (26 page)

Dee dragged herself through two more classes, had lunch – two cups of strong coffee – and turned on the phone again. There were more messages from Ethan, Amanda, Leon. And Lucy’s personal assistant Shona – that made a chill run down her spine. Lucy always called Dee herself.

She listened to Shona’s crisp, efficient voice, feeling worse by the second. Lucy was unexpectedly called away and wanted to cancel her lesson. Lucy would contact her when she wanted another yoga session.

Dee got the subtext: Lucy hadn’t cancelled; she’d scribbled Dee out of her diary. She should’ve been angry but she just felt discarded.

She wandered aimlessly around a shopping centre, trying not to think about Lucy – and subsequently Ethan, the newspaper, Arianne and Howard – then taught back-to-back classes at the school with only half a brain on the students. The other half had a fierce battle over partnership and unnecessary futures. Neither side won – just beat each other up and vowed to renew hostilities when they weren’t so tired. By the time she got home, Dee was shattered.

Pam stood in the bedroom doorway and watched her flop face down on the bed. ‘I talked to a reporter from some radio station this afternoon. I said you’d phone her back tonight.’

‘She’ll be waiting for a long, long time.’

‘Everyone at work was talking about you today.’ Pam invited herself in and hovered over the bed. ‘Leon was acting all hush-hush but I reckon the best way to handle a media outing is to be totally up front about everything. That’s what Breck did when he broke up with Saskia. He got the
Who Weekly
cover after that and he was made. A total star.’

Dee lifted her head. ‘What did you tell them?’

‘Just how you’d spent almost every night at his place since you got together and how he came over really late that night and how he’s fixed your business. You know, all the good stuff.’

What the hell would the media make of that?

Dee’s eyes flew open. She sat up, gasped.
Her fucked-up life
.

Five a.m. Great. Terrific. Tuesday morning, day of the cancelled DVD shoot. She hadn’t set the alarm but she was wide awake with nothing but endless, classless hours to wrestle endless, circular, anxious thoughts of Ethan and Lucy and so on and so forth.

At 5.30, she attempted a couple of big circles. Then again at 5.56. At 6.20, she managed a couple of cat stretches and another one at 7.02. She pulled her knees into her chest at 7.45 but at 8 a.m. she gave up her pathetic efforts and hobbled to the kitchen to make coffee. Her back was tight and her belly felt like she’d swallowed a shot-put ball.

She switched on Leon’s TV. Switched it off again. On, off, on, off. How long would it take to run the remote battery down? Would it be before or after she was reduced to tears again? She jumped when the phone rang, answered without thinking.

‘Trudy, there’s something wrong with your mobile phone. I’ve been ringing it since Sunday morning.’ Val’s voice was relieved and irritated at the same time. ‘Did Pam tell you I called? You should tell her to pass on your messages.’

Dee slumped into a beanbag. ‘She told me, I just didn’t get back to you.’

‘You must be terribly busy, what with everything going on. But I saw in the newspaper this morning the DVD you were helping with has been scrapped, so that should makes things a bit easier.’

‘That was in the paper?’ Why couldn’t she just fail miserably in private?

‘It was way back on page six. I almost missed it but Lesley Larkim – you remember her from cards, don’t you? – well, she rang and pointed it out. She thought it was such a pity but I told her it was good news because it would free you up to look at those new apartments with me today. And then we could have lunch at the crossroads. They have some very stylish boutiques down there.’

Trust Val to find her silver lining in Dee’s disaster. At least her mother’s attitude came from concern, which was preferable to the cynicism and disrespect she’d copped from the newspaper. But did she have the strength for dealing with Val today?

She weighed up her options. She could sit at home running the remote battery down while she cried on her pyjamas. Or she could spend a couple of hours not thinking about Ethan & Co while she bristled at Val’s version of maternal concern.

Dee found Val waiting by a bank of letterboxes with a real-estate agent.

‘Where would you like to start?’ Donna the Agent asked.

Dee looked at Val. ‘Start? I thought it was just one apartment.’

‘One apartment
block
.’

Maybe she didn’t have the strength for this today.

‘The front units are a different layout to the ones at the back,’ Donna said. ‘And, of course, the ground floor apartments have gardens.’

Dee peered through a fence. ‘This one doesn’t have a garden.’

‘It’s more like a smart city courtyard,’ Donna said.

‘Lovely,’ said Val.

‘If you tripped out the door, you’d get a bloody nose on the gate,’ said Dee.

They wandered through a succession of tiny single- and two-bedroom apartments, each beige interior indistinguishable from the last.

‘The warm cream paint and carpet gives it a lovely, light feel, don’t you think?’ Val paused on the landing where the staircase continued up to the third storey.

‘Like a beige cave,’ said Dee as she passed her.

‘Beige is so functional. It even goes with those unusual orange cushions of yours.’

Dee glanced down at her mother, about to make a retort, when she noticed Val had come to a halt, puffing hard, a sheen of perspiration on her brow. ‘You all right, Mum?’

‘Fine, dear. I’ll certainly get fitter if we get one on the top floor.’

Maybe she’d think twice about dropping in if she had to climb three storeys, Dee thought.

Donna was waiting inside the last apartment. ‘I think you’ll find this is the best.’ The master bedroom was tiny, barely enough room for a bed and a yoga mat, while the second bedroom, which Dee would need to rent to help pay the mortgage, wouldn’t house a small child. The single room that accommodated lounge, kitchen and laundry opened onto a deck just large enough for one person to survey the impressive view of a supermarket car park.

‘This one is an excellent buy,’ Donna said after they’d taken turns standing on the deck. ‘There’s been a lot of interest and, I shouldn’t tell you this, but I’m waiting on a call at the moment with an offer.’

Val turned to her daughter with a triumphant grin. ‘It’s perfect, darling, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t think –’

‘Now, Trudy, I know you’re worried about the money but we can work that out.’

‘No, Mum, it’s the –’

‘I had a bit of a chat with our accountant, Bill Kennedy.’ She pulled a sheet of paper from her handbag. ‘And he thinks that with Auntie May’s money, you should be able to afford the repayments if you budget properly.’ She held the page out to Dee as she listed the figures he’d written down. ‘Obviously, he had to estimate your earnings since you won’t tell me anything. See here, he based it on the lowest pay rate for a radiographer. You have to be getting at least that much. Of course, you’d have to forgo your holidays to India for a couple of years but, look, you’d have this lovely flat instead.’ She swept her arms wide, almost touching opposite walls.

Dee gritted her teeth. Did Val really think that now it was so cleverly worked out, she’d simply drop everything and do as she was told? She stalked to the deck, anger brewing in her belly.

‘She’s just having another look at the aspect. I think she really loves it,’ she heard Val tell Donna.

Dee shook her head incredulously, watching cars pull in and out of the supermarket parking. It would be crazy to spend Auntie May’s money on this tiny apartment. Dee’s chin snapped up.

Auntie May’s money.

The inheritance was almost what Arianne and Howard were asking for the partnership. If she had that, she wouldn’t need a fifteen-year business loan. Wouldn’t be locked into a future she’d vowed not to create for herself. She wasn’t really sure she wanted to be a partner in the school, hadn’t really been able to think about it. But without a huge loan, it was definitely more
attractive. Best of all, it was an
investment
. Something her mother could relate to, an alternative to buying an apartment, a way out of the mortgage Val wanted to hang around her neck. She could decide whether she actually wanted to be a partner once she got the money.

Dee stepped back into the room. ‘Actually, Mum, I might have something else to spend Auntie May’s money on. I’ve been given an opportunity to buy into a business.’

Val’s laugh was fast and loud. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Trudy. You couldn’t run a business. You can’t even keep your phone charged.’

Her words were a slap in the face. ‘And you think this apartment is a better idea?’

‘It’s perfect for you. Don’t you just love it?’

‘No, Mum, I don’t love it. I think it’s awful. It’s claustrophobic and soulless.’

‘Trudy, I don’t –’

‘And it’s unbelievably arrogant of you to assume you could find the perfect apartment for me. Especially when you have absolutely no appreciation of my life.’

Val was momentarily stunned. ‘
Trudy!
Donna doesn’t need to hear about your –’

‘Donna, my mother and I need to have a few moments alone.’

Donna exited in a hurry and, as they waited for the door to close, Val attempted to stare her daughter down, but Dee was in warrior mode. Val had gone too far. Everyone had gone too far. Ethan and Lucy and Ian the Bastard Reporter. But Val was here and she was about to have a piece of Dee’s mind.

‘Now listen, Trudy –’

‘No, you listen, Mum. I did not come here for financial advice or life coaching or business insight. I came to get you off my back. I am thirty-one years old. I do not need my mother to find me a home or tell me what to spend my money on. And I definitely don’t need you to tell me
how bloody hopeless you think I am.’ She pointed a finger at her. ‘If you don’t like the way I live, that’s your problem. Don’t make it mine.’ A piece of hair fell over her face and she pushed angrily at it. ‘And about Auntie May’s money – frankly, I don’t give a toss. Give it to me or don’t give it to me, I don’t care either way. But don’t use it to blackmail me into a life I don’t want. I’m sorry I’m a disappointment to you and, believe me, I wish it wasn’t like that, but it’s my life, not yours. Get over it.’

As Dee stormed past her, Val’s mouth was an ‘o’ in a face white with shock.

Amanda rang at six-fifteen. ‘Thank God you’ve got your phone on.’ Her voice was high and tight. ‘It’s Mum.’

‘What now?’

‘She’s had a heart attack.’

Dee ran into Emergency breathless from fear and phobia. Val looked grey and fragile in the narrow hospital bed, as though the tubes attached to her were sucking out her vitality instead of trying to keep it in.

As heart attacks go, it was closer to mild than massive, the doctor said. But a heart attack was a heart attack. She had to be stabilised, monitored and assessed for surgery.

Val was exhausted and drifted in and out of sleep through the long hours of the night. Dee sat in a chair beside her, unable to move from the bedside, a witness to Ken and Amanda dealing with their own brands of fear.

Ken was like a wind-up toy, wandering back and forth, to and from the curtained-off space. He was beefy and unfit, and Dee wondered why her tennis-playing, power-walking mother was the one in the bed.

Amanda spent most of the time talking to medical staff, making phone calls, fetching coffee, hunting down food and cups of ice. Later, in the early hours of the morning, she just sat. Opposite Dee. The two of them like sentinels guarding the unfamiliar figure in the bed.

Somewhere around 2 a.m., Val opened her eyes. ‘Trudy,’ she whispered.

Dee lifted her head from the bed clothes and saw the fear in her mother’s eyes. She closed her fingers around Val’s hand and held on like she was one of those tubes keeping her vitality in. She didn’t let go all night. Didn’t want her to wake scared and alone.

By the time breakfast trays were being passed around the Emergency ward, Dee’s hand ached. She was so stiff, she could barely move, which wasn’t all that different from the state she’d been in since arriving. Paralysed with guilt and anxiety and her own private dread.

From the moment Amanda had called, Dee’s mind kept replaying the shock on Val’s face at the apartment. And how she’d stopped on the landing, puffing and sweating. She couldn’t help thinking if she hadn’t lost her cool, her mother might be at home, sleeping peacefully and popping off to the GP to discuss the breathless episode.

Dee looked up as Amanda pushed through the curtains, dropping her phone back in her bag.

‘How are Amelia and Ruby?’ Dee asked quietly.

‘Upset. Ruby was refusing to get dressed until I told Reece how to do her hair. He’s bringing them in after school.’ She took her place opposite Dee. ‘Why don’t you have a break? You haven’t stood up for hours.’

Dee flexed her hand under Val’s. ‘I’m okay.’

Amanda slid fingers under Val’s other palm. ‘I can do this for a while.’

‘But …’

‘It’s okay. I won’t leave her.’

They exchanged grim smiles.

Dee stood slowly, cautiously, wincing as her back complained at the movement. She kissed Val on the forehead and hobbled out. She walked the corridors for a while to loosen up, then stood in the sun in a small hospital courtyard and called Leon.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked after she’d told him about Val.

‘No. I can’t breathe in there.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Could you bring me a change of clothes when you’ve finished work? I don’t want to leave.’

‘Anything else you want? Chocolate? Magazines?’

There was something but he couldn’t get it for her. ‘A big hug when you get here.’

‘That goes without saying. See you this afternoon.’

Dee sat on a bench and thought about what she wanted. Ethan. To see him, to hold on to him for a while. It’d been a thread through her thoughts all night. The first time in days she’d been able to think of him without a bunch of other emotions tainting what she felt. The sensation was uncomplicated, unmistakeable and intense. Not in the least bit scary. But she wasn’t going to call him. She couldn’t tell him what he wanted to hear.

Val was kept in Emergency most of the day, waiting on doctors and tests. Ken paced. Amanda fetched and phoned. Dee sat, stomach tight, nerves shred like frayed electrical cords.

Some time in the afternoon, a nurse pushed open the curtain. ‘Which one of you is Dee?’

She raised a hand.

‘There’s someone asking for you at the desk.’

‘It must be Leon.’ She eased the kinks out of her back, wanting to run far away. ‘I won’t be long, Mum.’

‘I’m all right, darling. Go and stretch your legs for a while.’

She turned into the long corridor, saw the figure at the nurses’ station – and a wave of emotion swelled and crashed inside her.

It was Ethan, as self-assured and strong as she’d ever needed him to be. Like a magnet to a sheet of steel, she walked straight to him, wrapped her arms around his waist and sobbed. Great heaving shudders with tears that left big wet patches on his shirt. He held her until there was nothing left then took her face in his hands. ‘Tell me.’

So she did – all about Val and the tests and the doctors and the fear her mother would wake
up alone.

‘How did you know I was here?’ she asked.

‘I got worried when you didn’t answer your phone for two days, so I called your flat and Pam gave me Leon’s number.’ He pushed a strand of hair off her face. ‘He said you wanted a change of clothes. I thought you might need someone to sit with you.’

Tears filled her eyes and toppled over the lids. Weeks ago, she’d told him that all she needed was someone to sit with. She was talking about another time and another hospital. And now he was here.

It wasn’t fair. He wanted a future and that massive obstacle hadn’t simply vanished because he was here to pull up a chair. And she couldn’t let him think it had. She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. ‘What I said about the future, about not … about being …’

He put a finger to her lips. ‘Shhh. That’s a conversation for another day. You’ve got more important things to think about right now.’

Over the afternoon, Ethan pulled some strings, organised a family room and had a tray of fresh sandwiches delivered. His father had had heart surgery twice before he died, he told them. You needed a good doctor and decent food to get through it in one piece.

Later, a heart specialist told them Val didn’t need a bypass but she would need a procedure to open two arteries. She was booked in for the next day and moved to the cardiac ward.

When the doctor declared Val wasn’t about to breathe her last, Amanda decided to spend some time with her family, and Ken went home to feed the cat. As tired and edgy as Dee was, she couldn’t bring herself to leave.

‘I need to sit with her,’ Dee told Ethan. ‘You should go. I’m okay now.’

She watched television with Val until her mother fell asleep, then stared mindlessly at the screen for another hour before Amanda returned from dinner. ‘Take a break, Dee, it’s going to be a long night.’

Yawning as she wandered back to the waiting room, she recognised the opening chords of the late news through the glass. It must be 11 p.m., she thought, then stopped in the doorway in astonishment as Ethan lifted his eyes from the laptop on his knees.

She felt heady, like she’d taken a big gulp of air from Val’s oxygen mask. She walked over, sat down, laid her head against his shoulder and savoured the warm, familiar smell of him. If only the future meant never moving from here.

Dee was beside the bed when Val woke early the next morning. She was fussy and restless, uncomfortable with the new Val – the one who needed a surgical procedure to keep her heart pumping.

Dee and Amanda let her boss them around a while, fluffing pillows, winding the bed up and down, finding more blankets, another magazine. It gave them something to do while they waited. Dee was on the way back from the hospital shop when Amanda tumbled out of Val’s room, tears brimming in her eyes.

‘Oh my God. Mum …? What’s wrong?’

Amanda caught Dee’s arm before she charged into the room. ‘She’s okay. I’m just … oh God.’ Her face broke and she let go a long, shuddering sob. ‘She thinks she’s going to die. She wanted to say goodbye. Just in case. She wants to see you.’

Dee faced the door, mouth agape in horror. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye. There were too many other words that hadn’t been said. She pushed it open hesitantly, saw relief in Val’s smile, as though she’d thought Dee wouldn’t get there in time.

‘You’re going to be fine today, Mum. You know that, don’t you?’

Val reached for her hand. ‘I want to say something before they take me down.’

‘Why don’t you save it until you get back? The nurse said your blood pressure was up this morning. You should try to relax.’

‘I’ll relax when I’ve said what I want to say. Just humour an old lady for a moment.’

A lump lodged itself in Dee’s throat. Val had never referred to herself as an old lady. ‘Okay.’

Val took a drawn out breath before starting. ‘I know how hard it’s been for you since your accident and how much Anthony hurt you. And I want you to know I’m proud of how you’ve tried to put your life back together. If something happens today, my only regret would be that I didn’t get to see you achieve that. I want you to promise me you’ll keep on trying to find your old self, even if I’m not here to help you.’

Dee pressed her lips together, trying to settle her competing emotions. A part of her felt like punching a victorious fist in the air at Val’s recognition of ten years of effort. But her shoulders wanted to slump in disappointment that her mother still refused to recognise what she’d achieved. And her legs ached to get up and pace about in anger, that even when Val thought she was on her death bed, she couldn’t forgive Dee for being the person she’d become.

But she didn’t do any of those things. She just waited for her tears to make their way down her cheeks. ‘Thank you, Mum. I need to know that you understand.’ She gave Val’s fingers a gentle squeeze instead of sending her off to surgery with an argument.

‘Promise me, Dee, that you’ll do something to help yourself. Get your hair fixed, buy some better clothes, give Ethan a reason to stay around.’

Dee slipped her hand from her mother’s, held it to her lips, keeping in words she didn’t
want Val to leave with.

‘Promise me.’

She could but it would be a lie. She didn’t want to send Val away with that, either. ‘No. I won’t promise something I don’t want because you’ll be back here in a couple of hours holding me to it.’

‘Dee, I …’

‘No, Mum. This isn’t about my hair or my clothes. This is about what happened between
us
after the accident.’ Dee took Val’s hand again to soften the words. ‘You wanted me to do it your way and refused to see I had to find my own. If something does happen today, my biggest regret would be that you never got past that to see the person I am now.’

‘I just want you to be happy, darling.’

‘I am happy.’

‘Not like you used to be. You used to be so joyful. You made everyone around you feel the same. You had such a wonderful lightness and a tinkling little laugh and a lovely sparkle in your eyes. I haven’t seen that sparkle since the accident and I miss it, Dee. I hoped you’d missed it, too. I’ve always felt if you got your life back to where it was before the accident, you might find it again.’

Dee said nothing for a long time. She’d been ready to defend her life choices, not a lost sparkle. Had there been a sparkle? She pulled a couple tissues from a box on the nightstand and passed one to Val. She wiped her own face with the other, remembering the heady weightlessness of her life before the crash. Had it been happiness – or the spangle of an idealist who hadn’t been slapped in the face with reality?

Dee pressed a fist to her chest. ‘My old life won’t make me happy now. And I don’t want
to be that Dee if it’s going to hurt me. The Dee I am now is what’s grown out of all the pain and hard work. I’m strong and I’m content. I wish you could like those qualities as much as the sparkle.’

Val was pale and tired and tense but her eyes roamed Dee’s face with something new in them. Her voice was gentle when she finally spoke. ‘I’m so sorry, darling. I haven’t given your Dee much of a chance, have I?’

That was a huge step for Val. ‘She’s a bit of a hippie but she has some excellent qualities,’ said Dee.

‘I’d like to get to know her.’

‘I’d like that, too.’ Dee reached across the bed and held her mother tight, glad that saying goodbye meant saying hello. ‘This Dee also knows quite a bit about relaxation. I’d like to try something with you.’ Val nodded and Dee felt a warm surge of hope. ‘Close your eyes.’ She waited until her lids were down. ‘I want you to try to become aware of the air moving in and out of your lungs.’