Jesse
THE LOFT CONVERSION, 34 GLOUCESTER TERRACE, CAMDEN, 11:48 P.M.
• • •
Jesse looked around the rooftop room where he’d be sleeping. It had been Olivia’s bedroom, and though her stuff had gone, vestiges of a younger Olivia remained—a lava lamp, some terrible clogs, and a graduation photo of endearingly dorkish friends. Now that he had seen the Birches’ tall, narrow London house, with its Danish chairs and Andrew’s political cartoons, he realized that Weyfield wasn’t really them. The place was all Emma, her childhood in aspic. And it was only now, seeing the Birches in their home, eating takeout and watching TV, that he’d started to feel like they were in some way family—not his foreign-exchange hosts. Or maybe it was everything that had gone down today that had broken the barriers.
It was nearly midnight, but his mind was still whirring. He lay on the single bed, looking at the starless skylight, thinking about the chat with Phoebe in the kitchen. It had reminded him of talking to Dana, though Phoebe was sharper. Of course she was—she was Andrew’s daughter. He would call Dana tomorrow, he decided, and tell his mom and dad the entire thing once he was back home. The quarantine stuff might take some justifying, but they’d get it. He realized he was excited to meet Sean, Haag survivor and another foreigner in the Birch clan. Potentially his brother-in-law. He wondered if Sean and Olivia would get married before the baby was born, if there would be a family wedding after all. Too bad he never got started on his adoption film. Olivia and Sean’s first dance could have been a neat closing scene. Outside, Jesse could hear traffic, sirens, drunken shouting. Even the subway journey from the hospital had been a relief after Norfolk. It felt like coming up for air, or cracking a window in a stuffy car. Maybe he and Phoebe could go shopping in the West End, he thought happily, as he stretched under the atlas print bedding, and turned out the light.
• 9 •
December 30, 2016
Olivia
ROOM 24, 8 NORTH WARD, THE ROYAL FREE HOSPITAL, HAMPSTEAD, 1:55 P.M.
• • •
Olivia leaned against the hard hospital bed, bags at her feet, impatient to be discharged. The thought that Sean was in the building, just floors away, had been dancing inside her all night. She’d felt such a fool in front of the doctors yesterday when her urine came back teeming with progesterone. Until now, she’d barely considered when she wanted children. It had always been “one day, not yet.” A family would tie her to London, stop her from working abroad. Settling down was for Phoebe. But now that it was happening with Sean, she felt different. Nervous, but ready—as if they’d been together for ages. She remembered him saying, offhand, that he wanted lots of kids, and how she’d teased him about being broody. Secretly, though, she’d hoped he’d been testing the water, gauging how serious they were.
She had sent a text earlier, promising to visit, but hadn’t said she was in the Royal Free. It would be cruel to announce she was in hospital without explaining, and she wanted to tell him she was pregnant face-to-face. Dennis White had written again this morning, demanding she contact him, but conceding that there was no longer a risk, now that her quarantine was over. She hadn’t been able to face replying. She would have to kowtow, she knew. It could wait. She rechecked her cautious strokes of mascara (Phoebe had sent a makeup bag with Emma last night), and willed the nurses to come and set her free.
An hour later she was on Sean’s high-observation ward, visitor’s pass in hand. She breathed the safe NHS scent—bleach and mopped floors, and the ghost of school dinners. Being in a hospital as a patient was disconcerting, like going from actor to audience. Two young doctors passed and she wanted to explain that she was one of them, usually in scrubs, too. Rounding a corner, she saw a barrel-shaped, middle-aged woman with spiky hair and gold earrings, by a vending machine. “O-livia?” she said, in a deep Irish accent.
“Yes?” said Olivia tentatively. “Are you . . . with Sean?” It hadn’t occurred to her that his family might be here. She felt about ten years old.
“I’m his Mammy! Kathy. He’s told us all about you. I recognized you from the Facebook. Come here, love!”
Olivia allowed herself to be embraced, and then held at arm’s length as Kathy beamed at her. She could see Sean now in his mother’s gray-green eyes. It crossed her mind that this woman was her baby’s grandmother. Potentially her mother-in-law—part of a whole new family, a new life. How could that night on Cape Beach have led them here so soon?
“Not your average meet-the-parents, eh?” said Kathy. “But it’s great to meet you, Olivia. You’re as lovely as Sean said. Now you’ve to see y’man inside!”
“How’s he feeling?” said Olivia, as they set off down a long corridor, shoes squeaking, Olivia holding doors open.
“He’s grand. He’s a fighter, our Seany. But he’s awfully thin, you should know. He’s been so worried about you.”
“Yeah. It was a risk, us . . . ” She tailed off, not sure how to put it, but Kathy laughed.
“Ah, young love! He’s a naughty boy,” she said fondly.
“This is him,” said Kathy, stopping at a door, and sanitizing her hands up to her forearms before knocking. There was no reply, and she opened the door just enough to see in.
“Ah, he’s asleep,” she said, sounding like a new mother admiring her baby.
“That’s OK. I’d like to see him anyway,” she said.
“Y’grand, you take your time, love. He might wake up when he hears your voice,” she said, eyes creasing like Sean’s.
Olivia walked into the sterile room. There he was, propped against pale green sheets, deep in a jungle of drips and wires and monitors. Still Sean, but different. She couldn’t believe how much weight he’d lost. Even after Kathy’s warning, and seeing so many Haag patients, it caught her off guard. His face was hollow, and his arms, flopping out of the hospital gown, had shrunk so that his elbows looked too big. Bluish dots peppered his throat—the remnants of the Haag rash. Their size confirmed that he had been Haag-negative for over twenty-four hours. She studied the ICU screen beside him, relieved to see respiratory rate, pulse, oxygen, and temperature were all in the normal parameters. A clipboard at the end of the bed recorded his meals, sleep, urine. She considered summoning a nurse and asking to see his bloods before he woke up, and told herself to let go. She needed to stop—to be here as his girlfriend, not his doctor.
Clearly, not everyone shared the media’s negative view of Sean. Get Well cards crowded the bedside cupboard, and the floor was heaped with presents. She put her gifts from the hospital shop on top of the pile, and then took them back again. She wanted to give them to him properly. She’d chosen a new Robert Harris and a big box of Maltesers—which he’d craved in Liberia. She realized it was the first time she’d enjoyed picking a present for somebody.
Flat, regular beeps from the monitor punctuated the steady rasp of his breathing. She sat on the visitor’s chair, wondering if she should wake him up to make the most of her time here. Now that she was with him, at last, it felt cruel to have to leave again. She said “Sean” a couple of times, but he didn’t stir. He’d always been an enviably heavy sleeper. She had imagined, stupidly, that she’d hug him on sight, but he looked too prone—too battered. Instead, she took his fingers in hers, careful not to dislodge the IV by the knuckles. His hand was cold, and she remembered how much she’d wanted to touch it that first night at the beach bar. She was about to nudge his shoulder, to wake him, but stopped. She wanted to just look at him for a while longer. Your baby’s father, she thought, trying to absorb what it meant. The two of them, combined in a whole new person.
“Sean,” she said again, louder. He still didn’t stir. She felt suddenly shy. What if she’d got everything all wrong, what if he was horrified at the news? What if he said it was all too soon? He wouldn’t, would he? She’d just tell him now, she decided. At least this way she could try the words, out loud, before he woke
up.
“Sean, I’ve got news,” she said. She paused, even though he was still asleep. “I’m pregnant. We’re having a baby.”
His eyelids flickered. She carried on.
“I’ve been feeling sick, but I never thought—we were always so careful. I’ve already had a scan because—”
His eyes half opened and closed. She held her breath.
“Anyway, it’s so different when it’s you, not a patient. It was just this little lozenge, this tiny heartbeat flashing.” She remembered the throb of new life with a thrill, the pulse sound they’d just picked up, like a bird’s beating wings.
“O-livia,” he said, and his thumb stroked her hand.
“Sean!” She squeezed his hand back, and leaned forward so that she could rest her cheek against his gaunt face.
“We’re having a baby. Fantastic,” he whispered, and grinned, with his eyes still shut.
Andrew
THE STUDY, 34 GLOUCESTER TERRACE, CAMDEN, 4:09 P.M.
FROM: Andrew Birch
TO: Sarah Gibbs
DATE: Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 4:09 p.m.
SUBJECT: copy Jan 10th
Hi both,
Copy below—decided on a Japanese place I visited before Christmas, over Hourani & Co, which was dreary.
I’ll let this one speak for itself, but suffice to say I think the time is right. Despite my occasional tantrums, some of which I blush to recall, it has been a pleasure to work with you both. Sarah, I owe you a good lunch. The Ivy?
Andrew
PS: Ian, would you humor me by leaving the deliberately split infinitive “having boldly fallen” in situ. It’s a Star Trek reference—this being a tale of The Next Generation (ho ho). Which, it so happens, was my daughter Olivia’s favorite childhood TV program.
Thanks.
YUKIKO’S TABLE, Belgravia
Food: 5/5 • Atmosphere: 4/5
And how was your Christmas, New Year, all the rest of it? Unremarkable as ever, passing in a fog of bad TV, superfluous Stilton, and unwanted presents? Readers, I can only tell you that mine was life-changing. You may remember that Chez Birch was a no-go zone over the festive season. My heroic daughter Olivia spent the run-up to Christmas treating Haag in Liberia, obliging us to spend a week in quarantine in North Norfolk. Quite a shock for the modern family, as you can imagine. Not least because a son I fathered as a young man (and to whose existence I was hitherto oblivious) turned up on our doorstep. Or, to be precise, in our hall, having boldly fallen through the front door—plunging himself into our quarantine. If this sounds like an abysmal modern play, it gets better. On the final day of quarantine my older daughter fainted, and might have choked on her own vomit in the manner of Jimi Hendrix, had not said long-lost son tended to her. While the rest of us flapped like the proverbial decapitated poultry, he risked contracting Haag without hesitation. Don’t worry, the happy ending’s coming. Olivia tested negative for Haag, transpiring, in fact, to be suffering from morning sickness and thus redeeming herself, in spirit, from junkie legend to the Duchess of Cambridge. In a nutshell, I have not only gained a son, but am shortly to gain a grandchild. I know, now, that life is too short to sweat the small stuff. Because to sweat the small stuff, day in, day out, is the great quotidian tragedy of our cosseted Western world. When I was a young man, I wrote about the big stuff. Wars, famine, human suffering. I thought a freshly slaughtered Maasai goat the height of culinary élan. At Olivia’s age, I, too, would have been in Liberia, reporting on the crisis my daughter has been working so bravely to contain. But for nearly thirty years I have written about . . . new restaurants. New restaurants are not the big stuff. They are the ultimate small stuff. If this Christmas showed me anything, it is that my heart is no longer in this column. I would like to apologize to every chef whose efforts I may have lampooned for good copy. I would not like to apologize to the Michelin-starred hellhole that turned me away for wearing jeans.
Yukiko’s Table is a fitting end to this column, being staffed by one family. I went the week before our quarantine, conscious that sushi would be in short supply in our Norfolk plague house. I was seated at a low table, in a room just a shade too bright, while a charming waitress hurried to bring me a cup of bracing, blood-temperature sake. Prawn tempura, light as mermaid’s farts
Andrew stopped and deleted “farts.” It was time to stop aping other critics’ puerile humor and just write. Then he went back and changed the too-wordy bit about headless chickens, before pressing on.
Prawn tempura followed—plump and fresh as rain in batter jackets, with pools of silken tamari. Then came yum cha: sensitively cooked, steaming pillows of umami. I could have happily eaten two baskets more, but left space for the teriyaki salmon—which had none of the “cat food in treacle” quality of its poor imitations. I finished with a boule of Jasmine green tea ice cream, a little ho-hum, but really, who goes to a Japanese restaurant for the puddings? Readers, run and eat at Yukiko’s Table, and tell them a friend recommended you. Farewell, and bonne dégustation.
Andrew read the column back. Was it too corny? No. He had shied away from corniness for too long. And it gave him enormous satisfaction to erase George from this parting family portrait. Should the little shit ever read the review (doubtful, but still), Andrew hoped George would be piqued at his own absence. As a bonus, he had written it in one sitting. Usually his column was a laborious routine of drafting, scrapping, rewriting, Tweeting, and coffee making. This one had written itself—a sign, he felt, that his decision to leave The World was right. He would call Sarah in the New Year. For now, this was his notice. He wasn’t sure what he would do instead. A new freelance gig was bound to turn up. He’d always rather fancied travel writing—assuming Emma was up to it. Or why not aim higher, have a go at writing his memoir? Imagining life without the fortnightly tug of his column was a revelation. Besides, many of his friends were already retired.
It was a relief to be back at his Ercol desk, out of the smoking room with its glinting decanters and miasma of Hartley male. From his compact, bay-windowed study, its walls a minty green chosen by Phoebe, he could see Primrose Hill. He decided to walk there later, before it got dark. Perhaps he would start to do so daily, he thought, adding this to a general intention to do better, be better. He wasn’t about to start writing New Year’s resolutions. But he had some plans. He wanted to take Olivia and Sean to Lemonia on Regent’s Park Road for lunch, and to visit Jesse in Los Angeles, and to be Emma’s rock through whatever ghastly treatment she might need. He thought of Phoebe’s paean to his heroic “restaurent reviews.” It had been too easy, for too long, to let Phoebe cast him as a hero. Olivia’s serious stare, her laudable ideals, had made him feel more Judas-like every year. That was why he didn’t ask about her work. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. It was just painful to remember his younger, intrepid self, his dreams of making a difference. He’d been jealous, too, he could admit now. Jealous of her freedom—the way she used her freedom. He pressed send on his final column and sat back. His stock of pithiness had run out.
• • •
Andrew had volunteered to go and collect Olivia from the Royal Free. In the hall he met Phoebe, coming up from the basement. She sat on the top step, watching him put on his coat. “Daddy,” she said. “Look at this message—what d’you think it means? He’s one of the presenters at work. No idea how he knows I’m single,” she said, sounding gratified that he did. She showed Andrew a text that read: Hi Phoebe, I heard you’re newly single. Before you get snapped up, I’d like to take you out for dinner. How are you fixed for tomorrow night pre-parties? Caspar x
“Sounds promising,” said Andrew.
“He’s really nice. But I’d never thought of him in that way, because of George.” Andrew doubted this, by the moony way she was looking at the message. “He’s super talented,
though.”
“Well, there you go. See what happens,” said Andrew. He didn’t want to get drawn into one of Phoebe’s long dissections of her life and be late to the hospital.
“I’m just about to pick up Olivia,” he said. “You coming?”
“No thanks. Hospitals give me the creeps,” she said, wedging her small body against the banister and stretching her legs so that they took up the whole step.
“Right. Well, we’ll be back for lunch.”
“’Kay,” she said, gazing at her phone as if it held all the secrets in the world.
• • •
Driving downhill from the Royal Free to Camden, Olivia in the passenger seat, Andrew automatically reached for Radio 4, and then stopped himself. They had just had a very interesting talk about corruption in Liberia, the nightmare of a system rigged by bribes. He had managed to ask lots of questions (the trick was to imagine he was interviewing her to avoid butting in), and learned things he hadn’t from the news. She returned his questions with a couple about the Middle East, which he felt he answered well, considering how long ago it was. He was just trying to think of another inquiry about her future plans—interested, but not invasive, when Olivia said: “I saw Sean this morning.”
“Marvelous!” Andrew felt as if he’d been thrown a lifeline. “I imagine he looked rather different from when you last saw him?”
“Mmm. He’s lost weight. And he still has the Haag rash, so he looks pretty rough. But he’s just weak really. Once he was awake, he was totally lucid. Talking, eating, everything.”
“And you told him the happy news?”
“Yup. I woke him up with it.”
“Did you? Terrific. He sounds like a very decent chap. Perhaps I could do, I don’t know, some sort of interview with him for The World—once he’s fully recovered. Set the record straight, sort of thing. Such a lot of rubbish was written. Just a thought anyway. Your call.”
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