by Judy Astley
‘Oh, Dad, while you were at the hospital that mad woman from next door came round. Cathy Thing,’ Imogen said vaguely, waving her pen in the general direction of the garden. ‘She said to tell you the sun’s reflecting from your office roof again and getting in her eyes when she’s doing her yoga.’
Greg shrugged and grinned. ‘What does she want me to do? I can’t move the sun, can I? Heaven and earth maybe, but . . .’
‘She could just salute it,’ Tris suggested. ‘That’s what you do in yoga, right?’
‘We’ll invite her round. I’ll do a Sunday lunch for this Charles bloke of Delphine’s and Cathy can come too. I’m not up to a silly cocktail-type bash, not with Rory the way he is. Lunch, though God knows when . . .’ Jay said as she went off to find suitable hospital outfits for Rory.
‘What Charles bloke? What lunch?’ Greg called up the stairs. Jay closed the bathroom door after her, leaving it to Tris to tell Greg about Delphine’s letter. For now, it was more than enough to contemplate the jumble that tumbled from the airing cupboard the moment its door was unleashed.
First though, she opened the small packet of anti-cellulite patches that she’d brought upstairs with her and sat on the edge of the bath to read the instructions. They were very small, the patches, and, thank goodness, they didn’t smell. She’d imagined going around wafting a potent, mildly medicinal scent of eucalyptus and cloves as if she was treating a bad cold. She was to stick four on each squishy plump thigh every morning and leave them to do their magical thing, choosing a different bit of skin each day. This would be fun – should she circle the bits she’d already done in biro so that she didn’t inadvertently keep applying the patches to the same bit? And if she did would she have a lovely smooth slender circle of thigh that contrasted with the rest of the general blobbiness? And how long would it last? Would she have to wear these things for ever and, if she went to the pool, have people speculating that she was covering up a host of domestically inflicted bruises?
Quickly, she peeled off the first few stickers and applied them to her bottom and upper thighs, stretching the skin slightly as she stuck them on. They felt OK. Better still, they were actually pretty much invisible, so that she had visions of herself hunting for them via the mirror when removal time came. That would be one for Planet Man – perhaps she could get him to make a note of exactly where she’d fixed them in case she needed something to refer to later.
Jay stashed the remaining patches back into her pocket and started the search for appropriate hospital wear for Rory. Somewhere at the back, behind the mismatched towels, long-lost swimming kits and tower of defunct blankets, sleeping bags and worn-out pillowcases kept for their potentially useful lace edgings, there must be something that would get him through a few days in hospital without either mortifying him (classic striped old-man PJs, ‘God, Mum, suppose someone sees?’) or appalling the other inmates (his favourite ‘Yo Muddah-fuckah’ T-shirt).
She would also, while she was up here filling in time before returning to Rory, make an eviction heap of stuff to be thrown away. For once, just once, it would be so satisfying to have the cupboard full of tidy piles of bedlinen all stashed together in colour-coded size order, with little sachets of scented beads scattered among them. So very Delphine, she thought and such a small but fulfilling task that she and her team quite often undertook for the Dishing the Dirt clients but somehow never got round to at home. On your own premises, where you chose the keeping and the chucking, how long could it possibly take? And more to the point, once perfected, how long could it possibly stay like that?
Tasha was waiting outside the school gate. Even from halfway down the tarmac drive Ellie could see she’d got the full face on – her eyelashes must weigh a ton under all that mascara and the eyeliner was loaded so thick she looked like a panda. She’d got her hair clipped way up on top of her head and spiked into place with a scarlet and white beaded scrunchie. It was all pulled back so hard Ellie could swear the skin over her cheekbones was higher and thinner than usual. She must be waiting for a boy. You didn’t make that much effort just to go home on the bus with no-one to impress.
Ellie wasn’t in much of a hurry. There’d be no-one home anyway today, nothing to rush for. She wasn’t going to race back just to do homework and watch the early soaps and listen to Imogen going on about the baby having grown, this week, to somewhere between the size of a bean and a Brazil nut. She sauntered along by herself, wondering if Amanda had gone out by the school’s side door to make a point or if she really had, like she’d said, got to meet her mum and help her do Tesco’s. If it was all about not sitting next to her on the bus that morning, well get over it, Mands.
‘Ellie! Over here, babes! Where you been? I been waiting.’ Tasha pounced on her and took hold of her arm. Ellie felt claimed: claimed and confused. Confused and flattered and a little bit nervy. What did starry Tasha see in her? Ellie could only guess she was to be a stooge for more shoplifting. She didn’t want that. One day they’d be caught, and in the milli-microsecond before the store tec’s hand landed on her shoulder Tasha would have offloaded all her swag from her own bag into Ellie’s. In the brief time before she spoke to her, Ellie had imagined the whole sequence, from the first questioning in the shop’s back room to being taken down the courtroom stairs to start a long and horrible sentence at some dismal young offenders’ institute.
‘You were waiting for me?’ she asked Tasha, deleting the mental image of massive, hard prison-girls beating her up for her chocolate ration.
‘Course. I’m going your way.’ Tasha looked round. ‘What happened to your brother? I didn’t see him around today. Not in lunch, not in the corridors. I usually see him.’
‘What, Rory?’ Why did Tash want to know? Rory was so not interesting. ‘He didn’t come in,’ she told her. ‘I got a text from Dad, Rory’s gone in the hospital to have his appendix out.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll be in school for a couple of weeks.’
Tasha stopped in the middle of the pavement and turned to Ellie, her face huge-eyed with drama-queen shock. ‘His appendix? What, like having an operation? So why are you here? Shouldn’t you be outside the operating thingy, waiting for when he’s awake, see if he’s OK?’
‘I dunno. I don’t think so.’ Tasha was being a bit over the top. Still, probably better this than robbing River Island. ‘I rang Mum, she just said he got really ill in the park and some women got him an ambulance. She said he’ll be all right, your appendix, well it’s just like a tooth or something.’
‘An ambulance! Wow, poor Rory!’ Tasha’s eyes were glittery. ‘Why didn’t you say something earlier? You could’ve told me in Maths.’
Ellie laughed. ‘But you don’t even know him!’
‘No, but . . .’ Tasha dashed forward suddenly, pulling Ellie with her so she almost fell. ‘We’ll go and see him! Now! Which bus is it? The 36 I think, right? Come on Elle!’
Ellie had never seen Tasha move so fast. She trailed behind trying to get her to stop. She didn’t want to go to the hospital. She’d hated it when old Auntie Win had been in for what she called ‘Down There’ problems and kept making big eyes at Mum whenever she said things Ellie wasn’t supposed to understand. Medical stuff made her feel queasy – all those dangling bags of liquid everywhere and people lying around looking like they’d already died and with needles sticking out of them and the thought that someone might be sick.
‘Tash! Stop, I’ve got to go home. Mum wants me to start supper.’
‘Supper? Ooooh aren’t you posh?’
Ellie blushed, mumbling, ‘Tea, dinner, supper. Whatever you call it, I’ve got to start cooking it.’ Well it was almost true, she’d have a look in the freezer, see what was mike-able.
This was a big mistake. She’d now have to go with Tash to the hospital or next thing, Tash would come to the house and tell everyone about her dad’s mega Mercedes and the glass staircase. In fact the glass nearly-everything: shelves in the sitting room, kitchen table, the thing
the television sat on, the pale blue basin in the downstairs loo, the mad roof extension, Dad’s office down the garden. Where had he got this thing about glass? Did you have to have it if you were an architect? Why couldn’t he have had a thing about bricks or wood, then at least no-one could look up your skirt when you walked up the stairs.
‘I’m really surprised you don’t want to be with him. Don’t you care about your brother?’ Tasha sounded slightly menacing now. She was standing very close with her hands hanging straight by her sides. Ellie could smell her cherry-mint bubblegum and felt conscious that she was between Tash and the road where school-run traffic was swooshing past, thick and fast. Big cars, huge, heavy four-wheel drives full of kids off to piano lessons, t’ai chi, extra maths, ballet . . . One push . . . But Tasha wouldn’t do that, not while there was something she wanted; but there’d be other times when you couldn’t be so sure.
‘OK, OK, we’ll go down there and see how he is. Don’t know why you want to come though.’
That so wasn’t true any more, Ellie knew as she stamped off towards the bus stop. Tasha fancied Rory. Vile thought. Brothers weren’t for fancying. Still, that shouldn’t last long. One look at Rory slobbed out in a hospital bed wearing one of those gowns that looked like a giant bib and Tasha would soon go off him. And she’d leave her alone again. Right now that really felt like something to look forward to, even though that weird adoration feeling from the thieving day was still there deep down.
‘Good thing I phoned Imogen, otherwise I don’t suppose I’d have heard about it till he was home again. I am his grandmother, you know.’ Audrey was waiting in the corridor outside Ward D3 and accosted Jay the moment she and Greg stepped out of the lift.
‘Oh Mum, there’s no need for you to be here. I don’t suppose Rory will feel much like seeing visitors, not today.’
‘Well you’re here. He’ll have to see you. And it’s not as if I’m not family.’ Audrey sniffed. ‘Win drove me, I was too upset. She’s in the loo, powdering.’
‘Oh God, both of them,’ Greg muttered, making Jay want to giggle. She hoped they’d behave. Win and Audrey shared a deep fondness for hospital premises and considered it only generous-spirited good manners to strike up intimate conversations with every ward resident. They were never happier than when a friend of theirs went in for some op or other and they got the chance to catch up on current medical procedures. They’d been particularly delighted a few months previously with Win’s dog-walking companion Molly, who’d explained in a loud whisper that the endoscopy she was having was so named because the camera was to be inserted into the end of her. Which end, Jay had managed not to ask.
As they went into the ward Jay could see that she and Greg were not the first of Rory’s visitors. Ellie, to Jay’s surprise, was already there, leaning on the end of the bed, picking at the skin round her thumbnail and looking bored. In what Jay couldn’t help thinking of as the Chief Visitor spot, up at the head end and on the only chair, was a blonde girl, made up as if for serious party-going and gazing without blinking at Rory’s face. Surely not a girlfriend of his, Jay thought. And if so, possibly not for long. The sight of Rory waking up would certainly put anyone off.
Rory’s eyes were closed but he looked reassuringly pink and healthy – or at least Jay thought he did, until it crossed her mind that being a bit flushed might, according to something she’d once read, be due to inhaling too much of a particularly dangerous gas. She wished she could recall which one.
‘I don’t think he’s allowed so many visitors at once,’ she warned Audrey, who, with Win, had followed her and Greg so closely into the ward she could almost feel their breathing on the back of her neck. It was like being trailed by a pair of eager wolfhounds.
‘Oh they won’t mind. Not after a nasty operation,’ Win said, parking her vast handbag on Rory’s feet.
‘Oy whoozat?’ Rory opened his eyes and glared at his great-aunt.
‘Poor kid probably thinks he’s died and gone to hell,’ Greg whispered to Jay.
‘Are you all right? How do you feel?’ Jay asked him, taking his hand. Rory slid his hand out of hers – a good sign, she thought. Only a Rory who was close to giving up the ghost would allow his mother to touch him fondly in public.
‘’M’all right. Tired.’
‘No change there, son,’ Greg commented.
‘Why’re you all here? Have I got Complications?’ he asked, suddenly interested and opening his eyes properly. He looked at the blonde girl beside him with a small recoil of surprise as if he didn’t know who she was, causing Jay to worry about what the anaesthetic had done to his memory. What else had it obliterated, his (already fragile) grasp of basic maths? Every French verb he’d half-learned?
‘No, no, you’re fine. We thought we’d just come and say hello, make sure it all went well,’ Jay told him. ‘We won’t stay long. Is there anyone about? Anyone medical we could ask?’ She looked around. It was all very quiet in the eight-bed room. Two beds were vacant, neatly made up for the next incumbents. Someone lurked behind a Daily Telegraph and a couple of ancient men lay back on their pillows, headphones on. There was no-one of Rory’s age to enjoy his recovery with. She was surprised they hadn’t put him in a children’s ward, where he’d grumble about being with little kids but at least (presumably) not risk the possible trauma of the patient alongside him dying in the night.
‘We’ve brought you some things.’ Win leaned over the bed and patted Rory’s forehead. ‘Some raspberry jelly. I know it’s hard to eat when you’ve had an op.’
‘No it’s not, not for an appendix,’ Audrey argued. ‘You’re thinking of tonsils. I’ve brought you a pack of cards. You can’t beat Patience for passing the time when you’re stuck in bed.’
‘And it’ll take your mind off what the others . . .’ Win cut in looking around the room. ‘What they’ve got wrong.’ She made a face at Jay then murmured, ‘Some of them might have prostrate . . . He doesn’t need to get involved with any of that at his age.’
The blonde girl giggled and Win glared then turned her attention back to Rory. ‘And don’t listen to your gran; a jelly is always nice. Young people like jelly. My Delphine always did, especially with her appendix. I used to make it whenever hers grumbled. You remember, don’t you Jay?’
Jay did. Delphine had been, as her mother had boasted, a martyr to her grumbling appendix. Audrey had been dismissive, asking why Delphine couldn’t just have indigestion like everyone else, why did she have to dress it up with a fancy name. That complaining appendix had been cosseted and coaxed all through Delphine’s childhood. Every morning – and it now came back to Jay as clearly as if it was last week – Win had got up at dawn (or ‘before God’ as Audrey had scathingly put it) to make Delphine’s muesli for her (nothing so simple as opening a packet) so it was ready on the table before school and with plenty of time for proper digesting after. She remembered the daily refrain from Win: ‘Have you been, Delpheen?’ Jay and her sister April used to sing it at her as a tease.
Whenever Jay had stayed overnight and witnessed the palaver of the process, it had amazed her that anyone could go to so much trouble for a bowl of cereal. Every morning Win would mix up a selection of nuts and and whole oats, carefully measured from glass storage jars (kept out of harmful direct sunlight) with a copper scoop. She’d peel and chop a scarlet apple (never a Granny Smith: too sour) and add dried fruits and ripe banana and, in summer, strawberries picked from a planter which was kept close to the back door and covered with green net and flapping silver streamers to keep the birds off. Then she’d stir the whole lot together with gluey buttermilk that had been out of the fridge for at least an hour to make sure the chill was off and the state of Delphine’s delicate appendix wouldn’t be compromised.
‘I’ve done plenty for you as well, dear,’ she’d said to Jay. Now, remembering, Jay felt ashamed at her lack of graciousness at the time. ‘Yuck no!’ she’d yelled, backing away, queasy at the sight of the fatty buttermilk. ‘Haven’
t you got any Weetabix?’
Delphine had looked at her with something too close to scorn. ‘Weetabix? Bought cereal?’
‘Yes. It’s what I like. And with proper milk,’ Jay had retaliated, brave for once and defensive that her own family’s breakfast habits were being criticized.
‘You should try this, dear, while you’re here,’ she remembered Win insisting, firmly sitting her at the table in front of a dreaded bowlful of Delphine’s concoction. ‘Especially with this lovely buttermilk. You could do with a bit of fattening up.’
My, thought Jay, that was a long time ago. How she’d love to hear someone say that about her now.
SEVEN
Shape-Shakes
He hadn’t made a very good start, this Charles bloke of Delphine’s, Jay decided as she read the brief, typed note that accompanied the keys to his apartment. He could have rung the bell, introduced himself and come in for a chat. That way they could have fixed a date for the as-demanded-by-Delphine lunch. Just pushing the envelope through the letterbox and buggering off without so much as a hello didn’t exactly make for the best impression of friendliness. Imperious, that’s the word that comes to mind, she thought, im-per-i-ous. Not unlike Delphine herself, come to that, so at least the two of them had something in common. Where her letter had been bossily instructive about party-giving, this one contained a businesslike list of cleaning requirements and a request for a thorough all-areas blitzing to be done on any one of half a dozen possible dates between now and the end of the month, when Delphine would arrive to set up home with him and his immaculately turned-out cupboards. It was probably better done later rather than sooner, Jay decided, giving Delphine less opportunity to run her fingers along radiator edges and scoop up a triumphant smear of dust.