8

‘Oh my god,’ said Penny, her phone screen lighting up her face in the darkness. ‘Francesco, wake up. Francesco!’

Francesco stirred and looked at the clock on the bedside table – it was 5 a.m.

‘It’s Uncle David. Something happened.’

He propped himself up on one elbow. ‘What? What happened?’

‘I’m not sure. Something to do with his heart? He’s at the hospital. I’ve got to …’

Francesco reached out a hand. ‘Hey,’ he said, his touch warm and his voice calm. ‘I’m here. It’s okay. Get dressed. I’ll take you.’

Penny could barely hear him. It felt like she’d been hit in the stomach with a plank of wood. All Eric’s text said, after a string of missed calls, was: We’re at the Derby Royal. He’s asking for you. It started with chest pains, waiting to find out more. Call me!!

The next few hours were a blur. Francesco borrowed Safiya’s bread delivery van and drove at one hundred miles per hour up the M1. It got lighter outside. Penny remembered realizing, sat in the hospital waiting room, that she was wearing her pyjama shorts under her jeans instead of underwear. She remembered how pale Eric had looked – she might remember that forever – and how little there was of him when they’d hugged, as if he’d shrunk from the worry. She remembered walking into the emergency room and wanting to walk back out, because Uncle David did not look like Uncle David.

‘Eric …’ Penny said. And then she burst into tears.

Francesco stayed with her through all of it, feeding her sugared tea when she refused to eat and calling Clementine to establish when she’d arrive with Rima. He’d gone down to the hospital shop to get a flannel, toothbrush and toothpaste so that Penny could freshen up, and let her rest her head in his lap, stroking her hair, as they waited for David to come out of surgery. He’d stayed, even in the scariest bits – especially because they were scary – and Penny had let herself need him throughout all of it. She held his hand, and didn’t let go.

‘You had me so fucking worried, Davvy.’

Penny all but launched herself at her uncle’s bed, where he was sat up, feebly eating a hospital dinner. He was the colour of the pillowcase.

‘He had us all worried,’ Eric said, shaking his head. ‘Fuck is about right.’

‘The language in this room!’ Uncle David croaked. ‘Can we just tone it down!’ He didn’t sound like himself. He sounded paper thin, as though if Penny blew on him hard enough, he would crumple under the weight of her breath.

‘You sound like hell,’ she told him.

‘Darling, I feel like hell,’ he replied, feebly.

The three of them sat in silence for a moment, exhaling in the relief that he was alive, all of them acknowledging that it was a very close call.

‘He works too hard,’ Eric said. ‘If you didn’t work so hard …’

‘Eric. Come on. Now’s not the time.’

‘You were at the pub when it happened?’ Penny asked. Details were arriving piecemeal and she was trying to thread it all together.

‘I found him surrounded by petit fours on the floor of the pastry section after service,’ Eric said. ‘I thought he’d slipped, but then he wasn’t getting up.’ He turned to David. ‘You and me, we’re going to have a talk. If you’d have died …’

Uncle David looked at Penny in a way that would have been pointed if he wasn’t so sallow and grey. Penny gave him half a smile, happy to be his teammate against Eric’s stern words. She’d made every promise she could think of to a god she wasn’t even sure she believed in as they’d waited for him outside the operating room. I’ll visit him more, she’d promised whoever was able to listen to the thoughts in her head. I’ll be a better niece. I’ll buy him nicer presents for his birthday and call every day instead of once a week and if he gets through this I’ll stop giving him a hard time about taking over the pub. I’ll understand that he only wants the best for me. I’ll be kinder to him, I will tell him I love him more …

‘Can I tell her?’ Eric said to his husband.

‘Tell me what?’ Penny looked between them.

Uncle David nodded once, curtly. Eric turned to Penny and said, ‘This is his second one.’

‘Second what?’

‘Second heart attack. He had one at New Year’s. We didn’t tell you, because …’ Eric trailed off, as if he wasn’t sure why.

Uncle David supplied, ‘It was barely even a heart attack. It was … we just didn’t want you to worry.’

Penny’s jaw dropped. Why wouldn’t they tell her Uncle David had been ill? Had had a heart attack?

‘Does Clemmie know?’ she said, trying to keep her voice level.

‘No, darling.’

‘And you’ve been working since then? Who has been running the pub?’

Eric and David looked at each other. To their testament they at least had the decency to look guilty. ‘We’ve been doing our best,’ Eric said slowly. ‘I’ve done what I can. I don’t know numbers very well and it’s been a bit of a muddle, but Charlie has been brilliant behind the bar and all the staff have stepped up and done their best as well.’

Penny started to shake. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,’ she began. ‘I need to know these things. What if something worse had happened? What if you’d died and I didn’t know and I could have helped and …’ The last two words came out in powerful sobs, and she stood back up from her plastic visitor’s chair to go to her uncle, holding his arm and bending down to hug him, crying onto his shoulder. He let her.

‘I’m sorry, Pen,’ he said, trying to move his body so he could rub her back, a move that he’d done to her her whole life whenever she was upset.

‘You can’t be sorry for being ill!’ she cried into his bedsheets.

‘I’m getting old, these things happen …’

‘You shouldn’t be working if your health is bad! Bloody hell!’ She realized, then, in an instant, why the pressure to take over had become stronger and stronger lately. He couldn’t run his own business – the business he’d spent his entire adult life building. He’d had a heart attack. And now another. The understanding of it all was dizzying. Penny felt sick. He’d been trying to tell her, in his own way, and every time Penny had accused him of trying to boss her around in her own life out of – what? Malice? His own interest? She’d been willingly deaf to the hints he’d tried to give her.

‘Well,’ Eric said. ‘He won’t be working now. The doctor says his heart muscle is very weak. He’s been lucky, but apparently it’s going to take several months for him to get better. The decision has been made for him.’

‘Okay,’ Penny nodded. ‘That’s good. Rest is good. You can do that, can’t you Davvy? You can rest?’

‘I’ve got no choice,’ said Uncle David.

‘Knock, knock,’ a gentle voice came at the door. ‘I don’t mean to intrude, but Penny – I brought you a hot chocolate.’ Penny had been lightly dozing and stirred slowly, taking it from Francesco with gratitude. ‘I thought you could use the sugar.’

‘Clever bean,’ said Eric, standing. ‘David, this is the Italian we’ve been hearing about. He was the one who got Penny up here, and in record time.’

‘Hi,’ said Francesco, extending a hand. ‘I’m so sorry for what happened.’

‘David,’ Uncle David said, limply giving a handshake.

‘I’m so pleased you’re okay.’

‘Thank you.’ Uncle David’s voice was still hollow. ‘Thank you for getting my girl here, too. I appreciate it.’

Francesco nodded in response and then read the mood of the room. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’ll leave you all to it. Penny – do you want me to call someone at the café? Stuart knows what’s going on and is just going to do coffee and cake service, but is there anything else I can tell him?’

Penny shook her head. ‘Whatever you think is best,’ she said, unable to even think about work. ‘I trust you.’

‘Sure. Okay. Well, feel better,’ Francesco said to David. Uncle David smiled.

When he’d gone, Uncle David said, ‘Nice man.’

‘Yeah,’ said Penny, sipping delicately at the drink he’d brought her. ‘He is.’

Later, waiting in the hall because Uncle David had nurses in his room running checks and fussing with blankets, Eric hugged Penny and told her, ‘I was so scared, Pen. I’m going to do whatever it takes to get him back to full health. I promise you.’ Eric and Uncle David had been together for eleven years now. He was as much a part of the family as they all were. Penny felt a stab of shame that she hadn’t thought to pick up the mantle and look after him in the same way Francesco had looked after her. All she could think about was her uncle – in her worry she forgot that Eric must have been beside himself, too. Uncle David and Eric lived for each other – she couldn’t imagine one without the other.

‘I’ll do anything to help,’ she said. ‘I can’t lose him, either. He’s all we have …’ She started to cry again, and Eric hugged her closer, crying too.

‘Sssssssh,’ he said, in between his own tears. ‘Ssssssssh. It’s okay. He’s going to be okay.’

They stood for a long time, gaining strength from each other as they cried it out. Uncle David had Eric. And, thankfully, Penny still had Uncle David. Whoever Penny had prayed to had spared her uncle and for that she was endlessly thankful. Without him, she’d be lost. It was unthinkable.

‘I want to take him to the coast for a bit,’ Eric explained, as they wandered the ward aimlessly, sitting feeling like too little action, even though there was nothing they could be doing. ‘To my sister’s holiday place. Rest. Sea air. No work.’

Penny nodded. ‘I think that’s a good idea,’ she replied. ‘The doctors made it very clear he needs to be kept away from that kitchen and I think the more miles between him and work, so much the better.’

‘The thing is …’ Eric started, and Penny understood. The thing was, was that somebody else needed to run The Red Panda.

‘You need me up here,’ Penny supplied.

‘I can’t think how else we might manage. We can’t sell it. Not right now. It would kill him. That place is his life’s work.’

‘I know,’ nodded Penny. She had tears in her eyes again. When would she stop crying?

‘And to be honest, after the start to the year we’ve had, business hasn’t been easy. So even if I could convince him to sell it, the books don’t look as good as usual. We just need a year or so to get all that lined up. Looking strong. Maybe then we could sell.’

Penny tried to think of another way to do it. Hiring somebody else, maybe, or … Well. Maybe those were the options: they hired somebody else, or they hired Penny, who had grown up there, and knew the village and the people and the kitchen and what her uncle had been trying to achieve all along.

She had the edges of a truth at the forefront of her mind, and the faintest notion that it was time for her to step up for her family – the way her family had stepped up for her – lingering on the outer parts of her consciousness. She wasn’t ready to agree to it yet, though. There was Bridges, and Francesco, and her life. But then, as they looped back to David’s room, she got it implicitly: what is all that for if I don’t have my uncle? she thought. And then: Oh, shit.

‘I’m just glad he’s going to be okay,’ Clementine said, sat beside Rima, and opposite Penny and Francesco. She was pale and the circles under her eyes looked like bruises. Penny assumed she looked no better. ‘I need to see him more. I’ve been a bad niece. Daughter. Person. I don’t see him enough.’

‘Hey,’ said Rima, her arm around her wife. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. You do your best. You call him when you’re away, you visit when you can.’

‘It’s not enough though, is it? I should love him harder.’

‘I should love him harder too,’ Penny cried, wrapping her arms around herself. ‘Oh, Clem, I just don’t know what to do. Like, it’s supposed to be a no-brainer: I go and take over the pub. If I loved him that’s what I would do, isn’t it?’

Clementine shrugged, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. ‘I can’t tell you what to do on that one,’ she stuttered. Her voice was kind, like she really felt sorry for Penny. ‘Nobody would expect you to uproot your life that way …’

‘Except they would. And if you were the sister who cooked, I’d expect you to do it.’

Clementine didn’t say anything to that.

‘I know I can do it. It’s a huge place, and I’d have to work twice as hard as I do. I just … I changed my mind about wanting that life. I know you understand that. I love Stoke Newington, now, and I love Bridges and my life there. I’d feel this way even if The Red Panda was next door. It’s a lot. A whole pub. A restaurant pub. I don’t want that anymore.’

She was letting it all out, now, this stream of consciousness.

‘But he was there through everything, Clementine. He’s a dad and a mum and an uncle and a friend and a cheerleader. And I am so, so mad he’s putting me in this position, and what’s worse is that he hasn’t even asked me yet. Eric basically did, but I get a sense that they’re waiting for me to offer. I wonder if I can give it a year, or agree to do it for two. Until he is stronger and can decide if he wants to sell. Huh. Like that isn’t what Eric has wanted for years. Eric has wanted to sell and Uncle David has waited it out to see if he can convince me to take over, and now here we are … literally life or death. I can’t tell him I’m mad but I am. I am so, so mad he’d ask me to do this. Even though he isn’t asking. I’m so mad that I have to offer.’

The tears came harder, every atom of worry from the past twelve hours leaking from her eyes.

‘I’m so mad. But I’m so relieved.’

‘I’m going to go and find some tissues,’ Francesco soothed, understanding he was encroaching on a deeply personal family discussion. ‘Can I get anybody anything else?’ He knew Penny needed her sister right now, and it was better to excuse himself for a moment. The women all watched him head towards the hospital shop for fake supplies.

‘And then there’s Francesco,’ Penny hissed, her voice lowered. ‘It started to feel like something, and I know it still can be, in theory, but also he is there and I will be here and he works shifts and I’m going to be in charge and probably never get a day off and it’s just asking for heartbreak, isn’t it? I’d be heartbroken to leave him in London – but I don’t want to limp on with him until Christmas and then be heartbroken all over again.’

Clementine slid across to Penny’s side of the table and started to stroke her hair, like their mother used to do when they were small.

‘No,’ she insisted. ‘You could make it work. People do.’ Rima leaned across the table with both hands, each one grabbing a sister and doing the only thing she could: holding on tightly.

‘I’m just not strong enough, Clemmie. I don’t feel strong enough for any of it.’ Penny looked to the ceiling, the tiles of it blurring as she blinked away her misgivings. ‘But for Uncle David I have to pull myself together, don’t I? What is the point of love if your family is falling apart? Family first, right? Look at all he has done for us.’

‘It’s alright,’ Clementine whispered. ‘You don’t have to decide this now. It’s okay. Come on.’

But Penny did have to decide now. She had to decide so much in an instant, and yet, really, truly, the choice had already been made: of course she’d go and run The Red Panda. Of course she would.

‘And the surrogacy …’ Penny said, trailing off. She couldn’t stand to finish the sentence. Whatever trepidation she’d had around it, it was another choice made for her: it would have to wait.

‘I know,’ said Clementine. ‘But the offer isn’t going anywhere. Everything is figureoutable.’

Penny closed her eyes in Clementine’s lap. The tears dried up and she felt an eerie sense of numbness. Her uncle was alive – but there was so much more she would now be losing. She counted to five as she inhaled, and counted the same as she exhaled. It felt like the only thing she had any say over was that. Five in, five out. Five in, five out. She counted until she fell asleep in her sister’s lap.