“What? She’d never refuse chemotherapy, would she?”
Olivia flopped back against the eiderdowns. “You never know. We see it all the time, patients self-diagnosing, believing any old rubbish online. It drives us insane.”
“Wait—how come Jesse knows anyway?”
“She told him when they met at the airport. Because she’s mad like that. And Jesse told Andrew, so everyone knows now.”
“Oh. I thought she didn’t want to talk about it yet.”
“She didn’t really tell me anything. She was just like: ‘I’m still waiting for results, so we’ll cross that bridge . . .’ It’s not unusual, in cancer patients. They all have different ways of coping.”
“But she’ll talk about it to Jesse?”
“Sometimes patients find it easier to talk to strangers. Frustratingly, since I am actually a doctor. I acted surprised, by the way. Didn’t say you’d told me.”
“Oh. Thanks.” She felt a bit mean for letting Olivia feel like the last to know. She traced the swirls on the eiderdown.
“At least it’s out in the open now,” said Olivia. “I’d like to be some use. Stop her listening to Jesse.”
“Ugh, he’s such a dick. Why is Mummy being all nice to him? If I was her I’d tell him to piss off.”
“I don’t know. I thought he was OK at first. But now I’m wondering. It’s dangerous, the stuff he’s telling her.”
“But—won’t she listen to you, if you tell her it’s dangerous? It’s your job.”
“Not necessarily. She was lapping it up, googling faddy diets. Plus she can’t see me that way. Like, an authority on anything. We’re just ‘the children’ to her.”
“Can’t you talk to Daddy about it, ask him to speak to her? She’d listen to him.”
“Um. Not sure that would work.” Phoebe looked round at her. Olivia was staring ahead, the bulb above casting shadows under her cheekbones. She was now “worryingly thin,” thought Phoebe, enviously.
“Why not?” she said.
“Just. Me and Andrew, we, you know, it’s not like you and him,” said Olivia. “We don’t talk much.”
“Maybe you should. He hates alternative medicine. He’s obsessed with this book called Bad Science.”
“Is he? I love that book!” said Olivia, turning. She looked pleased, as if she had no idea she and Andrew had anything in common.
“You two are too alike, that’s the problem,” said Phoebe.
“How d’you mean?”
“Stubborn. Obsessed with the news and the Third World. Don’t talk about feelings.”
“Hey, I told you about me and Sean.”
“Only when I asked you straight out. Do you miss him?”
“Just wish I could talk to him. Hearing his name everywhere, like he’s just this phenomenon, it’s so weird.”
“D’you think you’ll get married?”
“What? I don’t know. Why does everything have to be about getting married?” Phoebe could see she was trying not to smile.
“You do! You’re going to marry him!”
Olivia was grinning now. Phoebe took the chance.
“Liv, I’m sorry, but I only found out about Mummy being ill by accident. I saw this e-mail on her iPad about it and asked her. I should’ve said. It wasn’t cool.”
Olivia said nothing. Phoebe didn’t chance looking at her.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel bad, I was just really pissed off you’d followed me and George,” she added, the words rushing. “But I get it, we shouldn’t have left the house. It was his idea, by the way.”
“S’all right. She told me you found out by mistake. But thanks.”
“Oh. OK then.” Phoebe’s cheeks burned. Why did she still get herself in these situations at twenty-nine years old? She felt better for apologizing, though. Her phone pinged, and she grabbed for it.
“No way! I had no idea I got signal up here!” she said, her voice coming out squawked. It was a text from George. All it said was Sorry. She tapped back. You can make it up to me. But don’t go pinching my banana again x and told Olivia she was going to find him, relieved to escape the awkwardness of confession.
Since Jesse’s arrival, the bungalow had become their refuge. It was fun, playing house down there with George, even though he was so anal about mess. He was always huffing about her leaving clothes on the chair. His army dad had made him weirdly OCD. One day, she fantasized that they’d live in one of the big white houses on Primrose Hill, and she’d have a dressing room. But when she got down to the bungalow, hopping on her good foot, it was dark. She opened the door and switched on the lights. It looked different, and she realized that all George’s stuff, even his bag, had disappeared. There was a piece of folded paper on the Ping-Pong table. Something about it chilled her. She opened it and read, in his cramped schoolboy handwriting:
Pho, Phoebles, I’m sorry but I don’t think I can do this anymore. I need some space to think, on my own. I guess this won’t come as a shock to you, but its all moving to fast for me. I hope you understand. Please don’t contact me, I need time to work stuff out.
G
PS: Don’t worry about the ring.
She looked around, to see if George would jump out of a cupboard shouting “Fooled you!” but the silence in the room was too real. She felt like she’d been winded. What did he mean, it wouldn’t come as a shock? She picked up the bungalow’s phone and called the main house. Emma answered, and her voice unlocked Phoebe’s sobs.
“Darling? What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“Come here,” she croaked.
A minute later she heard boots and voices outside the door. She’d thought her mother would come alone, but everyone, even Jesse, was there. They all looked very concerned. Through her tears she found this mildly gratifying.
“Look,” she said, thrusting the note at them. She threw herself facedown on the sofa to carry on crying. She didn’t even care that Jesse could see.
A hand began rubbing her back, and she saw through the chink between her face and the cushion that it was Olivia. The others were standing around the Ping-Pong table, reading the note.
“What a . . . pig,” said her mother. “What on earth does he mean, ‘moving too fast’? He just asked you to marry him!”
“What about quarantine? He shouldn’t be—” began Olivia.
“Do his parents know about this?” interrupted her father.
“Just found it,” said Phoebe, into the cushion. It smelled of George—of his scalp and his neck, and she began crying so hard she felt like she was choking. I want to choke, she thought. That would serve him right, if I choked to death, crying because of what he’s done. Her thoughts seemed to be on fast-forward, each fresh humiliation crowding out the one before. The plans for engagement drinks. The save-the-date e-mail she’d sent a hundred people. The dreadful, shaming sympathy. Single. Back at square one. She started to cry again with new, hysterical force.
“Phoebe—breathe,” Olivia was saying. “Where could he have gone? Can you think? We ought to get him back—he can’t just go.”
“I’m half inclined to call up his odious parents and tell them what a little—” Andrew paused. “What a little twerp their son is. A note! And a badly written one at that!”
“Maybe I put too much pressure on him,” said Phoebe. She had no idea where he might have gone—home probably. That was the least of her problems. She’d quite like the whole Marsham-Smith family to get Haag. She still had her eyes shut, so that she could just feel the damp cotton against her face, and smell George and hear her family.
“Hey, this isn’t your fault!” said an American voice. Jesse. She peered round.
“I mean, you shouldn’t blame yourself. This is about George,” he said.
“What?” It was the first time she’d spoken to him directly, beyond
“Hello.”
“I mean, this is his action—he needs to own this.”
“I’m sorry?” said Phoebe, looking up properly. She knew she was being rude, and she knew she looked rough—and she didn’t care. On second thought, it really pissed her off that Jesse had come down.
“I just meant, this is a hundred percent his issue.”
“What issue?”
“Well, seems like he has some work to do on himself.”
They were all staring at Jesse now. He looked uncomfortable at being the center of attention. So he should.
“Work? Is this some L.A. therapy bullshit? You only met him yesterday!” It was satisfying to snap at someone.
“Phoebe . . .” said her mother.
“I’m sorry, I just meant—” began Jesse.
“Now, I think perhaps it’s best if Phoebe and I have a chat on our own,” interrupted Emma. “We’ll be up later. You three can sort your own lunch out, can’t you? There’s plenty of ham and cheese in the larder. Jesse, you could reheat some of the risotto we had last night.”
Her mother only told people to feed themselves if there was a crisis. She registered that Emma had been specially cooking the aubergine thing, and that she must be abandoning it to stay here. As the others left, and she sat sobbing into Emma’s shoulder, she realized that it wasn’t just George she was crying for. It was the thought of coping with stuff like this, with everything grown up, without her mother.
Jesse
THE KITCHEN, WEYFIELD HALL, 1:00 P.M.
• • •
Andrew and Olivia were sitting on one side of the table, and Jesse on the other, like they were interviewing him. The aborted vegan curry sat on the worktop. Andrew was picking at a single slice of ham, with a blob of gold leaf mustard that looked like paint. Olivia was eating more white toast with her gross-smelling Marmite—same as she had yesterday. Didn’t British doctors know about processed food? Jesse chewed through a mound of claggy risotto, as instructed. He had no clue how to reheat it on the range they called the AGA, and nobody offered to show him. It didn’t matter—the moment in the bungalow had blunted his appetite anyway. Why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut? Nobody had mentioned the way Phoebe had spoken to him just now. Perhaps that was how they dealt with shit here.
It was dim with rain outside, and Andrew leaned forward to light the angel chimes on the table, saying: “Mustn’t let standards slip.” He held up the match to watch the flame dwindle, and said, “D’you know, Jesse, when I was reporting from Afghanistan, I learned to start fires with a magnifying glass.” He’d said the same last night—Jesse guessed it was one of his refrains. His own dad, Mitch, did the same. He was about to ask Andrew to elaborate, but seeing Olivia’s glare guessed that she had probably heard the story ten thousand times already.
“George shouldn’t just be out there at large,” she said, out of nowhere. She was wearing glasses, but the shadows under her eyes were unmistakable. Her time in Liberia must have been pretty harrowing, even though she never said so. Clearly, it was all about Phoebe in this house.
Andrew poured himself a second glass of red wine, and another for Jesse. Olivia refused, and Jesse wished he felt able to, too, especially after the biting G&Ts Andrew had mixed at noon. His head was already fluffy, but he didn’t want to be rude. He felt bad enough for eating differently. Then again, it was kind of liberating how his birth father drank at any hour of the day. And he could use a drink right now.
“Sorry about all that, Jesse,” said Andrew, ignoring Olivia’s comment. “It’s not usually quite so dramatic around here. Phoebe wouldn’t have meant anything by it.”
“Hey, it’s all good. She’s in shock.”
“What a cretin,” said Andrew. “Slinking off like that. And that appalling note. Despicable. People that can’t write, shouldn’t,” he added, as if George’s prose style had offended him more than the content.
“Did you realize there were problems?” said Jesse. He guessed Phoebe had no clue that George was bi, or gay—but perhaps her family had suspected something.
“I never thought he’d do this,” said Andrew. “Perhaps I was naive.”
“Did you like him?” said Jesse to Olivia. She stopped chewing, as if startled that he was asking her opinion.
“I thought he made Phoebe happy,” she said. “Except when he bought her the wrong earrings.”
“Earrings?”
“She asked him for these particular earrings for Christmas, and he got the wrong ones. She threw a tantrum about it,” said Olivia wearily.
“That’s what I meant,” said Jesse. It seemed safest to build on what she’d said. “I know I only just met him, but I got the feeling they hadn’t fully connected. It felt kind of forced. Like they were playing at being a normal couple.”
The second he’d said “normal,” he wished he could swallow it back, but Emma’s entrance distracted Andrew and Olivia.
“Poor Phoebs,” she said, sitting on a corner of a bench, beside Andrew. Jesse was now faced with three of them across the table. “She’s beside herself.” She shot up again, as if she shouldn’t have sat down at all. “Now, I was just going to make her a sandwich. She might want it later.”
“Emma, won’t you sit down for a moment?” said Andrew.
“Yeah, I’ll take her something, Mum,” said Olivia.
Emma looked doubtful, but sat down again.
“What did you mean, ‘normal couple’?” she said, looking at Jesse. Shit. He’d just promised himself he wouldn’t get involved.
“Nothing—I mean, I had no idea he was planning to bail on Phoebe,” he said. “I just sensed that maybe he wasn’t totally . . . certain.”
Olivia looked up, her face skeptical.
“I have, kind of, a radar for this stuff,” he added. Why did he make things worse every time he tried to explain himself?
“What stuff?” said Olivia.
“For when guys are, like, confused.” The second he said “guys,” rather than people, he realized there was no going back. “I mean, people,” he added.
“Are you implying he’s gay?” said Olivia. Her eyes, flinty now, looked just like Andrew’s.
“No! Yeah, no, I mean, maybe. Or bi. Nobody’s one hundred percent.” Fuck wine. He wasn’t used to drinking all day. It was making him say things he wouldn’t ordinarily.
“Based on what, precisely?” she asked.
“Nothing explicit,” said Jesse. “It’s just, like, an energy I got from him. Right off the bat.”
Andrew took a sip of wine and said nothing.
“It’s a pretty big accusation to come out with, based on ‘an energy.’”
“I know it sounds that way. But intuition can be very powerful.”
“So it’s a hunch? No actual evidence?”
“Like I said, you get a feeling for these things.” He resented Olivia interrogating him. He could hardly say: “I was making out with him in my bed three nights ago.”
“What the hell? George isn’t gay!” came a voice from the doorway. It was Phoebe, bedraggled and puce faced.
“Hey—I wasn’t accusing him of anything. I just said it was a possibility. A lot of straight guys are confused. It’s not uncommon.”
“Please! This is actually fucking disrespectful. This is my fiancé you’re talking about. What—did you fancy him yourself?”
“Jesse—I’m not sure this is helpful,” said Emma quickly. “George and Phoebe have been together for years. He proposed to her. It’s fairly obvious he’s not gay, or he—”
“You did, didn’t you? This is your little ‘public schoolboy’ fantasy!” Phoebe interrupted.
He could feel all their eyes on him, trapping him in a mess he had created. An old, familiar indignation came broiling up—the hot temper he’d tried to purge for years.
“Don’t shoot the mess
enger!” he said, way louder than he meant to. “It’s not my fantasies you need to worry about. It’s your fiancé’s!” He knew he’d passed the point of no return. They were all staring at him.
“Don’t shout at me!” Phoebe screeched back. “You have no idea what you’re talking about! Why don’t you piss off back to Minnesota?”
The angel chimes dinged in the shocked pause.
“What is he even doing here?” she said, turning to Andrew. Jesse felt like they were acting a scene.
“Phoebe, calm down,” said Emma. “Jesse, perhaps we might have a minute?”
He stood up, legs weak as a string puppet. “Sure,” he said, taking his still-full plate to the sink and trying to walk normally. He felt them all watching his back, waiting for him to go.
For a moment, he stopped in the dark passage behind the kitchen wondering if anyone would say something about him. But there was just the sound of Phoebe bursting into noisy tears again. His skin pricked with mortified sweat. He took the oak staircase three steps at a time—as if this might help him escape the house and everyone in it. The long corridor upstairs felt oppressive, and his room horribly foreign. He lay on his side in bed. He had destroyed everything. He had only himself to blame. It was like the oversharing—he’d always struggled to contain his thoughts, his emotions. He’d trained himself to act so grounded the whole time, but then his feelings came spewing up, like a geyser—regardless of where he was or who he was talking to. They would all hate him now, even Andrew. His birth father was bound to be on Phoebe’s side. This wasn’t how it was meant to be.
Emma
THE KITCHEN, WEYFIELD HALL, 2:30 P.M.
• • •
“Let me do the dishwasher, sweetie,” said Emma to Olivia. Her daughter was putting everything away in the wrong place—no doubt a misplaced effort to make Emma relax.
“It’s fine, Mum. Why don’t you sit down, or go and check on Phoebe, or something?”
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