At Home with the Templetons

Gracie could tell Spencer was in one of his reckless moods from the moment she and Tom met him at the railway station in Rome. She wasn’t surprised when he produced a bag of dope out of his pocket and rolled it into a joint as they drove through the labyrinthine Rome streets, making their way out to the small villa apartment in the hills north of the city that she and Tom had rented cheaply.

It was fun at first. They went sightseeing, sunbathed, listened to music, had long lunches, spent hours deciding where to eat each night. On the fourth evening, Spencer’s final night with them, it was Gracie who chose the restaurant. She’d read about it in a guidebook. It was outside Rome, along a stretch of twisting country roads, apparently one of the region’s best-kept secrets.

‘A best-kept secret printed in a guidebook?’ Tom said. ‘Wow, that is secretive.’

The evening started well, the three of them having fun, laughing, being entertained once again by Spencer’s stories. Until he started ordering shots of different liqueurs: grappa; limoncello; sambuca. Gracie bowed out, having volunteered to be the driver. She was surprised when Tom kept going, meeting Spencer drink for drink for the next two rounds.

‘Good for you, Tom,’ Spencer said, raising his glass. ‘To the final days of our carefree youth.’

‘He’s a bad influence on you,’ she tried to joke, when Spencer left to go to the bar again.

Her feeling of unease grew from that moment. The night took on a different mood. She felt one step behind them both. They seemed to be talking too loudly, laughing too much, while she grew quieter. She wanted Tom to notice, wanted him to do what he’d done that time in London, take her away so it was just the two of them, not the three of them, her on the sidelines.

She was the one who called a halt, as Spencer stood to buy another round, the fourth or was it their fifth? ‘No, Spencer. We have to go. Now.’ She went to the bathroom to escape the taunting that she knew would come, Spencer calling her a spoilsport, a killjoy.

When she came back, he was gone. Tom was standing by the front door, looking out over the dark hills and valleys, the lights of Rome visible as a distant haze.

Tom leaned down, kissed the top of her head. ‘Mad at you? At my Gracie? Never.’

Spencer was in the driver’s seat when she and Tom got there. The door was open, the engine revving. ‘Sporty little number,’ he called across.

Spencer held up his hands in surrender. ‘Jesus, Gracie. What’s happened to you? Tom, how do you stand it? It must be like dating a fishwife. God help you if this lasts between you. You’re young, Tom. You should be carefree like me, not having someone nipping at your heels every minute like her.’

That stung Gracie. That was too close to the bone, too close to how she’d been feeling all night. ‘Fine,’ she said, too loudly. ‘You drive, Spencer. You get us home.’

‘I am drunk,’ Spencer said. ‘You are drunk. We are all drunk. Do you think I could teach English?’

There was a dance between Spencer and Tom then, exaggerated politeness, each opening a car door for each other. Gracie sat upright in the driver’s seat, furious, wanting to ignore them, wanting her brother to go away. Eventually they took their seats, Tom in the front beside her, her brother in the back.

As she slowly drove the car down the restaurant’s driveway, then indicated left, Spencer started singing ‘That’s Amore’ in an exaggerated comic opera voice.

Tom joined in. She stayed silent, concentrating on driving on the right-hand side. Their apartment was only a few kilometres away. The road ahead was dark. That was one good thing about staying this far out in the countryside. They had the road to themselves.

Tom and Spencer kept singing, both of them trying to make each other laugh with exaggerated operatic flourishes, building up to a crescendo. ‘That’s amore …’

As Spencer sang too loudly right behind her, he started tugging at her plait, deliberately trying to annoy her. She ignored it the first time, just reached back and swatted his hand away. Moments later he did it again. She tried to swat him away again. ‘Stop it, Spencer. It’s not funny.’ The third time he did it, still singing, pulling even harder on her plait, her anger was like a hot rush inside. She spun around to shout at him. ‘I told you, Spencer. Stop it!’

Their song was still in her head when she woke up the next morning in the hospital. She remembered a shout, from Tom or was it Spencer? ‘Gracie, look out!’ The lights of a truck appearing over the hill, headed right towards them. The sound of a horn. Screeching. Their brakes, the truck’s brakes. Then feeling took over from sound. The moment of impact, slow, slow at first, and then everything turned into fast motion, as she jerked forward, the seatbelt like a whip across her chest, holding her, her neck twisting, her chest hitting against the wheel, falling back, the car all motion, wrong motion, filled with sound, more screeches and bangs and shouting, her shouting, Spencer’s shouting. Tom’s silence.

For just a few seconds, everything was quiet, deathly quiet, but there was still movement, their car still seemed to be moving, and she was dizzy with it. What had happened? She sat up, somehow, touched her head, felt liquid. Blood. Everything was dark. She heard whimpering. Was it her? Tom? Spencer?

She said their names over and again. She was sure she said their names, but there was no sound in return. Was she dead? Had she died? Were they all dead?

‘We’ve had a crash,’ Spencer said. The stupidest, most obvious thing in the world to say.

‘We need to get out,’ she said. She could smell petrol. The car was going to explode.

Tom’s body was slumped away from her, against his door. She had to get him out now. Quickly. She somehow got her door open, feeling a sharp pain in her chest as she leaned forward, a worse, tearing pain in her ankle as she got out. She kept moving. She had to get Tom out. She fell, got up again, another blast of pain. She heard crying, panting, and realised it was coming from her.

The truck driver was getting out of his cabin. He was walking. His head was bleeding, but he was moving. He was shouting at them, shouting at them in Italian they couldn’t understand. As Gracie reached Tom’s side of the car, she heard another car stop, a person get out, more Italian being spoken, heard the truck driver speak into his phone, shout into his phone, heard polizia and ambulanza. She was beside Tom now, trying to open his door, but the handle wouldn’t work. She could see him in the flickering light from the truck’s indicators. She said his name over and again. ‘Tom? Tom?’ The glass of the window was cracked but not smashed. He was lying at a bad angle, she could see that. His eyes were shut. He wasn’t moving. He was there. He was dead. She’d killed him.

She grabbed her brother’s hand so tightly she felt a jolt of pain up her arm. She was crying, the tears were flooding down her face but she couldn’t wipe them away. ‘I think he’s dead, Spencer. He’s —’

She could only stare through the glass, put her free hand to the glass. Spencer was right. Tom was moving. His eyes were still shut but she saw him move his arm. She called his name, again and again, still pulling at the door, as if she could open it with her bare hands, pushing at the window as if she could get to him through the glass. She pushed again and heard the glass crack, like gunshot in the silent night air.

‘Leave it. Don’t touch him. Leave him.’ An American accent. A man, mid-fifties, bearded. In charge. ‘Step back. You need to step back. Don’t push the glass on him. Don’t try and move him. If his spine is injured, you could cripple him for life. Leave him.’

‘He’s my boyfriend. I need him to know I’m here.’ She said his name again. There was blood on his forehead. ‘Tom, can you hear me?’ She couldn’t stop saying his name.

Sirens. Lights. More noise. The American voice again. ‘Miss, step back. Let the ambulance people through.’

They made her stand far back, too far back. She could do nothing but watch as the huddle of men and women spoke, as they decided the door was too damaged, they’d have to cut him out. Her ankle pain was almost unbearable but she wouldn’t move. Spencer was in the ambulance. She saw him talking to the nurse, smiling even. He was smiling. They called for her. She shook her head, shook their hands off her. She had to be there with Tom, had to let him know she was there, saying his name, trying to make herself heard over the terrible, ear-splitting sound of the cutting equipment.

With Spencer beside her again, she watched as the ambulance crew freed the still-unconscious Tom, as they gently, carefully placed a collar around his neck, eased him on to a hard stretcher. Her hands shook, her body shook, tears ran down her face. She saw the ambulance door shut, watched a second ambulance arrive for her and Spencer. Two policemen coming towards them, asking in accented English, ‘Who was the driver?’

She must have fainted then. Shock and loss of blood. When she woke up the first time, she was in the ambulance. The second time, she woke in the hospital, with her forehead bandaged, her ankle in plaster. It took an hour to find someone who spoke enough English to answer the question she couldn’t stop asking. ‘Is he all right?’

‘Not my brother. The other man. Tom. Is Tom all right? The man in the crash with me.’

Spencer had phoned Eleanor, she learnt later. While she was taken into the emergency ward, given brain scans and x-rays, he had telephoned Eleanor in London. ‘We’d been out to dinner, having a few drinks. Gracie was driving and she ran into a truck.’

They took blood samples while she was unconscious to check her alcohol levels. She was under the limit. But it was too late to change the story that Spencer had unwittingly spread. They’d been out eating, drinking and then she had driven. She was a drunk driver.

It took Eleanor eight hours to get to them from London. Gracie cried as soon as she saw her mother’s anxious face. Eleanor was crying too.

‘Mum, I’m so sorry.’ Gracie couldn’t stop apologising. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Gracie, it was an accident. An accident. We all know that. Nina will understand.’

Her mother thought she was apologising for what had happened to Tom. ‘Is Nina here already?’

‘I have to see him,’ she said, trying to get out of the bed, pushing against her mother’s hands as she gently, firmly moved her back.

‘Gracie, your ankle’s badly broken in two places, you’ve got bruised ribs, a bad cut on your head. You have to stay still. And he’s in intensive care, darling. You can’t see him yet. Not yet.’

It was thirty-six hours before Nina arrived in Rome. Gracie heard her voice late on the second afternoon, outside in the corridor. Confined to her bed, she could only sit up and wait for her to come in. But Nina didn’t come in. She stayed outside, talking, shouting at someone. At Eleanor, Gracie soon realised.

Nina’s voice was more like a cry, her words tumbling over each other in her panic and shock. Gracie heard Nina shout Tom’s name, say something about Tom, then say her name, heard her shout ‘drink-driving’. But she hadn’t been drink-driving. She’d been under the limit. Who’d told Nina she’d been drunk? She waited for her mother to tell Nina it wasn’t true, but there was only silence. They had moved out of the corridor, out of earshot.

Gracie could only wait, her hands clenched, praying for Nina to come in, come straight to her bedside, to hug her, to let her say sorry, to say it was an accident, to understand, the two of them feeling this together, loving Tom, helping each other, helping him, whatever the future was going to bring …

When Eleanor came in ten minutes later, she was on her own. Gracie tried to sit up. ‘I need to see them, Mum. I have to see Tom and Nina now. I wasn’t drunk. I promise I wasn’t. It was an accident. I have to tell Nina the truth.’

‘She’s too upset to see you yet, Gracie. And they’re still not letting anyone but her see Tom.’

‘Is he going to die?’ Her voice rose. ‘Is that what you mean? Mum, no. He can’t —’

‘Gracie, no, not that. It’s his spine. There’s serious damage. They think —’

She couldn’t hear it yet. ‘Please, Mum, please. Ask Nina if I can see Tom. If I can see her. I need to talk to her too.’ She saw something in her mother’s face. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

She sat up then, chilled by the tone in her mother’s voice, by the expression on her face. ‘You have to let me see him. Please, let me talk to Nina.’

‘Gracie, I’m sorry, but you can’t. He’s being moved to another hospital this afternoon. One with a spinal unit. She has to make all the arrangements.’

She cried until her chest hurt even more, until there were no more tears, but it made no difference. Eleanor just said the same thing over and again.

The return to London was a nightmare, slow, painful, difficult. The days that followed were worse. Confined to the house, unable to put any weight on her ankle, she waited for a phone call from Nina, from Tom. All she could do was ask her mother again and again to please make contact, please help. She had to know he was all right. She had to talk to him. She didn’t understand. Why wasn’t her mother calling Nina? Why wasn’t Nina calling Eleanor? Gracie needed to tell her the truth. She hadn’t been drunk. It was an accident, a terrible accident.

Spencer came to her room a week later, the day he started work with the film company. His scratches were already healed. It was the first time they’d been alone together since the accident. He’d never acknowledged his part in it, the fact he’d been so drunk, his pulling at her hair. That didn’t matter to her. All that mattered now was Tom.

‘No more than you do. Just what Mum told you. Nina doesn’t want to talk to any of us.’

A week later there was still no word. She made herself get out of her bed, ignoring the pain in her ankle, made her way downstairs to the kitchen where her mother was standing, staring out the window.

‘Is he dead, Mum? Is Tom dead and you’re just not telling me?’ She began to cry again. She couldn’t stop crying. She had to know something. She begged her mother to help her. To find out something. Anything.

It took another week of pleading before Eleanor asked an Italian-speaking teacher at her school to help. With Gracie beside her, the teacher rang all the major hospitals in and around Rome, pleading for information, asking for names of specialist clinics, spinal wards. On the seventh call to a clinic south of Rome, they found him. Yes, there was a Tom Donovan there. A young Australian man. Eleanor’s colleague asked as many questions as she could before the hospital clerk hung up. ‘He’s alive, Gracie. No brain damage. He’s conscious, talking. He’s got movement from the waist up, but there’s serious lower spinal damage. They’ve operated, but it’s too early to know the exact situation.’

Three days later, a letter arrived from Nina, addressed to Eleanor, not Gracie. No greeting, no signature. Just hard, black letters in the centre of a page.

My son will never walk again. We are in the process of arranging to bring him back to Australia. Tom and I want nothing more to do with your family. I will leave Templeton Hall immediately.

Gracie read the letter a dozen times, searching for something she knew wasn’t there. A message to her from Tom. He would want to talk to her, she knew he would. She had to talk to him. She needed to talk to him. She had to say sorry. Why wouldn’t Nina let her? Why wouldn’t her mother understand? Help her? She pleaded with her again, to travel to Rome with her, to see Nina and Tom before they left for Australia.

‘Gracie, it’s very difficult, I know, but we have to accept what she says. She’s his mother.’

‘But he was my —’ Her what? Her boyfriend? Her almost fiancé? She could see it in everyone’s eyes, not just her mother’s. You and Tom were just kids. It wasn’t serious. Put it behind you. It’s just one of those tragic things.

Eleanor was deaf to her pleading. ‘Gracie, there’s nothing more I can do. Nina couldn’t be any clearer. I’m sorry.’

But Gracie couldn’t understand Nina’s actions. She couldn’t understand her mother’s behaviour, either. She needed Eleanor to be on her side, to say, ‘I’ll keep phoning Nina, Gracie. Don’t worry, she’ll understand, once the shock passes.’ But her mother wouldn’t.

‘What did Nina say to you at the hospital?’ She remembered her mother’s expression, after the two of them had been talking, after Nina had been crying outside Gracie’s room that day. ‘Did you have a fight with Nina?’

‘What did she say to you? Was it about me and Tom? Was she unhappy about us?’

‘Gracie, you saw her letter. Nina doesn’t want anything to do with us again. We have to respect that.’

How could she respect that? How could she even understand that? Nina had been her friend. That had been one of the extra, wonderful things about what had happened with Tom, knowing that Nina, her friend Nina, would be happy for them both. Hadn’t they been friends for so many years? How could she just cut them out of her life like this?

‘I’m going to go to Australia,’ she said, a week later. ‘I have to find him.’

‘Don’t, Gracie. Don’t make it any harder on yourself than it already is.’

‘I have to see him. I have to say sorry to him. Can’t I at least write to him?’

‘I don’t know where they are. All I know from our solicitor is she’s already moved out of the Hall.’

Someone had to know where they were. One day, when her mother was out, Gracie rang the Castlemaine police station. She asked for the inspector who’d been there when she was a child. He’d long retired, she was told. She didn’t know anyone else’s name. ‘I need to speak to someone who knows Nina Donovan. Nina and Tom Donovan.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m new to the area myself.’ He sounded young. ‘Who is this?’

She thought of Nina’s sister in Cairns, then realised she didn’t know her surname or where she worked. There was no way of tracking her down. She tried hospitals in Victoria, in New South Wales, in South Australia. If Tom wasn’t at home yet, he might still be in a ward somewhere. No one would give out any information.

She tried the cricket academy in Adelaide. She’d decided to ask to speak to Tom’s friend Stuart Phillips. He would know, surely. A cheery female voice answered. Gracie’s heart started to thump. The lie came easily. ‘I’m calling from London, from the London Cricketer magazine. Could I please speak to Stuart Phillips?’

‘I’m sorry. Mr Phillips is on long-service leave. Can anyone else help you?’

She made herself ask. ‘I was hoping to get an update on Tom Donovan’s condition.’

‘I don’t know the name, sorry. Let me ask someone else.’ She heard the receptionist ask a person beside her. ‘Do you know anyone called Tom Donovan? Some magazine in London wants an update on him.’

Her father came home to London to see her and Spencer. It didn’t help. Her mother greeted her father with such loathing Gracie wanted to scream at them both. ‘Forget about your problems for a minute, would you? Can’t you think about us, about me for once?’ From their shocked expressions she realised she’d said it aloud.

He returned the next day when her mother was out, the timing deliberate, Gracie knew. He brought her a jigsaw, grapes, a bag of sweets, as if she was eight, in hospital having her tonsils out.

But if her mother couldn’t help her, perhaps her father could. He and Nina had always got on well. ‘I need to talk to Tom, Dad. Talk to Nina. Can’t you help me find her? Find him? Ring the solicitor in Castlemaine? He’ll tell you where they are, surely.’

‘Gracie, I’m so sorry. No, I can’t. I’ve seen the letter. Nina’s made it clear how she feels.’

But there was no one more sorry than Gracie herself. Tom would never walk again and it was her fault. She started writing to them, to Tom, to Nina, to both of them, many letters each week, sent to every address she could think of in the hope that even one would find its way to them. Heartfelt letters, filled with remorse, anguish, sorrow. She begged her mother to post them for her. She saw the worry in her mother’s eyes. Two days later, she asked her aunt Hope as well. Hope had been a regular visitor since the accident. She’d even sat with Gracie sometimes, brought her lunch, magazines, books. Gracie grasped at any kindness on offer. To her relief, Hope agreed to post her letters too.

A month passed, then another. She should have been back at university but she couldn’t face it. She used her still-painful ankle as her excuse. The truth was the outside world seemed too frightening. She kept writing her letters, but there was still no word at all from Australia. Once her ankle finally healed and she could walk without crutches, she forced herself to go to the British Library to read the Australian newspapers, desperate to find some mention of him, of an accident in Italy involving a promising cricketer. If it had made the news, she couldn’t find it.

She tried one more time. ‘Please, Mum. Can’t you try and find Nina? She was your friend. She’d talk to you. Please help her to understand. Please, Mum.’

All Gracie could do was keep writing to him. If Nina wouldn’t answer her, perhaps Tom would, eventually. For the next two months, she sent two or three letters a week. She told him how much she cared about him. How much she loved him. How she was thinking of him every day. How sorry she was. At night, every night, she kept trying to imagine him now, unable to walk, unable to run. The images tormented her. She tried to keep other pictures in her head. Tom on the boat to the Isle of Skye, pulling her up the stairs on to the top deck, the light of the water silver and magical. Him in that Italian piazza, face to the sun, his long legs stretched out. The feel of his skin, his body, against her in bed. Then those images made her feel even more distraught. There was no peaceful place in her mind any more.

A fifth month passed. She felt like her own life had stalled. She hadn’t gone back to university. She was still living at home. Everyone else seemed to be getting on with their lives. Spencer never mentioned the accident. All he talked about was his courier job and the film world. Her sisters’ lives were busy and productive too. Charlotte’s nanny-training business was going from strength to strength. Audrey had surprised the whole family with her news – she and her husband, Greg, had decided to move to New Zealand. She visited Gracie the day before their flight, so happy, so excited, talking non-stop. ‘I really hope you get back to university soon, Gracie,’ she’d said. ‘Have you thought about doing some voluntary work in the meantime? It might help take your mind off things.’

But Gracie couldn’t think of anything but the accident. What else was there to think about?

She knew her parents were especially worried about her. Her father rang once a fortnight, sent her even more postcards, as well as books and magazines from the countries and cities he was working in. They didn’t help. She found it impossible to read. She found everything difficult. She barely managed to speak to Charlotte or Audrey whenever they rang. What was the point? She could never make them understand. Her mother tried to help her see reason. ‘Gracie, it was a terrible accident, but accidents happen. You have to try to move on.’ But she couldn’t move on. How could she? There was nowhere for her to go.

She kept writing to Tom. A letter a week. Sometimes a page, sometimes more, pouring her heart out to him, telling him everything she could, even trying to cheer him up sometimes, with little stories, memories of their travelling together, anything to try to keep a connection between them. It became her job. She structured her day around it. She could spend hours on each letter, choosing the best words, redrafting each one until it was perfect. Every morning she checked the mat for the post, her fingers crossed, endlessly hopeful that today would be the day she would hear something, anything, back from him or from Nina. Anything. It was the silence that was killing her.

Six months after the accident, a letter arrived from Australia in the morning post. It was addressed to her. Nina’s handwriting.

Eleanor had gone to the supermarket. Gracie was home alone. She was usually home. She’d formally withdrawn from university. She rarely ventured far from her neighbourhood. She found it too difficult travelling around London now. There were too many places that reminded her of Tom. She picked up the letter from the mat and held it in her hands. Her heart started thumping and her hands shook as she carefully, slowly opened it. She wanted it to be from Tom but Nina was the next best thing.

Stop writing to us. We’ve nothing to say to you and we can never forgive you.

Gracie was still by the front door, crying and holding the letter, when her mother arrived home an hour later.