I see the figure again. I stop trudging and stand still. Thunder and waves crash around me. Rain starts to pelt.
Another flash of light. He’s still there. At a distance. Watching me on the beach.
I must be more drunk than I thought. I don’t see dead people, I just feel them. I am desperate here. Torn. I want to run to him, but the pain of seeing him up close would destroy me. Not seeing him destroys me too.
‘Cam!’ I hear myself shouting over the cacophony of rain and thunder and ocean waves. I reach my hand out towards him. Why won’t he come any closer? I feel like once I start, I will follow him forever, endlessly, never close enough, always out of reach.
This is no way to live.
I turn around, and Hugh is standing not far from me, saturated. Rain is dripping off his dark hair and his face and neck while he waits for me.
He’s so . . .
Alive.
So real. So ‘with me’， in a way that Cam will never be now.
I wouldn’t be here with him if Cam hadn’t died. It’s that pervasive thought that occurs to me every single day. Almost everything about my existence has been re-written because of what we’ve been through. I didn’t ask for this. I can’t change it. The longer I stay here, chasing the ghost of my former life, the shorter the next chapter of my life will become.
Hugh presents me with the cardigan that I’d picked up yesterday. He must have grabbed it on the way out, maybe as a peace offering. It’s been tucked into his jacket and it’s the only thing that’s dry. I ease my hand through the sleeve and fish around behind my back, searching for the other sleeve until he has to help me. We’re standing so close, our breath is condensing into one cloud as we exhale. It’s electric, being here in the unpredictable storm with him – every cell of mine aware of every cell of his. I’m craving him on some deep, biological level that doesn’t care about secrets and betrayals and walls and professional boundaries.
Cam told me I had to move on. It was easy for him. He wasn’t the one dragging himself out of bed every day without their life partner. He didn’t start each new day facing a lifetime of parenting alone, where every significant and insignificant occasion is now bittersweet. School assemblies. Sports finals. Formals. Graduations. Weddings. Grandchildren. Always wanting to share these things with the only person who could ever feel exactly the same way about it. Always having to feel that way on your own.
And this extends to my own accomplishments too. I imagine writing my book and fantasise about being offered a publishing deal. But where there should be the popping of champagne in my kitchen and being picked up and spun around and kissed because Cam is so proud of me, there is nothing. A nice phone call with Mum. Maybe a hug from Charlie. Grace would take me out to celebrate but it’s not the same. Nothing is.
‘Kate?’
I don’t know when Cam expected me to move on. Or how. Just that he did.
Maybe he told Hugh about it. I’m not going to ask. I’m not up for another clammed-up response. In every interaction with this man from this moment on I’ll feel like he’s keeping something important from me. I’ll blame Cam and I’ll blame Hugh and it will eat me alive, not knowing. This is never going to work. How can it?
‘I’m trying to think of a way to fix this,’ Hugh says, ever the fixer. The rescuer. The knight in the proverbial shining armour, always riding in, saving people. Often me. Mainly me, I guess. Colluding with Cam. Snow ploughing everything out of my path to make it easier – except for this one obstacle, this secret, which he has the power to shift and won’t.
‘Tell me what I can do,’ he says. ‘I’m in an impossible situation here, like I was then. Cam trusted me. It was all for you. Always. Don’t ever question how much you are loved.’
‘Was loved,’ I say dismally.
He doesn’t argue with me any more.
My arms uncross, slowly, and drop to my sides. He’s gutted. And it’s my husband who led to it. It’s hard to stay mad at someone after he’s done so much. Too much, really. I’ve become reliant on him, as Mum said. I think it’s time to stop.
‘If I’m ever going to move forward,’ I begin, ‘I need it to be on my own terms. I need to rebuild my life, Hugh. From the ground up. Quit my job. Sell the house. Write my book. Get Charlie over to the UK to see his grandparents and show him the world like Cam always imagined we would.’
He looks alarmed.
‘It’s a lot of change,’ I say.
He nods. Swallows. Looks beyond my face, for once, at the wet skin on my neck, white top plastered to me under the cardigan, skirt clinging to my legs, and when his attention returns to my eyes, I know he wants me. I think he’s wanted me for a long time.
I bend down and run my finger along the wet sand, making a line, then stand behind it. ‘I don’t want you scheming to make my life easier. I appreciate everything you’ve done, but I need to get my act together now, on my own,’ I say.
He steps forward, near the line, and I put my hand on his chest and hold him back.
‘I feel like this is the end, Kate. You’re scaring me.’
‘You don’t come across this line unless I ask you to,’ I explain. ‘On this side, I’m not your subordinate. I’m not someone you rescue. You’re not my boss. I’m not a grief-stricken widow to feel sorry for. There’s no power imbalance.’
‘Our power imbalance has never been in the direction you think,’ he says.
‘I know you don’t do relationships since Genevieve, and this thing about you and Cam isn’t going to go away. You won’t tell me, and that’s your decision. I know what you’re like, and I respect and loathe that about you, all at once—’
‘Kate!’
‘I can’t see how it could work with something that monumental standing between us. I know I’m going out on a huge limb here, even suggesting you’re interested in me as more than a colleague and friend, since you’ve danced around the topic all day and haven’t actually said so in so many words—’
This is possibly the most mortifying conversation of my life. I’m not holding back. Not keeping the slightest air of mystery about myself, or how I feel.
‘I’m not going to be one of your one-night stands, Hugh,’ I announce, taking a massive leap of faith that he’d even want that.
He laughs. ‘Kate, I haven’t had a one-night stand in a long time. It’s not fair, when your mind is on someone else.’ He looks at me and holds his ground. And I’m flustered and confused.
‘You really can’t tell me Cam’s secret?’
He wants to. I can see it written all over his face.
I realise I’ve still got my hand on his chest, pushing him away from my line. I can feel his heartbeat through his wet shirt. It’s sprinting. We stare at each other, rain continuing to fall, waves continuing to crash. The sun will go on rising and setting, whether I kiss Hugh Lancaster or not.
I watch as my hand eases its pressure on his shirt. Grasps the wet fabric, twists it and pulls him towards me in the rain. Towards my line. Perilously close to it. And then over it.
36
I know this is going to be our last kiss, because kisses upset Cam. He doesn’t know who I am, or what I’m doing. To kiss him now feels like a violation. Even kisses like this – quick and gentle – confuse him, in the same way he’s forgotten how to eat and shower and use the toilet. Every human function is beyond his grasp at the end stage of Alzheimer’s.