Wonder Women

by Fiore, Rosie

  ‘Thanks so much, Holly,’ he said, taking the apple crumble. ‘As always, it’s a pleasure to do business with you.’ She smiled at his formal tone. But then he dipped his head and looked at her with big serious eyes. ‘I know how hard it is, what you’re going through,’ he said hesitantly. ‘With my grandpa it was very difficult, and really long. So if you need anything, anything at all, even if it’s just to get out for a little while, go for a drink, talk … I’m there, okay?’ He managed to embarrass himself again with this little speech, so he blushed once more, gave her a sweet smile and sauntered off down the path. His visit had made Holly feel so much better she couldn’t quite believe it – and not only because they had got the T-shirt order out of the way.

  The next few days were gruelling. Judith’s pain relief seemed to have stopped working, and very suddenly she seemed to have become weaker. Holly rang their GP, who made a rare home visit. She spent a long time with Judith and then came to find Holly, who was sitting at her computer at the kitchen table trying to work. ‘The medication she’s on isn’t working as we’d hoped,’ said the doctor. ‘And I don’t want to up the dose because there will be side effects. I think it’s best if you go and see the palliative-care experts at the hospice.’

  ‘The hospice?’ said Holly, and she couldn’t hide the wobble in her voice.

  ‘They’re the experts at this. They can make her as comfortable as possible and work out a pain regime that works better and has fewer side effects.’

  Holly nodded, shaken. She hadn’t imagined they would need the hospice so soon.

  ‘It’s not a bad place,’ said the doctor soothingly. ‘Odd though it sounds, it’s quite cheerful. You both might like it there.’

  Holly thought that was unlikely, but she sat there while the doctor rang the hospice and made an appointment for them for the following day. She took down the details and agreed she’d get her mum there for ten. She remembered her talk with Fraser about the hospice. How was he? she wondered. There was no point in dwelling on it. He hadn’t rung her, and she certainly didn’t have time to ring him at the moment.

  *

  The hospice was at the hospital itself, and Holly drove them there in the morning. Just getting Judith into and out of the car and into the hospital made her realise how weak her mum had become in just a short time. Judith leaned heavily on her arm, and walking from the car to the reception area seemed to wear her out completely. She was pale and shaking as they came through the door. ‘Can I just sit down for a moment, dear?’ she said softly. Holly glanced at her watch nervously. Their appointment was in two minutes and she wasn’t sure where in the hospital they needed to be. How was she going to get Judith there? She went to the reception desk, and waited to speak to the harassed-looking woman who was simultaneously talking on the phone, trying to enter details into a computer and arguing with a persistent man who wanted change for the parking and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Holly touched the man on the arm.

  ‘Do you need change for a fiver? Here.’ The doctor had warned her about the parking charges, so she had gone to the bank and got a ton of pound coins in preparation. The man grabbed the coins, thrust his crumpled five-pound note into her hand and thumped off without saying thank you. Holly stepped up to the counter. The woman was now typing at breakneck speed, with the phone wedged between her ear and her shoulder. It was clear from her side of the conversation that she was placing some kind of supplies order. She didn’t look up or acknowledge Holly’s presence. Holly stood there for about a minute, then glanced nervously over at Judith, who was sitting tipped slightly to one side, as if she didn’t even have the energy to straighten up. ‘Excuse me …’ Holly said hesitantly.

  The woman looked up at her as if she had done something unmentionable on her desk. ‘Can you not see I’m busy?’ she said sharply.

  ‘I can, but—’

  ‘Stand behind the line and wait,’ the woman barked. Holly took a step back in surprise. Clearly courtesy was too much to ask. They were now several minutes past the appointment time, and Holly was afraid they wouldn’t be seen. She would feel awful if she had dragged Judith all the way here and they had to go back home again without sorting out the pain regime. She took a step forward again. ‘Look, I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she said firmly, ‘but my mother over there has cancer, and we’re here to attend the palliative-care clinic at the hospice. Could you please just tell me where to go? Or would you like me to fill out one of these staff-assessment surveys?’ There was a stack of cards with tick boxes on the counter, and she picked up the top one and showed it to the woman. The woman took the phone away from her ear and glared at Holly. She opened her mouth to speak, but Holly cut in. ‘And before you accuse me of being rude and abusive, I have been neither. I’ve just asked you to do your job, pleasantly and politely, and to help a sick person.’

  The woman looked long and hard at Holly, obviously weighing up the chances that she would make an enormous fuss if she resisted further.

  ‘The hospice is outside, behind this building. You need to go to the end of that corridor, turn left, take the lift down to the basement, then go out of the exit doors, left at the end of the path and the hospice building will be in front of you.’ Holly looked down the corridor. It looked long. Impossibly long if she had to get Judith to walk down it, and then there were lifts and paths and more to contend with. The woman saw her expression, looked over at Judith and said abruptly, ‘You’d better put her in a wheelchair. They’re over there.’ And then to dispel any notion that she was showing an iota of compassion, she added, ‘Health and safety.’

  A wheelchair. It made sense, but it made Holly’s heart ache. Judith had always been so poised, so straight-backed, and putting her in a wheelchair would make her seem like a sick old woman. It was a realistic solution though. Holly went over to the row of chairs and fetched one, which she pushed over to where Judith was sitting and engaged the brakes.

  ‘Mum, it’s quite far to the hospice, so I thought it might be easier …’ She began to explain, but Judith seemed relieved.

  ‘Thank you, dear. I was hoping you’d get one.’

  She levered herself out of the chair she was sitting in and sat unsteadily in the wheelchair. Holly helped her to get her feet up on the footrests. Her ankles were so thin it was a wonder they could hold her up at all, and her feet, always slim and elegant, were heavily veined and very cold. Holly swallowed hard, brushed her hand over her eyes and straightened up. ‘We’d better get going, we’re late already,’ she said brightly, and began to push Judith down the long corridor.

  They were alone in the lift, and Holly took a moment, standing behind Judith, to take a few deep breaths so she’d be composed and not weepy when they arrived. Judith turned her head slightly and glanced up at her, and Holly managed a small smile. ‘You’re doing a fine job, Holly,’ Judith said quietly. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

  Holly gave her mother’s bird-like shoulder a little squeeze as the lift doors opened.

  The hospice, once they found it, was surprisingly bright and airy, with pot plants and prints of Impressionist paintings on the walls. It didn’t feel overly medical. The receptionist here was the antithesis of the woman downstairs: she smiled at them both warmly. ‘You must be Judith,’ she said. ‘Welcome.’

  ‘I’m so sorry we’re late …’ Holly began.

  ‘Not to worry. We know parking and getting here can sometimes be a bit of a nightmare. Judith, shall I take you through? The nurse is ready to see you, and is this your … daughter?’

  ‘Yes, this is Holly,’ said Judith.

  ‘Holly, maybe you’d like to help yourself to a cup of tea or coffee?’ The woman smiled again, and pointed to where Holly would need to go. She came out from behind her desk to take charge of the wheelchair. Holly hesitated for a moment. Maybe she should go with Judith? But Judith reached back and patted her hand.

  ‘You wait here, Holly dear. I’ll be fine. And I’ll ask the nurse to write everyth
ing down for you.’

  The woman took Judith off into a nearby consulting room. Holly wandered in the direction the woman had indicated. She found herself in an open lounge area, lit by a big skylight. There was a table set up in the corner with tea and coffee supplies and plates of biscuits, and a comfortable-looking seating area with a selection of magazines, books, and toys. In the middle of the room there was a circle of tables where a group of eight people were having a watercolour painting class. Someone had set up a simple still life in the middle of the circle. There was a round stool draped in a cloth, with a loose arrangement of fruit and flowers on it, and the people were all having a go at reproducing the arrangement with varying degrees of success. From the wigs, hats and bald heads in the circle, Holly guessed these were cancer patients. She didn’t want to interrupt, so she edged her way over to the table and made herself a cup of coffee as unobtrusively as possible.

  As she stirred her coffee, one of the students pushed her chair back and said, ‘That’s me. I don’t think Vermeer’s going to be bothered by my incursion into the still-life market any time soon.’

  The woman got up and came over to the drinks table. She smiled at Holly. ‘Could you pass me a custard cream?’ she said. Holly held out the plate of biscuits and the woman took one, hesitated for a second and took another two. She was young, probably only a few years older than Holly herself. She was wearing a brightly coloured knitted hat, and Holly could see from her lack of eyebrows that she had no hair at all. She had a pretty, lively face and a wicked smile.

  ‘Thanks. I’m Erin,’ she said, holding out her hand.

  ‘Holly, hi,’ said Holly, shaking hands. ‘I’m here with my mum …’

  ‘She here for treatment?’

  ‘Yes, they’re trying to sort out her pain meds.’

  ‘Ah, well, she’s come to the right place. They’re awesome here. With the last round of chemo I couldn’t stop throwing up, so I came in and stayed for a few days and they sorted me right out.’ Erin stirred some sugar into her coffee.

  ‘I hope they can help her,’ said Holly, and something about Erin’s normal tone and matter-of-fact attitude made her feel wobbly again. Her hand was shaking so she put down her cup. Erin noticed and looked at her. ‘You must be finding this all very hard. I often think it’s just as difficult for the family and the carers.’

  It was Holly’s turn to stare. ‘How can you say that? I’m not going through any of the things my mum is, or you are. None of the pain, none of the fear …’

  ‘Well, it’s not easy going through it, I’ll give you that,’ said Erin, ‘but the other side can’t be easy either. Seeing it all. Not being able to help. I think it’s often the little things that freak people out. My mum was wonderful and very supportive when I had the mastectomy, but me losing my hair? She hated that. More than I do, to be honest.’

  ‘I had to put my mum in a wheelchair to get her here,’ said Holly. ‘That freaked me out.’

  ‘First time?’

  ‘Yes. The worst part was, she wanted to use the wheelchair. She’s always been so elegant, so genteel, but she sat in the wheelchair like an old, sick person.’

  Holly was very aware that she was pouring out her problems to a woman with cancer … a woman her own age who would quite likely never be an old person. But Erin didn’t seem to have a problem with that.

  ‘You’re going to have lots of moments like that,’ she said, munching on her second custard cream. ‘And you’ll probably cry a lot and panic a lot. But there are also times to laugh. Life goes on, you know, if you’ll pardon the cliché. I always thought that out of suffering comes great art, but I tell you what, I can’t be suffering nearly enough. Look at my painting! It looks like a dog crapped next to that apple!’

  Holly followed Erin to her chair. Her painting was dreadful. So bad that Holly laughed, which delighted Erin.

  ‘Wow, harsh!’ she said delightedly. ‘Everyone’s a critic.’

  ‘What made you take a watercolour class?’

  ‘Oh, this isn’t a class, just a weekly get-together. We come and do an activity of some kind, eat too many biscuits and bitch about our bowels and our sore feet … it’s great! You should have been here the week we had the rookie volunteer who got us to do needlework. We had to make tapestry bookmarks.’

  A few people in the group looked up and laughed at the recollection, and one of the other women said, ‘Needlework? What the hell was she thinking?!’

  ‘Why is that funny?’ said Holly, confused.

  ‘One of the side effects of some of the chemo drugs is a thing called peripheral neuropathy. Basically you lose sensation in your hands and feet,’ Erin explained. ‘So we were all stitching away, and we all kept stabbing ourselves in the fingers without knowing we were doing it.’

  ‘Some of us have clotting problems too,’ a bloke across the circle chipped in.

  ‘It was a bloodbath!’ chuckled Erin. ‘We all thought it was hilarious, but she was mortified. She kept running around trying to patch us all up with gauze and plasters, and apologising like mad.’

  And so it was that Holly found herself giggling with a group of dying people, when the nurse came out to speak to her. She turned around, mortified that she was being so frivolous in this place of heartache, but the nurse seemed to think it was all perfectly normal.

  ‘Holly?’ she said enquiringly.

  ‘Yes, that’s me,’ said Holly, looking around for somewhere to put her coffee cup.

  ‘Dump it on my painting,’ Erin suggested. ‘It can only improve it.’

  ‘We’ve agreed with your mum that she should stay in here for a few days,’ explained the nurse. ‘Come through and see her. We’re just settling her into her room.’

  Holly followed the nurse through to a private room, where she found Judith being helped into bed.

  ‘We’re going to adjust her medication levels and try a few different options,’ explained the nurse. ‘We’ll be trying to get her as comfortable as possible, and set up a regime you can continue with at home.’

  Holly nodded. Judith already looked a little less strained. ‘You okay, Mum?’

  ‘Much better, thank you,’ Judith said. ‘But I don’t have any of my things with me. Could you pop back home and bring me my bathroom things and a clean nightie or two, and my dressing gown and slippers?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And, Holly, when you come back, do you think you might do my nails for me again?’ She managed a smile, and whispered, ‘I think I might be ready for the sparkly purple now.’

  ‘Why, Judith Evans, you devil!’ Holly smiled, and kissed her mum’s soft cheek.

  It took her an hour to drive home, pack everything into a bag and get back to the hospice. When she got there, Judith was fast asleep, and for the first time in weeks, her face was relaxed, as if she was not in pain. Holly quietly unpacked Judith’s things, putting her book and spectacles within easy reach and all of her toiletries neatly in the little private bathroom. She sat quietly by the bed for another half an hour or so, but Judith didn’t wake up. She was getting the rest she so badly needed, so Holly scribbled a quick note to say she had been there and where everything was, and then she headed off.

  It was strange to come home to the empty house. Holly couldn’t help thinking that it wouldn’t be all that long till Judith wouldn’t ever be here again. Even though the morning at the hospice had made her feel a little better and stronger, the quiet in the house was oppressive. She resolved to pack a bag of clothes and go and stay in the flat in East Finchley for the few days till Judith came home again. She’d use the time when she wasn’t visiting her mum to work in the shop and start making her flat a home.

  She fired off a quick text to Miranda to update her on the situation, and she was busy packing her own things into a bag when the doorbell went. No doubt it was another church casserole. She considered not answering at all, but her conscience got the better of her, and she dashed down the stairs. She opened the door to a small, e
legantly dressed man of about seventy. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘Is Mrs Judith Evans receiving callers?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Holly. ‘She’s spending a few days in the hospital.’ She didn’t want to say ‘hospice’. It seemed too scary and final. ‘I can tell her you came by though. Who shall I say …?’

  ‘I do beg your pardon,’ the man said formally. ‘Christopher Benton. I’m an acquaintance of Judith’s from the church.’ He offered her his hand to shake. Holly couldn’t help noticing his hands were soft and well cared for, and that he was very smartly turned out – crisp shirt, neat tie that looked like an old school one, a razor-sharp crease in his trousers and shoes polished to a high shine.

  ‘I’m Holly, Judith’s younger daughter,’ she said. ‘Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?’

  ‘If it wouldn’t be too much trouble,’ said Mr Benton. ‘I would like to hear how Judith is getting on.’

  Holly took him through to the kitchen, which was mercifully clean and tidy. She didn’t think he was a mug sort of man, so she made a pot of tea and got out two of Judith’s china cups and saucers. Christopher Benton stood quietly by, and when she gestured to the kitchen table, drew out a chair, did that trouser-twitching thing old men do to preserve the creases, and sat down, straight-backed.

  They exchanged a little halting small talk about the weather, but Holly could see that Mr Benton (she couldn’t think of him as Christopher) was uncomfortable, and suspected that he was mustering up the courage to say something. She tried to give him an opening. ‘So, have you known my mum long, Mr Benton?’