The desire to be ‘someone’ had probably been borne out of their father’s absence; subconsciously wanting to prove to him that he was the loser for having walked away. Somehow, his actions had made Briony more forthright than she might otherwise have been, but they’d done the opposite to Bex for a long time. Jeffrey’s rejection, especially of his older daughter, had turned her into a chronic people pleaser, willing to do whatever she had to in order to earn the praise she needed to feel validated. It was the one thing that had allowed Briony to survive her sister’s reaction to what had happened with Liam; the fact that Bex had stood up for herself in such a resolute way. But it had broken her heart too and it had changed her beyond all recognition. All of that inner confidence and self-belief had died, and she’d felt like a shadow of her old self without her sister by her side. That’s when she’d begun the search to find some new meaning in life, which had led her to where she was now, except she knew she’d never feel complete without Bex in her life, no matter how far she tried to outrun that feeling. So by the time her sister had closed the gap between them and taken a seat by the side of her bed, Briony could barely remember how to breathe. She could tell something big was coming, she just didn’t know what it was.
‘How are you feeling today?’ Bex narrowed her eyes as she asked the question, just as she had every single day since the medication had been reduced allowing Briony to come out of the induced coma, when her condition had stabilised enough to make it safe. From the start, Bex had scrutinised her responses, treating each one with suspicion and checking whether Briony really was as well as she claimed to be, by following up her initial enquiry with probing questions.
‘Bored stiff of being here and desperate to get back to Merlin and Woody, but I know it’s going to be a while.’ Briony dropped her gaze, not wanting to see her sister’s face as she continued. ‘I know I’ve got to stay local and none of you wanted me to be in the Airbnb by myself, but I was thinking if I could find somewhere to site Woody near Iris’s flat, and someone could move him for me, Ken could keep enough of an eye out for me to put everyone’s mind at rest.’
‘No.’ It was just one word but the force behind it was spelled out clearly. This was clearly non-negotiable. ‘You have to have someone taking proper care of you these first few weeks and there’s no way you can stay in the van on your own with a dog, however much you might want to.’
‘I know.’ Briony mumbled the response, wishing she could find more reasons to argue. ‘It’s just that the thought of being hemmed in, in the flat, and not seeing Merlin for who knows how long is harder than I realised it was going to be.’
‘I get that.’ Bex reached out and touched her hand, and Briony almost stopped breathing again. She’d expected her sister to remind her that she’d been away from the family she adored for more than two weeks. She also half-expected Bex to say that Briony knew all of this before she agreed to go ahead with the transplant, but her sister hadn’t done either of those things and somehow that was making her all the more nervous about what was to come.
‘I’ve just got to get on with it, and it’ll be lovely to be back with Mum and Ken. At least I won’t feel as bad about getting under Iris’s feet either, now that she’s arranged to go down to Cornwall to stay with her mum for a month. Although I can’t help wishing that’s where I was going too.’
‘I think if you’re born in Port Agnes your heart will always bethere, no matter how far you travel.’ Bex narrowed her eyes again. ‘I know I need to get back there.’
‘I completely understand that and I can’t believe you’ve stayed this long. I know we’ve avoided talking about everything that happened, but I’m so grateful to you for what you’ve?—’
‘I want you to come back with me.’ Bex’s words cut her off, but it felt as though they’d stopped her heart too. This had to be an out-of-body experience. Her sister couldn’t seriously be asking her to come back to Cornwall with her. Even if she was, there was no way the hospital would allow it.
‘I’ve got to be close by for the follow-up appointments.’ There was so much she wanted to say, so many questions she needed to ask, but for now that response was all she could manage.
‘It’s all sorted. One of the consultant hepatologists from St Piran’s is going to work in partnership with the transplant centre to monitor you and Mum. It’s something they’re able to do if they’ve got the right specialists in the local area, for patients who live as far as we do from the transplant centre.’
The words ‘we do’ made Briony catch her breath again. There hadn’t been a ‘we’ that had involved her and Bex for sixteen years and suddenly the tears were sliding down her face.
‘Look, I know this isn’t a perfect solution either and that you’d rather be in the van with just Merlin, but you need someone to keep an eye on you at least for a little while. Ken will be taking care of Mum, and you know their cats won’t be able to deal with Merlin. So if you want to be back with him, this is the best option.’
‘It’s not that I don’t want to.’ Briony’s voice cracked. ‘I just can’t put you, Matt and the boys through all of that. I don’t deserve you making sacrifices to look after me.’
‘Yes, you do. You saved Mum, that means you deserveeverything, and she’ll recover much more quickly if she knows both her girls are in Port Agnes.’
Both her girls. The words hit Briony again, the feeling of being a real part of the family after so long was almost overwhelming and she had to fight the urge to pinch herself to check that she wasn’t still in a coma, imagining all of this.
‘What about Matt and the boys? Won’t me being there be difficult for all of them?’
‘Tom is never going to forgive me if I come home without you, and Henry and Ollie will love you too. You always knew how to bring the fun.’
‘And the drama.’ Briony caught her sister’s eye for a moment and they both smiled, despite the fact that her own eyes were still blurred by tears. ‘Are you sure you don’t just want to get me back to your place so you can poison me or smother me with a pillow?’
‘The nurses here are so busy, if I’d wanted to do something like that, I could have got away with it long before now.’ Bex grinned again.
‘I’m not sure if I’m supposed to find that reassuring or not.’ Briony mirrored her sister’s expression, but then she sighed as all the other emotions rose back up to the surface. ‘It just feels like too much to ask of you, after everything that’s gone on.’
‘It won’t be forever.’ Bex’s voice was soft, but the words still felt like a hammer blow because Briony had no idea what they meant. Was her sister saying that the growing closeness between them was going to disappear as soon as she got better? If she lost her sister for a second time, she wasn’t sure she could make it through. Then Bex took hold of her hand again. ‘You just need to get fully better, then you can get back to life on the road, if that’s what you want. But we’ve been given this chance to try again and for you to get to know Matt and the boys and make up for lost time. Neither of us can predict how this is going to turn out, but Ithink we’d be stupid if we didn’t at least try to find some good out of all of this. I know there’s nothing that would make Mum happier.’
Bex hadn’t been able to disguise the emotion in her voice; this wasn’t just another game of make-believe she was playing. She’d never been the actress of the two of them, but Briony couldn’t disguise her reaction either, her eyes already glassy, although the threatened tears were happy ones. Her sister was saying the words she’d wanted to hear for sixteen years – that they had the chance to put things right – and there was no doubt in Briony’s mind that this time she meant them. She could be part of a family again if things went well, right at the heart of it too, not just hanging off the periphery feeling like a guest at a party who no one really wanted there. She had the chance to love and be loved in return; to get to know Bex’s sons – her nephews – and to be someone’s sister again, as well as an auntie.
She was being handed a dream she hadn’t allowed herself to believe could ever become a reality, but part of her was terrified too. If she messed this up, she wouldn’t survive. Losing Bex once had been hard enough, but to lose her for a second time, and to have to say goodbye to the boys too, not to mention Tristan, was more than she could stand. In some ways it would have been easier not to try, but it was already too late to prevent her heart from being broken if things didn’t work out. She’d loved and missed Bex through all the time they’d been apart, and she’d already fallen in love with Tom and Ollie in the little time she’d spent with them, and she had no doubt she’d feel the same way about Henry. There was so much on the line, but she had to try, because she knew now that no matter how far she travelled, or how many new experiences she had, she’d never be truly happy without Bex and her family in her life. It was why she was shaking, as she returned the pressure on her sister’s hand.
‘There’s nothing I want more either.’ Somehow Briony managed to resist the urge to ask Bex if it was the thing she most wanted too. She’d already been given the stars in the form of this second chance; she couldn’t ask for the moon as well. Even if things could never go back to the way they’d once been, just being a part of Bex’s life again was the greatest gift she could ever imagine receiving. She couldn’t envisage ever walking away from that, but then her life had rarely turned out the way she expected.
18
Briony had never been a mother, but she’d read about the kind of instant love that came when some women gave birth. She wasn’t expecting to ever get the chance to experience it, but after three weeks of living in her sister’s house, she felt as though she’d had something close to it with her nephews. They were each so funny and engaging in their own way, and they seemed to soak up the stories she told them about her shared childhood with their mum.
‘I need some ingredients for food tech tomorrow. It’s gluten-free week and we’re making something called cherry blossom cake,’ Henry had said at about 9p.m. on the Thursday evening of Briony’s first week in the farmhouse, thrusting a list towards his mum, and Bex had rolled her eyes so hard she’d been in danger of detaching a retina.
‘And when exactly were you given this list of ingredients?’
