How To Mend A Broken Heart

‘Great idea, Mum,’ Fletch agreed. ‘Why don’t you take Tess through and I’ll get the tea?’

Jean smiled and nodded. She turned to go then stopped, her smile dying as a look of confusion clouded her gaze. She looked at her son blankly.

‘Over there,’ Fletch murmured gently as he pointed to the corner of the open-plan living space where a leather three-piece suite, a coffee table and a large-screen television formed a lounge area.

Jean’s gaze followed the direction of Fletch’s finger. It took a moment or two for the set-up to register. ‘Of course.’ She shook her head. ‘Come on, Tess. Tell me all about work today.’

Tess moved off with Jean but not before her gaze locked with Fletch’s. She saw his despair and felt an answering flicker. No wonder Fletch had looked tired earlier—this had to be killing him.

Jean patted the cushion beside her and asked, ‘How was the unit today, dear? Busy as usual?’

Tess sat beside Jean, bringing her thoughts back to order. ‘I …’ She glanced at Fletch for direction.

Since moving to England Tess had changed her speciality to geriatrics so nursing Alzheimer’s patients was part and parcel of what she did every day. But each patient was individual and responded differently to having their misstatements corrected.

He nodded his head encouragingly, which didn’t really tell her very much. ‘I didn’t go to work today,’ she sidestepped. ‘It was my day off and I had … some business to attend to.’

‘Ah, well, no doubt Fletch will know. Fletch?’

‘It wasn’t too bad, Mum,’ Fletch said as he placed a tray with three steaming mugs on the coffee table and apportioned them. He sat on the nearby single-seater. ‘Still a lot of kids with the last of the winter bugs getting themselves into a pickle.’

Tess picked up her mug and absently blew on it. So they were validating Jean’s false sense of reality? At this stage of her disease it was probably all that was left to do. Too many dementia patients became confused and distressed when confronted with their memory loss, and to what end? They were too far gone to realise what was happening to them.

Jean sighed and looked from one to the other. ‘I’m so proud of both of you. It can’t be easy going to work each day looking after such sick little kiddies.’

Tess squeezed Jean’s hand in response. What else could she do? She and Fletch hadn’t worked at St Rita’s Paediatric Intensive Care Unit together for ten years. Not since Ryan had died there. In fact, she hadn’t been able to return to that field of practice at all, hence her move to the other end of the spectrum altogether.

Fletch changed the subject to the weather and they let Jean lead from there, navigating a maze of patchwork conversation—some lucid, some not so lucid. They got on to the spectacular view from the floor-to-ceiling glass doors, with Jean teasing Fletch about his fancy apartment. ‘I can’t believe you two got this thing. What happened to that gorgeous little cottage you were renovating?’

Fletch smiled at his mother. ‘We sold it. Too much hard work.’

‘Oh, pish,’ Jean said, swatting her hand through the air. ‘As if you’re afraid of hard work.’

Tess swallowed a lump as Jean, despite the dementia, looked at her son the way she always had, like he could hang the moon. Fletch’s father had died when he and his sister, Trish, had both been very young and Fletch had been the man of the house for a long time.

‘Gosh, Tess,’ Jean remarked, shaking her head. ‘Look how skinny you are! And where did that lovely tan go? I can’t believe how quickly that gorgeous tan of yours has faded. It hasn’t been that long since you’ve been back from Bora Bora.’

Fletch felt the bleakness inside ratchet up another notch. The tan had gone to England and never come back!

Jean held up an imperious finger. ‘Hold on a moment.’ And she scurried off towards the direction she’d originally come from.

Tess felt exhausted with jet-lag and trying to keep up with Jean’s meandering conversation and rapid-fire subject changes. But not as exhausted as Fletch looked. ‘What medication is she on?’ she asked.

Fletch rattled off a series of the most up-to-date dementia pills on the market. He shrugged. ‘They’ve held it at bay for many years but—’

Jean bustled back in, interrupting them. ‘Here it is,’ she said, brandishing a book of some description. When she sat down and opened it Tess realised it was a photo album. The one she’d put together all those years ago after their return from Bora Bora.

Fletch frowned as a hundred memories flooded his mind. He shook his head slightly at Tess’s questioning look. He’d had no idea his mother had this album. It, along with all the others, had been stored in one of the many boxes that he’d packed their marriage into after he and Tess had separated and she’d run away to the other side of the world.

Maybe when he’d asked his mother to get rid of it all just prior to his move to Canada, she’d decided to keep a few souvenirs? He hadn’t really cared at the time how she’d made it disappear, just that it had. God knew, he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of going through it all himself, deciding what to keep and what to discard.

Getting rid of it all, holus bolus, had been a much easier option.

And yet here was a part of it, turning up like the proverbial bad penny. A full Technicolor reminder of how happy they’d been.

‘See, now look at you here,’ Jean said, pointing to Tess in a bikini on the beach. ‘Brown as a berry!’

Tessa stared at the photograph, shocked by the sudden yank back into the past. She’d taken three photos from the ruins of their marriage—all of Ryan. Not that she’d been able to bear to look at them. They lived at the back of a cupboard she never opened.

But it had been a long time since she’d seen ones of Fletch and herself.

A stranger stared back at her. Yes, she was very tanned. She was also deliriously happy, obviously in love and blissfully unaware of the giant black hole hovering in her future. In fact, the woman in the photograph looked nothing like the woman she was today.

And it had nothing to do with the tan.

For a fleeting second, Tess wished she could jump into the photo, like Mary Poppins had jumped into that pavement painting, and give herself a good shake.

If only she’d known then what she knew now.

If only …

‘I think this is my favourite one,’ Jean said, flipping to one of Fletch, towel wrapped around his waist, elbows on the balcony railing, looking back over his shoulder and laughing into the camera, crystal waters behind him.

Tessa stilled as she remembered she’d been fresh from the shower and naked when she’d taken that picture and the series of intimate photos that had followed—ones that had not made it into this album! She remembered making him lie on the bed and loosen his towel, snapping shots of every glorious inch of his body.

Then he’d grappled the camera from her and returned the favour, asking her to pose for him and taking a set of photos a professional photographer would have been proud of. To this day the one on her stomach, looking over her shoulder with her hair flowing down her back, the sheet ruched around her bottom revealing only the slight rise of one cheek, was the best picture ever taken of her.

She remembered being so turned on by their nude photo session they’d made love for hours afterwards, rolling and sighing and moaning to the gentle swish of the waves.

She glanced at Fletch—did he remember?

His gaze locked with hers, turning almost silver as heat flashed like a solar flare. It dropped to her mouth and she watched as his throat bobbed.

‘It’s my favourite too,’ Fletch murmured.

Oh, yeah, he remembered.

Tess sat through the rest of the album, desperately trying to claw back some control of her brain. Bora Bora was in the past—a long time in the past. She hadn’t come here to take a walk down memory lane, although she guessed to a degree that had been inevitable. Neither had she come to rekindle the sexual attraction that, prior to Ryan’s death, had always raged like an inferno between them.

She’d come for Jean. To alleviate some anxiety and then turn around and go back to her perfectly fulfilling, asexual, far-away existence.

Jean closed the album. ‘I think you two need to go back to Bora Bora. You’re both too tense.’ She patted Tess’s hand. ‘And pale.’

Before Tess could answer, an alarm blared out and she jumped slightly at the same time Jean clutched at her chest and looked at Fletch anxiously.

‘It’s okay, Mum,’ Fletch reassured her as he reached over and turned off the alarm on the clock that was sitting on the coffee table. ‘Remember, that just means your show’s about to start.’ His mother continued to look at him blankly. ‘Wheel of Fortune,’ he prompted.

‘Oh.’ Jean sagged a little and dropped her hand to her lap. ‘Oh, yes, oh, I love that show! ’