by Lia Louis
‘It’s shit you had to deal with this alone last night, Nell,’ says Ed gently. ‘But at least it’s nothing major.’ Mum has a fracture, and was taken up to a ward at five a.m. They tried to find me, but couldn’t, and also tried to call me, but my phone has no signal and they never do, I find, in hospitals. She’s in Marx ward, just upstairs from where I was sitting with Sam, and I can visit after nine. ‘So, where’s Dilly? On the road?’
‘At home, till Tuesday,’ I tell him. ‘I didn’t really want him coming, to be honest. I think he would’ve done my head in. Plus, he’d been out, came home drunk and stinking of burgers.’
Ed shakes his head and laughs. ‘Everything changes and nothing changes, eh? At least if he’s at home, Ian next door won’t freak out when he knocks and nobody answers. Do you remember when we went to the cinema …’
I giggle, lips at the warm ceramic of my coffee mug, because I know the story before he’s said it.
‘… and your mum was in the bath and he pulled that community copper off the road to investigate and your mum thought someone was dead when they eventually got her to come to the door?’
We both laugh, then Ed throws a quick glance to his side at the busy cafeteria, and bites his lip as if he shouldn’t be.
‘Ian’s moved actually,’ I say. ‘Not far, over in Kingswood. Met someone. At the squash club. Pam.’
Ed’s green eyes widen and brings a mocking hand up to grasp at his chest. ‘You’re kidding me. Tell me he at least confessed his undying love for your mum before he went?’
‘Nope,’ I say.
‘What? But the man worships her.’
‘Ah, but she knows. Because he already sort of had told her, you know? Without saying it, all the little things he used to do for her. And I know Mum misses him. I just wish – oh, I dunno what I wish.’ I sip my coffee, the tingles of caffeine like sparks of electricity, slowly firing up my brain. ‘I wish they’d get together I suppose.’
Ed nods, wordlessly. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I guess he didn’t want to wait around though. You can’t blame him for that.’
I smart at that, shame blooming hotly across my cheeks. Is that how Ed felt, when the job offer in America came up? When I stalled. When I knew I couldn’t go with him, had to stay to look after Mum, and I’d danced around it, avoided the subject as if it was even possible to, until he had no choice but to ask me outright. ‘So, are you coming with me, Nell?’ Ugh. He called me a door mat. He called me ‘truly pathetic’, for letting my mum rule my life, at thirty. But then we both threw them – harsh, sharp knives of words, as if it would help, as if hurting each other would shock us into changing into what the other wanted, or something. We are both guilty.
‘So come on,’ Ed says, patting the table with his hand, ‘talk to me. How’s Dill’s band? What are their latest stage names? The Broom? The Blender?’
I smile. ‘Dwayne’s latest one is The Storm.’
Ed gulps down a mouthful of coffee and laughs, his hand flying up to his mouth as if to stop him spraying it everywhere. ‘The Storm,’ he repeats. ‘Seriously? More like The Bit of Wind.’
‘The Light Breeze.’
Ed laughs. ‘The Very Small Almost Unnoticeable Gust of Wind that Doesn’t Even Disturb the Empty Recycling Bins.’
Being with Ed, I realise how much his voice has been living inside my head for the last two years – that teasing, sarcastic tone, with the tiny Cheshire twang he’s never been able to lose despite it being somewhere he hasn’t lived since he was sixteen. I suppose when you share twelve years with someone – almost a third of your life to date, and most of your adult years. You grow up together – you grow together. Your thoughts and their words and your anecdotes and their views and jokes, all sort of weave together, until you’re one, and you have no idea where you end and they begin. I knew he’d understand why I left Dilly at home. I knew he’d laugh at Dwayne’s new stage name.
‘And how’re your parents?’ I ask, and I see pinkness, just slightly, spread across his cheeks. Ed’s parents were always nice, but I don’t think they ever fully approved of me. A family of doctors and vets and university professors never quite warmed, I don’t think, to me, someone who wanted to travel – and who then didn’t go any further than Sainsbury’s most days, and spent her life cleaning other people’s houses and checking in on her mum. ‘So, what’s the plan?’ Ed’s mum Helen would say to me often, as if I was in a sticky situation and not just, you know, living my life.
‘They’re good,’ Ed says. ‘No, really good.’ He cycles through, about his Dad retiring after forty years, about his Mum stopping lecturing and obsessing over organising his Dad’s seventieth instead, about his brothers. National Parks in Borneo. Private practices. Awards.
‘Wow,’ I say, and I think of how typical an Ed response that is. Factual. Career and achievement focused. No information on how they actually are.
We drink our coffee in silence, and I pull off a piece of the bacon roll, put it in my mouth, let it disintegrate. I don’t feel like eating. The exhaustion, the churning adrenaline of ambulances and hospitals and all things middle-of-the-night. I feel – and almost definitely look – as though I’ve been found during a river dredge.
‘It was weird seeing you,’ I say. ‘In the street.’
Ed nods, reluctantly, looks down at the mug in his hand. ‘Yeah, I know. It’s been a long time.’
‘Two years and two months.’
‘You’re counting,’ he says, with a sad smile. ‘It doesn’t feel like that long. Does it?’
I shake my head. ‘Sometimes it feels like forever and yesterday all at once,’ I want to say, but I don’t, and a silence drifts over our little round table like a cloud.
We finish our coffees and walk back through the hospital. It seems to have woken up fully now, bustling with people and telephones and the rattle of wheeled-along hospital beds, and I pull my cardigan around myself, as we walk, to hide the big Moomin peeping out at everyone on my stomach like a spy.
A doctor passes us in the corridor, takes Ed’s arm, slaps him once on the back.
‘Ay, it’s the runaway,’ he grins. ‘Didn’t fancy Virginia then? We should catch up. Few drinks?’
‘Sure.’ Ed laughs, nods, slaps him back in that over-the-top masculine sort of way, and the doctor strolls off, shoes squeaking on the hard floor.
‘Virginia?’
‘Fuck knows,’ he whispers. ‘Probably meant Oregon.’
Ed grabs a sheet of visiting times from the receptionist and hands it to me. The first visiting slot is at nine. I’ll go and see Mum, and then I’ll go home, get some sleep. I need it. I feel wobbly, like I’ve had too much of Charlie’s mad home brewed beer.
‘How do you think Bel’s going to handle being in a ward?’ Ed asks, as I scan the paper in my hand.
‘Fine,’ I say.
‘Yeah? What, really?’
‘She’s getting better,’ I lie, ‘doing more.’
‘Really? Well, that’s good.’
And I’m not sure why I say it. I suppose, to show him things have changed, to give the impression that things are different now, that I am different, no longer that person he stared at as he pulled a suitcase from the top of the wardrobe and called me – what was it? Shackled. ‘You’re shackled to other people’s problems,’ he’d said angrily, ‘and what makes me so pissed off, Nell, is that you have absolutely no motivation to change it. Do you? And I try. I try to understand why you insist upon shouldering it all. But …’ And that was when he said it. ‘It’s becoming pathetic, now, Nell. You’re becoming pathetic and in turn, so am I.’ I cried then. And eventually, so did Ed, the pair of us sitting on the edge of his bed, a suitcase, empty between us.
At the elevator, we say goodbye and as the doors slide closed, he says, ‘Be good, Nellie,’ as he always did, and as he flashes me a wide smile he’s given me a thousand times before, I see an image of him in my mind: seventeen and handsome, throwing that lopsided smile across college corridors,
Daisy rolling her eyes, me melting to girl-syrup beside her. And as I walk away, I’m almost grateful for the interruption to the cauldron of thoughts and feelings and emotions bubbling in my brain. It feels like they’re all there, happiness, excitement, fear and worry and all their counterparts, all simmering away, a confused soup.
‘Excuse me? Miss Butterby?’
I turn. It’s the receptionist Ed spoke to.
‘A doctor would like to speak to you. Just in here,’ she says kindly. ‘In private.’
Doctor Henry sits in a tiny room with milky blue walls and a fluorescent light that flickers above our heads like in a locked room in a horror movie.
‘So, Mrs Belinda Butterby, your mother,’ she says, looking down at papers in her lap. Her smart paisley trousers are covered in navy blue swirls, like milky ways.
‘Yes.’
‘And you are Noelle Butterby. Address, number eight, Levison Drive.’
‘Yes. That’s me.’
She dips her head once in a stiff nod. ‘It’s nothing alarming,’ she says. ‘We just have some concerns for your mother and would like to discuss them with you. How is her health generally? She keeps up with her hospital check-ups?’
I nod.
‘And she is generally well? I know she had the liver trouble, but that’s been rectified with a change of statin medication, yes?’
I nod again.
‘OK.’ She laces her fingers together. ‘Miss Butterby, the paramedic mentioned the panic your mother displayed in leaving home and we witnessed the same when she was admitted into a ward. Is there anything we should know? So we can help?’
I pause. There’s a right and wrong answer here, or at least there would be if Mum was sitting beside me now. ‘What does she say?’ I ask.
The doctor hesitates, leans back in her chair. She has dark curly hair, and smooth brown skin. She’s about my age, perhaps a little older and something about her calm manner and slow breaths makes me want to tell her everything, spill it all in front of her, watch her gather it all up, fix it, put it all together. Although some people in her position have already tried. ‘Your mother says she suffers occasionally with panic attacks.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, she does. She’s – since the stroke, she’s lost confidence and she goes out less and less and …’
‘You live with her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Just you two?’
‘And my younger brother, but he’s away a lot.’
Doctor Henry nods, sits back in her chair. ‘Do you think she needs help with her mental health? Her anxiety?’
I’ve tried. I’ve tried so many times. I’ve called Mum’s GP, I’ve self-referred her for CBT therapy with a local NHS mental health scheme, I’ve found forums for her to join, online courses. I even spoke to Tom, Ed’s brother, when we were together, and he was a junior in A&E and he’d given me a list of things to try. Physio, he said curtly. Counselling.
‘I’ve tried,’ I tell Doctor Henry. ‘She – she doesn’t think she needs the help. Because she’s fine if she’s at home. She has her routine at home, she cooks, she bakes, she cleans, and every day she sees people. Me. Our neighbour Ian. My brother …’
‘And you – you’re her carer.’
‘Well, I’m not her carer really, I …’ I trail off and the doctor waits, until she realises I’m not going to say any more and she nods and takes a big breath.
‘We can talk to her about beta blockers which may help––’
‘She won’t take them. She doesn’t think she needs them. It’s her confidence, as I said, since it happened. She was so busy all the time before. She was a singer – worked in clubs, at holiday parks, in local shows. She was a workaholic, really. And then it happened and … she’s just lost herself, a bit.’
‘I see,’ she says, nodding. ‘I understand.’ She leans over to her desk and hands me two leaflets. ‘Your mother is asleep. You may visit, but she let us give her a sleeping pill at least, so she might be sleeping for some time.’
‘OK. Thank you.’
She looks down at her notes. ‘And you are feeling OK?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes … ’ She looks down at her notes again, as if to double-check my name. ‘Noelle. How are you? You’re coping?’
‘Yes. Yeah, I’m fine––’
‘And your mental health?’
My heart stops its galloping – a rabbit in headlights.
‘I can see on our notes that you––’
‘I’m fine,’ I cut in. ‘I’m fine now.’
The doctor lingers on the page in her hand for a moment then looks back up at me. ‘All right. OK, then,’ she says, and I find myself breathing a long, hot sigh of relief. She doesn’t want to talk any more. I can go home. Mum can go home. Everything can go back to normal.
‘There is a support line here,’ she says, stretching out a hand and running a lidded biro across the leaflet in my hand. ‘For you. For your mum. For various things.’
‘Thank you.’
The doctor smiles gently. ‘Great.’
Doctor Henry follows me out and whisks off in the other direction, someone else to fix, to survey, to observe, and I walk down the corridor that I saw Sam disappear down hours ago. Was it even real? Was any of it? It’s bright outside now. Through the large, square windows, the sky is a brilliant tropical blue, and a fresh Spring breeze laps through the crack at the top of it. When I saw Sam, the night was black, the air was freezing cold, the corridors silent. It feels like a different place altogether.
I get to the end of the corridor; push through the sticky doors I saw Sam arrive through. And that’s when I see it. A leaflet balled up on a bench. I almost don’t want to reach out and pick it up, but of course, I do. And I don’t want to open it up either, but of course, I do that too. Because there it is. My three a.m. old-fashioned ‘like Candice and Steve’ scrawl. My phone number on a blood donation leaflet, written down for Sam. Who screwed it up and dumped it on a bench, like rubbish.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Oh, Elle, I can’t actually believe he was at the hospital.’
‘I know.’
‘I mean, out of all of the bloody places you could both be and at the same time.’
‘I know!’
‘What do you think this means?’ Charlie says without so much as a glance over her shoulder, and I know she isn’t addressing me. She’s addressing Theo, who is refilling a big container of glistening stuffed olives behind the glass deli counter I lean against, Petal snuffling on his chest in a black sling with silver loops at one shoulder, like a toga.
‘I think it means a lot,’ says Theo calmly. ‘They’re on the same plane. They have the same energy. They’re in complete alignment. They’re being pushed together, like magnets.’
I laugh, my hands around a mug of herbal tea Theo made me, and one that seems to be floating with what looks like bits of garden waste I dare not enquire about. ‘I don’t know about that––’
‘Oh come on,’ says Charlie. ‘Don’t give me that, Noelle Butterby, you know it means something.’ Charlie crunches an organic sourdough crouton then stares at me, eyes crinkling at the corners, as if staring into my very soul. ‘You’re marrying this man.’
I laugh again, louder this time. ‘Ah, well, see, I’m very sorry to report to you both that I don’t think that’s going to happen.’
‘I’m afraid it is.’
‘He threw my number away,’ I say, tossing the words into the middle of the room like a bomb. ‘Yuuuup. That’s right, my friends. Like balled-up bog roll he’d wiped his arse on.’
Charlie stops chewing then, a rainbow of salad speared on her fork. ‘What?’
‘I gave him my number at the hospital. On a leaflet. I wrote it down. And he chucked it away.’
‘How do you even know that?’
‘Found it. Screwed up, chucked on a bench.’
Charlie freezes, her brow creasing beneath her blunt fringe. Her earrings, two plastic sl
ices of lime, swing beside her rosy cheeks. She turns and looks at Theo, as if for the answer to the conundrum, but he says nothing.
‘Ah,’ I say, stealing a crouton. ‘Still think I’m marrying him now?’ I crunch it between my teeth.
It’s been a week since the hospital and it already feels like it didn’t happen – like it was something I imagined, like a weird, tired, delirious three a.m. fever dream. Mum going in an ambulance. That coffee I had with Ed in my ridiculous Moomin pyjama top. Seeing Sam – actually seeing him – in the middle of the night in a place the pair of us probably least expected. My number on a leaflet, screwed up and chucked on a hospital bench.
‘But why would he throw it away?’ asks Charlie. ‘Like – why? I don’t get it.’
‘Fear,’ says Theo, sliding the glass deli counter’s door closed. ‘Most adverse reactions to things are because of fear.’
‘Or a girlfriend?’ I offer. ‘A wife?’
‘Oh, who cares about that?’
‘Him, Charlie. Maybe he’s, you know, a decent person.’
‘But you – you got on so well, Noelle,’ Charlie groans, lagging behind us on the conversation trail. ‘You could just be friends. You didn’t give him your number and proposition him for God’s sake.’ Charlie looks at me. ‘Did you?’