‘Shall we eat on the terrace?’ she suggested as Keith took a jug of fresh orange juice out of the fridge, then two glasses out of the cupboard.
‘Okay.’ He placed the jug and glasses on a tray and took them outside.
The toast popped back up, golden brown, just as they both liked it. Mary placed it in a toast rack, put it on a tray with butter, margarine, two plates and two knives and stepped out onto the back terrace where Keith was sitting at the wooden table. ‘It will be good to have Patti here at last,’ she remarked, putting the tray down.
‘Yes it will. What time are you leaving to pick them up?’ Keith took a slice of toast out of the rack.
‘I was hoping you’d come too.’ Mary smeared butter onto her knife.
‘It doesn’t take two of us and I’ve got some things I want to finish here.’ Keith concentrated on spreading margarine thinly on his toast, refusing to meet her eye.
Mary sighed. Here we go again. She put down her knife. ‘Keith,’ she said firmly. He looked up sheepishly. ‘You need to comewith me and be there to greet your sister when she steps through Arrivals. This is a big thing she’s done, overcoming her fear of flying to come and visit you. You need to make an effort.’
‘Patti won’t mind.’
‘Imind. I’ll drive if you want, but you have to come along too. She’s your sister.’ She batted down her annoyance and kept her tone soft. ‘Patti’s expecting you to be there. She wants you to be there. I really think she’ll be disappointed if you aren’t.’
She bit into her toast and watched the myriad of expressions on Keith’s face. He was battling with the decision, she could see that. He and Patti were close, they messaged each other every week. He’d been so upset and worried when she had cancer, and over the moon when she came through. Patti had been very brave to overcome her fear and fly over to see them and the least Keith could do was show up to greet her. She chewed her toast as she considered how much to push him.
He nodded slowly. ‘I guess I’d better come then. I’ll drive. I’ve got to watch my blood pressure.’
Bloody cheek, insinuating that her driving would push his blood pressure up! Still, he’d agreed to come, that was a first. It was usually ‘you go, but don’t be long’. Before the heart attack they’d gone almost everywhere together, now she was always racing around alone to get the shopping in and chores done. She even walked Rags, their little terrier, by herself now. They used to have such a busy, fulfilling life. She missed it.
‘What time do they arrive again?’ Keith picked up his glass of fresh orange juice and took a sip.
‘Elevenish,’ she replied.
He frowned, a V forming between his eyebrows. ‘You don’t know the actual time? Didn’t Patti send you the flight details?’
‘She sent them to you.’
He picked up his phone. ‘Oh, there’s a message from Patti tosay they’re running fifteen minutes later. We’d better leave about ten thirty then.’
‘It takes us twenty-five minutes max to get to the airport,’ she reminded him. ‘We’ll be waiting around for ages. And the cost of parking is extortionate.’
‘We can go to Plaza Mayor and park up and wait until Patti texts and says they’ve landed, it’s only a few minutes from the airport.’
She sighed. ‘If you want.’ She wasn’t going to argue, at least she’d managed to persuade him to leave the house and drive to the airport to pick up his sister. That was a miracle in itself. Hopefully they could build on that and, once Keith had reconnected with Patti, he’d be accompanying them all on day trips. She longed for life to go back to how it was.
They got ready straight after breakfast but then Rags escaped through a hole in the fence and she had to get him back, locking him in the large, fenced area where he had a kennel – although he was house trained, she didn’t like to leave him inside when they went out. It was gone half past before they finally left and then they got caught in a traffic jam.
‘Damn. We’re going to be late at this rate,’ Keith muttered. ‘I knew we should have left earlier.’
‘Relax, we’ve got plenty of time. I’ve just checked and the flight is still ten minutes away, then they still have to disembark and get through passport control,’ Mary told him. She almost wished she hadn’t persuaded him to come with her now. He’d been on edge ever since he got in the car, grimly holding on to the steering wheel, his gaze fixed on the road ahead and insisting on total silence. He hated driving since his heart attack, but he hated being a passenger with Mary driving even more. How she longed for the days when they used to chat and sing along to music in the car.
Finally, the jam ended and the traffic picked up speed. They arrived at the airport just as a text pinged in from Patti to say they’d landed.
Parking was a nightmare, it seemed that quite a few people had taken advantage of the cheaper midweek flights, as Patti and Sandra had done.
‘Hurry up, they’ll be waiting.’
‘They probably won’t even be through yet. Stop panicking,’ she told him as they strode over the road and up to the Arrivals entrance.
They stood by the canteen near Arrivals watching the passengers pour through. Then Mary spotted Patti’s bright red hair. ‘There she is!’ She waved cheerily, her heart lifting.
She couldn’t wait to have a bit of company, someone to chat to and get out and about with. And hopefully, Patti would be able to get through to Keith, bring him out of the doldrums. She desperately wanted the old Keith back.
25
