The Old You

by Louise Voss

  We sat in silence for a few minutes, passing the e-cig between us like a bong. I still couldn’t relax though.

  ‘I’ve never been unfaithful to him before,’ I blurted.

  Adrian put his arm around me. ‘Do you remember when we used to shag on my mum’s carpet?’

  I managed a laugh. ‘Of course! You took me to all the best places…’

  I had a mental image of that dingy cold cottage, with the crooked horse-brasses and spider webs in every corner, a dead woman’s house, with her imprint still in the sofa cushions. But at least it took my mind off Ed for a moment.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, cupping my breast and stroking my nipple with his thumb. ‘It was pretty crap of me, thinking back on it. I was trying to be practical – her place was nearby, and free. But I never spoilt you nearly as often as I’d have liked to.’

  ‘You did take me to a hotel. Twice.’

  ‘I did.’

  He gazed down at me, still caressing me. I put my arms around his back, grateful for his attempts to cheer me up. He felt so different to Ed; lean, smooth and silky where Ed was much hairier and muscled.

  ‘Did you miss me when I left?’ I wasn’t fishing for compliments, I was genuinely curious.

  ‘Yes. Quite a bit, as it goes. But I also felt a sense of … relief. That I could work on my … other relationships.’

  Was he being coy about mentioning his wife, or did he actually mean ‘work on his other affairs’? I didn’t know, and didn’t want to.

  ‘I can’t leave him, ever. And this is not going to become a regular occurrence, OK? We’re friends, that’s all.’

  ‘Understood, Mrs Naismith.’

  He put down the vape and kissed me with growing intensity, rolling onto me so I could feel him hard against me. Lust and guilt fought a brief battle – it wasn’t too late to say no – but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to.

  ‘Friends with benefits,’ Adrian murmured, sliding a finger inside me, making me moan.

  28

  April 2017

  Life eventually settled back into a routine. As I suspected, there could be no burial for Mike since his killer still hadn’t been found, but a couple of weeks before there had been a moving memorial service, at which we’d all cried buckets.

  Ed and I both saw as much as we could of April, who was slowly recovering from her grief, although she was still quiet and withdrawn, not a patch on her former extrovert self. I saw as little as I could of Adrian, but we talked at least once a week, and met up once a month. He wanted to see me more frequently but, although his kind and calm presence massively helped me decompress, I felt so guilty about being unfaithful to Ed that I wouldn’t agree to it. I loved our conversations and meetings though, even more than the occasional sex. As gratifying as the sex was – particularly since Ed no longer showed any interest in me physically, and rebuffed my advances if I made them – it was always too fraught with guilt and remorse for me to properly enjoy it.

  Ed’s condition had also seemed to stabilise over these few months – or perhaps I was just getting used to the new reality of having a partner with dementia. He really did seem better, though. He wasn’t getting nearly so many words wrong, and I was finding fewer misplaced items around the house. We’d also been back sleeping together in our bed for a few months now – no sex, but no violence either. He was still in the clinical trial but had consistently refused to tell me when he was going for his appointments, shouting at me so loudly not to ‘fuss’ or ‘nag’ whenever I asked him that eventually I stopped asking and let him get on with it. They always sent a taxi for him, so it wasn’t as if he could come to any harm en route. I was still unsure why he was so reluctant for me to accompany him to any of these appointments, though. Maybe he felt embarrassed and humiliated by the whole thing. Or maybe he genuinely did keep forgetting the dates, only to remember when the taxi driver knocked at our door. I’d searched thoroughly for the email with Bill’s details on it, but try as I might, I couldn’t find it – nor the one from Bill’s colleague that Ed had printed out. I suspected Ed had thrown it away. I comforted myself by observing the gradual but clear improvement in his condition. Never look a gift horse, and all that, I told myself.

  One Thursday morning, though, after months of me asking, suddenly Ed said, ‘I’ve got an appointment at ten-thirty. Want to come with me?’

  He was dressed and clean-shaven, whereas I was still in my pyjamas and Uggs, reading the paper and drinking my morning coffee, enjoying the fact I didn’t have to go to work that day.

  ‘Eh? What appointment? Where?’

  ‘Bill wants to discuss the results of my scan. Will you come? He said he thought it was a good idea if you did. He’s sending a, a, camel.’

  ‘Ed! Yes of course! But – you had a scan? When? Were you OK? I must go and get dressed!’

  ‘Can’t remember exactly. It was all right though. I didn’t freak out. I was a brave boy.’ He made a winsome face at me and I laughed, although my mind was racing.

  ‘Does that mean you think you might be able to fly again soon? We could go on holiday somewhere hot this summer!’

  He grinned. ‘Maybe. Not sure though. A ten-minute scan is one thing … a long, er, plane ride is another.’

  Sure enough, at nine-thirty on the dot a minicab – not a camel, but I’d deduced as much – pulled up on the track outside the house and beeped its horn. I’d just had time to dress in jeans and yesterday’s shirt, tie my hair up and swipe some mascara on my lashes so that I didn’t look too ghostlike. Ed was calm and lucid, almost like his old self. He was even in a pair of new jeans, so stiff that he walked like a soldier on parade.

  ‘What’s the address of where we’re going?’ I asked the cabbie, a small North African man with a sparse beard and moustache.

  ‘Chelsea Clinic,’ he replied, meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror.

  ‘Have you driven Ed there before?’ I enquired, but Ed’s expression darkened.

  ‘Lynn! Don’t be nosy. No he hasn’t. It’s someone different every time … I think,’ he added uncertainly.

  ‘Our firm does a lot of work for the clinic,’ the driver said, and we drove over Hampton Court Bridge in silence.

  Forty minutes later we arrived at our destination, a very modern chrome-and-glass building overlooking the Thames.

  ‘Nice,’ I said. ‘Is this where you always come?’

  Ed nodded. I brushed a speck of dandruff from the shoulder of his lime-green cashmere pullover and smiled affectionately at him. It was so lovely when he had a good day – and there seemed to be more good days than bad at the moment. Long may it last, I thought.

  Automatic tinted-glass doors slid silently back to admit us into a large, cool lobby. I looked around and headed for the reception desk when a small, rotund man intercepted us, grabbing Ed’s hand and pumping it enthusiastically before turning to me.

  ‘And you must be Lynn! I can’t believe we’ve never met before. Bill Brown. A pleasure to meet you.’

  ‘Hello,’ I said, before submitting to a similarly vigorous greeting. ‘I know, me neither – you and Ed have been friends since medical school?’

  ‘We have,’ he agreed, beaming like a Cheshire Cat, ‘but there was a hiatus in the middle of at least, what, twenty-five years. Lost touch after we graduated and I lived abroad for a long time. Good old internet, hey? Where would we be without LinkedIn?’

  ‘Where indeed,’ I murmured, scrutinising him. He must have been Ed’s age but looked younger, with a smooth, round, bald head and tauter skin on his face.

  ‘Come on round,’ he said, ushering us into a corridor off reception. ‘Sorry if I seem a little manic, but I am in a state of – well, close to euphoria!’

  ‘Really?’ Ed and I exchanged glances and Ed grinned at me. I reached for his hand and squeezed it.

  Bill showed us into a consulting room, framed certificates bearing his name on the walls, a huge vase of tropical-looking flowers and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the river
. ‘Wow!’ I said. ‘Impressive.’

  ‘Sit down, please,’ he said, gesturing to two leather chairs across the desk from him. He was almost fidgeting with excitement as he picked up the huge brown envelope that was lying on his leather-topped desk, next to a photo of him with his arm around an attractive freckly girl. I was idly hoping that this was his daughter rather than his wife when he tipped up the envelope and some scans fell out. He unfolded and donned the glasses that had been sticking out of his shirt pocket, clipped the top scan up on a wall-mounted light box, and switched it on.

  ‘These are Ed’s scans from just over seven months ago, in which you can clearly see the start of some considerable amyloid plaque build-up on these areas of the brain; here, and here.’ He pointed with a small neat finger.

  I was confused. ‘But Ed didn’t have scans seven months ago. He refused. I was there. We were in Mr Deshmukh’s office.’

  ‘I did, honey,’ Ed said, looking me in the eye. ‘Next time I went in. He went on about it so much that I gave up … no, in. I gave in. I didn’t tell you because it was too depressing. Then I forgot. It was all right though.’

  ‘Anyway!’ Bill chirped. ‘That was then. As you know, Lynn, Ed’s been in a trial for this new drug galdonimene that we’re all getting very excited about. I’ve been assessing his cognition and general condition with questionnaires and interviews since, in tandem with ECGs, blood tests and so on, and…’

  He paused, suddenly serious again, turning to Ed: ‘You did explain, Ed, that I shouldn’t be doing this?’

  ‘Doing what?’ I was alarmed.

  Ed frowned. ‘Um. I’m not sure. Did I, darling?’

  ‘You just said Bill had asked me to come with you this time, to discuss how the trial was going.’

  ‘Oh. I guess I forgot. Sorry, Bill.’

  Bill took a deep breath. ‘As a medical professional, I’ve wrestled with the ethics of this, but I’m afraid in this instance my personal loyalty to Ed has won out over the rules of the trial – which are that no results are to be disclosed until at least the end of this eighteen-month phase. But as I said, I’ve been assessing his condition and I could see some remarkable improvements in cognition and vocabulary – surely you have noticed it too, Lynn?’

  ‘Yes … I have. I wasn’t sure if it was just that I was getting used to him having Pick’s, but I was thinking he seemed better. So…?’

  My heart was beating faster and my head started to swim, as if I knew my name was about to be announced to a stadium full of people. The air in the office felt charged with anticipation.

  With a flourish, Bill took out a different scan and pinned it up next to the first one. ‘This is Ed’s brain now. Well, as of two weeks ago.’ He pointed at the same areas and even I could see that they looked different, the newer one more plumped up. ‘There are clearly defined areas of actual improvement.’

  He beamed at us.

  ‘I’m thrilled to tell you – in the strictest confidence, you understand – that in just seven and a half months, the plaques have melted away from Ed’s neurons, leaving them free to regenerate instead of killing them off. The drug has worked spectacularly well on him! And there is no reason not to believe that it will continue to do so, with no side-effects at all – we were a little worried that it may cause swelling to the brain as it did in some of the lab trials on mice – but no, absolutely not. If it carries on working as well, I’m confident that Ed’s brain will be as good as it was five years ago! It’s nothing short of a miracle, and the breakthrough we have all been waiting for.’

  Tears came to his eyes and he wiped them away with a handkerchief he whipped out of his trouser pocket. His voice quaking with emotion, he continued: ‘As I’m sure you realise, this will have profound positive implications for the treatment and cure of dementia of all types. Profound! This is game-changing, folks. I’m just so happy that it’s happened to you, my friend…’

  He rushed across to Ed and dragged him out of his seat to hug him, pressing his face against Ed’s cashmere chest. I could see the pink tips of his ears throbbing as Ed embraced him back, laughing and crying at the same time.

  I was speechless. So many emotions whirled through me that I couldn’t take it in. Ed had been cured? Surely the first person ever to be cured of dementia … Ed was going to be better!

  ‘Can we tell Ben?’ I managed, through the tears now streaming down my own face.

  Bill broke away from the embrace and gripped my forearm. ‘No – I’m sorry, Lynn, but you must promise not to tell anybody at all. Nobody! If anyone notices the improvements in Ed’s condition, you can say he’s on this trial and it seems to be working, but you won’t know for sure until the eighteen months is up. Please, please, promise me you won’t! I would lose my job. I’m only seeing you both now because Ed’s a friend and I know you’d want to know.’

  I wiped my eyes too, staring at Ed as if seeing him for the first time. ‘This is … this is … incredible. Are you sure it’s not just a blip? Could the scans be wrong – I mean, are you sure they’re both Ed’s?’

  Bill laughed. ‘I know it seems unbelievable.’ He pointed out Ed’s name and the date on both scans, the diseased one from last September, the new one from two weeks ago. ‘But it’s not a blip. It’s true. We need to celebrate! Lunch tomorrow, Ed, my friend, on me?’

  Ed grinned and nodded, then grabbed me out of my seat. My legs were shaky as he and Bill both took my hands and gleefully whirled me round right there in his office, until we collided in a disbelieving, joyful huddle.

  29

  Muzzy-headed from the champagne Ed and I had consumed the night before, I went into work a couple of hours late the next morning, first dropping Ed off at the station to catch a train into London for his celebratory meal with Bill. I’d like to have gone with them, but Ed didn’t offer and I supposed that they just wanted to have a boys’ lunch together. I had quite a lot of work to do, anyway.

  Not that I could concentrate after Bill Brown’s momentous news. My relief and delight was tempered with confusion – and, I had to admit, a tiny dose of scepticism. I kept thinking that there must be some kind of mistake. Bill had mixed up Ed’s scans with someone else’s. Nobody had ever been cured of dementia before! It was too good to be true. But then that was the point of medical trials for new drugs, wasn’t it? Hoping for breakthroughs like this. I chastised myself. I ought to have been bursting with pride, knowing that Ed would go down in medical history. And the relief was overwhelming, there was no doubt about it. So why did I feel so unsettled?

  Perhaps it was because I’d finally got used to the reality of Ed’s illness, only to be suddenly liberated from it. Now we had a future again – hope, freedom. I felt like a calf who’d escaped from an abbatoir and was cautiously frolicking in the sunlight, not quite knowing what to do with itself in the fresh vastness of liberty.

  The students were all away for the Easter break and Fairhurst House seemed echoing with emptiness, silence bouncing off the dado rails and the high ceilings of the common room. Margaret was on leave, and the teaching staff didn’t bother to come in either once lectures had finished. ‘Working from home’ seemed to be a euphemism for ‘getting on a plane and going somewhere hot for Easter.’

  I tentatively allowed myself to wonder if, now that Ed was better, he might be up for doing what most of the staff had done, and going on holiday too. I’d have given a small body part to go and lie on a tropical beach.

  I rang Adrian, needing to voice my confusion. ‘Something incredible’s happened,’ I said. I was standing at the photocopier copying the Fauré Requiem for next term’s Chamber Choir.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘That clinical trial Ed’s been on? Apparently it’s worked. Completely worked! It’s already reversed the dementia. We’re over the moon.’ There was silence on the line. ‘Ade?’

  ‘Still here,’ he said, and coughed. ‘But … really? I thought it was an eighteen-month trial?’

  ‘It is – but the results so f
ar have been so dramatic. He had another set of scans.’

  ‘I thought you said he wouldn’t have them before?’

  I paused. ‘Yes – that’s what I thought, too. Turns out he did have some at the beginning, he’d just forgotten. It is weird though, that I didn’t know about either set … don’t you think?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Adrian contemplatively. ‘Yes and no. Entirely possible that he meant to tell you but his short-term memory was too fucked. But – wow. Will he be all over the papers?’

  ‘Not yet. There are huge improvements, and the doctor said his scans look almost completely clear – although yesterday he told me he was getting a camel instead of a cab, so he’s obviously not a hundred percent yet – he’ll stay on the trial till the end, make sure it’s not an aberration. He’s told us not to tell anyone.’

  ‘Well, that’s brilliant,’ he said, but his voice sounded flat. ‘I suppose that means that we won’t be able to meet up anymore, I mean, if you’ve got your husband back…’

  It was my turn to pause. I felt terribly ashamed of myself. It was the exact same feeling I’d had before, the turning point that made me request a transfer; a sudden point of no return – or, perhaps more accurately, a return to lost senses.

  ‘I hadn’t thought that … but now you mention it … I’m sorry, Adrian. I like you so much. Please could we still be friends? But I can’t sleep with you again. Not least because if Ed’s got his faculties back, he’s far more likely to find out.’

  ‘Right,’ said Adrian sulkily. ‘So it was fine for you to cheat when you were less likely to be found out…’

  I was silent. That was pretty much the size of it. ‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated. I felt slightly irritated with Adrian, though – I’d made it clear from the start that nothing could come of it. ‘Perhaps one day we’ll both be single at the same time, and then we can give things a proper go.’