“How was your weekend away with Max?” she asked.
“Ah, yes, the great, hunky Max!” Jethro said. “I’ve heard all about him.”
“It was lovely,” I said. “I think the more we spend time together, the more I realize how unsatisfied he is in so many ways. And I really want to help him, but I also don’t want to be smothering. So I’m just trying to work out that balance at the moment.”
“Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. Darling, what do you think, from a man’s perspective?” she said, turning to Jethro, who immediately launched into a speech about the misconceptions of the male psyche. I arranged my face into an expression that seemed engaged while allowing me to not listen to a word he was saying—the one I used at most birthday parties—and instead thought about the fact I hadn’t heard from Max since we’d come back to London. It had been four days. I texted him the day after he dropped me off, to see how he was, and I got no reply. I’d called him this morning and he didn’t pick up. A sense of dread had returned like a recurring injury.
“Do you like him?” Lola asked, when Jethro went to the loo.
“Really like him,” I said, searching my brain for specifics, because I knew she would not rest until specifics were given. “He’s very open, which I think is great. Really good hair. Love a male redhead. Very confident. Very warm.”
“What else?” she demanded gleefully.
“Obviously adores you.”
“You think?”
“Yes.”
“We’re moving in together.”
“I thought you already live together?”
“Yeah, well, we basically do, but we’re going to buy a place together.”
“Buy a place, why?”
“Because we want to have somewhere new that is both of ours.”
“Definitely rent together first, don’t buy.”
“Renting is a waste of money.”
“No, it’s not, that’s a thing our parents say. Renting is the best money you can spend, you get a home in return.”
“He doesn’t want to rent.”
“Can you afford to buy?”
This question irritated her. “He’s going to buy then we’ll split the mortgage.”
“But then you’re not buying a place together.”
“I don’t want to waste any more time,” she said. “I’ve been waiting my whole life to live with a man I love, I want to just get on with it now.”
“Okay,” I said. “I get it.” I did not get it.
In a classy move that proved to me that Jethro really was desperate for my approval, he paid for the bill without saying anything on his way back from the loo. I thanked him, we hugged goodbye, he told me we were “family now,” which felt almost like a threat, and I told him I looked forward to spending more time with him. Lola hugged me and told me she’d call me to arrange dinner that week. I knew she wouldn’t—having seen her with Jethro, it was confirmed that she really was on an indefinite holiday now, and I knew from experience that it was hard to get in touch with anyone who was staying where she’d checked in. I didn’t mind. I was happy that she’d finally got what she wanted.
I walked the two miles home and called Max. He didn’t pick up. I tried again—no answer. I walked past a sports centre that had outside courts. A group of teenage girls were playing netball. Netball reminded me of Katherine—we were in the team together when we were at school. She was so good at it—her body was factory-built for netball—long, quick, light on her feet. She was Goal Defence, I was a Wing Attack. Even in adulthood, we still employed the insult “she has such Centre energy” as the worst aspersion you could cast on a woman. I stood at the side and looked through the metal net and thought of all the matches my dad came to—how surprisingly blood-thirsty he became at the sidelines for such a mild-mannered man. I wondered if Katherine remembered it too. She was my only close friend from childhood—one day I would be the only member left of my triumvirate family and she’d be the one person who could travel into my memories with me. I found myself missing her more than I’d ever missed her.
I watched one of the girls glide into the air to catch the ball and gallop her feet down in two neat steps. What a prissy sport it was. No touching, one foot glued to the ground, no obstruction, no holding the ball for more than a few seconds. I watched the girls pivot balletically and wave their arms like an arabesque and was reminded of the day when we swapped all our sports lessons with a local boys’ school. They had a horrible time playing netball—unable to summon the emotionless, no-contact control the game required for which we had been so well trained. Whereas we all had the best day of our lives on their football and rugby pitches—kicking things and throwing each other to the ground and getting covered in grass and mud. Only now, watching teenage girls in prim bibs play netball so precisely and perfectly, did I realize that I wanted to scream on their behalf. I wanted to scream for all of us.
I sent Max a text.
“I think you’re doing it again.”
Ten minutes later I sent him another one.
“You promised me you wouldn’t do this again.”
* * *
—
When I arrived home, I could hear shouting as I approached the building. I stood in the hallway and pressed my ear against Angelo’s front door. There was arguing in Italian, first from him and then from a female voice. They shouted over each other—both of them raising their voices to defeat the other one in a tireless battle. I heard the female voice scream and something smash. There was a brief pause and then the shouting started again, from him, beginning slow and menacing and building to a crescendo so loud his voice broke from exertion. I banged on the door.
“Hello?” I yelped. I didn’t know what else to say. I only needed to know she was safe. “HELLO?” I said, banging the door. “ARE YOU OKAY?” She started shouting again, so I banged the door harder. “I’ll call the police, Angelo,” I shouted. “If you don’t open the door I’m going to CALL THE POLICE.” The door flung open. A woman stood in front of me—short, hard-featured, dark-eyed. Over-plucked, feathery eyebrows. Thin, almost invisible lips, quivering in anger. Her shoulder-length hair was that bottle-burgundy you saw a lot of in the mid-noughties, thick and crisp from straighteners.
“WHAT?” she shouted, lightly spritzing me with her spit. She had a silver hoop through her septum.
“Are you okay? Just tell me you’re okay and I’ll leave you alone. You can come sit in my flat if you need to.” I looked behind her and saw Angelo standing in his dressing gown, blank-faced, his hands swinging uselessly by his sides. She turned and asked him something in Italian. He shrugged and muttered something back. She gave a snort of laughter, then slammed the door. When I got upstairs I wrote the time and date on a scrap of paper, along with a description of what had just happened, in case it ever became important information.
* * *
—
A week later, still having heard nothing from Max, I decided to keep my phone at home when I left the flat. I had already wasted enough of the last year staring at my screen, waiting for him to appear. If he really was ghosting me again, this time I wanted the exorcism to happen as quickly and painlessly as possible. When I returned home one afternoon and picked up my phone to find five missed calls from my mum, I knew one of two things must have happened—a divorce within the royal family, or Dad was in trouble.
“Nina?” she squawked when she picked up after half a ring.
“Yes. Hi. Is everything okay?”
“I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day,” she said.
“I’m sorry, I’m trying to leave my phone in the flat when I’m out.”
“Why the hell would you do that?”
“Because—” I couldn’t face telling her that Max was ignoring me again—“of my…mental health,” I finished feebly. She’d know immediately this was n
ot a phrase I would ever use. My mental health. Like it was a pet dachshund.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“What’s happened?”
“Your dad’s had a fall,” Mum said.
A fall. Something happens when people become clinically vulnerable, they stop “falling” and they have “a fall.” “Dad’s fallen over”—how harmless that would have been ten years ago. A couple of bruises, a comedy retelling of the anecdote. “Dad’s had a fall” flicked panic on inside me like a fluorescent strip light.
* * *
—
I took the long tube journey up to the suburban hospital where Dad had been taken to A&E. I had only ever been in a hospital twice: once, when I fell out of the mulberry tree in Albyn Square and needed stitches on my knee; the second, to say goodbye to Grandma Nelly. I had forgotten how enormous hospitals were—how impossible they were to navigate, signed with too much information and yet not enough information. I spent half an hour unable to get hold of Mum, walking through various indistinguishable zones with names of different colours, trying to find someone who might be able to help me. But there were no passing staff to help me because such was the nature of a hospital—it wasn’t a hotel.
After finally locating one of two lifts in the entire building, I found the reception for A&E and was taken through to the cubicle where Dad was lying in bed, Mum standing by his side. I found myself petulantly withholding a hug from her, and I wasn’t quite sure why.
“Has anyone seen him yet?”
“No,” she said. “I think we could be waiting a while.”
“What do they want to check?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do they know about his condition?”
“Yes,” she said impatiently. “I’m going to get a coffee. Bill—I’m getting a coffee, would you like one?” He didn’t answer. She kissed him on the head and he didn’t respond, then she left. I approached the bed—there was a background noise of conversations and commands that I could tell was unsettling him. The air was sickly—a mixture of sugar, antibacterial liquids and the soggy potatoes of school dinners. It was the smell of both institution and dereliction.
“Does my mother know I’m here?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, sitting down in a chair beside him and reaching for his hand with mine. He was indifferent to it.
“When is she coming to see me?”
“I’m not sure, Dad,” I said. “I know she’s keen to know how you are.”
“Go fetch my mother and she can find out how I am.”
I wanted to cry. “Tell me what you’ve been enjoying recently, Dad. What music have you been listening to? Have you seen anything interesting in the paper?”
“I want to speak to her.” He was spitting his words out now. He was frustrated. And why wouldn’t he be? I was dismissing his questions and trying to distract him. I couldn’t think of anything I would find more exasperating. “I WANT MY MOTHER!” he shouted unexpectedly, discarding my hand. I thought of Olive and the last time I had seen her—how anxious and infuriated she had been, how Mark had soothed her from a distance.
“It’s okay, Dad,” I said. I tentatively reached to touch his arm and gently placed my hand on the fabric of his shirt. “It’s okay. I’m here, it’s okay.”
“No one listens to me any more.”
“I will always listen to you. I will always listen to you, and I will always take everything you say seriously. I promise.”
“I just want to speak with Mum, that’s all,” he said diminutively. “I want my mum.” I continued to stroke his arm until his breath deepened. He closed his eyes and eventually fell asleep.
Mum returned with two black coffees and I quietly ushered her out of the cubicle so Dad could try to rest. We went out to the hallway beyond the reception.
“We need a carer,” I said.
“Don’t be dramatic. People his age have falls all the time.”
“This isn’t ageing or an accident. It’s a progressive disease that is only going to get worse.”
“I will keep a closer eye on him.”
“That’s not going to work any more. You can’t give him the sort of support and attention that he needs.”
“So I’m not doing a good enough job? That’s what you’re actually saying? Any opportunity to have a go at me. Well, why don’t you move in and have a go instead, be my guest, see what it’s like.”
“I’m worried you’re not taking this seriously.”
“I am taking it seriously!”
“You’re not, and I don’t know why. I’ve tried to work out why, I’ve tried to be as understanding as I can. But I still don’t get why you seem so unbothered about the fact your husband is confused and angry and vulnerable—”
“How dare you say that to me,” she said, gripping one of the metal chairs that was against the wall and gritting her teeth. “I am not. Unbothered.”
“Why won’t you get extra help then? I’ll help you with the applications. I’ll talk to Gwen. If we need money, I’ll rent out my flat, I’ll move in with you if I need to.”
“It’s not about that,” she said quietly.
“It doesn’t mean we’re defeated. It doesn’t mean tragedy.”
“YES IT DOES!” she screamed, slamming her hands down on the back of the chair. Its front legs lifted and clattered back down to the ground. I flinched.
“Why?”
“Because it means we’re old. And I don’t want to be old yet, I’m not ready.”
“You don’t want to be old?”
“It’s okay for you—you’re in your thirties, you don’t have to think about this stuff. You don’t know how morbid it is, to meet up with people and all you talk about is bad knees and cancerous moles. Your father and I go to more funerals now than birthdays and I don’t want this to be my life.” I had no idea what to say or how to comfort her. “I know I’m lucky and the alternative is worse, but I don’t want the alternative either. I don’t want to die and I don’t want us to be getting close to dying. It’s all shit, it’s all SHIT,” she shouted, slamming the chair legs down to the plastic flooring again.
“But, Mum—”
“I’m not meant to say any of this. I’m not allowed to. And I’m definitely not meant to be saying it to my child. But…” Her voice wavered. She pressed her lips in on each other. “There’s so much left I want to do and see with your dad. I don’t want to be in the last bit with him. I don’t want a dying husband, I don’t want him to die.” She covered her eyes with her hands, like she was trying to hide from me. She became short of breath as she tried and failed to hold back tears. “I don’t want my husband to die.” I went over to her and sat her down in the chair. She sank her head down, curling in on herself, and sobbed into her knees. I sat cross-legged next to her on the floor and stroked her back. After a few minutes, she straightened herself up, breathing out through the controlled circle she’d made with her mouth. Her cheeks were stained with the grey tears of too much mascara.
“He is going to die, Mum.” She closed her eyes and nodded furiously. “But we don’t know when—it could be years and years. So, we need to do everything we can to make it as easy as possible.”
“I don’t know who I’ll be without him,” she said in a voice so small it sounded like a squeak.
I wished, selfishly, that I was little again. That I didn’t have to see all the humanity of my otherwise steely mother explode out of her like a geyser. I wished this hospital visit had been like the last time I’d seen Grandma Nelly, when I came in, read her a poem, kissed her velvety cheek that smelt of pressed powder, and was protected from the trauma and admin of illness.
“I know, Mum. It must be very frightening for you.”
“I’ve been with him since I was a girl, Nina. He’s my only boyfriend.” My only boyfriend. These words t
hrew open a box of ideas I hadn’t let myself contemplate until now. “I don’t know who I’ll be without him.”
“You’ll be social secretary of the church and running all those literary salons and coming up with puns for them.”
“I only do all that because I’m trying not to think about what’s going to happen to Dad,” she said. “I might not even want to do it any more when he’s gone.”
“You’ll be a great friend. Life and soul. Everyone’s matriarch, sorting everything out like you always do.” She relented to this truth with a shrug. “And my mum.”
“Yes,” she said, putting her arm around me and pressing her mouth, hard, to my forehead. She had never been partial to affection. I stayed completely still and savoured these few seconds of physical closeness. “I’m going to do this better.”
“Really?”
“I promise.”
“We’re doing it together. It’s going to be traumatic and stressful and sometimes it’s going to be very fucking weird and funny.” She laughed, wiping away the mascara on her cheeks. “But no one is going to get what it’s like other than you and me. So we have to be on the same team.”
“I know,” she said, composing a defiant smile.
Gwen’s number appeared on my phone—we had been trying to get hold of her.
“Hi,” I said as I picked up and signalled to Mum that I could take care of this call.
“Hello. I’m so sorry I’ve only just been able to get back to you. I’ve been with a patient this afternoon.”
“That’s okay. Dad had a fall and we’ve come to A&E.”
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