Amber laughed properly now, and grabbed my hand even tighter.
“When I was away with Mum, I came across something that T. S. Eliot wrote, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. He’s banging on about flowers and talking birds—I might be paraphrasing slightly there—but then he mentions ‘the still point of the turning world.’ I couldn’t stop thinking about that phrase. I was going round and round in circles, trying to work out why that stuck with me, and then I realized something. It’s you. And it has been ever since we first met. Because ever since then, no matter how much life has tried to knock me off-balance, I know as soon as I’m with you, that the chaos will clear. You’re my still point. You always have been. And I’ve taken that for granted. So, if we get through this, then I promise to do whatever it takes to be yours. And I’ll never shut you out again.”
At this, Amber launched herself at me, her mouth seeking mine, and I made a mental note to invite Eliot to the pub with Stanislavski the next time he was free. I owed him a pint.
Later, we lay together on our bed, Amber’s head on my chest, listening to the gentle buzz of activity outside: Families out on walks. The low rumble of planes descending into Heathrow. As I stroked Amber’s hair, I thought of the moment in her old home all those years ago, lying in her bed, limbs tangled, feeling hopeful for the first time about what lay ahead. I realized something then. If I could go back and speak to that kid, I’d tell him that it didn’t matter about the future, about the twists and turns ahead. What mattered was right there in front of him. And that I should spend the rest of my days searching only for the kind of happiness that exists in moments like that—where you hold the one you love as the world goes about its business, quiet and gentle, as if trying not to wake you. Because, in the end, that’s all that really matters.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Theo
I’d been staring at my phone all morning, waiting for it to ring. I was still in Joel’s Peckham place, and I felt cheered that things had obviously gone well enough with Amber for him not to have come back. But it had been four days since we’d left the hospital, and I was starting to properly worry now. I’d spoken briefly to Alice, just to let her know that things had gone well in my attempts to make up with Joel, but I hadn’t said anything about the donor situation yet. I didn’t want to tempt fate.
Inevitably, I was in the shower when Joel rang. I’d propped my phone up by the door so that I could see when someone called, and I nearly slipped on the wet floor as I went to grab my phone with soapy hands.
Joel cut to the chase. “They want us to come in,” he said.
“Bloody hell, okay. I mean, is that good? Did they say anything about the tests or what?”
“Dr. Abbasi just said we should come in and see her. Amber’s on set and I can’t get hold of her, but I’m leaving in an Uber now. Pick you up en route?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, see you soon.”
It all felt so ordinary, like we were arranging a working lunch. But as soon as I slid into the car and saw how ill Joel looked, everything felt horribly real.
“Bit of a bad night,” he explained.
“You okay?”
“I’ll live,” Joel said, but I wasn’t quite ready for gallows humor yet.
“Do you think it’s a positive sign that we’re both being asked to go in?” I asked as our driver looked for the best place to drop us off. “Surely, if they were going to tell us we aren’t a match, there’d be no need?”
Joel drummed his fingers on his knees. The sound seemed strangely amplified in the quiet of the car. I wound the window down, trying to get some air.
“Honestly? I don’t know,” he said.
The car pulled up by the hospital and I jumped out, a ball of nervous energy. I walked around to Joel’s side and waited for him to do the same, but he seemed to be having some difficulty.
“You all right?” I asked, opening the door.
“Sort of. Feel like all the strength’s gone out of me all of a sudden.”
“Right. Well, not to worry. Shall I . . . ?” I reached my arms out awkwardly. I wasn’t sure what Joel needed at first.
After a few failed attempts, he said, “Just, give me . . . That’s it.” He held my arm and I took his weight, pulling him to his feet. I thought of the moment we’d met after Alice’s accident, when we put our arms around each other’s shoulders, trying to fight back tears. As we inched our way to the hospital entrance, me supporting Joel as best I could, I couldn’t help but feel pride at how we’d finally found our way back to each other. It might have taken a while, but sometimes that’s how things have to work out—one foot in front of the other, one step at a time.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Joel
When Theo and I tried to hug Dr. Abbasi for the third time, she laughed and threatened us with the water pistol she used for her potted plants. It was official: Theo and I were a match. They would book us in for the operation as soon as they feasibly could. Dr. Abbasi attempted to give us the serious news—that there was still a chance my body would reject the portion of Theo’s liver, that the operation would last six hours and that testing indicated I might be at risk of having an allergic reaction to the anesthetic—but, like the idiots we were, we were too excited to listen. I’d been trying so hard not to get my hopes up, but now it was like a valve had been undone, releasing all the pressure. When I tried to call Amber, my hands were shaking too much.
“Mate,” Theo said, “shall I . . .”
He took the phone from me and brought up Amber’s contact, pressing “call” and passing me back the phone. When I finally got through and told her the news, she didn’t say anything at first. I think, like us, she’d been trying to prepare for the worst, so it took her a long time to find her voice, but when she did, she was talking at a thousand miles an hour, attempting to shut down an entire day’s filming to come and see me. I might usually have protested, but getting to hold her in my arms while we shared the good news was too good to turn down.
Theo and I walked out of the hospital in a daze.
“I’m going to go home today, see my family,” Theo said. “But I’ll be ready to jump on a train as soon as we get the green light.”
“Of course,” I said. We walked on for a bit while I worked up to what I needed to say. “Listen, I haven’t even begun to . . . to actually say to you how much . . .” Just then my phone rang, and I took it out of my pocket.
Theo, thinking it was Amber again, clapped a hand on my shoulder and said, “I’ll see you soon, okay?” and walked off to flag a taxi. He had such a skip in his step I thought he might be about to break out into the Morecambe and Wise dance.
The call was from an unknown number. I prepared for the marketing cold caller. But a familiar voice greeted me, albeit without its usual bombast.
“Joel, it’s Jane Green.”
“Oh, hello. You changed your number?”
“No. I was just rather worried you might not pick up, after the whole lunch affair.”
“I see,” I said. “Well, I think I’ll let you off. After what I’m about to tell you, I think you’ll probably see why.”
I found a bench to sit on and explained everything to Jane, who listened without interruption, if you didn’t count the monosyllabic swear words which she launched like mortars at every twist and turn of my story.
“Well, dear boy, I suspect that this will make what I am about to tell you even more significant. Hold on to your fucking hat, because I’ve got some more news about The Regulars . . .”
By the time we’d finished talking, I had sat down and stood up from the bench seven times, the phone clamped to my ear still. I must have looked like a hostage negotiator being given some particularly demeaning instructions.
When I lowered myself gingerly into the taxi taking me to Hampstead, all I wanted was to close my eyes and
wake up when I got there. But there was one final phone call I had to make.
“Joel!”
“Olá, Mum. Quick question: are you sitting down?”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Theo
It was a peculiarly welcome sight: the top of Dad’s head above a hedge, the occasional flash of those lethal garden shears of his. When I went through the garden gate, I found Mum and Alice sitting on the patio with mugs of tea. Mum jumped up and came over to hug me while Dad clambered down the ladder, waving at me like Edward Scissorhands, and came over to ruffle my hair (thankfully having lost the shears by the time he got to me).
“I’ve run out of explorer-cum-travel-writer puns to insult you with,” Alice said with a grin. “Can you just imagine I’ve thought of a really good one?”
“Yeah, why not,” I said.
“Tea?” Mum asked. “Can’t wait to hear about your big trip. Are there photos? Do we need to find the thingy lead, the video connector thing, for the big telly?”
“Um, maybe later,” I said. “I actually need to tell you something first.”
“Oh, okay,” Mum said. “Nothing’s wrong, is it, darling?”
“No, I’m fine. Let’s just . . .” I gestured to the French doors and led them inside.
Dad slid a chair aside so Alice could come to the kitchen table. Then he and Mum sat down opposite me. It was strange, this. We were never the sort of family that had “family meetings” or big talks. They were looking at me expectantly, but I didn’t quite know where to start.
“Is this about Joel?” Alice prompted.
“It is,” I said. “I found out this week that . . . well . . . there’s no easy way of saying this, but it turns out he wasn’t the one driving the car that hit you. It was Amber Crossley.”
Nobody said anything at first. Then Alice blinked rapidly a few times, like she’d just been exposed to a very bright light, and said, “Well, I wasn’t expecting that.”
“I’m afraid I’m a little confused,” Dad said. “He wasn’t in the car?”
“No, he was,” I said. “But he was trying to get Amber to stop. In the end, he decided to take the blame for her.”
“But . . . why?” Mum asked.
“Because he was—and still is—very much in love with her. But also because he is a generous, decent, selfless person. And that brings me on to the second thing I need to tell you, because, let’s face it, those aren’t exactly qualities that I’ve shown anytime recently.”
“Now, that’s not true,” Mum protested.
“I’m afraid it is,” I said. “I’ve parked myself here, relying on you all to look after me, stopping you from living your lives. I’ve been miserable, and I’ve been angry at the world, and you’ve all had to put up with it. I forced you to evict me.” I turned to Alice. “You’ve always been far more mature than me when it came to Joel. You wanted to move on, but I was the one who never let you forget what happened. It’s time that I actually did something to help someone else for a change. Luckily, I’ve been given a pretty big opportunity to do just that.”
I saw Mum take Dad’s hand as I started to tell them about Joel’s liver disease, and that it was so advanced that he had run out of all options apart from one.
“What’s that?” Dad asked.
I looked down at my hands as I answered. “There’s a way where someone with a healthy liver, who’s a match for Joel, can donate a portion of theirs which can replace his. A living donor. And it turns out I’m a match. We’ve done all the tests. We’re just waiting for a date for the operation.” I kept my eyes down. I felt strangely embarrassed, like I’d just revealed a big secret I’d been keeping from them for years.
“Oh, Theo,” Mum said. “That’s really quite something. Are you sure about this? Have you thought it all through? Is there not somebody else who might be a match?”
“Not that he knows of. But it doesn’t matter—he needs it now,” I said. “I’ve not stopped thinking about it since it became a possibility, and the only thing that’s worrying me is whether it’ll work. I’m not backing out. I owe it to him.”
Alice, to my astonishment, was crying.
“Fucking hell, Theo, please get over here now so I can hug you, you big idiot.”
Ah, that was more like it.
I moved around the table and she yanked me by the sleeve down toward her, hugging me with her fiercest ever grip. After a moment I felt Mum’s arm around me, and then Dad’s. In the middle of it all, I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on just how happy I was that I was about to do them proud.
* * *
The call from Joel came the next morning.
“We’re on,” he said. “A week from today.”
“Yes!” I yelled, like we’d just won the World Cup or something. I thought I heard a familiar voice in the background. “Do I take it things are okay again?”
“Yeah, everything’s good,” Joel said. I got the impression that he was holding back a little as Amber listened in. Still trying to play it cool, even now . . .
“Well, that’s excellent news,” I said.
“Yeah. Listen, hang on a sec.” It sounded like Joel had gone into another room. I heard a door shutting. “Again, obviously it goes without saying that—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa—I’ll stop you there. I’m doing this, okay? You’re not talking me out of it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but at this stage, even if you miraculously got better on your own, I’d still march in there and tell them to chop me open—see if some passing stranger needs an upgrade.”
Joel laughed—a proper hearty laugh—and it made me feel like I’d come in out of the cold.
* * *
I woke on the day of the operation to find a crisp autumn morning waiting for me, a thin layer of mist hanging in the air. Dad had suggested we all drive down to London together rather than getting the train. As we wound our way through Kemble’s country lanes, I gazed out of the window, watching the trees and fields slide past, thinking of all the adventures Joel and I had been on around here. On those endless summer days of school holidays, we would do anything to assuage our boredom, to try to make time go faster. If only I could go back and tell myself that it might feel like time was dragging, but it was actually pelting along at an intergalactic speed—that I should dig my heels into the ground and savor every last second of it.
We were going along a narrow road—the trees reaching their branches out across it toward each other, blocking out the light—when I felt the first throbbing pulse of nerves. I gripped the seat belt until it dug painfully into the webbing between my fingers.
I noticed Alice looking over at me.
“Mum?” she said.
“On it,” Mum replied from the front.
I was about to ask what this little exchange was all about when I saw Mum reach into the glove compartment and bring out a CD, which she slipped into the car stereo.
“We present the all-weather Goon Show.”
There was a short blast of jazz, and then:
“And tonight we bring you the story of . . . The Stolen Postman.”
It was my favorite episode of The Goon Show. I didn’t have it on CD, so Alice must have bought it specifically for this journey. As the gentle lunacy of the episode began, I felt my shoulders beginning to relax. I released my grip on the seat belt.
Without looking at me, Alice reached across and squeezed my hand. And then it was like the four of us were off on a summer holiday, in Dad’s old Saab, waiting to be the first person to say, “I can see the sea!” and feeling all our troubles ebbing away.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Joel
When we got to the hospital, I asked if we could walk around the block before we went in. This was only partly down to nerves. Mainly I wanted to keep on walking because I had Amber on one side of me and Mum on the other, and I liked it far too mu
ch to let go.
Amber and I had collected Mum from Gatwick a few days before. Never in my life did I think I’d be one of those people involved in a tearful reunion at arrivals, but there we were, a tangle of arms, Mum saying, “I can’t believe it—I just can’t believe it,” over and over again. The best part was that it seemed to thaw the last stubborn bit of ice that separated Mum and Amber. I sat in the front of the taxi and listened to them discussing Lisbon, genuine affection in their voices.
Mum happened to casually mention the name Martin a few times—a chap she’d met while breakfasting in what became her favorite café. “And then Martin said this very funny thing about the waiter . . . Martin was ever so kind helping me with my bags and the taxi . . .”
Amber and I had exchanged glances in the rearview mirror.
“Sue, does Martin live in England?”
“I believe he does,” Mum said.
“And did Martin perhaps give you his contact details?”
Mum gasped with faux shock.
“I will not even deign to answer that question.” But after a moment, she took a bit of paper from her bag and started gently fanning herself.
“Sue!” Amber said. “Is that . . .”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, dear,” Mum said, trying not to smile. From the mirror, I could just make out the word “Martin,” followed by an email address, written on her makeshift fan.
Mum stayed with us in Hampstead up until the operation. I was determined to squeeze every drop of happiness that I could out of those few days. I probably tired myself out more than was sensible, but taking Mum to Columbia Road Flower Market and going on walks around Hampstead Heath went some way to making up for leaving Lisbon halfway through the holiday, although Mum’s continuing case of mentionitis when it came to Martin had helped somewhat with my guilt. That wasn’t to say the idea of another man in Mum’s life didn’t worry me, but he’d clearly been kind and generous to her so far. If he did arrive on the scene properly, I’d be watching him like a hawk to make sure that was how things continued. I had visions of taking him aside outside the house, reminding him of his promise to have her back by ten while Mum covered her face, mortified.
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