Subject: Meeting
From: EleanorKeating@googlemail.co.uk
Date: 19/1/14
To: N.Wharton@QueenElizabeth.org.sa
Dear Nick,
I hope you are well.
I have reason to believe you might be in the UK around now. In which case, I was wondering if you would have the time to meet with me for, say, an hour at the very most? I am afraid it concerns matters of great sensitivity and seriousness connected to my sister Kat. Which is why I must stress that I will only be able to talk freely if you are able to come alone.
Sorry to fire such a bolt from the blue after so long.
I hope to hear back from you soon. My mob is: 07836569911.
Best wishes,
Eleanor Keating
Eleanor sat back in the café’s weather-beaten leather seat, chewing a rough bit of skin by her thumbnail. She had been writing and rewriting the email all morning and now only had a few minutes until Megan would be joining her for the January lunch that she had somehow never got around to cancelling. Her trepidations about getting together remained vivid, but so did a mounting desire to see her old friend.
It felt peculiar to be communicating with Nick as herself, and so formally too. Pangs had kept arriving, for how they had written before, when he thought she was Kat – the rush, every time, of hearing back from him, the clarity and directness of his thinking, the moreish glimpses of his playfulness.
Eleanor scowled at the screen. Truth mattered, she reminded herself; if there was one thing the last few weeks had taught her, it was that. No matter how old, or how horrific, the mere fact of facing up to reality brought its own comfort.
A stream of sunshine chose that moment to burst through the café window behind her, making the email hard to see. Eleanor stopped her re-reading and stabbed the send button, flopping back in her seat, her long dark curly hair splashing around her shoulders. The heat felt good on the back of her head, cradling the stiffness in her neck that had resulted from the new daily regime of hard work with which she had launched herself at the New Year. A string of private pupils was in place to help see her through to the summer. Better still, Trevor’s manuscript was starting to take shape at last, growing out of the paper mayhem round her laptop. Its paragraphs were not only double-spaced, spell-checked, chaptered and readable, but they had exactly the blend of comedy and poignancy that she had striven for and failed to achieve in all the years of abandoned attempts at fiction.
Since the rollercoaster of Christmas, the sentences had been flowing out of her. She was more settled in herself, that was part of it, Eleanor knew, still tangled with her grief and shock, but starting, sometimes, to feel a little distance from it too. That Howard, her once aloof and distant brother-in-law, was in the thick of this process with her, calling regularly now to check she was all right, working on a plan for bringing the children to London and taking her out to dinner, was wonderfully strengthening too, adding to the new sense of no longer facing all her troubles alone.
But, crucially, Eleanor was aware of having at last found the right ‘voice’ to tell Trevor’s story; not how Trevor spoke, but how he wished to be heard, the breakthrough being the recognition that the two were entirely different.
Megan blew into the café as Eleanor was putting away her laptop, turning heads with the ripples of cold January air from outside. She fought her way through the tables, several sales shopping bags bouncing on her arms, her square sturdy face, ruddy these days from her outdoor life, creased with sympathy and affection long before she reached the table.
Standing up to greet her, Eleanor’s heart flared with an ache, for the message now winging its way to Nick, and for the dear familiar figure fighting to reach her. It had to be two years since they had met, Eleanor realised in amazement as they fell to hugging, both talking at once through tears.
‘Oh god, you poor thing… and poor Kat… unspeakable…’ Megan choked, winning out in the fight to be heard and scrutinising Eleanor’s face anxiously. ‘And going so quiet on me for so long… not a line, not a word, nothing. But you look… okay… good, in fact. Are you okay?’
‘Yes… no… I don’t know… a lot better, anyway.’
They ate bowls of soup and crusty bread while Megan fired questions with her customary directness, wanting to know all the details of Kat’s illness and what Eleanor had been through. As they talked, Eleanor could feel herself warming under the rare and relaxing pleasure of being liked for oneself. Megan’s face had grown more drawn over the years, and her hair, cropped into a new boyishly short style, glinted with the occasional premature thread of silver, but they were the same people they had always been; the same two girls who had forged a friendship two decades before. But as the lunch progressed Eleanor could feel the guilt of her betrayal with Billy sitting inside her like a hot coal, making everything still not quite as good as it should have been.
When she got to Kat and her father, Megan went very still. ‘Are you going to tell anyone… authorities?’
‘Oh no. I am certain Kat wouldn’t have wanted that. Nor Howard, for that matter.’
‘What about counselling then? For you?’ urged Megan.
Eleanor managed a grateful smile and then tried to explain about Trevor and the reviving effect of his kindness. ‘I hit a sort of rock bottom, but he arrived on the doorstep – literally – and nursed me through. It’s like I was sick, and now I am getting better. And Howard has been brilliant too, like a proper friend. So much makes sense now, you see, and I am sure that’s why. Like how Kat used to be, back in the day… do you remember? So hostile and difficult and—’
‘She took Nick Wharton from you,’ Megan blurted. ‘That’s why you two fell out.’
Eleanor eyed her old friend ruefully. ‘Yes, but by then there was already a lot of…’ She faltered, wanting with her new hindsight to find exactly the right word. ‘…distance between her and me. A terrible distance. Kat put it there, for reasons I am at least starting to understand. But yes,’ she conceded, sighing, ‘the Nick business didn’t exactly help matters.’
‘She knew you liked him and she took him – that’s what you said,’ Megan insisted stoutly, clearly recalling Eleanor’s desolation on returning to college after this act of sisterly treachery, how hard she and Billy and their small band of friends had fought to get her spirits back up. ‘You spent the next two years avoiding him. Till he left. Then you started the Igor thing.’
‘I did,’ Eleanor admitted ruefully, privately resolving not to bring Megan up to date on the Nick Wharton front. ‘But, actually, Meg, no one “takes” anyone. It’s one of the big things I’ve recently got my head around. Feelings aren’t commodities. Nick Wharton fell in love with my little sister. End of. Love happens like that. Boom. Choice doesn’t come into it. Kat just went with the flow… the wrong flow, as it turned out… I never knew the details of their relationship, as you know – I never wanted to…’ Eleanor hesitated, remembering some of the recent insights inadvertently granted her by Nick. ‘But Kat was shitty to him, I know that much. So the poor man got his comeuppance. The point being,’ she concluded in a rush, wanting to close the subject, ‘I don’t blame Kat a jot. Not any more.’
Megan was watching her tenderly. ‘The two of you obviously had time to straighten a lot out. I’m so pleased.’
‘I miss her beyond words,’ said Eleanor quietly. ‘She was my baby sister and I failed to take care of her…’
‘No, you are not doing that,’ Megan interjected fiercely, grabbing her hand and squeezing it. ‘I forbid it. Kat made her decisions. You cannot blame yourself for them. Okay?’
Eleanor nodded meekly. ‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath, swallowing away the urge to cry, still never far from any conversation about her sister. ‘Tell me about these blooming cows of yours instead then, and who in London wanted to talk to you about them.’
Megan launched into an energetic account of the joys of rearing Red Highlands on the Welsh–Shropshire borders and the TV programme featuring specialist cattle that had summoned her to town for a meeting that morning. She then began pulling out her trophies from the January sales, all items of clothing for her sons, apart from a dark green fleece size XL which was for Billy. She held it up for Eleanor’s full appreciation. ‘Good colour on Bill, don’t you think? He’s got a bit of a tum these days.’ She pulled a goofy face.
‘Fantastic.’ Eleanor was fighting a fresh yearning to come clean. She and Billy had been so drunk. Everyone knew people did stupid things when they were drunk. Maybe Megan would understand. Truth might matter, Eleanor reflected frantically, but did that justify causing unnecessary pain? Kat clearly hadn’t thought so. Kat had thought protecting Eleanor mattered more than anything. Eleanor blinked slowly. Her sister might be gone, but she was understanding her better and that felt good.
Megan was still talking, about underwear now. She had bought a thong and matching skimpy bra – gleefully flashed over the top of a little bag – which she hoped would make Billy happy. She was giggling, mischievous, content.
Eleanor grinned at her. Shattering that contentment was beyond her. It would not be the act of a true friend.
A huge blue velvet butterfly had somehow got trapped in Doctor Wharton’s room. It bounced along the wide polished panes of the glass that framed the even wider seascape of Cape Town sky outside and then flew at the Monet print hanging by the door, coming to settle on the bridge spanning the water lilies.
Pat Driscoll watched it over the rim of her glasses before returning her attention to the desk computer. She had come in to look for a couple of files and have a general sort-out. There had been a lot of stuff to deal with since the accident, reassigning patients, collating letters for files, checking post, but it was mostly done with now. The consulting room was starting to feel empty. Even the thank-you letters from past happy patients, pinned to the cork board behind the door, seemed to hang with a new listlessness, like petals ready to fall.
Swimming, who would have thought it? Pat shuddered, thinking of the stairs down to the shared pool at the new development where she lived and how many times she had told her two young children never to venture there alone.
The emails arriving for Dr Wharton were usually advertisements of various kinds now – drug companies mainly. Pat worked her way through the latest batch with quick, practised fingers, aware of a certain guilty pleasure at sitting in her erstwhile employer’s big comfortable rotating chair. Only when she came across what turned out to be a personal email, from someone called Eleanor Keating, did she hesitate. There had been a couple of other pieces of private correspondence in recent weeks which she had forwarded to Mrs Wharton without a thought. But this one was clearly different, not just because of its hint of real hidden drama, but because of the unequivocal suggestion that it was a matter for Dr Wharton’s eyes alone.
Pat swung the big chair round in circles, trying to think. Dr Wharton was such a nice man that she couldn’t imagine him ever doing anything untoward. From the start he had been so sweet with her, never taking her or her time for granted in the way the previous doctor she had worked for had done.
She looked over at Dr Wharton’s most recent desk photograph of the stunning wife and the two still gawky daughters, legs like gazelles and with their big, full-lipped smiles. They were a family that had everything, but there was little to be envious of now, Pat thought sadly. An indicator, if one needed it, that the most solid-looking things could be snatched away in an instant.
Pat glanced again at Eleanor’s email and then picked up the desk phone. She dialled the mobile number it gave, first forgetting to add the UK code and then a second time with all the correct digits. She braced herself as it rang. But no one answered and after a while it cut out without even going to an answering machine. Pat sat still for a few moments before, in a quick rash movement, stabbing the delete button. She had had a go at telephoning, after all. And what did any of it matter now, when there was no question of Dr Wharton going to England, or anywhere else for that matter.