Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
With her harsh gaze padlocked onto mine, we stared at each other. Le petit danseur . Caught out. By me, a total stranger. Brittle, scared, and ready to flit.
But not broken. Hidden in there was the same indefatigable courage the French nation worshipped most Saturday afternoons. A courage refusing to crumble without a fight.
And with absolute certainty, the gaze told me something else. The existence of this pale, trembling woman, chin held aloft as she faced me down, was a guarded secret no one was ever meant to uncover.
I desperately wished I hadn’t.
I was the first to blink. This close, the sweetish-sour stench of half-digested alcohol and vomit was becoming difficult to ignore. As was my urge to escape and forget this whole episode had ever taken place.
“Okay, éti. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
Little by little, I peeled away the rest of my jacket, speaking to her like I might to a cornered animal. “I’m going to walk with you to your bedroom and help you find some warm and dry clothes. Then I’ll make you a hot drink, light the fire, and, if you are feeling better, I’ll leave you alone. Okay?”
She nodded, her head dropping, defeated by the effort of facing me down.
“Are you sure there isn’t someone I can call? Who can come over and take care of you?”
“No.” The resolute defiance again. “No one.”
Her hand curled around my bicep, she leaned on me as we shuffled to the back of the house. She limped and swore.
“I’ve cut my foot.”
“I’m not surprised. Some of those broken shells are sharp. Do you think you are awake enough for a shower?”
She nodded. Could I leave now? How did those painkillers mixed with alcohol work? Were their effects on the way down or on the way up? Plenty were still scattered across the table. And what if she had lied about how many she’d consumed? When had she taken them? Would she down a load more as soon as I left?
The villa was single storey, and we reached a bedroom. Hers, by the look of it. Discarded clothing lay strewn across a huge bed littered with cushions; a dressing table overflowed with female flotsam and jetsam. It reminded me of my younger sister Zo?’s room, albeit twice the size. A towelling robe and a set of comfortable flowery pyjamas hung from the back of a chair. At the far end was another door.
“Is the bathroom through there?”
Once she nodded, I picked up the nightwear. “Why don’t you go and clean yourself up. Take these with you.”
“Are you leaving?” The fingers around my bicep squeezed tighter.
I hesitated. Being in this stranger’s house, let alone her bedroom, felt wrong. But then so did abandoning someone who, a quarter of an hour earlier, could barely stand.
“Not yet. Not if you don’t want me to. I’ll light the fire and make some coffee. Okay? You can shout if you need me.”
As I coaxed a flame, then spooned instant coffee into two mugs, I listened out for the thump of a head connecting with unforgiving enamel. A sleek coffee machine stood on the counter, far too complicated to attempt at this time of day. I added a generous spoonful of sugar to éti’s mug, then retrieved the milk from the fridge—a huge steel thing, empty except for a few yoghurts and some protein shakes.
éti emerged, a white towel twisted around wet hair, her face scrubbed cleaned of make-up. Still ashen, but even more recognisable without hair obscuring her features. She leaned against the doorframe. Her grey eyes were glazed over, as if still not one hundred percent sure where she was and how she’d landed here. And who the heavily tattooed man dressed in waders might be, making himself at home in her kitchen.
“How’s the cut?”
“Just a scratch. It’s stopped bleeding.”
“Great. Why don’t you sit yourself over by the fire. I’ve made coffee. And then I… um… I think I’ll leave you to it.”
With a mute nod, she sat, pulling a blanket over herself, drawing her knees up to her chest and snuggling under it. The shower had revived her. Not only did she smell better, of something fresh and floral, but her movements were more fluid too. After handing her the mug, I picked up the pill container and scooped the scattered ones back into it. The vodka I’d already tidied away.
“Do you have any more of these?”
“No.” She sounded quiet, defeated.
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
Tucking the container into my pocket, I paused, reassessing her. She seemed calm. “Are you going to do anything stupid if I leave you? And are you sure there isn’t anyone I can call?”
“What, like a journalist? You’re going to do that anyhow, aren’t you? Right after you leave here?”
“No.” I frowned. “Why would I?”
She harrumphed. “You mean why wouldn’t you? You’re one phone call away from the biggest news story of the year.”
In my defence, it was the end of a long night shift. Realization crept up on me. “Oh.” I shook my head. “I wasn’t planning on it, no.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. You do you, mate. I’ll pay them off, anyhow. Ah, merde , my head hurts.”
The vulnerable, sleepy person I’d helped into the house had switched to sullen, grumpy even. The morning after coming down was hitting. We’d all been there, too, with or without the extra chemical layer of pills. I considered my duty done.
“Right. I’m off. Erm… take care and… um… good luck, I guess.”
My short walk home took me past my best friend Florian’s salt flat. March was too early in the season to harvest salt full time, but there was still plenty to do. And I needed to touch base with normality before putting my head down for a few hours. My night shift had been weird, to say the least. And Florian had known me my entire life—he filled my silences and tolerated my dourness. I found him halfway up a step ladder, repairing the tin roof of his ancient shack, singing along to the radio.
He threw me a big smile. “?a va ?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
I didn't need to ask how he was. He was so happy right now he sparkled, from the spring in his walk to the healthy, recently-fucked glow on his handsome face. In his own quiet way, Charles, Florian’s English lover, was mad as a box of frogs, but Florian and he seemed made for one other. Lucky guys.
He jumped down. “All good here, too. Coffee?”
I was already wired from the fancy super-strength stuff I’d drunk while waiting for my new friend to emerge from the shower. But sleep would elude me no matter what today, so I nodded a yes.
“You’re a bit late,” he observed. “I bumped into Max at the boulangerie. The tide came in a couple of hours ago.”
“Yeah, I… er… had some stuff to do.”
Stretching out my stiff legs on Florian’s narrow little bench, I sighed. Some secrets were designed for sharing with best friends to pore over and revel in them together. Like when our other friend, Jerome, was expecting his first baby with his girlfriend. Too soon to declare but bursting with pride. Others were a burden lightened; I’d offloaded a miserable one of those to Florian a few weeks earlier. Even though the sharing hadn’t changed anything, at least he now understood my tetchy behaviour and why our evenings in L’Escale had, of late, taken on such a joyless quality.
However, some enormous secrets, like the humdinger I’d unearthed a couple of hours ago, you didn’t dare let out.
“How’s your mum?”
I was glad Florian didn’t shy away from asking after her, unlike most people. And it wasn’t an insincere enquiry either, when the only right answer was a fine thanks . If I launched into a two-hour monologue about my family, falling apart at the seams, and me, ill-equipped to repair the damage, he’d listen to every word and not interrupt. Because that’s how he was.
Of course, Florian's excellent listening didn’t make me an effusive storyteller. So, I shrugged, like it wasn’t too important. Like my dad wasn’t a perpetually hungover shadow of his former self and my youngest sister wasn’t bunking school and hiding in her room. Like my brother, Max, didn’t limit himself to four words a day and play mindless computer games half the night. Like this thing eating away at us all hadn’t taken its greedy fill already.
And like my mum’s ravaged body wasn’t going to be buried six feet deep under the rich island soil before the year was out.
“Okay, I guess. Good days and bad days.”
Cancer survivors. Cancer fighters. Battle winners. Cute pink ribbons and triumphant banners. Cancer champions . I fucking hated that rhetoric. Running the gauntlet of it every visit to that blasted clinic, I always felt an urge to cover my mum’s eyes. Because when hope had been extinguished, what did that make her? A fifty-three-year-old, weak, and pathetic cancer loser ? A cancer coward , a white-feather-waving pacifist, lacking the nerve to stand up and face the fight?
But riddle me this: how was a woman actually supposed to battle that fucking beast when it had nested and multiplied in her liver months and months before a gritty lump ever made itself known in her breast?
The women of our family carried a rare gene made up of lots of numbers and letters. An anagram rearranged to spell death. My mum’s sister—my aunt—was in remission, but for how long was anyone’s guess. My cousin too. It had already taken my grandma, and, for all I knew, it already had its evil eye trained on Zo?, my sister.
“She’s been started on a new drug. Shrinks the tumours in her liver and hip, according to the specialist. Better than the other one did. She felt okay for the first few treatments. Less so now.”
“How’s Zo? coping?”
Easiest question so far. “Badly.”
Three months ago, I’d given up the flat I rented with a mate and moved back home. My mum had asked; how could I refuse? My younger siblings needed me, she said. My dad needed me, she said. And, out of all of us, I was the one holding it together the best, she said. Trust me—it didn’t always feel that way. Some days, I wished I’d stayed put. Now death laughed in my face every day, whereas living ten minutes up the road enabled me to dodge the reality for a few hours. And my mum had mistaken me for someone with the emotional skills to deal with shellshocked younger siblings and a father barely managing the bandwidth for tending to his sick wife and pitching in at work.
At least me, Max, and my dad had hard manual labour to keep us busy. I defied anyone to fight sleep after some of our long days, even more so now, when the quietness of the island tipped over into the annual spring and summer madness. Restaurants up and down the country bought sack-loads of our oysters all year round, but half our business revenue came from the island tourist season thundering down on us.
“Is there anything Charles or I can do to help?” Florian enquired. “You know you only have to say the word.”
Just let me forever have this peaceful moment . This unchanging oasis of ordinariness.
“No, I’m good.”
He asked me this question almost every day, and the answer was always the same. I appreciated the gesture, though. Sucking in a breath, I filled my lungs with pure, crisp ocean air, remembering countless happier times sat on this bench with him. Laughing, joshing, gossiping. Bitching about Jerome. Teasing about my latest one-night stand. Smoking cigarette after cigarette—although my mum’s cancer had put paid to that habit overnight. Mind you, my cravings for one had never been stronger.
“They say the new drug should give her some more time.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
I took a sip of my coffee. “I don’t know. The side effects can be devastating. Lots of people have to withdraw from it.”
Sometimes, I wondered if this existence in limbo hurt more than death. And then hated myself for wishing my mother’s life over. The drug would buy her a few more months, they’d said. But a few more months of what? Pain? Suffering? Trips to the shiny clinic? Teasing out the agony?
What was the point? What were we all waiting for?