20 September 2004
It’s like someone flicked a switch: the secret one that turns Tim into the ideal partner.
On the hot August night after I get my A level resit results – the AA I needed four years ago – he takes me to the Regency on the front, buys us cava and a frighteningly large seafood platter and promises he won’t give up till I’m a doctor.
He helps me with my med school applications, researching the best places for mature students, sending off for booklets about how to get in, adding the right buzzwords to each section of the form. Meanwhile, he’s passed his resits and is a model final-year student. He’s even joined Narcotics Anonymous – his suggestion, though I can only imagine how painful he finds it sitting in a room talking to strangers about his feelings.
He does more hands-on caring for Elaine to give me space, yet he also refuses to do certain things when he believes she can do them herself. To my surprise – maybe his, too – she cooperates more than before and becomes quite self-reliant.
Change is good.
I love him.
But.
Isn’t there always a but?
But.
I don’t know if it’s enough to save our relationship.
We are trying our hardest and I don’t want to rush into any decisions, at least not until after Tim’s finals early next year.
Joel is out of the picture, too. That night after the triathlon, I knew it was only euphoria that made him think he loved me. On the drive home, he was quiet, perhaps because he was embarrassed, or because of what I told him about me doing the CPR. Either way, he’s kept his distance since then.
It makes things simpler for both of us.
Once I popped into the Girasol, which he’s running while Ant tries to settle his parents back in Spain. Four months ago, Joel couldn’t run a brush through his hair. I’d been worried he might have relapsed, but he looked well, even though he didn’t seem to want me to hang around.
Would these things have happened to Tim or Joel without my help? I am not vain enough to take all the credit, and I am trying very hard not to be a control freak. Still, I pushed Tim and Joel in the right direction. Knowing that is almost as much of a buzz as jumping out of a plane.
But now it’s time to put myself first.
Winter creeps up on me, but suddenly it’s mid-December, season of flu and alcohol poisoning. At least being busy makes time go faster.
Tim’s most of the way through his Ob/Gyn placement – thankfully, for both their sakes, he wasn’t on duty when my sister gave birth to my gorgeous niece, Ava, a Bonfire Night baby. He’s finding it tough juggling the placement and his finals revision, but he’s still pulling his weight. Whenever I get home from a twelve-hour shift, the house is immaculate, dinner is ready and he’s almost pathologically upbeat.
‘Got plans tonight?’ my colleague Mo asks as we mummify ourselves in fleece layers in the locker room, bracing ourselves for the hail we can hear ricocheting off the pavement outside.
‘Seeing an old friend.’ The slightest charge goes through me when I say it. The same charge I felt when he called asking to meet.
Joel picks me up in Ant’s van, and when I climb in, he leans over to give me a lightning fast peck on the cheek. Yes, old friends, that’s what we are.
As he drives along the front, the radio plays Girls Aloud murdering ‘I’ll Stand by You’. Wind whips across from the sea and the string lights look as though they’ll be torn free. I take surreptitious looks at him and am pleased with what I see. Joel looks even fitter than he did for the triathlon, and he sits upright in the driver’s seat.
We turn left up Old Steine and head out of the centre. ‘Where are you taking me?’
‘Magical mystery tour, remember? Settle back and enjoy the ride.’
We travel up the Lewes Road, then take a right and wind through the twisting roads of the estate. Joel parks outside a community hall that reminds me of the St John Ambulance Cadets HQ, where Tim and I spent countless hours on moody nights like this one.
‘Ready to find out what I’ve been up to?’
Joel pushes the wooden door open. Inside, a bearish man in a tracksuit is laying out gym mats, hoops and skipping ropes on the worn parquet floor. When he looks up, I realize he has a ring of tinsel around his neck, like a dog collar.
‘All right, Greenaway. How’s your week going?’
Joel goes over to the man, and they shake hands in a blokeish way before he calls me over. ‘Kerry, come and meet Steve. He’s been keeping me out of trouble for a few months now.’
Steve can’t help crushing my fingers in his spade-sized paw.
‘Hi, I’m a friend of Joel’s—’ I start to say.
‘I think you’re more than that, aren’t you, darling? Joel told me the whole story.’
‘Er, no—’ What the hell has Joel been saying?
‘I mean, you brought him back to life, didn’t you? That makes you a lot more than a friend, in my eyes. A guardian angel, in fact.’
Joel glances at me and smiles. It’s OK. He’s forgiven me for lying to him about the CPR.
Forgiven me for saving his life.
I need to change the subject. ‘So . . . what’s happening here?’
‘It’s our rehab class,’ Steve says, laying out more pieces of equipment. ‘Joel’s been coming for a few months now, haven’t you, kid?’
Is this drug rehab? But the people who’re arriving behind us don’t look like thrill-seekers. Mostly they’re portly men of my dad’s age or older, except for one skeletal younger guy who seems barely able to take more than a few steps at a time. There’s a Christmas theme: Santa hats, velour reindeer antlers, snowflake socks.
Joel is next to me. ‘Guessed yet?’
When I shake my head, he unzips his fleece – his T-shirt rides up, revealing his flat belly and the line of hair disappearing down past his waistline. I have to look away.
‘Ta-da!’ he says, pointing at the logo on his top.
‘Coast Along Heart Charity,’ I read aloud. ‘Oh! This is cardiac rehab.’ I smile, but it’s not good news. Joel’s confidence – or his health – must have taken a nosedive to be going for something this gentle after completing our triathlon: cardiac rehab is for heart patients who can barely climb the stairs.
‘Starter’s orders, guys and gals!’ Steve calls out, and people take up stations in different parts of the gym. ‘Any hospital admissions in the last week, symptoms you need to report? No? Excellent job. Music, maestro, please!’
It’s Joel who turns on the CD player and the urgent rhythm of ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ blasts out of the speaker.
Joel walks over to Steve at the front, winks at me and claps his hands in time to the music. ‘All right, let’s warm up with a light march.’
He’s not participating in the class: he’s leading it. What a relief.
He catches my eye and grins. ‘And that includes you, Kerry Smith! There are no shirkers here.’
Joel encourages, cajoles, laughs, performs. He’s good. Very good.
And as he demonstrates the exercises, he has his grace back. I haven’t seen him move so effortlessly since the last night of 1999.
Joel and Steve take it in turns to lead different sections, making a great double act. CPR anthems keep popping up – ‘Stayin’ Alive’, ‘I Will Survive’ – and I realize it’s an in-joke, and that the gallows humour that keeps us sane in the ambulance control pit is important to these patients, too.
After the class ends, Joel comes over, his face and body glowing. ‘Well?’
‘I approve! What gave you the idea?’
‘After the triathlon, I realized I’d been moping about for roughly four years too long. Decided I needed something else to do. I googled “heart” and “volunteering”.’
‘You’re a natural.’ I’ve spent so long teasing and nagging him that paying a compliment feels awkward. ‘So, what now?’
‘Now it’s party time.’
The Coasters, as they call themselves, are having a Christmas get together in the Anchor nearby. Partners are invited along too, filling a big section of the snug.
‘This your girlfriend, Joel?’
‘You’re punching above your weight, mate!’
I blush, but Joel is shaking his head. ‘Not my girlfriend, she’s too good for me. But she was my lifesaver.’
‘Oh, come and sit with me, sweetheart,’ one of the women says, budging up and pouring me a glass of red. ‘We can swap war stories.’
Her name is Ali, and she’s married to Luke, the thin man who looks so much sicker than the others. ‘Most of the guys have only had trivial stuff like heart attacks or stents or quadruple bypasses. But Luke had a cardiac arrest, like Joel.’
She tells me that her husband, fit as a fiddle and a big deal in the local tennis league, went to bed one night and she woke up to hear him gasping. She couldn’t wake him and she called 999. ‘It felt like it was happening to someone else. They told me what to do and . . .’
Her eyes are huge and haunted as she remembers. It’s the side we never see in the control room.
‘He’s OK, though, right?’
Ali glances up at Luke. ‘They say he’s doing well. His memory is crap and he gets very tired. He’s a teacher and, at the moment, I can’t see how he’ll be able to do that job again. I hope it’ll get better . . .’
‘And you?’
‘Oh, I’m fine!’ she says. ‘I mean, I don’t sleep that well. I get nightmares about waking and finding him dead next to me in the morning . . .’ She stops suddenly and I realize her husband is watching her closely, and she grins back, though it looks strained. ‘Really, we’ve been so lucky. And seeing how well Joel is, what, nearly five years after his arrest, gives us both hope. Did he recover quickly?’
The question stumps me. Physically, yes. But mentally – should I lie to reassure her?
I scan the room for Joel. He’s in the centre of the group standing by the bar, telling stories and laughing. When he sees me, he raises his bottle of Coke and winks. Happiness glows inside me, a football-sized sensation of warmth and acceptance.
‘Joel had his struggles, believe me. But I think he’s on the right track again now.’
‘And what about you, Kerry? You gave him CPR too, didn’t you? Are you OK?’
No one has asked me this before. I could tell her how hard it’s been, that saving his life still affects mine to this day. But that doesn’t have to be her story. It’s better if she focuses on the positives.
‘I’m fine. I’m just grateful I could help.’
On the drive home, we talk about the Coasters and Joel tells me he has plans. He’s doing an online nutrition and personal training course. ‘Only a basic one but I really enjoy it. And this is me, the kid who paid zero attention at school. I might apply for a full-time diploma, even a degree afterwards.’
‘About time you got your shit together.’
‘Did you like them? The guys?’
I’m touched that my opinion matters to him. ‘Very much. And you’re already helping people. That guy, Luke: it’s early days for him but his wife says he’s so encouraged by seeing how fit you are. Hey, you could even start playing football again.’
He focuses on the road. ‘No. I’ll never play again.’
‘What, not even a kickabout when you have a family?’
Another silence. ‘I’m never having kids. In case my faulty heart –’ he taps his chest – ‘is something I end up passing on.’
The rain has eased but the wind is stronger than before. A bloated balloon Santa rides up from the pavement on a gust, billowing out and across the road towards us, bouncing off the windscreen and towards the sea.
We’re getting closer to home and I wish the journey was longer. ‘Drop me on the main road, please.’ Tim still has no idea I’m in touch with Joel, never mind meeting him tonight.
He nods. ‘So, what shifts are you working over Christmas?’
‘Christmas Eve to Boxing Day. Overnight shifts.’
‘Wow, you must really have pissed off your bosses.’
‘I volunteered. So many of my colleagues have kids and it’s more important for them.’ Plus, it means I have an excuse not to endure a full Smith Family Christmas, complete with extended cooing over Baby Ava and my sister’s relentless interrogation about the postponed wedding. ‘How about you?’
‘Mum’s ordered the slaughter of several poor organic farm animals to celebrate the return of the prodigal son from the edge of drug oblivion!’
‘Way too harsh. They’ve been through hell with you, Joel.’
‘You’re right. Remember that joke we had. How are the jerks? I’m the jerk, right?’
‘I didn’t see a jerk tonight, I saw . . .’ My first love. ‘I saw someone who is trying.’
He turns up Hazelmere Crescent and pulls in, just out of sight of the bungalow. ‘Look, Kerry. There’s something else. The full-time sports science courses I’m considering for next year, they’re a long way from Brighton. I thought . . . after what we talked about after the triathlon, well, I could do with a fresh start.’
No!
The reaction is immediate, visceral. My heart races, my stomach drops. I want to cry out: stay, Joel. But I told him after the triathlon that he didn’t love me, that I could never love him again. He’s made plans because of that, I should be pleased for him.
He leans in to hug me.
Don’t go. I can’t bear it if you go.
I drink in his smell, and his warm hands on my back, and it feels as though we’re shipwrecked and clinging to each other to stay afloat.
When he disentangles himself, he’s clearly expecting me to come out with a festive platitude. Good luck. Goodbye. Merry Christmas and a Happy 2005! Have a good life.
Instead, I pull his face towards mine and I kiss him, and I know I can’t let him go.