The Night We Met

by Zoë Folbigg

  ‘Oh,’ said Vaani disappointedly. She was still a northwest London kind of girl.

  ‘We’re moving out to the sticks though.’

  ‘Oh.’ Vaani’s aversion grew, as if she’d just found a slug in her baguette.

  ‘Nearish my husband’s parents, but on the trainline to London. We’re buying one of those modern, flat-pack houses.’ She said it in the hope of winning Vaani over.

  ‘Oh, cool. One of those German ones that look like a Tellytubby house?’

  ‘Yes! Well. Sort of. It’s a Huf Haus. We’re buying it from a couple who are divorcing – due to the stress of having it built apparently.’

  ‘Oh dear, I hope it isn’t cursed.’

  ‘I just hope it stays up. I can’t be doing with a new baby and walls made of plastic if it all falls down…’

  ‘German engineering. They’re very solid – and very chic – apparently. What does your husband do?’

  ‘Daniel – he’s a sports journalist. At The Guardian.’

  ‘Oh, my friend is fashion editor there.’

  ‘Lillie? Lillie Carter?’

  ‘Yes, Lillie!’

  ‘She was at our wedding!’

  ‘Shut up!’ scoffed Vaani.

  ‘No really, she’s a friend of Daniel’s. Small world.’

  Olivia marvelled at how Vaani must have friends everywhere, but wondered how they fell out of touch. Perhaps this was where Friends Reunited might do well. Perhaps the internet might help with these connections; Daniel had done a search on Olivia to find her in Milan after all.

  ‘So where are you working?’ Olivia asked, as she put her hand to her chest to fight the spike within it.

  ‘God, you’re not going to give birth here, are you?’

  ‘No, no, it’s just my lunch.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Vaani said unsympathetically.

  ‘And people don’t “just give birth” – it takes ages to kick in. So I’m told.’

  ‘Fine.’ Vaani took a sip of her sparkling water. ‘I work for Drapers, the industry magazine.’

  ‘Oh wow, you really did stay on your course pathway. The business of fashion.’

  ‘I know, right? So predictable.’

  ‘Vaani, you are anything but that. What do you do there?’

  ‘I’m deputy editor. Snooping around the industry. Moaning about business rates. Checking out what the parental leave policies are at the retail giants. Calling out the sweatshop proponents. Looking at the marketing successes… All very interesting for a geek like me. What about you? What do you do, apart from getting knocked up? Don’t tell me you’re working for Philip Green. Rumour is he’s going to get a knighthood…’

  ‘No, thank god. I work for East of Eden, in their Shoreditch studio.’

  ‘I know Phoebe! She’s great, isn’t she?’

  ‘No way, how funny!’ laughed Olivia, as she rubbed her belly.

  ‘I love what she’s done, giving a boutique brand an egalitarian edge. Not my kind of clothes mind, all those cargo pants and utility… stuff…’ Vaani made a face. ‘But she’s a very good businesswoman.’

  ‘She is. I met her here in fact! Shortly after 9/11. We got chatting and she offered me a job.’

  ‘Small world.’

  Olivia smiled to herself and thought again how it was. How she had bumped into Daniel at opposite ends of it. How Vaani seemingly knew everyone. How bizarre it was that they hadn’t crossed paths in the three years she had been back in London. Phoebe had been on maternity leave for most of that time, having a baby followed by accidental twins. Olivia had stepped up quickly and had been so busy helping to run the studio that she hadn’t had any time to schmooze the trade press.

  ‘She’s just come back from mat leave actually, I’m handing back over to her now.’

  ‘Well, I never. Olivia Messina has been the East of Eden caretaker all this time and I didn’t even know it.’

  ‘Working for Phoebe has taught me so much. The clothes aren’t really my style either, but that doesn’t matter. Her passion is inspirational. I don’t know how she does it with three babies. I don’t know how I’m going to do it with one.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll be fine!’ said Vaani with a nonchalant wave. ‘Just give it to a nanny or something.’

  Olivia frowned.

  ‘So what is your style?’ Vaani asked, finishing off her last bite of baguette.

  ‘Mine?’

  Olivia had been working so hard for Phoebe – getting her drawings through to production. Meeting accountants and investors. Liaising with PR and marketing teams. Seeing stock numbers through to the Carnaby Street showroom and holding events there. Keeping the business afloat. So much so that no one had asked Olivia about her own style, not since she tiptoed from her bedroom to Mamma Due’s sewing room, as she came out of her malaise at the end of the century.

  ‘Assuming you’re still drawing that is. Is it all Westwood-style corsets, like your binbag dress?’

  ‘That dress!’ Olivia laughed. ‘No, it’s…’

  Olivia looked at Vaani and felt able to open up to those large probing eyes.

  ‘Less structured. More floaty, I think.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Vaani wanted to hear more.

  Olivia thought about her own sketchbooks and swatches. She’d drawn a few pieces, but only made one creation of her own since leaving Milan.

  ‘Quite muted in terms of colour, but quite frothy in terms of fabric. I designed my wedding dress last year – we got married in the Tuscan hills – and the whole place inspired a style direction I guess.’

  ‘Sounds… A Midsummer Night’s Dreamy?’ suggested Vaani.

  ‘Yeah, dreamy, that’s it. I love it, when I do get to do it. But I’ve been so busy with East of Eden and buying this Huf Haus in Cambridgeshire and the baby coming… my own drawings have gone on the backburner.’

  ‘They sound lovely,’ Vaani said warmly.

  Lovely? Vaani? She really must have softened in her twenties.

  ‘It doesn’t sound like the sort of style you’d find lovely,’ Olivia said honestly. Vaani was wearing a shirt buttoned up to the collar and skinny chinos. Her wardrobe palette a different sort of muted: mostly black, navy and beige.

  ‘It’s not for me – but look at you! You’re a floaty maxi-dress-in-a-Tuscan-olive-grove kind of woman. I think your passion is inspiring and I’m sure your own style is too. To some people.’

  ‘You think?’ Olivia blushed. Her freckles flashing with her heartburn.

  ‘Yes – you should explore it. Work on it while you’re off. Women are meant to be creative when they’re creating babies, aren’t they?’

  ‘That’s what Phoebe says.’

  ‘Well then, get stuck in. It would stop you becoming one of those awful bores who talk about night feeds and nappy rash.’

  ‘Yeah, I will.’ Olivia mused, while her baby kicked the insides of her and her heart burned in its cage.

  Thirty-Five

  January 2018

  Cambridge, England

  ‘Come this way please,’ said a Macmillan nurse with a small face under a thick bob and a name badge that said Jackie. Olivia hadn’t come across Jackie before. She didn’t like having to start again with new faces in these cavernous corridors. She liked who she knew. Graham the radiographer. Dr Okereke and her beautiful, sage face. Her assistant Marian McQuillan. Their dashing Canadian student Jordan Lo. Kay, the Macmillan nurse she had first encountered in the corridors of Addenbrooke’s, who also had two daughters, although hers were grown up. Olivia couldn’t see Kay by the Macmillan station today and worried Jackie might be a bad omen.

  Olivia and Daniel followed Jackie down the corridor, Daniel carrying both their winter coats over his arm, as she opened the door to a cramped room where Dr Okereke and Dr McQuillan were already waiting.

  ‘Mrs Messina!’ Dr Okereke said warmly. ‘Sit down.’ Her grey braids had new jewel adornments near the tips, which tinkled like a wind chime as she proffered a seat.

  She called me Ol
ivia before.

  This too felt like a bad omen. She looked at Dr McQuillan perched on the desk, her smile warm and sympathetic. Olivia took the chair nearest to the desk, Daniel the one next to Olivia.

  Them and us, he thought, as he sat down, too nervous about the blows ahead to make chitchat. Daniel was never good at chitchat.

  He flopped their coats over the arm of the blue plastic chair as Jackie closed the door and leaned back against it.

  Hemmed in.

  Olivia looked at the vertical window blinds behind Dr Okereke, and the grey day and car park beyond it, and felt this room was not fit for the news that was delivered in it. Daniel put his hand on Olivia’s.

  ‘Thanks for coming in today,’ said Dr Okereke, always authoritative and warm. ‘Looks pretty horrid out there still…’

  ‘It is,’ said Daniel bleakly.

  ‘It’s been horrid hasn’t it?’ Jackie wittered and Olivia wanted to scream at everyone to stop talking about the fucking weather.

  ‘So, for the benefit of Jackie, who hasn’t been following your case as she’s new to Addenbrooke’s, this wonderful woman had a seizure in the summer, caused by an astrocytoma on the parietal lobe. She had surgery under Mr Greene and myself at Queen Square in September, which was a great success, topped up by some short bursts of radiotherapy, as a belt and braces approach…’

  Belt and braces. She’s saying it now.

  Olivia still didn’t know what it meant and reminded herself to ask Daniel.

  ‘Mrs Messina…’

  She called me Olivia before, I’m sure.

  ‘…had an MRI on Christmas Eve…’

  Why so formal? thought Olivia.

  Why isn’t she showing us on the screen? Daniel worried.

  Dr Okereke shook the folder in her hand, even though the digital images were on the sleeping computer behind her – old methodology was hard to move on from. ‘And I’m really happy with what we’ve seen, happy with how you’re doing, and as far as we know it, today your brain is tumour-free.’

  Olivia stared into space.

  Belt and braces.

  Daniel breathed out a sigh of relief that turned into a shake in his chest.

  ‘Oh god!’ he said, pulling Olivia into his arm before clutching his face with his free hand. ‘Can we see the scan? Does that mean it’s gone?’

  Olivia said nothing. From a high corner of a cramped room she looked down on herself, sitting still on the plastic chair; looked down on Daniel and the relief flooding him as he rubbed his face, his smile travelling to the corners of his eyes.

  ‘It’s wonderful news,’ Dr McQuillan said warmly, urging Olivia to feel able to celebrate.

  ‘It’s out,’ confirmed Dr Okereke. ‘There was no residue of the tumour we removed, nothing visible at all on the scan, and there are no signs or shadows to be concerned about. I can show you on the screen…’

  As she clicked a mouse to awaken the computer, the images she’d been discussing with Dr McQuillan before Jackie brought them in flashed up. Nine brains in a tile.

  ‘OK so this was August, your imaging from the hospital in Spain. This is the mass, the glioblastoma which was removed in September.’

  Daniel looked at the small cauliflower floret Dr Lorca had first shown them, when he said it might not be anything serious. Olivia looked out of the window.

  ‘Then if I just go to the image now…’ Dr Okereke clicked on another tab, and the white mass looked bigger, the cauliflower had grown.

  Daniel gasped and squeezed Olivia’s hand.

  ‘Oh, hang on…’

  Dr Okereke fumbled, flushed and embarrassed, looking bemusedly between her mouse and screen. ‘No, sorry, that was the September image just before your surgery, where you can see it at its largest. This should be December…’

  Daniel saw Dr McQuillan’s smile fade to a wince while Dr Okereke sang like a bird as she searched and clicked.

  ‘Brains I can do. Computers… There!’ she exhaled with a sigh of relief.

  ‘This is December, as you can see, there is some scar tissue but nothing to be concerned about – we are very pleased to inform you.’

  Olivia came back into her body and spoke.

  ‘It’s gone?’ she asked flatly.

  ‘It’s gone,’ smiled Dr McQuillan, in a soft Irish accent.

  ‘Will it come back?’

  Dr Okereke cleared her throat.

  ‘Well, what we say as medical professionals is that you are “cancer-free”. Any one of us in this room could have cancer in six months’ time.’

  Daniel frowned – Dr Okereke didn’t need to put such a downer on it. Dr McQuillan interjected.

  ‘Olivia, this operation and your treatment has been an amazing success, you have done brilliantly…’ She squeezed Olivia’s arm from her perch on the desk. ‘And if I were you, I would go and book a holiday because you bloody deserve one.’

  Olivia smiled.

  ‘I really don’t need any more treatment?’

  ‘You’ll be kept an eye on, three-monthly checks to start with,’ said Dr Okereke, pressing her purple lips together.

  Olivia thought of everything she wanted to do for her label – new designs she wanted to put into production and have made. All the reconnecting she wanted to do with her daughters.

  ‘I don’t have to come in sooner?’

  ‘You can come in sooner if you like,’ she chuckled. ‘Word is Jackie’s cakes are up there with Nigella!’ No one laughed, although Jackie gave a modest smile from her post against the door. ‘But no, get that holiday booked. You certainly deserve it.’

  Daniel and Olivia stood up, gathered their coats and her bag in a huddle, still shocked, then Daniel launched himself at Dr Okereke, opening his arms and giving her a broad hug.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  As Dr Okereke squeezed Daniel back, her large bosom pressing against him, Olivia saw a hesitation in her eyes, which she hoped was just down to his surprising embrace.

  Thirty-Six

  May 2004

  Cambridgeshire, England

  Sitting on the L-shaped sofa, boxes by her feet, Olivia held her baby girl to her breast and hoped the latch was correct. It looked correct, as Flora furiously suckled and released a deep fart into her tiny nappy. The key turned in the front door.

  They’re here.

  It was the first time Daniel had left Olivia since Flora Jean Luciana Messina Bleeker was born three days ago, three weeks early, so he could go to Stansted to collect his mothers-in-law. The silence of the house, save for the little grunts and snaffles of her newborn, and the birdsong in the garden from the blue tits and black caps, filled Olivia with a sense of peace.

  I did it. I made you.

  ‘Sorry, it’s a total mess…’ Olivia heard Daniel say to Nancy and Maria as they came through the door.

  ‘This is spectacular!’ Nancy looked up, all the way to the ceiling of the modern gabled roof. German flat-pack houses that generated more energy than they consumed were rare in the UK, but even rarer in Italy, although Nancy had seen one on a cycling trip to Switzerland.

  ‘Mind you don’t trip over any boxes…’

  Neither woman cared, they just wanted to get their hands on their granddaughter, so they dropped their bags and almost raced past the floating staircase to the expanse of the family room and kitchen at the back.

  ‘Allora,’ Maria said, rolling up her sleeves.

  ‘Let me see her…’ said Nancy, with authority.

  They walked into the sun-dappled room to see their daughter sitting on the sofa with her daughter.

  ‘Ah!’ Nancy gulped.

  ‘Bambina miaaaaaa…’ Maria cooed.

  Flora, soft hair in auburn swirls, flinched from her drunken slumber, eyes still shut, as her nonnas suddenly became speechless and cried silent tears.

  Olivia looked up, barefaced and tired. Her hair parted and twisted. Nancy was struck by how young her daughter suddenly looked at 28. How tiny her
granddaughter was. Olivia started to cry. She was so, so proud.

  *

  Olivia suspected as she climbed into the cabin of the removals van on the Friday morning, that something was rumbling, but she didn’t want to worry Daniel, so she rode it out. Paid attention to the twitches. Felt the pull of her tight tummy while the driver made jokes about her not going into labour and Daniel sat between them.

  They weren’t sure if the other two removal men should be transported in the back like stowaways, but Olivia wasn’t going to go in there.

  ‘No mate, she’s not due for another few weeks. You’re all good.’

  But as the van weaved its way from Brixton to Peckham, along the Old Kent Road and East India Dock; while Kelly Clarkson, Eminem and Kelis alternated between the adverts on the radio, the twinges started to hurt, and Daniel noticed from Olivia’s uncharacteristic quiet that something wasn’t right.

  On the M11, the driver stopped to check the pressure on a back tyre, and while he was on the hard shoulder, shouting to his colleagues through the roll-down back of the lorry, telling them that the tyre was OK, Daniel insisted Olivia tell him what was going on.

  ‘Have your waters broken?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, but I think it’s started, it hurts…’

  Daniel went white. They didn’t have a car and weren’t picking up their new one until tomorrow from the dealership in Cambridge.

  As they passed Elsenham, Olivia turned up Usher’s ‘Yeah!’ on the radio and half sang, half howled, to cover the groans of her pain while the driver thought she was somewhat weird.

  ‘Mate, can you drop us at the Rosie?’ Daniel asked coyly.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Addenbrooke’s, the hospital… it’s the maternity ward.’

  The driver went as white as Daniel, and put his foot on the accelerator, to the protest of the men in the back with the furniture.

  Flora swam into the world only four hours later, in a lowlit room with a birthing pool. The Andrea Bocelli CD Mamma Due had sent over was god knows where in the back of the van, but the midwives put on a calming playlist of their own while Olivia yelled, sweat and swore. Lots. Words they didn’t know, but they got the general gist of.