Assignment: Single Father

The simple beauty of the staircase was marred by the presence of a stairlift, but apart from that and the ramp by the steps to the front door, it was just as it had been built, she imagined.

The doorways were wide, the rooms large enough to accommodate a wheelchair with ease, and as she followed him through to the kitchen at the back, she felt a pang of envy. She’d always loved houses like this, always dreamed of living in one, and here he was owning it, the lucky man.

Then she caught sight of another photograph of his wife amidst all the clutter on the old pine dresser in the kitchen, and the envy left her, washed away by guilt and sympathy.

Lucky? No, she had no reason to envy him. The house was just bricks and mortar, and living in it were three people whose lives had been devastated by their loss. How could she possibly have envied them that?

Xavier was patting the dogs, two clearly devoted and rather soppy Labradors, and when he’d done his duty he turned to her.

‘Are you OK with dogs? I forgot to mention them.’

‘I’m fine. I grew up with Labs. Come on, then, come and make friends.’

They did, tongues lolling, leaning on her legs and grinning up at her like black bookends, one each side. ‘You soppy things,’ she said to them, and their tails thumped in unison.

‘The thin one’s Kate, the fatter one with the grey muzzle is Martha, her mother. Just tell them to go and lie down when you’ve had enough. Shall I put the kettle on?’

Fran straightened up and grinned at him. ‘That sounds like the best thing I’ve heard in hours. I could kill a cup of tea.’

He chuckled. ‘Ditto. And while it boils, I’ll put the dogs out for a minute and then show you the flat.’

He went through a door at the back of the kitchen into a lobby and opened the outside door to let the dogs out, then turned back to her with a smile. ‘Right, you need to be careful, the stairs are a little steep.’

She followed him through a door in the corner of the lobby that led to the narrow, winding back stairs, and at the top they came out onto a little landing in what must have been the servants’ quarters. To the left, its ceilings atticky and low, was a small but comfortable sitting room overlooking the garden; to the right was a bedroom with a double bed under a quilted bedspread, all whites and creams and pretty pastels.

Fran looked around her in slight disbelief and felt a lump in her throat.

‘Oh, it’s gorgeous,’ she murmured.

‘There’s a bathroom there, and a tiny kitchen so you can be independent if you want. And through here is the rest of the house.’

He opened a door at the end of the landing and went through it onto the much larger landing at the head of the main stairs. There was a wheelchair parked by the stairlift, in readiness, Fran imagined, for his daughter’s return, and she could see through the open doors into their bedrooms.

One was immaculate, one reasonably tidy, the last chaos.

‘That’s Nick’s room,’ Xavier said with a wry smile, indicating the messy one. ‘This one’s Chrissie’s.’

He pushed open the door of the reasonable one, and she looked around it, at all the pictures of horses and boy bands and other images dear to the heart of a young teenager, and she wondered what Chrissie was like and what had really happened.

‘Tell me about her,’ she said softly, and he sighed and tunnelled his fingers through his hair.

‘She’s…complicated,’ he said slowly. ‘She’s in a wheelchair, and she doesn’t speak, but they can’t find anything wrong with her. They’ve done a million tests and can’t detect anything, and she moves and talks in her sleep, but when she’s awake, she just won’t communicate—well, not a great deal. She has a little hand-held computer that she uses for important stuff, but mostly she doesn’t bother. And it’s not that she can’t, because she’s doing fine at school, even without speaking. There’s nothing wrong with her academically. It’s bizarre.’

‘Was she badly hurt in the accident?’

‘No. Nick had a broken arm, and Sara was killed instantly, but Chrissie was untouched. That’s the odd thing about it. She’s seen therapists and psychiatrists and every other sort of “ist”, but nobody’s found the key. She’s locked in there, and I can’t let her out, and I’m a doctor, for God’s sake!’

He broke off and turned away, his voice choked, and Fran lifted her hand to touch him, to reach out to him. She didn’t, though. She let it fall to her side, because there was nothing she could say to make it right, nothing she could do to make it better.

Well, only one thing.

‘If you were hoping to put me off, you’ve failed,’ she said softly.

Xavier turned, a flicker of hope in his anguished eyes, and his mouth kicked up in a crooked smile. ‘Well, so far, so good. Of course, you haven’t met them yet.’ He looked down, studying his hand as it rested on Chrissie’s doorknob, and then looked up at her again.

‘I really am in a bit of a fix with this at the moment. I don’t suppose there’s any way I could talk you into taking it on immediately, even just temporarily, at least the domestic side? I’m more than happy with your nursing skills, but this week I’m stuck completely on the domestic front unless I can get some help, and I can’t expect you to take us on without trying it. Would you consider a week’s trial? Give the kids a chance, give me a chance? And if you hate it, maybe I can find someone else…’

He finally ground to a halt, the flicker of hope fading in his eyes as she watched. He thought she was going to refuse, she realised. Well, she wasn’t.

‘That sounds fine,’ she said, and his eyes fell for a moment. When he raised them to her face the hope was back, hope and relief in equal proportions.

‘Thank you,’ he said fervently, then he dragged in a deep breath and pulled himself together visibly.

‘Right, now that’s sorted, how about that cup of tea? And if you’re really unlucky, I might even cook you lunch.’

They went back to the surgery after lunch, Xavier to his antenatal clinic, Fran to acquaint herself further with Angie and familiarise herself with the room she would be working in from the following morning. At three-thirty promptly, Xavier came into the office where she was talking to Angie about her routine.

‘I’m going to collect the children from school. Do you want to come? It would help you to see it at first hand, before you have to do it yourself.’

‘Good idea,’ she agreed, and wondered why she hadn’t thought of it. Lack of sleep, she decided, or just plain shell-shock.

She went with him out to the car park, noticing for the first time that his people carrier had a rear seat missing, presumably where Chrissie would go in her wheelchair. The enormity of what she was taking on suddenly sank in, and she felt a little flutter of doubt about her ability to do this part of the job.

She must be crazy, she thought. She didn’t know the first thing about looking after children of that age—except, of course, that she’d been thirteen once and had had a younger brother, so she knew all about the dynamics of that! But—Chrissie?

Still, she had no choice. It was a job, it was a home, albeit perhaps only for a week, and with a steadying breath she put the doubts aside.

If Xavier was prepared to take her on, she’d give it a go, at least for this trial period. She knew enough about children to cope for that long, and, besides, Chrissie had problems. Maybe she could help get to the root of them. She’d certainly give it her best shot, although if the girl’s own father had failed, it seemed unlikely that a total stranger could do better.

Except, of course, that it was often easier for an outsider to see the situation clearly.

‘I phoned the hospital, by the way,’ he was saying as he drove. ‘Bernard Donaldson’s made it through surgery—he had a perforated duodenal ulcer.’

Fran dragged her mind back to the earlier events of the day and nodded. ‘Figures. I’m glad he’s OK. They seemed a sweet couple.’

‘They are—truly devoted. Hopefully he’ll be all right now. OK, we’re at the school. You need to go through this set of gates, not the ones further down, so you can get right up to the school to collect them. Otherwise you can’t get close enough.’

Xavier went slowly along the drive and over the speed ramps, parked the car, and then they waited. Children were pouring out of the school, running and pushing and laughing, heading in their droves for the bus pull-in, others going down the drive to their parents, and then the crowd cleared like mist and she saw them.

A slender girl in a wheelchair, her hair hanging long and blonde around her shoulders, her trousers dangling on skinny legs, she looked tired and defeated.

Behind her was a boy the spitting image of Xavier, with a big smile and untidy hair. His shirt was un-tucked on one side, his tie was hanging askew, his face was grubby, but he looked bright and cheerful and disgustingly healthy in contrast to his frail older sister.

He was pushing the wheelchair towards them, and Xavier went over to them and hugged him, bending to kiss his daughter’s cheek. She didn’t respond, just sat there expressionless, and Fran felt the flicker of doubt return in force.

Give her time, she thought, but the girl was looking straight through her as she stood there beside the car, waiting.

‘Children, this is Miss Williams,’ he said. ‘She’s going to stay with us for a while and help me look after you.’