Where Love Lies (33 page)

‘Not particularly. As something that happened once, but it was over.’

‘So he might love you, but the way you feel about him is a symptom. It’s not real. After tomorrow, it’ll be gone, or it’ll just be a memory. You’ll be back to normal. A few days in hospital, and right as rain.’

Even to himself, it didn’t sound convincing.

She gazed at the moon. He saw the glitter of her eyes and thought there were tears in them. ‘You don’t understand, Quinn. For me, the feeling is very real. And it comes and goes, yes. But when it’s there, it’s the most powerful thing I’ve ever felt.’

‘It made you leave me.’

‘And that’s why it has to be real. Don’t you see? If it’s not real, if it’s
just a symptom, then I left you for no reason. Ewan fell in love with me again for no reason. I hurt you, I hurt your family, your mother hates me, Suz can’t bear the sight of me, because one of my arteries wasn’t working properly.’

‘But that’s good,’ he said wildly. ‘That’s wonderful. It means you’ll be cured, and everything will be fixed. You can come home and we can begin again.’

‘You don’t
really believe that, do you?’

Mare Tranquillitatis, Mare Serenitatis. Moon dust never stirred, it kept imprints for ever. Some hurts were too strong to be exposed to the air.

He spoke this one anyway. It had to be spoken aloud some time.

‘Even though it’s a disease,’ he said, ‘you still feel more for him than you ever have for me.’

The words hung between them.

‘I’ve known it,’ he said. ‘You’ve
never loved me as much as I’ve loved you. I’ve known it from the start.’

‘I’ve had some doubts. I tried to hide them from you.’

‘We’ve tried to hide a lot of things from each other.’ He swallowed. ‘Why did you marry me?’

‘I was very sad, and you made me feel better. I wanted to marry you. I thought we would be happy. You’re a good man, Quinn. You’re the best.’

He made a derisory noise, an
empty gesture at the moon.
Here I am. Look where it’s got me
.

‘You’re the last person in the world who I should hurt,’ she said. ‘And yet if I could feel so much for a man who wasn’t you, every day I stayed I was hurting you more.’

‘You’ve never opened up to me, Felicity. You’ve always been keeping part of yourself separate. We’ve been married for a year and I love you, but I feel as if you’re
a stranger. I asked, and then I stopped asking, because you never told me how you were feeling.’

‘I wanted to rest. I had so many things going through my head and when I was with you, I didn’t need to think about them. You made it safe for me. When I first met you, I wanted to scream all the time. I missed my mother so much. I wanted to run into the street and tear my clothes and never stop crying.
You made it so that I could be quiet. You made me smile again. I don’t think there was anyone else who could have done that for me. I’m so grateful to you.’

‘But that’s not enough.’

‘I thought it could be. I wanted it to be. I wanted it so much, Quinn.’

‘What can I do? What can we change so that we can be happy together?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure that I can trust myself.’

‘Other people rub along,’ he said. ‘They stay together even if it’s not perfect. They can move on from their problems. Why does it work for some people and not for us?’

‘Maybe because we want everything.’

I could have had everything, if you’d just love me back
.

The door opened and someone poked their head out. ‘Hello? All okay out there?’

It was the orderly he’d spoken to earlier. ‘I’ve found
her,’ Quinn called. ‘We’re having a breath of fresh air and then we’re coming back in, to the ward. Can you let them know?’

‘Hot night,’ agreed the orderly, and closed the door.

The sound echoed. Side by side, they looked up at the sky. She’d come up here to see it because it might be the last time.

Whatever happened tomorrow morning in the surgical theatre, this could be their last time seeing
it together.

‘Tell me what you’re afraid of,’ he said. ‘Are you afraid that you’ll die?’ The neuroradiologist had gone through the possibilities in great detail: stroke, heart attack, problems with the anaesthesia. The procedure they’d chosen was less risky than opening up Felicity’s skull, but like any surgery, it wasn’t safe.

‘I’m afraid of waking up and not being me any more,’ she said. ‘What
am I, except for what I feel and what I do? If all of that was caused by a blood balloon in my brain, who will I be when it’s gone?’

I’ll still love you no matter who you are
. But was that true? Had he still loved her when he saw her in another man’s arms? That fury, the jealousy, the gut-wrenching pain – was that love? He dipped his face between his knees, and then looked up at the moon again.

‘Tell me something about who you are,’ he said. ‘Tell me anything. We might never get a chance again.’

She gazed at his face. He felt it rather than saw it: how she had turned her entire attention to him.

‘In my first memory,’ she began, ‘I was sitting on a baby elephant.’

I TALK TO
Quinn, watching his face. I tell him about my memories as I remember them, even though they might be wrong, even though they might have been created by paintings or changed over the years from recollection or anecdotes or from things unseen happening in my brain. Because one thing, maybe the only thing, that this whole experience has taught me is that the reality you
carry within you is the only one you can act upon.

I may have fallen and broken my arm, or I may have been caught by my mother before I hit the ground. My mind wants me to know that I was safe and loved, never at risk from elephants. And that’s the greater truth, isn’t it?

I say all of this to him and more, there in the light of the full moon. His phone vibrates, but he ignores it. He listens
to me. Twice he laughs; once he makes a movement that might be to take my hand before he thinks better of it.

I tell him things that happened only between my mother and me and which I’ve never spoken about: the feeling of her arms around me, the eternal smell of linseed, the smile on her face when I told my first
Igor
story, the way she spoke about her one true love whom I never knew but who
helped to create me.

If something happens to me tomorrow, if I forget all of this, I won’t know it’s gone. Quinn will be the one who remembers it. Just like he’ll be the one who remembers all the secret moments between him and me. And they might not be the same way that I remember them – they may be poisoned for him with betrayal and disappointment – but Quinn’s reality is as important as mine.
I trust him entirely.

‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?’ he says. ‘When I asked you? When I took you to New York? You clammed up. But these are good memories, Felicity.’

‘When I think about how she lived, I can’t help but think about how she died. And it was my fault that she died the way she did.’

I hardly believe I’m saying this out loud. But we’re here, outside. And I might never
speak like this to Quinn again. I might never speak like this to anyone. On the night before I might be changed for ever, I want someone to know what I did.

I want Quinn to know. I want him to see me truly.

‘She died of cancer, didn’t she?’ Quinn says. ‘How could that be your fault?’

I said something similar to this to Ewan, when he was telling me about Lee’s death. I pretended not to understand
how guilt can come in many forms. Even if it’s not your fault – even if it’s fate or cancer or a mechanical failure or an aneurysm in your brain – if you had a part in it, you are responsible.

‘She was living in Cornwall,’ I tell him. ‘And I was in London, so I didn’t see her as much as I should have done. She’d been feeling poorly for ages, but she didn’t tell anyone. I went to visit her, and
she’d lost loads of weight, and I was frightened. She hadn’t gone to a doctor. She didn’t want to know, she said. She’d rather just carry on as she was.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ says Quinn, but his voice is kind.

‘I made her go to her GP, and then for tests. It was stage-four liver cancer. The doctor said it was going to kill her. He gave her a month without treatment, maybe six if she had chemo.
My mother just smiled and thanked him and asked me to drive her home.’

‘You didn’t, though, did you?’

‘She told me that she’d achieved everything she wanted to, more than most people. And that she’d experienced everything. And that she’d seen me grow up and I didn’t need her any more. So she was ready to go. She thought she’d work right up until she couldn’t any more, and then she’d have a big
party, maybe, with all of her friends and lovers and colleagues, and then she’d slip away.’

‘Okay,’ says Quinn. ‘I understand. You feel guilty because you let her have the death she wanted. But you could have told me that, Felicity. I wouldn’t have judged you for it.’

‘I didn’t let her have the death she wanted,’ I say. ‘I made her have the treatment. Chemotherapy made her sick. She couldn’t
leave her bed or use the toilet, and even then I didn’t let her die at home, I brought her to hospital so that she could have another week. Another day. All that time that she didn’t even want. I couldn’t let her go, and because of that she had more pain than I can imagine.’

I expect him to say something: blame me for doing this to my mother, for not telling him before. Or soothing words to tell
me that he would have done the same thing, if it were Molly who was sick.

He doesn’t say anything and it is so quiet on this rooftop, despite the traffic noise, filled with the silence between us again. But this silence gives me room to speak.

‘And on the day before she died I was beside her bed. I was holding her hand and she looked up at me and she could barely speak then – she was on so many
drugs for the pain that she didn’t recognize me some of the time. But she looked at me and I could tell she knew who I was. She whispered it. She said,
Why have you done this to me?
’

My cheeks are wet. I wipe them.

‘She said,
Why have you done this to me?
And I didn’t have an answer, Quinn. I had no answer to give her.’

He shifts on the bench and he puts his arm around my shoulder. He pulls
me to him and I curl into his warmth. It has seemed so ordinary until now, when I might lose it.

As always at night, he feels bigger than he looks during the day. More solid, more strong. He drops his head onto mine and speaks into my hair.

‘Everything you’ve done,’ he murmurs, ‘you’ve done out of love.’

‘I don’t think that makes it any better.’

He holds me, this man who, for now, is my husband.
I listen to his breathing and his heartbeat. I feel his arms around me and I inhale his scent, of cotton and coffee, a faint trace of damp from the cottage. I haven’t known until tonight how much I missed him. How adrift I’ve been without him. How much he has mattered to me all along.

I take it all and try to store it away inside me, somewhere it won’t be touched tomorrow, when a platinum wire
will change my brain.

I don’t know what I’ll lose, but I hope none of this will fade. I hope I remember the seas of the moon.

HE WASN’T CERTAIN
what time it was when he woke up, but Felicity had fallen asleep too. Her head rested on his shoulder. His muscles were stiff from sleeping on the bench, but not very stiff, and the moon hadn’t moved much, so he didn’t think he had been out for long. Carefully, trying not to disturb her, he shifted her, put his arms around her, and lifted her up.

He hadn’t carried her
over the doorstep of their home as a new bride. It had been raining too hard; they’d been in too much of a hurry to get inside. He carried her now into the hospital, down the flight of stairs and into the ward. A nurse approached him but he smiled at her and whispered that everything was fine. She followed him to the bed and folded the sheets back so he could tuck Felicity in.

‘You should go
home,’ she told him. ‘We’ll look after her now.’

The bedside cabinet was still open. ‘She left her handbag up in the garden,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back in a tick.’

Her bag was open on the ground beside the bench. Her phone was flashing inside it. Without thinking, without considering that this was wrong even in this situation, he took the phone out and read the one message on it, sent less than
an hour ago from Ewan.

I do love you. Meet me 12 September, in Greenwich. Our spot, at noon. I will be there. E xxx

He sat down, feeling sick. The text had come when they’d been on this bench together. When Felicity had been telling him her memories, when he’d held her. When he’d begun to think that maybe they would get through this, after all.

She’d talked with him, at last. But nothing had
changed.

The phone was slender in his hands. A few keystrokes would let him know how many times she’d spoken with Ewan. It would allow him to listen to the messages he’d left, read the texts they’d exchanged. He would see enough of their relationship to be able to imagine the rest.

How long had his mother picked up the extra phone extension upstairs as soon as his father answered it downstairs?
For how many months or years, even after it was supposed to be over, had she scrutinized every piece of post that came for Derek, and worried when he was late home from the office?

He’d never be able to ask her, but he thought he knew. Any time was too much. Even once was too much.

Quinn put Felicity’s phone back in her handbag and brought it back downstairs. He replaced it in her bedside cabinet.
She was asleep, turned away from him, her body a question mark in the bed.

‘Going home for some rest?’ the nurse who’d helped him asked as he passed her. He nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m finished.’

IN THE MORNING
, Quinn isn’t there when I wake up. It’s two nurses and the anaesthetist, checking my blood pressure. ‘You’re in theatre a bit earlier than we’d thought,’ says one of the nurses. ‘Just as well since you can’t have any breakfast!’