‘Ah Kate, try not to panic. It’s pretty normal, right?’ she says, sitting on the arm of the chair beside me. ‘I mean, he’s in a very different world at the minute, so making phone calls or sending texts isn’t going to be something he can do very often. David’s a bit of an action-man hero, isn’t he? He’ll be fine and he’ll be back soon.’
‘I know that, but I’ve just got an eerie feeling, Sinead, and I’m not going to settle until I hear from him.’
I toss and turn and barely sleep a wink when I’m eventually forced to bed by Sinead, and when I do wake up the next morning I get an international call to say that my instinct was right.
My blood runs cold. I’ve always had this underlying fear that as soon as David and I are happy and settled together, something awful is going to happen to destroy it all.
‘Is this Kate Foley?’ a strange voice on the phone asks me.
‘Yes,’ I say, sitting up on the bed and gripping the covers until my knuckles turn white. ‘What’s happened? Oh God, what’s happened to him?’
‘It’s David, yes,’ the man says. ‘Try not to panic. He’s going to be fine, but he’s been injured and has a badly broken leg. We were caught up in a looting gang desperate for medication, but David is being stabilized before we can fly him home. We’ll get him home to you very, very soon.’
I’ve no idea who I’m speaking to. I can hardly hear him with all the thoughts and fears going through my head.
I knew it. I just knew it. When he hurts, I hurt. I just knew it.
‘Oh David, oh God you scared me so much!’ I scream into nowhere, and Sinead comes running to my side.
I can’t breathe.
‘He’s coming home,’ she whispers. ‘Come on, that’s my girl. You’re going to be strong for him like you always are. Big deep breaths. He’s coming home.’
After a cup of hot sweet tea, a shower and a fresh change of clothes, I call my boss to explain what has happened and request some annual leave, then I fly to London as soon as I can get organized and go straight to David’s apartment. I plan to be there when he arrives back on home turf.
I know his physical injuries aren’t extreme, but I fear for what this will do to awake the sleeping demons in his ownmind from the bomb, and when he is dropped off the following morning, hobbling on crutches and with a bandage on his arm, the same arm I bandaged up with my coloured neck scarf in a bloodied doorway when we were so much younger, I burst into tears.
‘We can’t go on like this, David,’ I tell him, shaking my head as I wait with my arms open to greet him. ‘No more of this. Please, no more.’
He wraps his arms around me, letting the crutch go as he does, and I can smell fire and danger on his skin. I cup his beautiful face and look into his glistening eyes.
‘I will never leave you again,’ he promises, and I know I’ll look after him with all my heart. ‘It was a crazy idea to begin with, but I thought I was doing the right thing. We’ve suffered enough trauma, Kate. It’s over.’
I take him inside and spend the next few days tending to him, washing him and cooking for him. We watch trashy TV and listen to our favourite songs as he heals on the outside, but I know that on the inside he has seen far too much in his lifetime.
‘Should we try and come over to see you?’ his mother asks him when he talks to her on the phone. She too has been frantic with worry, and a little bit angry at him too for reopening old wounds, quite literally, by putting himself forward for such a mission in the first place, plus on top of her ongoing health struggles it was a stress she didn’t need.
‘No, no, please don’t worry, Mum,’ he tells her. ‘I’m being very well looked after by Kate and we both plan to come home and see you all as soon as I’m back on my feet.’
‘Kate?’ his mother asks him, a rise of delight in her voice.
‘Yes, Kate Foley, my girlfriend,’ he says, giving me a cheeky look of defiance as he sits with his broken leg resting on the sofa. ‘But let me tell Dad in person all about her when we get home. I’ll look forward to introducing you all in person.’
I spend the next few days tucked up with David in his apartment in Bromley, and I spend my days job-seeking for the future, as well as making sure David has all he needs. I shop for food, I drive him to the nearby parks where we feed the ducks in the winter sun and, when it snows heavily at the weekend, he watches me build a snowman at the front of his apartment block, taking photos as he does and laughing as I pretend to pelt him with snowballs at the window.
I bathe him and wash his hair by candlelight and to the soothing sounds of his favourite James Taylor songs; he reads me poetry in bed and my heart feels so full that I know I never want to be apart from him again.
‘I’m looking forward to getting back to the classroom in a few weeks,’ he tells me as I’m drifting off to sleep one night, so desperately grateful to have his teaching job to look forward to after his period of leave is up. ‘It’s science and cheeky teenagers for me from now on, Kate. No more heroic missions or action-man adventures. I know forsure where my heart lies and it’s firmly here with you, not trekking across the world on a plane. I’m so sorry for putting you through all that worry.’
‘I’m so glad to hear you say that,’ I reply, lost in a floating haze with his arms wrapped around my waist as we spoon in the luxury of his king-size bed, just the two of us as the rest of the world does its own thing. ‘It’s me and you from now on, David, and that’s all we need. Let’s never forget it again.’
I decide there and then that I can’t go back to Dublin while David is living and working here in England, in a place where we can totally be ourselves with no hiding, no worrying about what others might think and no pressure to fear how we might upset others.
One of us has to make a move and that someone is going to be me. I’m serving my notice, both at work in Dublin and with my apartment, and then I’m coming back here to stay with David once and for all.
DAVID
‘What is it with my limbs that I seem to attract such drama?’ I joke as we leave the fracture clinic on an afternoon in early April when I have my cast removed from my now fully healed leg. ‘I mean, as if this poor arm hasn’t suffered enough, I get to thrash it again, but now you and I are both even in the broken leg stakes.’
