‘There’s nothing for you to do there, love,’ Daphne tells her. ‘Stay here. I’ll call you once we know more.’
At the hospital Hector is taken straight into the emergency ward and there are nurses and doctors and tests.
In the late afternoon, one of the nurses says to Daphne, ‘You need to eat. We can’t have you keeling over too.’
So Daphne goes in search of food. She finds the cafeteria and a sandwich, then rings Janet, who says she’s told Noel what’s happening.
All the while Daphne’s trying to sort through the emotions that are competing with each other inside her: fear, anguish,love, anger (non-specific), anger (specific, directed at Hector), confusion, sadness.
Once Hector’s moved to the neurology ward she sits by his bed, clutching her handbag – Janet had thought to give it to her so she’d have money for phone calls and food – and watching him breathe.
Around seven at night his eyes flutter open and she sits closer.
‘Da-Da-Daph,’ he says and turns his head toward her.
The fear is still in his eyes and now she feels something that is strong and defined and she has a word for it: heartbreak.
Is this how his life ends – here, in this ward, surrounded by strangers, with a cannula in his arm and a drip beside him, a chart on the end of the bed and the humming noise of machines she can’t identify? That seems cruel. So cruel. Despite what she now knows about him, he took care of her. Of their children. Of her parents. That has to count for something.
‘I’m here,’ she says, and she takes his hand in both of hers.
He squeezes her hand, and it’s such an encouraging sign that she feels something like hope. Not that he’ll come back to her – not the way he was before he started to lose his mind, not the way he was before the affair with Adelaide, because that man is long gone – but that he’ll stay a while longer. For she finds, despite what her rational mind may tell her, that she doesn’t want him gone.
They remain like that until a different nurse appears and tells Daphne that visiting hours are almost over.
Daphne bends over her husband and kisses his temple.
‘I’ll see you soon, love,’ she says, then she goes back downstairs to the hospital foyer, to the pay phone, and calls a taxi to take her home.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The gulf between her and Daphne has never seemed as wide to Adelaide as it does now, when she needs her the most. She is aware that this is selfish. She is also aware that her behaviour throughout their friendship has been selfish. Taking Daphne’s husband as a lover was definitely selfish. So was running away to Europe to forge a career and relying on Daphne to keep up the connection.
When Adelaide thinks of herself in this light, she can’t help but wonder why Daphne bothered. She’s not a reliable friend, at all. Which makes the loss of friendship even more devastating because she so clearly took Daphne for granted. Took her care and attention as if she was owed them. Took Hector as if she was owed him too.
She needs Daphne now because she has no idea how to be a mother, and Desmond seems to want some sort of motherly behaviour from her. He has been calling her, filling her in on his week. Asking her what she’s been up to – which isn’t much.
The other day she walked past the frock shop and looked in. She misses being there. She had come to enjoy it; not just being with Daphne but with the customers too. It had been another sort of performance, working there.
There was a teenage girl behind the counter, talking to Christina. But no Daphne. Adelaide was tempted to go in and say hello, just so Christina could tell Daphne that she’d been there. That she’d tried.
Except she hasn’t tried. She’s wanted. She’s lamented. But she hasn’t tried.
So today she is trying. Today she is going to persevere. Because Desmond wants to meet Hector, and the motherly thing to do is to try to get her son what he wants.
After swearing she would never come back to the house on Beaconsfield Road, she opens the squeaky front gate and takes the uneven path to the door, watching her step because at her age she has to check for potential snares.
From the corner of her eye she sees movement near the front window, then the front door opens before she’s reached it.
Janet is standing there, clearly furious. But this is Desmond’s half-sister. That’s how Adelaide needs to think of Janet now.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Janet rasps.
‘I’m here to see Daphne,’ Adelaide says as calmly as possible.
‘I am very sure that Mum doesnotwant to see you.’
Janet is standing in the doorway but the door itself is barely open. Adelaide has to admire Janet’s ferocity in protecting her mother, even if Adelaide herself is the reason for it.