by Fiona Neill
‘Expelianos!’ I say, waving it like a wand. I remember from reading Harry Potter to Daisy and Max when they were little that there is a spell to get rid of illness that would probably be just as effective as Gregorio’s mumbo-jumbo but unfortunately I can’t remember it. Lisa opens her eyes, turns her head towards me and starts to giggle. It’s the best noise in the world. I adore the way her nose always wrinkles and her eyebrows disappear beneath her fringe when she laughs.
‘Please, Niko,’ she giggles. ‘Put your wand away. You’ll put Gregorio off his stride.’
‘Here’s hoping,’ I mutter.
I love the sound of her laughter so much. Before this wretched diagnosis it was so close to the surface and I always felt a burst of self-satisfied pride when I managed to provoke it. Now she laughs less but when she does I savour it all the more, knowing that soon I will lie awake at night ransacking my memory to recall its sound. I walk over to her, trying to ignore Gregorio, and lift a strand of hair that has stuck to her cheek. I kneel down beside her so we face each other and kiss her beautiful lips, closing my eyes for a couple of seconds so she can’t see the tears. I open them when I’m sure I have regained control. She has lost so much weight that her features have become her face. To me she looks lovelier than ever. I could stare at her forever.
‘Darling Lisa,’ I say, trying to keep my voice steady, but instead it sounds ridiculously husky. ‘Sorry I’m late. I was meeting with my team.’
‘Why so gruff, Niko darling?’ she asks, gently stroking the hair on my forearm with her middle finger. Her voice sounds weak. The illness, the lack of sleep, the diet and the endless pit of worry have all sapped her energy. ‘How was your celebration?’
‘Good. Great. Everyone was in very high spirits. I even got a note from the vice-chancellor of MIT.’
‘That’s so wonderful,’ says Lisa.
She is always really supportive of my work, much more so than Rosie ever was. I mean Rosie always professed to be interested, but it was difficult for my research to compete with the drama of the life-and-death decisions she takes every day.
‘How were Ava and Rex?’
‘I spoke to them both. Ava has agreed to fly over for the wedding. Rex isn’t sure but I think he’ll relent. He said he’s meant to be in Glasgow on a course.’
‘Did you say anything?’
She shakes her head. It doesn’t surprise me, although I wish they were a little less self-absorbed. Lisa has decided to postpone telling them what has happened until we get back from our honeymoon, so it doesn’t cast a dark cloud over our wedding, but I can’t help wondering if she is putting it off until she hears back from Rosie. I think about the letter in Rosie’s handbag again and feel a shiver creep up my spine. Bloody Gregorio keeps emphasizing the need to make peace with anyone Lisa has wronged. And I’m terrified what she might tell her.
‘We’re about to start the next part of the treatment,’ says Gregorio seriously. He makes a big show of putting on a pair of surgical gloves to divert our attention. ‘Lisa, please can you roll on to your side.’
I now notice that Lisa is wearing a medical gown that opens at the back, giving him a fantastic view of her wondrously shaped naked buttocks. I feel a stab of jealousy. It’s a feeling I have had many times since her diagnosis, as if the cancer is my love rival, absorbing all of her attention and taking her away from me into the hands of strangers. I can’t compete with its strength. I feel the now-familiar heat of rage creep up through my body. My hands start to shake and I put them behind my back so Lisa doesn’t notice. I’m not asking for sympathy but keeping Lisa’s illness secret from everyone apart from Gregorio has its own pressures.
He pulls a table on wheels towards the treatment bed, behaving as though he is about to embark on something medically incredibly complex, like spinal surgery. He puts one hand on Lisa’s buttock and rests it there for what seems like a lifetime. I have never in my life hit anyone but the desire to split his upper lip is almost overwhelming.
There are some things no man should have to see. I remember Barney telling me how watching Lisa give birth had put him off sex for months. Not a problem I would ever have had with her. But that’s nothing compared to what I’m about to go through. I eye what looks like a large pickle jar filled with thick dark coffee and a narrow plastic tube that will all too soon be inserted into Lisa. I remember what Max told me about infections, and wince.
‘She always has a flat white, Gregorio. One shot,’ I say, conspiratorially leaning over the bed towards him.
I have decided the best way to get her out of his clutches is through humour. Lisa starts giggling again. Her laughter instantly dissolves my rage. Gregorio puts down the tube and gives me a long soulful look.
‘I don’t think you are taking this seriously enough, Nick,’ he reprimands me. ‘The sooner Lisa starts the enema treatments, the sooner she gets better.’
I take a deep breath. ‘Look, I’m a scientist, Gregorio. I have a systematic way of thinking. I believe in testing a theory with factual observation. And I have looked for evidence to support your theory because I really want to believe it but I just can’t find it.’
‘If you don’t believe, the treatment won’t work,’ he says with a beatific expression on his face.
‘Sort of like Father Christmas, then?’
‘Nick,’ warns Lisa.
She banned me from challenging Gregorio at the outset, arguing everyone has the right to hope (true) and that a positive attitude can overcome most adversity (bollocks). Lisa’s love affair with pseudo science and self-help manuals used to be part of her charm, a quirky eccentricity that I adored in part because it underlined how different she was from Rosie. But now I wish I could transpose Rosie’s brain on to Lisa’s body. I note that Gregorio is testing the temperature of the coffee. My options are running out.
‘Exactly what empirical evidence do you have for that statement?’ It’s a question I often pose to my students. I cross my arms defensively.
‘I’ve explained this before,’ Gregorio says impatiently, crossing his own arms. ‘Cleansing the colon removes carcinogenic toxins. It stimulates the liver to produce more bile, which flushes out the toxins from the liver. It is a timeless tradition that dates back centuries.’
‘So is blood-letting and applying leeches but no one is doing that any more,’ I point out.
‘Nick, I don’t think your attitude is helping Lisa,’ he says, stroking his whiskery chin. ‘I understand your rage, Nick. It’s very common. You must be feeling a lot of frustration but it’s very misplaced. I see this a lot with the loved ones of people I treat.’
‘I bet you bloody do,’ I say.
‘It’s called transference, Nick,’ he says smoothly. ‘You are projecting your anger on to me. I am a lightning rod for your repressed emotions.’
‘Please, Nick,’ pleads Lisa. ‘I want to give this a try.’
‘Can everyone stop using my name so many times in a sentence,’ I say, immediately regretting the way I sound like a petulant child.
‘If you like, I could recommend a therapist for you to speak to,’ Gregorio offers.
‘And why coffee?’ I continue, trying to rein in my anger.
‘The coffee grains kill the bad bacteria,’ he says to me, bowing his head. Gregorio always does this when he’s trying to impress his ancient wisdom upon me and deflect perfectly reasonable questions. ‘If your colon isn’t happy then toxins accumulate.’
I have noticed in the past his habit of using black and white adjectives to describe his treatment. Everything is good and bad, happy and sad.
‘I hope it’s organic,’ I joke, but it sounds like a snarl.
‘Organic, hand-picked and Fair Trade,’ he confirms.
The angrier I get the slower he speaks. It’s so bloody passive-aggressive.
‘And how do the coffee grains distinguish the good cells from the bad?’ I ask. ‘Do they do a Jeremy Paxman-style interview first? Or do they do something even more scientif
ic like read their aura?’
His shoulders tighten. He is a man who is unused to having his authority questioned.
‘I think we can both agree, Nick, that the last thing Lisa needs right now is any further tension caused by argument over her treatment. The relationship between stress and cancer survival rates is well validated.’
‘Actually, there is excellent research to show stress plays no important direct role in either developing cancer or survival rates,’ I say. ‘My ex-wife is an oncologist and she can back me up on this.’
‘Oh, Nick,’ says Lisa.
I can’t bear it when she’s disappointed in me.
‘Ultimately, it isn’t what we know, it’s what we believe that is fundamental,’ says Gregorio, bowing his head.
Lisa shoots me a warning glance and I look away, turning towards the window overlooking Harley Street. I distract myself by trying to imagine how it looked in the eighteenth century when women had their tongues cut in half to cure hysteria and people believed cancer was contagious.
‘Perhaps you should get in touch with Rosie,’ I tell Lisa gently. ‘She might be able to give a second opinion. I could speak to her first, if you like. Or we could go and see her together.’ I see her eyelids flutter beneath her fringe for a split second as she weighs up her options and I’m hopeful that maybe she’s going to come clean about the letter. I don’t want there to be any secrets between us.
‘Rosie won’t want to see me. Not after what I did to her.’
It’s a lawyer’s response. It reveals neither the truth nor a lie. Silent tears start to stream down Lisa’s cheeks and soak into the edge of the hospital gown and on to the treatment bed. It’s the first time since the diagnosis that she has broken down in front of me and I find it very affecting and confusing.
Gregorio starts to tell us how it is good to cry because the tears contain toxins.
‘For God’s sake, man, just shut up for a moment!’ I tell him.
Remarkably, he acquiesces.
I sit down on the bed and put my arm around Lisa. Her tears are all the more poignant because in all the time I have known her, she has never done self-pity. It’s one of the qualities I most admire about her. I remember, when we first went public, how some of the mothers at school waged a pathetic vendetta against her, turning their backs on her in assemblies, refusing to return her calls, and Lisa never once flinched. Instead she held her head high and let it all wash over her. When Daisy lost the plot with Ava, Lisa was the person who restored calm to the situation, while the rest of us were losing our heads. Even when Ava and Rex asked to live with their father, rather than with us, Lisa said she could understand their anger and welcomed their decision because it might stop Barney from drinking. Which indeed it did. She is one of life’s true survivors. At least I believe she would be if I could get her out of Gregorio’s clutches and on to a conventional treatment plan.
I wipe away her tears with my thumb, accidentally smearing mascara across her cheek, and make a weak joke about putting on war paint for the battle ahead even though we both agreed at the outset that we didn’t like bellicose cancer metaphors. I should change the subject but I can’t help myself. Lisa would be the first to advise me never to shy away from the difficult questions.
‘Have you tried to communicate with Rosie?’ I ask, tilting her chin towards me so that our faces are almost touching.
She looks into my eyes, holds my gaze and shakes her head. She always was a better liar than me. ‘It wouldn’t be right. Not after all these years.’
‘Your illness changes everything. Rosie might be able to help you.’
‘Don’t you understand, Niko? This is a punishment for what I have done to her.’ She waves her hand across the breast with the hateful lump.
I persist. ‘If you could have five minutes with Rosie, what would you say to her?’ I ask.
‘This is karma, Nick. Look and learn. The truth catches up with everyone eventually.’
She doesn’t mean it to sound like a threat but somehow it does.
‘We fell in love, Lisa. It’s an age-old story. Even Rosie understands that. Cancer is something that happens on a cellular level.’
‘So do you have any questions about the centre in Mexico?’ Gregorio interrupts, sensing victory. ‘They are really looking forward to welcoming you there. They’ve never had a honeymooning couple before. It will be very special. There will be rose petals on the bed and watermelon juice on ice.’
I think for a moment. It’s too irresistible.
‘Do you get your money back if the cure doesn’t work?’
It’s obviously a joke but these guys don’t do humour.
‘I think it would be better if you left us alone to continue the treatment, Nick. Lisa needs all her emotional energy to be focused on her recuperation.’
‘Lisa?’ I ask hopefully.
‘He’s right,’ she says. ‘And haven’t you got to go and meet Daisy and Max to run through their reading at the wedding?’
I’d forgotten that too.
‘Have you got the book with you?’
She has every right to sound exasperated.
‘Yes,’ I lie.
We agree to meet at Liverpool Street Station in a couple of hours so that we can get the train back to Norfolk together.
Feeling pretty deflated, I find a table outside a restaurant just in front of platform nine and type ‘readings for second marriages’ into Google. There are almost a million results, which tells you something about the optimism of human nature. Lisa is insisting that each of our teenage children recites a verse from ‘On Marriage’ by Kahlil Gibran, even though it is the same poem I read at her wedding to Barney.
I’ve done everything I can to put her off but she is as adamant about this as she is about refusing chemotherapy. She says we are the only people who were at her first wedding and that we’ll never find a poem that sums up our relationship so perfectly. She keeps quoting the line about love being a ‘moving sea between the shores of your souls’ and arguing that nothing could be more appropriate for a beach ceremony. I haven’t seen this stubborn side of Lisa since she was married to Barney and at one point last week even considered phoning him up for advice on how to handle her.
It’s difficult to have a rational argument with someone who is dying. I tried one of Gregorio’s favourite methods by suggesting that it would be ‘bad karma’ to repeat the same reading. I spat out the word karma like an olive stone. She responded by telling me that Gregorio thinks the poem perfectly embodies the ‘solemn sanctity’ of our relationship. I couldn’t believe she had discussed it with him. But that’s not all. When Gregorio revealed that he is registered to conduct secular wedding ceremonies she asked him to officiate at ours without even consulting me. So I told her that if cancer is her punishment for what she did to Rosie then Gregorio is mine. She was so upset that I immediately backed down and agreed to her plan.
I look up and scan the crowds milling around the station to see if I can spot Daisy and Max. Daisy is incredibly well read and I’m hopeful she might come up with a good alternative. But given her reaction to the news of our wedding, we’ll probably be lucky if she even turns up. I order a couple of beers for Max and myself and drink both of them.
In the immediate aftermath of the diagnosis, getting married to Lisa had made perfect sense. It seemed to me to be the natural climax of the epic journey we have taken together. I did it all properly: I went to our favourite antiques shop in Norwich and bought a ring and got up early the following morning to head to the beach to write ‘Will you marry me?’ in pebbles on the sand, leaving the ring as the full stop beneath the question mark. I filmed Lisa on my phone as we walked to the edge of the cliff, and as she realized what was going on she turned to me and said, ‘Yes.’
But somehow when she insisted she didn’t want anyone to know that she was ill, the grand romance and heroism of the gesture withered and with it my unerring certainty. That’s the problem with feelings. They can be so
ephemeral. I even deleted the film when I realized I had no one to share it with.
Then the few people we told about the wedding – her children, my children, her ex-husband and my ex-wife – were understandably less than politely enthusiastic. I tried to explain to my father, who is in the early throes of dementia, but he was completely shocked because he had forgotten I had got divorced from Rosie. Lisa’s mother said she wouldn’t come from France if Lisa’s father would be there and Lisa’s father refused to come without his newest wife. Ava said she didn’t want to see Daisy. If I could have told them she was dying perhaps they would have stepped up to the mark, but Lisa said she preferred to run the risk of our wedding day being remembered for the ill humour of our guests rather than her illness. Brave is sometimes a byword for foolish.
I have to go through with it, I tell myself. I have to go through with it.
‘Go through with what, Dad?’ Daisy asks.
Max emerges from the crowd behind her. She bends down to kiss me on the cheek and gives me a quick hug. I didn’t realize I had spoken out loud.
I hold Daisy in my arms until she shakes me off. I am always grateful for her affection because for so many years it was withheld, and it is always strictly rationed. For a while she even used to flinch when I touched her. She has definitely lost weight. Even through her sweater I can feel her upper body is all sharp angles. But I know better than to say anything.
‘Are you having cold feet about getting married?’ asks Max, pulling up a chair beside me and giving me a long hard stare with his strange dark eyes.
Max has always had this unnerving way of instantly assessing a situation and drawing (mostly) the right conclusions. It’s a trait that all the best doctors share. He puts a hand on my shoulder and looks genuinely concerned. He is such a nice kid.
‘No, no, no,’ I say, laughing too long and too hard. ‘Someone wants to interview me about my research. I’m feeling a bit nervous, that’s all.’