Chapter 3
THREE
ANNA
I planned my confrontation with my husband as if I was a general preparing for a military operation.
It was displacement activity, I suppose – by obsessing over every detail of what was to come, I avoided thinking about what I believed was happening, or had already happened, because when I’d checked Gray’s drawer the previous evening, when he was allegedly away with work, filming a commercial in Liverpool, the earrings had no longer been there.
It was the day after Valentine’s Day. The children were out – Lulu meeting friends to go bowling and Barney to go and see Transformers One and have a sleepover.
I evicted all the clutter from the kitchen and buffed the countertops until they sparkled.
I tinted my hair and painted my nails and picked up the plum-coloured cashmere dress Gray had always admired from the dry cleaner’s, where it had been languishing since Christmas.
I bought beef short ribs from the butcher and simmered them in red wine for four hours.
If my husband was going to leave me for another woman, I wanted him to know exactly what he’d be missing.
By six o’clock I was ready. I’d set two places at the dining table, instead of at the kitchen counter where we usually ate. I’d dug out a highlighting and contouring palette and given my face what I hoped was a youthful glow. I’d lit candles and put a bottle of champagne in the fridge to chill.
I felt oddly calm; only my inability to sit still and the prickling of my dress under my arms reminded me how nervous I was feeling. I poured myself a gin and tonic and, as I was draining the potatoes into a colander ready to mash, I heard Gray’s key in the lock upstairs.
‘Hey, you,’ I called. ‘You’re home.’
From above, I heard the thump of his laptop bag as he put it down on the floor, then a pause which meant he was taking off his coat and hanging it up.
Hearing his footsteps on the stairs, I turned, preparing a smile that I hoped looked more welcoming than wary.
But as soon as I saw him, I felt it slide off my face as completely as if it had never been there.
He looked terrible. Tired, as he’d been looking more often recently, brushing off my suggestion that he should take a few days off, catch up on rest, maybe see the GP – but more than that. Exhausted. Haunted, almost.
‘Hey, Anna.’ He walked past the candles and the table settings and the champagne in its ice bucket as if they weren’t there, took a glass from the cabinet and poured a hefty belt of whisky from the bottle on the drinks trolley.
He added three blocks of ice straight from the fridge dispenser, apparently not noticing that they caused miniature tidal waves when they splashed into the glass.
Then he stood by the kitchen island, resting his forearms on it as if he needed it to support his weight, both hands wrapped around his drink.
‘Whisky?’ I said. ‘It’s ages since you’ve had one of those. Bad day?’
He nodded. ‘You could say that.’
I felt a chill of apprehension. This wasn’t how it was meant to go. He was meant to be soothed by my charm offensive, lulled into security so that when I asked the tough questions I’d prepared, he’d succumb to my interrogation and come out with the truth.
Instead, it seemed as if he was about to come out with some hard truths of his own.
He’s going to tell me he’s leaving me for her, I thought. He’s going to be on the attack, not the defence.
The champagne forgotten, I poured a second gin and tonic, this one stronger than the last.
I said, ‘I made a boeuf en daube. Do you want to eat first, or tell me what’s up?’
Gray grimaced, and I noticed the pallor on his face grow even more ghostly. ‘To be honest, I’m not remotely hungry.’
‘Right, okay.’ I perched on one of the stools at the counter, half-turning towards him. ‘I thought we could have a nice dinner together. You know – catch up. Do the Valentine’s Day thing, since we haven’t in a while, even though it’s a day late. But if you’re not feeling up to it…’
He shook his head. ‘I’m not feeling up to it. Sorry, Anna.’
An apology – I wondered if it was the last one I was going to get that night.
‘That’s okay. It’ll keep. The kids can have it tomorrow.’
‘Where are they?’ He glanced around, almost as if he was afraid they might come charging in at any moment, Lulu with her headphones round her neck, Barney carrying a reluctant Augustus.
If he’s about to tell me he’s leaving his family to shack up with another woman, I bet he’d be afraid of them.
‘Out. Barney’s gone to the pictures and is staying over at Marcus’s. Lulu’s bowling and then going on to some dodgy dessert bar. I told her to be home by ten.’
‘Right,’ he said again. Then he took another gulp of his drink.
I turned now so I was fully facing Gray.
One of the spotlights above the kitchen island was casting its light directly down on to his face, and I could see shadows beneath his cheekbones that I was certain hadn’t been there just a couple of weeks ago.
He’d lost a load of weight over the past three years, but it looked like he’d lost even more quite recently.
I wasn’t sure when I’d last seen him naked, and it had been at least a year since he’d stopped complacently reporting back to me after his weekly stand on the bathroom scales, but I saw with shock that he didn’t look healthily slim now, but gaunt.
‘I want to talk to you, Anna,’ he said.
‘Sure. I mean, I wanted to talk to you too, tonight. About something.’ But abruptly, I found I didn’t want to talk at all – not about what I’d planned to ask him, and certainly not about whatever it was he wanted to tell me.
I felt cold dread rising up from my stomach, and my fingers gripped the sides of my glass so tightly the nails turned white.
I didn’t want to talk. I wanted it all to stop.
‘Why don’t you go first?’ he said.
But, looking at him, I found I couldn’t do it.
‘No, you go,’ I managed to say.
Looking down into his glass instead of at me, he said, ‘I went to hospital today.’
‘What? You never told me you had an appointment.’
‘I didn’t. I went to A&E.’
‘Shit. Why? Are you okay?’
‘Doesn’t look like it.’ Now he raised his head and met my eyes. ‘They’re going to do some tests, but they think I’ve got cancer.’
Dumbly, I stared back at him. Cancer. The dreaded diagnosis. The big C. Something that happened to people who were old, or didn’t take care of their health. Something that happened to other people.
‘Wait, say that again.’ I was struggling to make my lips and tongue form the words.
‘Cancer.’ He said it gently, like he’d been practising making it sound less deadly.
I stood up, walked over to the sink and found a Tupperware container in the adjoining cupboard, tipping the potatoes into it and putting them in the fridge.
I turned the flame off under the cast-iron casserole dish, leaving it where it was on the stove because my arms felt too weak to lift it.
I put a plate on top of the bowl of salad and put that in the fridge too.
I fetched the bottle of gin and put it on the countertop next to Gray’s whisky.
Then I sat back down. He’d been watching me while I cleared up, his eyes steady and his face still.
‘So you went to A&E today,’ I said slowly. ‘Why?’
‘I’ve not been feeling great. Tired, sick, I’ve lost half a stone, although I’m not trying to any more.’
‘But that could be anything,’ I objected. ‘It could be nothing. Indigestion or something. A bug.’
‘That’s what the GP said when I saw her two weeks ago.’
‘You went to the doctor? You never said.’
‘You told me I should go, so I made an appointment. I didn’t want to worry you.
’ He lifted his glass to his lips, sipped and winced, then poured more whisky into it.
‘Then last night I vomited. And again this morning, although I hadn’t eaten.
So we – I thought I should get checked out.
And you know what it’s like trying to get an appointment at the local surgery. ’
We? Who was the other half of that we?
‘So you went to the hospital? In Liverpool?’
Gray’s shoulders lifted in a shrug, then dropped again. ‘I wasn’t in Liverpool.’
My mouth suddenly felt as dry as paper. I took another gulp of my drink then added more gin to the glass, not bothering with tonic.
‘You weren’t in Liverpool,’ I echoed. ‘Where were you?’
‘Gloucestershire.’ He didn’t meet my eyes, and he didn’t sound as if he’d practised saying that. ‘At a hotel in the country.’
‘Then why did you tell me you were somewhere else?’ I asked, although I was certain I knew what the answer would be.
Don’t lie to me, Gray. Don’t make this harder than it already is.
‘Because… Because of who I was with.’ The words sounded jagged, like they were physically hurting him.
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. All I could hear was the screaming in my mind.
My husband has cancer. My husband is having an affair.
The silence stretched between us, taut enough that it felt dangerous to break it.
Tentatively, I whispered, ‘Tell me what they said at the hospital.’
I heard him breathe out – a long exhale, like he was relieved to be talking about this again, rather than the other thing.
‘They took a look at me. Peered at my eyes, poked my stomach. Took some blood. That kind of thing.’
‘Right.’ I found myself peering at his eyes too. They looked normal to me – the familiar deep, rich brown, unusual for someone with blond hair, although his had gradually been silvering for some years. Just Gray’s eyes. Just Gray’s face.
‘They said I’m jaundiced,’ he went on. ‘And they could feel something in my abdomen. So they sent me for a CT scan, and they said it looks like there’s something there. Some kind of mass.’
‘Some kind of mass?’ My words came out high and incredulous. ‘What does that even mean? Where?’
‘On my pancreas.’
‘Pancreas. Okay.’
I thought, What the hell even is that? If it had been my husband’s liver, or obviously his kidney, I’d have had a clearer idea of what was going on. But a pancreas? It was just a word, just a thing that was there, somewhere in the jumble of meat that made up the inside of all of us.
‘So they’ve referred me to gastroenterology. Or rather, they’ve written to our GP to tell them to. It’s complicated because – well, because of the area thing. It’s a different NHS trust.’
The area thing. Not East London, where we lived. Not Liverpool, either. Somewhere in Gloucestershire.
‘They said I might have to chase them up,’ Gray was saying.
‘So what are we meant to do in the meantime?’ My voice was rising, thin and panicky.
‘Dunno. I guess we wait. That’s why it’s called a two-week wait, right? Clue’s in the name.’
‘And what if… What if it does turn out to be cancer?’ My throat felt raw, as if I’d been screaming. ‘I mean, it’s probably something else, right? Gallstones or something.’
‘They don’t think it’s gallstones,’ Gray replied quietly.
‘Yeah, maybe, but they don’t know.’ The words sounded almost wheedling, like I was trying to strike a bargain with someone who held all the cards. ‘That’s why we have to wait to find out.’
‘Anna.’ Gray turned his glass around on the countertop, a full three hundred and sixty degrees, but he didn’t pour any more whisky into it or drink any more of what was there. ‘If it does turn out to be pancreatic cancer…’
‘Then what?’
‘I googled, obviously. Just like you’re not supposed to do. But it’s not good.’
‘How not good?’
‘Like, really, really not good. Like the worst sort of cancer there is.’
The worst sort of cancer there is. Wasn’t that a tautology or something? Like, The Cutest Sort of Baby, or The Most Boring Game of Cricket?
I had some more of my drink. It was just watery gin now, the ice melted and the tonic long gone. I was feeling lightheaded – like I might fall off my stool or simply float away, up to the ceiling and then maybe out of the window, to somewhere where this wasn’t happening.
‘Anna,’ Gray said. ‘Are you listening to me?’
I nodded mutely.
‘It’s often fatal,’ he said. ‘More than often. Almost always. If it turns out that’s what I’ve got, I’ll probably die.’
‘Don’t be mad.’ I stood up, the floor seeming to seesaw beneath my feet, so I had to clutch at the countertop to regain my balance. ‘You won’t die. Come on. There are treatments for things like that. Drugs and surgery and – you know. Stuff. It’ll be okay.’
Slowly, fumblingly, I put my glass in the dishwasher and flicked the kettle on. I didn’t want tea or coffee, but it was something to do. I could take a mug of something hot up to bed with me, and when I woke up in the morning I wouldn’t have a hangover because this wouldn’t have happened.
But Gray didn’t let me take refuge in denial.
‘Anna, sit down.’ It was the same tone he used when he was going to give one of the kids a telling-off for something – firm but patient, gentle but with a touch of steel.
I sat.
‘There’s something else I need to tell you.’