How to Find Love in a Book Shop(45)

‘What happened, darling?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. There were loads of us. In the pub …’

‘Was Dillon there?’

‘Dillon?’ Alice was trying hard to recollect the events. ‘Maybe.’

‘Did he and Hugh have a row?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Only Hugh seems to think they did.’

Alice shook her head. ‘I can remember the J?ger train …’

Sarah wasn’t going to push it. She didn’t want Alice distressed.

‘Would you like to see Daddy?’

‘Yes, please. I’m sorry, Mummy.’

‘Sorry? What on earth are you sorry for?’

She could see Alice struggling with a thought, a memory.

‘I don’t know,’ answered Alice, and her eyes filled up with tears.



It was eight o’clock before Sarah and Ralph got back to Peasebrook Manor from the hospital. The nurse had insisted they go in the end; had assured them repeatedly that Alice would be comfortable, and that they would end up being a nuisance if they stayed any longer.

Hugh had gone to stay with a friend. He had sensed, quite rightly, that he was best out of Sarah’s line of fire for the time being.

Sarah sank down into her chair at the kitchen table. Yesterday morning seemed a lifetime away, when she had sat here preparing for Julius’s memorial. You never knew what lay ahead.

‘Shall I make scramblers?’ asked Ralph. She shook her head. She couldn’t bear the thought of food. ‘You’ve got to eat.’

‘Not now. Honestly. I’m beyond it.’

‘Tea.’ He grabbed the kettle and put it on the Aga. ‘That hospital tea was definitely made from scrapings off the factory floor.’

How could he be so jovial?

She stared at the dresser on the wall opposite. She could see Alice’s Noddy egg cup. It had been hers when she was small: a Noddy cup with a little blue felt hat with a bell on, to keep the egg warm. She thought about all the boiled eggs she’d made her daughter.

She could feel it coming. The grief. It was gathering speed, and was going to smash into her any moment. And this time, she didn’t have to brace herself to withstand it. This time, she could let it engulf her. She’d been through every emotion today. Shock. Fear. Anger. Fury. Worry. Relief. Then more worry, doubt, fear, anxiety … There was only so much you could take.

And being at the hospital had reminded her. Of the day she had said goodbye to Julius at the cottage hospital. It was two weeks before he had finally slipped away. She’d been in to see him; brought him the new Ian Rankin, which she was going to read to him because his eyes kept going blurry and he couldn’t concentrate.

She hadn’t been prepared for him telling her he didn’t want her to come in to see him again.

‘I feel OK today. But I know it’s just a temporary respite. Tomorrow I might be out of it. Or gone altogether. I want us to quit while we are ahead. I don’t want you here when I don’t know you are there. I don’t want you to watch me die. I want to say goodbye to you while I am still me. A pretty ropey version of me.’ He managed a self-deprecating smile. He was thin; his skin had an awful pallor; his hair was wispy. ‘But me.’

‘You can’t ask me to do that,’ she had whispered, appalled. She stroked his cheek. She loved every bone in his poor failing body.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to argue about it. It’s for the best.’

Their fingers had been entwined while they spoke. And she knew him well enough to know that he had thought this through, that what he was saying was right. Emilia was on her way home to be with her father. Sarah couldn’t be seen with him any more.

She held his hands in hers and kissed them. She kissed his forehead. She leant her cheek on his and held it there for as long as she could bear. She looked deep into his eyes, those eyes she had looked into so many times and seen herself.

She couldn’t see herself any more. He had shut her out. It was time for her to go, and he was preparing himself.

‘You’re the love of my life,’ she told him.

‘I’ll save you a place. Wherever I’m going,’ he said back. ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’

He gave a smile, and then he shut his eyes. It was his signal for her to go. She recognised that he couldn’t take any more. If she loved him, she had to leave him.

She drove home, staring at the road ahead. She felt nothing. She had shut down. It was the only way to cope. There was nothing in her that was able to deal with the horror of that final goodbye. She had wanted to climb into his bed and hold him forever. To die with him, if that were possible. Drift off into that final never-ending sleep with him in her arms.

She went to the folly when she got back. She curled up on the sofa with a cushion in her arms, folding herself into the smallest ball. There was a copy of Anna Karenina she had been reading. It was the last book Julius had given her. She tried to read it but the words were too small. She shut her eyes and prayed for sleep. She couldn’t bear to be awake. It was Dillon who found her, hours later, and shook her awake. She had looked up at him, wide-eyed, confused for a moment.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, and she nodded, slowly. She had to be. She had no choice.