Postcards at Christmas Page 9

  Sometimes it’s hard to find the old Simeon in the man that I see now. He has shrunk from the months of inaction, the muscles in his upper body wasted so that he no longer fills his tee shirts with eye-pleasing ripples and curves. His dark hair has flecks of grey in it; not much but it wasn’t there before the accident. The main change, though, is to his aura, the energy that he gives out. Whereas before he was vivacious and outgoing, now he is reserved and reticent as if he would rather just fade into the background of the room than start a party in it. I’ve seen these changes come over him gradually over the last few months but I know that for Mark, going from one version of Simeon to the other, it will be hard to absorb.

  Knowing that Mark is coming makes my stomach knot. I have to admit that I haven’t even tried to work on all the negative feelings that I still have about him. I suppose that it’s suited me to have him loitering in the recesses of my mind where I can load all blame squarely on his shoulders. I have made him my scapegoat and it’s hard to see how he will ever be anything else for me.

  But I have to see him, make an effort for Simeon’s sake if nothing else. He is going to be Sim’s best man and it seems that they are still close. Going by something Beth said, I think he and Sim have been texting each other since the accident, although Sim clearly thinks it wiser not to mention that to me.

  When the doorbell rings to announce his arrival, I pause for a moment to take a deep breath and pack my unruly emotions away. Simeon is in the sitting room watching the cricket, clearly not expecting whoever is at the door to be anything to do with him. I go to open it.

  Mark is standing on the doorstep. He looks like Simeon used to, fit, healthy, young. It is so galling. I set my jaw to prevent any of my anger leaking out of me.

  ‘Hello, Cara,’ he says. His arms are folded tight across his chest and taps his bicep with his thumb nervously.

  ‘Hi,’ I say shortly. ‘Come in.’

  He follows me into the hall and it takes every drop of my willpower not to tell him what I’m thinking. The last time I saw him was in the hospital, when I screamed at him, shock, horror and fear firing my every word straight into his heart like arrows. I am, at least, calmer now and I have to remember that this is about Simeon and not me. Mark is here to help and I have to at least let him try.

  ‘Simeon,’ I call. ‘There’s someone here to see you.’

  I know that we can get to Simeon faster than he can stand, find his balance and walk the few short steps to where we are so I nod at the sitting room door and let Mark go in ahead of me.

  ‘Mate!’ I hear him say as he steps in. ‘Look at you! You look fantastic! How are you doing?’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I hear Simeon say. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  I hang back, not wanting to spoil their reunion.

  ‘I’ve come to check you out,’ Mark says and, to give him his due, there is no hint of shock or pity in his voice. Beth must have briefed him well. ‘How’s it going?’ he adds, and there’s a sincerity to his voice that doesn’t sit well with the version of him that I carry in my head.

  Simeon shrugs.

  ‘It’s shit,’ he says simply.

  ‘How are the legs?’ asks Mark.

  ‘Working,’ replies Sim. ‘Just about.’

  ‘Right then!’ says Mark with a grin. ‘Pub?’

  My mouth falls open. I’m about to tell them how Simeon cannot possibly go to the pub, how this is a totally ridiculous suggestion and that Mark clearly has no idea how far Simeon still has to go before he is back to how he was . . . but then I check myself. Isn’t this precisely why we’ve summoned Mark to help, to try to rekindle something of the old Simeon? I bite my tongue.

  ‘That’s a bloody brilliant idea,’ says Simeon. ‘Ca, will you give us a lift?’

  I fix my smile.

  ‘Of course,’ I say.

  And so, I drive them the five hundred metres to the pub and leave them there to do whatever it is that men do when they’re on their own. I hope it’s enough.

  22

  BETH

  It’s so strange being at Cara and Simeon’s place again. It’s like the three months since the four of us were last here never happened, except for the spectre of the accident, of course, which hangs over us like Banquo’s ghost, a fifth presence at our table.

  Simeon seems lighter with Mark here, almost back to his old self in spirit at least and Mark is clearly making an enormous effort to keep the mood light, cracking poor taste jokes about the legless which Simeon seems to find hilarious. I can see that Cara is struggling with the joviality of the evening but, to give her her due, she is doing her best not to bring the mood down. The pub seems to have gone well, although Mark tells me that they only had a pint each. In my professional capacity, I try to think what medication Simeon must be on but conclude that whatever it is can’t have done any harm.

  And anyway, it wasn’t about the beer. It was about what a trip to the pub represented: friendship and a nod at the life that the two have them have shared and which we are all aiming at. Simeon had lost sight of that but I’m hoping that this is something that can start to remind him of where he is heading.

  Simeon and Mark have taken to recounting tales of their university days. Simeon’s short-term memory is still a little unreliable and he has a tendency to repeat himself when he’s tired but these old stories are solidly stuck in his mind.

  ‘Do you remember the canal?’ asks Simeon of Mark.

  I know this one but from her face it appears that Cara doesn’t. Mark drops his eyes and looks at his plate.

  ‘Oh, that’s water under the bridge, mate,’ he says and Simeon laughs.

  ‘Oh, very good,’ says Simeon, grinning at Mark’s pun. ‘That was the first time this git saved my life,’ Simeon adds as he slices his knife through a potato.

  Cara looks first horrified and then intrigued.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ says Mark bashfully. ‘It was nothing really.’

  ‘What was?’ asks Cara.

  Simeon is waiting for Mark to speak but Mark clearly isn’t going to so I leap in to tell the tale.

  ‘Sim dared Mark to cross a canal via this old pipe thing. Mark did it but when Simeon tried, he slipped, cracked his head and fell into the water. Mark had to dive down to pull him out. If he hadn’t, Simeon would have drowned. That’s right, isn’t it?’ I finish, turning to Mark for confirmation that I have all the salient points.

  ‘Er, yes. That’s about it,’ he says. He is clearly not wanting to take any credit and looks as if he’d rather we weren’t talking about this at all.

  Cara looks at me, frowning with confusion.

  ‘How come you know that and I don’t?’ she asks me.

  I nod at Mark and smile.

  ‘He told me.’

  Cara turns to Simeon. ‘And you didn’t!’ She’s grinning at him in her outrage and I realise that it’s been a long time since I saw her smile properly.

  Simeon rolls his eyes heavenward.

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘it hardly casts me in the greatest of lights. Not only am I stupid enough to suggest it in the first place but then I cock it up, nearly die and have to be rescued by my best mate. It’s not the kind of story you tell a girl you’re trying to impress.’

  Cara’s eyes flick from one man to the other as if she doesn’t quite know what to say. Through her silence I think I see something change, a switch being thrown in her mind. Her face creases in thought for a second and then she smiles again.

  ‘I thought this,’ she gestures at Simeon’s broken body, ‘was all his fault . . .’

  She points a finger at Mark and he seems to shrink a little in his chair. I reach under the table and put a hand on his leg to reassure him that everything is okay. I’m surprised and then a little thrilled when he puts his hand on top of mine.

  ‘. . . but it turns out you, Simeon Blake, are an even bigger idiot than I’d realised. What kind of moron tries to cross a canal?’ She’s laughing now and I feel Mark relax a l
ittle.

  ‘When drunk,’ I pipe up.

  ‘When drunk,’ she adds, ‘and just because his mate dares him.’

  I watch as Cara unfurls. It’s like she is allowing herself to re-evaluate things. This story, which happened long before she even knew Simeon, isn’t tainted by the accident. It was just one of those ridiculous things that boys do for fun, but hearing it seems to let her lift the veil of blame and anger and see the essence of Mark and Simeon’s friendship. She is finally starting to understand what Sim and I both know already; that Mark would do anything for his friend.

  ‘Actually,’ I say. ‘Mark didn’t do the daring. That was Sim.’

  Simeon nods sheepishly.

  ‘Guilty as charged,’ he says with a beaming grin.

  Mark speaks now but his expression is earnest, as if what he has to say is of vital importance.

  ‘Do you remember the ducks, Sim?’ he asks.

  Cara and I exchange looks, wondering what tale of high jinks we are going to be treated to now. Simeon is looking blank, his forehead furrowed as he searches his damaged memory banks for something deeply buried. Mark speaks again.

  ‘The mother and her ducklings,’ he prompts. ‘In the road?’

  Simeon still looks blank but then you can see the memory returning to him as if a light has been shone on something dark, revealing it for the very first time. There are tears in his eyes and I wonder what Mark has touched on.

  ‘Oh my God, yes,’ says Simeon slowly, his eyes focused on the ceiling as he tries to piece it together. ‘We came round that corner and they were all there in the middle of the road. They were tiny, weren’t they? They could only have been a day old. And there were loads of them.’

  ‘Nine,’ says Mark simply.

  Simeon lets out a rush of air in a regretful laugh.

  ‘The mother was trying to get them over the road to the river but they were so little that they kept wandering off.’

  I look at Mark and there are tears on his cheeks.

  ‘And so you got off your bike,’ he continues, ‘to get them to follow her . . .’

  ‘And the car came,’ finishes Cara.

  The silence is palpable.

  Mark nods and wipes away the tears with the back of his hand.

  23

  CARA

  I feel like such a bitch. For all these months I have carried this hatred in my heart. I have blamed Mark for everything that happened to Simeon, to both of us. I screamed at him in the hospital corridor and put everything firmly at his door. And he just let me. He took the blame and at no point did he try to set me straight or shift the focus from himself. He had just battened down the hatches and let me let rip into him so that I had somewhere to put my hurt.

  And all along he was totally blameless. Simeon had been in the middle of the road trying to save some ducklings. They weren’t drunk. It was just a twist of fate, a case of bad timing. A total accident.

  I look at Mark. He is wiping his cheek with the back of his hand. Beth puts an arm round his shoulder and I see him shudder and then take a huge breath. Then he looks up and our eyes meet and I can see how very badly I have misjudged him simply from the look he gives me. There is no anger in it, no resentment, just relief.

  ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ I ask him.

  He shrugs. ‘You had enough to deal with. You just needed someone to blame and I was there. I assumed that the truth would come out eventually. I just had to wait until the time was right to tell you.’

  ‘But what if that time had never come?’ I say. ‘What if Simeon never remembered? Would you have shouldered the blame forever?’

  He raises his eyebrows. ‘I guess so,’ he says.

  I am stunned.

  And then something else occurs to me.

  ‘I thought you were the one who was leading Simeon astray,’ I continue. ‘And now I learn that actually it was usually the other way around.’

  ‘You should have known that,’ pipes up Simeon. ‘I’m hardly an angel.’

  But I didn’t know that. I’ve never really thought about Simeon except when he’s with me. Obviously, I knew that he had a life before but somehow his stories had got lost when pitched against mine. I had never seen him dare a friend to do something stupid. In fact, I’d seen nothing approaching laddish behaviour from him in all the time I’d known him. But it was there, had been there all the time. He was just a normal bloke after all.

  I feel a lump rising in my throat and I think for one terrible moment that I might be sick.

  ‘Oh God,’ I say. ‘I feel like such an idiot. I’ve had it all so very wrong.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ says Mark quietly.

  But it does matter. It matters very much indeed.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m so very, very sorry.’

  Mark shakes his head. ‘Really,’ he says. ‘There’s no need.’

  I struggle to take it in, to reform what I thought I knew into something totally different and gradually, gradually, it starts to make sense.

  ‘Ducklings,’ I say then, like I can hardly believe that such a thing exists.

  AUTUMN

  24

  CARA

  Today is a huge day.

  We drop Lily off at nursery and then make the familiar trip to the hospital to visit the neurologist. She is the last professional that we are still seeing. We’ve got to know her pretty well over the last six months. I almost feel like she’s a friend, although I assume all her patients feel much the same as she is so good at putting us at our ease.

  Simeon has had the usual range of tests and we are waiting in her office for the update, sitting side by side in front of her desk like people waiting to hear about a mortgage application. She is perusing the file, looking at the familiar scan results and the pages of medical terms, some of which I understand now.

  I reach out and take Simeon’s hand in mine and he gives it a little squeeze. I can tell that he’s anxious from the way he’s breathing, shallow and quick. It feels very much like waiting for exam results.

  After what seems like an age, she looks up and pushes her glasses up on top of her blonde hair.

  ‘Well, this is all very encouraging, Simeon,’ she says. ‘The progress you’ve made over the last couple of months has been exceptional. You’ve clearly been working hard.’

  Simeon shrugs and I am hit by a wave of pride. He has been working hard. It started in the summer when Mark came and pulled him out of whichever dark place he had been sinking into. I suppose my shift in attitude might have contributed too but I don’t like to think too hard about the impact that my misplaced anger might have had on Sim’s recovery.

  Whatever it was that made the difference, he has been digging deeper than I ever thought possible. It was like he just decided to get better, overnight. Not that the improvements have come as quickly as that, but I can trace them back to that night in our kitchen. I owe Mark, and not just for that.

  ‘So, I think,’ the doctor continues, ‘that we can move you on to six-monthly checks. You will continue to see improvements in memory and fine motor skills but the bulk of the work is done.’

  Simeon lets out a long, slow breath and I squeeze his hand again.

  ‘Are you signing me off?’ he asks. I see him catch the inside of his lip between his teeth and he looks at her anxiously.

  ‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘I rather think I am.’

  ‘Can I go back to work?’ he asks her.

  She looks thoughtful.

  ‘What is it you do?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m a teacher,’ he says. He loves his job. Not being able to go to school has been one of the hardest parts of the last six months.

  ‘Then why don’t you tell them that you’ll be back after Christmas?’ she says.

  We might have gone out to celebrate but we are suddenly both exhausted, drained by the news but also by the strain of the darkness that has enveloped us since Easter finally lifting from our shoulders. We decide to go home.
>
  The clocks have changed and the sky is dark by the time we get back even though it’s not yet time to collect Lily from nursery. I usher us in and pull the curtains against the night. Then I light a fire in the grate and make us both a cup of tea. We sit on the sofa, mugs held in curled fingers, me with my legs underneath me and Simeon’s stretched out long. It feels just like it always did. Before.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I say.

  Simeon looks at me, his head cocked to one side.

  ‘I couldn’t have done it without you.’

  ‘Yes, you could. I’m so proud of you. You are amazing.’

  We sit in companionable silence for a while, each with our own thoughts. We finish our tea and I put the mugs on the floor at our feet. Simeon reaches for the remote control.

  ‘Sim?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replies, flicking the television on.

  I take the remote from him and turn it off again. Then I spin round in my seat so that I can look straight at him.

  ‘Will you marry me?’ I say quietly.

  He gazes at me as if I am the most precious jewel in all the world and in that moment I can’t believe how lucky I am to have found him.

  ‘Yes,’ he says simply.

  And then we hold each other for a very long time.

  25

  BETH

  I love being chief bridesmaid.

  I’ve bought myself a brand-new notebook. It’s cream and it says Wedding Planner across the front in pearly pink lettering. I suspect it’s actually intended for the bride-to-be but I don’t mind. I was one of those once and this time I’m much happier to be planning someone else’s nuptials. I even think, for one mad moment, that I could give up nursing and become a wedding planner. But really, I couldn’t – all those bridezillas would drive me potty.

  There’s not much time for planning, though. Already the lights are up in town and the shop windows are filled with Christmas trees and sparkle. Everywhere I go the old festive favourites are ringing out and even though it still feels a bit early, I can’t help but sing along with Band Aid and Wizzard. I even change the ring tone on my phone to ‘Jingle Bells’.