The Flower Arrangement by Ella Griffin Read Free Book Online Page B

rest and come back later.”
    Do what your brother says, Ted thinks. Lara puts her hand over his and he squeezes her fingers. Something is wrong with her hand—what is it? He can’t quite figure it out and is losing his train of thought, then suddenly it comes back and he knows. His daughter is not wearing her wedding ring. Maybe she took it off to wash her hands, he thinks. But no. He remembers her telling him she had it resized so it wouldn’t slip off in water. She never takes it off.
    He tries to remember the last time he saw his son-in-law, his mind stumbling back through the fog of days and weeks. It’s June now, isn’t it? Or is it still May? It must have been April, because he was still having chemo. Could it really be that long ago?
    Lara was working so Michael drove him to the hospital for his appointment and he decided to have the conversation, the one that he, who had never been afraid to call a spade a spade, had been tiptoeing around for five years. Even then, when time was running out and the drugs had about as much chance of winning the battle against the cancer as Watford had of beating Chelsea, he found himself putting it off till he was settled into the leather armchair in the crowded day ward with the catheter leaking poison into his arm.
    His son-in-law was hovering beside him. He was a hoverer, Michael. Always trying to slip into the background. “I’ll go and get you a paper.”
    â€œWait!” Ted said, too quickly, too sharply. “There’s something I have to ask you.” Michael looked uneasy. He was shy to the point ofreclusive, a man who’d be happier digging over your entire garden than having a conversation with you.
    â€œMan to man”—Ted lowered his voice—“is there a problem with you and Lara?”
    Michael’s eyes almost popped out of his head. “A problem? No! What do you mean, a problem?” He said it the way you might say, “Well, of course there is, any fool can see that.”
    â€œI mean that if you two can’t have children, you know, the normal way, well, there are, you know, other options. IVF. Surrogacy. Adoption.” Suddenly it felt good to be talking about a new life here surrounded by all the bald heads and gray faces, the lives hanging as precariously as the trembling silver drops in the IV bag over Ted’s own bald head.
    â€œNo, there’s no physical problem”—his son-in-law flushed—“as such.” He was twitching like a mackerel on the end of a line but Ted could not let him off the hook: this was too important.
    â€œGood. I’m glad to hear it. Look, I know the two of you will never get over losing Ryan, but that shouldn’t stop you trying for another baby. Life is short, Michael, and time is moving on.”
    Michael’s phone rang and a nurse came over to tell him to take his call outside. He mumbled something and hurried, well, fled really, out into the corridor. Ted watched the door swing behind him and it crossed his mind, like a flash, that there was a problem, a real problem between Michael and Lara. Something that had nothing to do with losing Ryan or having another baby.
    *   *   *
    His life is like a leaf caught in the bare branches of his bones. Pain is trying to shake it free but he can’t let it. He can’t die, not now, not if Lara’s marriage is in trouble. He has to hang on somehow to look after her.
    Margaret is there again, a red blur that won’t settle. Why is she wearing that coat? It’s summer outside and it must be nearly eightydegrees in here. He puts off pressing the pump despite the pain, waits till he can squeeze the room into focus. She is flicking through the crooked line of Get Well cards on the windowsill.
    â€œThere’s an untapped market out there for Get Worse cards,” she says drily. “Stuff the Hallmark crap. Say it like it really is.”
    Something stinks.