‘Anne’s got a new job.’ I ignore the jibe. ‘And Cathy’s home for a bit too, so it’s a chance for us to see her.’
Cathy has been working on a health outreach project in Kenya. Something to do with Aids. I sound as vague as Dad when he talks about her work but I’m not sure what it involves. She’s only ever home for a few weeks’ leave and I know she’ll come up to London and see us but her visit will be rushed, as they always are.
And I want to see Jon and Anne and celebrate Anne’s new job. I admire the way they make the most of the small things and don’t let the bigger issues cloud the rest of their lives.
Jon tested positive four years ago. When he found out he was a carrier, that his genes are marked in exactly the same way that our mother’s were, he and Anne decided not to have children. He didn’t want them to go through what we went through with Mum. He didn’t want a child of his to have to face what he knows he will have to face himself.
I wonder if I might have done the same, if the test had been available earlier, before I had my own two. I’m thankful it wasn’t, that I didn’t have to make a decision then that might have meant I’d never have a family of my own. I love them more than I thought it was possible to love anyone, and I love Richard for making it all possible and for understanding why I don’t want to know, why I’d rather live with the uncertainty than have my future mapped out for me by doctors and therapists.
Jon still shows no symptoms of the disease but he knows, as he approaches his fifties, that it won’t be long before they start to appear. Until then he’s decided to work hard, play hard, and celebrate whatever he thinks is worth celebrating.
Now that we’re here, now that Max’s friend’s mother has agreed that Lottie can spend the night at her house too, Richard’s relaxing a little, as he helps Jon fill a dustbin with ice and booze. Perhaps it helps that he has a beer in his hand.
‘By the way I’ve asked William Ross,’ Jon says casually, as they faff about with the drinks. ‘Do you remember him?’
‘Billy?’ He was one of my best friends through infant school.
‘Yes, but he calls himself William, these days.’
‘I’d almost forgotten he existed.’
The kids find it odd that I cannot name all the people I went to school with when I was their age; I have largely forgotten that time of my life.
‘Who is he?’ Richard asks.
‘Ivy’s first boyfriend.’
‘He wasn’t my boyfriend!’ I protest. ‘We were children.’
‘He was a bit soft on you, though,’ Jon says.
‘We were friends,’ I say to Richard, who is looking at me with a raised eyebrow. ‘His mum was a good friend of Mum’s.’
‘He wrote to me after Mum died,’ Jon tells Richard. ‘He still lives locally. I think he’s an estate agent or something.’
I try to picture Billy as a child but I can’t remember what he looked like or anything much about him, other than that I’d liked him and we’d spent a lot of time with each other and each other’s families.
I’m curious to see what he’s like now and keep an eye open for him when the guests begin to arrive.
‘Hello, stranger.’ Cathy’s one of the first. She’s come from Dad’s house but will stay at Jon’s tonight with us.
‘Hey! How are you?’ She looks well, tanned and slim. My big sister.
‘I’m … fine.’ She hugs me.
The pause before she said ‘fine’.
‘Are you?’
Her eyes dart around the room, as if she’s looking for someone other than me.
‘Oh, you know …’ She speaks with the curious lilt she’s developed since working in Africa. She drags her words out and uses an upward inflection at the end of her sentences, forming questioning statements.
‘She’s such a bloody hippie,’ was Jon’s verdict. ‘That or she’s stoned half the time.’
‘How long have you been home?’
‘Oh, me, I have been here since … Wed-nes-day.’
‘And have you been staying with Dad?’
‘I …’ She looks around again and never resumes whatever she started to say.
‘Is everything okay?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’d better find Jon. And I need a smoke.’
Maybe she was a little stoned already. ‘He’s with Richard on drinks duty in the conservatory,’ I tell her, and she briefly touches my arm.
‘See you in a bit.’
I’m talking to one of Anne’s colleagues when Billy Ross appears in my peripheral vision.
‘Ivy,’ he says, kissing my cheek.
‘Billy?’ If Jon hadn’t told me he was coming I wouldn’t have had a clue who he is.
‘Am I so tired and grey that you don’t recognize me?’
‘No, not at all,’ I say hastily, but in truth, the middle-aged, thickset, balding man bears no resemblance to the image of Billy Ross I’d tried to dredge up from my memory.
‘Are you still Ivy Trent?’ he asks. ‘You’re married now, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’ I glance around to see if Richard is nearby – he’s pouring wine on the other side of the room. ‘But I’m still Trent.’
That was the thing. We’d sat next to each other when we started school because our names followed each other in the register. There were no children with surnames that began with S.
‘I was sorry to hear about your mother,’ he says. ‘And your family. Jon told me his news. It can’t be easy for any of you.’
‘No,’ I reply, appreciating the fact he’d acknowledged it. Many people preferred to skirt round it. ‘It’s good of you to say. We’re all used to living with it now but it’s never easy.’
He seems nice as an adult, but I feel a little awkward, as if the years since I’d last seen him had left me with nothing to say to him. ‘Is your mum still around?’ I ask.
‘Yes. But she’s got Alzheimer’s. She’s in a home now and doesn’t really know what’s going on a lot of the time.’
‘I’m sorry. That must be difficult too. But how are you? Jon said you still live locally.’
‘Yes, with my wife, Sarah. I’m afraid she couldn’t make it. We’ve got a fairly new baby.’
‘Congratulations. Is it your first?’ Perhaps that accounts for the tiredness.
‘No, we’ve got an older boy, Matthew. He’s nearly two.’
‘How lovely. And what do you do?’
‘I’m a surveyor. I work for a local firm.’
‘I thought you wanted to be an astronaut.’ Have I remembered that correctly?
‘Didn’t everyone at the time?’
‘Ivy!’ Jon’s old school friend Simon gives me a huge bear hug. ‘How the hell are you?’
‘Good.’
I’m about to introduce Billy but Simon goes on, ‘Sorry to barge in on your chat but I have to drag this woman away. Grub’s up and I absolutely have to sit with you, Ivy, while I eat mine.’
‘Simon Hopper is intensely overbearing,’ I said to Cathy, the following morning, as she and I cleared away debris from the night before.
She might not have been stoned when she arrived at the party but she was the next time I saw her, standing in the garden, smoking, making no attempt to disguise it from one of the partners at Jon’s firm.
‘I suppose.’ She seemed down now.
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘Briefly. I wasn’t really in the mood.’
‘Oh?’
‘Like you say, he’s a bit much.’
‘I was talking to Billy Ross. I haven’t seen him for years but Simon butted in.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Billy’s a surveyor now.’
‘That fits.’
‘Does it?’
‘He’s your type.’ Cathy gave a heavy sigh, as if she wasn’t interested but I pursued it.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you know.’
‘No!’
‘Architects, surveyors.’
The way she said it, it was a criticism, and unlike Cathy. ‘But he’s nothing like Richard.’
She picked up a plate from the floor and put it on the coffee-table, saying nothing.
‘Do you think Richard’s like him?’ Richard wouldn’t be pleased.
‘Who is Richard like?’ Richard appeared in the doorway.
‘No one,’ I said, adding another plate to Cathy’s.
‘We probably shouldn’t leave it too long,’ he said, ‘before we get going. We need to pick up the kids.’
‘I’d like to pop in on Dad on the way home.’
‘As long as we don’t stay too long. I’ve got work I need to get done before the morning.’
That was Richard’s way of saying he’d had enough of my family. He liked everyone well enough but less so if he was exposed to them for more than twenty-four hours. ‘I know,’ I said, inclining my head to convey that I understood and that I was grateful to him for having come. He had been tired after a difficult week at work and I understood that he wanted to spend a bit of time at home, just being there, without the pressure of having to socialize.
‘Half an hour or so?’ he asked, and I nodded. He headed off to the kitchen.
‘He’s got a lot on at work,’ I said to Cathy, feeling the need to apologize on his behalf.
‘But you will call in on Dad before you go back?’
‘Yes, of course.’ She didn’t need to ask me. I saw Dad as often as I could, which was more often than she could.
‘When are you going back?’
‘I’m not sure. There’s something I need to talk to Jon about. You too. It’s hard to find the right moment.’ She gestured to the empty room, as if it were still full and all the people in it were getting in the way of her talking to us.
‘Cathy?’ My stomach turned. ‘It’s not? Is it?’
‘I had the test,’ she said, sitting down. ‘That’s one of the reasons I came back.’
‘Oh, God. Oh, no.’ I sat down too. ‘Is it? Are you?’
‘No,’ she said, reaching out and taking my hand. ‘It’s not. The test results were negative.’
‘Oh, God, Cathy.’ I was crying now. I think we both were. ‘When did you have it? What made you?’
‘I’ve met someone,’ she said. ‘There’s a guy in Kenya. We’re not getting married or anything. It’s just, working there, with so many people dying of Aids, I wanted to know either way.’
‘Oh, Cathy.’
We stood and I hugged her but I couldn’t stop crying. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just all so … I don’t know.’ More tears.
‘No. I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s been so difficult, finding the time and …’ she looked towards the kitchen ‘… I haven’t told Jon. I don’t know how to tell him. It seems so …’
‘What’s going on?’ Richard reappeared.
We discussed it in the car on the way home but I don’t think Richard understood my reaction. I didn’t really understand it myself. Of course I was relieved that Cathy had been spared the horrible slow death that our mother had suffered. Not just relieved, delighted. But Jon …
‘It must be difficult for Jon,’ Richard said.
‘Yes. It seems so unfair.’
‘He was very good about it.’
He had cried too, which wasn’t like him, but I think it was because he was pleased for Cathy, not because he was feeling sorry for himself.
‘Are you okay?’ Richard rested a hand on my thigh as we headed up the motorway back to London.
‘I think so,’ I said.
‘Is it making you wonder again about having the test yourself?’
‘Not really.’
‘Are you sure? Because the chance now …’ he paused ‘… now that you know Cathy’s clear …’
‘You think the chance of my not being positive is higher?’ I spat, angry with him for voicing what I was thinking. It was irrational, I knew it was, but I was allowed to be irrational because I was me. Richard had no such right. I know. That’s irrational too. ‘It’s still the same,’ I snapped. Although that wasn’t what I was feeling. Cathy being clear had made me think the chance of my being positive was diminished. ‘It’s still the same,’ I repeated.
Richard knew that.
Richard’s good at maths. His career is founded on being good at maths. He knows that if there’s a fifty–fifty chance of something being behind a closed door it remains a fifty–fifty chance, even if one of your siblings has opened the door and found something there and the other has opened it and found nothing.
Just because you toss a coin up ten times and it comes down heads each time, the chance of it coming down tails on the eleventh is no more likely than it was before. It’s still fifty–fifty. But human psychology and statistics aren’t on the same syllabus.
If Cathy had tested positive, I think I might have felt that my chance of having the disease was reduced, even though it would still be the same. Still fifty–fifty.
‘I just thought you might feel differently now. About the test,’ Richard said.
‘No.’ I said to him what I had been thinking.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Okay,’ he said, apologetic, and laid his hand on one of mine.
I let it rest there although I resented its presence. How dared he ask if I wanted the test? Why could he still not understand what we’d been over a million times before? I could live with the risk that I might have the gene that my brother knew he had but I didn’t know if I could live with the certainty.
And there was something else, a reaction to Cathy’s news that I hadn’t expected. I was delighted for Cathy, delighted that she was clear, delighted that she was so relieved and happy to know for certain. But I wasn’t sure I would feel the same if I was in her position. It was as if the risk of having the disease was so much a part of my identity that I didn’t want to lose it. For me, the test offered two outcomes, neither of which I was ready to face. I might find out that I carried the gene and my life would begin to shrink and disappear. Or I might discover that I didn’t, that the risk I had lived with all of my adult life was no longer there. And I wasn’t sure I was ready for that either.
‘It’s your decision,’ Richard put his hand back on the steering wheel, ‘but if you want to talk about it, I’m always ready to listen.’
‘I don’t,’ I said angrily. I wouldn’t let him pressure me into doing something I didn’t want to do.
‘Okay,’ he said gently.
I didn’t respond.
Why, when I felt suddenly vulnerable, did I push away the person who was there for me to lean on?
Again, human psychology and logic are not on the same syllabus.
Richard and I fell into an uneasy silence and he switched on the radio.
A traffic report warned us of delays further up the M23. ‘A lorry carrying hay bales has shed its load and a section of the motorway is closed while the road is cleared,’ said the announcer.
‘I don’t know why they can’t secure them a bit better,’ Richard said. I didn’t think he required a response so I didn’t give one.
I felt as if we’d had that conversation before, which scared me because that used to happen to Mum.
A week or so later I was feeling conspicuous as a lone woman sitting in the hotel bar. But drinking alone in my room felt lonely. I was familiar with Copenhagen and could have found another bar, somewhere close to Tivoli Gardens, but I was tired after travelling and had a long day ahead of me. And the hotel had a courtesy lounge. Drinks and food were thrown in with the room. It seemed a waste not to take advantage of it. And when I looked around almost everyone else appeared to be on their own too.
There were several configurations of armchairs set around small tables. But each configuration had a lone occupant, unless you counted mobile phones and the odd laptop as people. Most of them were sitting, drink in hand, plate of food on the table, and deeply engaged with either a computerized device or a sheaf of doc
uments. Businessmen, taking little pleasure from a night in a hotel on expenses.
‘Do you mind if I sit here?’
‘Go ahead.’ I wished the man who was hovering would sit anywhere else.
‘There are no free tables.’ He knew what I was thinking. ‘But if I’m disturbing you …’
‘No, no, no.’ In my mind, a triple negative exuded a positive. ‘It’s fine.’
‘It’s fine’ was something Max had begun saying when things were anything but, when I knew something was bothering him but he wouldn’t tell me what it was.
‘It’s fine’ really meant ‘I’ll put up with whatever it is but I’m not really happy about it.’
My fellow hotel guest put a plate of cold meat and bread on the table. ‘I’m going to get some wine.’ He gestured towards my nearly empty glass. ‘Would you like a top-up?’
‘No, thanks,’ I said, although I wanted another drink.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh, well, okay then, if you don’t mind. I was having the Sauvignon Blanc.’ I allowed him to take my glass and watched him as he approached the bar.
‘Sauvignon Blanc,’ he said, when he returned.
‘Thank you,’ I acknowledged the small kindness and returned to my book.
He, the interloper, arranged a sheaf of documents on the table, alongside his plate of charcuterie. They were covered with drawings. He was making slight alterations and notes alongside and he caught me looking and smiled, before going back to his work, clearly not wanting engage in conversation.
But my interest had been piqued and I peered over the top of my book. A series of what looked like water jets was splashed across the paper.
Their creator caught me looking. ‘Are you here on business?’ he asked, removing his glasses.
‘Yes.’ I shrugged, acknowledging my intrusion.
He looked at me expectantly.
‘I do PR for travel companies. One of my clients operates in north Zeeland. I’m here to see it for myself.’
‘I haven’t been outside the city but I’ve heard it’s a lovely part of the country.’
‘The home of Karen Blixen.’
‘Out of Africa Karen Blixen?’
‘Yes, but also Øresund coast Karen Blixen, where she returned to live and write.’
‘Babette’s Feast country?’ he asked, and I had to admit that I’d neither seen the film nor read the book. ‘You should,’ he said. ‘It might help with your PR and it’s a wonderful story.’
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