Dropping his keys on the table, Tony Bridges hurried upstairs to relieve Anna, who’d been helping look after Nicola for nearly eighteen months now. Tony was suddenly aware that he’d had too much to drink. He’d left the car by the pub and cabbed it home, allowing him the luxury of drinking. Caught up in the emotion of Charlie’s return, he’d ended up having four or five pints and he swayed slightly on the stairs. He was allowed to have a life of course, but still he always felt ashamed when Anna – or, worse, Nicola’s mother – caught him drinking. Would his speech give him away? The smell of alcohol on his breath? He tried his best to look sober and walked into Nicola’s bedroom.
‘How’s she been?’
‘Very good,’ replied Anna, smiling. She was always smiling, thank goodness. ‘She had her dinner and then I read her a few chapters.’
She held up Bleak House. Nicola had always loved Dickens – David Copperfield her particular favourite – so they were working through his back catalogue. It was a project, something for Nicola to achieve, and she seemed to enjoy the stories with their plucky heroes and diabolical villains.
‘We’re just getting to the exciting bit,’ Anna continued, ‘and she wanted to read on, so I gave her a couple of bonus chapters. But she’d pretty much nodded off by the end of it – you might have to recap a bit tomorrow. Make sure she doesn’t miss anything.’
Tony suddenly felt very emotional, moved by the tender care Anna lavished on his wife. Fearing his voice would falter, he patted Anna’s arm, thanked her quickly and sent her on her way.
Nicola was his childhood sweetheart and they had married young. Their life was set fair but two days before her twenty-ninth birthday, Nicola had suffered a massive stroke. She survived it, but the resulting brain damage was extensive and she was now a prisoner of locked-in syndrome. She could see and was aware, but was only able to move her eyes, due to the paralysis that gripped her body. Tony looked after her lovingly, patiently teaching her to communicate with her eyes, dragooning in family or hiring carers when he had to work, but still he often felt he was a bad husband to her. Impatient, frustrated, selfish. In reality, he did everything he could for her, but that didn’t stop him castigating himself. Especially when he’d been out having a good time. Then he felt callous and unworthy.
He stroked her hair, kissed her forehead and then retreated to his bedroom. Even now, two years after her stroke, the fact that they had separate bedrooms still hurt. Separate bedrooms were for couples who’d fallen out of love, for show marriages, not for him and Nicola. They were better than that.
