Sleight of Hand (41 page)

“I'm not!”

“OK. You don't believe
now
. But you
were
.”

“Never,” I say. “I'm not Christian, and I never was.”

“You were baptised though.”

“No I wasn't. Or christened. Or anything else for that matter.”

Ricardo frowns at me as if this is some shocking new revelation for him.

“Anyway
you're
not Catholic anymore,” I point out.

“I'm always Catholic. You don't just stop.”

“But you don't go to church.”

“Well no.”

“So you don't believe.”

“Not in everything. But the birth of Jesus … I mean …” he shrugs in a way that indicates that this is clearly beyond discussion, even for me.

I frown at him and shake my head. “You're bizarre,” I say.

He laughs. “You're the one doing so many things for Christmas,” he says. “You're
more
bizarre I think.”

When we get back, the lounge is lit only by flickering candlelight. Jenny is sitting at one end of the sofa and Sarah is asleep at the other end.

“Sh,” Jenny says. “She only just fell asleep. She was so excited.”

“Do you want me to take her up?” I ask.

“If you're sober enough to negotiate the stairs,” Jenny says.

“Just about,” I giggle.

Sarah groans vaguely but doesn't wake up as I carry her somewhat stumblingly upstairs to the front bedroom.

“She was so excited,” Jenny says again when I get back. “She was worried sick about how Father Christmas is going to get in.”

I look around the room. “No chimney,” I say. “Ouch.”

“Exactly. I said he has a magic key these days. Because so many people don't have chimneys.”

“A magic key. That's good.”

“I want tea Chupy,” Ricardo says. “You want?”

“Yeah. Please.”

“Jenny?”

“Nah, I'm fine thanks.”

Once he has left the room, Jenny adds, “He's becoming very English isn't he?”

“The tea?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, that's my influence. I drink a hundred cups a day. Wherever I live.”

“Tom phoned by the way,” Jenny says. “With good news.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Amazing news actually. His test – his first test – was wrong apparently.”

“It was
wrong?”

Jenny nods. “A false positive or something.”

“His
HIV test?”

“Well yes. Amazing huh? He says it's a Christmas miracle.”

I frown and turn to Ricardo who has just returned from putting the kettle on. “Is that possible Ricardo?”

He raises his chin to show that he hasn't heard, so I explain, “Tom says his HIV test was wrong. A false positive. Can that happen?”

Ricardo gives a rather splendid gallic shrug and makes a “pff” noise.

“Well
you're
the doctor here.”

He pushes his lips out. “I don't know about HIV tests babe,” he says. “But if Jenny says so …”

“Is he
sure?”
I ask Jenny. “I mean, how could you be sure if …”

“Apparently they redid it three different ways and they all came out negative.”

“God, that's outrageous,” I say. “I mean, you could go and top yourself on the back of that.”

“I know. He's over the moon though,” she says.

“I'll bet. That's brilliant news. I hope he'll be more careful now though.”

A lump forms in my throat. It only lasts a second, but my relief that Tom isn't going to have to face a life on HIV meds is momentary tear-provoking.

“Oh, I think he will,” Jenny says. “I gave him a good talking to. Not that I think he needed it but … Anyway, how was the … which one did you go to?”

“Uh?”

“Which pub?”

“Oh. The Beach Tavern. It was full of Poles.”

“Poles?” Jenny looks shocked.

“Polish people.”

“Oh! I was thinking of poles and pole-dancers for some reason. Why?”

“A coach load. Dunno. They had all eaten a buffet there.”

“How weird.”

“I know. The owner's wife is Polish I think, so there's some kind of family link. And then the coach came back and whisked them all off to midnight mass,” I say.

“Really?
I love midnight mass,” Jenny says.

I roll my eyes, and check that Ricardo is out of earshot in the kitchen. “You know that Colombian geezer. He only
believes
in the virgin birth!”

Jenny rolls her eyes. “You haven't been arguing about religion, have you? Not on Christmas Eve for God's sake.”

I laugh.

“What?”

“I don't know really. Just something about arguing about religion. On Christmas Eve. For God's sake.”

“You're drunk,” Jenny says.

“You're right,” I laugh. “I am.”

Of course there was a perfectly good reason that I felt so much better over Christmas: I had stopped taking my meds. Partly this was a conscious decision because I wanted to enjoy Christmas with my daughter, and I wanted her to remember it as wonderful, not as a time when Mummy had her head in a bucket. But mainly it was because I couldn't actually stomach them anymore.

Ironically, it was the pills that made me feel like I was dying, and this time around, that felt worse than the fear of
actually
dying if I didn't take them. So I promised myself that I would catch up once Christmas was over – or I wouldn't – and that would be fine.

The house looked amazing. We had the biggest, best decorated tree that I have ever seen. You could have put it in the lobby of the Ritz and it wouldn't have looked out of place, that's how good it was. And Mark and Ricardo bought hundreds of gifts. There were so many we had to have a rota to get them all wrapped.

On Christmas morning, we sat like some weird kind of extended family – with all the love and all the angst that the word family englobes – and we sipped our drinks and watched Sarah rip her way through the mountain of packages.

I had been off the meds for three days by then and I was feeling absolutely fine. Well, relatively. Perhaps it had simply been so long since I had felt absolutely fine that I couldn't remember how that was supposed to be anymore. But I felt good. I
honestly felt optimistic and despite being tired, full of fun. I laughed a lot and that, particularly, felt healing.

And feeling good and being surrounded by friends and watching my daughter almost wetting herself with excitement made me feel, at the same time, very strange indeed. Because I felt
so
well,
so
normal, that it seemed, just for a couple of days, like a complete impossibility that I might die.

In the light of what had happened to Tom I sat sipping a tiny glass of strictly prohibited sherry and wondered if I might not have a little Christmas miracle for myself.

Maybe my cancer had mysteriously vanished, I figured. Maybe they had got the diagnosis completely wrong. Maybe there had been a blur on the lens of the scanner machine and I was as fine as I suddenly felt.

It was all rubbish of course. I remained, deep down, entirely unconvinced. But as we span plastic helicopters into the air, or pulled barking dogs with tinny voices from boxes; as we cooked Christmas dinner and played charades, I was so happy that I repeatedly had tears in my eyes. And because it felt too good to interrupt, I decided to go with it. I decided to let myself pretend that it had all been in big, silly mistake.

That was my secret charade. That was my Christmas gift to myself.

Harsh reality could wait until after Christmas.

On Boxing day, Ricardo, Sarah and I are eating a breakfast of boiled eggs when Jenny plonks a bottle of pills on the table. “That's
my
breakfast,” she says.

“What are you doing with those?” I ask. “You're not on chemo this week.”

“I cheated,” Jenny says. “I stopped taking them over Christmas.”

“Ahah!” Ricardo exclaims.

“All is revealed,” I say. “We thought you seemed unusually chipper.”

“A bit naughty, but I needed a break.”

“It's snowing,” Sarah says, pointing, and all three of us turn to look out at the beach where, indeed, a few flakes are drifting from the matt grey sky.

“It is,” Jenny says.

“Can we make a snow-man?” Sarah asks.

“I think you might need a bit more snow than that,” I laugh.

“If it snows more then?”

“If it does.”

“So,” Jenny says, waving the bottle. “Can you two assume snow-man duties, or whatever, if I do my missing three days of pill-hell?”

I nod and glance at Ricardo. “Yep,” I say. “We're cool aren't we?”

Ricardo purses his lips and winks at Jenny. “We are very cool,” he says.

“Well then,” Jenny says, standing. “It's goodbye from me.”

“And it's goodbye from him,” I say, completing the TV catchphrase.

*

Two days later, Ricardo enters the kitchen with Jenny's untouched breakfast tray.

“Oh,” I say, reaching out to steal a slice of toast. “Back to normal huh?”

Ricardo nods and sighs. “She's not good babe,” he says.

“I know,” I splutter through a mouthful of toast.

“The pills are killing her,” he says.

“Yeah, I know,” I say. “So, what do you want to do today? I thought we could go to Beachy Head and have a walk. Get a breath of fresh air.”

Ricardo glowers at me. He looks, for some reason, like I am a profound disappointment to him.

“What's wrong with you?” I ask.

“I just say that the pills are killing her,” he says. “Did you hear me?”

I swallow and lower the remaining bread to the plate and kick the kitchen door shut to make sure that Sarah won't hear us. “I thought you were talking metaphorically,” I say. “They
always
make her ill.”

“Not metaphor,” Ricardo says. “She looks really bad. When does she go to the hospital for the checkup?”

I sigh and wonder if I have become so used to seeing Jenny ill that I am missing something. “Next Monday,” I say. “But I honestly don't think she's much worse than usual. And she was fine over Christmas.”

“Next Monday …” Ricardo says, wrinkling his nose. “So they don't see her bad, like today?”

I shrug. “No. It's the way the cycle works. They do the blood tests a week after the end of the cycle. So you're right. They never see her like this.”

Ricardo shakes his head. “I don't think she should take them,” he says. “She looks
hepatique
to me.”

“That happened once,” I say. “They put her on dialysis for two days.”

“I think she needs something now,” he says. “But maybe more for her liver than the kidneys. But she says she don't want to phone the hospital.”

“They changed the dosage already,” I say. “So if it's too much for her this time she'll be off the trial I think. So she's scared.”

“It's maybe better,” he says.

“Don't say that babe,” I tell him. “She has a brain tumour. Without the drugs they only gave her three to six months.”

Ricardo wrinkles his nose and sighs.

“That's your
very
unhappy face,” I say. “What is it?”

He shrugs. “Maybe I'm wrong,” he says. “But I've seen people die. From kidney fail and liver fail … they look a certain way … the skin, the eyes.” He points at the ceiling. “They look like her.”

A lump forms in my throat and tears well up from nowhere clouding my vision without warning.

“I think the pills maybe kill her faster than the cancer,” he continues.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Please don't …” I say. “Don't say that.”

“Did you call the man?” he asks gravely.

“The man?”

“About Sarah?”

“The lawyer? For the guardianship will?”

“Yes.”

“They're on holiday until the fifth as well.”

Ricardo stares into my eyes and sighs. “I think you need to get this done quickly,” he says.

I chew my finger as the realisation of what he is saying dawns on me. I stare at him and he shrugs and nods gently to emphasise that he is totally serious.

“And I think you should go convince your friend that she need to go to the hospital so they can see her like this,” he adds.

And then, as I start to cry, he opens his arms and steps towards me. “Come here,” he says. “Poor Chupy. Maybe I'm wrong. I just think we should get her checked out.”

When I enter her room, Jenny is asleep.

I circle the bed to get a better look and observe her in silence.

And yes, she looks ill. The grey winter daylight leaking through a gap in the curtains isn't helping, but, yes, I think she even looks worse than usual. Her skin has the same yellowish colour it had before, but beyond that it has a green papery death tinge to it as well. It's impossible to believe that three days ago she was laughing and playing charades.

“Jenny?” I say. “Jenny? Are you awake?”

She groans and rolls onto her side and squints at me. “Mmmm? What?”

“We think you need to go for a checkup,” I say.

Jenny frowns at me. “You woke me,” she says.

“You don't look well.”

“I don't
feel
well,” she says.

“OK. Understatement. You look like before. When they gave you dialysis.”

“It's next week. The checkup is next week,” she says wearily.

“I know. But both Ricardo and I think you need to see someone sooner.”

Jenny slides a hand from between the sheets and covers her eyes with it. “Mark,” she says, sounding irritated more than anything else. “It's my last day, I feel like shit, but I'll be fine tomorrow.”