Instinctively, I stepped forward, but Jenni stopped me. ‘I’ve got this,’ she said, passing Kaia a tissue. She didn’t put her arm around her. I watched in horror and fascination as my friend directed all of her rage and disappointment at the woman crying at our meeting table.
Reuben was paralysed .
‘I . . . lost a . . . It just really helps me to come here . . .’ Kaia was backing off now; an animal half run over. ‘I’m sorry. It just helps me. I’ll stop coming. I . . .’ She moved towards the door.
And suddenly I knew. ‘Kaia,’ I said quietly. ‘Hang on a second.’
She hovered.
‘Look, that story you told me, the day I met you,’ I said, and her face slackened, became all loose and billowy somehow, like a tent with its poles removed. ‘The story about the boy on the oncology ward. Who our clowns cheered up.’ The tent collapsed completely and there it was: a human being razed to the bone. ‘Was he your son?’ I asked.
Reuben stared at me. Kaia took a slow, potholed breath and nodded.
‘Phoenix,’ she said. ‘He was my boy, yes.’
I closed my eyes. This poor woman.
‘How did you know?’ Reuben asked, stunned.
When I’d opened our mail this morning, I’d found a letter from a couple called Brett and Louise West. Four months after losing their son, they had finally managed to put pen to paper; said we were their first letter. Thank you so much . . . It vastly improved his last few weeks . . . Can we help your organization at all? . . . Would love to come and volunteer . . . Would be great to give something back . . . Make ourselves useful . . .
It had made me wonder again about Kaia, and why she was here. I wasn’t convinced it was just because of Reuben.
A few days earlier we had had a call to say that a child we’d been working with for months was in remission and ready to go home. Kaia, who had never met the child, had broken down in tears. ‘A second chance,’ I’d heard her saying to my deputy, Kate, who’d announced the news. ‘A second chance at life. Oh, that is a blessed thing.’
And it was a blessed thing. We’d all cheered. But I had watched Kaia, long after everyone had gone back to work, and I’d wondered. Wondered if maybe there had been someone in her life who had not been given a second chance.
And as I watched her trying hopelessly to explain herself to Jenni just now, it seemed obvious that the little boy she’d told me about the day we met had been her own. She had lost her son, and with him an irreplaceable part of herself. And at some point, when she was able to get out of bed, to breathe, she had arrived in the non-profit sector – just like the two parents who had written to us today; like me, and so many others – because it felt like the only conceivable way of forging good from bad. Of keeping going.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘Me too. And I apologize for having been here too much. My partner and I split up last year; we couldn’t get past it. So it’s been . . . lonely. Not that that’s your problem, but it . . . it just kind of helps, being here.’
I closed my eyes. I was so bloody tired. ‘I get it.’
I watched them leave. Jenni was slumped at the end of the table.
I walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Stop it,’ I said quietly. ‘You weren’t to know.’
Jenni just shook her head.
‘Look, Jen, I’m touched that you were willing to stick up for me, and for the team, the way you did. You were polite; you were nice; you handed her a tissue. What more could you have done?’
‘I could have said nothing,’ she said. Her voice was gluey with guilt. ‘I could have just let her be. ’
I rubbed her shoulders, staring out of the window. One of my legs started shaking and I sat down next to her.
‘The worst of it is, we’re in the same boat, me and Kaia,’ Jenni said dully. ‘There’s a part of both of us missing. Although she actually had a child, Sarah, and he was taken away from her, and . . . Oh my God, can you even imagine?’
When eventually she recovered, I told her I needed to go. ‘I think I need to go to the walk-in clinic. I’m not . . . I’m not functioning very well at the moment, am I?’
‘No,’ Jenni said squarely, and I almost smiled. ‘But how’s the doctor supposed to help? You’re not going to ask for medication, are you?’
I paused. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I just need to . . . talk.’
She frowned. ‘You know you can talk to me, right?’
‘I do. And thank you again,’ I said. ‘For earlier. Your heart was in the right place.’
Jenni sighed. ‘Oh, I know. I’m going to bake her the biggest cake. Out of vegetables, or green powders, or something. It’ll be great.’
A few moments later the door to our building clicked behind me. I felt the muffled punch of a boiling July lunchtime, steadied myself against the doorframe. I wanted to sleep, only I couldn’t stand the silence of Jenni and Javier’s. I wanted to sit in cooled air, only I couldn’t go back to work. I wanted—
I froze.
Eddie. I wanted Eddie. But deep inside my brain something had to be misfiring, because he was there.
There.
Right across Vermont Avenue. Waiting for the traffic lights to change. Looking straight at me.
No!
Yes .
I stood stock still. I stared at him. A long, red Metro bus snaked along between us for what felt like hours. Then it was gone and he was still there. Still looking right at me.
I felt numb as I looked at him. There was a strange quiet, suddenly, out of step with the thunder of traffic passing between us. The lights changed and a white pedestrian light invited me to walk towards him, but I didn’t, because he was walking towards me, and he was still looking right at me. He was wearing shorts, the same shorts he’d been wearing the day we met. The same flip-flops. They smacked across the boiling road, and above them swung the same arms that had wrapped me like a present while I slept.
Eddie was coming. Across the world, across the road.
Until he turned round suddenly and retreated to the other side. The pedestrian sign held up a red hand, counted down three, two, one, and the traffic resumed. Eddie looked at me over his shoulder, then he made off down the street.
By the time the lights changed again and I was able to run across the road, he had disappeared down Lexington Avenue. I stood on the corner of Lexington and Vermont, stunned by the enormity of my feelings. Even now, after weeks of humiliation.
Nothing had changed. I was still in love with Eddie David. Only now I knew – I could no longer deny it – exactly who he was.
I set off towards the walk-in clinic.
The sun was sinking low over the west of the city. Below me, silvery roads ran dead straight to the horizon, lost in trembling haze and smog. Helicopters shared the sky with birds of prey riding thermal currents; hikers beetled up and down the paths carved into the hillside like scars.
I’d been up here two hours. More, probably. Alone on my favourite bench near the observatory in Griffith Park. The tourists had mostly left, anxious to get away before darkness fell. A few remained, anxious to photograph a perfect sunset. And among them I had sat quietly, trying to forget what the doctor had said earlier, concentrating instead on my week with Eddie. Waiting for the clue to reveal itself to me. I hadn’t found it yet, but I was close. It was amazing what you could find, once you knew what you were looking for.
I’d combed my way through almost to the end and now, as the sun bled all over the unseen Pacific, I was thinking about our final morning together. The brightness outside, the sense of loss as we said goodbye, the excitement at what was to come. He was leaning against the newel post on his stairs. The window was open and I could smell the fusty sweetness of the hawthorn blossom, the clean tang of warming grass. My eyes were closed. He was kissing me, a hand in the small of my back. He rested his nose against mine, eyes closed, and we talked. He gave me a flower, took my numbers, added me on Facebook, gave me Mouse for safekeeping. He said, I think I might have fallen in love with you. Is that too much?
No , I’d said. It’s perfect. And then I left.
I imagined him turning away when I’d gone, climbing the remaining steps. Picking up the tea he’d left at the top. Maybe pausing to take a sip. He still had his phone in one hand, because we’d just exchanged details. Perhaps he sat on a chair by the window and took a look at my Facebook profile. He’d scroll down, maybe, and—