by Fiona Neill
‘Hi, I’m Nick.’ I smile sympathetically as he shakes my hand. I know what you are going through, I want to tell him.
‘Ed,’ he says, backing towards the door, obviously relieved I have provided the excuse he needed for an honourable retreat. He gabbles something to Rosie about coming back after he has read her draft of the presentation she is due to make during her keynote speech at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
‘Anything you think I should look at in particular?’ He sounds completely flustered.
‘The notes on the PI3K-mutation group,’ says Rosie. ‘Really interesting, Stan.’
She’s got his name wrong but I don’t want to embarrass her by pointing this out so I shoot the guy a sympathetic eye roll.
‘So what can I do for you?’ Rosie turns to me and speaks in the same professionally interested tone she might use with a patient.
Her politeness hurts because it highlights the distance between us. She crosses and uncrosses her legs but doesn’t get up from behind the desk. She looks different but it’s difficult to work out what has changed. Her hair is longer. Possibly a shade darker than I remember. Her face has softened and her skin has lost the sallow pallor it had when Daisy was ill. Or maybe it is simply that her complexion now compares more favourably with Lisa’s.
‘Do you remember that holiday where you insisted we should camp on the marshes and it rained so hard that we discovered Daisy and Max had floated out of the tent on an air mattress? They slept through the whole thing, didn’t they? And then when I tried to make everything better by making bacon sandwiches, I used olive oil shower gel by mistake. So you took the bacon and washed it in the sea, but it was so salty we couldn’t eat it.’ I am taken aback to find myself awash with nostalgia. There aren’t many opportunities for bacon sandwiches with Lisa. Especially now.
‘Are you trying to do some test on the unreliability of flashbulb memories?’ Rosie responds. ‘To spot how our versions of the same event differ?’
She does that disapproving furrowed-brow expression that I used to call her signature look but instead of irritating me its familiarity is endearing.
‘No,’ I say, although a comparison of how divorced couples remember significant moments during the breakdown of their relationship would make for interesting and newsworthy research. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot recently about when the children were small.’ I pause and swallow a couple of times to disguise the catch in my voice. ‘They were good times.’ I remember how we used to have ridiculous competitions over who could remember the most characters from Thomas The Tank Engine during long car journeys and the time Daisy lost the car key in the mud on the marshes in Norfolk and how Max had nightmares about being trapped in a black hole.
‘They were,’ she says in a steady tone.
I wait for her reproach, but there is none.
‘I read your paper about how memory shifts and changes over time in relation to the bombing of the London Underground.’
‘Did you like it?’ Even after all these years, Rosie’s professional opinion still matters to me. I need her intellectual approval. She remains the only woman I know who thinks like a man.
‘I thought it was very interesting that, within a year, half the memories had completely changed,’ she says. She is distractedly opening and shutting the drawers of her desk and peering inside.
‘The purpose of memory isn’t so we remember what happened but what those memories teach us in terms of how we react in the future,’ I remind her.
‘So what have you learnt, Nick?’
She looks up at me and I swear she can see the darkness in my soul. I wince. She knows me too well. I immediately regret fantasizing about the girl in the shop. She smiles and I realize what is different.
‘You’ve had your teeth whitened, Rosie.’ I’m amazed. Unfortunately Rosie never showed any symptoms of vanity when we were together.
She stops smiling. ‘What is it that you want, Nick, because I’m pretty busy?’
I’m saved by the return of the junior doctor. He can’t find the slides that he needs to load on to the computer for Rosie’s presentation.
‘Excuse me,’ says Rosie, getting out of her seat. ‘I won’t be long.’
She’s wearing a pair of jeans that wouldn’t look out of place on Daisy, and I note the junior doctor catching a glance of her arse as he holds open the door for her.
‘Hey!’ I hear the word form in my mouth, but fortunately Rosie and her colleague are too wrapped up in the missing slides to notice. The door closes. I check my phone to see if Lisa has called. She hasn’t. I’m desperate to hear her voice but I don’t want to disturb her in case she is sleeping. Our nights are as broken as they were when Daisy and Max were babies. Lisa finds it difficult to find a comfortable position because her stomach is so swollen from all the juice and she wakes up in the night terrified about what lies ahead. No one should make any decisions at 3 a.m. I tried telling her last night, when she was worrying that Daisy’s awful reaction to the news that we were getting married meant we should cancel. I think we should tell all the children what is going on – especially Rex and Ava, Lisa’s son and daughter – but she is adamant she wants to wait until after we get back from our honeymoon to keep life normal for as long as possible.
Feeling anxious, I get up and pace around Rosie’s tiny office. The outer edge of the linoleum floor is coated with a thin line of greasy dirt where it nudges the wall. The windows are filthy. Books are piled on the floor because there isn’t enough room on the shelves. It never ceases to amaze me how these clever and dedicated medics work in conditions more suited to battery chickens.
Rosie’s bag is lying on the windowsill because there is nowhere else to keep it. I’m touched to see it is the same brown leather designer handbag I gave to her our last Christmas together. Judging by the pockmarked leather and grubby stains on the side it has had a tough life over the intervening years. I remember buying it because it had endless compartments and pockets that I thought would help her become more organized.
I can’t resist a peek inside to see whether it has fulfilled its purpose. But I’m disappointed. There are medical papers muddled with make-up, loose coins scratching a pair of glasses without a case, unopened post and at least two receipts from the same Indian restaurant where I went with Daisy and Max the other night. It shouldn’t surprise me. Rosie is a terrible cook. But still it hurts.
There is a loose bank statement, which confirms to me that her financial situation isn’t quite as bad as Daisy and Max have intimated and she is making some money from private practice. She’s almost certainly solvent enough to take them away in the summer without any handouts from me.
But it is a crumpled brown manila envelope deep at the bottom of the bag that captures all my attention. I take it out and examine the sender’s address on the back and immediately recognize the large confident brushstrokes of Lisa’s script. In my grief-stricken state, I assume it must be for me. Holding it against my chest I decide from now on to keep everything Lisa writes, from text messages to funny notes, because soon she will be gone and all I will be left with are the unreliable memories.
I think about the survivors of the London bombing that I interviewed over a period of five years. At the end, when I presented the results of my painstaking investigation, a few of them became incredibly angry with me for pointing out the inaccuracies in their description of what had happened. They thought I was accusing them of lying. I tried to explain that every time you retrieve a memory there is a re-storage process that means it shifts and changes over time. Even when I played back my interviews with them they couldn’t accept the results of my research. I am determined to avoid this with Lisa by retaining as much physical proof as possible of our relationship.
It’s difficult for people to appreciate how memory is prone to distortion. ‘I know what you did, Dad,’ Daisy once shouted at me during a row in the car after Rosie and I had split up and I was dropping her and Max back home at the end
of their first weekend with Lisa and me. She flew at me after I told them I would always look after their mum. I didn’t challenge Daisy because by that time it was clear she was too ill for reason, even if it wasn’t yet obvious what was wrong. Instead I asked her simply to try to remember where she was when we told her we were getting divorced and when she said the sitting room, instead of the kitchen, I pointed out her inaccuracy. Max backed her up but he was just trying to protect his sister.
Puzzled, I turn the manila envelope in my hands. Why would Rosie have a parcel that is meant for me? There is a mark on the front where the recipient’s name and address have been torn off but no clue to their identity. I look at the date and see that it is postmarked around the time Lisa had her first appointment with Gregorio. This is significant. The seal is broken so I take out the wrinkled letter, note our address in Norfolk on the top right-hand side and start reading. I am taken aback to see that Lisa is writing to Rosie. My dear Rosie, to be precise. I hear Lisa’s voice in my head as she outlines the exact sequence of events leading up to her diagnosis. Place, ongoing activity, informant, own affect, other affect and aftermath, I hear myself mutter as I skim-read the first page. Lisa’s letter perfectly reflects the six stages of a flashbulb memory.
I am filled with compassion and admiration for her. Apart from divorce, she and Rosie have shared every significant life experience with each other for years and death is the ultimate rite of passage. I’m just a little taken aback that she didn’t discuss this with me. I rummage around the envelope and immediately find a photo.
I pull it out. It’s a picture of all of us taken in Norfolk on the last holiday our two families spent together. I don’t remember the exact details of who is in it because I am too upset by the fact that Lisa’s face has been completely disfigured so that I only recognize her from the black leggings and white T-shirt that she is wearing. It’s not simply a few gashes, her entire face has been carefully excised, leaving a perfect white head-shaped space: Rosie has taken a scalpel to her.
For many years I hoped that Rosie and Lisa might resurrect some semblance of the friendship I helped destroy but I realize now this is impossible. Rosie knows that Lisa is dying but she still hates her. There is no hope of reconciliation. I hear footsteps in the corridor and quickly stuff the letter and the photo at the bottom of Lisa’s bag. I never get to read the second page of the letter.
When Rosie comes back in, she finds me sitting in the same chair, scrolling down through emails. I can’t do any more small talk.
‘I have some bad news, Rosie,’ I say. I explain everything in great detail because this is what she would expect, repeating the same phrases in the letter to gauge her reaction. As I speak, Rosie’s body slumps into the cheap office chair with the broken arm, as if she is melting. There is the occasional flash of shiny white teeth as her mouth drops open and she searches but fails to find the right words.
‘I’m so sorry, Nick,’ she says simply, when I finish.
‘I wanted to tell you in person that we’re getting married,’ I say.
The reason I am explaining all this is to demonstrate that, although doctors have a reputation for honesty, Rosie is as capable of dissimulation as the next person. She’s a good actress. I’ll give her that.
5
Daisy
I’m in bed with Kit at Mum’s house when it starts again. We’ve stopped staying at his place because I need to be at home as much as possible to keep an eye on her. It’s been almost a week since she first read the letter and I’m still watching and waiting for her reaction. Mum betrays nothing and I plan only to step in if it looks as though she’s going to see Lisa.
During the week it’s pretty easy to keep tabs on her because she’s at work. But weekends are more complicated. I have explained to Kit that she’s upset because Dad is getting remarried and she’s feeling lonely. It sounds perfectly logical and Kit hasn’t asked too many questions. Besides, he’s closer to his office here and it’s his turn on the sofa in the sitting room at his flat so, all in all, he’s happy about our new arrangement.
Kit is really, really, really understanding, which makes me feel really, really, really bad for not being completely honest with him. He knows nothing about the bad thoughts and the lost years. I appreciate he wouldn’t tell me to get over myself like some people did. It’s more I’m worried it might infect our relationship with bad juju. I don’t want to contradict his opinion of me because I am the best version of myself with him.
The following are qualities Kit believes I possess: 1) I am relaxed, 2) I am resilient, 3) I am cool. And when I first met him I was all these things, which gives me hope that I can be them again, once this problem with Lisa is out of the way.
The sour times start Sunday morning after we have sex. Kit is big into female pleasure – pretty rare in the age of the fuck boy – and I don’t get bad thoughts about sex with him, which is my only piece of luck with the whole illness, especially given the incident that triggered it all in the first place. I’m not going into that now, though, because, for sure, it will make this setback worse.
Anyway, we’re shuffling Spotify when a song by James from the album La Petite Mort comes on. Kit casually mentions something about how weird it is that orgasm is called ‘la petite mort’ when nothing makes you feel more alive. Not long ago, we’d have had a long discussion about this, I would have agreed with him and we probably would have ended up where we began, with his face between my legs. Now I immediately tense, clamping his hand where it’s resting between my thighs, a gesture he misreads for desire.
‘I guess it’s because of that feeling of total disconnection and loss of consciousness … when you think about it, sex and death is a big literary theme,’ he says. He reads a lot for a mathematician.
‘Sex and life,’ I repeat three times in an insistent tone as if I really am involved in the same intellectual debate. He disagrees and starts talking about Romeo and Juliet, Dracula and Victorian literature.
I try to focus on what he is saying, and usually I would have a lot of my own opinions, but the thoughts in my head are louder than the words coming out of his mouth. All I can think about is that mort means death in French. I need to neutralize the word as quickly as possible by saying the opposite word out loud but I can’t remember how to say ‘life’ in French. If I don’t say this then something bad will happen to Mum and Max, and it will be my fault. The ifs, buts and mights are disappearing from my world. An image of Mum, lying motionless, naked and covered in blood, plays out in my mind. At first it’s very impressionistic but the longer I fail to find the opposite word, the more vivid it becomes until I am part of the tableau, holding a mirror over her mouth to see whether she is breathing, while all the time hearing my own breath become more and more irregular. The anxiety is like a fire inside, burning the little oxygen I have left in my lungs. Even though I can hear Mum whistling the theme tune to The Archers on the floor below, I am convinced something awful is going to happen to her. I think of the drawer of kitchen knives and how easy it would be for a burglar to stab her with one. It’s the same old obsession from years ago. I must lack originality.
Kit continues to circle the inside of my right thigh with his fingertip, a sensation that he knows I usually find irresistible. But it’s as if he is touching someone else. I cross my hands over my chest and discreetly tap each shoulder blade three times. Give in to the thoughts and resist the compulsions. I hear the voice of my old therapist, Geeta, in one ear. But the voice in my head is more powerful. Please keep Rosie Foss safe, I say at the end of each set. I do the same for Max. Then I include Kit. This is a new one. There’s a short-lived moment of pleasure as I realize that Kit has become one of the people I care about most in the world followed by the anxiety that with this comes great responsibility for keeping him safe. Eleven threes are thirty-three. It’s weird shit but each repetition makes me feel calmer. All I need to do now is touch an object that belongs to each of the people I love three times and then I have
finished –
‘Are you reciting times tables?’ Kit interrupts.
Shit.
I must have spoken out loud. I shake my head, close my eyes so Kit thinks I’m meditating and start counting all over again from the beginning. But when I finish, the thoughts have only made a half-hearted retreat. I push away his hand with unintended aggression because I’m scared of my inability to regain control.
‘How do you say “life” in French?’ I ask, wriggling away and doing my best to sound completely normal. My voice has that high-pitched tone I get when my breathing is too shallow. Please, please, please don’t let me have a full-blown panic attack in front of Kit. I make a deal with myself that if I get out of this one I will tell him everything. My heart is pounding so hard in my chest that I’m surprised he doesn’t notice. No one’s heart should beat this fast. I’m going to die of a heart attack, and then who will look out for Mum and Max?
‘Why?’ he asks.
‘Just curious,’ I pant inelegantly. My arms are starting to go numb and I’m slippery with sweat. I smooth down my fringe over my forehead so he doesn’t notice. Kit screws his eyes shut with the effort of trying to remember GCSE French vocab. Then at the point where I’m about to give up hope he opens them.