She looks doubtful. ‘I reckon it’ll be a few days.’
‘Yeah.’ I study my cast. My toenails, I realise, could have done with a clip a few days ago.
‘I’m going to get a hotel nearby.’
‘Don’t do that.’
She looks confused. ‘Why not?’
‘Just… you should go. Go home, get on with your life. I’ll be OK.’ It sounds so forlorn when I say it that I try to follow it with a wide smile.
Clearly my wide smile looks borderline alarming as she makes a face. ‘Are you feeling OK?’
‘Yes. Sorry. It’s just… I really, really appreciate that you want to do that. But I feel as if I’ve taken you away from your life for far too long already. That stupid journey, all those stops. Putting you in hospital. Then trying to… thinking you were travelling back with me. As if you’d want to do that! Now, this. You should be home by now.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘But I do! I feel bad enough having messed myself up like this. I don’t want to mess your life up too, Sarah.’
‘You’re being ridiculous.’
‘I’m not. Think about it. I interrupted your life back then… you know, with the pregnancy and everything…’
‘But Louis?—’
‘I know. It’s turned out amazingly and I wouldn’t have it any other way. All those things. But the fact of the matter is that your life was on a brilliant course and I wrecked it. Then I probably made things harder over the years by not… I just didn’t realise how much more I could have done before it was too late. And now I’ve stopped you getting back to your job. It’s too much.’
Sarah looks as if she’s about to cry, which makes me feel even more wretched. Even more sorry for her. Even more sorry for myself.
‘Hal, that’s ridiculous. You haven’t wrecked anything… well, except Betty. We all do things that affect other people. If anything, a lot of it is my fault. I didn’t ask for more help with Louis. I let Mum scare you off.’
‘Yeah, but what sort of man?—’
‘Hal, you were just a boy back then. And Mum was… is… Believe me, mightier men have fallen.’ She grins.
I laugh, in spite of myself. ‘Well, that’s probably true.’
‘Of course it is. And you know, everything that happened with the journey, my leg. I asked you to take me. I didn’t have to. I could have taken the train. Or hired a chauffeur I guess –although that never would have occurred to me before Mum… Plus, I didn’t tell you I was feeling sick. A lot of this rests on me too.’
Our eyes meet. We smile. There’s real affection there. She means it. But somehow it makes me feel even worse.
‘Even so,’ I say. ‘You’d be better off going. I can take it from here. I promise. And honestly, if it makes you feel any better, I’m going to ask them to discharge me as soon as humanly possible. I can get treatment back in England. As soon as I’m safe to travel, I’ll… well, do you know how your mum hired that Mercedes? Because that might be the best option.’
‘If they let any of us near their company again!’ she says jokily. ‘That chauffeur got more than he bargained for.’
‘Ha. Good point. Well, yes, fingers crossed.’
‘I’m not going, you know, Hal. I’m staying,’ she says. ‘You’d do the same, and don’t pretend you wouldn’t.’
I would, too. But this woman has wasted too many years on ridiculous, clumsy, unlucky me. ‘Not sure I would,’ I tell her, feeling sick at my own words. ‘You know. We’re not… together. We’re barely friends, really. I mean, I care about you, obviously. But we both have lives apart from each other.’
She’s welling up now and I hate myself even more. But at least it gives me the impetus to say what I’m going to have to say.
‘I don’t want you to stay, Sarah. I’m fine. Really. Please, do me a favour and just go home.’
She fixes her eyes on my face, her pupils darting rapidly, studying my expression, maybe looking for signs that I’m joking or lying or that I’m going to say something more, take back my words. But when our eyes meet, I hold her gaze.
So she nods. ‘OK,’ she says, her voice quiet, slightly wobbly. ‘OK. So… I’d better go.’