Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming

‘I do love you, but it’s not that simple,’ he’d said.

She’d known it wasn’t simple. And she’d done her best to block that out because the lightning strike of love was so strong that it had seemed it must be their destiny to be together. This wasn’t a scheming, sex-fuelled fling: it was the real thing. True love trumped a marriage that was a marriage in name only, surely? Or so she’d assumed.

Assume makes an ass out of me and u, as somebody once said.

Izzie Silver might be a dumb broad, but nobody was going to make an ass out of her twice.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said her father, clearly desperate to break the silence round the kitchen table. ‘Is it possible Jamie is a brother of Lily’s, somebody who died when she was young and that’s why we’ve never heard of him? Infant mortality was terrible eighty and ninety years ago. If Jamie was her little brother, it would all make sense…’ Brendan’s voice trailed off. ‘Maybe Edward knows, or maybe there’s something in the family records.’

Even in her exhausted, jet-lagged state, Izzie was astute enough to sense Anneliese sitting up uncomfortably when Brendan spoke. It was the mention of her uncle Edward’s name that had done it, Izzie decided.

Dad had said something when he phoned her in New York about Edward seeming oddly reticent about speaking to his wife. Dad hadn’t known what was going on, but Izzie knew now, without anybody telling her in words, that there was something wrong between her aunt and uncle.

‘If Edward knew about another uncle who’d died, he’d have told us years ago,’ she said now, and again she could sense Anneliese relax a little. ‘You know how close Gran and I were. She’d have told me about a little brother who died, wouldn’t she? There was just her and Tommy, I’m sure of it.’

‘Well,’ said Anneliese glumly, ‘we don’t know who this Jamie person is, so maybe we don’t know as much as we thought we did. Even when you know people terribly well, you can discover they have secrets from you.’

‘True,’ agreed Izzie, thinking of Joe and how she’d been deceived by him. Or maybe he hadn’t deceived her. Maybe she’d wanted to be with him so much that she’d been blind to reality.

Still, it was harder to know people than you thought. And for whatever reason, dear Anneliese clearly felt the same way.

‘Do you think Lily will ever come back to us?’ Anneliese said listlessly.

‘Nobody knows, love,’ Dad said. ‘It’s up to God now.’

The three of them had stayed in the hospital for an hour with her grandmother and after that brief moment of lucidity when Lily had cried: ‘Jamie!’, there had been nothing else, just her grandmother lying there, still absent. She hadn’t opened her eyes or moved or said anything. All the hope that Izzie had felt on the flight over had melted away.

The young doctor who’d talked to them really hadn’t known what to say.

‘Sorry, there are no straightforward answers right now.’

At least she was being frank, Izzie thought. The young woman’s honesty was preferable to the ‘I am the doctor, I know everything’ mode of communication.

‘We’ve done a CT scan, she’s on heparin to arrest progression or prevent recurrence of further strokes, but I’m afraid there has been a considerable bleed in your grandmother’s brain. And when there’s coma following a stroke, it does present an unfavourable prognosis. It’s not all doom and gloom, there might well be spontaneous neurological recovery, but we really don’t know if that will happen. It’s a matter of waiting now, I’m afraid.

‘The added problem is that, because of your grandmother’s age, there are other risks now, including heart problems and pneumonia. And I’m afraid her heart activity has been a little erratic in the past twenty-four hours. That’s our primary concern.’

‘There’s a problem with her heart too?’ Izzie buried her face in her hands. It kept getting worse. ‘I thought, because she talked, that she might come out of this. It’s got to be a good sign, hasn’t it? It means she’s coming back, right?’

‘I’m sorry, it’s not that simple,’ the doctor said. ‘Who knows what your grandmother is seeing or believing right now? People in her position can respond in some way to voices, so it is perfectly natural that your voice sparked something in her, but as to what she was thinking, I don’t know. As to whether she will ever come out again, we don’t know that either. We’re monitoring her and trying to keep her vitals stable.’

‘And if she doesn’t come round properly?’ Anneliese asked what Izzie couldn’t bear to.

‘Every case is different. If a person in her condition hasn’t recovered in some neurological way within the first three weeks to a month, then it doesn’t look good, I’ll be honest with you. We’ll have to wait and see. Right now, we want to keep her stable and see what happens next.’

The first three weeks to a month? Izzie felt ill at the thought of watching her beloved gran fade away over a month. When they left the hospital, she was conscious of a sensation of emptiness in the world.

Twenty-seven years ago, when her mother died, she’d felt the same thing. It was, Izzie remembered, like part of the earth had crumbled away leaving a huge, gaping hole.

The difference was that there had been some time before Mum had died, some warning. Not enough, but it had at least given Izzie a chance to say goodbye.

The thought of that goodbye gripped Izzie’s heart tightly. Move on, think about something else, she told herself.

Anneliese moved her chair to sit beside Izzie. God, she was so intuitive, always had been. She and Gran had been brilliant when Mum died. It wasn’t the same as having Mum to turn to, but they’d been there for her, forming a sort of parental triangle with her father. It was a new family of sorts: not conventional, clumsily made up, but still a family.

Now it was coming apart and there was another gaping hole there. But it had all happened so quickly. There had been no time to prepare, no time to say all the things that hadn’t been said. Gran might die without ever smiling at Izzie again or telling her that it would be all right, that she was loved…

Izzie couldn’t bear it.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She wouldn’t cry again because, if she started, she genuinely didn’t think she’d be able to stop the grief from pouring out, and it hurt too much. Anneliese reached out and wrapped her arms around Izzie, saying nothing, just holding tightly.

‘Parish records,’ said Dad suddenly. ‘We could search the old parish records for births and deaths to see if there’s a Jamie or a James anywhere.’

‘Yes, Dad.’ Izzie untangled a hand from her aunt’s embrace to take his hand in hers, and they sat, making a clumsy, irregular trio around the old kitchen table. Sometimes, Dad’s habit of focusing on the not-so-important details irritated Izzie. But now, she could see it for what it was: a survival tactic.

His mother-in-law had been with him for the darkest parts of his life and now she might be dying. Rather than face that cold, stark fact, Dad was training his sights on something else.

‘Does it matter who he is?’ Anneliese asked with a touch of irritation. ‘You heard the doctor: nobody knows what’s going on in Lily’s mind. Jamie might be someone important or he might be the postman.’

‘The postman’s called Calum,’ said Brendan stubbornly.

‘Not the postman, then,’ said Izzie quickly. It was unlike her aunt to be so irritable. She gave Anneliese a final hug to show that she was all right. Anneliese resettled her chair and pulled her mug towards her.

‘Is Beth coming?’ Izzie asked Anneliese to deflect the irritation, and felt guilty as soon as she’d done so because her aunt looked away as if she could hide the anxiety that had flared in her eyes.

‘No, she can’t come yet and I don’t want to worry her,’ Anneliese said.

‘Of course,’ Izzie replied, in the cheery voice that she used to clients on the phone who were telling her they didn’t want to use one of the models on her books.

Not worrying Beth was a mantra she’d grown up with. In the family tree, Izzie was the one who had it all sorted out, who knew where she was going with her life. Beth was younger, the fragile, sometimes dizzy one, the one who wouldn’t quite make it in the world. How wrong that had turned out to be. Beth was happily married to Marcus and Izzie had notched up another failed relationship. Not even a proper relationship, actually: a relationship with a married man. Who was the fragile, dumb one now?

Damn, she had to stop thinking like this. She was going round and round in circles and her brain was numb. She should be thinking about her grandmother and not about bloody Joe Hansen.

Suddenly Izzie felt so very tired. It was a sad, lonely homecoming with nothing but misery. She wanted it to be the way it had been before; before Gran was ill; before she’d realised Dad was getting old; before she’d known about something wrong between Anneliese and Edward. Before it had all gone wrong with Joe.

She got up from the table quickly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I think the jet-lag is getting to me. I’m going to go to bed.’

‘Of course.’ Anneliese got up and gave her another hug.

Izzie sank into her aunt’s arms and bit back the desire to burst into tears.

‘I’ll phone you later,’ Anneliese whispered, for her ears only.

‘I’d like that,’ Izzie said.

Izzie woke up to light filtering in through floral curtains. She’d been having the most amazing dream and she wanted to tell Joe. They’d been on a holiday somewhere sunny, maybe Mexico, and she could feel the heat burnishing her skin. Then there was a ride in a teeny plane and now they were back in their lovely home, a light-filled loft apartment. She felt utter contentment fill her and she rolled over in the bed to touch Joe. Just then, she came fully awake. There was no Joe in the bed beside her. She’d never slept with him, she realised suddenly. It had all been a dream. Their sleeping together was relegated to small naps after those times they’d made love: correction – after they’d had sex.

They would never live in an airy loft apartment in New York together; he’d probably hate it. She wasn’t sure what he liked in apartments or houses. She’d never seen anywhere he’d ever lived. Instead, she was alone in her childhood bed in Tamarin, with the pale wallpaper she’d picked herself when she was eighteen and the apple tree banging in the wind against the window. Joe would never see this, he would never know about her childhood, he’d never come here, he’d probably never get to meet Gran.