Maybe he told Hugh about it. I’m not going to ask. I’m not up for another clammed-up response. In every interaction with this man from this moment on I’ll feel like he’s keeping something important from me. I’ll blame Cam and I’ll blame Hugh and it will eat me alive, not knowing. This is never going to work. How can it?
‘I’m trying to think of a way to fix this,’ Hugh says, ever the fixer. The rescuer. The knight in the proverbial shining armour, always riding in, saving people. Often me. Mainly me, I guess. Colluding with Cam. Snow ploughing everything out of my path to make it easier – except for this one obstacle, this secret, which he has the power to shift and won’t.
‘Tell me what I can do,’ he says. ‘I’m in an impossible situation here, like I was then. Cam trusted me. It was all for you. Always. Don’t ever question how much you are loved.’
‘Was loved,’ I say dismally.
He doesn’t argue with me any more.
My arms uncross, slowly, and drop to my sides. He’s gutted. And it’s my husband who led to it. It’s hard to stay mad at someone after he’s done so much. Too much, really. I’ve become reliant on him, as Mum said. I think it’s time to stop.
‘If I’m ever going to move forward,’ I begin, ‘I need it to be on my own terms. I need to rebuild my life, Hugh. From the ground up. Quit my job. Sell the house. Write my book. Get Charlie over to the UK to see his grandparents and show him the world like Cam always imagined we would.’
He looks alarmed.
‘It’s a lot of change,’ I say.
He nods. Swallows. Looks beyond my face, for once, at the wet skin on my neck, white top plastered to me under the cardigan, skirt clinging to my legs, and when his attention returns to my eyes, I know he wants me. I think he’s wanted me for a long time.
I bend down and run my finger along the wet sand, making a line, then stand behind it. ‘I don’t want you scheming to make my life easier. I appreciate everything you’ve done, but I need to get my act together now, on my own,’ I say.
He steps forward, near the line, and I put my hand on his chest and hold him back.
‘I feel like this is the end, Kate. You’re scaring me.’
‘You don’t come across this line unless I ask you to,’ I explain. ‘On this side, I’m not your subordinate. I’m not someone you rescue. You’re not my boss. I’m not a grief-stricken widow to feel sorry for. There’s no power imbalance.’
‘Our power imbalance has never been in the direction you think,’ he says.
‘I know you don’t do relationships since Genevieve, and this thing about you and Cam isn’t going to go away. You won’t tell me, and that’s your decision. I know what you’re like, and I respect and loathe that about you, all at once—’
‘Kate!’
‘I can’t see how it could work with something that monumental standing between us. I know I’m going out on a huge limb here, even suggesting you’re interested in me as more than a colleague and friend, since you’ve danced around the topic all day and haven’t actually said so in so many words—’
This is possibly the most mortifying conversation of my life. I’m not holding back. Not keeping the slightest air of mystery about myself, or how I feel.
‘I’m not going to be one of your one-night stands, Hugh,’ I announce, taking a massive leap of faith that he’d even want that.
He laughs. ‘Kate, I haven’t had a one-night stand in a long time. It’s not fair, when your mind is on someone else.’ He looks at me and holds his ground. And I’m flustered and confused.
‘You really can’t tell me Cam’s secret?’
He wants to. I can see it written all over his face.
I realise I’ve still got my hand on his chest, pushing him away from my line. I can feel his heartbeat through his wet shirt. It’s sprinting. We stare at each other, rain continuing to fall, waves continuing to crash. The sun will go on rising and setting, whether I kiss Hugh Lancaster or not.
I watch as my hand eases its pressure on his shirt. Grasps the wet fabric, twists it and pulls him towards me in the rain. Towards my line. Perilously close to it. And then over it.
36
I know this is going to be our last kiss, because kisses upset Cam. He doesn’t know who I am, or what I’m doing. To kiss him now feels like a violation. Even kisses like this – quick and gentle – confuse him, in the same way he’s forgotten how to eat and shower and use the toilet. Every human function is beyond his grasp at the end stage of Alzheimer’s.
He’s sitting in his room at the aged care facility, propped in one of those big armchairs with buttons you press to help you stand up. He can’t actually stand up any more, but the chair also reclines and this is where he sleeps. There are photos of Charlie and me everywhere. They ceased being any help to him months ago, but I like to think we’re there if he wakes up and is frightened.
He’s a shell of the man he was. Malnourished, because he’s forgotten how to chew and swallow. Gaunt, with skin almost translucent he’s so pale. I stroke his cheek, which was smooth after I shaved it this morning, but is now rough. The shaving was an ordeal, too, but I want him to feel better. Fresher. Cared for. Loved. Because he is loved, so much.
This is a long goodbye. I’ve been losing Cam in pieces, each progression taking part of him from me by stealth. I say goodbye each night when he’s tucked up in bed at seven, and I don’t know how much of him will be there the next day. Just less. Always less. I wanted to care for him at home until the very end, but it became too much with Charlie. Mum and Grace eventually convinced me my role was wife and mother, and if I could bring myself to hand his medical care to nurses, I could focus on those roles. And they’ve been incredibly professional and kind in here.
Cam and I have been adopted by the couple next door to his room, who are in their nineties. Without fail, whether I bowl up there wrung out and crying or reasonably put together straight from work, Claire reaches for me from her wheelchair, her beautiful face alight with genuine joy, and tells me I’m the ‘prettiest girl in the world’. She has advanced dementia too. And Barrie adores her, the way I adore Cam. I’ve never felt more understood than when I’m in his presence – intergenerational kindred spirits who are living love in that very practical, intimate, vulnerable sense that goes so much deeper than hearts and flowers and jewellery and honeymoons. He’s the father-figure I’ve never had. I’ve never felt more in awe of a couple, or more envious of the length of a loving relationship.
Charlie adores them too. They’re like surrogate grandparents to him. When Cam first moved in, people would ask Charlie if he was here to see his grandma or his grandpa.
‘Daddy!’ he would chirp, innocent of how inconceivably wrong this was, on every level. For a while, we took Cam to the special choir for residents with dementia, but their repertoire was decades out: ‘In the Mood’ and ‘Danny Boy’, when he needed ‘Blinded by the Light’.