‘You’re not alone.’
She stopped abruptly, waiting, wondering, and Tak suddenly found himself speaking—filling the silence—even though he’d had no intention of doing so.
‘I had another brother, you know. Saaj. He was eight months old when he was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease. To this day we still don’t know the cause, but my suspicion is that it was immunopathic.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Her tone was so sincere, so gentle, that he could feel the emotion balling in his throat. He waved her aside with his hand.
‘Saaj spent most of the next fourteen months in hospital unconscious, or if he was conscious then he was usually in pain. And as a baby he couldn’t articulate it. He was simply inconsolable, but unlike a normal baby there was nothing my mother could do to help him. She was there with him every day, but she couldn’t talk to him, or comfort him, or even cuddle him, because as the illness progressed even that caused him too much pain.’
‘Tak...’
She uttered his name softly. Neither a plea nor a statement, just a reassurance that she was there, and he realised that at some point she’d taken his hands, as though lending him support. He’d never thought he’d needed it. Until now.
‘She was in hell—unable to comfort him and equally unable to take his pain away.’
He couldn’t bring himself to tell her the truth about his mother. The way Saaj had been her excuse to abandon the rest of her children when they too had needed her. The way she’d already been doing before Saaj had been born. But with Saaj she’d had a clear-cut reason which no one—especially not his ten-year-old self—had been able to argue with.
And so he’d taken on the responsibility of caring for his siblings—from changing nappies to washing clothes and finding them something to eat every day. He’d hated his mother for not caring for them enough. And he’d hated his philandering father for caring for himself too much.
But what if Effie didn’t believe him? Worse, what if she took his mother’s side and decided he was being callous, lacking any empathy?
‘What about your father?’
‘He wasn’t around.’
That was all Tak was willing to offer. What else was there to say? That his father had been so busy with his whores that he hadn’t cared about anyone else?
‘I was a kid. I took care of my siblings.’ He wrapped it up neatly. ‘That’s why I don’t want that life now. I don’t want a family. I feel like I’ve already been there and had that. I love being a surgeon.’
‘Baby Saaj is why you became a surgeon, though, isn’t he?’ she asked abruptly.
Her quiet but clear words cut through the air. Through him. Incredibly, Tak found he couldn’t answer her. His tongue simply wouldn’t work.
‘And not just any surgeon.’ Her eyes might as well be pinning him to the spot. ‘But a neurosurgeon.’
She could read him in a way that no one else ever had. It should unnerve him more.
‘If I wanted you to psychoanalyse me I’d get on a couch and give you a clipboard,’ he managed to bite out eventually. ‘The point is that I don’t need any distractions. I don’t need a wife or a family at home, reminding me that I’ve let them down or abandoned them because I’ve got caught up with some case, some patient.’
It was intended as a conclusion, but she looked as though she was about to say more. He needed something to distract her. Words pressed urgently against his tongue, as if they were desperate to get out, whatever logic his brain might be using to restrain them.
‘Come with me to the neurology conference in Paris,’ he said. It certainly wasn’t what he’d expected to say.
‘No.’ She shook her head at once.
‘Why not?’
She eyed him apprehensively, as though trying to work it out. How he’d gone from shutting her out to inviting her to go away with him.
He was still trying to work it out himself.
‘Nell’s going on her ski trip at the same time,’ he said. ‘And you told me yourself that you’ve never been abroad but you’ve always wanted to. Here’s your chance.’
She bit her lip and he had to fight the oddest impulse to draw it into his mouth and kiss her thoroughly, just as he had before. More.
‘Where would I stay?’