Do No Harm

by L. V. Hay

  ‘Just keeping Lily company.’ His wife’s friend’s tone was airy, nonchalant. Like she belonged there. Or worse, like she had replaced him…

  This is still my house, he thought.

  Sebastian looked around the room. Lily was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Denny. The whole place was still. He noted the dishes in the sink, on the countertop. A selection of takeaway boxes balanced on a pile of recycling that had not been put out. The washing machine was full of wet clothes. Lily wasn’t usually this sloppy. Through the skylight, the grey light of another wet British summer. Rain beat on the glass. September was around the corner.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Just popped out. Be back soon.’ Triss flicked through a magazine at the kitchen table. She was acting as if she owned the place, stretching both her long legs out across the kitchen chairs.

  Sebastian reached out, knocking her legs from the chairs. She dipped forwards, surprised, almost overbalancing and falling. She regarded him, eyes blazing.

  ‘Don’t get too comfortable, will you?’ he said.

  Triss cocked her head at Sebastian. She smiled. ‘Worried, are we?’

  Sebastian chose his next words carefully. ‘Why would I be worried?’

  Triss sat back in her chair and folded her arms. ‘You tell me.’

  Irritated, Sebastian turned his back on her and swept through to the living area. He ignored her as she called after him.

  ‘Cor, touchy, aren’t we!’

  He saw Triss’s things scattered on the sofa: her bag, her duvet, a pillow. But that could be just for show. He marched out into the hallway, up to the second storey. He cast an eye over the bedroom he was supposed to be sharing every night with Lily. Everything looked in the right place. There was none of Triss’s stuff up here: none of her clothes on the floor, not even so much as a stick of unfamiliar deodorant on the dressing table.

  Sebastian sat down heavily on the made bed, head in his hands. He was being ridiculous. Again. Triss was Lily’s best friend. That was all. He was letting Maxwell’s comment from the day he hit him get inside his head.

  After forty minutes of waiting, Sebastian gave up and went back to his mother’s. As he walked up to the front door he found it was ajar. He was certain he’d shut it behind him when he left.

  Someone else had been here in the short time he was out.

  Dread pierced through him as a number of different scenarios sped through his brain. Burglars? Had Fran been taken ill, suddenly? Maybe she’d had to call an ambulance, while he was gone?

  Sebastian checked his phone, expecting to see a missed call. Nothing. The anxious flutter in his chest calmed. Maybe Fran had just answered the door to the postman, then forgotten to close it properly. He’d noticed she’d been less focused than usual. Maxwell had warned them all of this: ‘chemo brain’, he’d called it. He’d said forgetting things, or even doing mad things, was a common side-effect of the drugs, not to mention the stress.

  ‘Mum?’ Sebastian called as he went inside.

  Nothing. Sebastian moved swiftly through the hall. As he made it into the living room, his panic renewed its surge: the room was empty. The curtains were drawn, even the long ones over the patio window. The long swathe of fabric wafted towards him: the door to the garden behind it was open. Sebastian could smell rain, mown grass and earth.

  Sebastian floundered against the long curtain, almost wrenching it off the pole in his hurry to make it outside. He was certain he would find his mother on the wet grass, collapsed. The rain still pattered down, less heavy than earlier, though it pasted itself to his thinning hair in moments.

  The small back garden was deserted.

  ‘Mum!’

  As Sebastian turned back into the living room, Fran’s surprised features swam into view on the stairs beyond. She moved slowly, her second foot joining her first on each step. She seemed like a woman twenty years older. She stopped halfway down.

  ‘What on earth are you bellowing about?’ she said, peering at him through the bannister posts. ‘And why are you back so early?’

  Her skin seemed even more translucent, as if she was slowly beginning to disappear. A blue scarf was wrapped tight around her head, the ties of the bow at the back trailing over one shoulder. It had said in the medical literature Maxwell had given them that her hair would start to drop out approximately two weeks after her first chemo treatment and sure enough, Fran had reported hers was thinning, even coming away in the hairbrush. Sebastian had comforted her as she’d presented a clump of it to him a few days earlier.

  ‘I was worried when you weren’t on the sofa,’ he said, relief taking hold of him: a warm sensation that filled him head to foot, making his fingers and toes tingle. ‘And the front door was open.’

  He strode forwards, into the hallway. He joined his mother on the stairs and threw his arms around her. She stiffened, surprised at his uncommon show of affection. Then she relaxed, allowing him to embrace her fully.

  ‘I must have left it open. Forgetful, you know. And don’t you worry, I’m not going anywhere just yet,’ she said.

  Thirty-four

  ‘You just missed Sebastian. He was in a right mood.’

  I felt irritation work its way through me as I entered the kitchen to find Triss still seated at the kitchen table where I’d left her nearly an hour and a half earlier. Denny trailed by my side, his body uncomfortably close in the muggy August heat, his head under my elbow. Thankfully, he’d stopped crying now. His high-pitched wail all night had set my teeth on edge. I felt like I’d been awake for years.

  ‘Why was he in a mood? Didn’t you tell him we were at the doctor?’ I ripped open the paper bag from the pharmacy and took out the bottle of amoxicillin prescribed for Denny’s ear infection. I drew the medicine into the syringe provided.

  ‘Yeah.’ Triss looked up at me from her magazine, then her brow furrowed as she reconsidered her answer. ‘I think so, anyway.’

  ‘Well you either did, or you didn’t.’ I tried to keep the exasperation out of my tone as I presented the syringe to Denny. He screwed up his face in a scowl, turning his nose up at the antibiotics. Weariness filled my bones like concrete.

  ‘I did. I’m sure I did.’

  I took my phone from the countertop where I’d left it charging while we were out. No messages or missed calls. A pang of irritation and hurt bloomed. Sebastian could at least have sent me a text when he heard Denny was ill. It was like he could only concentrate on his mother at the moment.

  But then I caught myself. It was understandable. His mother was dying. Denny was not. But Denny was just a child. No! I had to pull myself together. Things were hard for everyone. And I could’ve sent him a message to tell him about Denny. I tapped one out now:

  Sorry I missed you, doctor took forever. Denny OK. See you later? XXX.

  Triss leaped up from the table, giving Denny a bright smile. ‘C’mon soldier. Take your medicine for your mum.’

  ‘Don’t want to.’ Denny’s lip jutted out.

  ‘Do you want your ear to fall off?’

  I nearly dropped the syringe. ‘Triss!’

  ‘What? Could happen. How do you know it won’t?’ Triss winked at me. ‘I get it, it’s horrible. But if you take that icky stuff, I’ll buy you some sweets. How about it?’

  ‘I don’t want him eating all these sweets…’ I began, but I knew I was already losing the battle.

  ‘Let’s get his ear sorted. Then we can fix his teeth if we need to.’ Triss took the syringe from me and advanced on Denny. ‘Now, open wide…’

  His medicine taken, we put a DVD on for Denny and he lounged on the sofa for the rest of the afternoon, under his Batman blanket, his expression morose. Finally, around five, he fell asleep.

  With him comfortable, I found myself suddenly irritated by the state of the kitchen and began cleaning up. Triss perched on her stool and scrolled through her various feeds on her phone as I tidied and wiped around her.

  ‘So, any news on how the mother-
in-law is doing?’ Triss asked.

  I’d seen Fran the day before, taken her some flowers. She’d seemed stalwart and brave, but also vulnerable and sad, just like my own mother had all those years ago. ‘She seems okay. But it must take a toll on your body, right? Chemo, I mean.’

  ‘Well, it’s essentially poison, isn’t it?’ Triss’s expression was grim.

  A picture of my mother flashed into my head – in the wingback chair in the bay window of our house. She spent a lot of time in that chair, watching the world go past. Red figured a lot in memories of my mother from that time: the curtains; the buses that swept by outside; the postbox on the corner of our street, all visible from her vantage point. And the red beanie hat she’d wear that accentuated her pale skin, the wide white expanse of her forehead, her eyes seeming too big for her head.

  I’d come straight home after school to show her my pictures, or read with her, resting my head on her bony lap. I realised now that I could barely remember Mum healthy. In the vast majority of my recollections of her, she was ill.

  As this thought fluttered through my mind, I saw my mother’s face move away from her window, to look at me, dead-on. Her moon-like face drew me further into the memory and I felt an irritating niggle in the back of my head, just like when I attempted to leave the house, but was struck by the notion that I might have left an appliance on. What could it be?

  ‘Lil?’ Triss’s voice crashed into my daydream.

  I blinked, brought back down to earth.

  ‘Someone’s at the door,’ she laughed.

  I reached over and pressed the intercom.

  ‘It’s me.’

  I raised my eyes towards the skylight and the fast-approaching dusk beyond. Only Maxwell was arrogant enough to announce his presence like that. I said nothing in reply, but pressed the button again. I heard the front door open, then his heavy, swaggering footfall on the stairs.

  ‘Evening,’ he said as he appeared at the top of the stairs. He leaned against the top of the bannister, clocking Triss lounging at my kitchen table. He nodded to her. ‘Beatrice.’

  Triss attempted to give him the side-eye, but I noted that she was fingering the silver chain around her throat.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, hands on my hips. Maybe he thought cosy takeaway dinners were going to be a regular thing now.

  Maxwell raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘It’s my night to have Denny…’

  I groaned. In all the palaver, I’d forgotten. ‘Denny’s ill. He’s been up all night. Sorry.’

  I braced myself for Maxwell’s anger at being let down, but he was uncharacteristically sympathetic. ‘Don’t worry. I know how stretched you are with … everything. Can I…?’ He indicated the sofa, where he’d now spotted Denny asleep.

  I nodded.

  Maxwell wandered over to the living area, his face softening as he took in his son, bundled up under his blanket. When he looked up at me I couldn’t help but be touched by the fatherly concern in his eyes.

  ‘He’s fine. Just an ear infection,’ I found myself reassuring him. I felt unreasonable all of a sudden. Perhaps Maxwell wasn’t all bad. I must have seen something in him once, after all?

  ‘Can I put him to bed?’ He hovered over Denny, his strong arms ready to pick him up.

  Out of habit, I almost said no. But Maxwell was strong enough to carry Denny to his bed, without disturbing him. Which, in turn, meant I might get a good sleep, after the torture of the previous night. Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time Maxwell had done such bedtime duty that week.

  ‘Sure. I’ll turn his bed down.’

  Maxwell scooped up Denny, who murmured in his sleep, opened one eye, saw his father, smiled, then dropped off again.

  ‘He’s still in his clothes,’ Triss observed from the kitchen table.

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  I walked ahead of Maxwell and opened Denny’s bedroom door. I pulled back his duvet and Maxwell carefully laid our son down on the bed. It creaked. We both winced at the sound, seemingly loud in the quiet bedroom. But Denny did not stir. Next, I undid the drawstring of his shorts and pulled them down. I balled them up and chucked them towards the wash basket. They went in first time, like a basketball hoop.

  Maxwell smiled. ‘You’ve done this before.’

  Denny stretched out on the bed in his T-shirt, pants and socks. Then he turned over onto his front and buried his face in the pillow. I pulled the duvet up to his shoulders.

  ‘Night, night,’ I whispered, kissing the top of his head.

  I straightened up and Maxwell and I regarded our sleeping son for a moment.

  Maxwell’s voice was wistful as he broke the silence. ‘You’re such a good mother. Denny is lucky to have you.’

  I looked up, surprised. Maxwell had never complimented my parenting skills before, even in the years we were married.

  ‘We were happy once, weren’t we?’ he said.

  As our eyes met, I thought I saw something shimmer in his. Apology? Regret? I couldn’t decide. I sighed. All of this crap had been so unnecessary. I noted all his usual bluster was gone and there was a vulnerability in his expression that in an instant transported me back nearly a decade. I saw myself in bed, waking up from a marathon sex session. Shirtless and newly showered, Maxwell was presenting me with a breakfast tray, a little box next to my eggs Benedict, the same uncertainty in his eyes as I saw before me now:

  ‘Marry me?’ he’d said back then.

  I’d opened the box to find a ring he’d had made for me. He knew I didn’t like diamonds – they reminded me of the one on my mother’s gaunt finger. So he’d designed me one in white gold, with a pink sapphire. Pink was still my favourite colour, even though the ring had long since been returned.

  ‘Of course I will!’ I’d squealed, throwing my arms around his neck.

  Standing over our son’s bed now, I felt a sharp pang of sorrow that it had turned out so badly.

  From the doorway came two short, sarcastic barks.

  ‘Well. Isn’t this cosy?’ Triss said, observing Maxwell.

  I was torn: I was pleased to have her support before things got awkward, but irritated Triss had thought I needed rescuing. What did she think would happen – that I’d let Maxwell jump my bones with our kid in the room?

  I painted on an automatic smile. ‘I’ll call you when he’s better,’ I said to Maxwell.

  He seemed to deflate, shooting a look at Triss. ‘Sure,’ he said.

  I saw Maxwell out and returned to the living area to find Triss now splayed across the sofa, some reality show on the TV. On the coffee table was the bottle of good red I’d been saving for the weekend, plus two glasses. I was both annoyed by her presumption and relieved she’d opened it already.

  Triss poured, then held up one of the full glasses. ‘Here’s to new men,’ she said.

  We clinked glasses.

  Thirty-five

  ‘Have you tried turning it off, then turning it back on again?’ As ever, Sebastian sounded distracted at the other end of the line.

  I counted to ten again. The landline to my ear, I swept a finger across the useless phone screen. Denny had dropped it on the bathroom tiles that morning.

  ‘Of course I have! The swipe function won’t work, either.’

  Though it was not smashed, the phone was unresponsive. On it was the vacuous, faraway look of some YouTuber, frozen mid-rant. It was not someone I recognised, but then I’d grown up in the eighties with four channels and no internet.

  Sebastian sighed. ‘Bring it over, I’ll see what I can do.’

  I looked at the calendar on the wall. It was the last Tuesday in August, a chemo day. Sebastian had told me he planned to escort his mother to the Cromwell and sit with her throughout the treatment, whether she liked it or not.

  ‘Bring it to the hospital?’

  ‘No. We’re at the house.’

  ‘How come? It’s Tuesday.’

  ‘I’ll tell you when you get here.’

  I st
rode through to the living area where Denny was working hard on a drawing. Triss was gathering her stuff together, shoving dirty clothes into her rucksack. She’d more or less become a permanent fixture over the past few weeks. I’d given up trying to send her home to her cramped, damp flat on the other side of town. And besides, I’d been grateful for some adult company, if Triss could be counted as a real adult.

  ‘Can you keep an eye on Denny?’

  Triss froze. ‘Sorry, I would, but … I’ve got a … a thing.’

  I noticed she had a make-up compact in her hand; she’d put on lipstick. Triss only ever wore make-up on dates, and it was barely midday.

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘What’s going on?’

  Triss looked so stricken, I burst out laughing.

  She smiled, relieved. ‘Look, it’s just a blind-date thing, off that app I use. I’m meeting him for lunch, scoping him out. I can rearrange, no problem.’

  ‘No, no! It’s fine, don’t worry. I’ll take Denny with me; he could do with the fresh air, anyway.’

  ‘Don’t want to go out,’ he mumbled, choosing another coloured pencil.

  ‘We’re going to get your phone fixed.’ I indicated the clock on the wall. ‘Five minutes: teeth and shoes, please.’

  Getting off the bus, we cut through the parkland by the side of Stew Pond, crossed the busy, tree-flanked road near the massive green WELCOME TO SURREY sign and slipped into a cul-de-sac of more modern builds, all red brick and sandstone. Just beyond the housing estate was a small, green copse of trees. Five tall, white, palatial homes were built like a toadstool ring around an ancient oak tree. Fran’s was the nearest. The oak itself was dead, hollowed out by centuries of rot caused by the rain and wind. It was an aweinspiring sight, held up by a single baluster, to stop gravity claiming the ancient tree.

  Sebastian looked strained as he opened the door and ushered us in, taking Denny’s broken phone from my outstretched hand before it was forgotten.

  ‘All right, mate?’ Sebastian’s face lit up at the sight of Denny, but he just got a shy, tight-lipped smile in return. ‘We’ve got some chocolate biscuits in the living room.’