Chapter 21
"Is it going to be like in The Secret Garden?" asks Chakra curiously.
"How do you mean?" Alicia looks up, pauses, previously preoccupied with throwing together something vaguely resembling lunch. "Where have you read that, anyway?"
"At Auntie Ruby's house. She has lots of books from a long time ago that she keeps for when I go to hers. Right now, we're reading Ballet Shoes."
"Really? I had no idea you liked those kinds of books, I'm going to have to up my Waterstones game, aren't I?"
"No, you pick good books too, just different kinds of books. I like the first Harry Potter book."
"Well, I'm glad to hear it, I'd be disowning you on the spot if you said you didn't like Harry Potter."
"Can we read the second one, when we go home?"
"We can. We might have to leave it for a while after number four though, okay?"
"Why?"
"Well, because I think you might be a little bit too young for number five onwards at the moment. We'll have to see."
"But you said you started reading Harry Potter when you were seven."
"Yes, I did. But JK Rowling was still writing the books when I was your age, I had to wait for them to come out. I used to make Granddad take me to the midnight releases, all the bookshops always opened specially. So I was a lot older than you by the time I read the later ones. I'll think about it. Okay? Anyway, so what do you mean, like in The Secret Garden?"
"Have you read it?"
"Yep, but years ago, so don't test me too much."
"Collin thinks he's really ill, but then he starts to have company again and he starts going outside into the garden and then he gets better."
"Oh, right. Okay…" Alicia groans, heart sinks. "Well, Ethan's not going to make a miraculous recovery, sweetheart, Huntington's Disease isn't like that."
"I know. But Ethan came out with us on Monday, and then he was really tired on Tuesday, and kind of yesterday. But today he wants to come out with us again, and he doesn't look grey anymore. Like he's happier. Even if he's still ill."
It's rather a good analogy for a seven-year-old, Alicia considers absentmindedly.
She more or less has Chakra down as destined to go into some weird, unconventional branch of medicine- holistic, perhaps, through Grad Med after a History and Archaeology degree and a few years digging up Celtic artefacts in the middle of nowhere- but she might surprise her yet and opt for English Literature.
"Oh, okay, I understand what you mean now. Maybe, Chak. I don't know. I think you're right though, I know what you mean. I don't think Ethan had been outside for even longer than Colin, properly outside, anyway. I do think he was probably tired because we were a little full on for him, not because he's ill. But you mustn't tell him I told you that, okay? Just in case we're wrong."
"What isthat?"
"It's ham. I bribed the landlady, Ethan doesn't like hummus. You can have some if you want to."
"No thank you. Did you know the Druids were vegans?"
"No, I didn't. Where on earth did you learn that?"
"Kerry told me, when you were getting clothes for Ethan. She thinks the man we saw at Glastonbury Tor was a druid. She says there are people in Glastonbury who are trying to reveal Druidism."
"Revive. Revive, not reveal."
"Revive. She says she wants your chocolate brownie recipe."
"Well, we can probably manage that. Why is it every time I leave you alone with Kerry for five minutes, you come away with more weird history facts?"
"She's working on reception where Ethan lives while she's waiting to find out if she has a place to do a PhD. It means she's going to be a doctor, except not a doctor like you and Auntie Bea, she's going to be a doctor of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic studies. If she gets her place. She wants to go to Cambridge, but she says it's really hard to get the university to give you money. That's why she's working on reception, so she can save up, just in case. Where did you go for university?"
"Newcastle. Didn't want to leave home, I guess, Nana and Granddad didn't move to Holby until the summer I graduated."
"Where did Ethan go?"
"St Andrews. In Scotland. Your Uncle Cal went to UCL, I think he wanted to go as far away from him as possible. Not… not because they didn't get on, just because they were both doing medicine, he wanted to be his own person, I guess. What do you think you might want to do, when you're older?"
"I haven't decided yet. Because I like history, and I like drawing, and Geography, but I want to be a doctor too." And then something changes in her eyes, rapid, drastic, goes from happy, childlike babbling to something far darker in a matter of seconds. "And I want to be a gymnast, but I'm too f…"
"Sorry, sorry." Ethan appears in the doorway, evidently with no idea he's interrupted anything at all. "Sorry, I know I said I wouldn't be long. Can I help with anything?"
"No, no, we're good. Thank you, though." Alicia glances between Ethan and Chakra, momentarily conflicted. "Right, shall we get going, then?" she suggests brightly, forces herself to smile, to deceive. "Chak, if I give you this, can you carry it out to the car for me?"
"So what did you say this place was, again?" Ethan frowns, limps slowly up the driveway (wheelchair abandoned in the car, despite Alicia's attempts to convince him otherwise).
"It's called Chalice Well, it's like a spiritual garden place. It's just supposed to be very peaceful."
"And she's going to be quiet and peaceful, is she?" Ethan gestures doubtfully to Chakra, skipping ahead of them happily, singing something incomprehensible to herself that Bea may or may not be responsible for, as though that brief earlier conversation that started so innocent and might just have gotten them both somewhere is all but forgotten.
"Hey, you'd be surprised. Would you have been quiet and peaceful at her age?"
Ethan shrugs. He's seen enough, Alicia reasons, enough in the few brief days he's known his daughter to realise exactly who she takes after temperament-wise, and it most certainly isn't her.
She scans the admission board, watches her daughter protectively. "Two adults and a child, please."
"I'm paying." Ethan pulls his card from his wallet before Alicia can rummage through her handbag in time.
"You don't have to do that…"
"Don't be silly. I want to." He inserts his card into the card reader; mercifully, Alicia notes, the tremor to his hands is significantly less obvious today.
"Do you have a guidebook?" Chakra peers over the counter at the receptionist, curious.
"I don't, but I can give you a map, that has some information on it, just there."
"Can you definitely drink the water?"
"Wow, you don't need the information on the map, do you, you already know everything. You can definitely drink the water. We have bottles you can use, but you'll have to talk nicely to Daddy, if he's paying."
Both of them squirm a little, Ethan and Chakra, uncomfortable, strange, new territory.
"Oh… sure, that's fine," Ethan covers hurriedly. "… Card, please."
"Can I collect the water?"
"You can, let's just wait for our tickets, okay? There you go then, you hold that. Thank you," Alicia smiles gratefully at the receptionist. "Come on then, I think we start this way."
"Why are you treating me like a baby?"
"I'm not," Alicia tells her, though she removes her hands from Chakra's shoulders, guilty as charged, reaches for her hand instead.
How can she tell her she hasn't been this worried about her since she was finally discharged from NICU, that she knows she has a point but it's just not that easy?
"Nana would like these." Chakra points to the flower beds, first signs of life beginning to bloom.
"She would," Alicia agrees. "March probably wasn't the best time to come, was it, it's probably much prettier in summer."
"I still think it's pretty. Are those snowdrops?"
"I think so. We'll have to take a photo for Nana and ask her, she's the expert." She squeezes Chakra's hand as the pass under the archway, trying to slow her down, more than anything, conscious that they're probably reaching a pace at which Ethan is no longer going to be able to keep up with them.
"I think this is the pool… the King Arthur pool. It looks cold."
"It's probably freezing."
"Can you get in?"
"I think that's the idea, yes. It's because people think the water's got healing powers."
"Please can you hold my shoes?"
"You're not actually going in, are you? Oh my goodness, you're crazy."
"It's the King Arthur pool."
"Okay, okay, stupid question. But you just put your feet in. It's going to be freezing, Chak. It's not deep, look, it would probably only come up to your calves if you were an adult, but you're only little, so you stay on the top step, please. I haven't got you any dry clothes."
"Are you doing it too, Ethan?"
"Oh… no, you can tell me how cold it is," Ethan tells her, lowers himself precariously onto the nearby bench. "That looks really, really cold, Chakra…"
"I know." She abandons her shoes and socks at Alicia's feet and then she's gone, skips, halts at the edge of the pool steps, tentatively dips in her toes.
"You know you can change your mind, right?" Alicia calls. "We won't tease you, we promise."
"I'm not going to." Chakra wanders along the edge of the steps, tiptoes, clings to the rail.
"I knew there had to be some of Cal in her somewhere," Ethan comments, as Alicia sits down beside him. "Cal would have been all over that."
"He would have dived in. She's definitely more like you, though."
"How long do you reckon she's going to last?" he asks, winces a little as Chakra lowers down onto her feet.
"Honest answer? Either two hours or two minutes. She's seriously zenned out, our daughter, it's a bit uncanny at times. Except, you know, when she isn't."
"You named her Chakra."
"Fair point."
"She islike you, you know. Okay, so there's a lot of me in her, personality wise," Ethan adds, at Alicia's raised eyebrows. "There's no way I was that chilled out at her age. At any age, actually. Always have worried about everything."
"Oh, believe me, she's pretty good at that too. She just spends the rest of the time in her own little world, that's all. Yoga works wonders."
"You take her to yoga?"
"Why not? She likes it, she stays quiet for the whole class, doesn't bother anyone. I'm not the only one, it's the easiest childcare solution, sometimes, just take them with you. She thinks it's brilliant, though I think that's more because she gets to lie happily in the splits while all the adults around her try to rediscover their toes. Believe me, she can stay quiet for an hour and a half when she wants to."
"Did I interrupt something this morning?" Ethan asks. "It looked like you two were…"
Alicia shakes her head. "It's fine. Seven year old chatter, that's all. Nothing important."
How can she tell him?
I have a terrible confession to make.
So you know when it's your birthday, you take in cake at university/school/work etc? I had plans to give you a normal chapter and a double upload as an internet equivalent of bringing in cake this weekend, and then I had the week from complete and utter hell and all my plans were sabotaged. And annoyingly, all I had written was half of two chapters, and I'm most likely not going to have time to do anything with them for a few days. So this was originally half a chapter, and has been edited slightly to make it part one of two chapters, because I really did want to give you something this weekend and it wasn't going to happen otherwise! I'm sorry! I hope the ending doesn't feel too abrupt, and I'm sorry it's such a short one, I just didn't want to leave you with nothing.
Chalice Well is a real place in Glastonbury and honestly one of the most beautiful, peaceful serene places on this earth, I highly, highly recommend. I set this story in Glastonbury partly so I could use the King Arthur mythology, but mostly because I wanted Chakra to 'find' her dad in Glastonbury. Chalice Well ended up being the last place I went with my own dad before he died unexpectedly, so it has a very special place in my heart, and I think some of you know that I only started writing for Casualty at all because Chelsea's final scenes in this summer's season finale reduced me to a sobbing wreck- this was after being unable to feel any real emotion whatsoever for about a year.
Thank you every one of you who has taken the time to review over the last 20 chapters, you are all stars. Thank you for making my return to creative writing after aforementioned tragedy so special. That I have een able to do keep writing this at all is down to YOU!
as ever, your feedback is always appreciated,
-IseultLaBelle