Runaway Wife (40 page)

Rose sat down on the odd pink plastic chair by his bedside and looked at him. He looked so frail, so weak. As if the force of nature that made him who he was had all but evaporated, leaving just a shell behind.

“I’ll get us some tea,” Tilda said, putting a hand on Rose’s shoulder. “Try not to worry, Rose. Your dad’s been down before. And almost out too, but if I know him at all I know he won’t give up fighting for every second more that he can squeeze out of life, and he’ll do that for you and Maddie. I promise you.”

Rose nodded. “Thank you,” she said quietly, adding with just as much calm measure, “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Oh, Rose, dear,” Tilda said, patting her once again on the shoulder and then rubbing it briefly, “I’m glad that
you
are here.”

•  •  •

They were standing in the corridor outside John’s room.

“His main problem right now,” said the doctor, who looked to Rose like he should still be at school and not managing the life and death of someone that she loved, “is that he’s dehydrated and malnourished. I think he’s probably been in pain for a long while, not eating properly. From our initial examination we suspect an obstruction in the bowel, but I’m reluctant to investigate further until we’ve got his stats back up.
We’ll know more tomorrow, but for now you should probably go home, rest.”

“If it’s a bowel obstruction,” Rose asked him, her face drawn and pale, “what then, another op?”

“I don’t know,” the doctor admitted reluctantly. “We need his notes from Leeds. We need to see what has already been done, if surgery is the way to go or . . . if a more palliative approach is required.”

“Oh God,” Rose sobbed, burying her head in her hands, making the young doctor shift awkwardly from one foot to the other and look longingly for an escape.

“How am I going to explain this to Maddie?” she asked Tilda, turning to gaze at her father through the slats of the blind at the window of his room, where he was lying silent and still, oblivious to everything that was going on around him.

Wake up, Dad, she pleaded silently. Please, please, wake up. Don’t give up now.

•  •  •

For the first few seconds after waking, it took Rose a little while to work out where she was. There was dim gray light filtering in through the thin hospital curtains and the rhythmic beat of the heart monitor, but still it took awhile for the realization to dawn on her that she had spent the night in hospital. When it did, the worry that had had a continuous grip on her heart since yesterday squeezed hard again.

Forcing her stiff neck into an upright position, she winced as pain shot down into her shoulder. She remembered that she’d decided to stay the night by John’s bedside, waiting for him to come round. It had been John squeezing her fingers that had roused her.

“Bloody hospital,” John said, his mouth dry. “Why am I here?”

“Here.” Rose tried to hide her relief as she picked up a beaker of water from the bedside table and held it to his lips. “I imagine you’re here because you’ve been doing your level best to ignore that terminal cancer you’ve got.”

John directed his gaze upwards, his dark sunken eyes studying the ceiling tiles for some moments, Rose sitting paralyzed at his side, finding it impossible to express all the emotion that had built up in her, suspecting that a crying, wailing daughter would be the last thing he would want.

“I don’t want to be here,” John said eventually. “Want to go home. I have work to do.”

“Dad.” Rose leant on the bed, resting her forehead on his hand for a moment. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“No time,” John rasped. “You’ve only just got here. I suppose this is my just deserts. To lose you now.”

“You’re not going to die,” Rose told him emphatically, even though she didn’t know it was true. “Well, not yet, anyway. Not for a very long time. The doctor seemed to think you’ve been ignoring symptoms. I bet they’ll patch you up and we can still do what we planned. Live together at Storm Cottage, be a family.”

“Perhaps,” John said wearily, “perhaps.”

“Don’t leave me, Dad,” Rose begged him desperately, her determination to contain her emotions crumbling away. “Please, not again.”

“I’ll try my best,” John said. “Rose . . . you know how sorry I am, don’t you?”

“You don’t have to say it again.” Rose shook her head, turning her face away from him.

“I do, not for you, for me. I need to say I am sorry over and over again as many times as I can. Please allow that. Allow me to ease my conscience just a little.”

“Morning!” A large and altogether too cheerful male nurse
bustled into the room, trampling over the moment before Rose could say anything in reply.

“Look who’s up and about, then?” he said brightly to John. “You’re nil by mouth till the doctor’s seen you, but I can bring you a cuppa if you like, love?” he said, looking at Rose, who nodded gratefully.

“I will be leaving shortly,” John told the nurse, waving his hand at the door. “If you could bring me the form . . .”

“Dad!” Rose shook her head. “No, you will not. You will not leave. You will see what you can do to stay with me for as long as possible.”

“She’s right, you know,” the nurse said, still sounding breezy. “These last few weeks you’ll have with your loved ones are the ones that will mean the most. Don’t be in a hurry to give up whatever time you can get.”

John sighed, leaning his head back against the pillow. “Very well.”

“Now stay there. I’m going to phone Maddie, tell her how you are,” Rose said.

“Don’t tell her about . . . ” John said anxiously.

“I won’t, not yet,” Rose replied, wondering how she was going to explain any of this to her daughter. “Not until we know more. But Maddie isn’t like most children. The more she knows the less she worries. So when we know something, then I’ll talk to her. Now stay put.”

“It’s not like I’m about to abseil out the window,” John said.

•  •  •

“How is he?” Frasier’s voice stopped Rose dead in her tracks as she walked down the hospital corridor. Slowly she turned round to set eyes on him, standing a few feet away from her, his face etched with concern. Forcing herself to stay put, and not run to him and beg him to put his arms around her,
which is what she wanted most in all the world, Rose drew her shoulders back and lifted her chin just a little.

You are not that woman anymore, Rose reminded herself in her father’s voice. You don’t need a man to look after you, not even Frasier. You can and you will stand alone.

“They don’t really know yet,” she said, the exhaustion sounding in her voice. “I’ve only just found out about the cancer. I’m not sure—no one seems to be—what this latest collapse means . . .” She stopped talking as her voice came dangerously close to breaking.

“Rose,” Frasier kept his distance, running his fingers through his fair hair, “I’m sorry that I knew and didn’t tell you. Your father really didn’t want you to know. He didn’t want you to feel that you had to stay, had to forgive him.”

“I know.” Rose nodded wearily, too exhausted to be angry. “I understand that. I can’t say I wouldn’t rather have known. But I understand why you did what you did.”

“Thank you,” Frasier said, carefully mannered, distant again. More of a stranger to her in that moment than he had been all those years ago on the first morning they had met.

“Rose?” The nurse who had offered her tea called her name. “The doctor’s ready to talk to you and your dad now.”

•  •  •

It was a long and silent drive back to Storm Cottage, and Rose would rather have done it with Tilda, but she had had to leave at some point late in the night, to make arrangements for her shop today. So it was Frasier who volunteered to take her back home, so she’d have a night to prepare for John’s return.

“So he’s coming home,” Frasier said, as he opened the front door of the cottage for Rose, switching on all the lights. “That’s good news.”

“He’s coming home to die,” Rose said bleakly as she walked into the small still room, which seemed so empty without
him in it. “Inoperable, that’s what they said. Untreatable now. All they can do is give him pain relief and the best quality of life possible. I’m losing him all over again.”

She leant against the kitchen table, trying desperately to stop her shoulders from shaking, longing to be touched, comforted. But the only other person there stayed exactly where he was.

“I know it must seem that way,” Frasier said, clearly struggling to know what to say now that their relationship had been reestablished once again, “but try to think of it as time, precious time to—”

“Frasier,” Rose cut across him, exhausted, mustering only the will to turn and face him. “Please, don’t try to tell me to think of this time we have together as a gift. It isn’t a gift, it’s a punishment, it’s a cruel trick, but it’s
not
a gift. I was foolish enough to think I’d found a new start in life, a place to be happy, people to be happy with, but I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

“No,” Frasier insisted. “Rose, I . . . got swept up in the moment, between you and me. I suppose I wanted to believe the fairy tale as much as you did. And that was wrong. I shouldn’t have done that to you, and I shouldn’t have blamed you for what happened with Ted—”

“Nothing happened with me and Ted!” Rose exclaimed, a brief burst of anger propelling her forward a few steps.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Frasier said, backing away. “It’s none of my business. I was stupid to let myself get carried away, to get involved with you when I knew in my heart that you weren’t ready. You’ve been through so much, you have so much yet to face.”

“Isn’t it up to me to decide what I can cope with?” Rose asked him tightly. “This isn’t about me, Frasier, it’s about you, changing your mind in the cold light of day.”

Frasier did not contradict her. “I think it was the painting,
and seeing you again, and, oh, I don’t know. I’m just an old romantic,” he said, remorse on his face. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. But I want you to know that I am here for you and John. I will be your friend as long as you will have me.”

Rose stared into his handsome face, desperate to slap him smartly around it. But she couldn’t. There was no time to be self-indulgent. Now she had to think of John, and Maddie, whom she’d promised to pick up from Jenny’s before bedtime.

“Come with me,” she said, taking a bunch of keys from a drawer in the kitchen.

Frasier followed her to the barn, where she unlocked three padlocks until they came at last to John’s room of private work.

“Dad needs something to focus on,” she said, wavering at the last moment over what she was about to do. “Something to keep him going. His private work is in here. He doesn’t want me to see this yet, so you go in. You look at it and see if it’s good enough and if there is enough.”

“Enough for what?” Frasier asked her.

“Enough to mount an exhibition,” Rose said, “of the work that means the most to him and gives him his true identity as an artist. I want you to exhibit him in your gallery, show the world what a truly great painter he is, at last. I want you to give him back his self-respect.”

“Right,” Frasier said, looking at the closed door uncertainly. “He would rip my head off if he knew what I was doing.”

“Well,” Rose said, finding the ghost of a smile, “there’s always a bright side.”

•  •  •

It seemed like an age that Rose was waiting in the vast empty middle room, staring up at the shafts of late afternoon sun that streamed in through the skylights, as she watched the
particles of dust that danced and spun in its wake. Then at last she heard Frasier emerge from the room behind her, pulling the door closed and shutting the padlock firmly.

“No?” Rose asked him.

Frasier was silent for a moment, and then quite without warning he scooped her up in his arms and twirled her around twice, before setting her, a little unsteadily, back on her feet.

“Sorry,” he said, realizing too late how inappropriate he’d been. “I just had to—”

“Um, just tell me,” Rose said, angered once again by the way he was with her.

“Brilliant,” Frasier said simply, happily. “Brilliant, epic, personal, emotional, ground-breaking, cutting edge, true, true works of genius. It will be the greatest exhibition that I have ever mounted, and I’m going to make sure that the whole world is there to see it.”

“Good,” Rose said. “That is wonderful. Now we just have to work out a way to break it to Dad.”

I
t had been three days since John had been allowed home, and when he arrived, chauffeured by Frasier, his house was considerably different from when he’d left it. The study, which was to have been Rose’s room for the time being, had been cleaned from top to bottom, his bed had been brought down, and a commode sat discreetly in the corner, which Rose knew that John would hate, so she asked Tilda to explain it to him so that he wouldn’t have to think he was a burden to Rose. Rose had ordered a new bed, which had been delivered and installed in her father’s bedroom, and she and Tilda had spent quite some time transferring all of his belongings, the piles of books and magazines, the photos, pictures and prints that he surrounded himself with, down from the bedroom to the study. It wasn’t exactly that they had developed a friendship, or any particular warmth between the two of them, it was more that they had a common purpose: to make John’s last weeks with them as comfortable and as peaceful as possible. No, there was no growth of affection between Rose and Tilda, more just an absence of animosity, which both of them seemed content to live with for now.

The doctors had made it quite clear that there was no further treatment now available to John, that all they could do
for him was offer him pain relief and therapy to make his life as comfortable as possible. They’d removed the obstruction in his bowel while he’d been in hospital, and Rose was pleased to see that helped ease the constant expression of pain that seemed engraved on his face. He had some color again and had looked more at ease when she’d gone to see him the previous night to explain that she’d moved the rooms and done her best to make everything just as she thought he would like it.