The Café in Fir Tree Park. Katey Lovell
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tearaway is desperate to keep walking rather than stop to chat, but I don’t want to be rude.
“Oh, she’s fine. Already managed to give me the slip once this morning though,” I admit, lowering myself to scoop her silky body up in my arms.
He throws back his head and laughs. “She’s not like your Bluey, is she? A real rascal, this one. I think she likes keeping you on your toes.”
“She does that all right,” I smile, as a wet doggy tongue laps at my cheek. “Even though she’s a pain I can’t imagine not having her. The house was too quiet with just me rattling around in it.”
“It must be strange,” he ponders. “Being on your lonesome after all those years.”
“It’s taking some adjusting to,” I admit. “And it’s harder still without Bluey. But I’m keeping myself busy, you know how it is.”
He probably didn’t. Carrick’s the perpetual bachelor boy, and he’s not had a lady friend for years.
Alf had spent more time with Carrick than I had over recent years. They’d both been in the skittles team and had shared games of darts at the pub of an evening. They weren’t as close as they’d been in their youth, when they’d both represented the local cricket club, but they’d still enjoyed a chat over a pint. Alf said Carrick would fob off anyone who asked why he didn’t have a woman by his side. He had wondered if Carrick might secretly be gay. I knew that wasn’t the case.
“Well, if you’re ever after a bit of company, I can always pop in for a cuppa after my shift?”
There’s something in his eyes, a look that’s hopeful. Maybe he’s as lonely as I am. He doesn’t even have a canine companion, as far as I know, and his nieces are all grown up now with lives of their own. I’d heard on the grapevine that the oldest one, Dina, was getting married soon.
“That’d be nice,” I say as I pop a wriggly Mitzi down on the pavement, and I realise I mean it. Since Alf died I’ve done very little in the way of entertaining, but it’s the kind of house that needs people in it. Maybe if Carrick came over I could get the good china out of the cupboards; it’s been stashed away unused for far too long. “I’ll check my diary.” He needn’t know I had nothing more exciting than dog walking scheduled.
Carrick beams as he readjusts his sunhat. “Let me know when best suits. I’ll look forward to it.”
Mitzi tugs impatiently at the lead, the cord rubbing uncomfortably against my hand as she does so. “I’m going to have to go. Madam here doesn’t want to stand around chatting.”
“See you soon,” Carrick says with a courteous nod.
I have just enough time to hold up my free hand in a wave as Mitzi takes me on a walk towards The Lake House Café, probably longing to lap at the water that’s in a shiny silver bowl near the doorway. Carrick’s right back to work, secateurs in hand to deadhead the gorgeous dusky pink rosebush.
“We’re having a guest come and visit us soon,” I say breathily to Mitzi, who’s charging on ahead. “So you’ll need to be on your best behaviour.”
She twists her body round to the direction of my voice and pops her slathering tongue out of her mouth. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was making fun of me.
Kelly’s blonde hair glimmers in the sun as she enters the café, a worried expression on her face. My stomach lurches. I’m not good at managing awkward conversations at the best of times and this is likely to be one of the most difficult conversations I’ve ever had.
I’d told Kelly the cold hard facts on the phone, and she’d seemed to take it well. At least, she hadn’t broken down in tears or asked me questions I didn’t know the answers to. She’d replied with a quiet ‘okay’ at the end of each sentence and then thanked me for letting her know. Talking in person was going to be much harder than talking over the phone though. There’s something about seeing people’s expressions that makes it harder to control my own emotions.
“I can’t stay long,” she says in a whisper, her eyes flickering around the café. “If Mum sees me here she’ll go crazy. She thinks I’m at home revising. I was revising until I got your phone call. Now I can’t think of anything except Luke.”
Her expression is weary and pained and I can only imagine mine is worse. I had two hours of broken sleep last night, and my body can tell. It wants to curl up and shut down, but I’m not going to let it. I’ve got too much to do.
“I wish I hadn’t had to tell you, and I wish I had better news, but all we can do is wait for him to get over this infection so they can operate.”
“When I saw him on Thursday he was fine,” Kelly hisses through gritted teeth. “He told me the headaches had gone. I thought they were stress-related because he’s been working so hard lately. How wrong was I?”
I shrug.
“I don’t know, Kel. Maybe Thursday was a good day. All I know is that last night he was screaming in pain. I was lying in bed reading one minute and the next Luke was crying out for me to come and help him. The panic in his voice …” I shudder at the memory. “He thought he was going blind, said he couldn’t see anything but black. It was terrifying.”
“I should have been there for him. I’ve known for weeks that he’s not been right. If only I’d taken it more seriously…”
I hold my hand up to stop her mid-flow.
“There’s nothing you could have done, nothing any of us could have done. Luke has a brain tumour. We couldn’t have stopped it happening.”
I appreciate how helpless she feels. I’d had all the same thoughts myself last night, the ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’, and the guilt had eroded my soul until I’d finally snatched a restless sleep leaning on my dad’s bony shoulder.
“I should have said something. Maybe if I’d told him to go to the doctor and get it checked out he’d have listened to me?”
“Kelly, please. Stop beating yourself up over this. If you’d tried to get him to go to the doctor he’d only have thought you were nagging. You know as well as I do that he hates making a fuss.”
“I can’t bear to think of him in hospital.” Kelly looks so unsure, her usual confident persona nowhere to be seen. “Poor Luke. Hospitals are depressing, full of old people waiting to die. He must be so scared. Can I go and see him?”
She’s looking at me with such hope, but I know there’s no way she can come to the hospital. My parents would hit the roof, especially in their current emotional state. “He’s not allowed visitors at the moment, because his immune system’s so low and they really need to get him back to full strength so they can operate.”
I’m not lying, but we both know it’s only half the reason. My dad had walked in on Kelly and Luke kissing at Luke’s eighteenth birthday party back in January. He’d been furious, despite both of them trying to explain that it was a typical drunken snog, the sort most teenagers have after a few too many alcopops.
I guess I’ve not been a typical teenager, holding out for someone who’s way out of my league, so my old-fashioned parents haven’t got experience in knowing what to expect from a hormone-addled adolescent. They’d already made it clear they thought it was outrageous that within Luke’s gang of closest friends there was a girl who identified as bisexual, and rather than being ashamed of her sexuality, openly revelled in it. Finding Luke kissing her was a complete shock for my prudish dad, so when they announced they were dating he took it as a personal insult. In his mind, Luke wasn’t seeing Kelly because he liked her, he was doing it just to wind him up.
Mum had inevitably