Page 115 of The Heir Apparent
“Do you think this is going to work?” I asked Mary.
“Do I think three women can take on a powerful institution and force it to change? Probably not. But what’s the alternative? Staying silent forever?”
I walked towards the pick-up lane. Ahead of me, I could see James leaning against the back of his LandCruiser with his hands in his pockets.
“I should go, my ride’s here,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll call with updates when I have them,” she said. “Oh, and happy new year. For tomorrow.”
I wheeled my bag up to James’s car and we stood staring at each other, neither of us able to smile. I was struck by how much he looked like Mum, though his hair was starting to go silver around his temples, the grooves in his face more pronounced. It was hard not to look at him and see her face if she had been allowed to age.
“Oh, dearest,” he said kindly, “you look like hell.”
As he wrapped his arms around me, the tears finally came. I wept silently against his chest. I cried for my family and the mess I had made of my life. I cried for our twins who were lost to us. In all the years I had known him, James had never held me before, but he rubbed my back awkwardly and kissed the top of my head.
“It’s alright. You’re home now.”
We drove out of the airport and I looked from the window at the dry hills shimmering under a blue sky. Everything was the same as it always was—parched and spare and beautiful—and I could almost believe my lost year had never really happened. London felt very far away. Soon the real world would encroach again, but for now I was home, and no one knew where to find me.
“When do you start back at the hospital?” James asked as we turned onto the road towards Richmond.
The route would take us past the vineyard, and I braced myself for the sight of it.
“In two weeks,” I said.
“Do you think you’ll be ready for that?”
I would be a third-year resident while all my colleagues had already moved onto their specialties. Every patient would knowexactly who I was and what I had done. My face would be in their gossip magazines, and they would whisper about me behind their hands. I would be followed by photographers for months until the world moved on to the next scandal.
“I need to get back to my life,” I said, and it was true.
I could see the bright-red gates of the Jennings vineyard ahead of us, the neat rows of the pinot vines already fluttering by my window. I was wondering whether I should avert my eyes when I realised James was pulling the car over.
“What are we doing?” I asked, alarmed.
He turned the engine off and looked at me levelly. “I think we should go in.”
My eyes blurred with hot tears. Even in the midst of my distress, I wondered if I was ever going to get hold of myself again. I had once been a girl who hadn’t cried in years, who couldn’t force the tears to come even when I needed them to. Now I couldn’t seem to stop.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Please, you don’t understand—”
“Lexi,” James said, “Jack knows everything. Amira called him a few weeks ago and told him what was happening. She told him what Richard was doing to you. She told him about the boat. She told him you’ve been miserable ever since he left Scotland.”
When I turned to look at him, he brushed a tear off my cheek.
“Then she had to callmebecause it was all she could do to stop him getting on a plane to London to go rescue you himself. I had to drive down here in the middle of the night and promise him I would get you home safe.”
I hid my face in my palms and wept. Distantly, I felt James’s hand on my back again.
“I won’t make you go in,” he said. “But he knows I’m picking you up today and he wants to see you.”
“Amira told him?” I managed.
James nodded. “All of it. Now, what do you want to do?Should we keep driving? Or do you want to go tell this man how you feel?”
We drove through the gates and up the long gravel path, through the thick vines that would soon be ready to harvest, and past the old house. Among the poplars, I could just glimpse our cottage. It was New Year’s Eve, so Paula would be camping down on the peninsula. Finn, I knew, was on shift at the hospital. We rumbled through the cluster of sheds and out towards the back field where Jack had once told me he planned to experiment with a dark-skinned terret noir.
Between two young budding vines, he stood with his back to us. But when he heard the car, he turned, shading his eyes against the afternoon sun. There he was, all of him exactly the same, still too wonderful to contemplate.
