Chapter 55
MEGAN LET herself into the house. She stood in the hall looking around. All evidence of their ‘invasion’ had disappeared: the coats and shoes and bags. The radiator ticked erratically. Now what?
Tea.
She went into the kitchen, filled the kettle – too full for a single mug – flicked it on, then stood waiting. The doorbell rang before the water had finished boiling. Two tentative blasts. She had no idea who might be calling.
It was Noah. That threw her. ‘Oh, hi. Did you forget something?’
He stayed on the front step. ‘No.’ There was a pause. ‘I know the last thing you probably want is another conversation, especially after these past few days, but I was wondering if you could spare me a few minutes. I’m honestly not here to cause trouble.’
Twenty-four hours earlier she would have shut the door in his face, but they had moved on. It was all settled now. She could afford him the courtesy of hearing him out – she supposed. ‘Okay. I was just making a drink, would you like one?’
‘Thank you.’ He stepped into the hall, unzipped his jacket. As he hung it on the hook, he glanced into Jonathan’s room. The hospital bed was still there, stripped and ready, awaiting collection back to the depot to be cleaned and delivered to someone else. Megan would be glad when it was gone. Another step completed in the dismantling of the past. Noah paid her the courtesy of not mentioning it, embarrassed, hopefully, by the memory of his drunken collapse in his father’s room on Saturday night.
They settled in the lounge. Noah waited for Megan to sit down before he lowered himself into a chair, polite all of a sudden; but once seated, he seemed hesitant to begin speaking.
‘What is it you want to talk about, Noah?’
He put his mug down, on a coaster, not on the table. ‘Firstly, I want to apologise for some of my behaviour this past weekend. At times I know I was rude, disrespectful. Saying that I’ve been upset isn’t much of an excuse.’ He must have seen a hardening in her expression because he hurried on, ‘Is no excuse. Anyway I want you to know, I’m sorry if I upset you.’
Megan nodded her acceptance. She felt she owed him nothing more. There was another awkward pause.
‘And I wanted to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind, about Dad. About his illness.’
She had assumed it was going to be a conversation about something in the house that he wanted – correction, something else he wanted. She hoped he wasn’t going to start unpicking Jonathan’s death or his legacy. She couldn’t bear that. ‘I suppose that’s okay.’
‘I appreciate it’s a bit rich. Asking now. After everything. I know I avoided it when he was first diagnosed and when he was ill.’
She nodded, feeling disinclined to offer him more, until she knew his motivation for asking, and where he was going with his questions.
Noah seemed to be in some sort of compulsive confessional mode, because he added, without prompting, ‘We used to talk about other stuff when we were together. I convinced myself that was what Dad wanted. Distraction. Tales from St Elsewhere. But, in truth, it was because I found it very difficult to talk to him about what was happening.’
Megan took pity on him, a little. ‘You weren’t the only one. We were all in denial a lot of the time. It felt like the only bearable way to deal with what was going on.’ They were quiet for a while. She thought about her comment and felt compelled to revise it, based on the evidence of how much Jonathan had, obviously, thought about his demise in the last year of his life. ‘To be fair to your father, I know – now – that he thought about the impact of his illness on other people a lot. Certainly a lot more than I realised, or gave him credit for.’ That was enough. Noah had no right to know how much shame and guilt she felt for frustrating Jonathan’s numerous attempts to talk about his impending death. She took a drink of her tea. Noah mirrored her. ‘So – what do you want to know?’
Noah pulled at the neck of his sweatshirt. ‘Can you tell me a little bit about it was like living with him? What I mean is… living with someone with MND.’
It was such a personal question. And although she had absolutely no obligation to protect the feelings of a fully grown man – who in the past forty-eight hours had said, and done, some truly hurtful things – she still edited herself. ‘He was brave. Rarely complained about the symptoms, the pain, the sheer grinding hard work of it. What he struggled with more was having to be helped. You know your dad: he prided himself on being self-sufficient. He hated having to rely on me, and Lisa,’ after a tiny pause she added, ‘and Chloe for things. Towards the end, the indignity of it got him down. It made him angry – not at me, but at it.’
Both of them went quiet, thinking about the circumstances of Jonathan’s death, but neither of them spoke of it. A pact had been made to accept his demise as ‘fitting’. It seemed that Noah was going to observe it. He looked distressed. Part of Megan felt some sympathy. They had
