Chapter Eight
Kate
Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush
This is not how I want to be spending my day off, but needs must. My address book is open in my lap, the phone is by my side and I have a cup of jasmine tea balanced on the arm of the sofa bed that is all folded away.
I have three more names on my list to call and considering I wrote the list in order of most likely to agree, I’m not confident any of the people I’m about to call are going to bite.
But I have to try. Because I really want to go to this event.
I dial my friend and one-time colleague Janice’s number and hold the phone to my ear while it rings. It rings so long I have time to take a sip of tea and then carefully place the mug back in its precarious resting place. I’m about to give up when someone finally picks up.
“Hello?”
“Janice? Hi, it’s Kate.” Silence. “Kate Chiu.”
“Oh, Kate! Hi! How are you? Sorry I was so long answering, I was in the middle of a feed and I haven’t quite mastered the art of walking while breastfeeding.”
Breastfeeding?
“Oh, gosh, yes! Congratulations!” I exclaim, pretty sure I didn’t even know she was expecting. It has to be a year at least since we last spoke.
I cross Janice’s name off my list.
“Thanks,” Janice says on a heavy exhale. “I’ve never been so exhausted, and that’s saying something after the double shifts we used to work.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.” Which is a lie. I can’t imagine what being a mother is like.
“But how are you?”
I don’t know how to answer that. I’m fine, I guess.
I’m working a lot. Too much. I find the work more and more draining and yet also more and more important.
I have given up on dating since that disastrous date with Michael and I can’t remember the last time I saw friends when I wasn’t wearing my nurse’s uniform.
“I’m good,” I say as breezily as I can.
“Are you still at Queen Street West?”
“Yeah, on the Princess Diana Ward.” The words roll off my tongue too easily.
“Oh. Really?” Janice sounds disbelieving.
“Yeah,” I say, softly. I’d forgotten how the fear even got to some nurses. For all its faults and its challenges, Princess Diana Ward has really become a bubble for me and hopefully the patients too.
“That must be… hard. Depressing, too.”
“Yeah, but we find some joy in it. Where we can. Whenever we can.”
“I suppose that’s what I should do with Timothy, too.
He’s not going to be this small forever, and my mum and my aunt and all the nosey busybodies walking down the street tell me to enjoy it because it will all be over before I know it.
But sometimes I can’t see past my aching tits and the way I have dual vision for most of the day because I’m so fucking tired. Shit. Sorry. Not supposed to moan.”
“Oh, yes, you are. Moaning is my tried and tested coping strategy.”
Janice’s laugh is brief but seems genuine. “Well, what can I do for you, Kate?”
I could lie. I could pretend I was calling to find out about Janice’s new baby. I could even be contacting her to find out her address to send a gift.
But that’s never been my style.
“I wanted to know if you wanted to go to something with me, but I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to.”
“Oh, what thing?”
I swallow. It will sound so silly now, so trivial, so juvenile after what she’s currently experiencing.
“It’s nothing. Not important.”
“Was it a training course? You know, I’m not sure I’m going to return to nursing after my maternity leave. It all feels a bit scary and now I’ve got a child…”
Janice’s voice drifts off and I let it. I’ve long stopped trying to educate people on the real risk of AIDS. To start now, and with someone who should arguably know better, feels especially redundant.
“Well, best of luck with it all,” I say with all the enthusiasm I can muster.
“Yeah, okay, but—”
“Speak soon, bye!” I hang up.
I stare at the remaining names and almost don’t even bother to call because I could put a healthy bet on what their answers will be. But I am nothing if not thorough. And stubborn.
It’s not that I don’t want to go to an evening with the creator of Lady Phantom on my own, I just would rather not.
So much so that I already bought two tickets.
I have no clue what the audience will be made up of – men, women, people older than me, or drastically younger – but I’m trying to resurrect my social life.
Most of my friends outside of work were people I knew through Tao and, unsurprisingly, they all sided with him in the divorce.
Not that I mind or miss them. They were mostly all a little snooty.
City workers who looked down on my profession.
University graduates who had been bankrolled by Daddy or an uncle or a godfather into a well-paying job.
They don’t have a clue how the real world works, how the other half of London that facilitates their existence – the taxi drivers, the Underground staff, the cleaners of their offices, the bin men who collect their rubbish once a week – live their lives and the shit they have to put up with.
I don’t miss them at all.
But I do miss having friends.
Especially friends who would think nothing of going to a meet and greet with the creator of a comic that has become my lifeline in the last twelve months.
The following two phone calls go exactly how I expect.
Safiyah, my old school friend who I see approximately once a year, is on holiday when the event is happening – which I don’t know if I believe – and Adam wastes no time telling me it’s not his cup of tea and that it’s not worth missing Brookside for.
My conversation with him makes me smile more than I expect – we went to nursing college together and now he's working down in Sutton – and he tells me he’ll call me when he’s next up town so we can meet for a drink.
So it’s not a complete waste of a day off. I may have breathed life into one old friendship.
But I don’t have the result I wanted.
As I close my address book and finish my tea, my mind drifts to Sharon Goldblatt. I know she would want to go to the meet and greet. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was already going.
So maybe I shouldn’t go…
No. I’ve wanted to meet AJ Ripley for nearly two years since the first Lady Phantom issue was released. They are deliberately cagey about their gender in interviews and, while I secretly hope they are a woman, whoever they are, I want to meet them.
So even if Sharon Goldblatt is there, I will go. I will go and I will get my autograph and I will tell AJ Ripley just how much their work means to me. And then I will demand they confirm that Lady Phantom and the Director are going to end up together.
I smile to myself, imagining I get confirmation and maybe some hint of how it’s going to play out.
I feel a surprising rush of energy, so I get my sewing machine out and start to see if I can fix the mess of my Lady Phantom costume.
I’d almost given up on the idea of wearing it to the meet and greet but now I feel like I should stick a middle finger up at anybody who’s going to look down on me for expressing my love of Lady Phantom.
So what if I can’t find somebody to come with me, let alone dress up as the Director, which had been a brief fantasy of mine as I’d written my list this morning.
I’m going to go on my own. I’m going do exactly what I want.
I’ve long been an independent spirit, a woman who marches to the beat of her own drum. I’m not about to stop now.