He’d been front and centre of my mind, a spot he’d occupied since I’d driven away from the surgery the night before. I’d reached for my phone to check the time and with a jolt had seen his name on the screen. It would appear that at 2 a.m., he’d sent me a message. It must have arrived just minutes after I’d finally given up on hearing from him and had fallen into a restless sleep. My fingers had felt less than steady when I clicked open the inbox, unaware I was holding my breath until it escaped me on a long, exhaled stream as I read his three-word message.
I’m so sorry.
Sorry. What was he sorry for? For kissing me? For allowing things to go so far that we’d been only two heartbeats away from making love when we were interrupted? Or was he apologising for answering the phone call?
It was weird that two men with the exact same face occupied our thoughts as we drove closer to Amelia’s coastal cottage. By the time we caught our first glimpse of the sea, it was hard to know whose relationship was the greater fantasy: Amelia and Sam’s, or mine and Nick’s.
I caught one more fleeting look of disappointment as Amelia scoped the parking area next to her cottage and saw only Mum’s car there. Phantom husbands don’t have cars, and it’s only in cheesy films that you’ll find them waiting inside, beneath a Welcome Home banner.
It was a strange day. We were like three actors in a play, saying the right things, doing the right things, but somehow failing to sound authentic.
‘It feels good to be home,’ Amelia said, her fingers grazing the walls, the door jambs and even the wooden banister rail in the hallway. But her eyes looked anxious as they flitted left and right as though something was wrong. I’d followed her into the cottage, after winning a brief dispute over who should carry the small holdall containing her belongings and the far-from-small carrier bag containing her medication.
Mum was excelling in her role of thankful parent. On hearing the front door open, she’d emerged from the kitchen carrying a cake she’d baked to celebrate Amelia’s homecoming. It made me think of the one I’d bought from the patisserie, the one I’d given to the charge nurse on Amelia’s ward that morning for the staff to share.
Amelia’s exhaustion was clear. We’d been warned it would take time for her to regain her strength, but it was only now, seeing her outside of a hospital environment, that I realised just how long a journey that was going to be. Even the short walk between the front door and the lounge had winded her and stolen some of the colour from her cheeks.
She managed only a couple of sips of the tea Mum had insisted on making before leaning back against the settee cushions mumbling something about ‘resting her eyes’. I glanced over at Mum as Amelia’s chest rose and fell at a rate that looked a little too fast for my liking. Mum quickly tidied away the worried expression she’d been wearing, but I’d still seen it.
With a stage whisper that probably wasn’t needed, for Amelia was already softly snoring, Mum said she was going to pop round to Tom’s to let him know that Amelia was back. I managed to hide my smile and resisted pointing out that he’d probably have worked that out himself seeing as he’d been outside his cottage, ostensibly weeding his weed-free plot, when I’d pulled up. I didn’t understand her coyness about their friendship because I certainly didn’t mind – in fact, I wished she’d found someone years ago. Dad wouldn’t have wanted her to be lonely.
After Mum left, I spent longer than I should have done watching my sister sleep, with a hawk-eyed scrutiny that could easily spill over into obsession. Was her breathing always this shallow? I never thought I’d miss the reassurance of hearing the familiar bleeps from a bank of monitors, but I did. I even spent ten minutes googling the price of defibrillators and wondering if Amelia would like one for an early birthday present, before good sense finally made me close that window on my laptop. We’d laugh about my foolishness one day, I promised myself, as I tiptoed out of the room to let her rest.
But it was hard to dismiss just how much damage her poor heart had sustained as I unpacked the assortment of pills she would need to take every day. I didn’t like seeing them lined up like that on the kitchen counter, so I rearranged the lower shelf of a cabinet so they could live there.
It was ostrich-like behaviour: out of sight, out of mind. And it was just the type of thing Amelia would have ridiculed me for… back in the day. And she’d have had a positive field day over my indecisiveness on how to reply to Nick’s message. I worked with words all day long, so you would have thought I’d be able to arrange a half dozen or so of them in the right order to reply to him. But I had no idea what to say. The problem was that I didn’t want him to apologise for something I really wanted us to do again. But I also didn’t want to say anything that would embarrass the hell out of both of us if he didn’t feel the same.
In the end, I sent an amusing shrugged shoulders GIF. I waited for a response, but none came.He’s probably just busy at work, I told myself. Even so, much as I’d done while Amelia was in hospital, I made sure my phone was never far from my side. I was actually checking if I still had signal when Amelia walked into the kitchen, startling me so much that I almost dropped the phone on the quarry-tiled floor.
I was pleased to see that the nap had restored some of her colour.
‘I think I’ll have a shower before lunch. I smell of hospital,’ she said.
‘Good idea,’ I replied. ‘Would you like a hand?’
She gave me a withering look that was so ‘old Amelia’, I couldn’t help but smile.
‘Even on the ward, they let me do that myself,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘Remind me, when are you going back to New York again?’ she asked over her shoulder as she turned towards the stairs.
I laughed, but still followed her like an anxious Border Collie as she began to slowly climb the treads.
‘This is going to get old very, very quickly,’ Amelia said when she was halfway up the flight, aware that I was keeping a vigil, two steps behind her. Her snipe would have carried more weight if it hadn’t been delivered between short, panting breaths.
‘Hey, I’m just trying to get upstairs, lady, but there’s a slow-moving object up ahead of me.’
It was good to hear her laugh.
Amelia went into her room, while I peeled off into the one I’d occupied long enough for it to now feel like mine. It was quiet for a long time, and I wondered if she’d experienced any flashbacks to the last time she’d been in her bedroom. Maybe she’d even be able to answer the puzzling question ofwhyshe’d gone wandering on the beach in the middle of the night.
I tidied away some laundry, checked my phone a couple more times, and eventually ventured back out into the hallway. I found Amelia there, staring into the airing cupboard where the boiler was housed. She was frowning.
‘There’s no hot water,’ she said, turning towards me. I was slow to realise that the expression in her eyes was confusion rather than irritation.
‘No, there wouldn’t be by now. You’ll need to override the current settings,’ I said, heading for the stairs.
‘Oh yes, of course,’ she said, still looking at me rather than the boiler. Something about her response felt vaguely off, but I couldn’t pin down what it was.
‘You have no idea how long it took before I eventually made friends with your bloody boiler,’ I said.