Yours,
Jesse
PS: I’m a big fan of your columns!
“Are you all right?” said Emma, coming into his study. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Really?” said Andrew. “I’m fine. Just fine.” His laptop was facing away from her, but he shut it anyway. “I’ve just filed my column. And how are you?” Andrew had always been surprised by his own ability to sound composed, even genial, when his mind was reeling.
“Fab!” said Emma. “I look forward to reading it. I’m just nipping out to John Lewis. I need to get some last things. Well, not last, but some more things for, um, Olivia’s stocking. And I, I should get some more wrapping paper . . . ” She tailed off, looking over his head at the clock. Andrew registered that his wife was speaking too quickly. But shock was still pounding through his body. She said something about what time she’d be back, and left. Andrew sat, reading the e-mail over and over again. Here it was, the voice he had been half dreading, half expecting. He thought back to that sultry night in Beirut, 1980, the one he had tried to convince himself had never happened. And then he thought of the strange little letter that Leila Deeba had written him, eighteen months ago, which had been forwarded from The World’s offices. He still had it, hidden from Emma. “My late birth mother was . . .” So the glorious, firm-bodied woman he had fucked between hotel sheets was dead. He stood up and stared out of the rain-flecked window. “Frosty the Snowman” came floating up from the basement kitchen. How had he reached an age when a woman he had slept with could be dead—and it wasn’t even remarkable? It was a bleak train of thought, and he forced himself back to the present. What, if anything, ought he to reply to this man? And, more to the point, what on earth was he going to tell Emma?
Emma
DR. SINGER’S PRACTICE, 3RD FLOOR, 68 HARLEY STREET, 4:59 P.M.
• • •
Dr. Singer’s waiting room, high above Harley Street, seemed to have been designed to cushion the blow of bad news. Everything was soft, carpeted, beige. There was always a plate of untouched biscuits by the tea and coffee, and piles of soothingly trashy magazines. Looking at a spread of a soap star’s wedding, Emma wondered whether OK! was kept afloat by private doctors and their creepy diagnoses. Don’t hope, Emma, she kept telling herself. Ever since childhood she had made the same bargain with fate. If she wanted one outcome, she had to make herself expect the opposite—to really, truly expect it. Then, the other outcome would come true (the one you’d wanted all along). It was like paying insurance—prepare for the worst, and all will be well. Of course, when her daughters were afraid, she told them to “hope for the best” and “cross that bridge when you come to it.” That was what mothers were supposed to say. Although only Phoebe confided in her, these days. If Olivia had any worries, she hadn’t shared them for years. Perhaps, thought Emma, she could draw her older daughter out over the quarantine.
“Mrs. Birch?” said the receptionist with the cartoonish lips (did she drop by the cosmetic surgeon on the ground floor during her lunch breaks?). “Dr. Singer’s ready for you.” Emma walked into his room. It was a grim combination of heavy mahogany furniture and medical equipment. Behind the curtain she knew there lay a narrow couch covered by a roll of blue paper, where she’d first shown Dr. Singer the hazelnut-sized lump in her right armpit.
“I’m afraid it isn’t good news,” he said, almost before she had sat down. “The biopsy showed that the lymph node we were concerned about is non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.” Emma wondered if he had found this the most effective way to tell people that they were dying. No beating about the bush, straight out with it before they’d taken off their coat. He kept talking, explaining that further tests were needed to determine whether the tumor was “indolent” or “aggressive.” Funny to define tumors like teenagers, she thought, as he moved on to “treatment options,” fixing her with his pebbly eyes. Emma sat nodding as he spoke, feeling disembodied. Why hadn’t she tried harder not to hope? She must have assumed, deep down, that everything would be fine, and now it wasn’t fine at all. “As I said, we need to do further tests and wait for those results before making any decisions, which is likely to be after Christmas, now,” said Dr. Singer, “but either way you’ll need to start treatment in January. OK?”
“Does cancer wait for Christmas, then?” said Emma. It was meant to sound lighthearted, but it came out slightly hysterical.
Dr. Singer (no doubt used to patients saying odd things) just smiled. “Anything you wanted to ask?” he said.
Emma hesitated. “Just one thing,” she said. “My daughter’s been treating Haag in Liberia, and she’ll be quarantined with us over Christmas. Is that a risk, I mean, in my situation?”
“Haag?” said Dr. Singer. For the first time she saw him look ruffled. “Well, yes, my advice would be that, in view of the biopsy, you should avoid any risk to your immunity—particularly something as serious as Haag.” He shut her file, as if to signal that the consultation was at an end. “Have a good Christmas. Try not to worry.”
Emma pushed open the door to 68 Harley Street, with all its little doorbells for different consultants. It was a relief to leave the hot, expensive hush of the lobby, and be out in the December air. Across Cavendish Square she could see the reassuring dark green of John Lewis. She had arranged to meet her oldest friend Nicola there, after her appointment, because, as Nicola said: “Everything is OK in John Lewis.” Emma had secretly thought that La Fromagerie in Marylebone would be nicer, but now that the bad news had come, dear old John Lewis seemed just right. Nicola was the only person who knew anything about Dr. Singer and the lump—the lump that had just become cancer. Emma hadn’t told Andrew, or the girls, because there hadn’t been anything concrete to tell them, or to worry about. Usually Emma delighted in department stores at Christmas. But today, the lights and window displays and people crisscrossing her path were exhausting. She just wanted to be sitting down. She had already sent Nicola a text: Bad news, because she couldn’t bear to see her friend’s face waiting, poised between elation and sympathy. It took forever to reach the fifth-floor café—every time she got to the top of one escalator she had to walk miles to the next one. Then they couldn’t speak properly for ages, because they had to push their trays around a metal track, like a school canteen, asking nice young men for Earl Grey and fruitcake. Nicola kept a hand on Emma’s arm the whole time, as if she were very old, and kept shooting her sad little smiles. Nicola does love a crisis, thought Emma, and then felt guilty.
At last, they were seated. “Right,” said Nicola, “tell me.” And as Emma explained how she was to have more tests tomorrow, which would come back after Christmas, and would quite likely need chemotherapy in the New Year, she heard the diagnosis taking shape as the story of her sixtieth year (Lord, how could she be so old?). By the time she had been through it several times, her mind had stopped galloping, and she felt more able to cope. Nicola was full of fighting talk, promising Emma, as she grasped her hand, that she could “beat this thing” with her friends’ and family’s support. Emma swallowed a last mouthful of jammy cake and managed a smile. “I’m not going to tell Andrew and the girls until after the quarantine,” she said.
“What? Why not? But you must! You can’t be shouldering this all alone!” Nicola’s voice shot up the scale with dismay.
“I can’t. Olivia won’t come home if I do. I know it. He said it was a risk, to be spending Christmas with her. But I have to, Nic. She has nowhere else to go.”
“Emma! This is silly. She’ll understand, she’s a doctor, for God’s sake. The last thing she’d want is to be putting you in danger.”
“But—look, you know how it is with Olivia. This is the first Christmas she’s been home in years—even just home for more than a few hours. It was the Calais camp last year, Sudan before that, the Philippines before that. I want her there. I don’t care what Singer thinks. It’s only a risk—a tiny risk at that. If she go
es down with Haag, my creaky immune system will be the least of our worries.”
“But Andrew? Surely he ought to know.”
She knew Nicola was right. But she was loath to go into how little she and Andrew shared these days, or how self-sufficient she had gradually become. Ever since the psychotherapy course Nicola had taken after her divorce, she was apt to counsel one at any opportunity. And it wasn’t as if Emma and Andrew were in trouble. Whose marriage was still wildly intimate after thirty years? Easier to blame Haag again.
“He’ll say the same—that Olivia can’t do her quarantine at home. And what if it is my last Christmas? I’d never forgive myself if I turned her away, and missed a chance to have one more Christmas just the four of us. I’d been so looking forward to it. The girls being at Weyfield again, like when they were little.”
Nicola’s eyes were moist. “OK, sweetheart,” she said. “You know best.”
Phoebe
THE DE BEERS CONTINENTAL HOTEL, 4TH FLOOR, KNIGHTSBRIDGE, 7:10 P.M.
• • •
Here it was, room 131, an executive suite. Phoebe knocked, the sound deadened by thick wood and plush carpet, and stood wondering if George was looking at her through the spyhole. He opened the door. He was wearing a white waffle robe and smiling with his lips closed and eyebrows raised, the way he did when Phoebe had proved herself endearingly incompetent. Behind him, dozens of tea lights flickered. George took her hand, leading her into the dark, candlelit suite. Crimson petals were scattered over the fortress-like bed. She decided to edit out this detail when she described the scene, as she already knew she would. Concentrate, Phoebe, she thought. It’s actually happening. The thing you’ve been waiting for. There was George, down on one knee. From the robe pocket he took a little blue velvet box, and opened it with a flourish that she suspected might have been rehearsed. The ring was a huge sapphire surrounded by diamonds, like Kate Middleton’s. It looked nothing like any of her jewelry. She pushed down a surge of disappointment, and its accompanying shame for being so awful.
“Phoebe,” he said, his head level with her crotch, “will you—would you be my wife?”
“Yes!” she squealed, hugging his head awkwardly as he staggered slightly to stand up. His knee clicked, and they kissed. “I’m so happy,” she said into his mouth. “I love you.”
“Me too,” he said, taking the ring, pushing it onto her finger, and kissing her hand. He began maneuvering her toward the bed.
“George,” she said, “sorry—just I really needed to pee when I arrived.” He rolled his eyes fondly, and she walked to the bathroom. It was palatial. She wondered how much the suite had cost. Sitting on the loo, she studied the ring. It had probably cost loads, too. She turned her fingers in the light, thinking how grown-up her hand looked. A cork popped outside. She stood in front of the huge three-way mirror, excitement pooling in her stomach, hoping she looked somehow different. You’re engaged! she told her reflection silently, as she pondered who to tell first, and whether she’d say it had been a shock, or admit that she’d suspected this when George’s text had summoned her to a hotel. Visions of an engagement party, and wedding dress shopping, and a hen weekend in Paris, or maybe Ibiza, blossomed in her mind. She stripped to her underwear and pulled on the second white robe. Its thick folds made her look pleasingly delicate. After examining the freebies by the marble sinks, she tousled her hair and padded out. George was sitting on a pert brocade sofa, photographing two champagne flutes with his phone.
“I had this on ice,” he said. “It’s Moët rosé. Chose it specially. To my beautiful bride to be,” he said, offering her one of the glasses. He sipped, making the rasping noise he always did when he drank special wine. “Wow. Good stuff.”
Phoebe grinned. “You know I can’t tell the difference between this and prosecco,” she said, even though after six years with George, and going to so many nice places with her dad, she could.
“We can work on that, Phoebles.” He reached over and ruffled the top of her head.
“It’s beautiful, by the way,” she said, waggling her hand so the ring flashed.
“Knew you’d like it,” he said. “It’s very you.”
• • •
Later, lying in the crook of George’s armpit, she felt herself beginning to believe she was engaged. Dinner in the Michelin-starred restaurant downstairs, and the free champagne the staff sent over, had helped. It must have been the shock, before, that had made it seem a bit unreal. Shock could numb responses, she was sure she had read that somewhere. And now that flurries of “likes” and “Congratulations!!!!!” were appearing on Instagram and Facebook, she’d started to warm to the ring, too. Maybe it was time she graduated to “lady jewelry” (her friend Saskia’s shorthand for dainty, diamondy stuff). She checked her phone—the selfie she’d posted earlier captioned Engaged! And modeling his’n’hers bathrobes #BlindDateThrowback had got 224 likes, a personal best. She showed George, the little image of them clinking champagne flutes lighting up the dark suite.
“Awesome,” he said. “But I don’t get it—blind date?”
“Duh! ’Cause the couples on Blind Date always used to wear white bathrobes, and be, like, drinking champagne and being really cheesy. Remember?”
“Oh, right. Huh! Yeah!” he said. She wasn’t sure he got it. Sometimes references like that went over George’s head. He’d captioned the same photo #Moët #LTD #lifegoals. Loads of people had commented on what a pretty couple they made.
“That steak was genuinely amazing,” said George, into the dimness. “Gym tomorrow!” She didn’t reply. She was thinking how silky the sheets felt against her legs, and how much she loved hotels, and how the rest of her life, with George, would be a series of places like this.
“I wish,” she said, “someone would come and turn down my bed every night.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged, princess,” he said, propping himself up on one elbow and smiling down at her.
“You do realize Mummy is going to be an absolute nightmare over the wedding,” she said. Her mother had sounded so emotional on the phone earlier. She’d actually started sobbing with happiness. A bit extreme, but sweet. “She’s probably desperate for grandchildren,” Phoebe carried on. Usually the whole topic of babies felt off limits with George, but this evening had given her courage. She snuggled in closer.
“No wonder, with your sister,” said George.
“Hey! Olivia’s saving the world. She can’t help it if she’s too busy for men,” said Phoebe, slapping his chest. Funny, she thought, how she often moaned about Olivia herself, but didn’t like to hear her criticized by anyone else. George wouldn’t understand, being the third of four siblings whose main aim seemed to be to insult one another. Their younger sister, Mouse (real name Claire), was mostly talked over.
“When’s she back anyway?” he said. “When does lockdown start?”
“The twenty-third. It’ll be nice to have her back at Christmas, for a change.”
George did his snorty laugh.
“What?”
“Nothing. Has she even replied to you yet?”
“She will. Not sure she has signal there.”
They lay in silence for a while. A strip of fake Christmas lights from Knightsbridge, far below, glowed above the suede curtains. After a while, George’s breathing slowed, and his arm relaxed around her shoulder.
She looked at him, asleep. It occurred to her that her overwhelming feeling was one of relief. No more waiting. No more hoping, every time they watched a sunset, that now might be the moment. No more fighting back ungenerous tears with each engagement paraded on Facebook. At last, it had happened. She lay, fingering the jewels on her hand, trying to absorb the idea of “married.” The cumulous duvet was suddenly too hot, and she stood up for water from the minibar. An opened envelope on top of the fridge caught her eye. She guessed it was the bill, and teased out the sheet o
f paper inside to see how much George had spent. It was sweet of him to have gone to so much effort. The thought of him lighting all the candles, even strewing the tacky rose petals, was so unlike him it was touching. The paper read:
THE PROPOSAL PACKAGE
Advance ring consultation and delivery: . . . . £500
Room preparation, including candles, rose petals, Moët & Chandon Rosé Impérial champagne, fruit basket, disposable camera, and personalized chocolates: . . . . £350
Executive Suite, including breakfast: . . . . £1,000
She turned, not sure if she should make a joke of it, or not. But George was snoring.
Jesse
THE GREEN ROOM BAR, LOS ANGELES, 8:00 P.M.
• • •
Jesse rechecked his e-mail while he waited for Dana, his younger sister. She’d suggested they meet for cocktails when he’d called earlier—rattled but jubilant—to say he’d finally sent the message to Andrew Birch. That had been twelve hours ago, but there was still no reply. Could he have missed it? His birth father didn’t seem like the type to miss e-mails. Plus Jesse knew he’d been online, because at 6 p.m. British time @ABirchReviews had tweeted: “Why must health writers invariably describe nuts as ‘nutritional powerhouses’? Lazy and meaningless.” At 7 p.m. he’d been back on Twitter to say: “Please make Christmas 2016 quick.” Wow. Sometimes the guy seemed so negative. Surely reviewing restaurants for a living couldn’t be that bad.
When Jesse had first googled “Andrew Birch,” exactly one year ago, and found hundreds of Andrew’s articles online, many with an e-mail byline, he’d been psyched. Here was a way to get to know his birth father, secretly, safely, before making contact. Researching Andrew had become his late-night hobby. His mind now contained a bulging file of Birch trivia, each new fact bringing Jesse a detective’s thrill. His therapist, Calgary, had warned that while this research was a “safe space,” he must not confuse knowing about his birth father with truly knowing him. Jesse knew she had a point. But the voice in Andrew’s fortnightly restaurant reviews for The World magazine sounded so critical—so unlike Jesse’s adoptive dad, Mitch—that the prospect of actually meeting his birth father in the flesh had become unduly daunting. Plus the column was a goldmine of information, since Andrew never gave the food more than a paragraph, filling the rest with glimpses of his personal life and past.
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