State of Grace (Resurrection) (3 page)

‘Grace? You ok
?’ Ianto asked.

I nodded.

‘Something happen last night?’

I nodded again, not trusting my voice. It was unusual for my brother to be so perceptive.

‘Want to talk about it?’ he suggested.

At that moment mum
walked back into the kitchen, and I was grateful for the interruption. I smiled at him and mouthed ‘later’. He understood. We had always been a team, backing each other up in our made-up stories that we believed would get us out of trouble. Like when we had carried a chicken up to the top of the hay barn and pushed it out of the big old door near the roof in the mistaken belief it would fly away to chicken freedom. It hadn’t flown, although it had managed a sort of feathery fall that was halfway between a plummet and a glide. Remarkably the hen had been unharmed, unlike my behind which had been soundly paddled. Ianto had gotten away with a scolding because he was so much younger than me and I was supposed to look out for him, and not lead him into temptation. We had stuck to our story of seeing the chicken fly up into the barn and going in after it to rescue it, though. And if I remembered rightly, it had been Ianto’s idea from the beginning. Come to think of it, I often got into trouble for supporting my mischievous brother in his dangerous antics…

‘Better get a move on,’ he said standing up. He patted me on the
shoulder as he passed my chair, following our father out of the kitchen.

‘Fancy coming shopping?’ Mum’
s tone was unnaturally cheerful when she wandered back in and busied herself with clearing the table.

‘No thanks. I’m rather tired. I think I’ll get some sleep.’

‘No wonder you’re up all hours of the night if you insist on sleeping during the day,’ she chided, but I could tell her heart wasn’t in the scolding.

After she left I pottered round the house, trying to fill the time. The headache had gone and I was feeling restless, too het up with the events during the night to seriously contemplate sleep. The dishes had been washed but the floor needed mopping, and there was always mud tracked through somewhere in the house. You couldn’t live on a farm without spreading almost as much mud around inside as there was out. The cats shed hairs too, even though they weren’t supposed to be indoors.

I love
d this house. It was constructed around two hundred years ago, but according to local folk lore there had been a building of some kind on this site for much longer than that. Built of local sandstone with a grey slate roof, it was a substantial property, as an estate agent would say. It was also quite large. Besides the kitchen and boot room, it had an impressive wood-panelled L shaped hall, a downstairs shower room (handy when someone came in absolutely filthy dirty: it kept the smell of cows and sheep out of the rest of the house, too), a dining room that was hardly ever used, a den, a living room with a large open fireplace, and a recently added conservatory with views out across the Usk valley. Five bedrooms, an upstairs bathroom that Ianto now had to share with me, much to his annoyance, and an en-suite in my parents’ room completed the tour.

I cleaned through each room in turn,
relishing the peace now that everyone was out. No small talk to be made, just the satisfaction of a job well done.

Inevitably my thoughts turned to last night’s strange episode. I didn’t know what else to call it. I remembered everything with exceptional clarity. It wasn’t like a dream where sequences are disjointed, and one thing merges into another, or you can’t remember bits, or really odd things happen, like a huge parsnip follows you down the road. I smiled
ruefully, acknowledging that four men with swords and my being naked was actually a little strange.

I thought about the man who had killed his attac
kers. There was no denying he had been movie-star, drop-dead gorgeous, in a chilling, dangerous sort of way. He had been very pale and reeked of menace, and I had no doubt at all he would have killed me if he had got the chance. With that in mind, the attraction I had felt for him was madness; the whole episode had stunk of madness. I truly didn’t want to think too closely about what it could mean.

Perhaps I had fallen asleep for a moment and I had dreamt the whole thing. That
was the most likely explanation. I wanted it to have been a dream. The other explanation, that the tumour was to blame for the ‘episode’, ‘hallucination’, or whatever it could be called, didn’t bear thinking about.  I toyed with the idea of calling Margaret and asking to speak to Mr Cunningham (he was my consultant in London) but decided against it. If I had fallen asleep, and it was only a dream, then I would feel really foolish. If it was anything else… I sighed. There was nothing Mr Cunningham, or anyone, could do about it. If it was a symptom that my tumour (I hate calling it ‘mine’: as far as I was concerned it was nothing to do with me, an unwanted invader in my brain. Calling it ‘mine’ made it seem as if I owned it, as if I had a choice about it) was growing and pressing on something that had no business being pressed, I would simply have to accept it.

I finished my chores downstairs and lugged the Dyson to the first floor
. I wouldn’t clean my parents’ room, that was my mother’s domain, and I certainly wouldn’t step foot into Ianto’s room (you never knew what might be lurking in there) so I restricted my efforts to vacuuming the landing and my bedroom, and finished up my cleaning session by tackling the bathroom.

After twenty minutes of blea
ching and scrubbing I straightened up to admire my work. My back was aching from bending over the tub, I smelt of bleach and my hands were red, but I felt pretty good. Actually, that was part of the problem: now the chemotherapy drugs had left my system I felt quite healthy. There was no outward indication I was ill, and apart from the headaches I felt well.

If I hadn’
t been a pilot, required to have six-monthly check-ups, then I probably still wouldn’t have known I had a serious problem. I hadn’t particularly noticed the irregularities with my eyesight, they had been too insidious, and I put the headaches down to stress and the odd hours us sky-jockeys were forced to work. After all, I had been having headaches ever since my GCSEs: they had become a little more frequent lately, and a little more severe, is all. I had only been hoping for something slightly stronger than paracetamol when I mentioned them to the doctor. Sometimes I wished she hadn’t referred me to the hospital at all. Ignorance is bliss, and all that.

In three short days I had been sent for an MRI scan and had undergone
a series of tests. Numerous doctors had prodded and poked, each one passing me further up the food chain, until eventually I landed on Mr Cunningham’s plate, the senior consultant. Everyone had remained cautiously optimistic, in spite of the tumour being inoperable because of its position on my brain stem. If the chemotherapy had worked then that hope would have been justified. But the tumour had stubbornly refused to shrink. After three sessions of drug therapy Mr Cunningham had finally stated what had been obvious to me for a while: the tumour would kill me.

And if I hadn’t
actually fallen asleep last night on the top of Fan Y Big, then perhaps the nasty lump of not-me in my brain was beginning to make its presence felt.

Chapter 2

I love fireworks, so I certainly wasn’t going to miss the Bonfire night display at Brecon RFC.

Stuffing one glove in each of my jacket pockets, I debated on whether
or not to wear a hat. Nah, I decided, it wasn’t that cold. Not nearly as cold as Novembers had been when I was a child. I remembered being unable to feel my feet after about twenty minutes of standing on the pitch  and being so cold my teeth chattered all the way back to the car. Today was positively mild in comparison. Fireworks didn’t seem the same when you weren’t freezing your wotsits off but I was determined to enjoy myself in spite of the less-than-seasonal temperature.

Ianto drove me to
the town centre. I was meeting Sarah and Ben there, and maybe Josie, too, if they had persuaded her May wasn’t too young for fireworks. It was so inconvenient not being able to drive, but I simply couldn’t trust my vision not to play tricks on me. I would never forgive myself if I hurt anyone. Plus there was also the issue of driving probably not being legal in my situation.

I saw two familiar heads in the crowd
heading to the rugby ground and waved frantically. Ben swung me around when he reached me and planted a sloppy wet kiss on my cheek. To add insult to injury he ruffled my short curling hair.

‘Suits you, Gracie,’ he said, admiringly. ‘You’ve got that pixie look going on.’

‘Since when do you know anything about fashion or hairstyles?’ Sarah teased, hugging me. She pulled away for a long look. ‘You’ve changed,’ she declared.

I touched my hair self-consciously.

‘No, not just your hair, although Ben’s right for once: it does suit you.’

My hair had always been long, waving down between my shoulder blades. The only time I had cried during my treatment
was when it had fallen out by the handful half way through my first dose of chemo. It had grown back to a length of about five inches and now clustered about my head in soft curls.

‘It does make you look like a little
pixie,’ Sarah said. ‘The elfin look.’

‘Bet you got the pointy ears to go with it.’ Ben couldn’t r
esist that one. Sarah punched him in the arm. ‘Ow!’ he cried, clutching his bicep.

She rolled her eyes. ‘He’s such a wimp.’ She scrutinised me again. ‘No, there’s something else. Your face is thinner!’ she exclaimed. ‘Since when did you get those cheek bones? I am
so
jealous. You look positively gorgeous. Doesn’t she, Ben?’ Sarah demanded.

‘Not as gorgeous as you, darlin’,’ he said, gallantly.

Sarah shook her head at him in mock despair. They had been together since they were fourteen. Sarah had been my best friend since way before then, but I hadn’t minded sharing her. Well, only a bit, I amended. They were made for each other. Sarah was what my mother would call an ‘old soul’. She had always been older than her years, whereas Ben was stuck at about age twelve: maybe twelve and a half on a good day.

Sarah was calm and level headed whereas
Ben had the enthusiasm, impulsiveness and self-control of an Irish Setter puppy. They complemented each other. They even looked similar, both being short and fairish. Sarah was what might be called plump in today’s thin-obsessed society, the old-fashioned curvy shape you would have seen on a 1940s film star. It suited her personality and she loved to dress in tailored suits that showed off her figure. She was most definitely a grown up and could hold conversations that included the phrases ‘tracker mortgage’ and ‘returns on your capital investment’. Ben had no idea what she was talking about and was quite happy to let her take charge. He was a little taller than her, probably five foot eight, and stocky, but quick with it, as his frequent placing as a fly half testified. His short, fair hair was tousled and stuck up in clumps over his head. Sarah was groomed to perfection: her hair cut into a sharp blunt bob, her clothes reflecting her skill in dressing herself to show off her assets, barely-there make-up highlighting her best features. In contrast I looked like a wannabe teenager in combats, fleece and converse trainers. And I didn’t have much in the way of curves to flaunt. I had never been good at dressing up, more at home in tomboy clothes, although I did have a couple of nice cocktail type dresses that I resorted to when the need arose. My weakness in the style department was handbags: couldn’t get enough of ‘em and I had quite a collection.

‘So,’ Sarah said, linking her arm through mine. Ben took my other arm as we joined the crowd heading toward
s the rugby field. ‘Are you home for good?’

‘Um,’ I hesitated, h
aving refrained from sharing my state of health with anyone except my immediate family, and of course the airline. ‘Not sure.’

‘What about your job? You’
re still working out of Heathrow, aren’t you? It’s a long way to commute,’ she added.

‘Not got one, no and yes,’ I replied.

‘Not got one! Why not? What happened?

‘Bad eyes,’ I said, briefly.

‘Oh, Gracie,’ Sarah’s voice was full of sympathy. She, of all people, knows how passionate I am about flying. Ever since I was tiny and my parents took Ianto and me to Menorca for a holiday when I was seven, I wanted to fly. Back then I wanted to be like the glamorous airhostesses. To me, their expert make-up, groomed hair and perfectly manicured nails epitomised sophistication, with the added hint of the exotic as they got to travel to faraway places. The next year (Lanzarote this time), when the world not quite so scared of itself as it is now, I was allowed to visit the cockpit, and it was then that everything in my universe clicked into place. Wanting to be in the air wasn’t enough – I wanted to control it. I wanted to fly!

It must have cost mum and dad a fortune,
and to this day I don’t know where they found the money, but they gave me the greatest gift they possibly could: flying lessons. Unlike other teenage girls who asked for clothes, or make-up, or the latest mobile phone for birthdays and Christmases, I only wanted money: money I could exchange for an hour or two in the sky.

I did everything I
could to earn it. I helped around the farm much more than Ianto ever did, and I had a paper round, walking the two miles into the outskirts Brecon five mornings a week to deliver papers before school. On Saturdays I was fortunate to find work in the small indoor market on a stall selling cooked meats, pasties, pies and unusual cheeses.

And on Sundays,
well, on Sundays I flew. My favourite aircraft had been a Piper Cherokee Warrior, a single 300 hp engine aircraft with retractable landing gear, but I happily flew anything available or I was allowed to fly. By seventeen I had over fifty flying hours under my belt. By the time I had completed my A Levels I was being considered for a training programme with one of the big commercial airlines: a rare thing indeed. These days nearly every pilot new to the commercials is ex-RAF. Training programmes have fizzled out, a response to the economic climate. There are still a few of us self-taught pilots around though, the ones who put themselves through flying school and paid for their own PPL (Private Pilot Licence): at a huge financial cost, I might add.

Colin Bradford was my mentor. I met him early on in my flying career. He piloted Boeing 737s for Quantas for
a living, but he liked to fly light aircraft in his spare time. He compared it to driving a fully laden lorry during the week and a Fiat 500 on the weekends. I would have to agree with him.

Sarah was still looking at me with pity. Even Ben had cottoned on the change in atmosphere.

‘Hey,’ I said, lightly. ‘It’s rare for somebody to stay in the same career all their life. People change direction all the time.’

‘Which direction were you thinking of heading in?’ she asked, unconvinced.

‘Oh, I don’t know… do a degree maybe. Psychology sounds good. Or find a rich guy and marry him: that’s always an option.’

When I found out about the tumour I had told as few people as possible. Work, obviously, because I couldn’t fly and because the airline’s medical service would have been informed anyway, my parents (whom I swore to secrecy) and my brother
, but only because he still lived with our parents, and would have noticed… eventually. But that was all. Luckily for me I had my own place, a small flat in Egham, west of Heathrow but well within commuting distance, so I had no flatmate to witness my misery.

I didn’
t want anyone’s pity. I wanted to live as normal a life as possible. Perhaps in the back of my mind, deep down where there were still monsters in the closet, and sticking a foot out of bed in the middle of the night would inevitably lead to your ankle being grabbed by the something that lived under the bed, I thought if I didn’t acknowledge it then it wouldn’t be real. It must have been so hard for mum and dad to watch me go through the physical and emotional distress that accompanied cancer, even if it had been at a distance. I refused to leave London, to give up my flat and the life that I had enjoyed so much, until I absolutely had to.

Looking back, I realised how unrealistic
that decision had been; my pilot licence had been suspended, even before the diagnosis, and as soon as I had started treatment my life changed dramatically. I was too tired and ill to want to live the high life, and all ties with the airport and my friends were almost severed overnight as all my energy was taken up with trying to get through each day. Occasionally I been unable to resist the temptation to visit Heathrow and had watched the aircraft and their personnel going about their daily routines, and had been swamped by feelings of loss and sadness.

Oh, and of course,
there was Joe. He knew. Joe, my ex-boyfriend. Our on-again-off-again relationship (it’s hard to keep things going when one of the couple works strange hours and can be out of the country for days at a time) hadn’t long settled down to something more permanent when I was grounded. It appeared my being at home all the time was not conducive to our relationship, either.  To be fair to him, he stayed with me through the diagnosis and the first dose of drug therapy. Things got a little too much for him after that. I didn’t blame him, but I couldn’t quite forgive him, either.

‘
What about Joe?’ Sarah asked and for one minute I thought she could read my mind, then quickly realised the last thing I had said was I could marry a rich man. Of course she would think of Joe.
He
wasn’t rich per se, but his parents were. They had owned a chain of high street stores, and when they had sold out to a large corporation they had made a very healthy profit indeed. Joe, courtesy of his parents, didn’t need to work, but to his credit, wanted to make his own way in the world and was heading for a directorship in the not-too-distant future working for a rival chain.

I shrugged. ‘Didn’t work out.’

‘Sorry, Grace. You ok with that?’ Sarah worked in personnel and specialised in counselling. If anyone could get to ask a question like that, it was her.

‘I’m not sure,’ I hedged, then decided to be
as honest as I could be. ‘I’m not sure if it is him I miss, or the idea of him, if you get my meaning.’

She looked at me quizzically, so I tried to explain. ‘I like the idea of having a boyfriend, of having someone to go out to dinner with, to snuggle up with on a winter’s night. Someone to be able to call when I’m having a crappy day. Someone on my side.’ I paused. ‘Oh, yeah, and the sex.’

‘Sex? Who mentioned sex?’ Ben’s ears virtually pricked up. Yep – Irish Setter alright. Sarah elbowed him in the ribs.

‘Ow.’

‘Go on,’ Sarah said. I could see her mentally leaning forward across a desk with her fingers steepled under her chin.

‘See, I miss all that in an abstract
kind of way. Just not sure I actually miss
him
or miss having a boyfriend.’