We are the Glampions!

by Daisy Tate

  Izzy put on her best game-show hostess smile and did a little display affair with her hands. As if she needed to point out that a six-foot-tall, sun-kissed Scandinavian god was standing in her room.

  ‘Everyone? Meet Alfred.’

  Chapter 6

  ‘Do you think I should leave a review on TripAdvisor?’

  Izzy’s giggles were infectious.

  ‘Here, Izz.’ Charlotte beckoned for her to hand over the unruly pile of clothes she’d pulled out of the wardrobe. Charlotte put them on the stripped hospital bed and began to fold them properly. ‘I’m not certain hospitals are the target audience for TripAdvisor.’

  Izzy feigned disbelief. ‘Wot? It’s great here. There’s room service. An en-suite bathroom complete with someone to wash you if you’re too tired. Staff on hand to save your life. This place is da bomb.’

  They’d definitely deserved five stars for saving Izzy’s life. For the foreseeable future, anyway – and for that, Charlotte would be permanently grateful to them. Anyone who pooh-poohed the NHS on her watch would receive stern words.

  ‘Hello ladies.’ Cheery Oncologist appeared at their door. ‘All ready to get out there into the big wide world?’

  Izzy whooped with such exuberance that both Charlotte and the doctor rushed forward to steady her.

  ‘I’m all right, I’m all right,’ Izzy protested as she let them accept the bulk of her cloud-like bodyweight and led her to the bedside chair.

  She was very, very frail. And incredibly happy. The first phase of the trial was over and had been deemed a success. Two more phases and, fingers crossed, Izzy would have the all clear.

  ‘Good. Well,’ Cheery Oncologist flicked her thumb towards the nurses’ station, ‘make sure you sign out. I would say we’ll miss you round here, but …’

  She and Izzy spoke as one: ‘Better out than in!’

  A quick checklist of Do This and Don’t Do Thats followed. ‘Right then! We’ll see you once a week for check-ups. More if anything unusual crops up.’

  Izzy waved a sheaf of papers. ‘I know. I’ve got it all here. It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.’

  ‘That’s what I’m talking about!’ Cheery Oncologist unleashed a High C and a wave as she left.

  ‘Sweet heavens I need a break from that woman,’ Izzy said once she’d gone.

  ‘I thought you liked her.’

  ‘I do, it’s just … have you ever met someone who was so relentlessly happy.’

  ‘You’re pretty happy.’

  Izzy breathed in as though she meant to protest then conceded, ‘Yeah. You’re right. I am pretty happy.’

  ‘So,’ Charlotte said as she went back to her folding, ‘how did the rest of your visit with Alfred go?’

  ‘Good! Fun. It was only a flying visit. He’s making lots of promises, but … we’ll see. It’s still early days and he had to get back to Copenhagen, so … yes.’

  ‘Yes?’ Charlotte circled her finger so that Izzy would elaborate.

  Izzy tipped her cheek into her palm. ‘He’s … well, he’s still gorgeous.’

  Charlotte didn’t say anything. She’d thought Oliver was gorgeous, but that certainly hadn’t made him prime husband material. The last she’d heard from him was a curt email about not being able to take the children this weekend as planned because he and Xanthe were going away to ‘put things right’. There was also mention of a new nanny.

  ‘He totally loves Luna,’ Izzy said proudly. ‘He’s already booked another flight so he can see her at surf school before actual school begins.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Charlotte smoothed her hand along an enormous Sex Wax T-shirt that Izzy had worn for the bulk of her treatment. It might have to go, given that Freya had had to cut it open to put Velcro tabs and string ties along the back. Then again, she would be needing it again for round two.

  Izzy pushed herself up with a little grunt and started taking her posters down from the walls. ‘He’s been really cool about everything. He’s offered to pay some child support. Says his parents are delighted. The more children the merrier is their motto, apparently.’

  Alf, they were surprised to hear, was the eldest of seven.

  ‘He’s been everything I’d want from someone who just found out they had a ten-year-old kid, but …’

  ‘But?’ Charlotte prompted.

  ‘I don’t know. He’s still going through his divorce. He’s gone a lot for work. I just … I don’t want Looney to invest high hopes in him and I definitely don’t want Emily to think I called him to replace her.’

  Charlotte didn’t think there would be a problem in that department. After Alf had filled them in on his children, his divorce, the family business, the family island, the long sailing trips they took every summer, Emily had pulled Charlotte and Freya aside to say there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to let Alfred anywhere near Luna. Not on a full-time basis anyway. Or without a chaperone. ‘Nordic Noir,’ she’d said ominously, ‘was a thing for a reason.’

  ‘What made you call him?’ Charlotte asked.

  ‘Ohhh …’ Izzy’s progress in taking down the Luna Picture Wall slowed. ‘I guess on the nights I believed I actually might die, I thought about my own father. How I could’ve met him if I’d wanted to and never did.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  Izzy shrugged. ‘I suppose it was some sort of misplaced loyalty for my mum. She hadn’t wanted me to meet him when she was alive, so I thought, why bother when she’s dead? But now that it’s too late? I thought it was only fair to Luna to give her the choice.’

  Charlotte nodded. She could see the sense in that. ‘Have you ever thought of reaching out to your father’s family?’

  Izzy made a noncommittal noise. ‘Maybe one day. Right now? I just want to go home.’

  Charlotte pulled the zip shut on Izzy’s duffel bag. ‘Right then. Let’s do that.’

  Without a backwards look, they left the room, the ward, the hospital and headed to the vicarage.

  ‘Mind the scaffolding!’

  The church was so wreathed in scaffolding – inside and out – that ducking had become second nature to Freya and her family. Izzy? Not so much. At least she had all of that hair as padding. Adding concussion to her list of medical woes would not be good. Not that she looked like a woman on the brink, or anything. One week out of treatment and she had already put on weight. Izzy said it was the steroids, but Freya was hopeful it was Charlotte’s cooking.

  They ducked under another scaffolding tower then walked inside the main church doors. ‘So this bit will be the entrance to numbers one and two. Our townhouse and number four will have entrances over by the garden.’

  ‘Graveyard, you mean.’

  It had been deconsecrated, so technically not … ‘Yes. Where the graveyard was.’

  ‘Cool. I like thinking of all of those old souls looking after us.’ Izzy carefully picked her way through the piles of plywood and supplies. ‘I can’t believe how different it is.’ She brushed her fingers along everything she passed, as if she were trying to memorize all that she’d taken for granted. Even dry wall, from the looks of things.

  ‘It’s nice to hear someone sees a difference. All Monts and I can see is all the work that’s left to do.’ Freya tucked her fringe back behind her scarf. Monty was doing his best, but … it was slow going. And Cameron wasn’t the easiest of men to work for. If he’d told them they’d needed planning permission to change the back entrance before they’d knocked it down, Monty would’ve held fire. Now they were facing a fine on top of everything else.

  Big breath in …

  ‘Oh my gosh! This is amazing. Fluffy!’ Izzy dived into their upgraded bedroom (Charlotte had donated her tent when a rather silly tickling session sounded a death knell for the old one) and sprawled herself the length of Freya’s airbed. It was covered with a Highland cowhide she and her brother had had tanned ‘just to see’. It had turned out brilliantly, was super warm (the church was not) and Freya already had orders fr
om a bespoke furniture shop on the King’s Road for as many ottomans as she could make when they had more. It was shocking how much money people would pay for an ottoman. But she wasn’t arguing. Each little bit of debt she and Monty erased made more room in their marriage for getting back to normal. The new normal, anyway.

  ‘Do you miss the old tent?’ Izzy rolled back and forth on the airbed like a little girl.

  ‘Short answer? No.’ It had been fun, but there was only so much cosiness a girl could handle in the end. That, and some summer showers a couple of weeks back had made it crystal clear that the church roof needed redoing. Urgently.

  ‘Is Rocco coming down again?’ Izzy gave a naughty laugh. ‘Or should I be asking Charlotte?

  ‘He’s definitely coming down, but I’m fairly certain he’s been told he’s staying in the guest room.’

  Izzy made a sad clown face.

  ‘No. Nothing like that. I think with Oliver being such an ass, Charlotte just wants to take things slowly. She’s got to figure out how to be Charlotte on her own before she takes my big bear of a brother on.’

  Freya was crossing everything that they’d get together, but she knew more than most that slow and steady was a wise course of action. ‘Anyway, I don’t think Rocco likes leaving Dad on his own, so … if he does start coming down more regularly, we might have to see about someone coming in to check up on him.’

  Izzy’s brow furrowed protectively. She’d really taken to Lachlan over Christmas. ‘He’s not that bad, is he?’

  ‘No, not at all.’ He wasn’t. The problem was they weren’t really sure what he was. They hadn’t yet had an official prognosis because, in true Scottish male style, her father was refusing to go to the doctors. ‘I’m old!’ he’d crow if they questioned him about forgetting something from the past. ‘I miss your mother,’ he’d say if he’d had a wee nip or two.

  ‘Right!’ Freya clapped her hands together then swooped one of her arms towards the door. ‘We better get on. Monty’s making us all a curry tonight. Thai.’

  They wandered round the rest of the building, Izzy oohing and aahing in all the right places. The bathroom that would have not one but two beautiful stained-glass windows. The kitchen that would be floodlit by a skylight over the apse. Freya pointed towards another scaffold-laced area. ‘Through there you can see the new stairs they’re putting in up to the spire. That’ll be Regan’s room when they’re finished.’

  ‘Oooops!’

  Freya turned round just in time to see Izzy’s entire head of hair hanging from a bit of scaffolding.

  She looked at Izzy, who was laughing despite having just been scalped. Or had she? Her head wasn’t bald. Her hair was short, though. Halle Berry pixie short. It looked cute actually. If not 100 per cent different from Big Hair Izzy.

  ‘Ummm …’ Freya pointed out the obvious. ‘You’re wearing a wig.’

  ‘Yup!’ Izzy detached it from the scaffolding and expertly whirled it back into place. ‘Been wearing one since I got back to the UK. This little beauty is one of three.’

  ‘But it …’

  ‘Looks like my hair?’ Izzy laughed again and fluffed up her curls. ‘It is my hair. I cut it before I started chemo in Hawaii. My mum’s hair had fallen out and she was furious. It was one of her last poems. “Fickle Follicles”.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘No,’ Izzy laughed. ‘She was just worried all my memories of her were going to be of a bloated, balding, shell of a woman. She was wrong, of course, because beauty doesn’t work like that, but … Looney was so much younger than I was; I wanted her world to at least look normal. There is so little we are in charge of – not the weather, not the waves, not cancer. I wanted to be in charge of something. This was my something.’

  For perhaps the first time ever, Freya thought she would do well to take a page out of Izzy’s book. It wasn’t being an airhead that kept her positive. It was her deep understanding of how life worked. Some things you could control. Some things you couldn’t. Freya had almost let her marriage fall apart over money. Something they could control. Badly. But step by step, they were improving.

  ‘It was clever.’ Freya reached out but didn’t touch Izzy’s wig. ‘Saving your hair.’

  Izzy snorted. ‘It was vanity. Pure and simple.’ She took it off and stared at it. ‘It’s only supposed to last a few years, so I might have to go off the shelf soon.’ She shuddered at the thought.

  ‘I’ll give you mine if you want. There’s not a lot of it, but you’re welcome to it.’

  Izzy beamed that beautiful, open smile of hers, then tucked her hand in the crook of Freya’s elbow. ‘I know you would, girlfriend. I know you would.’

  ‘Ack!’ Izzy howled in protest as they passed the photo round. ‘Why didn’t you tell me the Alicia Keys phase was so epically bad?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ Emily rolled her eyes. ‘You looked good no matter what you did.’

  Izzy batted her lashes. ‘Flatterer.’

  ‘Don’t get used to it,’ Emily sniffed. ‘This is only because you’ve just got out of hospital.’

  ‘That was over two weeks ago.’

  ‘Well, then.’ Emily narrowed her eyes. ‘You look like shit.’

  ‘That’s more like it.’ Izzy planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek. ‘I don’t like it when you’re nice. It’s creepy.’

  They continued to shift through the photos, pointing out bad outfits, long-forgotten friends, T-shirts they’d long since consigned to the charity shops. They had had an awful lot of parties. It was a good thing the children had opted to watch a film in the other room. Some of the photos were not showing the ‘responsible adults’ in their lives in the best of lights.

  ‘Oh, my gosh. Emms … Izz …’ Freya held out a photo and they all crowded in to look. It was Emily pointing at a beaming Izzy. She was modelling one of Freya’s year-end projects – a party frock made entirely of bluebells. Her hair was absolutely enormous. Wild and free. Her eyes sparked with life. She looked utterly stunning. Emily was gazing at her as if she were Aphrodite herself.

  Emily looked away, horrified at her transparency. Did everyone have a photo of Emily looking doe-eyed at Izzy? She was about to make a sarcastic comment, then noticed no one was poking fun. Quite the opposite in fact. Her friends were cooing, smiling, reaching out to the photo, as if touching it would transport them back to that moment.

  And then it hit her.

  They’d known all along.

  ‘Why didn’t you guys ever say anything?’ They all turned to look at her. ‘You know, about the whole “Emily likes girls” thing.’

  Charlotte crinkled her nose and gave Emily a funny little smile. ‘Because you’re Emily.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ She wasn’t offended. Old Emily would have been. This Emily was simply curious.

  ‘It means you don’t talk about things. You’re private.’ Charlotte closed the lid on the shoebox and put it to the side. ‘We all respect that.’

  Freya laughed. ‘That. And we thought you’d punch us in the face if we did.’ She feinted right and left, dodging invisible blows. Charlotte, Freya and Izzy grinned at each other, did the zipped-lips gesture and threw away the keys. It was a well-practised move. Which kind of made Emily feel good.

  ‘Right! I’ve got a busy day of vending wares ahead of me. There’s an art show at the co-op tomorrow. I’ve got to stop the watercolourists from going to war with the oil painters. So touchy, these arty types.’ She gave a self-deprecating laugh. ‘Have a good trip back to London, Emms.’ Freya gave them all a quick wave then headed off to her scaffolding-clad home.

  Izzy yawned and stretched. ‘I promised Looney we’d watch Gilmore Girls before bed. Poppy got her hooked.’ She blew them all kisses and headed into the lounge where a chorus of ‘We’re watching that! Mummy! Why is she dancing in front of the tele?’ made it clear Izzy was most definitely on the mend.

  Charlotte and Emily picked up the handful of glasses and empty cake plates from the kitchen tab
le.

  ‘She seems settled,’ Emily said.

  ‘Mmmm.’ Charlotte handed her a dishtowel. ‘I think the counsellor that Freya suggested has been a real help. Izzy sees her a couple of times a week before she goes into the yoga studio.’

  ‘She’s really training to become an instructor?’ Izzy had got a job as a receptionist a couple of weeks earlier and had already decided that yoga was her path to serenity. Said it helped a lot of surfers keep their core balanced.

  ‘Not yet. I don’t think she’s strong enough. But she says working on the reception desk is “giving her the right vibes”. You know Izzy. Once she sets her mind to something she goes for it. Whether or not it makes sense.’

  Yes. Emily nodded. True dat. And despite that, she had always loved her.

  After everything had been tidied away to Charlotte’s satisfaction, Emily turned off the kitchen lights then headed towards the stairs with Charlotte. There was a box room with her name on it and she was looking forward to a good night’s sleep before heading back to London in the morning. Charlotte suddenly stopped and turned to her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Emms.’

  ‘For what?’

  Charlotte looked down at her hands then met Emily’s gaze straight on. ‘I feel sad that you didn’t think you could tell us earlier. About being a lesbian.’

  ‘Don’t.’ Emily shook her head, the back of her throat tickling with unexpected emotion. ‘I’m the one who should be apologizing.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For taking this long to figure out I could.’

  She slipped her arm round Charlotte’s waist as they began to make their way up the stairs. ‘Mostly? I’m just happy that you lot don’t care.’

  ‘That’s the whole point, silly,’ Charlotte tsked. ‘We do care. You’re our Emily.’

  TO: NHS GREYSTONE HOSPITAL TRUST, HR

  FROM: Dr Emily Cheung

  RE: RE: RE: Ten Years of Unused Holiday

  Dear Over-worked HR Department,

  Apologies for any terseness in my previous emails. I did not mean to imply that I alone have earned a year’s holiday. Obviously everyone at the NHS deserves a year off. I was merely suggesting some leniency as regards the last-minute nature of my request for personal leave. (Which, if anyone in HR had bothered to accrue it, would total 52 weeks.)