Finding You (23 page)

30 - Charlie

Did Jules say she’d be at Alys’ house this afternoon? I can’t remember her saying that, but when I pull up on the drive at Blackberry House, only the hall lights are on. The house is silent and my two are out. Where have they got to? I can feel my forehead furrowing as I turn my key in the door. I wanted you to be home tonight, J.  I needed you here tonight. Someone to console me, tell me it’s going to be okay, because an hour ago at work I got a phone call from Rolli and the truth is that everything is far from okay.  Dad’s had a heart attack. They’ve taken him by ambulance to Huddersfield General Infirmary, and I’m told he’s drifting in and out of consciousness. They don’t know if he’s going to come out of this one. I could tell from Rolli’s voice that’s what he was thinking. After all this time of dreading going up to see Dad, I’m now facing the prospect of going up for what might be the last time, and I feel like a wreck.

Jeez, Julia, where
are
you?  Inside, the house is still and quiet. No sounds of the cartoon channel playing in the living room. No sounds of J rustling up something in the kitchen, the radio on. I tried the home phone and her mobile numerous times on the way back home, but no one was picking up and her mobile is dead. That already happened a couple of times recently, I think ruefully—both of them when Hadyn apparently decided to chuck her mobile down the loo.
Why the loo
? Dammit. I hope that hasn’t happened again. I’m going to want to be able to get hold of her over the next few days when I’m away. I hate not being able to contact her. After what happened to us before ...

Where’s my suitcase? Up in the bedroom, everything’s spick and span. I push the tied bouquet I bought for Julia earlier into an empty vase by her bedside and pull the small weekender case down from the top of the wardrobe. I chuck in my wash bag, a couple of clean shirts, some underwear, and then my mind goes blank. What am I going to need? How long will I be up there for? I don’t know. For one long moment, standing in my bathroom staring at the contents of the cabinet, I can’t think. Why didn’t I get on and do this before? I should have had a suitcase packed from the time Rob and I spoke over the phone recently and he alerted me. I hadn’t paid him too much mind at the time, though. I’d thought Dad would go on forever. The grey light in the bathroom flickers; I feel strangely weak. Shit, Charles.  And then the sudden loud trill of the phone in the hallway presses into my mind. The moment passes. Julia’s calling me and I feel stronger again, knowing that she’s there; is she ringing to say that she’s on her way home? Did she get any of my messages after all? Distracted, I pick up. ‘Hello?’

‘Hello stranger.’ The laugh at the other end is so familiar, throaty and playful. God, no. Not tonight of all nights ...  I didn’t recognise the number. Is she in London already, maybe? She laughs softly again, this time at my surprise, and I know Lourdes realises that she’s caught me at last.

‘I see you weren’t expecting to hear from me?’ She teases gently. ‘You knew I was in London, no?’

‘I knew.’ I rub at my temples, trying to remember exactly what it was I’d heard. ‘There was mention of you coming over, and bringing some documents for us, too? Julia arranged something.  For later in the month though, I thought?’

‘She did.  And she has the documents already. Julia and I met for coffee this afternoon—I came over earlier than expected, as you see.’

‘You saw her today? Where?’
What does it matter where?
It doesn’t. What matters is what she’s telling me now: that she and Julia have met this afternoon. Why for coffee? In fact, why did they need to meet at all? She could have left the papers at the clinic. I open my bedroom wardrobe again and stare in at the row of shirts, unseeing, knowing that I still need to pack. I need to get going as soon as I can; it’s a good few hours up to Huddersfield and a journey I would have ideally started before the rush-hour traffic got going. I think,
I didn’t need this distraction tonight
. 

‘In Oxford Street,’ she’s saying now. ‘I’m staying at The Geneve. In Williams Street, do you know it? It’s not too far from Drapers Street clinic ...’ she’s coaxing.

If she’s suggesting we might meet up for some cosy little lunch, that’s not going to happen.

‘Lourdes.’ I cut to the chase. Because I can’t stand here having this conversation with her tonight. Because my father might be dying now and maybe I’ve only got a few hours left before it’s too late to say ... all that there is still left that’s not been said. Once upon a time, I would have opened up and told her all this. She would understand, I know, what I’m feeling inside right now. She’s always understood. But somehow, tonight, it does not feel like the right thing to do. She does not feel like the right person I should be sharing my feelings with. She’s moved into a circle further out from me.

‘Just tell me. When you met Julia today, did you mention anything about ...’

‘What do you think?’ she reproves. I can almost see her lip curling at the fact that I’ve even asked, her pretty forehead furrowing, a little annoyed with me.  ‘You know me better than
that
, Charles.’ Then she adds, her annoyance immediately dissolving into petulance, ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you, you know.’

‘I know,’ I confess. And now it is my turn to feel bad again.  She sounds sad, and I don’t like to hear her sad. That’s why I have not answered her texts, why I have not replied to the voice mail she left me. Because it is so much easier if I have nothing to do with her at all.

‘I’ve missed you,’ she sighs.

‘I know that, too.’

‘And you...’ she prompts.

I give a sad laugh. ‘You are my oldest friend in the world, Lourdes. You were there for me a long time ago when no one else was. I haven’t forgotten.’

‘I’m still here,’ she says, breathless. And for one moment, I wish that we did not have the distance of these miles between us tonight. I lean my head against the corridor wall, aching. I wish we did not have the distance of all the things that have happened, all the events and the partings that have come between us and into our lives. That things could be
simple
. That she were here in person with me, to comfort me as she has been so many times in my life before.  ‘I’m here for you if you need me, just as I once promised.’

I sit on the bottom step of my quietly lit hallway and I wonder, during this afternoon having coffee with my fiancée, what has Lourdes picked up? Has she picked up the sadness, the desperation that seemingly underpins everything that Julia does these days? Has she picked up the cracks that I thought we’d successfully plastered over, re-surfacing steadily with every day that goes by? Because our son does not seem able to respond to her like she sees all the other little children responding to their mummies? Because he has been hurt so badly in some fundamental way we may never understand and she’s still looking for the child he was and she’s still fighting me on what the best way forward is?

Has Lourdes picked all this up?

And yet ... I have hopeful news as well today. News that I’m longing to share, things that I haven’t even told Julia yet. Pippa Killman collared me in the hall after her meeting with J this morning. She felt Hadyn would be a prime candidate for a pilot study they’re conducting in Atlanta. She’s already rung her people and they’ve agreed to take him on. It’s a real silver lining, she told me; a ray of hope at last. J will resist me on it at first, no doubt, but I know she’ll be persuaded when she hears how very enthusiastic Pippa was, having met him.

‘Are you all right, Carlos?’ Lourdes brings my attention back to her. ‘That big house does sound very quiet behind you.’

‘It
is
quiet,’ I agree. ‘My two haven’t got back in yet.’ And I hear her sigh.         

This is such a huge house, it occurs to me now. A house that deserves to be filled with children and friends and laughter, just like the house I once lived in with my parents and my grandmother, that faced proudly out to the sea with its façade of purple bougainvillea covering the front. The house my father closed and eventually sold once my mother died.

Does Lourdes remember how she found me hiding out there one night when I’d run away from my grandmother’s home during the holidays? The others had searched for me high and low, but she alone had known where I would be. It was winter. By the time she found me, I’d been sitting there for hours. I was soaked and I was freezing. I remember how she took off her jacket—a thick, padded khaki one, and wrapped it around me.

‘You are sad now, but one day, you will be happy again,’ she’d reassured me. My ears had been closed to her, my face turned away towards the ocean. All I wanted to hear was the crash and swell of the waves, the fierce windswept rain. But I had heard her voice, small and determined, nonetheless. ‘I am going to
make
you happy, Carlos.’ Even then, with me at eleven and her at thirteen, her jacket had been way too small for me. It hadn’t mattered. What had touched me then was that she cared so much.

She still cares. I can hear it, all the longing that she no longer dares to speak of, I can
feel
it, sliding its way across the miles and down the telephone line ... 

‘Don’t do this, Lourdes.’

She gives a little laugh, a laugh that belies everything I know in my heart to be true.

‘Oh I don’t mean
that
way. I know you don’t want me like
that
anymore. Now you have the lovely Julia to warm you at nights ...’ There’s a pause. ‘I mean,’ she continues, ‘if there’s anything I can ever do, any way I can help?’

She cannot help.

Then she asks, ‘Is everything all right, Charles? I mean, with your son. Julia seemed to be a little concerned about him. She was asking me what I knew about Illusion ...’

‘No. But thanks,’ I tell her.

‘If you want me to do some digging around ... anything that I can do for you,’ she says quietly, ‘You know I will.’

‘Thank you, but it isn’t necessary, Lourdes.’ What’s Julia thinking of? I feel a flash of irritation at her now, a clench in my guts that she has brought this up with Lourdes, of all people.

 ‘Are you two worried in some way about how Illusion might have handled your son?’ her voice is curious now as well as concerned.

‘No. It’s just that ... we’ve been told to avoid any risk of reminding Hadyn about her. Perhaps Julia feels the more she knows about Illusion, the better she’ll be able to avoid any triggers.’

‘I guess,’ Lourdes says. Then she adds, ‘I heard you two are resurrecting your marriage plans at last?

‘Yes. It’s going to happen.’

‘I’m glad for you,’ she says, and I can tell her throat is hurting. I wish ... I wish she would finish this call. I’ve got to go. It’s getting late. Julia must be on her way home any time now—perhaps she’ll be on the train already? Perhaps she’s done that bit already and is nearly home? I get up and go open the front door for any sign that she is nearly back, but there is nothing and I stand there with the door open, letting the cooler night air in. Where have she and Hadyn gone; why are they taking so long?      I’ve still got to pack. And some time in the early hours, I’m going to get to see my old man at last.

But she doesn’t say goodbye, hang up and I have to ask her, gently, so as not to hurt her anymore, ‘What do you
want
, Lourdes?

‘I want ...what I’ve always wanted. To see you happy. To give you what I know you’ve always wanted most in the world.’

‘I have that, Lourdes. I already have it.’

‘Yes. Carlos.’ Pause. Then she says, ‘The Hermosa results are back.’

‘So you have texted me three times already to say.’
Do I sound too harsh? Have I not told her to let it be? That whatever the results are, I don’t want to know?

‘And you don’t want to know what they are?’ she breathes, desperate.

‘No. By every saint in God’s heaven, no. It was a mistake, Lourdes. Can’t we just drop it now?’ I know what the results will be. We both already know it.

Silence.

When she comes back to me, her voice has changed a little. She sounds more like Julia than herself. ‘It’s about time you stopped doing that, Carlos. Running away from the truth.’

For Christ’s sake ...

‘The results were
positive
, Charlie.’

‘They were?’ The results were positive. I swallow, feeling both a slow-burning joy and a regret spreading right through my belly.

Positive.

A slow panic rises up through the host of conflicting emotions she’s left me with. And ... why is it that my two are not back home yet?  The burning question now: what did Lourdes tell Julia when she met with her earlier today? 

‘Are you happy?’ Lourdes says, her voice strained and a little detached now. ‘
All you ever wanted was the child,
’ she reminds me. ‘That’s what’s always mattered the most to you, isn’t it, Charlie?’

I cannot answer that. It was
she
who left me once when we both thought I’d never have any children, but the news she’s insisted on bringing me today has brought it all back and left me with nothing to say to her.

‘Goodbye, Lourdes.’ I can tell from her stifled reaction at the other end that she has heard me this time. She knows that I mean it.   

I take a step towards the open door now, my hand on the lintel, looking out to the spread of orange in the west. Will I look back on this moment in years to come and remember the graceful silver birch waving at me in the breeze, showering earlier raindrops down on the path while the light of the sky seems at once both brighter and darker at the same time? A relief. A joy. And also, beneath that, the burning shame, the confused guilt and the regret?