‘I understand,’ I said, trying not to sound disappointed that this was going to be goodbye.
‘What time do you need to check out?’ he asked.
‘By noon.’
‘Okay. What if I meet you in the lobby at noon and we spend the afternoon together? We can talk about how we make this thing between us work or, if that’s too much for the moment, we can just enjoy each other’s company.’
I loved how understanding he was, not trying to rush me into anything I wasn’t ready for. ‘I’d like to talk about how we make it work.’
‘Music to my ears!’ He pulled on his clothes, wincing as they were still soggy and, with a final long, lingering kiss, said a temporary goodbye.
I stayed where I was for a moment, replaying in my mind every part of our time together, before showering.
After I dressed, I realised my phone was still in my handbag. It was out of charge so I plugged it in and, moments later, it pinged with a voicemail. And that’s when the course of my life changed once more.
29
PRESENT DAY
‘What was on the voicemail?’ Paulette asked after I fell silent.
‘It was the hospital. Cliff had been involved in a serious car crash.’
‘Oh, Yvonne! No!’
‘Listening to that message was horrendous. I felt like the bottom had just dropped out of my world. I phoned the hospital but all they could tell me was that Cliff was in surgery and that it wascritical. What did that mean? That it was a tricky operation? That he was about to die? I stuffed everything in my case and got out of there as fast as I could. All I could think about was what would happen if I was too late. I’ve never felt so scared in my whole life.
‘I found out more about the accident when I got to the hospital. A courier had pulled out of a side road at speed, straight into the side of Cliff’s van, knocking him into the path of another vehicle. He’d incurred serious abdominal injuries including a perforated bowel and needed a colostomy so it took a while to recover and make some lifestyle adjustments, but he got there.’
‘And you were with him every step of the way,’ Paulette said.
‘How could I not be?’
‘What happened to Will?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. We hadn’t exchanged phone numbers and I was in such a panic to get to the hospital that I wasn’t thinking about him and it never entered my head to leave a message with reception. He’d have turned up at noon and probably waited for a while before asking after me, and he’d have discovered I’d checked out and gone. He probably thought I’d changed my mind.’
‘Did you ever try to find him?’
‘I didn’t know how to. Stupid as it sounds now, we’d talked for hours about anything and everything – except those vital little details that would have helped me trace him. I didn’t know his surname and he didn’t know mine. I didn’t know where in Manchester he lived.’
‘But you knew he taught music and drama.’
‘It wasn’t a lot to go on but it was all I had and I’ll admit I did a bit of searching when Cliff was back at work and life was back to normal but I drew a blank. It clearly wasn’t meant to be.’
Paulette placed her hand over mine. ‘I’m so sorry. I can hear the regret in your voice.’
‘I regret losing Will, but I don’t regret the time I spent with Cliff.’
‘I fully get that when you had such a happy life together. But that doesn’t mean you can’t regret walking away from the possibility of adifferentlife, or at least feeling wistful about what might have been. Regret’s maybe too strong a word.’
We sat in silence for a while but I could feel the cold seeping into my bones and suggested we wander back.
‘Did you ever tell Cliff about Will?’ Paulette asked.
‘No. I had no way of contacting Will so I knew that was over and, after the trauma Cliff had been through, what was the point in laying that on him? Besides, I’d made the decision to stay. When I got that message, spoke to his surgeon, saw his wrecked van, it broke me. The thought of losing Cliff… It might not have been romantic love but it was still love.’
Paulette linked her arm through mine. ‘You’ve been through so much.’
