At eight-fifty on Saturday morning, in an attempt at letting Jenny sleep in, I answer the landline on its first ring.
“Jenny?”
“No, it’s Mark. Is that Tom?”
“Yeah. Sorry, can you put Jenny on?”
“She’s still in bed I’m afraid.”
“I tried her mobile, but it’s off.”
“Yes, she’s still in bed.”
“Right. She’s usually up by now. That’s why I called early. To catch her before she goes back to bed.”
“I hear you Tom, but she’s still asleep.”
“OK. Um. Never mind. Can you just tell her I’ll be up your way about twelve?”
“Well I could, only I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to be honest.”
“I’m sorry?”
“She’s really poorly Tom.”
After a two-breath pause, Tom says, “And when she’s poorly, she only wants to see you, right?”
I laugh. “Not at all. She doesn’t want to see anyone. I haven’t seen her since six yesterday evening. Nor has Sarah.”
“Is she OK?”
“Well no. She isn’t. That’s why I’m letting her sleep.”
“So I can’t visit her. You don’t want me to come up?”
“Tom, really! Get a grip. This is nothing to do with what I want. She got back from the hospital yesterday. They drilled a hole in her skull. She has the worst headache she has ever had, and she’s sleeping. If you come up you’ll just end up having to sit and chat to me, and I don’t think that’s what you want. Is it?”
“Well, no. Clearly not.”
“So … When she gets up, I’ll get her to call you, and you and she can decide what’s best. OK?”
“I suppose.”
“Right.”
“You promise?”
“What?”
“Promise you’ll tell her I called?”
“Whatever, Tom. I promise.”
I click the end-call button and grimace at the handset.
“Is Tom coming?” Sarah asks, looking up from a bowl of cereal at me.
“Maybe,” I say. “We’ll see when Mummy gets up.”
“He isn’t,” Jenny says from behind us.
Both Sarah and I turn to see her standing in the doorway of the kitchen.
“This is a no-visits day,” Jenny says.
Sarah drops her spoon and runs across to hug her mother’s legs. Jenny reaches down and ruffles her hair. “Hello sweetheart,” she says.
“You’re up,” I say, stating the obvious.
“I’m not stopping. I just need some water to take this,” she says, showing me a pill.
“How are you feeling?”
“Shocking.”
“Some breakfast maybe?”
Jenny shakes her head, prises Sarah off and crosses to the kitchen sink.
Sarah stands a little forlorn in the middle of the kitchen and watches her mother.
“It might do you good to eat something,” I say.
Jenny fills a glass from the tap, takes her pill and replaces the tumbler on the counter. “It wouldn’t,” she says.
“Can you just call Tom and tell him then?” I ask.
“I’d rather not,” Jenny says, leaving the room.
“Text him maybe?” I plead. But Jenny is already climbing the stairs.
“She’s feeling poorly,” I tell Sarah who is standing staring at the now-empty doorway. “Don’t worry, she’ll be back down later. Now, if you can just finish your breakfast Miss,” I say, patting the seat of her chair.
As she continues eating her breakfast, I sit and finger the phone.
I think that I could text Tom, but he would just phone me back, furious. I could maybe email him, but then he might not see it – he might turn up anyway.
“Is uncle Tom coming?” Sarah asks.
“No. You heard Mummy say she’s too tired for visits today, right?”
Sarah looks up at me and nods, giving me a better idea.
“Well how would you like to phone uncle Tom and tell him?”
Sarah nods again, simultaneously emptying a spoonful of rice-crispies onto the table.
“You can tell him all about your new doll as well.”
“Tom doesn’t like Polly Pockets, he says they’re boring.”
“Well you can tell him all about them anyway.”
Sarah spends a good ten minutes rambling on about her dolls before announcing, rather brutally. “Mummy says you can’t come. She says no visits today.”
But Tom presumably takes this information better from Sarah than he would from me, because Sarah is still smiling when she hangs up.
I shower her and dress her and we spend the morning in the park. It’s a grey old day but thankfully dry. I spoil her a little with chocolate from the refreshments kiosk and another round of her obsession – alphabet spaghetti – in an attempt at making up for her mother’s pain-induced insularity.
And then I park her in front of the television and call Ricardo.
He tells me excitedly that he has found a reasonable deal for an iPhone and that he’s heading into Santa Marta to pick it up later this morning.
“It’s a double deal Chupy, that’s the only thing, so I have to change the landline number as well,” he says.
“Isn’t that Federico’s though? Surely, the landline isn’t ours.”
“I checked with him, and he doesn’t mind.”
And then he tells me what he has found out about pontine gliomas. “Statistically she’s going to die,” he says with Colombian brutality.
“Jesus babe, don’t say that.”
“But you need to know. As far as I can see it’s the worst prognosis of any kind of brain tumour. I’d say she’s lucky if her chances are one in fifty.”
I glance at the door to check that Jenny is out of earshot. “God, I can see why the surgeon didn’t want to discuss probabilities.”
“But don’t tell her,” Ricardo says.
“And I might be wrong. It’s not my speciality, babe.”
“No.”
“But everything I can find says that it’s usually fatal.”
And so, Sarah happily mesmerised by the Teletubbies, I sit and try to process this new information, this new concept … That Jenny, currently asleep upstairs, may not be around for that much longer. And I try to work out what that means, for her, for her daughter, for myself.
But there are no answers to be found.