“Who is?” I sit up so I can be close to him. “School is a testing time for everyone. Even the popular kids I think have a hard time.”
He considers this. “You’re probably right, but some of us deal with it the right way. Others, the wrong way. Boys aren’t supposed to show pain so I hid it instead of letting it go. Jokes boys made at my expense, teachers that told me I’d never amount to anything, girls who wouldn’t go out with me. Carried all of it like excess luggage and kept adding to it with every failure and every mistake…And to make things harder for myself I chose to be an actor, a career built on rejections.”
“Oh God, don’t I know it.” I can’t help agreeing hotly. “The hundreds of auditions that lead to nothing. The savage competition for roles. One of our lecturers at the Guildhall would always say, you need to be thick skinned to be an actor. She said it again and again over and over to drum it into us.”
He scoffs. “Wise words. We were told the same. But being told to expect difficulty and knowing how not to let it get to you are not the same thing.”
“You’re not the only one. Remember Daniel Day Lewis? He cracked up because of all the bad reviews?”
“TheHamletthing?” Raff glanced down at me, more animated. Theatre gossip is always stimulating. “I thought he saw his father’s ghost.”
“No that was how his agent spun the story for the press. I heard it from someone who was at the National. Daniel Day Lewis got a lot of bad reviews, don’t know why, and it got to him. He walked off stage in the middle of the scene and fell apart backstage sobbing and refusing to go back out.”
Raff whistles long and low. “F-u-c-k.” He draws the word out. “He was at the top of his fame, too, and even he couldn’t take it.”
He thinks for a moment, and I snuggle up under his arm and lay my head against his chest again.
“That’s kind of how it was for me but on a smaller scale. The self-doubt. Whenever anything went wrong I took it as evidence that I was the same failure my teachers said. When things were going well, I worried they might end too soon. The more successful I was the worse the doubt and anxiety. Worrying about reviews, about competition, about being written out ofClanif audiences didn’t like my character. Then one day,someone offers you a pill, and all that fear melts away.” He glances down and strokes my hair. “You know that luggage I told you about, it suddenly lifted. I felt fine and free and happy. My heart didn’t feel like a jagged rock anymore.”
He wraps his arm around me and pulls me close. “So, I took another pill, and before long I couldn’t manage without them even back in England. Even when I was out with friends drinking and having fun, I still took the pills. Until…until I fell through a glass wall and woke up in hospital.”
I want to cry listening to his story. His heart, his beautiful caring heart, how could it feel like a jagged rock. I press my lips on his chest, just in the centre where his pectoral begins. “I wish I could kiss your heart better,” I whisper and press my lips above his heartbeat for a long time while he continues.
“That injury, the loss of blood, all of it was the best thing that ever happened to me. It made me realise this was no way to live, it was a way to die. And I wouldn’t be the first. So when they discharged me from hospital, I booked myself into a recovery centre. There. I learnt how to put down my luggage, how to see life differently and most of all how to stop feeling sorry for myself, thinking every misfortune is about me. In recovery you learn to stop thinking about yourself and think about others, to be of service to others. It’s very freeing. The relief might not be as intense as the pills, but it lasts longer and you learn to handle life better.”
He squeezes me. “Does this answer your question?”
“Thank you for telling me.”
He slides back down, so we’re face to face and we hold each other and eventually fall asleep. My last thought before drifting off is of his words.
In recovery you learn to stop thinking about yourself and think about others, to be of service to others.
The next morning, at 5.30am, he slides out of bed and pulls his clothes on.
“It’s too cold. Stay under the covers,” he says when I sit up.
The bed is hot from his own body. But I’m not going to let him go without a proper goodbye so I follow him downstairs. At the door. He holds me so tight as if he wants to take me with him. “Leonie, think about it. Your next step. Think about what makes you happy.”
I can’t answer because he kisses me one last time and then he’s out and the door is closed behind him.
I run upstairs so I can watch him drive away. It’s too dark so all I can see are the tail lights from the taxi as it winds up the hill then disappear too soon down the other side.
When I get back into bed, it’s cold. With my body alone it takes too long to warm up and never as hot as he made it.
Chapter Thirty-One
Sunday 18th December, The Glyn, 9am
I’ve never come here in the morning. It’s a very different place. Nurses wheeling patients to and from bathrooms, trollies full of medication, the din of breakfast trays being cleared.
The games lounge is empty so I go to Bill’s room directly. He’s dressed and sitting in his armchair reading a long letter and looking very serious. He glances up and his face registers surprise to see me.
“Leonie? Why are you here – what’s happened?”
I’ve been numb since Raff left, walking through the morning as if in a trance, all feelings frozen. But the caring look on my grandfather’s face, the way he drops his paperwork and holds his arms out to me breaks the dam. Before I can speak, my tears flow.
“Oh my dear, my dear.” He pushes himself up from his chair and comes to hug me. “Tell me.”
