‘I’ll walk,’ he shrugs. ‘It’s a nice night. It might help me sleep.’ My heart goes out to him. I know all about sleepless nights.
‘I’ll give you a call,’ I say. ‘Soon. And thanks again for everything. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.’
‘It was certainly an interesting experience,’ Dominic agrees. ‘Even from my point of view.’
‘I promise to wear more clothes when we go out for dinner.’
‘No need to on my behalf,’ Dominic replies with a smile.
I kiss him on the cheek. Oh, it would be so easy to turn my head and kiss his lips. Quickly, I pull away. Perhaps I’ve got some Superglue on the brain.
‘I’ll speak to you soon.’ And with that, Dominic leaves. I think about watching him walk down the street from my balcony, but wonder if he’d misconstrue it. I wonder if he should misconstrue it!
I pick up Leo’s photograph. Will it be possible to replace Leo in my affections? Who knows. It’s too late and I’m too tired to think about it. Still, I’d better listen to his message – see what he’s got to say for himself.
Flicking on the answerphone, I listen in. But it isn’t Leo. My father’s wavering voice rings out into the flat.
My father never rings me. Ever. That’s my mother’s job.
‘Darling,’ he says shakily. ‘It’s Daddy. And I’ve got some terrible news.’
Chapter Sixty-Seven
The towering circle of stones were so distinct on the horizon. An unmistakable monument to long-departed ancestors. Though to this day, no one really has any idea what Stonehenge is all about or how the gigantic slabs of blue Welsh stone came to be here. It looked like a great place for sacrifice and rituals and pagan worship and magic. Those Druids – or whoever built it – certainly knew how to pick their spot.
Leo and his friends turned down a small, dark country lane and bumped along towards the monument. As Grant pulled into the gravel car park at the Visitor Centre, Ethel’s wheels made an intrusive crunch in the overwhelming silence.
Leaning down, Leo whispered to Isobel, ‘We’re here.’ She managed a weak smile. And not a moment too soon, Leo could have added.
The area was absolutely deserted – theirs was the only car around. The snack bars were all closed up, the ice-cream vans and the tourists’ coaches long gone. In the distance, Leo could see that the stones were surrounded by a high wire fence; he was sure that when he last came here as a boy, he’d walked right up to them.
Without talking, they all climbed out of the car. Lard helped Leo to lift Isobel into his arms. An officious sign announced that the Visitor Centre closed at 7.00 p.m. and went on to give a long list of rules for ‘enjoying’ the stones. The row of turnstiles were locked, clamped with padlocks, for the night. The pay booths were shuttered against them. Racks of audio commentaries stood idle. Even if they’d wanted to, the tiny group couldn’t have parted with the extortionate entrance fee.
‘Oh flip,’ Leo said with a heartfelt sigh. ‘It’s shut.’ In his haste to get there, he hadn’t even considered that they might not be able to get access to the stones. He hoped that Isobel had one last wave left in her wand as they might well need it. ‘What now?’
Lard picked up his holdall. With a flourish like a sword, their dark little friend produced a crowbar from inside. ‘We go and find fairies,’ he said.
Grant and Leo looked on in amazement as Lard marched up to the turnstiles and jumped over with a surprising degree of athleticism. They followed him, speechless, and Grant jumped over too and then took Isobel from Leo’s arms while he did the same.
By the time they’d sorted themselves out, Lard was already at the door of the Visitor Centre. In fact, they were so surprised that they followed him, unspeaking, until they were all huddled round the door – Lard with his crowbar in hand.
‘We have to go through here to get to the stones,’ he told them.
‘Isn’t there another way?’
‘No.’ Lard shook his head firmly.
‘We can’t break in,’ Leo said.
‘We can,’ Lard insisted, exhibiting an assertiveness previously unseen in his character and outside of Terminator films.
Leo looked to Grant as the voice of reason. ‘Let’s do it,’ his friend said.
And, with a minimal amount of effort, Lard leaned on his crowbar and eased his way in. The front door gave amazingly quickly – they really needed to look at their security arrangements here. Grant and Leo exchanged a stunned look. They never knew that Lard had this in him.
‘Have you ever done this professionally?’ Leo asked.
‘Leo,’ he answered, ‘if we get caught, I might not have any choice.’
Leo could see how having form for breaking and entering might not sit well with an accelerated career path in the City. But that was the least of their worries tonight.
They eased their way in and tiptoed past the waiting rack of books, DVDs and videos selling the story of Stonehenge from every possible angle. Leo would have thought that there might have been a burglar alarm in the shop, but then again, who on earth would hear it ringing out here in the middle of nowhere? The nearest police station must be miles away.
‘Do we need anything from in here to help us in our quest?’ he asked.
‘What good is a Stonehenge thimble to us?’ Grant said. ‘Or Stonehenge playing cards?’
‘I don’t know,’ Leo admitted. ‘But I thought I’d check.’
They jemmied the door at the other end of the gift shop and slipped out into the tunnel which went under the road and linked them to the site of the stones.
The tunnel was lit with psychedelic spotlights in pink and green, picking out naive paintings of bare-chested Anglo-Saxons heaving stones on wooden rollers. They hurried along it – Leo panting with the weight of Isobel in his arms – until they came out onto the vast open plain. Leo’s shirt was sticking to his back with sweat.
Despite the night being hot and clammy, there was a cool, steady breeze blowing. Leo turned his face to it, thankful for a moment’s respite. Just ahead, there was a sentry box, but thankfully there was no security guard on duty. Instead, a huge metal gate barred the way.
‘It’s terrible that they have to go to so much trouble to protect the stones from vandalism,’ Leo said with a sigh.
Grant and Lard turned to look at him.
‘What?’
Lard opened his holdall once more and pulled out some bolt cutters.
‘Why have you got all these things?’ Leo wanted to know. All he owned was a Black & Decker drill – unused. And . . . no, that was it. Just the drill. And Emma probably bought him that one Christmas in an attempt to domesticate him. What previous use had Lard had for a range of tools like this? Obviously, there was much that they didn’t know about their little chocolate-eating friend.
Lard cut through the gate with his bolt cutters like a warm knife slicing through butter. They all slipped inside.
Once in the middle of the hallowed circle, they gazed in awe at the massive stones, humbled by the sheer audacity of their size. Leo felt as if they’d been standing waiting for them all this time.
‘Wow!’ Lard intoned breathlessly. Leo thought that his friend was quite taken aback by his own skill at skulduggery.
‘Isobel’s fading fast,’ Leo told them. ‘What do we have to do?’
‘Lay her on the ground in the centre of the stones,’ Grant instructed.
Leo kissed Isobel and held her to him tenderly, before gently laying her on the lush grass, thick with springy clumps of clover and a sprinkling of buttercups and daisies. The circle was no longer complete and some of the great slabs of stone lay higgledy-piggledy on the ground. Leo wondered what this place might have been – a temple to a Sun God, a prehistoric observatory or some sort of calculator for celestial activity? All of these things had been mooted by experts in the past. He’d never heard anyone say that it was a kind of underground station for fairies who needed to get home. Which worried him.
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Grant and Lard exchanged a glance. ‘Is this a bad time to mention that we’re all supposed to be virgins?’ Grant said sheepishly.
‘Oh great!’ Leo paced the ground. ‘You’ve been shagging everything that moves for years.’
‘Thanks.’
‘None of us are exactly,’ Lard interjected, ‘well, pure. What’s the opposite of virgins?’
‘Slappers,’ Leo said. ‘We’re all slappers.’
‘Apart from Isobel,’ Lard noted respectfully.
Leo gazed down at her on the grass and wondered how it could have come to this – that she’d had to put her trust in three City slappers and Google. He covered his eyes with his hands. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Grant admitted. ‘Perhaps we should all think clean thoughts while we do the rest of it.’
‘What “rest of it”?’
His friends exchanged another dodgy look. They really were getting more and more like an old married couple every day, Leo thought.
Lard delved into his holdall once more and pulled out a ghetto-blaster which he placed, with some reverence, on the ground between them.
‘I put new batteries in it,’ he said proudly.
‘Good.’ Leo stood open-mouthed still awaiting some explanation. There was very little light left now and they were peering at each other in the dark.
Grant cleared his throat. ‘We do a fairy dance.’
‘What the hell’s a fairy dance?’
‘How should I know,’ Grant snapped. ‘That’s all it said on the internet. It didn’t give me the steps.’
‘Marvellous.’
‘Try to enter into the spirit of this, Leo,’ he shouted. ‘We are doing it for you, after all.’
‘We’re doing it for Isobel,’ Leo said quietly. ‘Come on. Let’s get on with it instead of doing our Marx Brothers routine.’
Lard produced another packet from his seemingly bottomless holdall and with great solemnity handed out sparklers.
‘Sparklers?’ Leo asked, trying not to sound cynical.
‘Sparklers,’ Lard shrugged in response.
‘Look, Leo,’ Grant snapped again. ‘Just accept that we do not understand the great unfathomable mysteries of the universe and go with the flow.’
Leo examined his sparkler. He hadn’t had one of these for a long time – Bonfire Night circa 1980 would be his guess. It was rogue one and had burned a hole in his glove. He turned his attention to the ghetto-blaster. Leo hardly dared ask this question. ‘What’s that for?’
‘Fairy music,’ Grant said.
‘Of course.’
Lard flicked the switch and a blast of tinkly piano music filled the air. Leo could feel a frown coming on.
‘What on earth’s that?’ Grant demanded.
Lard looked offended. ‘Liberace.’
Grant and Leo in unison. ‘Liberace?’
‘Fairy music,’ Lard explained. ‘I didn’t have any Elton John so I borrowed this from my mum. It’s just the job.’
Grant huffed with exasperation. ‘It said to play some music for a fairy, you clot – not by a fairy!’
Liberace’s latest fan shrugged. ‘What’s the difference?’
‘Turn it off! Turn it off!’ Grant shouted.
Lard clicked off the ghetto-blaster and the eerie sound of silence returned once more to the vast landscape. ‘What else have you got?’
Rooting around in the bottom of his holdall, Lard muttered mutinously under his breath.
Leo could have wept. He could have wept for his beautiful girl, who was having to suffer this indignity.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
My father seems to have shrunk. The proud, bad-tempered curmudgeon has disappeared to be replaced by a small, frightened man who looks older than his years.
The man who is so meticulous about his appearance has dishevelled hair and a mismatched jacket over his trousers. I fly straight to him and hug him.
‘Where is she?’
‘Through there,’ he says, indicating double swing doors. ‘I just came out for some air.’
The reception of the private clinic my mother has been taken to is a far cry from the tatty Accident and Emergency department I’ve just left. It’s decorated in soothing blues and is filled with sumptuous sofas and vases of delicate flowers. Tasteful modern artworks hang on the walls. Catherine would hate them.
‘How is she?’
‘Asleep,’ my father tells me. ‘She’s comfortable.’
‘Is she going to be all right?’
He shakes his head. ‘It’s hard to tell at this stage,’ he says, his voice hoarse with tiredness. ‘It seems to be a minor stroke, thank goodness, but she’s lost her speech and the movement down one side. That might take some time to come back.’
‘But it will come back?’
Daddy puts his arm around me. ‘We don’t know, darling. We simply don’t know.’
I burst into tears and cling to my father. ‘Mummy can’t be ill,’ I say. ‘She’s never ill.’ It’s my father who’s been swallowing pills for his angina the best part of ten years, not my mother. She never takes so much as a headache tablet. She never even has a common cold. Catherine Chambers is the picture of health.
‘We’re going to have to do things differently from now on,’ my father says. ‘Your mother has always run the family. She’s the powerhouse. We’re going to have to take the pressure off her. We need to look after her now.’
‘I don’t want to see her like this,’ I say.
‘Come on, now.’ My father rubs his thumb over my face, smudging my tears, and I think that it’s probably the first time he has touched me like that in years. ‘My big strong girl. You can cope. You always do. Catherine doesn’t look any different. Just more vulnerable.’
And that’s exactly how I feel. More vulnerable than I’ve ever felt in my life.
My mother lies on the hospital bed attached to an array of machines and drips. Something beeps methodically. She looks pale against the starched white sheets. I go over to her and kiss her on the forehead, which feels too cold and dry, but my mother doesn’t stir.
My father pulls up two armchairs and we both sit down. He holds my hand, too tightly. I rest my head back. I’m so unbelievably tired.
‘How did it happen?’
‘Catherine was out shopping with Henrietta Gooding,’ my father explains. ‘She collapsed in Harrods. They were marvellous. Thank goodness she didn’t keel over in a lower-class establishment,’ he says with a shake of his head. ‘She might not be here to tell the tale.’
I hide a smile. Even in this state, my father still manages to be a pompous snob.
‘Henrietta is normally so feeble-brained,’ he continues, ‘but the woman came good this time, phoned me immediately. I pulled a few strings and we brought your mother straight here.’ He pats his wife’s hand and fusses with her bedclothes. ‘Much better than that terrible general hospital. I called you as soon as I could, but they said you hadn’t been into work today.’
I sigh. ‘I had a small emergency of my own.’
My father raises an eyebrow in question. Thankfully, he hasn’t been watching the television news.
‘All sorted now,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m sorry it took me so long. Do Clara and Arabelle know?’
My father nods. ‘They’ll be here tomorrow. They both needed to make arrangements for the children to be cared for.’
‘Will Mummy be in here for long?’
‘We don’t know yet, sweetheart,’ my father admits. ‘We’ll have to see what the doctor says.’
We both settle back into our armchairs. I feel so helpless just sitting here, watching my mother; there’s nothing I can do for her, except wait and be here. I close my eyes. It would be unbearable if anything happens to her. It seems as if my entire support network is being kicked away from me at the moment: first Leo, now my mother. Both people I’ve taken hideously for granted. Maybe it’s God’s perverse way of making me realise that I shou
ld have appreciated them both more.
‘I do love your mother,’ my father says into my thoughts. ‘I don’t think I ever showed it enough.’
‘Of course you did, Daddy,’ I insist.
‘I should have told her more often. I should have taken her out more. She’s a very beautiful woman.’ His voice is laden with tears. ‘I should have said so every day.’
‘She knows you love her,’ I tell him. She knows, but I realise that I’ve never heard my father say it to his wife. That suddenly seems too sad.
‘You plan for the future,’ my father continues heavily, ‘but none of us knows how long we’ve got. We never understand the frailty of human life until it hits us in the face. We really are a very arrogant race. We always think we’ve got for ever.’ My father fiddles with his watch. ‘I’m going to take her on a cruise. She’ll like that. A long one. Round the Caribbean. As soon as she’s well. We must do the things we’ve always said that we’d do.’
He doesn’t say ‘before it’s too late’ but I know that’s exactly what’s on his mind.
‘I’ll work shorter hours,’ he goes on. ‘Maybe take early retirement.’
‘But your work is your life, Daddy.’
‘Your mother must be my life from now on. She’s always been there for me – for all of us. Now I must do the same.’ He turns bleak eyes to me. ‘I don’t want her to leave me. I don’t know what I’d do.’
I hold my father to me. It surprises me to realise that this is the longest conversation I’ve had with him in many years. Normally, it’s a few brisk exchanged words, before each of us rush off to do something more important. Why is it that sometimes the people you love the most, you know the least? Why do we build barriers around our feelings for our closest relations? Maybe I have some thinking to do too.
‘She won’t leave us,’ I say determinedly. ‘Mummy won’t give up without a fight. She’s an old battleaxe. That’s why you love her.’
‘I do love her,’ my father says. ‘I do.’
Suddenly I need Leo. I need to talk to him. Just to hear his voice. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, Daddy,’ I say and slip out of the hospital room.