My Husband's Wives (22 page)

‘We've done what we can for her. All she needs is rest,' said the young doctor who came to speak to them after what seemed like hours. ‘She's been very lucky. It'll take a while for her to come around. But she will be fine.'

*

‘Can we see her, just for a minute?' Annalise was the first to ask.

Grace would not have recognized Evie from only a day earlier. It seemed her hair had been wet and pulled from her face. The skin around her eyes and mouth stretched back as though the muscles underneath might snap at any moment. She was old and vulnerable and maybe for a moment, Grace could see why Paul could not fully walk away from her. Wires and tubes travelled ominously from her nose and hand. Her breath was a soft hum induced by the trauma of getting rid of whatever poison Evie had ingested.

*

Grace dreaded telling Delilah, but she knew she had to. Already, her daughter was talking about Evie as if they had some kind of connection. Grace wondered if Delilah was trying to measure her up. It was something her daughter did constantly; it started after Paul left them.

‘Can I go to Daryl's house, Mum?' she pleaded regularly, knowing that Grace had huge reservations. Not because of the saucer-sized holes in Daryl's ears, not because Daryl's hair was blue and his nails painted black. If his appearance was meant to throw her, it was a waste of time. Her reservations were more to do with Daryl's mum, or the fact that she was never home. His parents ran a trendy city-centre restaurant and Daryl came low in the pecking order when it came to parental supervision.

‘Why not invite him over; he could have dinner with us?'

‘Oh Mum, that is just too square,' and then she would trounce off, lips curled downwards sighing loudly as she went. ‘Sometimes you are beyond embarrassing, seriously excruciating?'

Doors seemed to slam all the time after Paul left them. Sometimes Grace put it down to puberty, to Delilah finding her own voice. Too often though, she felt as though her only daughter hated and resented her for letting her father slip away. ‘Dad would let me,' or ‘if Dad were here, then you'd let me,' were the mantras in Grace's ears. Before Paul died, Grace had to remind herself this was the same Delilah that she couldn't bear to be apart from.

There was no sign of life in the house when she returned from the hospital. Una must have taken her out somewhere. Grace poured herself a large glass of vodka, added a token drop of something fizzy and sat down to consider her daughter. It was no use – all she could do was wait for her to come home.

‘We're back,' Una called from the hallway and Grace took a deep breath. It had been a couple of hours, but it had given her time to frame her words better than she might have earlier. She would have to tell Delilah about Evie this evening. ‘We've had a lovely time.' Una was windswept. ‘We took the dogs for a long walk on the beach – I'm not sure who's more tired, us or them.' She put an arm about Delilah's shoulders and gave her a squeeze and Grace noticed her daughter didn't shrug her off. Another pang of loneliness swept through her. ‘Well, I'd better be off; maybe I'll see you tomorrow, Delilah, eh?' She looked meaningfully at Grace.

‘Thanks a million, Una.' Grace got up from the kitchen table, walked towards her neighbour. ‘Honestly, where would we be without you?' When Una pulled the front door behind her, Grace thought she could feel all cheerfulness leave the house.

‘I'm going to my room.' Delilah's words were toneless. Maybe Grace had been the same when her own father died. It seemed so long ago.

‘I need to talk to you; please stay here for a little while.' Grace set about switching on the kettle, rattling about the fridge. Una would have made sure that Delilah ate – this was just an exercise in avoidance.

‘What is it?'

‘It's…' Grace sat heavily. ‘It's Evie, I'm afraid. She's in hospital.'

‘Oh.' Delilah's lips remained in a circle for a moment; this wasn't what she was expecting. ‘What happened to her?' The question Grace had been dreading.

‘She…' Grace still didn't have an answer. ‘She is going to be okay, we hope, but she… you know the way she was married to your dad?'

‘Yes.' Delilah sighed. ‘Mum, whatever it is, I'm big enough to understand. You have to stop treating me as if I'm a five-year-old; it's a joke.'

‘Okay, you're right, of course, you're right.' Grace took a deep breath. ‘Evie is very lonely, especially since the accident. They say that some people can almost die of loneliness.' She hated the frightened expression that her daughter wore, hated that she was the one giving her this news to hurt her further. ‘Well, last night, maybe Evie thought that being with your dad was better than being here and she tried to take her own life.'

‘Oh, shit.' The words were reflexive; they meant nothing. Delilah's hands flew to her face. In that moment, Grace moved towards her daughter, reached a hand across the table and Delilah clasped it.

‘I'm sorry. It's a lot on top of everything else, but I couldn't keep it from you; it wouldn't be fair.'

‘Oh Mum.' Heavy tears began to fall out of Delilah's eyes; she rubbed them away with the back of her hands. ‘Is she going to be okay?'

‘I, well, Annalise and I called to her house earlier today. We found her, got her to hospital. She's there now, hardly conscious, and she's going to be really tired out for a while. It's going to take a bit of time for her to recover.' There were no guarantees, of course, but things were looking better.

‘Can we go and see her?'

‘I'm not sure, not for a little while anyway; they won't let…' she was going to say, ‘kids in to the ward,' but managed to stop herself. ‘In a few days, we'll see how she's feeling, and then you can visit her, okay?'

‘Thanks, Mum.' She dived across the table, threw herself across Grace, her whole body in a desperate embrace. ‘I love you Mum, you get that, don't you? Even when I'm shouting and… well you know, it's like,' she took a deep breath, ‘I'd just die if anything happened to you.' She tightened her grip, hugged her for a long time and Grace had to work hard not to burst into tears of something between relief and guilt. Eventually Delilah let her go, stepped back from her just a little, and lowered her voice. ‘We have to make sure she's all right, Mum. We have to make sure she never gets lonely again.'

Kasia returned Grace's call as soon as she finished her shift; she had always been able to sense bad news. Grace was worried, despite her words of reassurance. Kasia could tell; Evie had frightened her.

‘I'll come straight away. You can go home to Delilah then and I will stay with her until someone comes to take over.'

‘She may not want us here.' Grace was telling the truth. What did they know of Evie Considine or she of them?

‘She may not,' Kasia conceded. ‘But maybe, when there is no one else, she might be glad of us. It is the right thing to do; it is what Paul would want.'

Kasia liked Grace. There were no questions although Kasia knew that surely one question must burn between the women. Grace reached out with the hand of kindness, even when she herself had lost so much. Kasia would sit with Evie Considine for Grace, not even for Paul anymore.

To say that Evie Considine was not the woman she had been at the funeral was at the very least an understatement. Here, without make-up and her hair in disarray, she certainly looked a lot older for one thing. Paul never really spoke about Evie. She assumed that he fell in love with each of his wives at different times in his life, and loved each of them in different ways. Looking at Evie Considine propped up silently on a mound of pillows, she looked old, fragile, and spent. It was almost two days since she'd been admitted.

‘She's too old to be at this carry on,' one of the matrons said and Kasia thought she wasn't the only one who was too old to be here. ‘Rich women; more money than sense, if you ask me,' but the words were said under her breath so the only one to catch them was Kasia.

Grace's voice was low. ‘I've spoken to the doctors.' She leaned in close over Evie who was drifting in and out of sleep now, catching fragments of their conversation, but too tired to keep up for very long. ‘They won't let her go home because she lives alone; they're talking about some kind of psychiatric facility. They want to send her somewhere private, to get her sorted.'

‘I can hear you,' Evie whispered from beneath the various tubes and monitors that surrounded her. Her voice was cracked and ragged. ‘They can't keep me here, it's… not right.'

Grace glanced at Kasia; Evie might have no other choice.

‘Things will look different tomorrow, after a good night's rest,' Kasia said, keeping her voice light. Poor Evie. Kasia was glad to be here in some ways, she said so to Grace. She couldn't relax in the flat now, not knowing that Vasile could turn up at any moment.

By ten o'clock, Kasia was glad when Grace popped her head around the door. ‘You didn't need to come back; I would have been fine.' But it was nice to see her, even just to say hello.

‘This is too much for you, sitting in one place. I wouldn't have been able to when I was expecting Delilah,' Grace confided when she arrived back in the little room. Evie was sleeping; now and again, her eyes would flutter open, a desolate and lost look hurtling across her face. She would sigh occasionally and sink back into her restless sleep. ‘Jigsaw puzzles? Sudoku?'

‘It's not that bad really,' Kasia fibbed. With that, a familiar sound intruded the room. A text from Vasile.

Where are you? I am coming back to the flat.

Simple as that. Kasia's heart sank.

‘What's up?' Grace knew instinctively something was wrong.

‘It's Vasile…' Even saying his name filled Kasia with terror. ‘He's coming back to the flat.'

‘When?'

‘He doesn't say.' Unexpectedly, boredom seemed to be a luxury. ‘He could be there already.' Panic crawled across her skin as if it owned her all along. She took a deep breath, tried to steady herself. ‘I don't want him to have anything to do with the baby.'

‘You don't have to have him involved,' Grace said but there was a question in her voice.

‘You must understand, he's not a bad person, it's just…'

‘Look, we're all a product of what we've lived through. I'm not one to judge anyone.' She smiled. ‘So, you were going to run away? Take the baby and run?'

‘I don't really have a plan figured. He met this other girl before I had to do anything. This baby, we are family already. Vasile, he is… well, I could never be happy with him and he is not the kind of man I want anywhere near my child.' Grace nodded as if she understood.

‘Okay, so what do you want to do?'

‘I want to disappear, but I can't do that, can I?'

‘He doesn't know where you are, does he?'

‘No, he will think I am at work at this hour.' Then something occurred to Kasia. ‘I changed the locks on the apartment. Oh God, he will go mad.'

‘Okay. Okay.' Grace walked the length of the little room over and back. ‘Okay.' She smiled at Kasia. ‘I have an idea. I'm not sure what you're going to make of it, but here goes.'

‘I'm listening and – how do you say it – opened for all your suggestions?' Knowing that she had Grace Kennedy on her side, she felt she had help at her back.

‘Okay. You need to text him. Tell him the locks were changed; make something up if you have to. You lost your keys, or the landlord changed them, something to do with insurance – anything. Tonight, you have to work a night shift, but you'll get back in the morning and let him in then. You're not in the café; you're doing a bit of agency work, maybe outside the city somewhere?' She was nodding to herself, still thinking, still pacing. ‘That gives us time to clear out anything you want from the flat.'

‘What?' Kasia felt the word drop from her lips. There was something surreal about watching Grace Kennedy, such a tiny woman, taking care of everything for her.

‘Well, you said you wanted to disappear?'

‘Yes, but…' Kasia shook her head slightly.

‘Look, we'll leave a note for him. Say you have moved on. He's welcome to the place. I'll take out as much of your stuff as I can. I can store it for you at the studio.' She reached out her hand towards Evie, tucked the blanket snugly beneath her chin. It was tapered and soft and the white gold jewellery that adorned her fingers glinted playfully in the light. ‘I'm thinking you might save each other.'

Kasia feared it made little difference where she went or what she said to Vasile. Maybe Grace was right; with time, things could turn out better. At least she could be helping Evie – there was that – and it would give her time to think about her future and what was best for her and the baby. While she tapped in the text, Grace called Annalise Connolly.

‘There isn't a choice, Annalise. This is what Paul would have wanted you to do.' She listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. Kasia thought she wouldn't talk Annalise Connolly around easily, but before long there seemed to be agreement. ‘Great. You can bring the jeep; we can fold down the seats to bring lots of stuff in it?' She wasn't asking, not really. Grace winked at Kasia. ‘So. What do you need from the flat?' There wasn't much: a few bits of clothes, some money she kept in a jar in the bathroom and a photograph of herself and Maria, taken at a party in Bucharest before anyone had mentioned cancer. The photograph was the only thing that meant anything to her.

There was no return call from Vasile. She assumed from the silence that he'd swallowed her text, or maybe his heart was broken by his new love. She didn't really care, so long as Grace Kennedy and Annalise Connolly got in and out of the flat safely. Once they did that, she would contact Vasile and explain where the key was and that she had moved on.