Runaway Wife (39 page)

“I think you have been fine,” Maddie said, sincerely enough to bring a tear to Rose’s eyes.

Suddenly feeling drained, Rose sat on the edge of the backseat next to her daughter.

“Don’t worry,” Maddie said, clapping her on the back and rubbing her shoulder. “I do that all the time: fall out with people when I don’t mean to. It hurts for a bit when people don’t talk to you and stop liking you, but if you act like it doesn’t matter and pretend you don’t care, they leave you alone after a bit, and then at least you can pretend that you are OK even if that’s not how you feel inside.”

Rose rested her palm against Maddie’s cheek, stunned by the revelation that suddenly put her troubles into stark perspective. “Is that what it was like for you at school?” she asked. Maddie had never said anything about what life was like for her before, never in so much detail, at least.

“Yes,” Maddie said, matter-of-factly with a small shrug. “I annoy people, I always do. I am really unlikable, I just am. I don’t even have to try. Sometimes I think there is no point in starting to be friends with people because they will only go off me eventually. So a lot of the time I don’t bother.”

“Oh, Maddie,” Rose said. “I had no idea that you felt that way, because it’s not true, you are a lovely person.”

“Don’t worry, Mum,” Maddie said. “I don’t mind, and anyway
we live here now. And I feel different here. I feel . . . nicer. I’m sure it will be fine when I start school again, and whatever you’ve done to upset everyone we know, just pretend that you don’t care. Eventually you will stop caring for real and they’ll get bored and leave you alone.”

“That’s good advice,” Rose said.

“And we’ve always got Granddad,” Maddie said. “That’s what I like about him the most. He likes us even though we are very unlikable.”

Feeling closer to her daughter in that moment than she ever had before, Rose climbed into the front of the car, knowing that now she needed to begin again from scratch to rebuild what she had thought she was already halfway to rebuilding. Somehow, although she was sure the hurt and disappointment would come crashing in later, it didn’t matter as much as she had feared, just at that moment. Now for the first time in her life she understood what it felt like to be her daughter, and that insight was priceless.
And
she was going home to her father.

Above and beyond anything else, she had a place to call home.

M
addie scrambled out of the car as soon as it came to a stop, racing to the barn first and, finding it locked once again, back to the cottage. Rose smiled as she watched Maddie, as happy as she had ever seen her, her thick hair flying behind her, her feet barely touching the ground in her hurry to be the first to announce that they were home. Taking some of their luggage out of the boot, Rose paused for a second, allowing herself a moment to breathe in the air, admire the scenery around her, knowing with a small sense of pleasure that soon the majesty and wonder of the mountains would become commonplace to her, just like every familiar scene should.

Maddie had left the front door swinging on its creaky hinges, so Rose had only to shoulder it open, without the need to put her bags down. It was when she came across the scene in the living room that she dropped them, frozen for a moment by shock.

Maddie was sitting crossed-legged on the floor next to John, who was lying sprawled on his front, completely still. From what little Rose could see, his face lay smashed against the tiles, white and waxy. There was an acrid smell of urine in the air, and Rose knew with a dark, grim certainty that whatever was wrong, it was far more than arthritis.

“He’s dead,” Maddie said, looking up at her, clearly in shock. “He’s not breathing.”

“Yes, he is,” Rose insisted, suddenly galvanized from shock into action. There was a small pool of vomit by his head, which meant that it was a good thing he had collapsed on his front, Rose thought as she rolled him onto his side, into the recovery position. Frantically she tried feeling for a pulse and then, realizing she was panicking too much to be able to concentrate, she rested her head against his chest and waited. After what seemed like an age, his ribs creaked, rose and fell beneath her head.

“He’s breathing,” Rose said, shaking him quite firmly by the shoulder, just the way she had used to with her mother. “Dad! Wake up!”

Unable to rouse him, Rose reached for a dusty cushion from the chair and put it under his head, rolling up a blanket that was strewn on the sofa and propping it against him to stop him from slipping onto his back.

“Maddie, it will be OK,” Rose told her daughter, who sat perfectly still in her original position, quiet and contained, her eyes big with fear. But she wasn’t about to panic—Rose knew that. Maddie had lived long enough with fear, even if she wasn’t entirely aware of it, to know that panicking didn’t help.

Taking her phone, Rose touched John’s forehead, checking for a temperature and finding him cold as she dialed 999. It was a brief call, in which she explained, as calmly as she could, the symptoms and, having sent Maddie to fetch them, read out the names of the pills that were stacked by John’s bed. None of it felt real, and as the dispatcher told Rose that an air ambulance was on its way and would be with them in minutes, Rose felt utterly detached, separated from what was happening just as she had on the day she found out about her
mother. Only this wasn’t happening now, she told herself. No one was dying now.

Seeing her opportunity to get her away from the scene that she was so afraid would turn to one of loss, Rose sent Maddie to the yard to keep an eye out for a helicopter. Then she dialed Frasier’s number, unsurprised when it went straight to voice mail.

“Frasier,” she said as calmly as she could, determined not to let him hear the tears and panic that threatened in her voice behind the false façade of calm, “John’s collapsed again. It’s worse this time. He’s not conscious. I’ve called an ambulance. Please, please, for Dad’s sake, please come. He needs you. We both do.”

Hanging up and without a second thought, Rose called Tilda next, thankful that she’d decided to put the number in her phone after all.

“Hello, Tilda’s Things?” Tilda answered the phone breezily, happily unaware of the words she was about to hear.

“It’s Dad,” Rose said, her voice breaking into sobs at last. “I’ve called an ambulance. Tilda, it doesn’t look good. I think . . . I think he’s dying.”

“I’m coming,” Tilda said, hanging up the phone.

•  •  •

Tilda’s car swept into the yard, stopping on its far side, as Rose watched her father, his face now obscured by an oxygen mask, being loaded into the helicopter, its blades making a tremendous noise as they swooped round.

“We can’t take you with us,” a young woman paramedic told Rose, shouting to make herself heard over the din. “We’re taking him to Furness General. They’ve got all the right care there to see what the trouble is. We’ll be there in minutes, so you don’t need to worry, OK?”

“OK,” Rose said, dumbfounded, as Tilda, her arms covering
her head against the whirlwind the blades created, jogged as best as she could to her side.

“He’s got cancer,” she told the paramedic, out of breath, in such a hurry to deliver the vital information that she had clearly forgotten it was the first time that Rose was hearing the news about her father’s condition. “Liver, bowels, pancreas. He’s had treatment—chemo- and radiotherapy, and a bowel reconstruction.”

“Right,” the paramedic said, her eyes widening as she took the information in. “Thank you. When you arrive, ask at the main desk. They’ll tell you where to go.”

She ran back to the helicopter, and Maddie clung to Rose’s legs, cowering, as the aircraft lifted into the air, buffeting them with powerful winds. Rose did not move from the spot she was standing in until she could no longer see it. Then she turned to Tilda.

“Will you drive?” she asked her. “I’m not sure I could concentrate.”

Tilda nodded. “Rose, listen—” Tilda began to attempt to explain, her face ashen with worry.

“No.” Rose shook her head, indicating Maddie, who was listening intently to every word with wide, scared eyes. “Don’t say anything now.”

Rose smiled at her daughter, hoping to look reassuring. “Maddie, I’m taking you back to Jenny’s, because I don’t know how long I’m going to be with Granddad, so I think it would be best if you stayed there tonight.”

“But Jenny doesn’t like us anymore,” Maddie protested anxiously. “I don’t mind waiting. I’ll be fine. I’ll bring my sketchpad.”

“Jenny is cross with
me
,” Rose said, gently firm, “not you. Come on now, Maddie. We don’t have time to argue. Please do as I ask.”

Reluctantly, Maddie nodded, climbing into the back of the car as Rose picked up her bag of things.

“Do you have a key?” she asked Tilda, realizing she had no way of locking the cottage.

Tilda shook her head. “No, John never locks it. I’m not sure he even knows where the key is.”

“Well, then,” Rose said, looking at the rough, shabby door, “we’ll leave it just exactly as it always is for when he comes home.”

•  •  •

It had been an awkward moment, the persistent ringing of the doorbell, and having to put her foot between the door and the frame to stop Jenny from slamming it in her face.

“Jenny,” Rose had said urgently, all too aware that Maddie was watching her intently from the car, “please, just listen. Dad’s collapsed and an air ambulance came. He’s got cancer. I’ve only just found out. Please, please take Maddie. I don’t know when I’ll be back and I’ve got no one else to ask. Please. None of this is Maddie’s fault. Don’t make her suffer because I’ve been an idiot.”

Jenny had opened the door at once, her features taut but not completely unkind.

“Of course I’ll take her,” she said. Rose beckoned for Maddie to come out of the car, which Maddie did reluctantly, eyeing Jenny with a good deal of mistrust.

“Are you going to be unkind to me?” she asked Jenny.

“No, dear, of course not,” Jenny said, upset by Maddie’s wariness.

“Thank you,” Rose said, hugging Maddie briefly to her chest as she looked at Jenny. “I’ll pay for another night of board, of course.”

“No need to do that,” Jenny said stiffly. “You’re a local now.”

“Jenny, you were so good to me,” Rose said sincerely,
“when I had no one else. I never did anything to deliberately hurt you or your family, I promise you.”

Jenny nodded, sucking in her bottom lip. “Well, I dare say you didn’t,” she said. “But Ted is my boy, and I know him. I know he feels things more deeply than he’ll ever let on. I expect things will calm down. Go and be with your dad, and, Rose, I hope it’s not too bad, lass.”

Grateful for that one word of affection, Rose gave Maddie another kiss goodbye and ran back to the car, pulling on her seat belt as Tilda drove away.

“Now, you can talk,” Rose said to Tilda as soon as they were out. “Tell me everything.”

“He was ill for a long time, of course,” Tilda began slowly, telling a story that she wished she didn’t know by heart. “Not that he would ever admit to it, or even go to a doctor. Not until the pain got so bad he couldn’t stand it. Frasier took him the first time. Marched him into the surgery like a naughty schoolboy, he was
so
furious.” Tilda smiled faintly at the memory, her eyes on the ever-twisting road as Rose watched. “Frasier was the only one that could make him go, though. Thank God he did.”

“And they diagnosed it straightaway?” Rose asked, feeling strangely detached from the devastating news, aware that news like that, news that cannot be easily recovered from, takes a very long time to filter through the body’s defenses and hit home. It had been the same when they told her they’d found her mum’s body. It had been days—days of people being kind to her, speaking in hushed tones and bringing her hot meals in oven-warmed dishes—before any of it sunk in. Experienced in loss, Rose knew that she had to use the period of numbness to learn what she could, to try to understand why her father had never mentioned to her that he was dying.

“Well, I think the doctor knew, yes. But there were tests. Lots of tests, biopsies. I went with him. Frasier and I both did when the consultant gave him the news. Bowel cancer, serious, and it had spread to the liver and beyond. They said that whatever they did now it was about prolonging his life, not curing him. I half expected John to say don’t bother, it’s fine, I’ll just die, but he didn’t.”

Tilda didn’t take her eyes off the road, but Rose could tell by the tension in her throat and the thickness in her voice that she was fighting off tears.

“Why not?” Rose asked her. “For you?”

“For you,” Tilda said simply. “John had long since given up any hope of seeing you again. In fact, after the cancer he told me it was the last thing he wanted: to see you, to find you again, only to lose you so soon. But for the last few years all the work he’s been doing, it’s been for you. All the money, almost all of it, has gone into a trust fund for you. He knew money didn’t make up for the father that he failed to be, but he said it made him feel a little better, knowing that after he’d gone, you’d realize that he had thought about you, had missed you. Even if you never touched the money or gave it away, he didn’t care. Just as long as you knew. So when they told him that he only had a couple of years at best, with surgery, radiotherapy, chemo, drugs, he took it. He wanted to make as much money as he could for you.”

“Christ,” Rose said quietly, “it’s so unfair. Why now? Why now, after everything I’ve been through, when I’ve only just found him?”

“At least you have found him,” Tilda said. “Even if it’s for a short time, it’s better than no time at all. Keep thinking that. And, well, I’ll bet you any money you like he’s sitting up in bed complaining when we get there.”

•  •  •

But after a frustrating hour of driving and several minutes of trying to find somewhere to park, not to mention tracking down exactly where John was, Tilda was proved wrong. John had been given a private side room, and his face was still covered with an oxygen mask. A nurse took them to his side, telling them he hadn’t been conscious since they arrived, but that a doctor would be with them as soon as possible to let them know what was going on.