We all looked at him. There was a time, not that long ago, when any one of these activities would have been unthinkable. There was a time when Will would have taken pleasure in saying no just to upset his mother. He had always been like that, our son – quite capable of doing the opposite of what was right, simply because he didn’t want to be seen to be complying, in some way. I don’t know where it came from, this urge to subvert. Perhaps it was what made him such a brilliant negotiator.
He looked up at me, his eyes unreadable, and I felt my jaw tense. And then he looked at the girl, and smiled.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘I’m quite looking forward to seeing Clark throw herself into some rapids.’
The girl seemed to physically deflate a little – with relief – as if she had half expected him to say no.
It’s funny – I admit, when she first wound her way into our lives I was a little suspicious of her. Will, despite all his bluster, had been vulnerable. I was a little afraid that he could be manipulated. He’s a wealthy young man, despite it all, and that wretched Alicia running off with his friend had made him feel about as worthless as anyone in his position could feel.
But I saw the way Louisa looked at him then, a strange mixture of pride and gratitude on her face, and I was suddenly immensely glad that she was there. My son, although we never said as much, was in the most untenable of situations. Whatever it was she was doing, it seemed to be giving him just a small respite from that.
There was, for a few days, a faint but definitely celebratory air in the house. Camilla wore an air of quiet hopefulness, although she refused to admit to me that that was what it was. I knew her subtext: what did we really have to celebrate, when all was said and done? I heard her on the telephone to Georgina late at night, justifying what she had agreed to. Her mother’s daughter, Georgina, she was already looking for any way in which Louisa might have used Will’s situation to advantage herself.
‘She offered to pay for herself, Georgina,’ Camilla said. And, ‘No, darling. I don’t really think we have a choice. We have very little time and Will has agreed to it, so I’m just going to hope for the best. I think you really have to do the same now.’
I knew what it cost her to defend Louisa, to even be nice to her. But she tolerated that girl because she knew, as I did, that Louisa was our only chance of keeping our son even halfway happy.
Louisa Clark had become, although neither of us said it, our only chance of keeping him alive.
I went for a drink with Della last night. Camilla was visiting her sister, so we went for a walk down by the river on the way back.
‘Will’s going to take a holiday,’ I said.
‘How wonderful,’ she replied.
Poor Della. I could see her fighting her instinctive urge to ask me about our future – to consider how this unexpected development might affect it – but I didn’t suppose she ever would. Not until this was all resolved.
We walked, watching the swans, smiling at the tourists splashing around in their boats in the early evening sun, and she chatted away about how this might all be actually rather wonderful for Will, and probably showed that he was really learning to adapt to his situation. It was a sweet thing for her to say as I knew that, in some respects, she might legitimately have hoped for an end to it all. It was Will’s accident that had so curtailed our plans for a life together, after all. She must have secretly hoped that my responsibilities towards Will would one day end so that I could be free.
And I walked along beside her, feeling her hand resting in the crook of my arm, listening to her sing-song voice. I couldn’t tell her the truth – the truth that just a handful of us knew. That if the girl failed with her ranches and her bungee jumping and hot tubs and what have you, she would paradoxically be setting me free. Because the only way I would ever be able to leave my family was if Will decided, after all, that he was still determined to go to this infernal place in Switzerland.
I knew it, and Camilla knew it. Even if neither of us would admit it to ourselves. Only on my son’s death would I be free to live the life of my choosing.
‘Don’t,’ she said, catching my expression.
Dear Della. She could tell what I was thinking, even when I didn’t know myself.
‘It’s good news, Steven. Really. You never know, this might be the start of a whole new independent life for Will.’
I placed my hand over hers. A braver man might have told her what I really thought. A braver man would have let her go long ago – her, and maybe even my wife too.
‘You’re right,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘Let’s hope he comes back full of tales of bungee ropes or whatever horror it is the young people like to inflict upon each other.’
She nudged me. ‘He might make you put one up in the castle.’
‘White-water rafting in the moat?’ I said. ‘I shall file it away as a possible attraction for next summer’s season.’
Sustained by this unlikely picture, we walked, occasionally chuckling, all the way down to the boathouse.
And then Will got pneumonia.
22
I ran into Accident and Emergency. The sprawling layout of the hospital and my natural lack of any kind of internal compass meant that the critical-care ward took me forever to find. I had to ask three times before someone pointed me in the right direction. I finally swung open the doors to Ward C12, breathless and gasping, and there, in the corridor, was Nathan, sitting reading a newspaper. He looked up as I approached him.
‘How is he?’
‘On oxygen. Stable.’
‘I don’t understand. He was fine on Friday night. He had a bit of a cough Saturday morning, but … but this? What happened?’
My heart was racing. I sat down for a moment, trying to catch my breath. I had been running pretty much since I received Nathan’s text message an hour previously. He sat up, and folded his newspaper.
‘It’s not the first time, Lou. He gets a bit of bacteria in his lungs, his cough mechanism doesn’t work like it should, he goes down pretty fast. I tried to do some clearing techniques on him Saturday afternoon but he was in too much pain. He got a fever out of nowhere, then he got a stabbing pain in his chest. We had to call an ambulance Saturday night.’
‘Shit,’ I said, bending over. ‘Shit, shit, shit. Can I go in?’
‘He’s pretty groggy. Not sure you’ll get much out of him. And Mrs T is with him.’
I left my bag with Nathan, cleaned my hands with antibacterial lotion, then pushed at the door and entered.