A Minor Indiscretion (34 page)

N
eil eventually took Orla's hand. “Hi,” he said.

The smile came back and so did Rossano Brazzi. The woman of his dreams stood before him, and Ed, the lucky bastard, had snaffled her up first. Some blokes had all the luck. And his brother seemed to have more than most. This bloody lucky suit was proving a disaster!

“Do you know where he is?” Orla asked, extracting her hand from his. Her fingers were long, slender pianist's hands.

The restaurant manager tried to make himself look busy.

“No,” Neil said. “He'd gone by the time I got here.”

“Why did you come?”

Tricky one that. “Er…” Neil said while he floundered around his brain looking for inspiration.

“He was meeting Alicia, wasn't he?”

“Yes,” Neil said, nodding. Wool would not be pulled easily over this one's eyes. “I wanted to check everything was okay.”

Orla shrugged. “That's thoughtful of you.”

They stood and looked at each other. Orla's face softened. The black eyes charged with flecks of electricity. “What now?” she said, gesturing with her arms.

“I don't know,” Neil answered.

She gave a half-laugh and twisted one of her curls. “I guess I'll go home to a frozen pizza.”

“Me too,” Neil said.

Orla clapped her hands together. A tight, uncomfortable movement. “Oh, well.”

The restaurant manager cleared his throat. Neil glanced up at him, and the manager flicked his eyes toward the restaurant door. A light clicked on in Neil's brain.

“Unless…” he said.

Orla tilted her chin. “Unless?”

Neil laughed. “No. No. No. I don't know what I'm thinking of!”

She laughed back. “What?”

“Well.” Neil fluttered his eyelashes. “We could have dinner together.”

Orla glanced at the restaurant manager.

“I'm sure we could find you a table,” he said encouragingly.

Orla laughed again. “Shall we?”

“Why not?” Neil was magnanimous.

“If you'd like to go through, madam,” the manager said to Orla, indicating the door.

As Neil passed him, he whispered, “Cheers, mate.”

The manager picked the beautiful bouquet of red roses wrapped in purple tissue from the wastepaper bin, dusted them off and gave them back to Neil with a wink. “Good luck, sir.”

“I think I'll need it,” Neil said, tugging at his tie. But then, he was wearing his lucky suit.

I
t isn't possible to die of happiness, I've learned. It is, however, entirely possible to die of cancer.

I pull my hospital gown round my knees, which bares my bottom to anyone who cares to look. Not that there is anyone else here, apart from the consultant gynecologist who's probably seen it all before and a little bit more. He is sitting looking at me after his calm, cool bombshell announcement, waiting, presumably, for some response from me.

There's a big empty space where the comforting thud, thud, thudding of my heart should be, and I swear it takes ten whole minutes for the next beat to kick in. What if I have a heart attack and die of shock before the cancer has a chance to kill me? I laugh out loud at the irony, and the consultant lowers his head and studies his notes.

This is a truly horrible room. The tiles are supposed to be white and clinical, but they're grubby, gray and cracked all over the place. I'm on an examination table which has a rip in it where I can see the stuffing coming out, and that can't in any way be classed as hygienic, can it? And this tissue paper I'm sitting on is revolting. It's more crumpled than I could have made it, and there are already faint yellow stains on it as if someone has used it before, someone with a more leaky disease than me. Goose
bumps creep all over my skin and I really want to get off, but my legs won't move.

The consultant comes round his desk and perches uneasily on it. He crosses his legs and then his arms. I think he is trying to adopt a relaxed pose. So am I, and we are both failing.

“You have a very good chance of making a full recovery,” he says softly. “An excellent chance.” I want to remind him that's not what he said a minute ago. A minute ago he said I had ovarian cancer. A minute ago he said it was at a very advanced stage.

He smiles grimly at me and continues, “You're young. You're fit. You're healthy.” Is he talking to the same person? I resist the urge to look round in case there is someone else behind me who
is
young and fit and healthy. I'm not young and fit. And I'm definitely not healthy. I'm as old as the hills and I have a disease, I want to say. I have a disease that's silently eating me away inside.

“We must move quickly,” the consultant says. He is young and fit. He looks like he's just come back from Barbados or Antigua. Some exclusive holiday resort. Sandals, maybe. He is bronzed and athletic-looking. He looks like he swims or works out. His sheer healthiness is out of place in this hospital full of sick people, in this small, airless room with a sick person. “I want your permission to operate straight away.” He is wearing the most awful tie. Whoever told him it matched that shirt was color-blind. I wonder if he has a wife who helps him to get dressed. Perhaps she's the one that's color-blind. “Ali?”

I look up. He's folding and unfolding his arms and legs as he talks as if he's doing some big, invisible origami. “Ali. I want to prepare you for surgery tomorrow.”

I know I should say something, but I can't. I nod instead. I want it out of me, this thing. This thing that Dr. James put down to nothing more than stress.

I spent the entire evening being ignored in Casualty, waiting for a bed to come empty so that I could be “observed.” I had this horrible thought that they were either going to parcel up someone and send them home before they were ready because they weren't quite as sick as me or that they were waiting for someone to die so that I could nip between their sheets. I have been reading far too much about our Third World National Health service in the
Daily Mail
to feel comfortable here. Anyway, at around
three in the morning, when someone did finally “observe” me, they decided I should have been “observed” a lot earlier. About five years earlier, I think.

The consultant glances at his notes. “You've got three children?”

I nod. I am hanging on to them by a thread, I want to say, because my husband thinks I'm an unfit mother. It was all I ever wanted to be—a wife, a mother, to have a lovely husband, three children and maybe some roses round the door.

“Had you planned to have any more?”

I don't know whether I nod or shake, but I feel my head move. I can't even plan what I want for dinner tomorrow night these days. I try to conjure up images of children that may or may not be born, but fail dismally. I just can't think that hard.

“Is there someone you want me to contact for you?” he says. “Do you need to discuss this?”

What would be the point? Who would I discuss it with? Not Ed. Why should he care anymore? Besides, even the sight of a blood-stained plaster makes him go pale. Not Christian. How could he understand anything of this? He is another young, fit and healthy specimen. He has no idea what it is like to have your traitorous insides do the dirty on you. How could he possibly advise me on the best course of action? And, as I see it, I don't have a choice. It's do or die. Literally.

“Do you have children?” I ask.

The young, healthy consultant looks embarrassed. “Not yet.”

“When you do,” I say wearily, “make sure that you treasure them.”

My eyes fill up with tears and I feel one roll out, over my cheek, in a cold, self-pitying trail, and I watch it splash in slow motion on the hard vinyl tiles. It is followed by another and another and another, until there is a great, long stream of them. I feel as if my heart is about to snap in two. I stare at the tears pooling at my feet. This floor looks like no one has taken a mop to it in a long, long time.

I
t was persistently raining. Drips of rain from Ed's porch were running down and hitting Neil squarely in the middle of his head, and he didn't feel like moving out of the way. He felt as if it was what he deserved. Water torture from Ed's porch. Water torture and kneecapping with a baseball bat. And he was probably going to get both.

He'd wanted to ride over on his motorbike, but it wasn't a bike-riding sort of day. Rain seeped inside all your exposed bits, face, neck, wrists. It ran down inside your boots making a water feature of your toes. Soggy leathers took days to dry out. If, however, he had been able to ride round on his motorbike, it might have given him time to sort out in his head exactly what it was he wanted to say.

Ed opened the door.

“Bro!” Neil stood and dripped cheerfully at him, relieved to see that he wasn't yet carrying anything that could be classed as an offensive weapon.

“Bro,” Ed replied flatly. He stood aside while Neil went in. Ed followed him into the kitchen. There was a bottle of whisky standing on the counter, and in the light Ed's eyes were looking red-rimmed and bleary with alcohol. “Drink?” Ed asked, pouring himself another one.

“No thanks, mate,” Neil said, shaking his head. “Designated driver.”

“You don't mind if I do?”

“Well…don't you think you've had enough?”

Ed looked up. “No.”

Neil wished he had something to fidget with, so he started to wring out a wet bit of his fringe. “It's not the answer, is it?”

Ed sat down on a kitchen stool, whisky poised. “To what?”

Neil shrugged. “Anything…”

“In particular?”

The oblivion of whisky was very tempting. “What happened last night?” Neil ventured.

“I sat in and watched telly,” Ed said. He fixed his brother with a stare.

“I've got some bad news, some very bad news, some very, very bad news and some really, truly awful news,” Neil blurted.

“Have you been taking drama-queen lessons from Elliott?” Ed said over the top of his glass.

“I'm serious, bro.”

“Go on, then,” Ed said, topping up his whisky. “Do you want to tell me in reverse order in the time-honored tradition of Miss World contests?”

Neil looked uncertain. “I don't think so.”

Ed slid farther down toward the counter. “Shoot.”

Neil took a deep breath and opened his mouth.

“This wouldn't have anything to do with The Ivy?”

Neil looked shocked. “How do you know?”

Ed shrugged. “As the bloke who rang the bells at Notre Dame said, ‘It's just a hunch.'”

“Jemma and I set it up. Mainly Jemma,” Neil added quickly. That would pay her back for the cup of tea in the face.

Ed turned his eyes from his bottle. “That's the bad news?”

Neil nodded. “I came down to see you, but you'd gone.”

“You'll realize then that Ali didn't turn up?”

Neil nodded again. “There's a reason, mate.”

“Why doesn't that surprise me?”

“A good reason.”

Ed's glass faltered slightly on the way to his lips.

“She's in hospital, bro.”

A spark of concern flashed in Ed's eyes, and he was instantly sober. “Is she hurt?”

Neil chewed his lip. “Not hurt,” he said. “Not as such. This is heavy-duty, man.”

“How heavy-duty?”

“She's got the big C, Ed. Cancer. They're operating tomorrow.”

Ed stood up. “Take me to her. She'll need me.”

“That was the very bad news,” Neil said. “The very, very bad news is that she doesn't want to see you.”

Ed sat down again. Heavily. He looked like someone had punched him in the stomach. His breathing was labored. “Why?”

“I haven't a clue.” Neil put his hand on his arm. “Women, eh?”

“Women,” Ed agreed.

“Who needs them?” Neil tried a jocular laugh and failed miserably. The bleak look in Ed's eyes said that he did. At least, one particular woman.

“So,” Ed said with a heavy sigh, “if that was the very, very bad news, what's the really, truly awful news?”

“I'm shagging your girlfriend,” Neil said earnestly.

“Orla?” Ed said, his mouth turned up at the corners.

“Yes,” Neil answered grimly.

Ed started to laugh, a tight little giggle that turned into a hearty guffaw. Neil stood and watched helplessly as his brother laughed and laughed, laughed so hard that he cried and the tears rolled unabated down his sad, tired face.

I
had a tumor the size of a grapefruit, apparently. Why are all tumors the size of grapefruits? Why not any other citrus fruits? Lemons? Limes? Kumquats? Is a kumquat a citrus fruit? Or tennis balls? You never hear anyone say they had a tumor the size of a tennis ball, do you? Anyway, it's gone now. All of it. Along with quite a bit of my insides. But apart from the fact that I feel like I've been kicked up the bottom by a horse and my emotions are whirling on the breeze with all the control of a stunt kite, I'm absolutely fine. That's the wonder of modern anesthetic for you.

Christian, on the other hand, is not fine. He, like most of the male population, does not cope well with illness. Hospitals make him break out in a cold sweat. He says the smell of stale urine makes him want to gag. Not mine, I hasten to add.

He is sitting by my bedside looking bored, and he's already eaten most of the grapes he brought in. Visiting hour is torture. Christian looks up at me wanly.

“Cheer up,” I say. “I'll be out in a couple of days.” I can't wait.

The hospital food is great, providing you like beans and chips for every meal. And it's one of those mixed wards, where they let geriatric old men wander round at night with their pajamas all undone. There are several shades of hair tangled round the bathroom plug hole, and the loos are crying out for the want of some Toi
let Duck. If you didn't come in here with an illness, you would, without a shadow of a doubt, go out with one.

A few months ago I could have been ill in a cream-and-terra-cotta room that looked like a window design from Habitat, with my very own spotlessly clean shower, and had prawn sandwiches with the crusts cut off for afternoon tea and Baileys on demand. I had private health care under Ed's scheme with Wavelength, but I don't know if Ed has cut me out of it now that we are “estranged,” and because I came in as an emergency, I didn't really have the time or the inclination to ask.

Ed hasn't been near, and I think that's mainly because I told everyone I didn't want him here. And that was partly true. I am just about holding all this together, and I really don't think I could have coped with him feeling sorry for me because I'm feeling sorry enough for myself. And I didn't want him to want me back for all the wrong reasons, which he might have done if he'd seen me like this. There's nothing quite like having an armful of intravenous drips to bring on a bit of misplaced sympathy. Do you know what I mean? There's a part of me in all this that just wants to pretend none of it has happened and to wind the clock back, about three years probably, to a time when all we had to row and worry about was whether we needed a conservatory built or not.

I didn't want the kids to come in either. It's not that I don't miss them desperately, I do—they're the only children I'll ever have now, and I want to hug them to me and love them. But I didn't want them to see me sick and worry. And I didn't want them to catch anything deadly either. As I said, the whole thing has just screwed my emotions up completely. Facing your own mortality is nearly as scary as the length of the checkout queues at Ikea.

Jemma is clip-clopping her way down the ward, and Christian looks relieved. It means he can slope away early. Jemma is flushed and has on her careworn look, but despite that, she is dressed from head to toe in antique silk and looks like she's going to a gallery opening rather than hospital visiting. She's missed the tea trolley, which she'll be miffed about. It's only seventy pence a cup, and they use at least one tea bag per hundred patients. So no cutbacks there!

Christian stands up. He and Jemma nod curtly at each other. “I'll be off,” Christian says, and he pecks my cheek and rushes away without another word.

Jemma sits down in his vacated utilitarian lime-green plastic
seat and starts to cry. I reach out and stroke her hair. She'll start me off too if she's not careful. “Hush, hush,” I murmur softly, and reach for the box of Tempo Aloe Plus tissues on my metal bedside cabinet. “Don't worry about me.” I tilt her chin and smile my bravest, if slightly tearful, smile. “I'll be fine.”

Jemma sniffs unhappily. “I'm not worrying about you,” she says, taking one of my tissues. “You're always fine. I'm worrying about me.”

I stop stroking her hair and lie back on my pillow.

“Supposing I can't find anyone to have babies with?” she continues. “Cancer sometimes runs in families. We used to eat the same breakfast cereal. Suppose that does it?”

“Don't be stupid.”

“You're all right—you've already got three children. What if I haven't had any by the time my insides decide to pack up? I can't find anyone who will commit to me.”

“So stop going out with married men.” In this mood, Jemma would make Good Samaritans want to take a long run off a short cliff.

“It's easy for you to say that, you're married to one. Well, you were.”

Thank you, Jemma.

“Do you know how many prams I saw today, Alicia?”

“No.” But I'm sure you're going to tell me.

“Nine,” Jemma says emphatically. “Nine prams.”

“Nice.”

“Nine prams and seven cute, chubby little toddlers.”

“Any surly teenagers?” I inquire.

“No,” Jemma snaps. “None.” My sister eyes my grapes covetously, and I move them away from her. “Now that you're staring death in the face, Ali, it's made me realize that I'm not getting any younger either.”

“God forbid,” I say.

Jemma starts a renewed bout of crying. This is a two tissue flow. “He's left me,” she wails loud enough for even the deaf geriatrics to hear. They pull their attention away from
General Hospital,
which is blaring out of the lone ward telly, cunningly positioned ten feet up the wall so that no one can quite see it.

“Sssh,” I say. “Who?”

“My Swiss banker.” Her sniveling has never been done in dulcet tones. “I've always wanted a Swiss banker.”

“Why?”

“Because they're rich and sophisticated and have apartments overlooking Lake Geneva and ski lodges in Zermatt.”

I tut. “Why has he left you?”

“Oh.” Jemma's lower lip quivers. “Eric said he couldn't go on living a lie.”

I can't hide my smile. “Eric?”

“So.” Jemma scowls. “No one's perfect!”

“So, presumably, Eric not only had a crap name but a wife too.”

Jemma tosses her hair. “The marriage had been dead for a long time.”

“Let me have a guess.” I can do waspish along with the best—anesthetic or not. “The minute alimony was mentioned, they thought they'd give it another try.”

Jemma has the grace to look slightly abashed. “Well…”

“How often are you going to go through this, Jemma?”

“You're a fine one to talk.”

“At least I've only cocked things up once.”

“And at least you're admitting it now,” she snapped. “You and Ed make me want to bang my head against the wall in frustration.” Don't I know the feeling! “You're both too damn stubborn to back down. That's why Neil and I arranged the meal on Saturday….”

“What meal?” I'll have you note my senses are all still on full alert despite my pain.

“Oh.” Jemma looks round for help.

“What meal?” I have her cornered. There are fifteen minutes left of visiting time before she can escape.

“We want you to get back together, Ali. For your sake and for the kids. You have three lovely children who you're destroying because you're both too damn cussed to say you're sorry. The world is full of people with children, and you all just take them for granted.”

I am so choked that I can't speak.

“We arranged for you and Ed to meet at The Ivy.”

“No one told me,” I say when I find my voice again.

“Neil sent you an invitation.”

“I didn't get it.” There are cogs whirring slowly in my brain, and maybe I'm not as sharp as I think.

“Well, it doesn't matter.” Jemma shrugs. “You couldn't go because you were in here.” Her gaze takes in the worn blue nylon curtains which don't quite meet and the eiderdown which has a design in ten-year-old black currant juice on it.

“Did Ed go?” My mouth is dry.

“Yes,” she says.

“And he sat there all alone?”

“Yes.”

“And he knows that I'm in here?”

“Yes,” Jemma says. “Yes, yes, yes to all of the above.” Patience is a virtue Jemma doesn't possess. “He wants to see you, Ali.”

“No,” I say. “I couldn't handle it. I'll see him when I'm better.”

“And who's going to look after you?”

“Christian.”

“He might be as gorgeous as George Clooney, but I'm not sure he'll have his bedside manner. What if you've got to have chemotherapy?”

“We'll manage.”

“Come to me,” she pleads.

“I can't think of anything worse.”

“Go to Mum's then. She'd love to fuss round you.”

“The cancer wouldn't have to bother, she'd kill me with kindness,” I protest. “I just want to be alone.”

Jemma takes my hand. “Please sort this out with Ed,” she says. “Or one day you will be alone.”

“Get your own glass house sorted out, Jemma,” I snap tiredly. “Then you can throw stones.” Sometimes the truth hurts, doesn't it?

She stands up. “I shouldn't have messed Neil around,” she says.

“I won't say I told you so.”

“He's a really nice guy.”

“He could have given you what you want, Jemma.”

“Maybe it's not too late,” she says tentatively.

“He's very forgiving.”

“I threw a cup of tea in his face,” she says.

“Maybe he's not that forgiving,” I say, and we both start to laugh.

“Ali.” Jemma is serious again. “If you'd got the invitation and this hadn't happened, would you have gone to meet Ed?”

I scratch the intravenous drip which is going into the back of my hand, turning it a nice shade of blue, so that I can avoid looking at my sister. “I don't know,” I say, but in my heart I know exactly what I would have done.