47

‘Daisy’s not in today,’ said a girl whose vowels were so twisted with poshness that Con could barely understand a word she was saying.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘right. Do you know what’s wrong with her?’

‘No idea,’ she said. ‘I didn’t ask.’

Con felt an icy sense of dread. He took the lift back down to the post room and pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket. She didn’t answer her mobile, so he took a deep breath and called her home number. Again, there was no reply. He tried both numbers every ten minutes until finally, at half past two, someone answered her mobile. It was a man’s voice, impatient and gruff.

‘Hello. Is that Daisy’s phone?’

‘Yes. Who is this?’

‘It’s Con. I’m a friend of hers. Who’s this?’

‘I’m Daisy’s father.’

‘Oh.’ Con stopped slouching against the wall and brought himself up straight. ‘Hello. Is Daisy all right?’

‘Sorry, what did you say your name was?’

‘Con. Connor. I’m a friend of Daisy’s from work.’

‘I see. Well – we’re all at the hospital right now …’

‘The hospital. Shit. I mean, God. Is it serious? Is she OK?’

Daisy’s father sighed. ‘Well, we’re waiting for some X-rays. It looks like another pneumothorax.’

‘What … what’s that?’

‘It means she’s got air around her lungs.’

‘Shit. Sorry. Will she be OK?’

‘Look. I’m terribly sorry, but I have to go now. Maybe you should come to see her.’

‘Would that be OK?’

‘Of course. She’d love to see a friend. She’s at St Mary’s. Bring her something nice to eat. The food here is terrible.’

Con followed the signs to Daisy’s ward, clutching a bag of sandwiches and a bunch of roses. A man sat on a plastic chair in a dressing gown, his hand attached by clear plastic tubing to a drip on a stand. A porter pushed a grey-faced woman in a wheelchair towards a lift. Con shuddered. It was wrong to think of Daisy in this environment, amongst all this greyness and decay.

Her bed was at the furthest end of the small ward, underneath a window. Mimi sat at one side of her bed; a small woman with silver hair sat at the other side. Mimi was reading a magazine and the other woman was laughing at something she’d just said.

He edged towards the bed nervously. He was about to be confronted by both Daisy’s illness and her family. He felt overwhelmed.

The small woman turned as Con approached and smiled. She had a dimple and crooked teeth. ‘Connor!’ she cried, getting immediately to her feet to greet him. ‘I’m Helen, Daisy’s mother.’

‘Hello,’ he said, accepting a coffee-scented kiss to his cheek.

‘Daisy,’ she said, touching her knee, ‘look who’s here. It’s your friend Connor.’

Daisy was held up by a thick wedge of pillows and had a tube coming out of her chest, attached to a jar of water. She was clutching an oxygen mask in her right hand which was attached to a tank. Her skin was very blue and her hair was lying in lank strands on her pillow. She smiled wanly at him. ‘Sexy, huh?’ she said.

He rested the roses on the bed and smiled at her. ‘You look lovely,’ he said. ‘A bit pale …’

‘You mean a bit blue,’ she croaked. ‘Not to mention a bit tubey and a bit ill.’

‘Here.’ Daisy’s mother moved her plastic chair towards him. ‘Sit down, Connor.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, honestly.’

‘No. I insist. I’ve been sitting down for so long my bum’s gone totally numb. I think I might just go and stretch my legs, actually. Meems – are you coming?’

‘Yes,’ said Mimi, getting to her feet. ‘I could do with a wander. See you in a minute.’

Con waited until the two women had left the ward, then he kissed Daisy on the lips. ‘Your mum’s really nice,’ he said.

‘Yes. I told you I had fantastic parents, didn’t I?’

‘I brought you some sandwiches,’ he said, showing her the bag.

‘Ooh, yum. What have we got today?’

‘Tuna and capers.’

‘Ooh, lovely. I love capers.’

He unwrapped the sandwiches for her and passed her a square. Then he poured some water for her, from a clear plastic jug into a plastic cup.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what’s this pneumo … pneumo …?’

‘Pneumothorax. It’s air around the lungs. It’s horrible. I’ve had it before, but not this badly. I thought I was dying, I really did.’

‘And is it to do with your cystic fibrosis?’

‘Of course. Isn’t everything? Yes, so, I’ve got to lie here with this thing sticking into my ribs for at least three days …’

‘And then what – then you can come home?’

‘Then I can come home.’

‘So it’s not, you know, not something that might …’

‘No. It’s not going to kill me. Just ruin my social life for a few days.’

‘Oh,’ said Con, ‘oh, that’s good, then, that’s … oh … God …’ And then Con felt all the pent-up anxiety he’d been carrying round all day suddenly leave his body in an enormous whoosh of emotion and he started to cry. ‘Oh, God,’ he sniffed, ‘I’m really sorry. Shit. I just thought … when your dad said you were in the hospital I just panicked. And then he wouldn’t tell me if you were going to be OK and I just thought that you were going to … that you might … and I couldn’t, I really couldn’t handle it if anything happened. I couldn’t deal with it …’

Con pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, trying to stem the flow of tears. Daisy passed him a paper tissue from a box on her trolley. He took it silently and breathed in deeply, in and out, in and out, trying to bring himself under control. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m being really pathetic. You must think I’m psycho.’

‘Of course I don’t,’ said Daisy, clutching his fisted-up hands with hers. ‘I think it’s really sweet.’

‘Oh, God,’ he laughed, and wiped his face with the tissue, ‘that’s even worse.’

‘I can’t believe you were that worried about me.’

‘Of course! I mean, I know we’ve only known each other a few weeks, but you’re really important to me. You’re, you know, special.’ He gulped.

Daisy squeezed his hand. ‘You’re very special to me, too.’

‘I am?’

‘Of course you are. You’re up there, you know, up there with my mother and my father, my sisters, my best friend. You really matter to me. You …’ She stopped and tried to catch her breath. She brought the oxygen mask to her mouth and took a few deep breaths. Her blue eyes peered at him from over the mask, pale and scared and young. ‘Sorry,’ she said, a moment later. ‘I should stop talking for a while … it’s … hard …’

‘No. Don’t talk. You don’t have to say anything. Look – here. I’ve got you something else.’ He pulled the poem from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.

She unfolded it and started to read. Con watched her intently as she read, trying to gauge her reaction. She folded up the poem, rested it on her lap and smiled.

‘Con?’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘I love you, too.’

Mimi and Helen came back a few minutes later with plastic cups of coffee and a packet of Fruit Pastilles. Then Daisy’s father returned and shook Con warmly and firmly by the hand. They were a noisy family, talkative and open and full of swearwords and booming laughter. They wanted to know all about Con and acted as if many of their friends were teenage boys from Tottenham. They didn’t seem at all fazed or desperate about Daisy’s situation or about the fact that she was dating someone like him. They weren’t like anyone Con had ever met before. They were so confident in themselves, in their unity, in their themness, that there was no room for doubt or fear or awkwardness.

There was talk of Daisy taking some time off work, of Daisy spending a week at home recuperating. ‘And of course,’ said Helen, touching Con’s knee with her birdlike hand, ‘you must come to visit. You must come to stay, for as long as you like.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Daisy’s father. ‘We’ve already got one fellow in the house.’

Con looked at him questioningly.

‘Camellia’s at home at the moment and of course her fellow couldn’t bear to be separated from her for a minute, so he’s staying at the house. Nice chap. He’s a bassoonist, plays with the LPO. I think you’d like him …’

Con left the hospital at eight o’clock that night, letting the cold night air swallow him up. He walked quickly through the streets of Paddington, following signs to the Tube station. His breathing was hard and fast, his heart full of the euphoria of escape. He’d just seen reality, the very basic truth of Daisy and him, of what they were doing and where they were going. And he couldn’t handle any of it. He couldn’t handle her close-knit family, their talk of ‘the house’, of bassoon-playing boyfriends and invitations to stay. He couldn’t handle their unquestioning acceptance of him because he knew it was borne out of nothing more than middle-class politesse. But more than anything, he couldn’t handle the fact that the first woman he’d ever loved was going to keep getting ill and that one day she was going to die and that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.