Where the Memories Lie (31 page)

with her GP, Doctor Palmer, who called Nadia to arrange for them

all to come to the surgery later that afternoon.

As I waited for their appointment time, my mind was all over

the place. I tried about six times before I managed to finally draw blood from Sam Caldwell’s vein, something unheard of for me. And

I forgot to tell Jimmy Dawson to come back in two days to get the

abscess on his back lanced if the cream I gave him didn’t draw it out.

I had to call him later to let him know.

I hovered outside Doctor Palmer’s office while they were inside,

wringing my hands, waiting for them after they’d been dealt the

life-shattering blow.

Nadia had tears in her eyes as she led Charlotte back out with

an arm protectively around her shoulder. Charlotte’s eyes were

blank, her mouth hanging open, lips trembling. She was in shock.

Lucas’s colour had faded to a sickly pallor, pinpricks of sweat on his forehead.

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‘Come into my office.’ I took Charlotte’s hand and we all

walked along the corridor. I sat her down in a chair and crouched in front of her, clasping her hands. ‘Do you want something to drink?’

Charlotte shook her head vaguely.

‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart.’

‘Doctor Palmer said the results are highly suggestive of

leukaemia,’ Nadia said. ‘But that doesn’t mean it’s certain, does it?

It could be just a mix-up, couldn’t it?’ She shook her head violently.

Lucas took a deep breath, blinking rapidly up at the ceiling,

trying to be strong and hold it together.

‘No, I don’t believe it.’ Nadia carried on with her denial. ‘The

tests must be wrong.’

I gave her a pained smile, digging my nails into my palm hard

to stop myself crying. ‘I’m sure Doctor Palmer explained that the

blast
cells shouldn’t be there. The oncologist will take some bone marrow samples to examine, but I’d say it was almost certain. I’m

so, so sorry.’

Tears fell from Charlotte’s cheeks, dropping onto her dress.

‘There’s a high chance of remission.’ I rubbed her tears away as

Nadia carried on shaking her head, unable to take it in. ‘That’s what you need to concentrate on, Charlotte.’

‘Doctor Palmer talked about chemo. Or possibly stem cell

treatment,’ Lucas said, rubbing Charlotte’s back.

‘Yes, the oncologist will be able to give you more information

at your appointment tomorrow, but I think you’ve caught this early

and you’re going to respond well to treatment.’ I forced a bright,

positive smile at Charlotte.

‘God, why didn’t I take her for a blood test sooner?’ Nadia

muttered. ‘It’s all my fault. All my fault. I thought it was just a virus.

That she was tired from all her exam revision. I thought—’

‘You can’t blame yourself,’ I said lamely, knowing that every

parent in the same position would find a way to blame themselves

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for something like this. I was a nurse and even I hadn’t put her

symptoms together sooner. I was equally to blame. ‘The paediatric

oncologist in Dorchester has got a great reputation. It’s likely

she’ll do the bone marrow aspiration and biopsy tomorrow at

your consultation, to speed things up. Look, I think I should get

out of your hair so you can have some private time alone to pre-

pare for the appointment. Anna and Ethan and I should move

back home.’

‘Anna really doesn’t want to go home. It’ll upset her,’ Nadia said.

I wanted to hug her. Even in the midst of her own crisis she was

still thinking about others.

‘We can’t stay with you forever. And besides, you need to . . .

you know, we’re not going to impose right now. I’ll phone Ethan

and tell him to come back to ours when he’s finished his planning

meeting. We were going to move back after the weekend, anyway.

You just do what you need to do.’

We all walked back to their house together in silence, trying to

make sense of something so awful, each of us lost in our own wor-

rying thoughts.

I left them in the kitchen and went up the stairs to Charlotte’s

room where Anna was still watching a DVD. She lay on her stom-

ach on the carpet. At least she’d bothered to get dressed, which

was an improvement. But the room smelled of unwashed kids and

curry-flavoured crisps.

I bit back the tears, blinking fast, holding off the point when I

couldn’t control them any longer. I managed to force a smile but it felt as if my face was about to crack. ‘Hi.’

She ignored me for a moment, engrossed in
Norbit
.
I don’t know why; she’d watched it at least twenty times − could even recite the words.

‘Oh, hi,’ Anna finally said without looking at me.

‘Anna, I need to talk to you.’

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‘Yeah, this will be finished in about half an hour. There’s a really funny bit coming up.’

‘No, I mean now.’

‘Huh?’ Her gaze didn’t stray my way.

‘NOW!’ I said.

That got her attention. ‘Oooh, you’re so snappy at the moment,’

she snapped. I might’ve found the irony of that funny in any other

circumstances.

‘Anna, I don’t want any more arguments from you. Get the

laptop and your bag of clothes and meet me downstairs.’

‘What? Where are we going?’

‘We’re going back home.’

She pushed herself up to a sitting position. ‘We can’t go back

there. There’s a dead girl,’ she whined, her eyes imploring me.

I felt like a bad mother. A horrendous mother. And maybe I

was. Maybe I was paying for every mistake I’d ever made. Maybe

we all were. I wanted to hug her. Squeeze her tight. Squeeze

Charlotte tight. Cradle them both in my arms, as I’d done when

they were babies, and promise them that everything was going to

be all right. That I was there to look after them. The whole family was. I had a duty to protect my daughter and Charlotte from harm.

From evil things happening in their world. Rose had failed to

do that with Katie; I couldn’t fail to do it with my miracle child

and my niece. And yet here I was, powerless. Powerless to change

the direction of their lives or the hands that they had been dealt.

Powerless to take the fear and grief away from my daughter and the

pain and disease away from Charlotte. I had to be strong − strong

for everyone. Nadia and Lucas would need us now, too, more than

ever. But all I wanted that second was to fall apart.

I took a deep breath. ‘Let’s go and take Poppy out for a walk on

Chesil Beach and then we can talk about things, OK? You haven’t

been out of the house for days. It will do you good to get some

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fresh air.’ I was expecting a drama, another tantrum like the ones

she’d suddenly succumbed to since Tom’s death, but she just looked

tired. Weary with it, as we all were. ‘I’ll buy you an ice cream,’ I said lamely, every mother’s best bribe.

‘And then are we coming back, though?’ Her lower lip trembled

and she was about to burst into tears. ‘I want to come back.’

‘Come on. We’ll get that ice cream first.’

I left a message for Ethan to come home as soon as he could and

drove Poppy and Anna to the beach.

Poppy barked excitedly as we pulled up in the car park, her

head poking through the unwound window. I opened the door and

she shot out just before I managed to undo her lead. She bounded

towards the sea, barking at the waves.

‘I know you don’t want to go home at the moment, Anna, but

Charlotte and Lucas and Nadia need their space.’ I put my arm

around her as we walked along.

‘No, they don’t. We’re family. Me and Charlotte are like sisters.’

She shrugged me off.

‘Yes, I know that, darling, but . . .’ I glanced at a green piece of glass nestled in between the pebbles that had probably started off

life as a bottle but been smoothed away by the sea to an odd shape, like a bone.

I shuddered, a vision of Katie’s bones lying under the garage

flashing into my head, but pushed the image away.

‘We can stay with Nadia and Lucas until we sell the barn, then.

They won’t mind,’ Anna said.

‘I have some bad news.’ I stopped, my hand resting on her

shoulder. ‘It’s almost certain that Charlotte’s got leukaemia,

sweetheart. I found out today. They need their space to deal with

this. She’s going to have some pretty hard treatment and she’ll be

feeling very ill with it, and probably very down. It’s going to be a terrible time for everybody.’

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Anna’s eyes grew huge. ‘What do you mean,
leukaemia?
You

mean, she’s going to
die
?’ Her cupid bow lips opened in a gasp.

I took her hand and we sat on the pebbles, looking out to sea

while Poppy turned her attention to chasing after the seagulls,

which took flight in a blur of white.

‘Hopefully not. She has a good chance of going into remission.’

‘So she’ll definitely live, then, won’t she, Mum?’

‘Unfortunately, no one can make those promises. It depends

on how she responds to the treatment. It’s going to be a long,

painful road.’

‘But you said she’d go into remission. That means she’ll survive.’

‘She could do, but she could also . . . die.’ I wanted to sugar-

coat it but at the same time I wanted to be honest. I didn’t believe in lying. Anna was old enough to know the truth. And what I didn’t

tell her she’d only google, anyway.

She burst into tears. ‘Everyone’s dying around me.’

‘Come on, now, Anna.’ I blinked back my own tears. ‘You need

to be a strong girl for Charlotte. We all need to be strong for her.’

‘You’ll die soon, too. And Dad. And what if I’m left on my

own?’ She wiped her snotty nose with the sleeve of her T-shirt.

‘We’re not going to die.’

‘How do you know? You don’t know anything. You said that

the other day and now Charlotte could die!’

I wished I had the magic answer to make everything better, but

last time I consulted the perfect parents’ handbook there must’ve

been some pages missing. The truth was, I didn’t know what to say.

‘Well, if I do die, I’ll come back as your stepmum so I can still

look after you.’

‘Oh, don’t be so stupid!’ She jumped up and stomped away

from me.

Right. So obviously I shouldn’t have said that, then. Magic

answer still sadly lacking. I leaped up and rushed after her. Poppy, 238

Where the Memories Lie

thinking this was all good fun, ran along in between us, getting

beneath my feet, almost tripping me up.

‘Come back here, Anna!’ I expected her to ignore me but

she didn’t.

She stopped abruptly, as if she’d hit an invisible brick wall. By

the time she turned around I’d caught up. Her eyes were downcast

and teary. She ignored Poppy nuzzling into her hand for a stroke.

‘Sometimes in life we have to put other people first.’ I bent my

knees a little so I was in her sightline. ‘We’re upset and scared about Charlotte, but we have to put that aside and be here for her right

now. And Lucas and Nadia. And that means giving them space and

moving back into our house. We’ll sell the barn when we can, but I

need you to be a big, strong girl and help us out, OK?’

‘But Katie’s in there.’

‘She’s not, darling.’ I pressed my fingertips to my eyelids, trying to keep the tears inside. If I started, I didn’t think I’d be able to stop.

I dropped my hands and took hold of hers. ‘The police took her

away. There’s nothing left. She’s not there.’

‘Her ghost is still there.’

‘Darling, we’ve had this conversation.’

‘I don’t care – it’s still there!’ She stamped her foot. I felt like doing the same. If only it would solve everything. ‘And Granddad

killed her!’ she yelled the last part at me. I glanced around to see if anyone had overheard, then thought
What did it matter?
Everyone in the village probably knew by now, anyway.

‘We’re not going to be there for long – just until we can sell it,

like I said. And we don’t know that Granddad did have anything

to do with her death yet.’ I tried to hold on to that thought, like I’d been trying to all this time, and yet I was still struggling with it. ‘It might’ve been an accident for all we know,’ I said lamely.

‘In the meantime, we have to leave them all be and let them get

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whenever she wants to see us, but we can’t stay in their house. It’s not fair of us to burden them with how we’re feeling when they have to cope with her illness.’

She sullenly stared down, kicking at pebbles with her feet.

‘Can I go with her for her treatment? Hold her hand and keep her

company?’

‘If she wants you to, darling, of course you can. I think that

would be a very brave and loving thing for you to do. Concentrating on helping her get through this will give you strength to deal with it, too.’

She pulled at her lip with her thumb and forefinger, thinking

about that for a few moments, and then nodded. ‘OK. I’m going to

be the best cousin I can so I can help her, and I need to be grown

up to do that, don’t I?’

‘You do indeed.’ I smiled with relief and looked up at the sky,