Just One Life

By Pat Abercromby

When you realise you have just one life left to live, how do you make peace with the mistakes of your past?

Fran should be looking back on her life with pride. She's risen to the top of the job ladder, having left behind a council housing estate in post-war Glasgow, to forge a colourful, fulfilling career and enjoy all the trappings of success.

But instead, Fran is consumed by regret. A shocking revelation has cast her life, and her thirty-year marriage, asunder. She finds herself the full-time carer for her husband, a man she now accepts, she has never loved. The sacrifices she has made, the personal freedoms she has lost, have left Fran crushed. Her free-spirited friend Iona is her one salvation. Their friendship has survived the storms of conflict and loss since childhood, their deep affection for one another the only constant remaining in Fran's life, a life she no longer recognises as her own.

Her husband's new brush with death will give Fran the chance to reflect on what she has left, the choices she has made and the two men she has loved and lost.

Can Fran find a way through the ruins of her marriage and find inner peace, to make the most of what remains of her life's journey?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clink Street Publishing
• Release date: Apr 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781911525547

Pat Abercromby

Pat Abercromby started her career in the pharmaceutical industry and has lived with her family all over the world, including Singapore, Germany, Saudi Arabia and the USA. During her six years in Saudi Arabia, she wrote for the Saudi Gazette and the Arab News and was a regular contributor to the in-flight magazine for Saudi Arabian Airlines. She hosted a chat show Ahlan wa Sahlan (Welcome) in the country, interviewing people from the diplomatic service, business sector and interesting expatriates. Upon returning to the UK in the 1990s, Abercromby retrained as a massage therapist, specialising in Seated Seated Acupressure Therapy. She is the co-author of Seated Acupressure Massage written with her friend and business partner Davina Thomson, with whom she now runs Wellbeing Direct, a corporate wellness company.

Book preview

Prologue

‘Has your husband signed a DNR?’

DNR? Fran’s brain could not make any sense of his words.

‘Does -he -want -to -be -resuscitated?’ He pronounced each word carefully, as if he were talking to someone with little understanding of English.

He had not even bothered to sit down beside her as she sat numbly, waiting outside the side ward. Instead he stood, impatiently waiting for her to answer, his arms hanging oddly limp at his sides, the sleeves of his white coat, incongruously too long. Why did she notice such a trivial detail when Rob’s life was hanging in the balance?

‘I don’t know,’ she replied, stunned, looking up at him. ‘Is he that ill? We never discussed it.’

‘Yes, he is quite unwell, he has pneumonia and sepsis and if we can stabilise him here, he will be transferred to the Intensive Care Unit.’ The doctor was impatient for a specific response and kept glancing back through the small window of the side ward.

‘Well yes, I think he would want to be resuscitated.’ The words slipped out of her mouth unbidden and before she could elaborate or ask any questions the doctor shot back into the room slamming the door behind him. Through the small window, all she could see were the backs of gowned and gloved minders wielding tubes and fluids, forcing life back into her husband’s inert body.

She sat for hours in the hospital’s I.C.U. family waiting room, staring at the eponymous hospital copy of Country Life. Balm for the souls of the distressed and grieving she thought, wryly leafing unseeingly through the pages. It all seemed so unreal. She felt very disassociated from it all, as if it were happening to somebody else. She almost felt like laughing, as if this unfolding drama were some sort of joke. What was wrong with her? For once he was out of control and had no say in the outcome. In that moment, she had held his life in her hands. Then reality set in. What if they could not resuscitate him? What if he were to survive this latest assault on his being? He might end up even more dependent. How would she react? Random thoughts and possible outcomes swirled around in her mind. How had it all come to this? How had she become caught up in this hopeless dynamic of life-time carer? For the first time in her life, she gave herself permission for introspection, without judgement. She had never wanted to examine her life choices, or her motives, so closely before. It was too uncomfortable.

It had started at an early age she realised now. She remembered hearing as a three-year-old, that Mr Potter across the road had died. Everybody drew their blinds on the day of the funeral and spoke in sombre tones. Fran had somehow escaped from her house and marched across the road with a dustpan and brush to sweep Mrs Potter’s doorstep, quite sure that this would be a comfort. Mrs Potter had opened her door and looked down in astonishment at the wee girl.

‘I’m sorry Mr Potter’s gone to heaven,’ she had lisped. Even at that tender age, wanting to rescue. For most of her childhood though, she remained invisible. Fran was, after all, the third, unplanned child born to a mother unprepared, and edging towards an eventual nervous breakdown.

‘Mrs Patterson?’

Fran looked up, startled out of her reverie as the I.C.U. nurse crossed the room and sat beside her. The nurse laid her hand on Fran’s arm. ‘We have managed to stabilise your husband, but he is not out of the woods yet. Just to warn you, the doctor has had to insert a tube into his neck vein so that we can deliver antibiotics and other medications directly into his bloodstream. It looks a bit horrific, but we are keeping him comfortable.’

Fran thought this might be a euphemism for, ‘We might still lose him but we are doing our best.’

‘You can come and sit with him if you want,’ the nurse encouraged kindly.

‘Is he conscious?’ Fran asked anxiously, reluctant to keep vigil with him otherwise.

The nurse hesitated. ‘He is slipping in and out of consciousness, but it might help him if he hears your voice.’

My voice is not necessarily the voice he would prefer to hear, Fran thought to herself, but she nodded her head and obediently started to follow the nurse through to the ward. She was vaguely aware that some of the other relatives in the family room were looking at her as she left, but she could not bear to make eye contact with them, they all had their own traumas to process.

The I.C.U. ward felt like a space station. Each bed was surrounded by a variety of robotic-looking machines and monitors bleeping and clicking away, guarding the occupants with lines attached to exposed chests and tubes inserted into orifices and veins. She glanced fearfully at each patient as she passed their beds. Who would be claiming their broken bodies with their failing organs she wondered? Mercifully their eyes were closed, either because they were unconscious or because of the glaring lights. She searched out her husband. His bed was in an L-shaped part of the room, away from the main ward and he too was hooked up to the robots. Sure enough a tube, held in place by tape, was sticking out of his neck. She had the irreverent thought that if he had a matching tube sticking out the other side, he would have looked like Frankenstein.

The nurse brought a chair over for Fran. ‘Rob, your wife’s here to see you.’ She spoke loudly into his ear, perhaps thinking that Fran might be incapable of speech at that moment. His eyes fluttered open for a second, squinting against the harsh brightness of the overhead light. She had visions of the neck tube popping out if he turned his head. She quickly stood up and leaned over him so that he could see her face, and to block out some of the light, allowing him to keep his eyes open for longer than a nanosecond.

‘Hey, it’s me, Fran.’ His eyes cracked open again, at the sound of her voice. ‘You didn’t have to go to these lengths to get a fix.’ She smiled, wondering if he understood her joke. His dark eyes focussed briefly onto hers, but he didn’t respond, other than to squeeze her hand feebly, before closing his eyes again. He still clutched her fingers, but now in a tighter grip. She sat back down beside him, imprisoned once more, and gazed at his rugged features. He was still a handsome man, everybody said so. His face, normally tanned, was drained of colour, glistening with fever, the flesh under the high cheekbones sunk in, giving him a skeletal appearance. For the second time in the five years since his devastating stroke, she held his hand and silently prayed that he would let go of whatever was holding him on the planet, keeping them both in bondage. The minutes ticked by with no further reaction from Rob and she found herself drifting back to her memories, some unbearably painful and others mystifying, lulled into introspection by the rhythmic clicking of the monitors.

Beginnings

‘Iona? What kind of name is that to give anybody?’ Which was her mother’s first response when Fran came hurtling into the house to show off her scraped knee. She had been pushed off her bike by Billy Robson, the street bully, who lived further up the road. Her mum was standing at the deep kitchen sink scrubbing a towel up and down a ribbed washboard, her hands red and wrinkled from the hot, soapy water. She didn’t turn around to look at Fran.

Fran had been breathless with the pain from her knee, but more from excitement and astonishment that someone had stood up for her. The first time that had happened in her first seven years of playing with the other children in her street. She had spent the first few years of her life, after being allowed out to play, trying to avoid the jostling for power that went on amongst the children. Frequently she was the quiet victim of the Robson family. Billy’s big sister Marion, once trailed the four-year-old Fran, fully clothed in her new winter coat, through the boating pond at the park. She was chest high in the murky water. Perhaps her mum or dad had had a word with Mr and Mrs Robson, but after that the Robson children never missed an opportunity to bully Fran. Seeing Fran proudly riding her newly acquired handed-down bike had been like a red rag to a bull to the troubled Billy Robson.

‘But Mum, Iona pushed Billy Robson over and asked him how he would like to be knocked down and told him to pick on someone his own size. My knee’s bleeding, it’s sore.’ Her words tumbled out in a rush.

‘Ask your dad to clean up your knee. He’s in the garden. I need to get this washing out on the line.’ She could tell from her mother’s hunched shoulders that there was no point expecting any more attention. Washing heavy towels and wringing them out through the mangle was guaranteed to put her mother in a bad mood. She was not long back from a lengthy spell in a convalescent home, recovering from a nervous breakdown left over from an unrecognised and untreated postnatal depression. Her youngest child was frequently not on her radar, or the two older siblings for that matter. Normally Fran’s dad did the wringing on washing day on a Saturday, but he was planting cabbages in his vegetable patch, taking advantage of the dry weather.

Fran had been sitting on the pavement clutching her bloodied knee, her bike a tangled heap beside her. Billy Robson looked like he might be moving in for another kick at her bike when a whirling streak of long, jodhpurs-clad legs on a lanky body, topped with a head of bobbing blond curls, took him down. What this avenging angel actually said as she sat astride him, forcing his head to the ground with one hand was, ‘How do you like it you little shite? Away home to your mammy and stay away from this wee girl. She’s half your size. Come near her again and…’ she left her threat hanging.

Billy Robson slunk away without another word when Fran’s rescuer got off him. She came straight over to Fran. ‘Let’s have a look at your knee. It’s not too bad.’ She picked up Fran’s bike and handed it to her. ‘I’m Iona, we live at No. 45. We just moved in.’

‘I’m Fran,’ she had answered shyly, overawed that this strange, older girl had helped her. ‘I live at No. 21.’

‘I have to get to the stables; I need to muck out the horses before I get a ride. But if that boy bothers you again, you let me know.’ She smiled at Fran and squeezed her shoulder. ‘See you.’ Iona jumped on her own bike which she had flung down on the road and rode off at top speed, her blonde curls flying out behind her.

Horses? Stables? Fran was agog, she had never known anyone who lived such an exotic life. All the children in her street ever did was play hopscotch, or the luckier ones rode up and down the street on their bikes. It was also the first time Fran had heard a swear word being used in her defence. It was shockingly thrilling.

Iona became Fran’s secret heroine, admired from afar as she cycled madly back and forth from the stables or walked to the secondary school. She must have been about eleven, Fran guessed. She always acknowledged Fran with a cheery wave any time she saw her. She tried to be outside her gate when she knew Iona would be cycling or walking past and her heart would beat a little faster. Billy Robson did not try to bully her again. Sometimes Iona would stop and have a chat with Fran, always asking her if she was all right. As the next few years passed, Iona started confiding in Fran about how much she enjoyed riding and that she had a crush on someone at the stables, and occasionally she spoke about her mum and dad fighting. Her parents both drank and their fiery Irish tempers would flare up. Especially on a Friday when her mum got paid and came home with a few bottles of Guinness. Although she had no real advice to offer, Fran realised that Iona was grateful to have her to talk to and they would often meet up in the park on a Friday so that Iona could get out from under her hot-tempered parents’ Guinness-fuelled arguments. Fran was just content that Iona was treating her sometimes like a best friend.

Fran’s older sisters had left the secondary school by the time it was her turn to go, so she was walking anxiously to school alone on that first day when Iona caught up with her.

‘Hello Fran. First day at big school eh? You can walk in with me if you like. I’ll show you around.’ Fran was delighted, Iona, her friend and protector had taken her under her wing.

What a relief she felt as she mingled with the big kids at the secondary school. At last she could blend in. She had grown so quickly between the age of nine and eleven and was the biggest child in her primary class, even taller than her primary school teacher. Although on reflection, he was rather vertically challenged anyway and bristled scarily with Napoleonic energy. Fran had been a prime target for teasing and name-calling, especially from the little boys who lived at the rougher end of their housing estate. Many of them looked pale and undernourished with scabby knees and dirty nails. At least her street had trees. But she had been too visible, in the wrong way. She never got away with any small misbehaviours at primary school.

‘A big girl like you should know better,’ Mr Thompson her teacher would growl.

She learned to be compliant and well behaved so as not to draw any attention to herself. It did not always work.

‘Fran, come and sit beside Colin McBride at the front here and help him with his reading.’ Fran would have to squeeze in beside anxious wee Colin at his too-small desk and try not to gag at the smell of his unwashed body and urine-drenched trousers. Thus, Mr Thompson reinforced in Fran’s psyche that she would always take the role of rescuer because ‘she was a big girl and should know better’.

Colin McBride’s smell lingered in her nostrils for ages afterwards. She hated it. She never did teach him how to read and did not see him again after she moved up to the secondary school. Her first lost cause. She had done well in her eleven-plus test and was put into the A stream at school and her expectations for academic success became a possibility.

Both her sisters had left school at fifteen, worked at boring office jobs and had equally boring boyfriends. They had left home and were sharing a house with two other girls. All they wanted to achieve was to get married and have children and stop working. Fran had always been aware that she wanted much more for her life. Although she was not sure how to go about achieving ‘the much more’ or indeed what it might be. Possibly living somewhere with a fitted carpet would be a good start. She was embarrassed by the threadbare rug in the middle of their living room, exposing acres of dark brown stained floorboard, around the edges. Iona’s hallway and living room were carpeted wall to wall with a grey and green patterned Axminster. Luxury. And the walls boasted interesting wallpaper, repeating pattern of orange fir cones in the hallway and a big floral design in black and pink in the living room. Fran was particularly envious of the dark maroon moquette three-piece suite which Iona said her mum had paid for out of her tips for serving petrol on the garage forecourt. The walls in Fran’s house were still in post-war bare plaster, which her dad had sponge-stippled all over with a green and pink abstract design. Fran so longed for wallpaper. Their living room was furnished with a sagging bed settee which her mum and dad had to sleep on when Grandma came to stay and was given their bedroom. Two mismatched armchairs in faded and fraying fabric, a sideboard and dining table with six chairs placed under the window, took up the rest of the space. She was acutely aware that their house was shabby compared to Iona’s house and some of the other neighbours’ houses that she had been in and wished fervently that her house could look nicer inside. It had made her determined from an early age when her social awareness kicked in, that she wanted a better future for herself.

Iona caught up with Fran one Friday afternoon on their way back from school. It was the last day of the summer term. ‘Fran, my mum wants to move back to Killarney, she’s lost her job at the garage. They installed self-service pumps and she has been made redundant. I don’t want to leave, especially you. I’ll miss the stables so much too. I love going there.’ Her voice quivered as she added, ‘I feel so angry with her, but now that Dad’s gone, she wants to be closer to her family.’

Fran was appalled. ‘But Iona can’t your mum get another job somewhere else? Do you really have to leave?’ Her throat constricted at the horrible prospect of losing her best friend.

Iona just shook her head ‘I don’t have a choice Fran, Mum has already given up the house and enrolled me in a school in Killarney. We are leaving in a few days. I’m so sorry to leave you, but as soon as I get to sixteen I’ll come back. I promise. Goodbye Fran’ Iona squeezed Fran’s arm hard with one hand and rushed off, her pale blue eyes brimming with unshed tears.

Fran did not see Iona again before they left the street. Iona was fifteen.

Fran was bereft. The sharp pain of loss she experienced for the first time in her life could not be shared with anyone who might have understood. Her sisters thought that Iona was too old and too precocious for Fran and she could not tell her mother or father that Iona’s leaving was making her feel so unhappy.

Despite their age difference, Iona had befriended her and had been happy to confide in Fran about her turbulent home life. Iona’s dad had died suddenly from a ruptured spleen; he had been a heavy drinker. As life-changing as that had been for Iona and her mum, Fran never dreamt that her friend would leave. Although her parents were both fiery characters and Fran was a bit intimidated by them, Iona had adored her dad. She had been named after their honeymoon destination, Iona, as she had been born exactly nine months later.

Fran never forgot the summer that cemented her friendship with Iona. Iona’s dad drove a black cab and one summer, two years after they had moved into the road, he and John Dunwoody, another black-cab driver who lived next door to Fran, took all the kids they could fit into their taxis to the beach. They drove for ninety minutes west of Glasgow to the seaside town of Saltcoats, where Fran, Iona and the other children from their road (not the Robsons!) enjoyed an amazing day at the beach, paddling (too cold to swim), building sandcastles and sharing the sand-crunchy sandwiches their mothers had packed for them. It was the first time she had been at the seaside and Iona had spent the whole day with her.

Fran was not allowed to go to the funeral service in the Catholic church, but stood beside Iona later at the graveside. Iona had cried softly and squeezed Fran’s hand hard when the priest intoned the Rite of Committal prayer. Fran experienced a deep connection with Iona as she grieved over the loss of her beloved father.

The long weeks of summer dragged on the year that Iona left. The children spilled out onto the street for the day straight after breakfast and usually drifted down to the local park in a group, playing rounders, or spending hours on the swings, trying to avoid the attention of the creepy park keeper. Fran often went along with them, but without Iona, she felt lonely most of the time. Iona’s friendship had given her life shape, opened possibilities for a different future. But she was still too young to change anything or identify what she did want. Confused and unhappy, she withdrew into her imagination, her soul’s journey suspended.

At school, she focussed on her work and the years slid by, unmarked by any major changes in her home life. Except for the eventual appearance of a fitted carpet and a three-piece suite, after her mother went out to work. Fran felt a little better.

Continuum

‘Fran, it’s me, I’m back. I’ve moved in with Liam.’ Iona’s voice was husky, excited.

‘When? Where?’ was all Fran could manage. She couldn’t believe that Iona had come back to Glasgow from Ireland. It had been five years since she left with her widowed mother to live in Killarney and the girls had only exchanged Christmas cards occasionally. Fran had not expected to see Iona again despite her promise to return. She had not forgotten how intense her friendship with Iona had been and had never stopped missing her. She spent a lot of her spare time hanging out with a small group of school friends from her year, but always felt a bit detached from them, still painfully self-conscious and unable to participate in the easy banter with the boys that her girl-friends seemed to be so good at.

‘Listen Fran,’ Iona continued rapidly. ‘I’m working at the Veterinary Hospital as a groom. Liam’s stables are just down the road. He’s been coming over to Killarney to see me-and-I -I’m in love with him…’

Iona had mentioned Liam in one of her Christmas cards, but Fran had no idea that their friendship was so serious. She knew that Iona had had a crush on him before she left Glasgow for Killarney, but he was old, at least thirty! He was divorced and he owned the stables. Could this be real? She was stunned, thrilled and confused all at once. Her friend was back, but deeply involved in a relationship that Fran had no concept of. Would Iona still be interested in rekindling their friendship? All Fran had to offer in the way of news from the past five years was that she was still a schoolgirl with plans to sit her Highers the following year and then perhaps go to university or college. She was determined not to follow in her sisters’ footsteps. They had both recently married within three months of one another, falling out over Fran’s hair length. Her older sister had married first and insisted on Fran, the bridesmaid, cutting her hair short. Her middle sister was enraged as she had wanted Fran’s hair to be long for her wedding, three months later. Bridesmaid again. There was so much stress and disharmony around both events and Fran strongly disliked her brothers-in-law anyway, that she decided that she would never get married. And she hated her short hair. Hardly earth shattering events to share.

‘Can you come over later? There’s a bus stop right outside the stables.’ Iona continued. ‘The cottage is at the entrance. It would be great to see you again and I want you to meet Liam.’

‘Yes, I can come.’ Fran’s voice shook a little, she was delighted to be seeing Iona again but nervous about having to meet the mysterious Liam. She had never gone to the stables with Iona when she was younger and had