by Tony Parsons
That’s when he was happy to be driving again, happy to be constantly moving, happy to be living a life that was free of VAT men and tax inspectors and all the soul-numbing bureaucracy of the small businessman. Paulo worked all night, and there were moments when he forgot everything and he felt completely free.
It lasted until he made his way to the airport for his final fare. The tourists and businessmen would stagger from their planes, grey-faced and hungover from the free booze, their minds still in some other place, emptied out from being spirited halfway round the world, and Paulo would deposit one of their number at hotel or home.
Then, with his yellow For hire sign finally extinguished, he would travel back to their little flat where Coldplay and lamb curry crept through the wafer-thin walls, and for a long time he would watch his wife and daughter sleeping, their faces his two favourite things in the world, wishing he never had to be away from them, his eyes spilling over, and feeling almost drunk with exhaustion and love.
Twenty-seven
Megan went to see Dr Lawford, and it was as if years had gone by, not months. What was he? In his fifties? He looked like an old man, as though the sickness in this neighbourhood had started to seep into his bones.
‘Go private,’ he told her, sitting on his desk during a break between patients. ‘Go away and don’t come back.’
At first she thought he was joking. And then she saw that he wasn’t joking at all.
He still smelled the same – that cigarette smell mixed with cheese and sweet pickle. Once that smell had repulsed her, and now she realised she had missed it. And missed him, and the generosity and wisdom he concealed under his cheap suits and fog of fag smoke.
‘Go private?’ she said, dumbstruck. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because nothing’s changed around here.’ He took a sip of something brown from a polystyrene cup. ‘Too many patients. Not enough doctors. Not enough time. The reasons you ran away are the reasons you should go private.’
Megan felt her cheeks burning. ‘Is that what I did? Ran away?’
‘It’s not a criticism,’ Lawford said. ‘I don’t blame you. That pumpkin would have killed you.’ Pumpkin – doctor talk for, the lights are on but nobody’s home. ‘You had your child to think of. But the reasons you went away are the reasons you should stay away.’
It had never occurred to Megan that Lawford would tell her to work in the private sector. Going private was one of the great dreams of the patients they saw at this surgery. It was like winning the lottery – something they would do one day, to escape the queues and frustrations of the overwhelmed NHS. If the doctors dreamed of going private, they had never mentioned it to Megan. It would have been a kind of blasphemy.
‘You’ll still be helping people,’ Lawford said. ‘Who knows? Maybe you’ll actually help more people. How much good do we really do around here? Dishing out the antibiotics like sweeties. You were never very good at the assembly line medicine, were you? Wheeling them in and wheeling them out.’ He smiled at the memory of the keen young GP registrar she had been. ‘You always insisted on treating them like human beings.’
Lawford was scribbling something down on a prescription pad, as though the name and telephone number were just what Megan needed for what ailed her.
‘I suggest you try your luck as a maternity locum. Stand in for all those clever lady doctors on Wimpole Street and Harley Street who take three months off to have their babies.’
Megan took the piece of paper.
‘You don’t want me to work here,’ she said, trying and failing to keep the hurt out of her voice.
‘I want you to have a happy life,’ he said, making his voice hard to cover the softness and feeling in the words, and she thought, he likes me. Then he looked at his watch, and downed the cup of brown stuff. ‘But now it’s time to crack on.’
Megan briskly shook his hand. Any other form of physical contact – a hug, a kiss – was unthinkable. Then he was expertly ushering her out of his surgery and calling the name of his next patient. She wanted to thank him, to tell him that she could not have qualified without him, that she owed him everything. But Lawford had already turned his back, and was following a shuffling old man into his room.
The surgery was full and among the throng of faces someone was smiling at Megan. A woman with a young child trying to break free from her handcuff grip stood up to greet her.
‘Hello, doctor!’
‘Mrs Summer.’
The woman proudly stuck out her stomach. She must have been six months pregnant.
‘Heard you were away,’ she said. ‘Glad to see you again.’ Rubbing her stomach now. ‘You can help me with this one.’
‘That would be wonderful,’ Megan said, before explaining that she was moving on, and this was just a quick visit. Mrs Summer looked crestfallen, but she smiled bravely and wished Megan all the best for the future, and Megan had to turn away.
There was decency and goodness here, she thought. Mrs Summer. Daisy. The boxer. And Dr Lawford. She wished that she could abandon the Sunny View Estate with a clear conscience, but ghosts tugged at her sleeve, and told her she was running away from everything she had once believed in.
I can’t save these people, Megan thought. Just look at me. I have enough trouble looking after my little girl.
And as she left, she saw another face that she recognised, a man coming up the steps of the surgery as she was going down. Warren Marley caught her gaze, and she saw the hate and violence in his eyes.
Megan hurried out into the traffic, horns blaring all around her, to where Jessica was parked on the other side of the street in a battered old Punto. She quickly got inside, glancing at the back seat where Poppy and Little Wei were dozing in their baby seats. As the car pulled away, she saw Warren Marley standing on the steps of the surgery, the traffic between them like a river he couldn’t cross.
Megan pushed herself deep into the passenger seat, feeling the prescription paper in her hand, and she didn’t look back.
Her sisters were bickering.
Cat could hear them in the living room, their voices rising and falling, talking across each other as she leaned across her bed and zipped Poppy into her Grobag.
Little Wei was next to Poppy, already zipped up and on the threshold of sleep, and her three luminous yellow dummies – one in her mouth, one in each of her fists – glowed in the darkness.
Something inside Cat felt warm and shining as she watched her two nieces sleeping in her bedroom. It made her feel as though their little family, so long broken and different from everybody else’s family, was finally renewing itself.
After returning to London, Megan and Poppy had moved into Cat’s flat. It was unspoken but clear to both of the sisters. Cat had not given them a place to stay. She had given them a home.
Now Cat placed pillows on either side of the bed, a goose-down safety barrier to prevent anyone rolling onto the floor, even though Megan and Jessica had both told her it wasn’t necessary, the babies were not going anywhere in those Grobags.
Cat murmured soothingly as she stacked the pillows, telling them it was all right, and it was lovely to be in bed, and it was time for a nice nap, trying to distract the girls from the fractious voices of their mothers coming through the half-opened door.
‘But you said you would look after her for me,’ Megan was saying, and Cat thought she sounded every inch the much loved youngest sister, outraged at the unfairness of the world. ‘You said you would.’
‘But our boiler’s gone again,’ Jessica was saying, and her voice seemed to sigh with irritation that yet again she needed to explain the patently obvious. ‘Nothing works in that flat. We’ve got no hot water, no heating, and tomorrow I have to wait in for the plumber, whenever he decides to show up.’
Nothing changes, Cat thought wearily. How many times had she heard those two squabbling when they were growing up? How many times had she played the mediator, the peacekeeper, the big sister? Except that once Megan and J
essica argued about who had pulled off Barbie’s leg or Ken’s head, and now they had other things to fight about.
Because everything changes, Cat thought, as she retrieved a dropped dummy from Little Wei’s right fist, and gently placed it back in her hand, knowing she would go crazy if she woke up and found one of her dummies missing. Everything changes. Look at these two.
They were sleeping now. Poppy was still a bit underweight for her age, but with a long body, much more like Cat’s gawky frame, all legs and arms, than Megan’s cuddly roundness, her baby sister’s body of circles. Like Cat, Poppy seemed to have a tiny head which made many children her own age look like the Incredible Hulk when they were next to her.
But after the scare of her early birth and the weeks in the Intensive Care Unit, they were not worried about Poppy now. So what if she was always on the light side? The entire Western world wanted to lose weight, didn’t they? Cat could already tell that Poppy was going to be tall and slim and gorgeous. Like a pretty version of me, she thought.
And Little Wei had settled into her new life better than any of them could ever have hoped. There were still signs of the insecurities of the past, like those three dummies during the night, and the way she organised her stuffed monkeys and talking frogs and Leapfrog musical toys with an obsessive love of order that seemed out of place in a child so young.
But Little Wei was bright and smart and happy, spending ages poring over her Maisy the Mouse books and contemplating her Baby Einstein DVDs, starting to show some affection – although her kisses were strictly reserved for Jessica – and she had learned to cry. Jessica and Paulo had done a great job with her, Cat thought. They had taught Little Wei that she was home.
‘What’s more important to you?’ Megan was demanding, starting to play dirty, the last refuge of the youngest child. ‘A plumber or your niece?’
‘That’s really unfair,’ Jessica said, sounding on the edge of tears. ‘After the days I spent sitting with her when she was in the incubator while you were moping in your room. After all the times I looked after her when you were working.’
The two babies were so different, Cat thought. Little Wei had dark eyes that looked like melting chocolate, and Poppy’s eyes were icy blue, like the eyes of her father. Poppy’s skin was so fair it looked as though it had never seen the sunshine, while Little Wei was the colour of honey. Even sleeping they were different – Little Wei throwing her arms above her head, her face in profile, a baby weightlifter ready to claim her place in the world, while Poppy curled up like a pale-faced comma inside her Grobag, sucking busily on her thumb, as if still missing her mother’s body. So different in every way, Cat thought, and yet she had no trouble in believing that the two girls were part of the same family.
‘You can’t start crying just because you lose an argument,’ Megan was saying, a note of mocking triumph in her voice.
‘Only thinking of yourself,’ Jessica said, her voice shaking with emotion. ‘Bloody typical.’
Cat felt a double blow from inside, a baby-sized combination of foot or fist that said, don’t forget about me. Stroking her stomach, Cat left the sleeping children and joined her sisters.
I could never forget you.
Megan and Jessica fell silent when they saw Cat.
‘What’s the problem?’ she said, not knowing whether to be annoyed or amused. When I am seventy-five, she thought, I will be separating these two while they bitch about who stole the other one’s walking stick, or whose turn it is to use the zimmer frame.
Jessica and Megan avoided her eyes.
‘Come on, let’s have it.’
‘It’s nothing,’ Megan said, all haughty and authoritarian. I’m not baby Megan any more.
Jessica turned wet eyes towards her big sister.
‘Megan’s got these job interviews tomorrow,’ she said. ‘On Harley Street.’
‘Wimpole Street,’ Megan said, her eyes flashing angrily at Jessica, who could never be trusted to keep her cake hole shut. ‘Maternity locum posts.’
‘More interviews?’ Cat said. She knew her sister must have had a dozen already. They had all told her that she was up against doctors who were older and more experienced.
‘Once I get my foot through the door, they’ll all see,’ Megan said bitterly. ‘But Jessie’s plumber is coming round. So she can’t come and pick up Poppy.’
Cat could see the frustration burning in her youngest sister. All those years skating through exams, all those years being the star of every classroom she entered, and now the real world was unimpressed. Just when she needed it most.
And Jessie had problems of her own. Although she tried to keep it from Paulo, their new little flat was wearing her down. Just as she had to worry about money for the first time in her life, she was living in a place that seemed to hate her. She had rolled up her sleeves and dealt with the overflowing toilet, the leaking washing machine and the whims of the prehistoric cooker. But the lack of hot water and heating was too much.
‘I’ll take Poppy tomorrow,’ Cat said, not even needing to think about it.
‘But you’ve got to see the midwives tomorrow,’ Jessica said.
‘What’s that?’ Megan said. ‘Fluid retention check?’
Cat nodded. ‘I’ll reschedule it. The day after. Whatever. It’s okay, I don’t mind staying home. I can hardly get my shoes on anyway. My feet act as if I’ve just got off a long-haul flight.’
‘You should really keep these appointments,’ Megan said.
‘I’ll keep them,’ Cat said. ‘When you’ve got your job back, and Jessie’s got her boiler back.’
The telephone rang. Cat moved slowly across the room to pick it up, as if her legs could no longer carry the weight of both her and her baby. By the time she reached the phone, Rory’s voice was speaking on the answer machine. Abashed, hesitant. No trace of the humour and warmth that used to be there, Cat thought. But then whose fault was that?
She made no attempt to pick up the receiver.
‘I know you don’t want me to keep calling you…but I just wanted you to know that your father has kindly invited me to his wedding…and I’m going to go…unless you ask me not to…so, er, I guess that’s it then…well…hope everything is okay.’
When his voice had clicked off, Cat looked up to find her sisters staring at her. Jessica’s pretty face all pained, Megan shaking her head knowingly.
‘What?’ Cat said.
‘He’s such a lovely man,’ Jessica said.
‘Don’t try to do it all alone,’ Megan said.
Cat laughed. ‘Look who’s talking.’
‘That’s right,’ Megan said defiantly. ‘I know what I’m talking about. It’s hard doing it by yourself.’ She looked at Jessica, softening. ‘I know I’m not alone. Not when you two are there. But still – there’s no father around, is there? There’s no partner.’
‘What else could you do?’ Cat said. ‘You couldn’t let him walk all over you. That’s not who you are, Megan.’
‘But it’s not just me any more, is it? There’s Poppy. And I tell myself, I need to be happy, so my child can be happy. And I keep telling myself that, but I don’t know if it’s true. Maybe I should have stuck it out, for at least a bit longer. For my daughter. For both of us. There’s no back-up when you’re on your own.’
‘You did the right thing,’ Cat said. ‘Leaving him. Coming back.’
But Megan was no longer young enough to be so certain of everything.
‘I don’t know if I did the right thing, Cat. We expect these men to tick all our boxes. Romantic, sexual, emotional. Maybe we expect too much. Maybe we think about ourselves too much. Maybe we should think about our children.’
‘You want Poppy to grow up with a father like that?’ Cat said angrily. ‘Where’s Daddy? Oh, Daddy’s out banging a Swedish tourist.’
‘But Rory’s a nice guy,’ Jessica said.
‘The world is full of nice guys,’ Cat said.
‘So why don’t you get one?’
‘I just think we should be kind to each other,’ Jessica said. ‘While there’s still time.’
‘When you go back to work, you can’t leave a kid with your pride,’ Megan said. ‘You leave it with your family, or you leave it with strangers. I’m just saying – if you can avoid it, don’t go it alone. Don’t do it by yourself because you’re afraid you’ll get left again.’
Cat bridled at that. ‘You mean – like I was left before?’
‘No,’ Megan said gently. ‘Like we were left before. And why shouldn’t I give you advice? We’re not kids any more,’ she said, and there was a kind of sweet sadness in her words. ‘Look at us. We’re all grown up.’
From the other room came the siren’s wail of a baby screaming. Little Wei, caught in a nightmare or possibly dropping one of her dummies.
‘I’ll do it,’ Cat said, struggling to get up. ‘Then I’ll knock us up something to eat. I think there’s some pasta in the fridge.’
Megan and Jessica swapped a look. The look said, look what she did for us. Without talking about it, both of them remembered the sight of a tired twelve-year-old girl clearing up their mess, and a debt that they could never repay.
So Jessica went off to settle her daughter, and Megan made Cat lie down on the sofa, placing cushions under her head and her swollen feet.
‘Keep your feet above your heart,’ Megan told her. ‘That will reduce the swelling.’
When Jessica came back, Megan took their orders for the local Thai takeaway, and it turned out to be like a meal from their childhood, consumed in front of the television, punctuated by their laughter, with no adults to tell them that they had to eat at the table.
Without saying the words, and for long after the children were sleeping, Megan and Jessica brought Cat tea and made her take it easy and in all these little ways tried to show her that, for now at least, their big sister didn’t have to worry about being strong.