I decided to change tack and instead admired the flowers that had been sent this morning. Auntie Lyd turned her head to look at them too. Reading the cards, I was surprised to see that several
were from newspapers and magazines. There must have been some Press Association briefing about Auntie Lyd for everyone to have reacted so quickly; it was less than twenty-four hours since
she’d been admitted to hospital. It was weird to imagine that someone, seeing a woman collapsed on the floor of the butcher’s, must have thought,
What I must do in this situation is
inform the press.
The more blunt of the floral tributes from magazines and newspapers had asked outright for an interview when Auntie Lyd was better, which made me think that even those who had
been more subtle probably had the same objective in mind.
Auntie Lyd shifted uncomfortably on her pillows as I picked up the card on a small pot of primroses, sunny and somehow appealingly innocent next to the blowsy bouquets that dwarfed it.
‘Who’s Paul?’ I asked. The card was signed,
These still make me think of you. Be well.
Auntie Lyd turned her face away. ‘Someone I worked with,’ she said. ‘A long time ago.’
When she turned back I saw the vivid colour had returned to her cheeks and her eyes had become glassy. I tucked the card back into the primroses and decided not to push it. Auntie Lyd enjoyed
keeping her mysteries and this was not the time to press her for confessions.
The curtain surrounding the bed twitched and, with a clatter of curtain rings, opened to reveal Martin framed between the hangings. Auntie Lyd gave a start of surprise, and pushed herself up to
sitting, glancing over at me anxiously as if I would be equally shocked by his presence.
‘Lydia,’ Martin said, coming inside to stand next to me. He pulled me protectively in to his side and I tried not to resist, although I wished he’d given us longer before
interrupting. ‘How are you?’
Auntie Lyd looked from Martin to me in astonishment, lifting her head from the pillows. The doctor’s warning about the need for calm and tranquillity rang in my ears. I knew she had taken
against Martin after I’d split up with him, and his unexpected arrival in the hospital must be a shock to her, but I didn’t want her to start worrying about me.
‘Martin took the call about your heart attack, Auntie Lyd,’ I reassured her quickly. ‘He drove Percy and Eleanor home yesterday; he’s given up his time to bring me here
today. He’s been really helpful to all of us.’
Auntie Lyd said nothing, just rested her head back on her pillows, her eyes wide in her pinched face.
‘I know, Lydia,’ said Martin. ‘You’re surprised to see me here. But I wanted to let you know you that Rory’s being looked after while you’re here. I
wouldn’t let her go through this alone. We’re putting our troubles behind us now. Everything’s going to be okay.’
‘Is it?’ said Auntie Lyd, looking at me searchingly.
‘Yes, of course,’ I said, although I was far from sure. I felt like a Tory wife posing for the press with her husband hours after his numerous affairs have been revealed. Loyal but
wary, and rather forced into a position of solidarity with Martin thanks to his appearance at Auntie Lyd’s bedside.
‘I’m tired, Rory,’ said Auntie Lyd, lowering her eyelids slowly. She exhaled, or perhaps it was a sigh. ‘I think I need to sleep now.’
‘Okay,’ I said, coming to sit down next to her so that my face was level with hers. ‘I’ll come back this afternoon. Do you want me to bring Percy and Eleanor?
Jim?’
‘Lovely, darling,’ she said. I wasn’t sure if she had really heard me. Her eyes stayed closed; I could see them flickering faintly beneath her papery eyelids.
‘We’ll all see you later,’ I whispered, and kissed her forehead. I think she was already asleep.
There was a Turkish cafe opposite the hospital, and Martin insisted on taking me there for something to eat, claiming he could see me growing thinner by the minute. I still
wasn’t hungry, but I thought Martin probably could do with the break so I let myself be persuaded to leave the cardiology unit. The banana Jim had pressed on me thumped reproachfully against
my side in my coat pocket as Martin led me via the car park so we could renew the parking permit. I’d run out of coins this time, and suggested that I pay for the food once we got to the
cafe; that seemed fair. He’d already been so generous, and hadn’t even asked me to contribute towards his petrol from driving over from North Sheen. Martin kissed the top of my head
gratefully; I could see he was glad I’d offered. He wouldn’t have asked, but I knew he’d have his petrol costs worked out for the month and all of this extra mileage would eat
into his budget. It was funny how you remembered that sort of thing, even after months apart.
The cafe was already busy, even though lunch was still hours away. Two young nurses in their pink surgical scrubs stood patiently in the takeaway line, pointedly ignoring the comments of a rowdy
table full of paint-splattered builders. An elderly Turkish man balanced on the corner of a spindly metal fold-up chair next to the till, occasionally sipping from a tiny cup of thick black coffee.
He tapped away at a calculator while the pile of receipts at his elbow fluttered worryingly with the breeze every time the door opened. There was a smell of fried food, and the chefs, visible
through the kitchen hatch, looked harried. Most of the tables were full but the waitress, squeezing past us with plates held high above her head, nodded us towards a space at the back. Martin took
the cushioned seat that faced out into the cafe and peeled a sticky laminated menu off the table. I pulled out the other chair and sat down. When the waitress reappeared, untucking a pad from her
apron and whipping a pen from behind her ear, Martin surprised me by, Teddy-like, ordering for both of us.
‘We’ll have two coffees, please,’ he said, handing her the menu. ‘The full Turkish breakfast for me, and my girlfriend will have the fruit plate.’
I stopped the waitress before she left. ‘No coffee for me,’ I said. ‘Please can I have an English breakfast tea instead?’
‘Sure,’ she shrugged, and scrawled it on to her order pad.
‘Rory, be adventurous,’ smiled Martin. ‘Turkish coffee is amazing stuff. You should give it a try.’
‘I don’t like coffee, Martin,’ I reminded him tartly. My anger at his barging up to Auntie Lyd’s bedside was beginning to build. I had suppressed it for her sake but now,
safely away from the ward, it had returned. ‘I’ve never liked coffee. And I’m not your girlfriend.’
Martin stuck out his bottom lip petulantly, but his eyes sparkled as if I had said something funny. Under the table his hand found my leg and he smoothed his thumb across my thigh over and over,
as if calming an anxious pet. I tried to pull away but he held on tightly, the pressure of his fingers gently but forcefully restraining me.
‘It’s okay, Rory,’ he soothed, seeing my annoyance. ‘I know you need to put up a fight, make me suffer a bit before you take me back. I understand. I know you,
Rory.’
‘Things changed while we were apart, Martin,’ I told him. I finally wrenched free of his grasp and crossed my legs away from him. ‘You might not know me any more.’
‘I know I need you, Rory,’ he insisted. ‘And you need me. You can’t do this alone. You don’t need to. I can take whatever you want to throw at me.’
I considered the ketchup bottle on the table. He saw where I was looking and laughed.
‘Even that. But throwing things isn’t your usual style. Unless you really
have
changed.’
He did know me. I had never been the type to have tantrums. Perhaps I should have been. I smiled reluctantly.
‘When all this is over, when your aunt’s better, I want you to come home,’ said Martin. ‘It hasn’t felt like home since you left, Rory. Not for a minute.’
‘Probably because you moved someone else in straight away,’ I said, turning my knife over on the table. He surely wouldn’t think I was going to just come back without even
discussing the reason why I’d left.
‘Melinda never moved in,’ he answered. ‘She didn’t. No matter what you might have heard.’
‘I didn’t hear anything, Martin,’ I said quietly. ‘I saw it for myself when I came to collect my stuff.’
Martin’s eyes narrowed. His hands stopped their relentless movement as he gripped them into stillness on top of the sticky table.
‘You saw what she wanted you to see, Rory. She never moved in – she tried, oh yes, she tried. Leaving things at my house to try and stake a claim. But she couldn’t, Rory. She
couldn’t because it was always our house. Yours and mine. She didn’t belong there. She could never have replaced what you and I had.’
I looked down at the wood-effect tabletop. I couldn’t take in everything Martin was saying – he’d destroyed our relationship for a fling with someone who didn’t mean
anything to him? My mind seemed to close off, as if unable to even try to understand him. I felt my attention drift to the patterns I could discern in the smeared surface of the table. On the edge
of the table, missed by the cloth, a clot of ketchup mingled with a dull yellow smear – mustard? It made me think, in a way that would have infuriated Martin if I’d been foolish enough
to admit to it, of the Abstract Expressionists – giving a physical form to feelings and emotions that can’t be expressed figuratively. If only there was a way of speaking like that,
blurting it all out at once without trying to form it into proper sentences, saying everything I’d been thinking for months. Everything I thought of saying at this moment sounded flat and
clichéd – ‘You cheated on me,’ ‘I don’t know if I can trust you again,’ ‘I need some time.’
Or perhaps I just really did want to throw the ketchup in Martin’s face. He stretched his hand across the table and lifted my chin up so that I would look into his eyes.
‘Rory, Rory, Rory,’ he said. His face softened with sympathy. ‘It’s okay to be angry with me. I’ve been a terrible boyfriend. I don’t know how I can make it
up to you. I just know that I want to. Please let me. I’m trying.’
I dropped my eyes down, although his fingers still tilted my face upwards.
‘I – I don’t know,’ I whispered.
‘Rory,’ he said firmly. I felt his fingers twitch under my chin as if he was about to shake my head to rearrange the contents into a form he found more amenable. ‘I know this
is hard, but you need to think about your life. You’re thirty—’
‘
Nearly
thirty,’ I insisted. Had he forgotten my birthday was in September, on top of everything else?
‘Nearly thirty,’ he conceded. ‘You need to think about your future, Rory. Our future. It’s lonely out there, Rory, lonely and difficult. Remember how your aunt had to be
taken to hospital alone? A single woman all on her own? Is that what you want for yourself?’
I pushed his hand away furiously. ‘Auntie Lyd is an amazing woman. She’s not a figure of pity,’ I snapped. But hadn’t I been guilty of thinking just the same when
I’d accused her of being a victim of Jim’s supposed conartistry?
‘Not pity, no,’ said Martin. His voice seemed to become softer the more agitated I became. ‘Your Auntie Lyd has made choices in her life. And they’ve had consequences. I
just want you to think about what sort of choices you are making in your life. That’s all. I’m thinking of you, Rory.’
‘I’d be happy if I was like Auntie Lyd when I reached my sixties,’ I declared, jutting out my chin. ‘You saw her on the ward, all those well-wishers, everyone sending her
flowers. She’s got a brilliant life, I don’t care what you say.’
‘Rory,’ he said sorrowfully, his eyes sympathetic and pitying. ‘You really think that’s what you want? To live alone with strangers for the rest of your life? Never to
have a family of your own? You’re not like her.’
‘I – I—’ I saw suddenly and horribly that I didn’t want that. I loved Auntie Lyd, but I didn’t want to be her. I did want a family of my own.
‘And what if your aunt hadn’t got better?’ he asked, gently. ‘Where would you be then? All alone, Rory.’
I blinked at him, unable to speak. I didn’t want to think about the possibility of life without Auntie Lyd. Martin leaned closer, his voice low and persuasive.
‘You have a right to hate me, Rory. I understand you’re angry. But please, don’t throw away everything we once had out of pride. Without even thinking about it.’
I looked away from him, studying instead my reflection in the smeared surface of my knife. What if I said no to him now and that was it? What if I never met another suitable man again? It
wasn’t like I’d met anyone really wonderful in the time we’d been apart – if it was a choice between Martin and Malky or Teddy or Luke or Sebastian, then it was impossible
not to see that Martin was superior to all of them. Would I torture myself for the rest of my single Auntie-Lyd-like life, remembering the morning when I sat opposite Martin and said no to the
security and stability – and the family – that I’d always wanted? When I settled instead for one of the terrible men off the internet, would I think of this moment?
‘I – I need more time,’ I said. He was right. I should at least think about this properly.
‘How much time?’ There was an almost imperceptible edge of impatience to his voice. Imperceptible unless, like me, you had spent eleven years listening out for it: the first tiny
creak before the ice collapses.
Hot tears sprang up in my eyes. He’d forced me into presenting a united front to Auntie Lyd before I was ready, and now he was accusing me of leading him on. The waitress looked over from
the counter with a sympathetic expression. I expect she was used to emotional customers coming over from the hospital.
‘It’s not even been twenty-four hours,’ I said, to the table. My eyes swam so that its surface was hardly visible.
‘Well, I’ve just had to buy a second twenty-four-hour parking permit, actually,’ Martin said, and there was no answer to that. He was always right. I didn’t need to check
my watch to know he wouldn’t have made a mistake.
He raised his reassuring thumb to my cheek, where he wiped away a tear. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just because I love you, Rory. I want us to be together again. Happy
like we used to be. Remember?’