Anything for You Ch. 09

Not that I really needed to worry about anything. She'd taken the spare key when she dropped me off the day before, promising to call in twice a week to make sure all was well and to pick up the post.

Three months. It didn't sound long but it was finally sinking in just how long it really was. In three months it'd be March. The worst of the winter would be over, the daffodils in bloom. And by then, like the seasons, maybe I too would be changed. A stronger, more confident Sam, with new skills and abilities. Well, a girl could dare to dream.

By the time I'd worked my way around the house, it was five to eight. And right on time, after I'd made one last trip to the bathroom and was heading back towards the stairs, I heard a car draw up outside.

But when I pulled the door open, suitcase already in hand, I stared in open-mouthed astonishment. Because instead of the black cab I'd been expecting, there on my driveway stood a dark blue Volvo estate.

My father's car.

"Dad," I faltered as he climbed out, my voice a startled croak. "What—what are you doing here? I'm waiting for a taxi. It'll be here in a minute."

"I know. I'm not planning on holding you up."

I watched him walk towards me, my heart beginning to hammer in my chest as I realised he was alone. Oh God, he had to come just as I was about to leave? When he'd had all yesterday afternoon and evening to re-establish contact? "But this really isn't a good time, Dad. I'm sorry." I dug my fingernails into my palm, my eyes prickling ominously. "I can't do this. Not now."

He slowed to a halt in front of me, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Even through a blur of tears, I could see he looked shattered. Older somehow. And yet for all that, there was a hopefulness in his expression I hadn't seen for years. "I was wondering if you'd let me take you to the airport. So we can... You know. Talk."

"I've booked a taxi," I whispered automatically.

He nodded. "It's okay. I can deal with that when it comes. Let me take you, Sam. Please? There're some things I need to tell you. Things I need to say."

I gazed at him for a moment, dimly aware of a flare of headlights at the end of the cul-de-sac, the familiar chug of a diesel engine. "What if I don't want to hear them?"

Shock zinged down my spine. I'd actually spoken those words aloud?

"Then I won't say anything." To his credit, my father almost managed to conceal the heartache in his tone. Almost. "We don't have to talk. I'll just drive you to the airport. Make sure you get there safely. Sam..." He looked over his shoulder at the approaching cab. "I can't make things up to you. It'd be stupid to even try. But I do want you to know I never stopped caring. Never stopped loving you. Haven't always done a great job of showing you that, I know, but..." And then he swore under his breath.

Another jolt of electricity rippled through me. I'd never heard him swear. "Oh God, I know that, Dad. I love you too."

He turned back around, his eyes suspiciously bright. "You'll let me take you, then?"

I hesitated. "But it's Paul's birthday today. Surely...?"

"No." He shook his head "It would've been his birthday," he corrected. "But it isn't. And I've talked about it to your Mum—I mean, we've talked about it—and we've agreed not to do the birthday thing anymore. 'Cause it's not..." It was his turn to hesitate. "Well, it's not helpful, is it?"

"She actually agreed?" I stared at him. "But—"

"She's not alone, don't worry. Mrs Jenkins—you remember, the woman who lives next door?—said she'd be happy to stay with her, share some lunch. So please, Sam? Let me do this?"

I swallowed. "I—give me a moment?" And after putting down my suitcase, I darted down the driveway to the taxi and motioned to the driver to wind down his window.

"Well, good morning Miss Chesterton Close," he said with a grin. "We meet again."

Joe. "You're the only cabbie in Stow Newton, right?" I said once I'd recovered. "Is that it?"

His grin broadened. "Heard the address, couldn't resist taking the fare." He threw a glance at my father who was making his way towards us. "Don't tell me you've got more man trouble?"

"Ha ha. He's my Dad." I bit my lip. "And he's just offered to take me to Stansted."

"Right." Joe's smile wavered. "I see."

"And I feel really bad about sending you away but I—"

Before I could finish, my father gently elbowed me aside. I watched in startled—and grateful—astonishment as he peeled a couple of notes from his wallet and pressed them into Joe's hand. And then a newly smiling Joe was reversing back off the drive, his arm raised in a gesture of farewell and in a matter of seconds, Dad and I were alone again.

"Right then," he said simply. "Let's get you to that plane."

*

"Ladies and gentlemen, as we start our descent, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position. Make sure your seatbelt is securely fastened..."

Descent? Startled, I opened my eyes and looked around to discover many of my fellow travellers fumbling with seat controls and seatbelts. But we couldn't be landing already, could we? I'd only flicked through about five pages of the glossy magazine I'd picked up in WHSmith at Stansted—no way had we been in the air long enough.

I checked my watch. Apparently, we had been in the air long enough. More than an hour had passed since I'd last looked at the time. Just to be certain, I looked towards the window, and as luck would have it, a gap in the clouds allowed me to snatch a glimpse of buildings below. Which meant that somehow, I must've dozed off before I had a chance to read—I stared down at the magazine spread across my lap—99 Ways To Please Your Lover Tonight. Me, who never slept on aeroplanes. Though I probably shouldn't have been surprised. When, after all, had I last had a decent night's sleep?

"You'll need to put that forward an hour dear, now we're over Italy," a friendly voice said to my left.

"What?" I turned to see a bright-eyed little old lady sitting in the seat next to me and followed her gaze back to my wrist. "Oh, yes. Thank you."

She smiled. "You're welcome. And you know," she added conspiratorially, "I've always had a soft spot for number seven."

As I sent her a startled glance, she tapped at the magazine on my lap.

7 ~ How to give your man the perfect blow job

"It's always been lucky for me, dear. Works a treat," she said, a rather dreamy expression on her face now. "He'll be like putty in your hands."

"Right," I heard myself say faintly. "Er, thanks."

"Feeling better now?" she carried on cheerfully as I grappled with my seatbelt, blushing furiously.

Thanks?

"Only you looked a bit peaky when we got on. You certainly look a lot better than you did."

Oh dear, just how bad had I looked earlier? I managed a brief nod, returned her smile and then, deciding it might be better for my sanity to avoid engaging in any further conversation, made a show of studying the magazine.

Still, it probably wasn't surprising she'd been concerned. I'd felt decidedly rough by the time Dad dropped me off outside Departures. There was no question we needed to have the conversation we'd had, but in the process, I'd had to allow so many long-buried emotions to be dragged back up to the surface.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart."

We'd driven in silence for quite a while, so those first three words, softly spoken, made me jump as much as they might have done had my father bellowed them through a loudhailer.

"Sorry for what?" I said, equally quietly, my heart still pounding.

"Ah, Sam." His fingers clenched on the steering wheel. "Sorry for everything. You name it, I'm sorry. Sorry I let your mother treat you differently to Paul. Sorry your brother got sick. Sorry I let you donate one of your kidneys to him."

"But I wanted to."

"I know." He sighed. "But there's no way we should've let you do it. Well, no way I should've let you do it," he amended after a further moment of consideration. "Your mother was never going to see things rationally. But I should've done."

I chewed my lower lip. "You couldn't have stopped me, Dad."

"I might've managed to persuade you it was a bad idea. But I didn't even try."

"Because it wasn't a bad idea. No one seemed to think it was a bad idea. None of the doctors, anyway. It was supposed to be straightforward."

"Well, they were wrong." He shot me a sidelong glance, his expression pained. "It was about as un-straightforward as you could get. And all this time..." He drew in a deep breath. "All this time, you've felt like it was your fault he died?"

I gazed at him helplessly. Surely the words I'd blurted out yesterday at my parents' house hadn't come as a total surprise to him? "Maybe not my fault, exactly," I said at last. "But you can't tell me that if Mum had been given the choice, she'd have chosen me over Paul?" My voice cracked on his name. "If she could've picked which one of us should live..."

"Sam." I watched a muscle working in his jaw, saw new lines appearing on his brow as he squeezed his eyes closed for a moment. "Oh sweetheart."

"It's not your fault."

"It certainly isn't yours." He shook his head slightly. "But I am to blame for a lot of this. I should've done something years ago. I've let things go on for far too long."

I touched his arm, stricken by his anguished expression. "You did your best."

"Hardly." His lips twisted. "I just kept hoping she'd..."

"Snap out of it?"

I saw the beginnings of a grim smile. "Something like that. I kind of thought when the court case was settled things would start getting back to normal."

I nodded, remembering with a pang how I'd said the same thing to Drew the night of my birthday.

"But I should've realised things wouldn't be that simple. How could they be? How could being awarded a huge lump of cash make up for losing a son?"

I risked a small smile of my own. "Well, you get to go on Caribbean cruises when you retire."

"Oh God, don't remind me." He returned a comical grimace. "Never again."

I frowned. "It wasn't that bad, was it?"

"You have to be joking. It was hell on earth." He shuddered. "Hundreds of people trapped together on a boat, most of them playing at being rich, putting on fake posh accents. Your mother loved it, of course. She got to pretend to be someone completely different. Bragged about her beautiful house, her husband's amazing career." He hesitated. "Her two wonderful children."

"Two?" But I could already guess what was coming next. "You mean, she talked about Paul as if...?"

"As if he was still alive, yes."

I watched him as he gazed out at the road ahead, watched that little muscle twitching in his jaw again, and, not for the first time, wondered how he'd managed to bury his head in the sand for so long.

"Call me stupid," he said at length, after we'd navigated a roundabout and turned on to the motorway, "but I didn't tackle her about it while we were away. I figured..." He sighed again. "I told myself that having a holiday was exactly what she needed and that maybe she just needed to do the play-acting thing one more time, get it out of her system once and for all. 'Course." He released a short, bitter laugh. "I was kidding myself. Again." He threw me a look. "But you already knew that, didn't you?"

I drew in a slow, steadying breath. Prayed to whoever might be listening that when I started to speak, the right words would simply flow out. "Dad..."

"It's all right. You don't need to say it." He reached across to rest his hand on my knee. "I've told her we're going to get some help. And she's agreed we need some. She's finally accepted things can't right themselves on their own. Because after yesterday—after what happened when you came around—"

"I'm sorry." Biting my lip wasn't working any more; tears were escaping from the corners of my eyes and there wasn't a thing I could do to stop them. "Oh God, I'm so—"

"No, Sam." His hand sought mine, his voice gruff. "Don't say sorry again, okay? Not ever. If anyone should say sorry, it's me." He squeezed my fingers. "I've tried so hard not to see what was going on. It was easy enough to do when I was working. I could've retired a year ago, you know that? They offered me early retirement, the full package. But I didn't want to take it."

I couldn't get rid of the lump in my throat. "Well, we all cope in different ways," I croaked. "Going to work was your way of coping. Pretending Paul's still alive sometimes—that's Mum's way of coping. There's—there's no such thing as normal grief, you know?"

"What about you?" He sent me another sidelong look. "What's your way of coping? You seriously planning on keeping Drew Barnett at arm's length for all eternity?"

I stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment.

"You can't keep him waiting forever, you know."

"It's not—" Why was my throat so dry? "It's not like that."

"Oh, Sam." My father's lips twisted into another wry smile. "It's exactly like that, my girl. I've seen the way he looks at you. Poor boy's got it bad. So have you." He glanced at me again. "Haven't you?"

I'd shaken my head, not daring to meet his gaze. "He's with someone else."

"If he is, it's only because he can't be with you."

I couldn't bring myself to answer, couldn't trust myself to speak. And after several seconds ticked by, my father's hand had found mine again. "Sweetheart, listen to me. You, me, your mother—we've spent so long trying not to talk about things because it hurts. But the truth is, there's one thing we should've all learnt by now. It hurts even more if you don't."

So then I'd confessed all. Found myself telling him everything, giving him all the gory details—including some details that, on reflection, a daughter probably shouldn't share with her father. But it had helped to talk, I realised, bending to retrieve my handbag from under the seat as the plane finally taxied to a halt at the gate. Somehow, having an in depth, no-holds-barred conversation that hadn't skirted any of the difficult issues, but that had instead met them head on was a curiously cathartic experience.

More than that, I reflected as I shuffled off the plane with everyone else and followed the crowd to baggage reclaim, it was like getting a piece of my life back. As a child, I'd spent hours with my Dad, helping him in the garden, watching him build things in the garage, the whole time chatting nineteen to the dozen. How come I'd never realised until now that when Paul died, my relationship with my father—not just my relationship with my mother—had changed?

When had we stopped talking? When had I stopped talking? To think I'd been arrogant enough to believe I'd been dealing with my grief far more effectively than my mother.

"Samantha! Over here, cara!"

My head jerking up at the familiar voice, I scanned the faces of the people around me in the Arrivals Hall, finally spotting my new employer a mere second before he wrapped me up in an exuberant hug. "Hi!" I gasped, laughing as he lifted me, suitcase and all, from the ground. "Whoa... Marco!"

Grinning broadly, he set me down, swept my case from my hand then kissed me on both cheeks. "Ciao bella! It's so good to see you again."

"It's only been a week," I reminded him, still breathless. "Anyone would think you haven't seen me for a year."

He held me at arm's length then, his smile fading. "Looks as though it could've been a year," he pronounced, shaking his head. "You've lost weight."

"Have I?" I supposed that for Marco, having spent his formative years surrounded by fashion models, registering the loss of even a few pounds came as second nature. Though actually, he might be right. My faithful black jeans were feeling decidedly loose. "Well, that's good, isn't it?" I said lightly, allowing him to thread his arm through mine and lead me across to the exit. "There'll be more room for all that pasta you're going to feed me while I'm here, right?"

"No, not good." He turned his head so I could see his scowl. "It's no good at all. And I... Urgh." To my surprise, he rattled off an unintelligible stream of Italian under his breath.

I narrowed my gaze at him. "Something wrong?"

He squinted back at me then breathed out an extra long sigh. "Yes. And no. But I'll tell you in the car. It's cold out here—the car is warm. Come." And sliding his arm around my waist, he hurried me outside, across the access road and over to a sleek black car parked in a nearby car park.

"So what's up?" I asked anxiously when he slid in beside me at last, having stowed my suitcase safely in the boot. "Are the designs for the new collection not going well? Supplier problems?"

"No, no." He flapped a hand at me, that familiar even-toothed grin back in place. "Everything is fine." I watched with some awe as he pushed a button on the dash and the engine purred into life. If I thought the interior of Drew's Audi was impressive, this was something else. This car was probably worth two of Drew's car. Maybe even three or four, come to think of it.

"Then...?"

"I'm sorry, cara. I can't have you to stay with me at my house just now."

"Oh." My stomach suddenly felt oddly hollow. "O-okay."

"No, Samantha, it's really not okay. The apartment I was going to give to you—there has been a burst water pipe." He raised his hands expressively. "Water everywhere. Through the ceiling, down the walls. Carpets soaked. Furniture soaked. No way you can stay there, no way at all. So I've booked you into a local hotel while I arrange for repairs, all expenses paid."

"Marco," I protested. "You didn't need to do that! I just need a sofa to sleep on for now. Any old sofa, I don't mind."

He frowned. "But I would mind. You come to work for me at my request, to do me a great favour—and I have nowhere suitable for you to sleep? No, of course you must be in a hotel." Then he smiled. "I think you'll like it. It's right in the centre of town. The hotel belongs to my Uncle Alberto. I've asked for you to have one of their best rooms."

"No!"

"Yes, cara." He switched his smile into full persuasive charm mode. "Hey, it's December. It's quiet for the hotel this time of year."

It was clear he wasn't going to be swayed. How ironic. Just weeks earlier, I would've leapt at the chance to stay in a smart hotel—had leapt at the chance, in fact. And now, all I could think about was that I'd be alone. That I'd be on my own in a hotel room, in a strange city, in a foreign country, with only my thoughts and an Italian phrase book for company.

"Well, thank you," I said as brightly as I could manage. "It'll only be for a few days though, right?"

He shrugged, switching on the windscreen wipers as it started to rain. "A week? Perhaps two."

Oh God, two weeks? I turned to look out of the window and pretended to admire the passing scenery, not that there was much scenery to admire. To my horror, we already appeared to be approaching the outskirts of the city but it was only mid-afternoon, even factoring in the extra hour. Did he intend to drop me off at the hotel and leave me to my own devices for the rest of the day?

"I've been thinking, though. It seems to me you could do with a little holiday. A paid holiday, of course," he added as I turned back to look at him, wide-eyed. "Just for a few days, eh? You can explore the city. Maybe visit Venezia?"

"What? No!" I gasped, finding my voice again. "That's very kind but I've come here to work. I don't need a holiday."

"I disagree." He gave me a long look—a disconcertingly long look, considering he should've been watching the traffic ahead of us. "Look at you. All thin. All pale. And this is before you start working for me? I can just imagine what Alice will say to me if I send you back to her in March, ill and exhausted. What Roxy will say."