by Zoë Folbigg
Olivia threw her cigarette into the gutter and put on her jacket.
‘What’s the band?’ Jim asked.
‘The Horizontals, they’re awesome,’ she said with a frown. ‘My friend is the bass player.’
Jim hadn’t heard of them yet, but he was always interested in seeking out the next big thing to oust the tabloid fodder he usually had to put on a pedestal: the girlbands, the boybands. The European DJs, Blur and Oasis.
‘I’ll come for an hour,’ Jim said.
‘Dan-i-el?’ she asked. Three syllables as she levelled him with her gaze. He was still shocked and confused and smiling at her in disbelief.
Daniel remembered Olivia wiping mustard from her lips as they ate burgers at the bottom of the world; the glitter in her eyes when she saw her ankle chain; the wetness of her tears against his neck on the steps of the train station; the taste of her kiss before she ran for her train. He looked at her angry cascade of hair as she pulled each lapel of her jacket together over her flimsy dress, and knew he’d never see her again if he let her walk off now.
‘Jim, give me your phone,’ Daniel said, as Jim delved into his chinos pocket and whispered ‘Uh-oh.’
‘I’m calling in sick.’
Eighteen
September 2017
London
‘Ay, amore mia, is there anything else you need?’ asked a fretful Maria. ‘Do you want some more figs? Another bottle of water perhaps? Is there anything I can get you, tesora?’
Olivia lay in her hospital bed in London, waiting to go to theatre, while her two mothers sat at her side. Nancy, perched on the mattress by Olivia’s pillow, had pale skin and red hair in the short, pageboy style she had had all her adult life. Maria, sitting on a chair stroking Olivia’s hand, looked like a Sicilian peasant, despite the fact she clutched a Mulberry bag she had picked up in the West End yesterday. The dark corridors and basement cafe of the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery on Queen Square had been stifling for the past week of appointments, scans and pre-op assessment, so Nancy and Maria, Mamma Una and Mamma Due, had appreciated some fresh air and light relief, while feeling guilty about doing so without their daughter. It wasn’t right stroking the ties in Liberty or having a slice of cake in John Lewis if Olivia wasn’t with them.
Both women were practical and pragmatic, powering Olivia on in different ways. Nancy was the mother Olivia would turn to for advice about money, university applications, car insurance or political discussion. They would talk at length on the phone about Scottish independence, Hillary for President or rising populism in Italy, and she was a good, if matter-of-fact counsel in parental questions or worries Olivia might have about Flora and Sofia.
Maria was the mamma Olivia turned to as a child when she needed ointment on a cut, a new party dress fashioned out of nothing, boyfriend wisdom, or to cry into a plate of pumpkin doughnuts or almond cannoli (tears of sadness would soon turn to joy as Olivia inhaled the sweet ricotta filling). Maria had a recipe for every heartbreak and disaster, and Olivia sought comfort in her cookery, and most of all, the hum of her sewing machine. And it was Maria who Olivia turned to for guidance and creative direction when she started her own clothing brand: helping her name it (‘Olivia Messina ovviamente!’), sourcing fabrics, feeding back on sketches, advising on embellishment and where to have the clothes made – even though she vehemently believed that no workshop in India would be as good as the ateliers of Milan.
From under her polyester hospital bedlinen, Olivia looked at the faces of the women she tried not to take for granted and marvelled.
‘I’m fine, really. I’m not meant to eat now anyway,’ she scorned Mamma Due the feeder. Maria made a face as if to say, oops. Daniel returned to the busy ward and Olivia’s bay with a coffee in a cardboard Costa cup.
‘We’d better get back for pickup,’ Nancy said, looking at her watch. Timekeeping was also more Nancy’s domain. She gave Olivia an apologetic smile.
‘Really, it’s fine, go get our girls.’
‘You’ll be all right?’ Maria retied her headscarf and tried to hide her tears.
‘Really. I’m as ready as I ever will be. I have peaches I’m not allowed to eat. I have Oggi, Grazia and Hello!. I have three bottles of water and six cans of Aranciata I’m not even sure I’ll be allowed to drink when I wake up. I have a book that I haven’t started yet. I have Daniel. And I have enough torta setteveli to feed the entire surgical team for a month. Go!’
Daniel laughed away the tension and put his cup down on the side table among Olivia’s book and magazines.
‘She’ll be fine,’ he said, taking Maria into his arms while she stifled her cry.
‘I will Mamma. I’ll be out of here before you guys know it.’
*
Two hours later, Daniel was still sitting by Olivia’s bedside, patiently waiting for her to be taken into theatre. It was the lack of urgency that he found hardest to cope with, the most frustrating.
There hadn’t been an ambulance waiting on the tarmac on their return from Ibiza to Stansted. There was no melodramatic rush down a corridor with medics talking in a vernacular of ‘units’ and ‘lines’. There wasn’t any sense of hurry, despite the worry that Olivia might have another seizure at any time. The woman on the desk at Guildington GP surgery had put up her usual barriers when Daniel and Olivia walked through its doors the day after landing, while Flora was watching Sofia watch cartoons at home.
‘We don’t have anything for three weeks, I’m afraid,’ said the woman who looked like a goblin, without much remorse at all.
Olivia laughed – even terrified, she was so laissez faire and flighty about her illness.
‘Erm, that won’t be good for us,’ she said with a smile.
Daniel interjected, a tense pallor on his sun-kissed faced. ‘No – we need to see Dr Humbolt as soon as possible. It’s urgent,’ he said behind gritted teeth.
‘Well, what’s it regarding?’ The goblin looked pained, expecting the harangued husband to complain that his wife had a bladder infection or a bad cold, because she’d already had to fend off a load of time wasters today.
Daniel was about to object.
What business is it of yours?!
He looked behind him and scowled at the waiting queue. A little sign saying ‘Please stand behind this barrier to give the person in front some privacy’ stood only a metre behind him. Olivia put a calm palm on his chest to stop him and smiled at the goblin.
‘I have a brain tumour. I collapsed at an airport in Spain. I’ve been in hospital there for the past week while they discovered I have a tumour the size of a walnut. I’m on anti-fitting drugs and I need brain surgery. Urgently. You need to find me an appointment with Dr Humbolt today.’
The goblin was silenced, and told them to sit in waiting area B.
Dr Humbolt had been their GP since they moved to the village thirteen years ago, the day Flora was born. He was scruffy, sympathetic and helpful, and got Olivia into the system at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge on the list of Dr Okereke, a consultant clinical oncologist with grey braided hair, sparkling brown eyes and deep purple lipstick, who said Olivia’s surgery would be done three weeks later at a specialist hospital in London, where Daniel waited anxiously now.
What if it’s too big to remove now?
What if all that time sitting around made the astrocytoma grip too deep?
Why is there no urgency from anyone?
Can brain surgeons start operating at two in the afternoon?
What if they’re not concentrating so well?
What if she never wakes up?
Daniel finished his third coffee; his eyeballs were tired yet wired, and he hoped his wife wouldn’t notice his stomach’s plaintiff rumblings for food.
Maybe I should have one of those peaches.
Olivia let out a sigh, closed her eyes and turned her head as she tried to get some rest, tried not to think that soon, someone would be going into her skull, into her brain. Her ha
ir was crammed into a blue cap bursting at the seams, her white hospital gown peeling away from one shoulder. Daniel looked at her and remembered the night in the 100 Club. Her brown collarbone holding up her cream slip dress. The night that started with the most amazing surprise but turned ugly.
‘You look beautiful,’ he whispered out of nowhere.
Olivia’s eyes flickered open.
‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
‘My brain doesn’t look big in this?’ she joked, pointing to the bulbous mass.
‘Your brain is perfect.’
‘No it isn’t.’
‘It will be.’
‘They shaved a chunk out of my hair, did you see?’
‘Yes, but no one will notice under the rest of it. Besides, all the hip mums at school are rocking an undercut.’
Olivia closed her eyes again and turned her head.
She’d had lots of visitors to her bay since Nancy and Maria had left. Dr Okereke and the senior consultant neurosurgeon, Mr Greene, had been round, along with two junior doctors, followed by a chat with the anaesthetist and what felt like four hundred nurses delivering pills and potions, all wanting to discuss Olivia, mostly as if Olivia weren’t in the room. Finally, two nurses and the anaesthetist returned, and said it was time.
‘Would you like a minute?’ asked the anaesthetist from behind a bushy moustache. Daniel nodded, pulled his seat closer to his wife and tried to think of something profound to say while the medics lingered around a corner.
‘I love you, you know.’
‘I know.’
‘And the girls love you more than anyone could love a mother.’
‘Flora doesn’t.’
‘Don’t say that! She does. She’s just 13. It’s the law – she has to give you shit.’
Olivia gave a look as if to say, I know. That she knew her daughters loved her, despite the different ways they showed it. Daniel’s smile made way for sincerity again. ‘Jude loves his mamma too,’ he said, his eyes filling with water. A greyness washed away Olivia’s smile. ‘He will be watching over you, our beautiful angel.’
Olivia squeezed Daniel’s hand.
‘At least if this isn’t a success, I will be reunited with him.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Well, I meant to say, if this doesn’t go to plan… then, well, I’ve left letters for the girls in my knickers drawer.’
‘What?’
‘If I don’t wake up or if I’m soulless or a vegetable.’
‘Don’t!’
‘Well, there are letters to the girls. And, well… I’m sorry I let you down.’
Daniel let out a desperate sigh, a sound that showed he was trying to suppress a sob, and his eyes welled up. This was the first time either of them had said it out loud. He scratched his nose and looked down at Olivia’s hand, hooked up to cannulas and wires, and he clasped it in both of his.
‘You are not going to let me down. You are the strongest and bravest woman I know.’ He clasped tighter. ‘I would be a mess if it had been the other way around – if I was the one going into theatre. Look at you! You could never let me down. This will be fine, you will be fine. And we will be laughing about it next week.’
‘You think?’
Daniel held Olivia’s weary gaze. She hadn’t felt a single headache, a single bit of pain since her diagnosis – apart from that caused by needles and prodding and claustrophobic scans in tunnels – but the fatigue she felt, the exhausting nature of being told you’re ill and being put through a system of hospitals, even if you didn’t feel ill – well, that had been draining.
‘I know it.’
Now wasn’t the time for Daniel to show his anxiety, so he held her gaze lest he show the terror he felt; kept his eyes firmly on his wife’s, and did the last thing he would expect to do in such circumstances: he broke into Dolly.
‘Islands in the stream…’
Or was it Kenny?
Self-consciousness seeped away from him for a second, he didn’t care that the other patients behind their moth-eaten curtains might be laughing, as he carried on singing.
He had pitched it an octave too high and they were both trying not to laugh as he continued to sing badly.
Olivia laughed. Then she cried.
The nurses and anaesthetist returned to wheel her away and Daniel stood, leaned over the trolley bed and kissed Olivia firmly on the lips. She gave a little wave.
‘I’ll be here when you wake up!’ Daniel shouted down the corridor.
That was what he had meant to say.
Nineteen
June 1998
London
‘Olivia Messina,’ Olivia announced to a man with broad shoulders and a battered clipboard at the entrance to the dingy underground club.
Daniel and Jim gave each other a pointed look and made the mental note.
Messina.
The doorman looked down his list and drew a line through Olivia’s name on it.
‘And you two?’ he asked gruffly.
Jim stepped forward.
‘Jim Beck, showbiz reporter, The Sun.’
Olivia, who had already started walking down the stairs to the club, turned back to look at Jim and raised an eyebrow.
‘Want to see my press pass?’
‘No, you’re good,’ the man said, waving Jim and Daniel in, who followed Olivia into the basement.
The band had already started playing to a misty haze of dry ice and blue lighting.
‘That’s my friend there!’ she pointed proudly. ‘Mimi!’
Daniel and Jim looked up at the small stage in awe. Mimi’s bass guitar was almost as tall as she was, and she leaned back to take it in her slight arms as she played, holding it against her white vest and tight dark jeans. Her hair was black and poker straight, contrasting with her pale skin as she whispered haunting harmonies into the mic as the blue lights captured the brightness of her pale eyes. Daniel didn’t realise yet that he had seen Mimi before, in a cafe in Sydney.
The band sounded good. Jim was taking note.
Singer and guitarist Nate took the lead under a jagged fringe, while morose Tommy stood behind a synthesiser and buff drummer Nik pummelled the drums as a small crowd danced with great enthusiasm.
Mimi spotted Olivia and smiled in surprise as she sang into the mic. She wasn’t expecting to see her, even though she had put her name down.
‘Whoooo-hooo!’ Olivia cheered.
‘Double Jack Daniel’s?’ Daniel asked cheerily.
‘Vodka tonic!’ Olivia shouted. ‘But yes, double thanks.’
Daniel looked to Jim expectantly.
‘Same please!’ he said, with a cheeky sparkle. Neither of them could really believe how the night was turning out.
‘Japan baby!’ cheered Olivia at the end of her favourite song, as she took her jacket back off, looked at Jim and swayed. He could see why Daniel was so enchanted, Olivia was unlike anyone he’d met before.
‘Japan?’
‘They’re off on tour tomorrow, three weeks in Japan!’ she said, slinging her jacket onto a raised barstool at a vacant high table next to them. Jim raised an impressed eyebrow. Maybe The Horizontals were going to be the next big thing.
‘How cool. I like them!’
The Horizontals were embarking on a tour of Japan, where they had struck gold; all the groovy Harajuku girls and boys were loving their synth pop ditties, even if Mimi had to work the soft toy department of Hamleys in London by day, to make ends meet.
All eyes were on the band – mostly on Mimi – but Daniel made a beeline for Olivia as he returned from the bar and handed out the drinks.
‘Thanks buddy,’ Jim said.
‘Grazie,’ Olivia said with a flirty smile. She was about to ask Jim whether the business about The Sun was true, but the mobile went off in his pocket and he weaved upstairs to take the call.
Olivia downed most of her drink in one and went to light another cigarette. Daniel marvelled at her. He couldn’t
believe he’d bumped into her. Again. On this side of the world.
‘So surreal – I can’t believe you’re here!’ he said.
‘Nor can I!’ Olivia laughed, although Daniel wasn’t sure if she meant meeting him or the fact that she was in the 100 Club and not at work.
‘How have you been?’
‘OK,’ Olivia said unconvincingly as she exhaled smoke and reached for the remnants of her drink in the plastic cup on the table.
The band finished another song and Olivia clapped and shouted.
‘Go on treacle!’ she added in a mockney accent, cheering and whooping. ‘Play anuvva blinder!’
Daniel laughed.
‘You’ve taken to London then?’
‘Oh yeah,’ Olivia answered. ‘I’ve got the lingo down guv’nor,’ she said in a terrible East End accent. Daniel smiled as he sipped his pint.
‘I know that “cream crackered” means I’m tired; a man is now a “geezer”; and “pissed” doesn’t mean angry anymore, it means loaded.’
‘Loaded?’
‘Drunk, guv!’ Olivia protested. ‘Loaded means drunk among the kids I went to school with… but they mostly speak American.’
‘Yeah, loaded means something else here. But you might be that too.’
Olivia didn’t answer that, because it was obvious she was. She didn’t really need the job she had just been sacked from. She had taken it to add some rhythm to her week, because her mammas were worried about her erratic schedule and her lack of meaningful friendships. Nancy in particular had recommended she get a job, not realising that barwork was conducive to neither good timekeeping nor making friends.
‘I might not fit in, but I just know to never – ever – say “fanny pack” again.’
They giggled.
‘Ooh and I know what “sling yer hook” means now I’ve been fired!’
Daniel smiled, then remembered his own pitiful employment situation, and wondered if Will would be firing him. The longer the set went on, the less Daniel cared. He wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Jim came back in and made his excuses. ‘Gotta go. Boyzone cancelled on me but I’ve just taken a very interesting call from Geri…’ He was hoping for the exclusive on why she had recently left the Spice Girls.