“I’m scared.” The words slip out before I have the chance to think better of them.
“I know, but trust me, you’ll be more scared if you don’t talk. If you don’t, then you’ll have regrets. And regret is something to be far more scared of.”
I sense Daisy is about to leave, and I am overwhelmed by my desire to keep her here. She is safe—a reliable conduit to Maggie.
“Daisy,” I call, as she heads for the door. “What shall I say?”
Daisy’s face remains unchanged, bar a slight smile that breaks at the corners of her lips. Evidently, I am not the first visitor to need schooling on their bedside manner.
“That’s up to you, Frank. If you’re struggling, why don’t you tell her your story? You and her, huh? There’s a reason people tell you to start at the beginning. It’s easiest that way. Only this time, you can do it right. Tell her all the things you should have said before.”
I nod.
“Not all at once now, remember.”
With that, Daisy is gone.
I pull my chair a little closer to Maggie’s side, careful not to knock the cables. I am struck by how much there is to say, how much I should have said, and yet how very little feels appropriate. And how do you start to talk again, when you stopped so long ago?
“Morning, Maggie.” My voice comes out as a croak. “The things I should have said before, eh? Well, you better get comfortable.”
In the silence, I remember her laugh, light as a feather and quick to humor me—my bad jokes, the dad jokes.
I see the cannula strain where I have grasped at her hand, and I quickly place it back down before one of the contraptions signals my disruption and I am unceremoniously hauled out by the staff.
“I . . . I . . . Can you hear me? Did you hear that, what I just said? No? Oh. Well . . . Oh God, Maggie, I’m terrible at this, aren’t I?”
For a minute I think of leaving, of making a repeat performance of yesterday’s nonstarter. Then I think of the house, each room achingly empty, a memory of Maggie imprinted on every chair and wall and light switch. What sort of husband would it make me to leave her here? Not a very loving one, that’s for sure. I have had plenty of failings over the years, but not loving Maggie enough has never been one.
I sit up taller, imagining each vertebra slotting back into its proper formation, and rise out of my half slump.
“Look, Mags, you are going to have to put up with me being terrible at this because I am here to stay. I will stay as long as it takes for you to wake up. See, I even have a chair.”
Nothing.
“You need to know what happened, Mags, why I switched off.”
I half expect her eyes to open wide at this. Finally, an answer. The answers that she spent six months looking for. The answers that nearly took Maggie from me forever.
“I can’t let you go without telling you that.”
It sounds so morbid, out in the open, and I kick myself. This wasn’t what Daisy meant about keeping it positive, quite the opposite.
“I can’t let you go full stop, Maggie. I can’t be without you. Really, Maggie, I can’t,” I whisper, reaching for her hand. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorrier than you can ever know.
“Do you remember that was the first thing I ever said to you, Mags? Do you? ‘I’m sorry.’ And do you know, I have spent the last forty-odd years thinking what better lines I could have tried out on you instead?”
The first time I saw you, all I could make out were your eyes and the very tip of your nose, ruby red like a beacon in the cold. You had a thick woolly scarf pulled up over your lips, your hair bunched up under it so that only a few wisps could escape. When you arrived, it was as it ever would be, like a cyclone descending, all flailing limbs and air kisses, a flurry of hugs and exclamations and the sort of warmth everyone in the vicinity could feel, even at three degrees below.
I hadn’t seen you around before, that much I knew for sure. I’d been in Oxford for five years by that point and I was knee-deep into my PhD; the lab was hardly swarming with women and it wasn’t as if I was dripping in them in my spare time either. No, I definitely would have remembered if I had seen a girl like you before.
With its cheap lager and large outdoor seating area, the Rose & Crown was a stomping ground for the developmental biology department, if such a thing could be claimed by a group of scientists who didn’t see much daylight, let alone the social evening hours. It was far enough from the Dreaming Spires to dodge the Canon-wielding tourists but close enough to stumble back to halls if anyone did manage to land it lucky at the end of the night. I know it is a cliché to say that I noticed you straightaway, but it would still be true, even if your elbow hadn’t half caught Piotr’s glass as you barreled past and into the arms of your equally excitable friends.
That close to Christmas, there were plenty of new faces in our local, some of them home in time to spend the week with family. Our group of academic exiles was either too far from home to enjoy the festive season in the comfort of our own front rooms or, as in my case, would rather prolong the inevitable awkwardness of returning to our parents at the age of twenty-six and without a bride in tow. So much for the social upheaval of the seventies: the liberal ideals of the decade had scarcely reached the Home Counties, let alone brushed the doorstep of my parents’ three-bed terrace in Guildford.
It was a relief to be free, really, as much as my family meant well. I loved them, and I knew they loved me; it was just that everything at home felt so very small. We didn’t really discuss things. Not the important stuff, the big questions that kept me awake at night. No, it was polite, and it was comfortable. There was an unspoken assumption that I would follow in Dad’s footsteps, take over the garage and shore up the business. As they saw it, science was all very well, but it was best left at the school gates in favor of a mortgageable career. My choices took some getting used to, but I knew they were proud, in their own way at least.
As for Oxford, well, I felt at home in a way I never had before. I made great friends, many as socially inept as I was, and no one at the back of the lecture hall shouted you down for sitting in the front row or taking too many notes. I did worry that I hadn’t made quite enough of it, though. In my mind, my time there should have been spent smoking cigars on the rooftops or attending parties with women called Camilla or Cordelia or something else that sounded suitably exotic to me until the sun shot through the curtains and took us all by surprise. In reality, the only place I pulled all-nighters was at my desk. That was my version of a good time. Until I met you.
I was looking forward to that evening, a Christmas party of sorts, only the budget didn’t stretch far enough for any sort of planning to have been required. Instead, the two supervisors had come and put a fistful of notes in a glass for us to buy rounds. I wonder what would have happened without the departmental Dutch courage? If I could have focused on the merriment on hand instead of mooning at your table, reading into your mad hand gestures and facial expressions as if I were at a mime performance, not in a pub garden?
You are, naturally, the center of attention, a habit, I will come to realize, holding court and magnetizing all eyes to you. To your left, a man with sandy hair and a tweed jacket hangs on your every word, laughing a little too loudly and a beat or so before the rest do. There is some distance between you, though, and I write him off as another acolyte, in thrall to your charms.