Chapter Six
December 2015
Lydia toyed with the chocolates hanging on the Christmas tree in their small but well-styled lounge room. Theo had strictly forbidden any eating of the chocolates until Christmas Eve, which Lydia thought was completely ridiculous. ‘We’ll get plenty of treats on the day itself, we won’t want the chocolates then. How about one a night?’ she’d tried to reason with him. He’d told her no and kissed her, grabbing her hand as she’d reached out for another. ‘And I’ve counted them,’ he’d told her. ‘So there’s no getting away with it.’
The sound of the post landing on the doormat brought Lydia out of her daze and the chocolate fell from her fingers, dangling on the branch once again. She scooped the envelopes and flyers up, dumped junk mail in the recycling, put the bills to one side and warmed at the sight of a postcard from Perth, Australia, where her sister, Imogen, was enjoying a gap year following university before she ‘joined the real world’ as Theo had laughingly told her. Lydia hadn’t emailed Imogen and she’d made her parents promise not to either. She’d be home in a few short months and Lydia didn’t want her younger sister cutting her trip short for this. Not when none of them had any idea what would happen.
Lydia scanned the carefree postcard news with a smile, and then using the beer glass magnet, fastened it to the fridge. Imogen and Theo had always got on really well. ‘The brother I never had’, her sister had described him as once. With a determined nod of the head Lydia patted the postcard. Theo could read it when he came home.
Visiting hours didn’t start until eleven o’clock in the morning, and ten days on from the accident Lydia was finding it increasingly difficult to get through the hours preceding the start time. She had freelancing to be getting on with but it wasn’t enough of a distraction and she didn’t have the workload to occupy her mind for long enough. Part of being a freelancer was touting for business. She needed to get herself out there and make things happen, pitch ideas in a timely manner, get commissions. She didn’t have a never-ending money tree and it wasn’t like her to ignore the financial side of things. Usually, she was the sensible one who talked about savings, money for a rainy day. Since the accident, her self-employed work routine had fallen apart and she knew it couldn’t go on like this forever, but the day she thought of pitching an article on traumatic brain injury had been the day she’d screamed at the computer and she hadn’t put it on since.
She was all over the place and she had to get herself back on track.
With an hour to go before she donned the bobble hat, gloves and Siberian-esque coat from the downstairs closet, Lydia finally booted up the PC. She’d tackle her emails first. Good, one was a payment advice for her last two articles, both bought by a women’s magazine for good money, but her eyes pretty quickly zoomed in on the one from an Ian Galway. She recognised the name immediately. He was the man to whom she’d applied for the journalist job. It was a fairly new start-up and mainly an online magazine with a view to becoming print, but the offices were based in the city centre and they wanted a journalist to join the team. The job advert had been pretty vague but Theo had insisted she apply, and it would be a steady income, something she knew she needed long-term.
Lydia picked up the phone and called the contact number, partly because she had Theo’s voice in her head – the only place it was for now – and he was telling her to go for it, to take a chance on something new.
‘Hello, is that Ian Galway?’
‘It is.’
‘This is Lydia Walters. I got your email about the journalist position.’
‘Lydia, yes, hello!’ He sounded young and enthusiastic. She supposed any start-up these days had to be led by someone with energy and perkiness at all hours of the day.
After they’d chatted about Lydia’s qualifications and experience, she addressed the only concern she had before she’d agree to come in for an interview. ‘I was wondering if you could tell me more about the job. The advert didn’t go into too much detail.’ That was putting it mildly. It was a short, vague piece, not a good selling point in her opinion and could even discourage applicants.
‘That was deliberate,’ he answered, full of confidence. ‘The job is for a journalist to research and write up on travel destinations and will involve some travel in the UK, and potentially farther afield as we grow as a company.’
‘Right,’ said Lydia, but then added, ‘If you don’t mind me saying, putting that in the advert might have attracted more applicants.’ Had she gone too far, criticising anything about this company when she was trying to make a good impression? Theo had always said she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. They’d laughed about it and he’d called her a Venus flytrap, exotic in appearance, luring you in and then taking you by surprise.
His laughter rumbled down the phone. ‘I wanted someone who was qualified, someone willing to work hard, and the last time I advertised I got a never ending stream of applicants who had neither the know-how or the drive I was actually looking for. They were in it for the free travel and I didn’t hire any of them. I need more, Lydia. Do you think you’re up for the task?’
Part of her was saying hell, yeah! The other part was thinking of Theo, lying there in the ICU with tubes and wires for this, that and the other, and doctors milling around in their uniforms with loafers or sensible lace-ups that had silent soles that puffed air as they followed the rabbit warren of corridors around the hospital.
‘Lydia? Are you still there?’
‘Yes, sorry. Still here.’
‘Would you come in for an interview?’
There was Theo’s voice again, his hand ushering her out the door, his lips on hers as he breathed good luck.
‘Yes, of course. When would you like to see me?’
*
As it happened, the boss of the company – Ian as he insisted on being called rather than anything too formal – was at a conference for the next three days so it gave Lydia some breathing room with the interview not until nine o’clock on Friday morning. As she strolled through the city centre, past eager shoppers desperate for that last minute Christmas present, past the man selling theBig Issuewho always smiled at her when she bought a copy and was impossible to ignore this morning, and on towards the bus stop where she’d catch the bus to the hospital, Lydia knew she had to give the opportunity a chance come Friday. No matter what was happening with Theo, she needed a permanent source of steady income. They had a mortgage to pay and who knew how long Theo would be in hospital, how long before he’d return to work.
She gulped.If he ever returned to work.
Lydia had wondered whether to mention Theo to Ian, the man who could potentially be her new boss. But she decided against it. She’d address the issue when and if she got offered the job because until then it was nothing but a moot point.
Following the accident Theo had been taken to the nearest hospital, a new facility about half an hour out of the city. When Lydia arrived, the first thing she did was make a cup of black tea to warm her up and to calm her for what lay ahead. It was funny how quickly you became used to something – a new place, new people – even though it might not be what you thought would ever happen. She’d greeted three nurses already on her way in to the visitors’ room – Tania, the senior sister, Selina and Milly, both charge nurses – already on a first name basis with people who rotated and cared for Theo over time. Tania was the girl who rarely smiled and had the most serious manner of all three but told you how it was, no dressing up the issue. Selina was a shy girl and you needed to prise information out of her and Milly was at the other end of the spectrum, serious but wrapped with an air of optimism.
But it wasn’t any of the nurses she was familiar with who Lydia saw next. It was the critical-care consultant who’d updated them intermittently with Theo’s progress and he’d ushered Anita into the interview room opposite. Lydia left her half-full cup of tea on the side by the machine and went to join them. When she knocked and opened the door, Anita looked glad of the company and the consultant nodded in recognition.
Lydia patted Anita’s hand after she sat down. Lydia, at Theo’s insistence, had never taken Anita’s air of disapproval personally. She’d even offered Anita a place to stay while her son was in hospital, but Anita had given them both an out when she’d said it would be better for her to stay in the bedroom provided for relatives here near the ICU, or in a bed and breakfast two minutes’ walk away from the hospital.
