Uphill All the Way (17 page)

The doorbell shrilled. They raised their eyebrows at each other.

'Half-past seven?' An unusual hour for visitors. Judith pushed the chair away from the computer.

Adam stood up, winced, and lifted a protesting hand to his head. The right hand. He must be feeling rough. 'Do you want me to answer it?'

'I'll do it.' At the front door Judith squinted out over the chain, pain lancing across her eyes at an attack from the cruel morning sun.

The figure on the step snapped, 'It's me.'

'Molly?' She unchained the door. 'What are you...? I mean, come in.'

Molly's Lexus was pulled up at the kerb, very gold in the early sunlight. Judith frowned as she made out solid shapes crouching on the back seat. Suitcases?

'Can I stay for a bit?' asked Molly, calmly, taking off her cardigan and smoothing her hair. 'I've left Frankie.' She took in Judith in her robe and bare feet, and Adam with his slept-in his clothes. 'Who's
he
?'

The morning grew hazy with heat. Judith stood the door to the garden open, and filled the kettle.

After making room for Molly's things by removing all the clothes that she'd just stowed in the spare wardrobe, she occupied herself with small chores, wondering about her sister and feeling nauseous and headachy. It was a long time since she'd been drunk enough to have a hangover and the whole unpleasant process had not improved.

The computer hummed gently, the 3-D design on the screensaver rolling slowly through its contortions. She didn't need to click the mouse and let Giorgio's obituary beam again from the screen and jolt her with fresh pain. It was there, but she hadn't quite brought herself to remove it. In fact, she could almost have lit candles around it, an illumination in a plastic shrine.

The sounds of Molly moving purposefully about in the spare room filtered through the house; the wardrobe door opening, shutting, opening, shutting, the drawers of the chest groaning in and out.

It was a kind of inverted déjà vu. A few short weeks ago she'd shut herself in Molly's spare room to unpack her life methodically from her suitcases. And now here was Molly, returning the favour.

Judith stepped out onto the patio, the flagstones warm beneath her bare feet, looking up the long narrow garden at the lawn, and Adam beyond it, cutting back some shrub that grew in an enormous spray of cerise flowers against the ochre tones of the back wall. He had far too much alcohol in his system to drive straight home and she'd brushed away his offers to walk the three miles or so to his new place, or to call a cab.

He'd kept her company when she needed someone to be with. She wasn't going to heave him out prematurely just because her sister was taking her turn to have a crisis.

'Coffee? Tea?' she called.

He shaded his eyes to look back at her. 'Tea would be nectar.'

Borrowing his pragmatic approach of the evening before, she made two mugs and took him them both.

He grinned appreciatively. 'The only thing better than a cup of tea is two cups.'

Back in the kitchen, she jumped to find Molly waiting.

Molly was composed, neat in black trousers and a cherry red short-sleeved jumper, her hair brushed loose and shiny over her shoulders. 'Sorry that I didn't feel like talking straight away.'

Judith slid her arm around her sister, looking down at the pale face. 'That's all right. How are you doing?'

'OK.' Molly didn't look OK. She looked glum. 'I'll get the coffee on, shall I?'

She was going to take over, Judith could see, putting herself in charge of the kettle was the first step. She wondered whether to form some kind of protest, but realising that a) Molly probably needed something to do, and b) Judith didn't enjoy chores enough to hog them, refrained, as Molly busily poured the steaming water from the kettle into the mugs.

Feeling slightly less nauseous in the fresh air, Judith carried their drinks out to the bench.

'So.' She made herself concentrate on Molly. 'Tell me what happened. Do I have to go round and smash his face in?'

Molly didn't bother to smile. 'As long as I don't have to stay with him any more, I don't care what happens.' Her entire body was loose, still.

A silence.

'Look.' Judith linked the soft arm and drew her sister closer. 'I don't want to compromise your privacy, but I think you're going to have to give me a few hints. He hasn't been knocking you about, has he?'

A head shake.

'Having an affair?'

'No.'

Judith waited.

Eventually, Molly sighed. 'I just can't bear him any more, ruling the roost like a Victorian, treating me like a skivvy. Never showing me any affection, thinking it's fine to ogle other women and ignore me. He even told me that I bored him, and he wouldn't...' She blinked fiercely. 'He wouldn't be able to
do it
if we tried, because I don't arouse him. So I packed.'

Judith gave Molly's arm a sympathetic squeeze. 'Good for you.' What else could she say? Frankie had always ruled the roost, and always treated Molly like a skivvy. Equality had come in the seventies without Frankie ever taking out his subscription.

But saying that he couldn't get an erection for her, well that was just nasty.

It was difficult, given recent history, to protest about Molly landing herself in Judith's newly acquired space, but this wasn't a great moment to be landed upon. She was sympathetic, of course she was sympathetic, she loved Moll to death. But it was tough to 'be there' for her just at this exact moment, when all she wanted to do was sit in the sunshine and think of Giorgio.

Her eyes were beginning to burn ominously, as if her tears were preparing to flood out again.

Molly nodded in Adam's direction. 'When's he going?'

'When he's not so full of booze.'

With a quavering sigh, Molly put her hand over her eyes. 'Honestly Judith, you can't know what Frankie's like! He's so grumpy all the time...'

Judith watched Adam, how he squinted against the bright light.

' - dictatorial, criticising and carping...'

He had his back to them, his cowboy legs planted firm against the earth as he worked his way methodically over the shrub, snipping off a leggy branch and snip, snip, snipping it into smaller pieces into a garden refuse sack. He seemed to be able to work the secateurs OK with his right hand, he'd slipped it into some kind of protective splint, leaving his thumb and finger free to lever against a projection where his fingers used to be. Probably the 'gizmo' he'd talked about.

He'd been so kind last night. Had seemed to instantly understand the depth and futility of her pain, amplified because her grief would forever go unacknowledged by Giorgio's family.

Oh Giorgio! Will it always hurt this much?

' - and he should've found someone else years ago if he's found me unexciting for such a long time. Shouldn't he? Judith?' Molly waited.

Stricken, Judith turned. 'I'm sorry Moll, I didn't - '

Molly's face flooded dull crimson and her eyes blazed. 'I'm sorry if I
interrupted something
with my obviously inopportune appearance, but is it too much to ask that you stop lusting after the gardener just long enough to attend to my woes for a change? Honestly, it's different when it's you, isn't it? Talk about selfish.'

Misery closed in. Judith had to swallow hard before she could speak. 'I'm not 'lusting after' Adam. He stayed last night because...' She breathed in. ' - because Giorgio died yesterday.'

A silence. Shock dragged down Molly's jaw. 'Don't be stupid,' she denied uncertainly. 'How could he?'

Wearily, Judith let her head tip back. 'Do you want me to show you the obituary? He had an accident, he was in a coma, which is why I came home. And now he's been released.'

And then Molly was crying, and Judith let her fall into her arms. 'I'm sorry,' Molly wept. 'I'm sorry, I didn't know! But please don't ask me to go back to Frankie, Judith. It's been horrible, hardly speaking, sleeping in the spare room.'

That explained the underwear.
'Of course not.' Judith closed her eyes as her sister cried in great soaking gulps.

She shouldn't have come home.

She couldn't give much support to her sister's unhappiness or her mother's frailty. Tomorrow, she should be standing on the rock that was Malta as Giorgio Zammit became part of it forever, there to see his grave. How, from green, leafy Brinham, could she feel close to him? Sense him in the yellow stone and blue sea of the place he'd lived, the place they'd loved, feel proof that he'd existed?

In Malta she would have been able to talk to his friends about him, Charlie, Carmelo, even Anton and Gordon, bring him back to life in their stories, his sense of humour and his gentleness.

Perhaps, in time, she would be able to overlay the inner vision that haunted her, of Giorgio, helpless and empty, like a big baby in a white gown on a white hospital bed with his head bandaged and his life lived for him by a handful of tubes.

Even as she patted Molly's heaving back, making comforting noises, framing soothing sentences, other words were forming in her head.

I can go back.

Chapter Sixteen

Judith sat on the clifftop at Ghar Lapsi and stared at the glittering sea.

She'd driven there straight from Luqa airport and made no attempt to see the funeral cortège set out from the imposing buildings of St. Luke's Hospital, nor to slip into the church to hear the mass said for the repose of Giorgio's soul or skulk among the mourners at the cemetery.

Instead, she watched the delicate movements of the sea where they'd dived together and been happy, and remembered loving a man with a joyful heart. Even if he'd proved to be a bit butterfingered with insurance premiums.

The cliff top - more of a broad shelf, really, as a second cliff rose behind her - was scrubby, but she found a slab of rock and sank down. It was quiet up here, she'd positioned herself away from the restaurant with its tables on the terrace, the concrete pathways, the steps to the sea. She could gaze down into the bay sheltered by its arm of rock and not be bothered by the tourists or the fishermen.

Having learnt respect for the power of summer sunshine she'd brought a big bottle of water in her bag, and wore a black straw hat.

The sea was ultra blue, the waves shattering the sun's reflection into smithereens of blinding light. Insignificant waves today, sighing against the dark craggy rocks with little spray. There might be divers down, a slight choppiness like that wouldn't affect them. It was when there was a swell that the currents were treacherous. Divers died, dragged out past the reef with its sponges and coral, or trapped, slapped about somewhere in the underwater cavern system.

The sea was mighty.

But today was a beautiful day for a dive. The light would be filtering through chinks in the rock and into the caves, rainbow wrasse, rays and moray would flit through weed swaying with the motion of the sea. Divers would fin through the near-silent, turquoise world in pairs, communicating with occasional gestures and signals.

Out to sea, looking closer than it was, the dark shape of the tiny island of Filfla, a nature reserve and possibly, depending on what you believed, the home of two-tailed lizards. A couple of fishing boats surged across the waves perhaps half-a-mile out. The rest of the sea within eyeshot was empty.

Except, on the horizon to the left, purple through the heat haze, the oil rigs some moron had allowed to wait there for their next job. Resolutely, she ignored their spikiness.

It was probably how it had looked the day Giorgio was injured, the squatting presence of Filfla and one or two boats. One, at least. One that carried jet skis.

It was almost evening by the time she roused and rose stiffly from the rock, her eyes burning from the salty breeze. She could have stayed all night, watching the sun set and the sky turn shrimp pink, purple, then black. But she needed the loo.

After the public toilets she retrieved the hire car from the car park and drove towards Tarxien and the Santa Maria Addolorata cemetery. In the residential areas the buildings were turning tawny as the sun angled low, the forest of television aerials glinting above.

Tiredness crept up on her. The day had begun early, she'd only just made her flight because the southbound M1 was closed owing to a chemical spillage. Tight with anxiety she'd had to find a way onto the M11 and then M25 and pass London to the east.

She'd left without telling anybody.

No doubt she'd catch hell from Molly. Molly didn't understand that Judith had to do things her own way. And if that way included booking a flight and leaving for Malta before Molly was awake... She could almost hear her elder sister's scandalised complaints. 'Fancy just going off like that without telling a soul! Leaving me a note to say make yourself at home and there's plenty of food! What a way to treat a guest! That's just like you, Judith...'

What was surprising was that Molly should expect her to be anything other. Who else would she be like?

She left the car outside the black, wrought iron cemetery gates that were patterned to echo the gothic stone arches beyond. The flower stalls in the car park were being closed up, the stallholders calling to one another as they worked. A pretty girl flashed a smile as Judith asked her if she'd sell her a single white orchid. 'Of course, madam.'