‘He was four.’ Four years, two days. He’d celebrated his fourth birthday.
Just.
‘How did he die?’
‘Leukaemia,’ Jess told him, her voice growing mechanical now. Dull. ‘He was ill for almost two years. I fought so hard, and so did he. He had every treatment possible. I tried everything.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Tragedies happen,’ she said wearily. ‘You move on.’
‘Do you?’
Silence. The fire crackled and hissed, absorbing pain.
‘
‘Warren didn’t like illness.’ This was easier, she thought thankfully. Talking about Warren was like talking about…nothing. ‘He left us a month after Dominic was diagnosed. By the time Dominic died, Warren had a new wife and a baby daughter. He didn’t even come to the funeral.’
Raoul’s face stilled, appalled. ‘Tough,’ he whispered and she shook her head.
‘Warren wasn’t tough,’ she told him. ‘He was weak. Not like his son. Dominic was just the bravest…’
She stopped. There was a long pause, broken only by the sound of the fire.
‘So you’ve come here to try and recuperate,’ he said at last, and she flinched.
‘You don’t recuperate from a child’s death,’ she whispered, and she couldn’t stop the sudden flash of anger. ‘But that’s what they all said. You go overseas and forget, they told me. Start again. How can I start again? Why would I want to?’
‘Like me,’ he said softly and her eyes flew to his. ‘Only harder.’
‘What…what do you mean?’
‘I believed them,’ he told her, his voice gentling. ‘Or maybe, like you, they just wore me down by repeating their mantra and I hoped like hell they were right.’
She paused. The fire died down a little. It was crazily intimate; crazily close. It was as if the world had stopped, paused, giving them a tiny cocoon of unreality. Space in the face of shared tragedy.
‘You’ve lost someone, too?’ she whispered, though she already knew the answer.
‘My twin. My sister. Lisle.’
His twin sister. She stared at his face and she saw the bleakness of loss.
‘How long ago?’
‘Three years.’ He shrugged. ‘I know. I should be over it.’
‘Of course you shouldn’t be over it,’ she snapped. She stared some more into his strained face. ‘I guessed it,’ she said, savagely, angry at herself for not letting the thought surface before. ‘I knew.’
‘How?’
‘It’s a look,’ she told him. ‘I saw it in the hospital. I saw it in the faces of those who knew there was no longer hope. It’s an emptiness, a hole. You and your mother… Jean-Paul’s death has hurt, but it’s also brought back Lisle’s death.’
‘I don’t have an emptiness,’ he said but she shook her head.
‘No? Then why Medecins Sans Frontieres?’
‘I just… It seemed the right thing to do, to be a doctor.’ He hesitated but the firelight was enough to encourage him to go on. It was like the confessional, Jess thought. This night there were no secrets. ‘Lisle was deprived of oxygen during birth,’ he told her. ‘She had cerebral palsy. She was so bright, so damned intelligent, and her body was a prison.’
He paused for a moment and she thought he’d stop. But she didn’t speak. She simply waited.
‘That’s why my mother left my father,’ he told her. ‘As soon as my father realised Lisle would be disabled, he demanded she be placed in an institution. Of course, my mother refused. We had servants here to help with Lisle’s physical needs, and Lisle was as intelligent as any of us. She loved us. To do anything but keep her as an integral part of our family seemed unthinkable. But physical disability horrified my father and he insisted. Mama fought him- she held out for six long years. But then it was time for schooling, and there were to be no tutors here. My father refused to have them. And he started being cruel to Lisle. So Mama had a choice and it was a hellish one. Place Lisle into an institution, or walk away from the palace. There was no way my father would release his grip on his heir so that also meant walking away from my brother.’
‘Oh, no. Oh, Raoul.’
‘It broke her heart,’ Raoul said bitterly. ‘Jean-Paul was twelve. She’d hoped she could maintain access-she’d hoped that Jean-Paul himself could understand her decision, but of course he couldn’t. He hated her for leaving. And my father… I think my father just dismissed her. She was forgotten the moment she walked out of the palace and she was never permitted back.’
To make a choice between her children… Jess’s heart recoiled in horror. ‘I can’t imagine how she can have managed.’
‘Oh, she managed,’ Raoul said and a hint of a remembering smile played across his lips as he left the tragedy of his childhood and moved on. ‘She took Lisle and me to Paris. She raised us with love, and she tried not to let the tragedy of leaving her eldest child spoil our childhood. No one answered our phone calls to the palace but we wrote to Jean-Paul every week. Every one of us did. But he never answered. Mama thought for a long while that my father was keeping the letters from him, but no. The servants confirmed for us…Jean-Paul, like my father, had simply moved on.’
‘And Lisle?’ Jess asked, and his face softened. Pleasure returning.
‘Lisle ended up with a first-class university degree,’ he told her. ‘She loved life. She had friends, she had the best sense of humour… We were so proud of her. She was a truly wonderful person.’
‘But she died.’
The smile faded. ‘In the end her body defeated her,’ he said softly. ‘She suffered infection after infection and finally we couldn’t save her.’
He fell silent, and she saw the pain etched across his face. There was a part of her-a really big part of her-that wanted to reach out and touch him. No. But it took an almost superhuman effort to keep her hands to herself.
‘As I said, that was three years ago,’ he continued and maybe he didn’t sense what she was thinking. He was staring into the firelight-not at her. ‘I was already a practising doctor and I thought, after watching the courage with which Lisle faced life, that the least I could do was try to help others. And, of course, everyone said I should get away and forget.’
‘Hence Medecins Sans Frontieres?’
‘Mm.’
‘Hence the scar?’ she asked, wanting suddenly to reach out-to trace its course. She did no such thing.
‘Tribesmen involved in a who-gets-the-doctor-first dispute,’ he said, smiling faintly. ‘I tried to referee and then there were three of us needing attention.’
She couldn’t touch it. She musn’t.
‘And now you’re back here,’ she said softly, gripping her hands firmly into place; staring at the firelight and not looking at him. ‘You’re trying to save your country. And your mother is facing losing again. Losing her grandson. Walking away.’
‘It’s damnable,’ he told her. He glanced through the door to the bed, where Edouard lay clutching his Sebastian in sleep. ‘He’s so…desperate. You know, in the weeks we’ve been here my mother has given him toys but he’s not looked at anything. Tonight has been magic.’ He hesitated, and she saw him form the question she knew had to come. ‘Sebastian is Dominic’s teddy?’
‘He’s Edouard’s teddy,’ she told him, her voice firming.
‘But…’
‘Edouard needs him now.’ She was speaking more firmly than she felt, but she knew this was right. ‘We move on, Raoul. We both need to move on. We need to remember Lisle and Dominic-but we also need to get on with our lives.’
‘Easier to say than do.’
‘It’s not so hard. You just have to be definite. You just have to remember toast and marmalade makes you feel good.’
