Claire knew Jonah hated her make-up, but she’d been instructed that she had to put on ‘her face’ whenever going in front of the camera. Before she’d left the UK the make-up artist had given her a lesson in how to apply foundation and the best shades of eye shadow to use to complement her colouring. She thought she’d not done too bad a job this morning, but it felt like the California sun had melted the products coating her cheeks.
“No babe, you look gorgeous,” said Jonah, lying down on the bed next to her. He took her hand. “The girls are watching a movie and you’ve got a couple of hours. What do you reckon?” he suggested, lifting her fingers to his lips before returning their clasped hands to settle on her right breast.
The sight of Jonah in a towel was arousing, but wouldn’t sex ruin her make-up? She so didn’t want to have to put on her face again. She was about to air these concerns when her laptop buzzed. It was Orlando Goodman calling on Skype. It was 2am in the UK, a weird time to phone.
“Shit, babe, I’ve got to take this, sorry.”
Jonah nodded. Claire had told him all about this client.
“I’m going to go,” Jonah mouthed at her as she answered the call. It took a while for Orlando’s picture to come up on the screen but, when it did, her heart leapt to her mouth. He looked wan and drawn, his cheeks were sunken hollows. And it had only been three weeks since she’d last seen him. Perhaps the pixels were distorting his features.
“Hello,” she said. “I’ve been thinking of you, wondering how things were going.”
She couldn’t bring herself to ask for his news. He’d obviously called for a reason. He never just telephoned for a chat about nothing. Especially not at 2 am.
“The test results came back this end. Not good I’m afraid.”
Claire kept quiet. Orlando Goodman, one of the country’s finest actors, was clearly struggling to compose himself and find the right words. She didn’t want to interrupt his flow. There was a long silence. She was about to say something to encourage him to continue but then he started speaking again.
“You were right to be concerned, because it looks like this old boy has got cancer.”
Claire felt as if she’d been thwacked over the head with a sledgehammer. If only her sixth sense had been wrong.
“Oh no, I’m so sorry, Orlando. At least we got you checked out early.”
What’s the prognosis? What kind of cancer? She was scared to ask.
“Not early enough it would seem,” Orlando was matter-of-fact in his delivery. “It’s pancreatic cancer and it’s already spread to the liver and kidneys according to the oncologist.”
Claire fought the urge to cry. The 19-9 test must have come back positive. She wanted to bash the computer, reach in to grab the image of Orlando and hug him. She felt so helpless. She was seven thousand miles and a glass screen too far away. Pancreatic cancer is about as bad as it gets. It’s virtually a death sentence. Hardly anyone beats it. Not Patrick Swayze, nor Steve Jobs, despite showing such determination.
“Do you think the right diet can help?” whispered Orlando.
“Yes,” said Claire firmly. “I can’t promise you that it’s a cure but we can get your body in the best possible place so you can fight the illness and cope with the chemotherapy. What’s your treatment plan?
“No treatment dahling. I’ve said no to the treatment. If the cancer doesn’t kill me then the chemo will. No, I want to fight this beast with food.”
---------------
Three hours later, the girls were in bed and Jonah massaged Claire’s shoulders as she re-applied her make-up. So much for worrying about sex ruining her face – as soon as she’d finished talking to Orlando the tears had done it instead, leaving chalky streaks trailing her cheeks and black smudges under her eyes. She’d given Orlando his meal plan there and then, telling him what he absolutely
must
eat (lots of oily fish and vegetables) and what he absolutely must not (sugar and red meat).
“Life’s not fair,” Claire whispered.
“And life’s too short,” replied Jonah. “Stuff like this reminds one to seize each day and live for the moment.”
Claire inhaled deeply, closing her eyes as she did so, trying to calm down. Chad and Ben would be here any minute and she needed to pull herself together. The last thing she felt like doing was a live broadcast, but to coin one of Orlando’s favourite phrases,
the show must go on
.
“He wants me to help him fight this with food,” Claire told Jonah, “but that’s impossib -
A stabbing pain shot across Claire’s lower abdomen, stopping her in her tracks.
“Are you ok?” checked Jonah.
She nodded, planting a hand over her tummy to massage away the thud.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
It actually hurt like hell but, compared to Orlando’s predicament, a touch of belly ache was insignificant. To complain felt wrong.
JONAH
“Right little ladies,” said Jonah at the precise moment that Miriam and Martha decided to perform a synchronised jump into the pool, showering him with spray. Using the end of the white towel slung around his neck he wiped his eyes and waited for the girls to surface. “You’ve got half an hour to decide what you’d like to do today and my challenge will be to see if I can combine all three of our ideas. Got it?”
“Got it,” said the girls.
“Be good,” said Jonah, “I’m watching you.”
The complex had a small but well-equipped gym which overlooked the pool. Its position enabled Jonah to keep an eye on the girls while he worked out. Most days he liked to run on the treadmill for half-an-hour followed by a few minutes lifting weights. He’d been forced to relax his regime whilst he was in the UK but, even then, when he could he’d snatch a few moments in the hotel gym. You can’t go from being a professional athlete, training for eight hours a day, to doing absolutely nada. Well, you
could
, but it wouldn’t feel good.
He threw his towel onto a bench, switched on the treadmill and started with a gentle jog as he watched the girls practicing their dives. Jonah couldn’t have been happier with how things were panning out. Claire was under the impression that nothing ever scared him but she was wrong. Scared wasn’t quite the word he would use but he’d certainly been concerned about how his daughter would react to Claire and Miriam trespassing on her turf, day in, day out. Martha was an only child used to getting her own way and her mother’s style of parenting was questionable at best. Much to Jonah’s dismay, she’d always pandered to their daughter’s every whim and spoiled her rotten, but that was the problem with divorce. When your child is in the other parent’s charge, you’re impotent. He’d observed Martha playing with friends and she wasn’t a great sharer, which had boded badly for the introduction of potential step- siblings. And so he’d waited with bated breath for tantrums and the green-eyed monster to rear their ugly heads but so far so good. In fact, so far it had been an unexpected breeze. True, the girls had had their fair share of squabbles and that was only to be expected. Goddamn, even siblings can fight the hell out of each other. But Martha and Miriam’s tiffs were all short-lived and inconsequential. They were largely TV focused. Who should have possession of the remote control, what programme should they watch, that sort of trivial nonsense. Claire was always quick to break up the fight and referee it fairly. She was a fantastic mother. Watching her interact with the girls had deepened his love and respect for her even further.
He’d not mentioned it to Claire for fear she’d give him some health and safety lecture but, the other day he’d found the girls in one of their rooms huddled round Martha’s sewing box. She’d taken a pin and they were both pricking their fingers and holding their wounds against one another’s. “Now we’re proper sisters,” Martha said. “Blood sisters,” Miriam declared. There’d also been a lot of mattress shifting. One night, about a week into the stay, Martha had invited Miriam to sleep in her room. The next night it had been vice versa. On the third night something very interesting had happened which Jonah felt, on some social, anthropological and psychological level had a greater meaning than he could ever fathom. They had both moved their mattresses into the spare room. The ‘blue’ room as Miriam called it, and that’s where they’d slept. And now, whenever they chose to sleep together, it was in this new, neutral territory that they convened.
Splash, bomb and dive: three more children joined the girls in the pool and Miriam showed them how to do underwater handstands and somersaults. A few seconds later her head bobbed back out of the water as she held her nose. “Say bairth,” one of the girls told her. “Barth,” said Miriam. They all giggled. “Now say hart,” said one of the other girls. “Hot,” said Miriam. Now they were all laughing and trying out the different versions of the words, the American youngsters seeing if they could sound British. Amused, Jonah chuckled to himself.
He didn’t mind the days Claire worked at all. He enjoyed having the girls to himself and he was pretty sure that they had a good time too. This was the third Monday that she was out filming and time was passing way too quickly. In just over a week Miriam’s father would be coming to pick up his daughter as would Martha’s mom.
The girls were all having such a good time in the pool that Jonah managed to eek an extra ten minutes to work on his triceps. “Tom – ay – tow,” the girls were saying to Miriam as Jonah left the gym. “Say ‘tom – ay – tow’.” Miriam copied their accents and sounded wonderfully Californian as she did so. Again, Jonah smiled, wondering how pleased Claire would be if her daughter lost her British accent.
“Very good Miriam,” he told her.
“Really?” she asked, swimming up to the edge of the pool.
“Yep, you sound 100% American.”
Miriam looked pleased.
“Right girls, have you decided what you want to do?”
Martha came to join Miriam at the pool’s edge.
“I want to go cycling,” she said.
“I want to eat ice-cream,” said Miriam.
Jonah nodded, contemplating.
“Ok, we’ve got one ice-cream, one cycling and I want to go to the park.”
“The
park
,” said Martha, looking sceptical.
“Uh-huh,” said Jonah. “We all get one choice, no complaints.”
“So where are we going then, what are we doing?” said Martha as she scrambled out the pool.
“We’re doing cycling, ice-cream and park,” said Jonah, heading back towards the villa. “Come on now. Chop, chop.”
As the girls followed him inside, he reminded himself that there was one more activity to add into the mix. Jonah had to stop at a pharmacy. Claire wasn’t herself since Orlando Goodman told her he had cancer and Jonah was starting to worry.
------------
Claire had once told him, very proudly, that London had one of the greatest urban concentrations of parks in the world, if not
the
greatest concentration. The royal parks alone covered a whopping eight miles of green land and Jonah’s favourite was Hyde Park. He could get lost there for hours and its Serpentine Lake was truly a thing of great beauty. It was so quintessentially English that it reminded him of a Constable painting. You could hire boats by the hour to row on the water and he and Claire had done that, years ago. She’d been lazy, declaring her arms way too weak, and lay back basking in the sun whilst he put in the muscle power. “See, now you don’t have to go to the gym later,” she told him as she watched his triceps in motion. “I’ve done you a favour.” When the sun came out in Britain the colours were extraordinary and, the day that they’d rowed, Jonah remembered thinking the park had looked like a scene from Mary Poppins, the one where the characters hop into the painting. The green foliage and the cornflower blue sky had been so impossibly bright that the colours looked as if they’d been photo-shopped.
But while Jonah loved the Serpentine, his favourite park had to be the one back home. San Diego’s Balboa Park was the biggest cultural urban park in the United States and he loved its variety. As well as housing the zoo, theatres, museums and gardens, it was also home to sixty-five miles of hiking and biking trails. So the fact that Martha had wanted to cycle today was a bonus. He could kill two birds with one stone by coming here.
They’d stopped off twice en route, first at a deli where they’d bought freshly made sandwiches, iced cupcakes and drinks to take on a picnic and, next, at a bike rental hut. He and Martha already had wheels which were locked to the bike rack on the rear of his Porsche Cayenne, but Miriam needed kitting up. There was a gleaming pink model out front which was the right size and also had a front basket. That’s the one Miriam had picked. Jonah loaded up its basket with their feast and they set off down a six mile trail marked ‘golden hill’, bumping along a dirt track shaded by oak and eucalyptus towards the canyons. There were a fair few uphill sections which required some hard-core effort which left the girls panting, but they managed it and were impressed with their efforts when they looked back at the gradient of the slope they’d just climbed. They found a large, shady tree under which Jonah unfolded a rug he’d loaded in his backpack. They took the sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper out of Miriam’s bike basket, along with the sodas, and tucked in.
Martha had pastrami as a filling, Miriam had picked turkey with coleslaw and Jonah had chosen salt beef.
“Mm, this is good,” said Jonah, biting a massive chunk out of his roll.
“Mine too,” said Martha appreciatively.
“Jonah,” said Miriam, eyeing her sandwich but not yet eating it. “I was wondering, actually, err, we’ve been wondering, if you marry my mother then will Martha and I be, err, like, sort of, err sisters?”
Jonah nearly choked on his salt beef, freezing mid-chew as he digested this direct question. He loved how children could throw such curve balls. Nothing was too embarrassing and there was no filter button. Was this question actually about the sisterhood thing or was it a clever way of getting into the marrying issue?
Goddamn it, he wasn’t sure what to say. If Claire were sitting next to him what would
she
say? Miriam was capable of flustering him way more than his own daughter ever could.
Be honest and just say it how it is.
That’s what Claire would say, wasn’t it? Or would she dodge the issue? Marriage was a big word but not one he’d even discussed with Claire. And he certainly wasn’t going to let his thoughts be stolen by a nine-year old.
He swallowed his mouthful with a hefty gulp of Dr. Peppers.
“I guess that would make you sisters, yes.”
“Cool,” said Martha, linking her little finger with Miriam’s.
“How’s your sandwich?” Jonah asked Miriam, trying to change the subject, but she wasn’t having any of it. She stared him directly in the eye, as if daring him with her gaze.
“So,” she asked. “
Are
you going to marry my mother?”
------------------
Marriage wasn’t what was on Jonah’s mind as they steered towards the edge of the park. Think! Think! Think! He racked his brains. Where is there a chemist near to an ice-cream parlour? Wasn’t there one near to Mariposa Ice Cream? In summer they made this special watermelon sorbet which he always left to melt in the heat a little, so he could drink it. To hell whether there was a pharmacy or not next to it. Now that he had Mariposa in his head, that’s where they were going. The girls would love it.
Claire’s stomach aches were becoming more frequent and whilst she kept brushing it off as nothing, he wasn’t convinced. The pain came and went, it wasn’t constant. Some days she was completely fine but, occasionally, when she didn’t think he was looking, he caught her doubling over and clutching the lower right part of her abdomen. Wasn’t that where the appendix was? Couldn’t a burst appendix kill you?
“You really should see a doctor” he told her.
“It’s just wind.” she reassured him. “I know my own body.”
Well, if it really was wind, then he knew just the thing. His mother used to give him these little charcoal pills when he was a child which always did the trick.
“Let’s park the bikes here,” he said as he caught sight of Adams Avenue.
He chained the bikes up to a lamppost and they crossed the road. Yep, there was the pharmacy, two doors down, but first they made for the ice-cream parlour. Nobody could decide: white chocolate macadamia, white chocolate raspberry, heath butter toffee or maple walnut. They even made ice-cream pie, although that needed to be ordered a few days in advance. Eventually they all decided they were so hot that it had to be refreshing sorbet. Martha went for orange sherbet and mango, Miriam chose peach and pumpkin and Jonah inevitably selected the watermelon sorbet. No sooner had they got outside than the ice-cream started melting!
“Girls, why don’t you stay here,” he suggested, handing Martha his cone. “I’ve got to go into the pharmacy for a minute and I don’t want these dripping everywhere.”
Leaving them licking the damage from their cone stems and fingers, Jonah dashed into the chemist. He ran straight up to the pharmacy counter.