‘My ears,’ I say.
He looks at me, confused. ‘You’ve lost me, Kate.’
No, not yet.
And just like that, the joy of seeing him so vital and engaged with Hugh is wiped and replaced with another piece of evidence that his brain is faltering, despite appearances.
‘I’d better do another round of drinks,’ Hugh suggests tactfully. As he walks past me his eyes meet mine and his lips curve into a half-smile. It doesn’t make me feel beautiful at all, like Cam’s smile does.
It makes me feel seen.
‘I need to duck to the bathroom,’ I tell Cam as I glance around the park for the facilities. Charlie is standing up, holding onto my leg for security, and I prise his little fingers off my jeans and latch him onto Daddy’s leg instead. They look so comical standing together – Cam over six foot tall, Charlie his mini doppelg?nger.
‘Charlie! Look at Mumma!’ I say as I take a photo on my phone of the two of them beaming. My phone has thousands of photos of Cam and Charlie, and almost none of Charlie with me. Cam used to complain that I was incessantly capturing moments instead of just enjoying them, but now thousands of photos don’t seem nearly enough. One day, this will be all Charlie has. Photos to hold onto, instead of Daddy’s leg. And I will zoom in on them, desperate for familiar details – laugh lines around his mouth, the set of his jaw. Nothing will ever be in high enough resolution.
The toilets are a long way through the park, well beyond the playground. In truth, it’s good to have a few moments to myself. I’m still finding ‘normal life’ confronting, while we’re trying to adjust to Cam’s diagnosis and the miscarriage, and working through ways to make the most of our time. At work, only Hugh knows the specifics about the diagnosis. I haven’t reached a point where I can talk about it without going to pieces, so all the others know is I’ve lost the baby and there’s something else going on.
The latest round of tests indicated that things are progressing at the faster end of the prognosis spectrum. The more we learn, the more likely it seems that this won’t be one of those slow-developing cases that takes years. Charlie’s not even eighteen months old. I’m desperate for Cam to stay alive and ‘himself’ long enough for his little boy to be able to pocket some memories of his own. I can’t stand the idea of him having to spend a lifetime cobbling together a representation of the man his father was, entirely from secondary sources.
I run into Sophie in the toilet block, and she takes me aside, eyes alight.
‘Oh my God, Kate. Your husband is fit AF!’
I laugh at her exuberance.
‘And your baby is squishable! I want to eat him! If I end up with even half of what you’ve got, I’ll be a happy woman.’
Half of what I had is exactly what I’ll end up with. And I’ll be miserable.
‘Though, if you saw Tinder, you wouldn’t like my chances . . . How lucky are you never having to go near online dating,’ she says.
‘Lucky’ isn’t a word I’ve applied to myself recently. But as Sophie prattles on, praising my little family, unaware of the festival of faux pas she’s stumbling through, I realise she’s right. I am lucky, in a sense. Some people never get to experience what I have. They never find that great love. Never adore someone with even a portion of the untamed intensity that still exists between Cam and me seventeen years after we met. At my mums’ group, the others sometimes complain about their partners. That they’re not hands-on enough as parents, or they’re hopeless communicators or just lazy or distant. They describe themselves as housemates sharing a roof, but not a life.
And then there’s Grace and the scores of pregnancy tests she’s taken, imagining she sees a second line that never materialises, no matter what kind of light she holds it under.
Am I selfish, to wish for more?
‘I hope Tinder rallies for you,’ I say to Sophie as we wander back.
Cam is back talking to Hugh again, on the fringes of the pack. It’s so good to see him comfortable, socially. The diagnosis has already dented his confidence. He’s not convinced he’s properly following conversations, and he’s worried he’s repeating himself. Both are true, but I can’t bring myself to agree with him.
‘Who’s got Charlie?’ Sophie asks suddenly, and we both freeze.
My eyes scan the group. Nobody has him. I can’t see him! Every organ in my body plunges in terror. ‘Hugh!’ I scream bloodcurdlingly across the park. ‘Where’s Charlie?’
I hate that I’ve automatically gone over the top of Cam’s head, relegating him to the role of an unreliable witness.
Everyone drops everything and flies into a frantic search of the peninsula – with water in three out of four directions. This level of panic feels almost incompatible with life. I cannot lose three of them!
‘There!’ Sophie yells, after what feels like years but must only be seconds. She’s pointing at the water’s edge, where Charlie is toddling around, splashing in the shallows, chasing a family of ducks – and now all I’m aware of is Cam and me, sprinting towards him, and towards each other, both splashing into the water together, falling into it, scooping Charlie up into our arms together, crying.
I am furious.
It takes every ounce of self-control for me to silence the white-hot rage within me.
Could you not just focus, Cam, for FIVE MINUTES!
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he’s repeating. ‘I thought he was with you. I don’t know what happened . . .’
The rest of my team is gathered on the sandy verge now, witness to the forced disintegration of trust in our marriage. It’s not his fault. I know that. But from this moment on, I can’t leave him alone with Charlie. He’ll leave something on the stove and burn the house down.
He’s crying, I’m crying, Charlie’s crying – though mainly because we’ve confiscated the ducks. We splash out of the water together and walk slowly back to the picnic spot, where I sit on the bench at the picnic table, Charlie and I wrapped in somebody’s towel, rocking back and forth, hugging him tight to my chest, vowing never to let him out of my sight again.
I want to go home. This has been a disaster. I’m embarrassed that everyone saw that.
I look up in time to see Hugh put a hand on Cam’s shoulder. In this moment, I’m angry with him, too. He’s the only other person here who knows about the Alzheimer’s. What could possibly have been so important about their conversation that it justified letting his guard down?
But mostly, I’m angry with myself. It was me alone who misjudged Cam’s capacity. It’s a harsh preview of the fact that I’m the one who is increasingly going to shoulder all responsibility for the three of us, undoing years of mutual effort.
And Sophie thought I was lucky.