At once Gina knew, but she played along. Excitement struggled with the distant leaden feeling of being left out. She forced it to one side.
‘What? You want another shed? Give me time to get over the last one, please.’
‘No, stupid. You’re going to be an unofficial auntie again!’
Gina clasped her cheeks in pretend shock. ‘You’re having a baby?’
‘Yes!’ Naomi’s face flushed. She looked about fourteen – excited and nervous and radiant. ‘It wasn’t planned exactly but . . . yes! He or she’s due in January so this Christmas is going to be soooo boring.
‘You’re okay, aren’t you?’ she added, hastily. ‘I know it’s not great timing with Stuart and everything.’
‘Of course I’m okay!’ said Gina. ‘I’m thrilled. Honestly. C’mere, give me a hug. I’m so, so pleased for you.’
They hugged in the middle of the room, and as Gina squeezed Naomi more gently than usual, her head crammed with thoughts. She was so lucky to have a friend like Naomi, who could make black jokes at the right time, and knew her well enough to be honest. She was starting from scratch again now, a single woman in her thirties with Tamoxifen and a business loan, but at least she had Naomi and all the love the Hewsons gave her.
But. But . . .
Underneath her arms, Naomi’s shoulders rose and fell jaggedly, and when she looked, Gina saw she was crying. That was when she realised she was too.
‘Why are you crying?’ Gina sobbed.
‘I don’t know.’ Naomi gulped and held her at arm’s length so she could look her in the eye. Her expression was contorted with emotion. ‘I’m just so glad you’re still here. I’m so glad Willow gets to grow up with you around, and the new baby’ll have you in its life too. I always wanted a sister growing up, but you’ve been so much better than that. Thinking about you at the hospital today – it’s just been reminding me all day about how close we came to losing you.’
‘But you didn’t,’ said Gina. She laughed, a squelchy sound because of the tears. ‘I don’t know why we’re crying. There’s nothing to cry about. I’m fine.’
Naomi wiped her eyes. ‘It’s the bloody hospital. I always come home and cry after my smear test. There’s something about being up there that reminds you how easily things can go wrong.’
‘And the probes,’ said Gina. ‘No one likes having their parts probed.’
Naomi laughed, and wiped her nose. ‘No, that’s true.’
They looked at each other, their smiles smudged with tears, and Gina knew it wasn’t going to be easy, juggling their friendship with another baby, another demand on Naomi’s time and love. But they’d work out a way of doing it. Theirs was a friendship that stretched forwards as well as backwards. It would stretch in any direction it needed to, in order to keep them together.
Chapter Twenty-two
ITEM: a thick sheaf of coloured printed garden-party invitations for various drinks parties in New College, Oxford from 1998–2001, hole-punched in the corner, tied up on a yellow ribbon
Oxford, June 2001
No one has ever driven Gina’s Mini apart from her, not even Kit, and the seat doesn’t go back quite far enough for him to fold his long legs in comfortably.
But Gina’s drunk too much to drive, and she’s in no state to concentrate even if she wanted to, so Kit squashes himself in and tries to adjust the mirrors and the seat so he can at least get it out of the tiny parking space Gina’s managed to find.
‘Careful!’ she says automatically, as he comes within a whisker of scraping it against the Land Rover behind.
‘OK!’
‘Sorry, sorry.’ It’s just that she can’t bear the thought of any damage occurring to her car, if Terry isn’t there to fix it. She makes a wild bargain with the universe: if the car can stay perfect, Terry will too.
The traffic out of town is painfully slow, and Gina can feel herself wanting to sweep the cars out of their path with one powerful backhand swipe. It’s the Pimm’s. Or, she concedes guiltily, not that she’ll tell Kit, possibly the speed she took to wake herself up. She regretted it as soon as it was done, but it’s done now. Precious minutes are ticking away, and she has no idea what’s happening with Terry. He could be dead already. He could be waiting for her. Clinging on to say goodbye. That would be just like him. Waiting.
All the times she made Terry wait flash before her. Outside school discos. At the station. At Christmas.
‘Why is it so slow?’ She nearly weeps.
Kit’s hand reaches over and covers hers. Not hard, given that the car’s so small inside that his left knee is rammed against the handbrake. ‘I don’t want to say relax, but it’s going to take us a certain amount of time to get there, and that’s all there is to it. We’re on the way.’
‘I know.’ Gina swallows. She wants to be calm but her body won’t co-operate. Her heart’s racing. ‘I know.’
‘Is your Auntie Sylvia going up to the hospital now?’
‘Yes, she was just waiting for me to ring back.’ Another thing to feel bad about: Auntie Sylvia having to hang around by her mother’s telephone table instead of rushing to her brother’s bedside, just because selfish Gina drank fishbowls of Pimm’s at a garden party.
Oh, God. Is this her fault somehow? For not going to a university closer to home? For wanting to be nearer Kit?
Gina wonders if the guilt will stay with her for ever, like a scar, if she can’t get home in time to see Terry. Her brain is making weird connections, the sort that seem very profound when she and Kit are stoned and listening to Radiohead but which now scare her. She feels like an astronaut, returning from outer space to the earth too fast. Her home world and her university world have always seemed like different universes, and she’s been different people in them. They’ve never crashed into each other like this. The consequences have never occurred to her.
‘Shit. Mum’ll go mad if she realises I’ve been drinking,’ she says aloud, hearing her voice slur.
‘You’ll have sobered up by then. I should give my mum a call when we stop for petrol,’ says Kit. He has to shout a bit over the raw sound of the little engine. ‘Let her know I won’t be back.’
‘Does she know you’re with me?’
It’s no secret Kit’s mother hasn’t grown to like Gina over the years. It’s not that Anita dislikes her, she just doesn’t think the relationship is going anywhere. She’s made that clear on the infrequent occasions Gina’s met her and she’s affected surprise that Gina’s still on the scene.
Kit pauses too long, and she knows that, no, Anita Atherton doesn’t know where he is.
‘Kit!’ She glances at him – too quickly, sudden movements make her feel nauseous.
‘No, it’s not like that.’ He frowns, and changes down to overtake a slow-moving pensioner. The Mini howls in protest at the unusually proactive driving. ‘I’m supposed to be at a wedding this weekend, one of Mum’s cousins, in Hampstead. I said I was going up to Oxford to see some mates, and that I’d be away till Monday.’
‘You could have just told her you were with me.’
‘I thought it would be easier on you if I didn’t.’ He glances across, anxious that she sees that he means it. ‘I didn’t want to get into an argument about which is most important, family or you. Obviously it’s you. But she’d probably pull out some distant relative who could get me an interview at Deloitte and we’d be back into the job argument again.’
‘Well, if we’re going travelling, will you tell her you’re with me then?’
‘Of course.’
They drive for a bit, and then he glances back, a cheekier twinkle in his eyes. ‘Does that mean you’ll come?’
Gina’s heart thuds. ‘Guess so.’
It’s as easy as that with Kit. Decide it; do it. When she’s with him, she’s the kind of girl who thinks like that too.
And then her stomach lurches again. ‘If Terry pulls through.’
‘He’ll pull through,’ says Kit. ‘The quiet ones are t
he strongest.’
‘I don’t want to lose another dad,’ she says, in a voice that sounds so small she’s not even sure she’s said it aloud.
She sees Terry in the garage, oily fingers fixing this car. Her, taking him for granted. Why does everything break?
Instead she looks down at the map. They need to get onto the A40 and from there it’s straight home, but the Mini isn’t used to fast roads: it shakes worryingly and the steering wheel vibrates. The few times she’s taken it on the motorway, Gina’s stuck to the slow lane where she can feel the car tramlining on the lorries’ tracks.
‘Can you stay?’ she asks. Kit’s starting an internship at some banking firm on Monday; it’s very prestigious. He beat hundreds of people to get it. Anita’s telling everyone, apparently, even though Kit wanted to do something ‘more media’.
‘I wish I could,’ he says. ‘Maybe tonight. But I’ll have to be back on Monday. You know, for work.’
‘OK.’
‘Gina,’ says Kit. He’s fiddling with his right hand, steering with the flat of his left wrist as he tries to get something off.
‘Careful,’ she says, as they get perilously close to the centre line.
‘I’m fine.’ He grabs the wheel again. ‘Hold out your hand.’
She does and he drops something into it. Something warm and heavy. It’s his ring, the gold signet ring he wears on his little finger. It was his granddad’s.
Gina looks at Kit, heart in her mouth. Is this . . .? Does he . . .? She wishes she wasn’t so drunk, that she was more ready for this moment rushing up at her.
‘Gina,’ he says, glancing sideways, looking for somewhere to pull over, but there are no lay-bys on this stretch of road.
‘Kit, be careful,’ she says. ‘Please be careful.’
‘I am.’
Gina is holding her breath. It’s all too loud. Too fast. This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen. She wants this moment to slow down so she can appreciate it.
The road clears, and Kit turns to her. He’s smiling. Gina thinks she’s never seen him look so handsome, as if he’s been carved out of marble.
‘Gina, I love you,’ he says. ‘And I want you to wear this and remember that—’
Gina never hears the end of that sentence because without warning a tractor pulls out of a turning ahead, and as Kit fights to avoid it, the little car spins.
And spins and spins and spins, like a space shuttle returning to earth too fast, until it leaves the road and smashes into a tree, scattering glass and metal and smoke across the grassy bank.
Kit’s ring bounces into the footwell of the car, then falls into the sheared-off wheel arch, and from there onto the churned mud where it’s crushed by the weight of the crumpled Mini grinding it into the earth.
He was waiting for her when she arrived. Gina didn’t need to scan the restaurant to find Kit this time: he’d chosen a table near the entrance and was facing the door so he could catch her eye when she walked in.
She thought he seemed older than the last time she’d seen him, more solid and flesh-and-blood. The fineness of his features had settled into a sandy handsomeness, his hair paler and a little longer. He was still in a suit but it fitted him better, less like the suit of armour it had been last time. His wide-spaced eyes and long nose were very Oxford, she thought. Kit had finally turned into the Oxford academic his mother had hoped he’d be.
He raised a hand. Gina detected a trace of anxiety in his expression, replaced by a tentative smile when she waved from the door. It surprised her to see him anxious, after how sharp he’d been last time.
‘Hello,’ she said, as she slid into her seat, with no kisses. ‘It’s nice to see you.’
As usual, Gina had thought a bit about what she was going to say on the train, but the hour she’d just spent walking through the streets of Oxford had swept everything out of her head. She hadn’t expected the melancholy nostalgia of seeing the familiar landmarks with a new set of students running through them, drunk and euphoric at the end of their exams. New shops she didn’t recognise next to old sandwich bars and academic outfitters; London chains where she remembered independents.
It was as if she’d never been there, or as if she’d been there in a dream, floating through, leaving no trace. Sad, and reassuring at the same time.
‘It’s nice to see you, too,’ said Kit. ‘I did wonder if I’d ever see you again. After the last time we met. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, look, that was my fault,’ she started. ‘It wasn’t the right time to see you. I’d just had some . . .’
Kit put his hand on hers, and they both flinched at the contact, then smiled awkwardly.
Gina didn’t pull hers away; he didn’t move his. Eventually he patted hers and broke the contact. She felt a shimmer of sadness mixed with relief.
‘Let’s get it out of the way. I’m sorry for being so rude and self-righteous when I saw you last. You were ill. I was . . . horrible. It was unforgivably mean and I regret it.’
‘I didn’t say anything the way I wanted to either.’ She fiddled with the spoon in front of her. ‘It probably came across as offensive, looking you up just because I was ill myself.’
‘Actually, that wasn’t what made me so mean,’ said Kit. ‘I was going through a really driven phase. You weren’t the only person I steamrollered.’
‘Yeah, yeah, it’s not you, it’s me. That old cliché,’ said Gina, without thinking, and he smiled wryly.
‘I discussed it with my therapist afterwards – what exactly made me so angry with you. I think it was just that I didn’t want to hear you say sorry. You were so desperate to say sorry. It’s the one word I couldn’t cope with at the time. Sorry meant it was your fault, and it wasn’t.’
Gina looked up. Kit’s brow was furrowed with awkwardness, and suddenly he seemed far more like the man she’d known, the boyfriend who’d taken such delight in discovering new things with her.
He took a long breath, then blew out his cheeks, as if gathering his thoughts in the right order.
Gina said nothing. It didn’t feel odd to launch straight into this conversation, with no polite preamble about the weather or work. It felt as if they’d been waiting thirteen years for the right moment, and now it was here.
‘It took me a lot longer to come to terms with the accident than it did to recover physically,’ he said. ‘Everyone blamed everything else – you for being drunk, the car for being too old, the traffic, the weather, British roads, everything. Everyone who came round to see me had someone else to blame. In the end, I saw this very perceptive counsellor who said that as long as I thought like that I was never going to let go of it and move on with my life because I’d always be the victim.’
‘But it was someone’s fault,’ said Gina. ‘It wasn’t an Act of God. If it was anyone’s fault it was mine.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Your mum does.’
Kit shrugged. ‘I’m sure your mum thinks it was mine. Mums need someone to blame and they’re never going to blame you. Dad agreed with the counsellor. His counsellor said something similar. We spent a lot of time in counselling, my family. Did you get any?’
Gina shook her head. She’d had two sessions with a woman who was very sympathetic, then tried to make it all about her dead father, something Gina didn’t feel was helpful. Janet had refused all offers of counselling and thrown herself into gardening and keeping Terry’s half of their bedroom exactly as it was.
‘Is that why she sent my letters back? Did you even know I’d written?’
Kit picked up the teaspoon on his coffee saucer. ‘To be honest, I told her to do that. I didn’t want to be reminded that I’d screwed your life up too. I thought it was better that I just didn’t see you than you come once a week, then once a month, then twice a year.’
‘But—’ Gina started.
‘You were twenty-one,’ said Kit. ‘And I couldn’t even get my head around never walking again. I couldn’t think about what I’d jus
t lost. Mum only told me much later how long you wrote for, though. I felt terrible. Thinking of you writing and never getting a reply.’
The news made Gina feel cold. It went against everything she’d always assumed: Kit really had turned away from her. He hadn’t wanted her letters.
‘But if you’d told me not to write, I’d have stopped,’ she said. ‘I assumed your mum was keeping us apart because she hated me for ruining your life.’ She winced. ‘God, that sounds so melodramatic now. So self-centred.’
‘It’s not. You were romantic. Your letters always felt like hearing you talk, you put so much of yourself into them. But I guess I didn’t want to be reminded of all that, once that life had gone. And come on. We were kids. If you can’t be melodramatic then . . .’
‘Sorry,’ said Gina. The letters were in her handbag now. Should she even mention they were there? When she’d emailed to arrange this meeting she hadn’t mentioned them; now she was beginning to be glad she hadn’t.
Kit was talking again. ‘While we’re doing apologies, I’m sorry you got a hard time from Mum. She was over-protective to begin with – she did as much as she could herself, but we had to have nurses in, and physios, the whole lot. I feel bad about it now because I got this reputation for being brave and positive about my disability, but that was mainly because she didn’t let anyone see me when I was an angry mess.’ He looked rueful. ‘I was a really angry mess. But I didn’t want anyone to see that because everyone kept going on about how brave I was. I felt like I’d be letting them down if I was anything else.’
Gina finally felt a tug of recognition. ‘I know. My mum doesn’t really have a clue about how bad chemo was because Stuart, my, um, my ex-husband, never let her see. He was the only person who sat through it with me. Him and Naomi. She still thinks I made a bit of a fuss – I remember her asking how I was feeling when I’d just left the house after three straight days of throwing up every time I moved my head. I told her that the last round had been so agonising that I’d actually wondered how much worse dying would feel, and she told me I’d get nowhere with that attitude.’