Chapter 8 #2
Afterwards, I pour the last of the wine into our glasses and consider the table, the sofa, the stairs.
Peter looks at me. “What?”
“I am too full to have sex.”
His mouth opens.
Then he laughs.
Not a small laugh. A proper one, head tipped back, eyes creasing at the corners.
“I made cottage pie for a dick appointment and sabotaged myself.”
“That was poor planning.”
I pick up my glass. “We could nap for a bit.”
“Radical.”
“There is a bed upstairs.”
His eyebrows lift.
“Fully dressed,” I add.
“Ah. The most sensual of all arrangements.”
“I am not lying on the sofa. It has poor lumbar support.”
“Very romantic.”
“I am a doctor. Spines matter.”
He picks up his wine. “Lead the way.”
We take our glasses upstairs like two people who have not just turned dinner into an event more intimate than sex. I tell myself that is absurd. People eat together every day. People cook. People laugh over sinks and carry wine to bedrooms and complain about being too full.
It does not have to mean anything.
My bedroom lamp is already on. I sit on the bed first, then shuffle back until my shoulders find the pillows. Peter stands there for a moment, glass in hand, looking amused.
“What?” I ask.
“You look very prepared for a formal nap.”
“This is how adults digest.”
“I had no idea.”
“You will learn.”
He sets his glass on the bedside table and lies beside me on top of the duvet, fully clothed, one arm tucked beneath his head. I expect him to make a joke. To touch my thigh. To turn towards me and remind me why he is here.
He only exhales and stares at the ceiling.
“This is dangerously comfortable,” he says.
“I know.”
“My mistake was feeding us.”
“One of several tonight.”
“I can accept constructive feedback.”
“No, you cannot.”
“No,” he agrees. “But I enjoy pretending.”
The wine warms my limbs. The cottage pie sits heavy and pleasant in my stomach. The house is quiet around us, the sort of quiet that usually feels like mine alone. Tonight it has Peter’s breathing in it, and I am surprised by how little I mind.
“So,” he says after a while, “what is the worst thing you have ever eaten?”
I turn my head. “That is an odd question.”
“You looked traumatised by the potatoes earlier.”
“They had soil on them.”
“Potatoes grow in soil.”
“I prefer not to be confronted by the process.”
He smiles. “Worst food. Go on.”
I consider lying.
The wine encourages honesty.
“There was a flight from Nairobi to London,” I say. “During my Doctors Without Borders years.”
Peter turns fully onto his side. “This already sounds promising.”
“It was not.”
“For you, no. For the story, possibly.”
“I had been working for nearly three weeks without a proper day off. Karim and I were flying back for meetings, and someone at the airport gave us chicken in a foil tray.”
Peter closes his eyes. “Oh, Mandy.”
“I know.”
“You are a doctor.”
“I was also hungry.”
“That is how they get you.”
“The chicken looked fine.”
“They always do.”
“It did not smell strange.”
“Classic trap.”
I point at him. “Do you want the story or not?”
He gestures for me to continue, smiling.
“Six hours later, somewhere over Europe, I realised I was going to die.”
“Clinical diagnosis?”
“Very confident.”
“What did Karim do?”
“He laughed.”
Peter’s mouth falls open. “Your husband laughed?”
“My ex-husband. And yes. I had spent twenty minutes insisting I was absolutely fine while turning an increasingly alarming shade of grey.”
“That seems fair.”
“I was trying to preserve dignity.”
“How did that go?”
“I vomited into a paper bag while a German businessman patted my shoulder and told me in excellent English that his wife was also stubborn.”
Peter laughs so hard it turns into a snort.
“It gets worse,” I say.
“I was hoping it would.”
“The seatbelt sign was on. I needed the loo. A flight attendant told me I could not get up. I told her, in what Karim later described as my most frightening doctor voice, that I was either going to the toilet or creating a public health incident in row twenty-six.”
Peter is shaking beside me. “And?”
“She let me go.”
“Wise woman.”
“I got halfway down the aisle before turbulence hit.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Mandy.”
“I went sideways into a man eating a bread roll.”
Peter presses a hand over his eyes. “Not the bread roll.”
“It survived.”
“Thank God.”
“I did not.”
He is laughing properly now, the kind that makes the mattress move. I should be offended. I am not. The whole memory has softened with time into something ridiculous rather than humiliating.
“Karim spent the rest of the flight apologising to everyone in three languages,” I say. “Then he bought me peppermint tea at Heathrow and told me I had never looked more terrifying.”
Peter wipes at the corner of his eye. “I like Karim.”
“He is very likeable.”
The laughter eases.
The room settles around the sentence.
Peter studies me, still smiling but more gently now. “Do you miss it?”
“Food poisoning?”
“The work.”
I look back at the ceiling.
There it is. A door opened quietly. No forcing. No demand that I step through. Just the question, waiting.
“Sometimes,” I say.
“What do you miss?”
“The clarity. The pace. Knowing that if someone came to me, it was because something needed doing and I could usually do at least part of it.” I pause. “And the people. Not the suffering. Not the politics or the helplessness or the sheer scale of it. But the people.”
Peter is quiet.