Watch Over Me (28 page)

‘Poor you. My poor Eilidh.’ He smoothed the hair away from my forehead, in a gesture so familiar it broke my heart. ‘Your mum keeps saying you tried to … to harm yourself …’

‘What? What is she talking about? I’d never …’ Of course. I should have known. What a perfect occasion for her to take control, seamless really. Eilidh is so unstable she even tried to kill herself. We must take control of her. I was so angry, I couldn’t speak.

‘I know, I know. Don’t worry. Everybody knows she’s talking nonsense. We’ll get you discharged soon and back on your feet. We’ll take a holiday, anywhere you want …’

I untangled my hands from his.

‘Oh, Tom. No. I’m sorry. Nothing has changed … We’re not getting back together. We can’t …’

‘Why can’t we? I know you called me here to talk about the divorce but … With all that happened …’

‘Nothing has changed. Please, Tom.’ Our eyes met. He looked into my eyes, his blue gaze holding mine for a long time, as if he was searching my soul.

‘Do you have feelings for Jamie?’

‘Yes.’ My heart stopped for a second. It was the first time I’d said it aloud. ‘But Jamie has nothing to do with you and me. It’s been over for a long time, before you … you …’

‘Nine days.’ He said and his face was bitter.

‘Nine days? What do you mean?’

‘Once, you didn’t speak to me for nine days. And there was nothing wrong between us, really. I hadn’t … I wasn’t seeing anyone, we hadn’t fought or anything. It was this baby thing that was eating you inside. We were living together and you didn’t speak to me for nine whole days, apart from, “Hello,” “Night,” and, “Would you like a cup of tea?” I counted. The tenth day, you spoke to me just before bed, about some stuff needing done in the house.’

‘Oh my God, Tom. I’m so sorry …’

‘Well, you know what? You should be. Because this is your doing as well as mine. I’m not attacking you, Eilidh, God knows I love you, if I could go back … But you did this too, with me. We destroyed our marriage. And for what?’

I took a deep breath. ‘I saw two people in love, a few months ago. They were about to kiss and were looking into each other’s eyes. It made me see … I never felt that way for you. And you never felt that way for me.’

He looked shocked. I could see at once I’d hurt him deeply and that there was no return from there.

‘You’re wrong. As far as I’m concerned, at least.’ He stood up and covered his eyes with his hand. I started crying, too, and made no effort to stop the tears. Our marriage deserved those tears. The end of our marriage was a time to cry.

After a few seconds, he spoke again.

‘I’ll speak to your parents. I’ll see that you’re able to stay in Peggy’s house. I’ll see that your parents have no way to take you back to Southport …’

‘Wait …’ He couldn’t possibly leave like that. He couldn’t leave
me
like that.

‘What?’ he said softly. ‘What’s left to say?’

I held my hands out. ‘Tom …’

He held them.

‘I’ll give you a divorce, of course. I’ll take care of everything.’

‘No, it’s not that … Tom …’

‘No more, Eilidh. Please.’ He let go of my hands and it felt like a part of me had been cut off.

He left, without looking back, he left.

‘Thank you …’ I whispered but I’m not sure he heard.

Eilidh was sitting on Peggy’s sofa, sipping her tea and emailing on her laptop. She looked serene and peaceful and smiled a lot. For someone who’d just been in a near-fatal accident, she looked very …
satisfied
.

I knew it had something to do with Jamie. They couldn’t hide the feelings between them. I just hoped they’d finish their ‘will we, won’t we’ dance and get on with it.

Still, she seemed pretty happy
all
the time, not only when Jamie was there or when he phoned.

‘Eilidh, can I ask you a question?’

‘Sure.’ Her clear blue eyes met mine. No wonder Jamie fell for her, I thought, she’s beautiful. Not in an obvious way, more in a … soulful way. Silke would have the words to describe it. She always does.

‘You seem so … I don’t know, contented. It’s like this accident hasn’t really affected you …’

She smiled and all of a sudden, her face was like a wee girl’s.

‘Just the opposite, actually …’ She looked thoughtful and put the laptop down beside her. ‘It has affected me a lot. In a good way …’

I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I waited.

‘You see, I’ve spent a lot of time being sad. For one reason or another, you know, my family, not being able to have children, my husband, and so on and so forth. When I was in hospital, I thought I’d died. It’s difficult to explain, I was in a coma but I could
think
and I was sure I was dead. Then I woke up …’ She gestured towards the window, as if to show me the world she was still here to enjoy. ‘I feel like I’ve been given a second chance. And I’m just so relieved, so delighted, that I’ve been allowed to live …’

She brought her knees up and hugged her legs, wincing slightly. She was still in pain. I knew that, I was the one sitting with her through the night and helping her with all the things she still struggled to do by herself.

‘And of course, there’s Jamie …’ she added.

I blushed and looked away. I’m not good with this kind of talk, I get embarrassed. I know I’m old enough to be over this chronic shyness, I’m not a teenager anymore. But I can’t help it.

She noticed my awkwardness and smiled, a mischievous smile, I thought.

‘What about you, Fiona, do you have someone?’

She knew, of course. Silke’s friends all knew. My desperate attempt to keep it secret hadn’t worked, which is mainly why we broke up.

Mainly. And also the fact that I couldn’t possibly be the kind of person who lives
that
way. Ok, I might have dabbled in it, it happened, but a life choice, no. I was going to get married and have children, like everybody else. I couldn’t be the one that people whispered about, I couldn’t be the one who lets her parents down, who lets her dad down.

Since I came back, I’ve seen Silke twice. Twice my heart stopped. She looked at me for a long time, waiting for me to speak. I saw that she still loved me, I saw it in her eyes, and I just wanted to run into her arms.

But nothing had changed for me. I still wasn’t comfortable with people knowing. We were back to square one. I knew that I couldn’t be near her, without … without giving in.

‘Yes. I’m seeing someone.’

Oh God, I thought. I’m terrible at lying. How on earth was I going to keep this one going?

Eilidh looked taken aback.

‘He was at college with me. He’s from Aberdeen. We … we text and speak all the time.’

‘That’s great. Good for you …’ she said and looked at me for a long time.

‘His name is Jack. He’s great. He’s my … ideal man,’ I added, feeling my cheeks getting hotter and redder every second.

My ideal man. There was no ideal
man
on this earth for me.

There was only Silke and I’d just taken another little step further away from her because I knew that Eilidh would tell Jamie about this Jack I made up, and Jamie would tell Silke, and she’d move on.

Which was what I wanted of course, I wanted her to move on and be happy. Without me.

Jack? I didn’t believe her for a second. She just made it up. Fiona was so transparent, so innocent. She couldn’t lie to save her life. She looked very young, I thought, with her wavy brown hair down, her milk-white skin dotted with freckles, her deep, dark green eyes. Her cheeks were very pink, which made her look even younger.

I wasn’t sure what she’d choose. I knew she still had feelings for Silke but she was fighting them with all her strength.

It was easy for all of us to say she should free herself, she should accept who she is. But it’s such a difficult choice, to go against your family, to defy all their expectations and stand firm against their disapproval. Just thinking about it made my heart beat faster with upset – to be Morag and Hugh Robertson’s daughter, to be brought up in the Baptist faith, going to the church and Sunday school every week, and actually sharing their beliefs and trying to live by them … and then falling in love with a woman.

I’d felt a lot better for a while now; Fiona’s stay in Glen Avich was drawing to a close. I really didn’t have the slightest idea what was going to happen with those two. This much I knew, though: Fiona could maybe manage to be strong this time and walk away, but judging from her face the night I saw her kissing Silke, she was too passionate, her blood flew too fast and warm in her veins, for her to deny herself forever. Sooner or later, I knew she’d fall in love again, and her falling will be sweet, too sweet to stop, too sweet to talk about it.

My head spun a little. Maybe it was the painkillers, or maybe I was just hungry …

All of a sudden, I felt restless. A sense of longing rose up inside me, I couldn’t sit still anymore. It was a beautiful night, the world was pulsating all around me, it was early spring and my thoughts were flowing like a singing stream. I put my jacket on and said to Fiona that I was going for a walk, and I did mean to do that, to just go for a walk, but my legs had a will of their own; they took me up St Colman’s Way, past the spot I nearly died, to Jamie’s house.

I wished I could just reach out and kiss her, like I did at Hogmanay. But I seemed to have lost my courage. In my mind, she was fragile now, like something that’s been broken and put back together and needed to be handled with care. But when I was alone at night and I closed my eyes, the things I saw, the things we did together … it could never be this way for real, not now.

But, since the accident, she smiled and looked straight at me, she didn’t look away like she used to, as if I wasn’t meant to know what she was thinking, as if she had to hide from me. She looked like she was waiting, waiting for something that she knew was inevitable, something that was going to happen soon, as soon as I could reach out and touch her.

And then, one clear spring night, I came home to find her on my doorstep. I looked into her face and she wasn’t smiling, her eyes were dark, nearly black in the twilight. I held her and she was shaking.

‘Hi … come on in. Maisie’s with Shona tonight …’

‘I know.’

I realised at once why she’d come and why she was shaking. I put the fire on and we sat for a while, watching the flames flickering, watching each other tentatively.

Eilidh has this way of kissing, slow and steady, she doesn’t change, she stays nearly still and doesn’t stop until I can’t take anymore. She did that to me that night and I tried to stop myself but I couldn’t, it’d been so long … I held on to her waist like I was about to fall – and I did – I fell into her. And then she stroked my hair and looked at me with those dark, liquid eyes that I’d never seen before.

I took her by the hand and led her upstairs and we didn’t need to be quiet. I held her gently, like a porcelain doll, until I couldn’t take it anymore and I had to take her the way I dreamt of and she didn’t stop me. She whispered, ‘Keep your eyes open.’ Our eyes were locked as we moved together and our souls were bared. We looked into each other’s eyes as we came and it was raw and beautiful, and after that I knew that our ties could never be broken.

‘It’s been so long,’ he’d said.

And so it’d been for me … I was frightened and I couldn’t stop shaking. I was frightened and still, I couldn’t stop and I didn’t stop. I wish I could say it was him that led me – I knew it was wrong to do this, I was still married, it was too soon – but I couldn’t deny it was me, it was me who came close to him, so close he just couldn’t move away, and it was me who touched him so that it would have been torture to stop and so there could be no way back.

I’d been empty and longing for so long and I was coming to life again. I wanted him to look at me, I wanted to see his eyes as we melted into one, and I hoped, I hoped with all my heart, he’d never leave me. I should have whispered, ‘I love you.’ Instead, I whispered, ‘Don’t go …’ because I knew that if he left, I would survive, I would keep breathing, but I would never be alive again.

He whispered back, ‘I’ll never go,’ and I couldn’t talk then, I couldn’t talk anymore but I thought it over and over again, don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.

My heart was breaking with love for him and I was frightened because he had my life in his hands and when he said, ‘I’ll never go,’ I didn’t believe him. I knew by then that vows can be broken and promises can be forgotten, that all we have is hope that love doesn’t fall through our fingers, like sand.

Maisie and I were sitting at the kitchen table. I was helping her with her reading and keeping an ear out for the phone. Tom was due to call me that afternoon, to arrange for me to go down to Southport to sign some documents. It had all been so quick, so smooth. I didn’t want anything of his and I had nothing of mine to share, except a pot of savings so small it wouldn’t have even paid for the lawyer. There were no children, of course, so no custody battles. Very straightforward, yet not painless. No, not painless.