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All this because of him. I’ve been yanked away from my perfect week, because of him. My wife is hurt, because of him. Even now, after all these years, he’s still managing to ruin not only my life, but the lives of those I care about.
“He kept coming round,” Becca goes on.
“Then you keep telling him to do one.”
“Oh, Will…” She sounds almost disappointed with me, with my attitude towards him.
How? After the way he treated me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, come on, Will. Is that what you would’ve done? Told him to get lost? We both know you wouldn’t.”
My breath leaves my body as if she’s just slapped me across the face. “Becca…” I thought she understood. I turn away, can’t bear to look at her.
“I’m sorry,” she says immediately. “Will, please. I’m sorry.”
“It’s complicated between me and him,” I say. “You know that.”
“I do. It’s just…it was twenty-odd years ago. This grudge you’re holding, maybe it’s time to…” She stops talking when I spin around and glower at her, eagerly awaiting the end of that sentence.
“To?” Please don’t say forgive him. Not you, Becs.
“Move on, I suppose,” she says quietly, her expression sheepish. “He’s been nothing but pleasant when asking about the records. Honestly, I think he just wants to settle down with this new lady friend of his. I’m not saying you have to start inviting him round to Sunday dinner, but—”
“Stop.” I raise my hand. “I can’t talk about this anymore. Not here.” I mean that, until a thought occurs to me. “Out of interest, did you find them? The records.”
Her sudden pout gives me an answer before she speaks. “No. They’re not there.”
I don’t bother saying I told you so, though I’m sure my expression conveys a similar message. They’re not there because, unlike my wife, I haven’t forgotten the years of torment my father put me through. I’ll never be able to forget the pain of broken skin, or how worthless he made me feel. I’ll never be able to forgive him for making me so ashamed of who I was that I ended up living a lie for over twenty years, a lie that’s about to ruin three of the most precious people I know.
I’m facing the wall when the curtain rips open. My daughter enters, holding a white paper bag. “Got your prescription,” she tells her mum, before scowling at both of us. “Could you two be anymore embarrassing? I could hear you bickering all the way past the patient toilets.”
“Sorry,” I mutter. “We were just—”
“You don’t need to explain what it was it was about, Dad. The whole of A&E knows what it was about.”
Becca and I glance at each other like two naughty kids outside the headteacher’s office.
“A nurse is coming by with some temporary crutches and then we can leave,” Lucy continues. “A community nurse will visit the house tomorrow with some better ones, apparently.”
Nodding, I start gathering Becca’s things, handing her bag and coat to Lucy. “Why don’t you take these to the van and call a taxi for you and your mum. I’ll follow in the van.”
“I’ll be fine in the van,” Becca insists.
“But your back…”
“Is fine. Hurts like hell, but it will hurt in a taxi, too.”
“Is it safe for me to leave?” Lucy says. “You two aren’t going to start a world war in here?”
I pluck out the keys from my back pocket, toss them at my snark-arse daughter. “Get outta here. Give your mum some privacy while I help her get dressed.”
“Pfft. I came out of her privacy.”
Sometimes, my kids make it really difficult to stay angry. Chuckling, I shoo Lucy away and return to Becca. “I’m glad Lucy was with you.”
“God, me too,” Becca says. “The pain absolutely blindsided me, and I was nowhere near my phone. I think I’d have been stuck there until someone came home. Pure luck it was, too. Her boss had called just an hour before and asked if she could swap her shift.”
We’re interrupted by the nurse with the crutches. I step aside, give him access to Becca. I would’ve thought using crutches was pretty straightforward but, turns out, they come with a presentation and instructions. I take a seat in the visitor’s chair after realising his speech could take some time and, despite my wife lying injured and in pain just a couple of feet away, my thoughts fall to Laurence.
I miss him.
At home, it takes a good fifteen minutes to get Becca from the van and into the house. She’s too exhausted to try the stairs, so I settle her down on the couch and make her a cup of tea. We’re both in better moods now, our argument forgotten. Or, at least, not to be spoken about anymore. It’s easier that way, I discovered early on in our relationship.
