by Lucy Dillon
She’d framed the photograph well: he was plumb centre of the shot, his shirt neck open at the perfect angle to show the hollows either side of his throat. Gina hadn’t noticed it in real life but as she stared at the photo she noticed the two tanned indentations, shadowed on his smooth skin, framed by the checked cotton. There was something very masculine about them. The bones under the skin again – delicate but strong.
‘Good picture,’ he said, leaning over to see, and she caught a whiff of the smell that had seemed so familiar the first time they’d met outside. It was like something she already knew. Probably just his shampoo, she told herself.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
The following day, Stuart rang the doorbell at dead on six o’clock, and Buzz darted into his basket in the corner of the kitchen, where he’d been hiding while she hoovered the flat.
‘Don’t worry, no one’s coming to get you,’ said Gina, and he flattened his ears, in a way she could now differentiate from his scared ear raise.
She pressed the intercom buzzer to open the front door, and rested her knuckles on her hips as she surveyed the sitting room. It would be a shock to Stuart: this was the emptiest, whitest room she’d ever lived in. Apart from the sofa and footstool, only the bright blue vase filled with red tulips splashed colour onto the paleness. There were a few boxes left to sort through but she’d shut them in the bedroom, out of the way. The last thing she wanted was for Stuart to start scratching through them now.
Importantly, though, Gina’s flat felt like home. The sorting agony had been worth it. Everything here was hers. Not theirs. Hers.
She heard his feet bound up the stairs. Then he rapped three times on the door. Even though she was prepared, Gina suddenly felt nervous: this was the first time she’d seen him since they’d moved out of Dryden Road.
She opened the door and there he was, in his football-training kit, a bag slung over his shoulder.
‘Hey.’
Gina didn’t want to, but she couldn’t stop her eyes sweeping Stuart’s face for changes: his tawny hair was a little longer than she remembered, and there was a definite beard along his jaw, but otherwise he was completely as normal. He didn’t look a lot different from the twenty-seven-year-old she’d met at Naomi’s. Which was annoying. The least he could do, after what he’d put her through, was look as if he’d had a few sleepless nights. Instead, he had a faintly smug glow about him.
She forced a smile, and hoped it didn’t look too tense. ‘Hello. Come in.’
‘Thanks for letting me come round,’ said Stuart, politely, as he passed her, gazing at the white walls and the paintings she’d hung. He stopped at the window and stared at the vase as if he couldn’t quite place it, then turned back.
Gina decided that she didn’t like the beard: it made him look more football manager than star striker.
‘I’ve put everything in there,’ she said brightly, indicating the box on the coffee table. ‘Including the Murano bowls.’
‘Oh?’ He raised a sarcastic eyebrow. ‘The bowls your solicitor thought you couldn’t find?’
Rory had been right, thought Gina. Financial settlements didn’t bring out the best in anyone. Rise above it.
‘I found them,’ she said, simply. ‘I thought about keeping two, and giving you two, but in the end I decided they should stay together, and that you should have them as a happy memory of that holiday in Venice.’
Stuart regarded her suspiciously. ‘Right.’
‘Because that was a happy time,’ Gina pressed on. ‘It was a nice holiday, and the bowls will always remind you of that afternoon. Seeing Venice for the first time, and eating ice cream in St Mark’s Square and you . . . haggling.’
Stuart had started to look mollified, but he did a double take at that. ‘Hang on. You’re rewriting history again. You were mortified about that. You gave me a right earful about haggling, even though everyone knows you’re supposed to. It was in the guidebook,’ he added, with a trace of an old grievance.
Gina’s determination to be gracious stuttered. Stuart always picked up on the tiniest things, then refused to let them go. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But when I look back on it now, I realise that it was very you. You were determined to get the best price and you did. I always admired your tenacity . . .’
You’re talking about him like he’s dead.
‘. . . the way you never take no for an answer. It made all the difference when I was ill.’ She glanced up and saw Stuart’s expression had changed: he looked touched. She felt a rush of generosity. ‘I want you to have the bowls, and when you use them, I want you to remember that we did have some happy times together. And,’ it only occurred to her as she was saying it, ‘that I was truly grateful for your stubbornness when it really mattered.’
This is about sending something into the atmosphere, she told herself. Like Rachel said, maybe I need to let things happen, instead of trying to control it all.
Stuart seemed at a loss. He’d obviously come prepared for an argument.
‘Um, thanks. That’s a nice thought.’ He reached into the box and took one out; Gina had encased them in bubble-wrap, stacking them neatly together. Stuart undid one and held it up to the light, so the tiny dots of coloured glass shone like boiled sweets melted in sugar.
Gina had taken photos of the lights dotted along the canal at night but they hadn’t really come out. The memory she’d wanted to capture was the promising dusk, the smell of grilled meat and the canals in the heavy night air. The oldness of the place. The bowls made her remember that.
‘I’d forgotten how nice they were, actually,’ he said, and glanced at her, his expression more like the easy-going one she remembered. ‘No wonder that guy wouldn’t back down. To be honest, ’ his mouth tugged to one side, ‘I got the exchange rate wrong in my head. I think I did beat him down a bit much. I checked when we got home and I reckon we underpaid by about a hundred euros.’
‘What? No! You never said anything.’
‘How could I?’ Stuart looked sheepish. ‘I’d made such a fuss. But come on. They’re not bad, are they?’
‘They’re art, you philistine,’ she said, only half joking.
He grinned, and Gina realised this was the first amiable conversation they’d had in ages. It was tentative, and they were talking about their relationship as if it were a fondly remembered dead relative, but it wasn’t bad.
‘So . . .’ Stuart glanced around the flat, more closely this time. ‘Are you actually living here?’
‘What do you mean? Of course I am.’
‘No, I mean, it’s so empty. Our loo had more stuff in it than this room.’
‘I’m having a detox. You should try it.’
‘Ha. As if. Is that . . .’ His gaze had stopped at the kitchen, and turned incredulous. ‘Is that a real dog?’
Buzz feigned sleep in his basket, pressing himself into the sides. Gina could see the signs of his nervous twitch, and kicked herself for letting Stuart, a strange man, into the flat. Buzz hated strange men.
‘Not really. I’m just looking after him until he can go into kennels,’ she said.
‘How did that happen?’ Stuart seemed amused. ‘Loki and Thor will be livid when I tell them you’ve gone over to the dark side.’
‘The bark side,’ said Gina goofily, and after two beats, Stuart smiled.
Gina opened her mouth to tell Stuart exactly how Buzz had been dropped into her life then realised it probably wasn’t a great idea to bring up the bike, not when things were going relatively cordially. Fortunately Stuart was already distracted by the Roberts radio sitting on the kitchen counter.
‘This is mine,’ he said, picking it up. ‘Didn’t you give me this for my birthday one year? It was in the bathroom.’
‘No, it’s mine,’ she said. ‘You’re thinking of that DAB radio. It’s in the box. It was on your list.’
Gina heard a faint sound from the kitchen, like a distant car engine being started, a low rumbling growl. Was that Buzz? She�
��d never heard him make a noise like that before. He rarely made a noise at all, other than the snuffly grunts he made when Rachel tickled his ears and the occasional click in his sleep.
‘Buzz?’ she said, and the noise stopped.
Gina turned back to Stuart. ‘Anyway, I meant to say, off the record, thanks for getting the financial paperwork moving. I don’t know what’s prompted it, but . . . What?’
Stuart was rubbing his chin with his hand, as if working out how to say something awkward. ‘Um, yeah . . . About that,’ he said.
He’s going abroad, guessed Gina. He and Bryony have decided to sell up and emigrate. That’d be why he hadn’t bothered to take much stuff.
Stuart coughed and stared at the floor, but a faint smile flickered around his eyes. ‘Um . . . not sure how to say this . . .’
‘What?’ She was starting to remember why remaining gracious around him could be such a strain. ‘Whatever you’ve got to say to me, it’s not going to be worse than “I’m having an affair”, Stu.’
‘I don’t know about that.’
‘Believe me, it won’t be. Get on with it,’ said Gina.
‘Me and Bryony . . . Well, Bryony more than me . . .’ Stuart looked up, and Gina could see he was enjoying the words, despite his reluctance to say them to her. ‘We’re pregnant.’
Gina had always loathed that phrase for its modern-parent smuggery, but now it made her feel nauseous. Something sour rose in her throat. ‘She’s pregnant,’ she retorted automatically. ‘Unless you’ve got some kind of man-womb you never let on about.’
He lifted his hands and dropped them, as if she’d just proved his point. ‘You see? I knew you’d be like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘Bitter.’
‘Bitter? Stuart, that’s wit. Bitter would be some comment about, I don’t know, you not even bothering to wait until you’d divorced your first wife before getting your next woman pregnant.’
‘Look, it’s not ideal but it is what it is. We’re very happy.’ His chin jutted self-righteously. ‘Anyway, I didn’t come here to discuss it. I just wanted you to hear it from me.’
Gina wanted to be cool and ask questions, but her mind was furious and red and blank. Naomi – even her best friend Naomi – hadn’t told her she was pregnant until her three-month scan. Which meant . . . Gina’s mind spun backwards.
‘How pregnant is she?’
Stuart looked evasive, which told Gina everything. All at once, she didn’t want to know details. Her chest felt as if it were about to cave in. ‘You’re such a sad old cliché,’ she said. ‘You’re just like all those other man-children who hum and haw about kids, wasting years of people’s lives, and then . . .’
‘Fuck off,’ said Stuart, outraged. ‘Who was wasting time? It was my time that was being wasted too. You didn’t even want children.’
It stung. ‘That’s not true!’
He glared at her. ‘I was there, remember? I drove you to the clinic. And I sat there in that fertility office when you told the doctor you didn’t want to go ahead with the embryo harvesting. You didn’t want us to have children. Or, rather, you didn’t want to have my children.’
‘That wasn’t—’ Gina stopped herself before she said something she couldn’t take back.
‘That wasn’t what?’ demanded Stuart. He looked her squarely in the face, and the angry hurt in his expression made him look older. Older, and a stranger. ‘That wasn’t how you want to remember it?’
‘That’s not how it was,’ said Gina. She clamped her lips together and tried to condense the blurry memory in her head into something sharp and specific but it wouldn’t come together. There was too much she didn’t understand herself.
Life pivots on such tiny moments, she thought. You get a split second to think how to deal with hugely significant situations and, bang, you get it wrong and everything goes hurtling off the wrong way. A minute ago things were going well. And now . . .
‘Well, whatever.’ Stuart waved a hand round her empty flat. ‘Good luck.’
‘That’s it?’ Gina’s voice cracked. ‘“I’m having a baby with another woman, cheers for the bowls and the good times, good luck”?’
Stuart rolled his eyes. ‘Seriously, it’s impossible to talk to you sometimes. I am pleased for you. We’ve both got a fresh start. I’ll be in touch.’
He grabbed his box off the table and made for the door, kicking it open with his foot and storming down the stairs.
Gina would have followed, maybe even chucked some old travel guides after him, but she couldn’t move. Her legs felt like lead. Memories she’d shoved right to the back of her mind were crowding around her, the emotions unexpectedly very fresh again. She’d known at the time that she was only postponing the real pain for another day, but there had been so much else to think about then. There hadn’t been room in her head to consider theoretical pain when real pain was being timetabled in three-weekly doses.
Now, though, the full impact of what she’d said, what she’d done, in the consultant’s office in Longhampton hospital finally revealed itself. Ta-da! it said. Here I am, and now you’re six years older, and alone.
Gina sank onto the sofa and put her head in her hands. She didn’t cry but let the waves of emotion surge through her veins. She didn’t know how long she sat there, letting the tide wash back and forth over the memory, but she stayed in the same hunched pose until her breathing returned to normal.
When she looked up, Buzz had left his basket and was lying by the door, watching it with his inscrutable black eyes. He wasn’t waiting to be let out. He was guarding it.
Chapter Fifteen
ITEM: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, property of Georgina Jessica Pritchard, aged 8
Longhampton, 25th June 2008
The fertility specialist is kind, makes a point of talking to her and Stuart equally, alternating his gentle gaze between them both as he outlines the options available to them in the event of Gina’s chemotherapy affecting their chances of starting a family.
Gina nods, and smiles politely. Stuart nods, and writes it all down, frowning as he links everything up with arrows and boxes, cross-referencing time frames and asking Mr Mancini to spell the drugs so he can look them up later.
It is, of course, fair, thinks Gina, trying to put herself in Stuart’s shoes as his pen scratches across the ever-present notebook. It’s Stuart’s future son or daughter who may or may not be at risk from the chemicals that are scheduled to be pumped though Gina’s veins, attacking the cancer and, sadly, other things in her body, like follicles and eggs. They’re not fussy.
‘. . . we can give you luteinising hormone-blocker injections to stop your ovaries working during the chemotherapy treatment, but again, that’s not absolutely guaranteed . . .’
Except it’s not strictly fair, is it? she thinks. Stuart can always go and have children with someone else. Another woman. She can’t. This is her future as a parent they’re discussing. As well as her future as a person. Gina tries to remind herself that it’s amazing Stuart’s thinking in terms of them, their family, but for once, she wants it to be about her.
Mr Mancini is explaining that her best option for motherhood is to postpone her chemotherapy while she takes a series of hormones that might actually increase the cancer cells in order to harvest some eggs, which Stuart can then fertilise, and the embryos can be put on ice until she’s better.
So, for the mere chance of being a mother, she has to go through a pre-motherhood sacrifice and offer up her own body to chance and medical science.
Mum would love that, she thinks, staring at the baby handprint cast Mr Mancini has on his desk – to inspire his patients, presumably. It looks morbid to Gina, but at the moment, everything feels like a symbol of death. Trees, flowers, birds in the sky. The real test of a mother. How much do you want it? Are you willing to feed your own cancer to do it?
The answer should, of course, be yes. But Gina can’t find that yes inside herself. There’s ju
st a worrying silence that isn’t quite a no.
The worst thing about this conversation is that, for the first time since her diagnosis, Gina feels she has to make a decision. Not just about her future, but about the sort of person she is. So far, everything’s been presented to her and the answer has been obvious. The doctors know more than she does about how to treat the cancer in her breast; where there have been ‘choices’, she’s been smart enough to see that, realistically, there are no choices. Now, though, she has to decide something that will have a direct impact on a life beyond the treatment, and Gina doesn’t want to look that far.
It’s impossible to imagine children – nativity plays, parties, tooth fairies, exams – when she still can’t get her head around the sobering fact that her own life might not now stretch out to the seventy, eighty years she’d taken for granted before. It might not stretch out another ten.
Across the desk, Mr Mancini pauses in his biology lecture and raises his eyebrows to check she understands what he’s said. He’s a reassuring man. But his outcomes are probably a bit more uplifting than her oncologist’s.
‘Of course, Mrs Horsfield, apart from your youth, you’re in a much stronger position than many of the patients I see,’ he says.
‘Really?’ says Gina. She can’t imagine how her position can possibly be stronger. Because she came in quickly? Because Stuart is here taking notes? Because she’s now Mrs Horsfield, not Miss Bellamy? That still sounds weird, but comforting, as if she’s tucked under Stuart’s capable wing.
‘Well, you could opt to freeze a fertilised embryo, rather than eggs.’ He glances between the two of them, the avuncular smile broadening. ‘That has a much higher success rate. Afterwards, I mean.’
‘But the procedure is the same?’ Stuart asks. ‘The hormone injections and the egg collection and so on?’
‘It’s just like IVF, essentially,’ says Mr Mancini.
‘We’re familiar with that,’ says Stuart. ‘Not ourselves, obviously. My sister . . .’