The Paradise Trees (15 page)

‘Hello?’

‘Alicia, sorry. It’s Doug. Am I interrupting anything?’

‘Not at all,’ she said warmly. ‘I was upstairs putting the house to rights. We’ve been out all day, Jen and I, hamburgers and shopping in Merton and then a picnic in the
woods.’

Doug laughed. ‘Sounds like a fun day. I bet Jenny enjoyed having you all to herself.’

‘She did, and so did I,’ said Alicia. ‘My father’s alright, I suppose?’

‘He’s fine. I looked in on him ten minutes ago. There’s been no more agitation, in fact he was outside for a bit this afternoon with Katy and some of the other residents, and
now they’re all in the dayroom watching TV. I wondered if you were coming in this evening?’

‘Yes, about sevenish,’ she said. ‘I’m expecting Margaret to phone tonight, and I want to be able to give her the latest about how he’s doing.’

‘Great, and how about having that coffee afterwards? I’ve got a super machine right here in my office, and we could have a chat about anything you want to know about St.
Joe’s.’

‘That would be lovely. I do have some questions, actually. Shall we just come down after visiting?’

‘I’ll be waiting,’ he said, and she thought how warm his voice sounded. Dark brown, like his eyes.

‘Bye, then,’ she said, breaking the connection. Well. That would make a very pleasant end to the day. It wasn’t quite going out for a coffee, but it would still be...
interesting. Even with Jen tagging along. And now she’d better go and sort out something to wear, because a pink t-shirt and picnic-in-the-woods jeans weren’t quite what she wanted to
wear for an almost-date with Doug.

A grey and white V-neck top and her new black jeans fitted the bill rather well, and Alicia walked into the ward aware that she was looking forward to seeing Doug again. Derek Thorpe was sitting
at the nurses’ station, and he waved her over.

‘Your Dad’s been fine all day,’ he said, closing the file in front of him.

‘Good,’ said Alicia. ‘It’s such a relief to have him here, I really feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Thank you all so much.’

‘Just doing our job,’ said Derek. ‘Doug asked if young Jenny here would like to help the nurses while you and he have a talk after visiting. Give you more scope for a proper
discussion.’ He winked at Jenny.

The little girl was one big beam as they walked down the corridor.

‘I think I’ll be a nurse when I grow up,’ she said, opening the door and looking over to where her grandfather was snoring in his bed. ‘What’s ‘scope’,
Mummy?’

‘Um... possibility,’ said Alicia, pulling chairs over to the bed.

And twenty minutes later she was heading back along the corridor, leaving Jenny helping with a tea trolley. The two of them had spent visiting time making plans for the rest of the week –
Indiana Jones, Merton swimming pool and raspberry jam-making had figured strongly in the conversation – and her father had slept soundly all the while. None of the other old people seemed to
have early-evening visitors, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, coming in when the patients were tired and the nurses were busy organising the ward for the night.

Derek had joined her for the last few minutes. ‘Don’t beat yourself up,’ he said in a low voice, looking at her face as she rose to go. ‘It’s hard losing your
parents no matter what the circumstances are, and in a way you’ve lost your father while he’s still alive.’

Alicia floundered. What should she tell him? Would Frank say anything about her father’s treatment of her? No, that would come under patient confidentiality. But then she wasn’t
Frank’s patient.

‘We had a very up and down relationship,’ she said at last, and he wrinkled his nose.

‘Tell me about it. I had one of those with both my parents. Like a lot of people. Bob’s fine here, Alicia. You’ve done the best thing.’

He was right, she thought, running downstairs. In fact he always was about things like that, he seemed to be one of those people who did the right thing automatically. If it hadn’t been
for the story about his ex-wife and the unsuitable relationships that followed, he would have seemed almost too good to be true. Alicia paused at the bottom of the stairs, aware that she was
nervous about her meeting with Doug. At the door to his office she wiped damp palms on her trousers in case he shook hands. He was quite a touchy-feely kind of person, she had noticed that before.
The kind who would give you a spontaneous hug if he thought you were looking down.

He didn’t exactly hug her, but he put a hand between her shoulder blades as he showed her to a sofa by the window. Alicia looked round, surprised. His room was really nice, quite unlike
the usual kind of hospital office space. He even had a little sitting area by the window, with a two-seater sofa and a couple of armchairs grouped round a pine coffee table. The pale green walls
and polished wooden floor contributed to the calm atmosphere, and with her back to the office furniture like this she could almost imagine she was visiting him at home.

He bent over her when she was seated, and the whiff of lemony aftershave made her breath catch. ‘Here we are. Home from home, as you see. Is Jenny alright upstairs?’

‘She’s having a ball, and you’re right, it’s easier to talk about my father without her around.’

Doug nodded. ‘And then you can tell her everything later on, in a way she’ll understand.’

Alicia relaxed into the depths of the sofa. This was comfy, she’d have to be careful, after all the broken nights she could fall asleep here quite easily. On the other hand, just looking
at Doug was more than enough to increase her heart rate, so she wasn’t very likely to nod off. She grinned at him, and he went over to the coffee machine in the corner.

‘Coffee,’ he said firmly. ‘My machine here does a very good cappuccino. Or would you prefer espresso?’

‘Cappuccino please,’ she said, watching as he organised cups and saucers. He seemed quite at ease in the little domestic situation, and Alicia suddenly remembered how Paul
hadn’t known one end of the coffee machine from the other.

Doug placed an aromatic cup before her. ‘Here we are. Help yourself to biscuits. Now, you said you had some questions?’

Alicia sipped her coffee and took a custard cream. ‘Nothing vital. Things like who organises haircuts, and the chiropodist. The village chiropodist is due to visit him next
week.’

Doug stirred his coffee. ‘Right. Our own chiropodist sees the new residents automatically when they come to us, so you can cancel your own appointment. And the hairdresser comes every
Wednesday.’

Alicia sighed with relief. By the sound of things she wouldn’t need to organise anything at all for her father any more. She really was free.

‘Great. I can see he’ll be well looked after here. Frank was right to want him in.’

He was smiling at her, and Alicia could feel her own smile widen, like two Cheshire cats...

‘We’ll do our very best to make sure Bob’s happy here,’ said Doug warmly. ‘You can depend on that. With us here to look after him, you’ll have more time free
just to love him.’

Alicia felt her smile crack. Well. That was something she was going to have to put straight soon. But this wasn’t the time. Doug must have noticed something, because he leaned forward, his
expression serious.

‘Have a shortbread finger,’ he said, taking one himself. ‘They’re shop ones, I’m afraid. I’m not a baker, though my wife did a lot when... while we were
together.’

He was giving her a piece of his past, a piece of himself. Alicia accepted another biscuit and looked at him sympathetically. ‘I heard you lost your wife. I’m so sorry. It was a few
years ago, wasn’t it?’

He stared down at his clasped hands. ‘Just over five years ago. We didn’t have a long time together, but it was a good time. It took me a while to realise that the love we had has
actually turned into a part of me, and I can move on with my own life and still keep that love. And my work helps too, of course.’

She looked at him. She could identify with all of that. ‘Do you know, that’s what I often feel about my marriage. Paul and I had some really good times before it all went
pear-shaped, and in a way they’re still with me. And that’s important for Jenny, too. But it must have been infinitely more dreadful for you, of course.’

He sat there, fiddling with a teaspoon, obviously struggling to find words that would make her understand.

‘It was terrible. And it takes a while to get over something like that, but - ’ He smiled at her. ‘ - time
does
heal all wounds, doesn’t it? Here we both are.
Who knows what life’ll bring us?’

She looked at him soberly. ‘You’re very good at putting things into words. Most blokes aren’t. You’re lucky.’

And she was lucky too, she thought suddenly. She had a beautiful daughter, an aunt who loved her, and now the prospect of something more than that, with Doug. But maybe they had said all that
needed to be said for now. She lifted her bag from the floor.

‘I should go and rescue the nurses, Jen’s probably talked them all to death by now. Thank you so much, Doug, for coffee and words of wisdom.’

He walked beside her to the door.

‘No problem. And now we’ve had coffee, how about dinner sometime? You haven’t told me the story of
your
life yet. When your aunt comes back we can make a date,
can’t we?’

Alicia took a deep breath. A date. Dinner. Doug. And maybe one day soon, a real, proper relationship, with giving and taking and being a family and... what? A move back to Lower Banford? No. She
was getting way ahead of herself here.

She smiled up at him. ‘I’ll look forward to that. Thanks, Doug.’

His face was inches from hers, and she could smell his aftershave again. Slowly, she reached out and touched his cheek, and felt his arms go round her as she pulled his face to hers. The kiss
was strangely gentle and yet earth-shattering. Surely she had never felt quite like this.

It was Doug who broke away first.

‘I’m... not very good at this,’ he said, and she heard the emotion in his voice.

‘Oh you are, you know,’ she said, holding on to the front of his jacket. ‘But let’s just take our time.’

He kissed her forehead and let her go. ‘Yes. We can take all the time we need, can’t we?’

Alicia walked upstairs and pushed the ward doors open. Jenny and Derek were at the far end of the corridor and by the looks of things, they were entertaining each other very nicely; slightly
surprising when you considered that her daughter had been more than apprehensive at the thought of strangers just a week or two ago. But Jen’s face was one big beam now and so was
Derek’s.

Alicia

Jenny banging around downstairs woke Alicia well before seven on Tuesday morning. She groaned, and then remembered the previous evening and smiled to herself. One kiss and she
felt like a different person. Warm. Alive. Not just a single mother with a problem parent. She felt ten years younger at least.

She lay there thinking about everything that had happened yesterday, with her father and Jenny, Conker and Frank, and Doug... and the way she had felt when they’d kissed. The friendship
was giving every promise of deepening. It was exciting to say the least. At last, at last she would be one of a pair again.

It was nine o’clock before she arrived down in the kitchen, hair still damp from the shower. She’d had a terrific night’s sleep, no worry, no nightmares, just sleep, blessed
sleep. Because of the kiss, or because her father was no longer waiting for her attention? A picture of him standing by his bed slid into her mind.

Go away, go away!

It was the child’s voice again, whispering through her head, throaty and tearful. Alicia winced. She was going to have to deal with whatever memories were coming to the surface. She should
treat the child in her head as she would treat Jenny, or as she would have wanted to be treated herself. She should love this child, because maybe no-one else had.

The thought both comforted and horrified her. She was a mother, of course she could help this little voice trying to tell her about something bad. But where had her own mother been when little
Alicia had been so afraid? Why hadn’t Mum come to her aid? Or had they both been victims?

Jenny came running in from the garden.

‘Mummy, there’s a yellow scooter at the back of the garden shed, can I try it? Was it yours?’

A yellow scooter. The wave of nausea this time was the strongest of all. Alicia clapped one hand over her mouth and grabbed the back of the nearest chair with the other, retching violently.

‘What is it? Are you sick?’ Jenny was looking up at her, apprehension on her small face. Alicia took a deep shaky breath as the nausea receded. ‘No, lovey, it’s alright.
I just... choked. Yes, of course you can try the scooter. It was my birthday present when I was five, I think.’

The yellow scooter... she could remember it all quite clearly now, she’d been right here in the kitchen, standing pretty much where she was standing now, holding a doll, a Barbie doll...
but surely she hadn’t been allowed a Barbie doll, Barbies had boobs and long legs and definitely belonged to the devil... yet there had been one, a present, yes, a birthday present from
Sonja, that was it, she had unwrapped it and she’d been so pleased, such a feeling of delight, a
Barbie
, she had one too now... oh thank you, Sonja... And then Mum had taken her and
Sonja out to the lane to play on the scooter, and when she came back inside the Barbie doll had gone and her father was waiting for her with a thick leather belt... and...

‘Mummy?’

Alicia made herself breathe calmly and reached out to ruffle the little girl’s hair.

‘Sorry, lovey. On you go and try out the scooter while I’m having breakfast and we’ll leave for Mr Taylor’s at ten on the dot,’ she said, and Jenny ran outside.

Alicia dropped down on the nearest chair and buried her head in both hands. Her father had beaten her with that belt. On and on, he had beaten her, up in his bedroom, the bad room. On her fifth
birthday, because she’d been happy to have a Barbie doll. And Mum hadn’t helped her at all. It was the most vivid memory yet.