Page 110 of The Flowers of Bay C
He rubs his hand over his head and stares around at us. He opens his mouth and then closes it again.
Kat says, ‘I’m sorry,’ and I can’t imagine where she digs up the grace for it. I’m not sorry, not for him. I am more sorry than I cansay for Jodie and her family and us as those who loved her even though we only knew the edges of her. But for Kane, I cannot find any sorry in myself.
He clears his throat. ‘I… brought this bag back.’ He holds it up hopelessly, looking around at each one of us, waiting.
‘It’s mine,’ I say, and even I can hear the clipped scorn wrapped around my words.
He shambles over and drops it on my bed.
Jake glares at him.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ Kane says.
No one replies.
‘I did love her, you know.’
Silence.
‘I’m not a bad person. I didn’t mean to leave you all there at the beach. It just happened. I… I did go back, after a while, but you were all gone. Thought you were safe. I wouldn’t have left you, you know.’’
I have lots of words I could say to this, but I have no energy to waste on saying them out loud.
His face is all crumpled up. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Maybe I’m not really sorry that he did leave us there. Maybe I’m grateful for that time spent with Jodie and the others, for the way my life got turned upside down, for the sunset and the snow and the cat and the bus. All because of him.
But I am still angry with him.
‘She never told me,’ he says, shifting his eyes to the window behind me. ‘Why did she never? If she told me I’d of treated her better. I would of.’
Kat presses her lips together.
‘She never said nothing about her heart.’
‘But you knew she was sick with her lungs,’ Kat says.
Kane stares at his feet.
A hot wave rises into my throat and pushes out my words. ‘That’s not what love is, though, is it. It’s not that you treat someone better because they are more sick, or suffering more or whatever. What was it you said before about love, Kat? That it’s always patient. Always kind. Not self-serving. Love doesn’t come with conditions.’
Kane looks like he doesn’t understand what I am talking about.
‘You didn’t love Jodie,’ I say.
He looks smaller all of a sudden, diminished, shrunk back into himself. He shrugs and then he offers me the plastic wallet in his hand. ‘Thought you might like this.’
It’s the photo he sent to theMail.The photo of us all frozen in time, with Jodie captured in a golden moment, arms in the air, glittering with life.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
Kane turns and walks out of the bay and out of our lives.
???
Violet has been all ready to go for hours. Her discharge forms and medication have finally arrived, and Brian is packing up her things while she discards the hideous dressing gown and dons her silver jacket, with a pink and orange floral scarf that looks like it is desperately trying to escape back into the eighties. Brian is wearing the exact same silver jacket, only in a smaller version. For a moment I can almost taste Jodie’s reaction to them, and I feel myself smiling.
A paramedic comes into the bay with a wheelchair and scans the name boards above the beds, settling on Barbara’s. ‘Hospital transport,’ he says to Nicki, who is hovering at the door with some notes. ‘Taking Mrs Evansto her care home.’
