"When will you be 'ome then?"
"Tomorrow, I'll go straight to work from here and then come home at the usual time"
"So, 'ow did it go, what did they say?"
"Not great, but I'll tell you all about it when I get home, are you okay?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"No reason, I'll see you tomorrow"
It was the first time he hadn't ended a call by telling her that he loved her and he had a nasty suspicion that she had been or was crying, but he couldn't bring himself to call her back as pride got in the way when he remembered how stroppy she'd been towards him the previous evening and he did something he hadn't done for years and sulked. He told himself that she should understand how he was feeling, that he wasn't just being sorry for himself and that anyone would feel the same in his shoes.
3.34 in the morning and Charles was wide awake, reminiscent of the times just after Rebecca had left him when he'd had the most appalling insomnia. He couldn't call her now, she'd be fast asleep and he'd scare the shit out of her if he rang at this time, but he was filled with the most awful regret, asking himself what the hell had possessed him to behave like such a dick. He loved her, she loved him, even if she didn't say so, they had a life together, they were going to have a baby in a few weeks and here he was behaving like an utter jerk because his mum was sick and he felt like a kid instead of an adult with responsibilities, he was scared and out of his depth, and instead of sharing how he felt, he'd just lashed out.
-OG-
"So you want to move back and live in Bath to look out for your mum?"
"Yep, can't think what else I can do"
"What about the business, you just gonna dump that, dump Eddie and all the people what work there? And if you do that, what we gonna live on?"
"I haven't worked out how I'm going to manage things yet"
"What about me and Lexie, 'ave you thought about 'ow you're gonna manage us yet?"
"You'll come with me of course, it'll be great for Lexie, lovely big garden to play in, nice schools"
"Lovely big 'ouse for her mum to clean while she's looking out for her gran to save everyone else the hassle"
"Don't be ridiculous, it's not like that"
"Innit? Where's your dad gonna be while all this is going on? And what about you, what are you gonna do? And what about Parsnip? Your dad don't like dogs, won't 'ave 'im in the 'ouse, so what you gonna do with 'im? Give 'im away, take 'im to Battersea, or 'ave 'im put down? What?"
"Stop it, Molls, now you really are being ridiculous. Look, its family, and I don't expect you to understand but I'm just trying to do what's best for everyone"
"Yeah and of course I wouldn't understand about family, right?" She was trying her best not to lose her temper and get upset, the tears of angry frustration weren't far away "You know absolutely nothing about my family, so just shut up about me not understanding. I know you're trying to do your best and I can see that it's most likely the best for Betsy and for Bill, and maybe it'll be okay for you as well, but tell Eddie and Doreen and Bert that it's best for them and see whether they agree with you. Oh no, they're not family are they?"
"What about you?"
"I dunno, but I can't see how walking away from the business that you've worked so hard for, dragging me away from everything and everyone, just so as your Dad can pretend he's Tiger Woods or the other one, you know, Rory something or other, so that 'e doesn't have to take care of your mum at all, is right. And it's not that I don't care about your mum being ill, cos I do, but you need to talk things through with your dad, see what's best 'n that, not just decide that you've gotta sort everything out yourself and change your whole life so your dad don't need to change anything"
Any doubts about the course of action he'd decided on had been swept away that morning when he'd been preparing to leave Bath for the drive to work. Betsy had suddenly started talking as though he was setting off back to boarding school after a weekend's leave at home and had kept asking him whether he'd got his clean rugby kit and had he got his homework, and had he finished it, fussing around him as she used to when he was that schoolboy, and constantly reminding him of the need to write to let them know he was okay. Charles had followed the advice of the consultant to try not to correct her or get impatient with her, but his dad had snapped "Oh for God's sake" and slammed the dishwasher door as he put his cup in, giving her a look of complete exasperation before he'd banged out of the kitchen.
He knew he should tell Molly all about it, but he was tired after his broken night and long day and didn't want to start talking about what was happening or how it made him feel, and how worried he was; putting it into words made it all feel far too real and he still couldn't get away from the feeling that she should somehow know and understand without him having to spell it out for her. She had a point when she said that he didn't know anything about her family, when they'd first got together he'd wanted to know all about what Eddie had described as her dysfunctional childhood, about what had caused her terrible claustrophobia, and why she didn't have any real contact with her family, apart from spasmodically with her Nan, but that desire to know had got lost somewhere and he was no wiser now than he had been then.
What he needed most was a hug, a cuddle, not necessarily sex, but something that made everything just recede for a bit, but her rigid back told him all he wanted to know and he was still being obstinate, still expecting her to know what he needed and still buggered if he was going to ask, anyway he didn't want to give her any opportunity to reject him.
-OG-
His third trip to Bath in less than two weeks and another day away from the office was accompanied by driving rain which was rapidly turning to sleet, a grim greyness which matched his mood. Molly had refused point blank to go with him saying she preferred the company of the dog and anyway, she was tired, his tossing and turning all night had meant that she hadn't got much sleep either and the baby had kicked seven bells out of her when he'd finally managed to drop off, meaning that she couldn't. He'd told his dad that he was coming down so that they could have a talk about what was best for Betsy and the rest of them and it would have been far more convenient for him to go at the weekend, but he had a strong suspicion from his father's attitude that he would cite all his golfing commitments and his council social arrangements as reasons not to be there and it was going to be very difficult anyway to get any sort of co-operation out of him at all.
"Okay, so you won't sell the house and move nearer to London, you can't move away from your golf and the council, Mum can't manage without a bit of help sometimes and you can't have someone coming in every day because you don't want a stranger in the house and you can't spend more time with her yourself because you find it hard, you get too impatient, so what's your answer Dad?"
"I don't know, what do you suggest?"
"I'm completely out of magic wands, except for putting Mum into a home and that is definitely not going to happen, you know I've got a business to run in London which is too far from here to commute, and we can't expect Molly to just drop everything and move down here to look after mum during the week while I come back at the weekends, and she's going to have a baby to look after in the next couple of weeks, and it's not like you made much of an effort with her before all this, is it?"
"Surely she can do it for family?"
"Dad! Why the hell should she? She's got her own family so I'm not sure she will, no, in fact I know that she won't and who can blame her"
They were going round in circles which was pretty much what Charles knew he should have expected, his dad was trying his level best to make it everyone else's job to look after Betsy with the minimum inconvenience to him and was basically waiting for Charles to take over and absolve him of any responsibility so that he was suddenly reminded of Molly's remark about his dad trying to be Tiger Woods. All his life he had been brought up with the idea that unquestioning obedience was what his father was entitled to, in fact, it was what he deserved and that his father's word was absolute law, and suddenly Charles could see that for what it was, his mother's fantasy of what a father should be and it was a complete load of bollocks. There was no way he was going to be that sort of dad to Lexie.
-OG-
He'd decided not to stay over, his mother was having a much better day so that for a few minutes he wondered whether it had all been some sort of ghastly mistake, but knew when he looked at her eyes that were so empty of expression that, unfortunately, this was just one of the good days the consultant had talked about and that tomorrow might well be a whole different ball bag as Molly would say. He also realised that the more he stepped in to help and to try and solve everything for everyone, the less his father felt obliged to do anything even vaguely helpful, and the less he felt obliged to do, the more it freed him up to live his life the way he'd always done. They'd spent the whole day talking round and round in circles, and had come up with precisely nothing, no meaningful plan at all, so that he was tired and frustrated and more than a little infuriated with his father.
Charles knew he was going to have to do some serious grovelling when he got home, it wasn't that he'd hurt her accidentally, or even without thinking, he'd lashed out at her quite deliberately and when he'd been talking to his father and laying out the facts he'd suddenly woken up to himself and to what he'd been doing and he'd cringed. He hadn't called her to tell her he wasn't staying in Bath, in fact he hadn't spoken to her all day, mainly because he didn't know exactly what to say, 'sorry' seemed a bit inadequate somehow. So he just got in the car and headed home, hoping that she would forgive him with her usual mix of a hug and the threat of a swift slap round the side of his head if he ever did anything like it again.
-OG-
The absence of the dog tearing down the hallway at the sound of his key in the lock gave him the first intimation that something wasn't quite right, there were no lights left burning anywhere so Molly hadn't just taken Parsnip out for a quick walk round the block and she was unlikely to have gone out on her own so late in the evening anyway, and he knew instantly by the unnatural feel of the silence in the house that she wasn't there either. Not that that stopped him racing round the place flicking lights on and calling her name as panic set in that she'd gone into labour when he'd been dicking about with his father in Bath, so that even now she was in hospital and that their daughter might already have been born without him being there or even knowing. Eventually common sense took over from the blind panic as he told himself she would have rung him, no matter how much they'd been fighting or how much of a prick he'd been in the last week or so, she would have wanted him there with her, and it didn't explain the absence of Parsnip either, she could hardly have taken him with her.
He climbed back up the stairs like an old man, the relief he'd felt as he realised he was over-reacting making the muscles in his legs turn to jelly as he went into the spare bedroom they'd converted into a nursery and sat on the floor, resting his head back against the wall, the soft rocking chair was still shrouded in shrink wrapped plastic, and he looked around at the soft white walls with their Peter Rabbit frieze. Molly had refused point blank to have anything remotely Disney Princess related or pink, saying that there was plenty of time for Lexie to be brainwashed when she was a bit older, and he looked through eyes that were getting suspiciously blurred at the cot that he'd had such a nightmare assembling. Molly had wet herself laughing at him trying to decipher the instructions and then they'd stood and smiled at each other as they'd looked with pride at the finished article and gone to bed to celebrate how clever they'd been. He wasn't quite sure whether that had referred to assembling the cot or making the baby that was destined to sleep in it, but it hadn't mattered at the time and that had only been a little more than a month ago. And now he'd fucked things up so thoroughly that she'd gone.
Even though she hadn't left a note, there were three places she could possibly have gone, as, without even contemplating her family home in east Ham, he dismissed the first two bolt holes because she'd taken her beloved Parsnip with her and he couldn't see the dog in Nan's one bedroom flat in the tower block, and Doreen had made no bones about the fact that she disliked dogs as much as his dad did. She always gave Parsnip a very wide berth when she visited, despite all Molly's reassurances that he wouldn't hurt a fly, so Charles was pretty sure that Molly would have run to Eddie's.
He wanted to ring her and considered doing just that for a few minutes, either calling her mobile or Eddie's land line, but it was past 1.00 in the morning, so he plumped for going round there first thing before work, and then went downstairs and helped himself to a very large scotch, he didn't want to resign himself to another sleepless night when he'd inevitably start contemplating what he'd do if she wasn't actually at Eddie's. That didn't bear thinking about.
-OG-
Author's notes: Thank you for your reviews, as many of you have said this is a difficult subject, but I like to try and tackle something other than fluff occasionally. I have telescoped the passage of some of the symptoms that Betsy might suffer from (everyone's different, there is no definitive symptom list or time scale) because I didn't want it to become a medical diary, it's more to do with the way her illness and their family responsibilities affect them as a couple and how it impacts on their relationships, both with each other and their wider families.
In the next Chapter, pulling together starts to seem more of a possibility…