I had a tumor the size of a grapefruit, apparently. Why are all tumors the size of grapefruits? Why not any other citrus fruits? Lemons? Limes? Kumquats? Is a kumquat a citrus fruit? Or tennis balls? You never hear anyone say they had a tumor the size of a tennis ball, do you? Anyway, it’s gone now. All of it. Along with quite a bit of my insides. But apart from the fact that I feel like I’ve been kicked up the bottom by a horse and my emotions are whirling on the breeze with all the control of a stunt kite, I’m absolutely fine. That’s the wonder of modern anesthetic for you.
Christian, on the other hand, is not fine. He, like most of the male population, does not cope well with illness. Hospitals make him break out in a cold sweat. He says the smell of stale urine makes him want to gag. Not mine, I hasten to add.
He is sitting by my bedside looking bored, and he’s already eaten most of the grapes he brought in. Visiting hour is torture. Christian looks up at me wanly.
“Cheer up,” I say. “I’ll be out in a couple of days.” I can’t wait.
The hospital food is great, providing you like beans and chips for every meal. And it’s one of those mixed wards, where they let geriatric old men wander round at night with their pajamas all undone. There are several shades of hair tangled round the bathroom plug hole, and the loos are crying out for the want of some Toilet Duck. If you didn’t come in here with an illness, you would, without a shadow of a doubt, go out with one.
A few months ago I could have been ill in a cream-and-terra-cotta room that looked like a window design from Habitat, with my very own spotlessly clean shower, and had prawn sandwiches with the crusts cut off for afternoon tea and Baileys on demand. I had private health care under Ed’s scheme with Wavelength, but I don’t know if Ed has cut me out of it now that we are “estranged,” and because I came in as an emergency, I didn’t really have the time or the inclination to ask.
Ed hasn’t been near, and I think that’s mainly because I told everyone I didn’t want him here. And that was partly true. I am just about holding all this together, and I really don’t think I could have coped with him feeling sorry for me because I’m feeling sorry enough for myself. And I didn’t want him to want me back for all the wrong reasons, which he might have done if he’d seen me like this. There’s nothing quite like having an armful of intravenous drips to bring on a bit of misplaced sympathy. Do you know what I mean? There’s a part of me in all this that just wants to pretend none of it has happened and to wind the clock back, about three years probably, to a time when all we had to row and worry about was whether we needed a conservatory built or not.
I didn’t want the kids to come in either. It’s not that I don’t miss them desperately, I do—they’re the only children I’ll ever have now, and I want to hug them to me and love them. But I didn’t want them to see me sick and worry. And I didn’t want them to catch anything deadly either. As I said, the whole thing has just screwed my emotions up completely. Facing your own mortality is nearly as scary as the length of the checkout queues at Ikea.
Jemma is clip-clopping her way down the ward, and Christian looks relieved. It means he can slope away early. Jemma is flushed and has on her careworn look, but despite that, she is dressed from head to toe in antique silk and looks like she’s going to a gallery opening rather than hospital visiting. She’s missed the tea trolley, which she’ll be miffed about. It’s only seventy pence a cup, and they use at least one tea bag per hundred patients. So no cutbacks there!
Christian stands up. He and Jemma nod curtly at each other. “I’ll be off,” Christian says, and he pecks my cheek and rushes away without another word.
Jemma sits down in his vacated utilitarian lime-green plastic seat and starts to cry. I reach out and stroke her hair. She’ll start me off too if she’s not careful. “Hush, hush,” I murmur softly, and reach for the box of Tempo Aloe Plus tissues on my metal bedside cabinet. “Don’t worry about me.” I tilt her chin and smile my bravest, if slightly tearful, smile. “I’ll be fine.”
Jemma sniffs unhappily. “I’m not worrying about you,” she says, taking one of my tissues. “You’re always fine. I’m worrying about me.”
I stop stroking her hair and lie back on my pillow.
“Supposing I can’t find anyone to have babies with?” she continues. “Cancer sometimes runs in families. We used to eat the same breakfast cereal. Suppose that does it?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“You’re all right—you’ve already got three children. What if I haven’t had any by the time my insides decide to pack up? I can’t find anyone who will commit to me.”
“So stop going out with married men.” In this mood, Jemma would make Good Samaritans want to take a long run off a short cliff.
“It’s easy for you to say that, you’re married to one. Well, you were.”
Thank you, Jemma.
“Do you know how many prams I saw today, Alicia?”
“No.” But I’m sure you’re going to tell me.
“Nine,” Jemma says emphatically. “Nine prams.”
“Nice.”
“Nine prams and seven cute, chubby little toddlers.”
“Any surly teenagers?” I inquire.
“No,” Jemma snaps. “None.” My sister eyes my grapes covetously, and I move them away from her. “Now that you’re staring death in the face, Ali, it’s made me realize that I’m not getting any younger either.”
“God forbid,” I say.
Jemma starts a renewed bout of crying. This is a two tissue flow. “He’s left me,” she wails loud enough for even the deaf geriatrics to hear. They pull their attention away from General Hospital, which is blaring out of the lone ward telly, cunningly positioned ten feet up the wall so that no one can quite see it.
“Sssh,” I say. “Who?”
“My Swiss banker.” Her sniveling has never been done in dulcet tones. “I’ve always wanted a Swiss banker.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re rich and sophisticated and have apartments overlooking Lake Geneva and ski lodges in Zermatt.”
I tut. “Why has he left you?”
“Oh.” Jemma’s lower lip quivers. “Eric said he couldn’t go on living a lie.”
I can’t hide my smile. “Eric?”
“So.” Jemma scowls. “No one’s perfect!”
“So, presumably, Eric not only had a crap name but a wife too.”
Jemma tosses her hair. “The marriage had been dead for a long time.”
“Let me have a guess.” I can do waspish along with the best—anesthetic or not. “The minute alimony was mentioned, they thought they’d give it another try.”
Jemma has the grace to look slightly abashed. “Well…”
“How often are you going to go through this, Jemma?”
“You’re a fine one to talk.”
“At least I’ve only cocked things up once.”
“And at least you’re admitting it now,” she snapped. “You and Ed make me want to bang my head against the wall in frustration.” Don’t I know the feeling! “You’re both too damn stubborn to back down. That’s why Neil and I arranged the meal on Saturday….”
“What meal?” I’ll have you note my senses are all still on full alert despite my pain.
“Oh.” Jemma looks round for help.
“What meal?” I have her cornered. There are fifteen minutes left of visiting time before she can escape.
“We want you to get back together, Ali. For your sake and for the kids. You have three lovely children who you’re destroying because you’re both too damn cussed to say you’re sorry. The world is full of people with children, and you all just take them for granted.”
I am so choked that I can’t speak.
“We arranged for you and Ed to meet at The Ivy.”
“No one told me,” I say when I find my voice again.
“Neil sent you an invitation.”
“I didn’t get it.” There are cogs whirring slowly in my brain, and maybe I’m not as sharp as I think.
“Well, it doesn’t matter.” Jemma shrugs. “You couldn’t go because you were in here.” Her gaze takes in the worn blue nylon curtains which don’t quite meet and the eiderdown which has a design in ten-year-old black currant juice on it.
“Did Ed go?” My mouth is dry.
“Yes,” she says.
“And he sat there all alone?”
“Yes.”
“And he knows that I’m in here?”
“Yes,” Jemma says. “Yes, yes, yes to all of the above.” Patience is a virtue Jemma doesn’t possess. “He wants to see you, Ali.”
“No,” I say. “I couldn’t handle it. I’ll see him when I’m better.”
“And who’s going to look after you?”
“Christian.”
“He might be as gorgeous as George Clooney, but I’m not sure he’ll have his bedside manner. What if you’ve got to have chemotherapy?”
“We’ll manage.”
“Come to me,” she pleads.
“I can’t think of anything worse.”
“Go to Mum’s then. She’d love to fuss round you.”
“The cancer wouldn’t have to bother, she’d kill me with kindness,” I protest. “I just want to be alone.”
Jemma takes my hand. “Please sort this out with Ed,” she says. “Or one day you will be alone.”
“Get your own glass house sorted out, Jemma,” I snap tiredly. “Then you can throw stones.” Sometimes the truth hurts, doesn’t it?
She stands up. “I shouldn’t have messed Neil around,” she says.
“I won’t say I told you so.”
“He’s a really nice guy.”
“He could have given you what you want, Jemma.”
“Maybe it’s not too late,” she says tentatively.
“He’s very forgiving.”
“I threw a cup of tea in his face,” she says.
“Maybe he’s not that forgiving,” I say, and we both start to laugh.
“Ali.” Jemma is serious again. “If you’d got the invitation and this hadn’t happened, would you have gone to meet Ed?”
I scratch the intravenous drip which is going into the back of my hand, turning it a nice shade of blue, so that I can avoid looking at my sister. “I don’t know,” I say, but in my heart I know exactly what I would have done.