“No, I’m a beauty PR and they won’t keep my job open forever.” I let that thought settle with her, then I whispered darkly, “No more free makeup.”
But not even that worked. “You’re going nowhere, missy.”
However, I’d picked my time well: that very afternoon I had my weekly hospital checkup, and if the professionals said I was getting better, Mum wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
After lots of hanging around, an X-ray was taken of my arm. As I’d thought, it was healing fast and well; the sling could be removed immediately and the plaster could come off in a couple of weeks.
Then onto the skin specialist, who said I was doing so well that the stitches could be taken out of my cheek. Even I hadn’t expected that. It hurt more than I’d thought it would and an angry, red, puckered line ran from the corner of my eye to the corner of my mouth, but now that my face was no longer being held together by navy-blue thread, I looked far, far more normal.
“What about plastic surgery?” Mum asked.
“Eventually,” he said. “But not for a while. It’s always hard to tell how well these things will heal.”
Then on to Dr. Chowdhury to have my internal organs poked and prodded. According to him, all the bruising and swelling had subsided and he said, like he’d said on the other visits, how unbelieveably fortunate I’d been not to have ruptured anything.
“She’s talking about going back to New York,” Mum burst out. “Tell her she’s not well enough to travel.”
“But she was well enough to travel home,” Dr. Chowdhury said, with undeniable truth.
Mum stared at him, and even though she didn’t say it, not even under her breath, her “Fuck you, fuckhead” hung in the air.
Mum and I drove home in grim silence. At least Mum did, my silence was happy and—I couldn’t help it—a little smug.
“What about your gammy knee?” Mum said, suddenly animated: all was not lost. “How can you go to New York if you can’t climb a step?”
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “If I can walk to the top of the stairs on it, I’m well enough to go back.”
She agreed because she thought I hadn’t a hope of doing it. But she had no idea how determined I was to leave. I would do it. And I did do it—even though it took over ten minutes and left me covered in sweat and a little puky from the pain.
But what Mum was missing was that even if I hadn’t been able to get past the first step, I was leaving anyway. I needed to get back and I was starting to get panicky.
“See?” I gasped, sitting down on the landing. “I’m all better. Arm, face, innards, knee—better!”
“Anna,” she said, and I didn’t like her tone, it was so somber. “There’s more wrong with you than just physical injuries.”
I processed that. “Mum, I know. But I have to go back. I have to. I’m not saying I’ll stay there forever. I might arrive back home very quickly, but I’ve no choice. I must go back.”
Something in my voice convinced her because she seemed to deflate. “It’s the modern way, I suppose,” she said. “Getting closure.” Sadly, she went on, “In my day there was nothing at all wrong with unfinished business. You just left a place and never went back and no one thought there was anything wrong with that. And if you went a bit funny in the head and had nightmares and woke the whole house, running around in the middle of the night screeching your head off, the parish priest would be brought in to pray over you. Not that it ever helped, but no one minded, that’s just the way it was.”
“Rachel will be in New York to help me,” I reassured her.
“And maybe you’d think about going for some of that counseling stuff.”
“Counseling?” I wondered if I was hearing right. Mum totally disapproved of any kind of psychotherapy. Nothing would convince her that therapists employed confidentiality. Although she had no proof, she insisted they regaled people at dinner parties with their clients’ secrets.
“Yes, counseling. Rachel might be able to recommend someone for you.”
“Mmm,” I said musingly, as if I was considering it, but I wasn’t. Talking about what had happened wouldn’t change a single thing.
“Come on, we’d better tell your father what’s happening. He might cry, but ignore him.”
Poor Dad. In a houseful of strong women, his opinion counted for nothing. We found him watching golf on telly.
“We’ve a bit of news. Anna’s going back to New York for a while,” Mum said.
He looked up, startled and upset. “Why?”
“To get closure.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t really know,” Mum admitted. “But apparently her life won’t be worth living without it.”
“Isn’t it a bit soon to be leaving? What about the broken arm? And the gammy knee?”
“All on the mend. And the sooner she gets this fecking closure, the sooner she’ll be back to us,” Mum said.
Then it was time to tell Helen and she was quite distraught. “War crime!” She declared. “Don’t go.”
“I have to.”
“But I thought we could go into business together, you and me. We could be private investigators. Think of the laugh we’d have.”
Think of the laugh she’d have, snuggled up in her nice warm dry bed while I loitered in damp shrubbery doing her job for her.
“I’m more use to you as a beauty PR,” I said, and she seemed to buy that.
So they sent for Rachel to bring me back.
10
While I waited to see if Aidan Maddox would find my number and ring me, I got on with my life. I had my hands full of speed-dating dates.
However, Harris, the interesting architect, turned out to be a little too interesting when he suggested that, for our first date, we have a pedicure together. Nearly everyone shrieked that it was adorable, that it was original, and that he obviously wanted me to have a good time. But I had my misgivings. As for Jacqui, who had no time for that Feathery Strokery sort of nonsense, she nearly went through the roof.
She threatened to walk past the salon and shame me; luckily she was working that evening, and when the time came and I was sitting beside Harris, the two of us like a king and queen, raised above the salon on matching thronelike padded seats, up to our ankles in little pools of soapy water, I’ve never been so glad.