12
It turned out Janice had put off going to see her doctor when she’d first noticed a lump, and now the cancer had spread. Appallingly, it was too late to do anything except find a balance that would prolong her life for a few more months while leaving her as comfortable as possible. Her decline was rapid.
Alex was devastated. In shock. He spent most of his free time at the hospital with his mother and supporting his father as much as Stanley would allow him to. And when Alex got home, he poured his sadness and frustration out to me.
“Dad’s so angry all the time. He’s convinced Mum’s not trying to get better. That all she needs to do is think positively and she’ll be cured. It’s ridiculous. What was the point of us paying for a second opinion if he’s just going to ignore it? He even shouted at her today. It was awful, Lil. I was this far from hitting him.” He held up his thumb and forefinger to indicate how close it had been.
It was all too easy to imagine retired high-achiever Stanley not taking the loss of his wife well. She was the backbone of their relationship. “He’s probably in denial, don’t you think? He just can’t stand the thought of losing her.”
“Well, neither can I,” Alex said passionately, his eyes filling with tears. “If there was anything I could do, I’d do it. I just want her last months to be as peaceful and as happy as possible. Why can’t Dad see that?”
I held him in my arms. “He’s hurting, that’s all. You mustn’t fall out with him; he’ll still be here after your mum’s gone. I know you’ve always been closest to her, but you don’t have a bad relationship with your dad, do you? Not normally. He won’t be able to go on denying it all forever, and then he’s going to really need you.”
Alex sighed, rubbing his face. “I guess so. God, I’m glad I’ve got you, Lil. I don’t know how I’d cope if I was dealing with this on my own. Will you come with me when I go to see Mum next time? She was asking to see your engagement ring.”
“Of course.”
Janice seemed to have lost a third of her body weight since I’d last seen her. Dreadfully frail, her eyes dark in her shadowed eye sockets, she was a husk of the woman who’d once challenged me not to break her son’s heart.
“Hello, Lily,” she said after Alex had kissed her. “This is a turn up for the books, isn’t it?”
“It’s come as such a shock to us,” I said, knowing I sounded pathetic, but having no clue what to say to her.
She laughed—a short, bitter-sounding laugh. I noticed there were dark roots in her hair. I hadn’t even guessed she wasn’t a natural blonde. “A shock,” she said. “Yes, that’s one way of describing it.” She began to cough, her whole body racked by it. Alex quickly held a beaker of water to her lips.
“Take a sip, Mum,” he said, supporting her head, and she did.
“You’ve been through all this before, haven’t you, Lily?” Janice said when she could speak again. “With your own mother.”
I felt the blood drain from my face as I nodded. How awful to be confronted by your long-ago lie in circumstances like this.
When I didn’t speak, she patted my hand, assuming the memories were too painful to talk about. Then she said, “Anyway, I’m so sick of thinking about it. Of talking about me. Thinking about treatments and time scales and blood counts. Let me see that ring of yours, Lily. Alex said he chose it himself. I hope he did you proud.”
I held out my hand, the diamond on the ring sparkling in the light from the window.
Janice looked at it, her breathing laboured. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Good choice, Alex.”
Alex’s voice cracked. “Thanks, Mum.”
“All you need to do now,” she said, looking from him to me and back to him again, “is get married quickly, so I can be at the wedding.”
Alex and I exchanged glances. Janice had two months to live at the very most.
“Don’t look like that, both of you,” she said with a measure of her old strength. “I know it means you won’t have time to plan the wedding of your dreams, but you can always have a second bigger affair after I’m gone. It would mean so much to me, to be there. To see my darling boy set up for life with the woman he loves.” She paused, a single tear trickling down the side of her face into her hair. “After all, I won’t be around to meet my grandchildren, will I? And that breaks my heart, it really does.”
I felt sick.
Alex began to sob. “Oh, Mum.”
Janice held out her arms to him, and he went into them.
“There, there. I’m sorry to upset you. It’s just that, with so little time left, I have to say what needs to be said, don’t I?”
She looked at me then, over Alex’s heaving shoulders, her eyes searching for reassurance. Confirmation. It was my cue to say something. Anything. But I wasn’t sure I could. I don’t think I’d ever been more grateful to see anyone than I was to see the nurse entering the ward with a trolley of medical equipment.
“Time to take some more bloods, I’m afraid, Janice. Perhaps your visitors could wait outside?”
Alex pulled himself together, and we trooped outside to the waiting area to sit hand in hand on orange-plastic chairs. He was hurting so badly, and there was so much more pain ahead of him. So far, as far as I could tell, Alex had barely experienced pain in his life. It was going to change him forever. Force him to grow up.
After a moment, he cleared his throat. “Would that be all right for you? What Mum suggested? Bringing the wedding forwards? I know it will be a big rush, but we’d still be married, wouldn’t we? And I think ... well, I would like Mum to be there. In fact, I can’t imagine getting married without her being there.”
I longed for another interruption. For someone else to come along.
Miraculously, my phone bleeped. I reached for it from my bag, like a lifeline. It was a message from Amy, suggesting we catch up for a drink soon. I didn’t tell Alex that. Instead I put my phone back in my bag and stood up.
“Sorry,” I said. “Can we talk about this tomorrow? That was my manager, reminding me she wants a report about my work at the women’s refuge for a meeting tomorrow. I’d forgotten all about it with everything that’s happened. I’ll have to go and finish it. Sorry. Will you be all right here on your own?”
Alex looked at me. “I won’t be on my own, will I? I’ll be with Mum.” A tear rolled down his cheek. He wiped it quickly away. Attempted a brave smile. “I’ll be fine. You go and get your work done. I’ll see you later.”
“Okay, thanks. See you later. Give your mum my love, won’t you?”
“Wait,” he said. “How will you get home?”
The hospital was a few miles out of town, and we’d come in Alex’s car.
“I’ll catch a bus. There are loads from here. I can think out my report so I’m ready to start work as soon as I get home.”
“Okay.”
I kissed him. “Bye, love. See you later.”
Then I left my sad, bewildered-looking fiancé on his own in his hour of need and took my cowardly, lying butt out to the bus stop at the front of the hospital. And when the next bus to arrive was headed in the direction of Matt and Inga’s house, I took that one instead of waiting for the one that would take me home. I couldn’t just go home and sit there waiting for Alex to get back. Couldn’t paint with all this churning around in my mind. I needed to talk to someone. If I didn’t, I might just explode.
A heavily pregnant woman with a young child got on the bus. She looked happy, not careworn, and I wondered what had taken her to the hospital. She certainly hadn’t just visited her fiancé’s dying mother by the look of her.
They took the two empty seats in front of my seat.
“Can we have burgers tonight, Mummy?” asked the little girl, who looked about five.
“No, we’re having chicken casserole, remember? Mummy put the slow cooker on before we came out.”
“I like burgers more.”
The woman stroked her daughter’s hair. “Don’t worry, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of burgers when the baby comes. Pizza too. Mummy and Daddy will be too busy to do much cooking, I expect.”
“Can the baby come soon, Mummy?” asked the girl.
The woman laughed. “Oh, so you’re in a hurry now, are you? Now you know you’ll get burgers when the baby’s here?”
The little girl nodded, giggling. “Burger Baby.”
“You are not going to call your little sister Burger Baby, young lady.”
The girl giggled some more. The woman in the seat adjacent to theirs caught my eye and smiled, shaking her head. I smiled back.
“Come here, trouble,” the mother said, pulling her daughter into her side and planting a kiss on the top of her head.
The little girl snuggled, contentedly sucking her thumb, entirely confident she was loved, so openly loving of her mother, even one who wanted to feed her healthy chicken casserole instead of burgers.
I wondered what the woman’s work was. Whether she had work. Whether she’d given it up or gone part time after she’d had her daughter, or if the little girl had gone into full-time childcare before she’d started school. Whether it sometimes seemed to the mother as if her life was one long scramble to fit everything in, and there was no time for herself. If she was sometimes overwhelmed, or whether she was usually perfectly content with her lot the way she clearly was today. Then I rummaged in my bag for my phone and plugged myself into my music, closing my eyes to blot everything else out.
At Matt and Inga’s house, my knock was answered by Matt.
“Lily, hi. What a lovely surprise. Inga’s not back from work yet, but come in, come in.”
It was a relief somehow, to have Matt to myself. A treat. If Inga was here, she’d probably ply me with questions I didn’t feel up to answering.
“You look as if you were just going out,” I said, taking in his walking shoes and the jumper thrown around his shoulders.
“I was just going out for a walk before I cook dinner. Touring the estate, you know?” He smiled. “Want to come?”
I nodded, realising I couldn’t think of anything I’d like better. “Yes, please.”
“Great. Want to borrow Inga’s walking boots? She’s barely worn them.”
“No, that’s okay. My trainers will be fine.”
“All right, then.” He stepped out of the house and pulled the door closed. “How did you get here?”
I fell into step beside him. “I caught a bus. From the hospital. Alex is still there.”
“Ah, yes, poor Janice. How’s Alex taking it? Sorry, daft question. I imagine he’s in bits?”
I nodded. “He is, yes.”
“They’ve always been really close, Alex and his mum. We used to tease him about it at school, but really, I think we were probably jealous.”
We were heading across the lawn towards the trees at the edge of the property. A slight breeze was blowing, and I could hear it soughing in the fir trees. I let out a deep breath I hadn’t been aware I was holding in.
“How about you?” Matt asked me gently. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, I ...” As I began to speak, a ghost glided along the edge of the trees, head turned down towards the ground, searching for prey. “Was that an owl?”
“That was our barn owl. It’s the tawny owls that really drive Inga crazy. They’re not out just yet. Inga would say they deliberately wait until she’s gone to bed.”
But I was too entranced by the barn owl to want to discuss Inga’s dissatisfactions. It was still gliding along, turning its round face this way and that as it listened for its prey. Stunningly beautiful.
“He’s hunting for the voles that live along the stream bank,” Matt told me, and as he spoke, the stream came into view, a glittering strip of silver flitting in and out of the shadows of the line of trees.
“Poor voles,” I said.
The owl flew off, and we stopped at the edge of the stream to watch it flowing, the water bubbling as it caught on some large stones, the peaceful sound a balm for my troubled mind. Out of nowhere, a memory sprang into my mind. A long-ago day with my mum before Violet was born.
“My mother and I made a dam on a stream like this one day. I was about seven, I think.” I spoke without thinking, probably as a result of the raw emotion of the last few hours, taking myself by surprise before I could stuff the memory back down inside me the way I always stuffed childhood memories down.
Matt was looking at me, his smile a prompt for me to talk about it. “Sounds like a special day.”
“It was,” I said, Matt’s expression somehow making the impulse to drift along like the stream into my memories less reckless than it would normally feel.
It had been a rare day when everything coalesced to be perfect. Sunny weather, no school, Mum awake, and well. Food in the fridge, no boyfriend imminently arriving.
“Come on, kiddo,” she’d said. “We’re going for a picnic.”
I was excited as I dressed in my favourite summer dress, running downstairs to help Mum pack some supplies before we left to catch a bus to take us to the outskirts of the city. Once there, we spread our blanket, laid out our edible treasures, and ate while looking out at the view of the cathedral spire and the distant city. Birds were singing. Wildflowers bobbed about in the breeze. A stream babbled somewhere nearby. And best of all, Mum was smiling.
“Let’s have a paddle,” Mum said when we got too hot, so we went down to the stream and took off our shoes.
“Tuck your dress up into your knickers so it doesn’t get wet,” Mum said, helping me to do it, and then we paddled, the icy water delicious between our toes.
“Come on, let’s make a dam,” said Mum. “My dad showed me how to do it when I was your age.”
We collected sticks and fallen branches and piled them up across the stream, Mum directing where they should go, until finally the water was deep enough to make a pool.
“That’s worn me out,” Mum said, and she took herself off to have a nap, leaving me to get lost in a world of make-believe, pretending the dam was hot coals I had to run across, making sticks breach the dam and topple down imaginary rapids. I was so absorbed I didn’t notice my dress had come free from my knickers and was now soaking wet and filthy with mud from the stream bank. Oh, no. Mum was going to be cross.
With apprehension settling on me, I turned my back on the happy hours spent playing in the stream to find Mum asleep on her back on the picnic blanket, her mouth open, an empty wine bottle lying beside her.
My heart sank still further. She wouldn’t want me to disturb her, I knew that. But the sun had gone behind a cloud, and I was shivering in my wet dress.
“Mummy?” I said quietly.
There was no response. I couldn’t even hear her breathing.
“Mummy?”
I shook her, suddenly panicked, and when she still didn’t move, I shook her again. “Mummy!”
Suddenly she snapped into abrupt wakefulness. “Jesus Christ, Lily, I was asleep.”
By now I was really shivering. “I’m cold, Mummy.”
She struggled upright, mimicking me. “ I’m cold, Mummy . Well, you shouldn’t have got your lovely dress wet, should you? Look at it. It’s ruined. You always have to fucking well go and spoil everything, Lily, don’t you?”
“Lily?” Matt said. “Is everything okay?”
I wiped away tears I hadn’t known were falling, thinking about what I’d learnt from that day by the stream and countless other days like it. To keep my feelings and my needs to myself. To avoid conflict at all costs.
Matt put an arm around my shoulders. “What is it? Tell me.”
“Let’s just say that day started out well and ended badly.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He waited; a listening pause I knew I could fill with stories of my sad, neglected childhood if I wanted to. And to be honest, the idea of letting go, of unburdening myself to Matt was very tempting. I could imagine the way he’d listen to me; carefully hearing out my story. Offering comfort after I’d finished.
But then what? I’d be vulnerable, the past out in the open. And Matt would think of me that way: poor, broken Lily with a drunken mother.
So, I took in a shuddering breath, saying, “Oh well, it was a long time ago.”
“You’re shivering. D’you want to go back to the house?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s fine. I need to go soon. Alex will be back from the hospital.”
“I’ll drive you home. Unless you want to wait to see Inga?”
I supposed seeing Inga must have been the reason I’d caught the bus here from the hospital, but somehow that wasn’t what I wanted any longer. “No,” I said. “I’d better go. A lift home would be great. Thank you.”
But Matt made no move to go back to the house. “Look,” he said, “tell me to butt out if you like, but is there something else bothering you? You seem ...”
“All over the place? Fraught?”
He smiled. “No, just a bit troubled, that’s all.”
I sighed. “Janice has asked me and Alex to bring our wedding forwards so she can be there.”
“God, poor woman.”
“I know. It’s so sad. But I ...”
“Don’t want to be rushed?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t. But Alex wants to do it. He says we’re getting married anyway, so why not earlier? But there are things we need to talk about, the two of us. Things I don’t want to bring up while he’s so upset about his mum.”
“Is this about having children?”
I whirled round to look at him. “He told you about that?”
“Not in any big announcement way, no. Just in passing. We were out together, and there was this new dad with a baby strapped to his chest, and Alex said, ‘D’you think I’d look good in one of those?’ You know, like the harness or the carrier or whatever it’s called was an item of clothing or something. And I said, ‘I don’t think those things come with a baby, mate.’”
It was funny. Except that it really wasn’t.
“I don’t want to have children. I thought I’d always been really clear about that. But I guess I can’t have been, can I?”
Matt sighed. “Look, I adore Alex. But sometimes he’s got selective vision. When we were in India, the poverty and suffering seemed to just pass him by. He was too fixated by the sights and sounds to notice it, whereas it was all I could see.”
I pictured the two of them in India; imagined myself there with them. “I’d be the same as you, I think,” I said, and he nodded.
“Yes, I think you would.”
It was an oddly intimate moment, this acknowledgement that we were similar to each other, and suddenly I remembered Alex, in Wales, pointing out how at ease Matt and I were with each other. The slight snag of insecurity in his voice as he’d said it.
Darkness was beginning to gather. The silver highlights on the stream were gone, and the birds had settled down for the night. Alex would certainly be home now, wondering where I was. I was surprised he hadn’t texted or called yet. Then I remembered my phone was off from being at the hospital. I ought to hurry home. Yet I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay here, in Matt’s reassuring, comforting presence, enjoying that feeling of kinship. Of being understood.
And suddenly, out of nowhere, I found the courage to speak. “My mother drank,” I said into the silence, my voice shaking slightly. “She’d drink, and then she’d pass out and leave my little sister crying to be fed.”
“Jesus, Lily.”
Matt’s arm went around my shoulders, anchoring me.
“I’d hear Violet through my bedroom wall. On and on. I’d go and try to wake Mum up, but I couldn’t. So, in the end, I learnt how to feed my sister myself.”
“God, how old were you?”
“About eight.”
“Bloody hell.”
He held me close. I felt tears start to slide down my face. It was a relief to have spoken the words out loud. To be understood. Comforted. But there was guilt, too, plenty of it. Because there’d been so many chances to tell Inga and Alex about it, and I never had.
“I just can’t imagine how that must have been for you.” He shook his head, pushing me away slightly to look at me. “How can we have been friends for as long as we have and not known this about you?”
I sighed, wiping my wet cheeks with my hands. “It’s not something I find easy to talk about. And I suppose I don’t want to dwell on it. It’s all such a long time ago.”
“That kind of thing never leaves you, though, does it?”
“It doesn’t seem to do, no. I feel ... I feel as if I’ve already been a mother, you know? Taking care of Violet like that. And it was hard, Matt. So hard.”
“Of course, it was. You were a child, for Christ’s sake! God. Does Alex know about this? Have you talked to him?”
I shook my head, feeling ashamed. “No. Please, don’t tell him, Matt. Or Inga. I know I have to. And I will. Just when I’m ready, okay?”
He nodded. “All right. But do it soon, okay? I really think, if you tell him about it, he’ll understand better.”
I was doubtful. Alex’s childhood had been the stuff of dreams. Loved, provided for, his every need and whim anticipated. “Maybe.”
“Have I ever told you about my dad?” Matt said suddenly.
“Not really, no.”
“He was a workaholic. Either away or too whacked from running his business to interact much with us kids. Mum was always shushing us, making us play quietly with the TV volume down low. If I ever become a dad I’ll make sure I’m there for my children. Not that it’s likely I ever will, because Inga doesn’t want kids, either, as you know.”
Shit. Immediately I thought about the baby he had no clue about. The baby that was still very much on my conscience because I’d had to keep quiet about the abortion. Here I was, taking comfort from Matt, confident enough of his regard to spew out secrets I’d never told anybody before about my past, when all the time I was keeping a huge secret from him. And I’d just asked him to do the very same thing for me. Jesus, what a mess. A dirty, stinking mess.
“What ...,” I started, trying to speak normally, stopping to lick my lips. “What d’you think about that?”
“You mean about not becoming a father? I don’t really think about it, to be honest. It’s just the way things are. Like I say, until very recently I’d no idea it was in Alex’s plans either.”
He turned to face me in the darkness. “You have to speak to him, Lily. Not just about not wanting children, but about the wedding too. Janice has always been really good to me, but it’s wrong, what she’s asking of you.”
The feeling of intimacy was back again. That feeling of being fundamentally understood. But this time it was tempered by my shame. Matt deserved better.
I looked down at the ground. “Some would say I’m selfish not to give her what she wants, when she’s dying.”
“You can’t just get married and have a child to please other people.”
I nodded. He was right; I couldn’t. But it was one thing to know it, and another thing to try to convince Alex.