Love Life

by Nancy Peach

  “So in the end I didn’t let either of them know about the tests. I had plenty of friends nearby who took me to appointments and waited to drive me back from my scans, and all the time they were asking me, ‘What does Edward make of it? When is Madeleine coming back?’ not knowing that I just wasn’t brave enough to tell my own children what was going on. Until it was too late. And I had to tell them. There was nothing they could do, and they were devastated. And furious. As you’d expect. I’m so sorry, do you have another…?”

  Tess pulled another tissue out of the box and handed it to Mrs Russell. She dabbed her eyes delicately.

  “Madeleine has just been on the phone non-stop, to me, to Edward, to the doctors… And I think she has led Edward to believe that he should have somehow taken better care of me, that he shouldn’t have allowed this to happen in her absence. Completely unreasonable, but you know, they’re siblings. What can you do? It’s always a bit of a power struggle.”

  Tess considered her own brother, Jake, and their wrangling over much more trivial matters than these. “It’s not that unusual, you know. There’s always a lot of guilt around when someone has a difficult diagnosis, and families react in different ways. Sometimes it really brings people closer together.”

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  “We do have family counselling sessions here at the hospice if you think it might help, with Ed… with your son? No? Well, have a think about it. He might surprise you. I’ll leave you be for now, but if there’s anything you need, let me know. All your medication’s written up.”

  She reached over to place the box of tissues onto Mrs Russell’s table and, seeing that her eyelids were starting to droop, she patted her hand and left the room.

  Tess didn’t speak to Mrs Russell again that day. She and Farida were kept occupied by a dramatic showdown in the family visiting room where Mr Johnson’s mistress, Ms Frost, had arrived just as his wife and family were leaving. The ensuing slanging match had resulted in security being called and many of the staff were pulled in to administer cups of tea and sympathetic ears to both sides of the party (Mr Johnson being fast asleep and blissfully unaware of the unfolding drama). Much as the staff were familiar with extremes of emotion at the end of life, they were less used to dealing with displays of open aggression, and some of the language hurled from wife to mistress and back again was enough to make your eyes water. Eventually, the betrayed Mrs Johnson settled the matter by slapping the enigmatic Ms Frost across the face with a copy of Reader’s Digest magazine. Ms Frost dropped the potted plant she had been carrying and fled the building to the refrain of Mrs Johnson wailing, “He doesn’t even like begonias, you silly bitch!” and calm was restored.

  By the time Tess left, the supper trolley was meandering through the hospice distributing cod mornay and Mrs Russell’s door was shut; the nurse in charge said she was sleeping. There had been no further sightings of Edward, angry or otherwise, although Tess understood that he was likely to be visiting later that evening. She was keen to get home for once. There was too much going on in her head and she needed to sit down with Morris on her lap, put something mindless on the telly, and open a bottle of wine. She knew of colleagues who dealt with far more complicated conflicts of interest during their careers than simply treating the mother of a man you’d once misguidedly thought might be “the one”. This scenario didn’t really constitute a professional crisis but she couldn’t deny it had been a shock to see him again. It was almost as if she’d persuaded herself over the years that he had been a figment of her imagination. And in a way, she supposed he had. Or at least her notion of him was fabricated; the connection they’d shared had been entirely in her own head.

  The rain was lashing down as she made her way across the car park, pulling her coat tight across her body and trying, but failing, to position her umbrella in such a way as to make it remotely effective against the gusting downpour. She was just crossing the ambulance bay when a large BMW thundered around the corner, headlights on full beam and splashing through the pot-holes. Tess stepped back, dazzled by the lights as the car thumped to a halt beside her, soaking her feet. The passenger window glided down and she felt the thump in her stomach again as she saw the tense, handsome face of Edward Russell staring back at her through the gloom.

  “There’s nowhere to bloody park.”

  “Well you can’t park here. It’s the ambulance bay,” she replied in as dignified a way as she could whilst grappling with her brolly like a deranged Mary Poppins. “Look,” she softened a little, seeing his plaintive expression, “you should really park in the visitors’ section but I’m just heading home now. You could have my spot?”

  “Excellent.” There was a pause. “Well. You’d better hop in then. I can’t very well follow you in my nice dry car and leave you battling the elements.” He leaned over to release the passenger door and nodded quickly. “In you get.”

  His movements and tone were so decisive that Tess didn’t really feel in a position to refuse, despite her car being only a short distance away. She put her umbrella down before getting in, all the while questioning just exactly what she was hoping to achieve by spending more time in close proximity to this man. The rain drove sideways through the open door and made small puddles on the leather upholstery. Edward gathered a collection of papers into a document folder and moved it from the front to the back seat to make space for her, the fabric of his shirt stretched taut across his upper arm and shoulder as he did so. Tess clambered in with minimal elegance, the electric window gliding noiselessly back into place and steaming up as her breath hit its cold pane. She settled into the leather seat and balanced her sodden umbrella across her knees, watching it drip into the footwell. She was aware that every inch of her seemed to be emanating a damp heat into the arid BMW interior, her hair was plastered to her forehead, and little rivulets of water were trickling down the back of her neck.

  There was an impatient drumming of those restless fingers on the steering wheel and she looked across to where Edward sat, dry and composed. His blue eyes were fixed on her face as he enquired as to her car’s whereabouts. With a nervous laugh she pointed to a red Fiat parked only ten metres away. “It’s just over there. The little Punto? The red one?”

  “The little Punto. Indeed.” The BMW purred across the tarmac, rolling towards the space. “Well, thank heavens we saved you such an extensive journey. God knows how you’d have made it otherwise.”

  “Absolutely. Quite the hero.” She smiled. “At least you get a parking space for your trouble. I’m so sorry, I appear to have introduced a monsoon into your car. I hope I haven’t wrecked your interior.”

  She reached for the door handle but then paused; maybe she should say something now? Could she make her voice casual enough when her throat felt this tight? But it would be weird anyway, wouldn’t it? To suddenly start talking about a party she’d attended five years ago when he was clearly in a hurry and, you know, waiting to see his dying mother and therefore perhaps not in the most receptive mood? Maybe better to talk about the obvious thing. “She’s nice and settled,” she said. “Your mum. She’s a lot more comfortable now.”

  It was the wrong thing to say and the mood in the car shifted noticeably. Tess felt the recently broken tension return with a vengeance and almost wished she had talked about the bloody party instead.

  “I’m sure she’s more comfortable, thank you.” He turned towards Tess and again appeared to look through her rather than at her. “But she’s not going to give up. I’ve been in touch with her oncologist this afternoon. He thinks she has other options to consider and I value his opinion regarding my mother’s care. We’re obviously extremely grateful for all you do here,” he waved a dismissive hand in the general direction of the hospice building, “but I doubt she will be staying with you for long. Little point in her getting settled, as you put it.”

  Tess felt suitably told-off. Her cheeks flushed, but she responded in a measured tone, “Of course.” She gathered her things a
nd glanced across to Edward, now staring resolutely forward, deep in thought and chewing on his lip. “Well, thank you for the lift.”

  There was a long and uncomfortable silence while Tess awaited a response. Seeing that none was forthcoming, she opened the door and stepped back out into the rain, wrestling her bag behind her. Reversing out of her space with a little more pressure on the accelerator than was strictly necessary, she made her way out of the car park, still clenching her teeth with frustration.

  “Truly, the gentleman is insufferably rude.” Jane Austen’s voice was just loud enough in Tess’s ear to compete with the windscreen wipers frantically bobbing up and down through the torrents. “It is not to be borne.” She sighed. “Certainly, he is blessed with a noble countenance and perhaps one can make small allowances… But are you quite sure that this is the same gentleman to whom you once felt an attachment? Can it be that he is so altered?”

  Tess shook her head. “Tell me about it, Jane,” she muttered under her breath. “Tell me about it.”

  Chapter Four

  “Do you remember that party when we were, like, third or fourth years?” Tess was trying to jog Kath’s memory, but seeing as Kath had consumed the best part of a bottle of Bacardi whilst out with the A&E lot, she was not having much luck. Kath wrinkled up her nose, “Mebbee?”

  “Maybe you weren’t there. I can’t remember which firm we were attached to, but it was the F2 doctor, Dan. He had a flat in Clifton, a really lush one. It was a duplex; he had the basement and the garden and—”

  “Not ringing any bells yet, my love.” Kath slumped down onto the sofa and gathered Morris up into her arms, burying her face in his fur. “You’re a fine cat, so you are Mr Morris. A handsome devil. Aren’t you? Aren’t you?” Morris gave her a disdainful look and padded back to Tess.

  “He can tell when you’re hammered, you know.” Tess smoothed her hand down Morris’s back and he settled into her lap. “Anyway, this party. I went… we’d been invited – I guess it must have been me and Donna. It was when we were doing the ENT block…”

  “Wasn’t me then,” Kath said. “I did ENT in Gloucester, remember? Got off with that tasty registrar, the one that was doing the research project about tonsils. Or maybe it was just my tonsils…”

  Tess ignored her. “Well, this party. We didn’t know anyone else there – it was mainly proper doctors – and I think the only reason we’d been asked was that Dan had wanted to get into Donna’s knickers. But there was this bloke there. Do you remember me talking about him?”

  Kath pulled a face. “Well, you’re going to have to be a bit more specific… I mean, a bloke at a party, five or six years ago. A party I didn’t even go to…”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay. It’s just that I’m sure I told you about him. Maybe not if you were in Gloucester. I certainly wouldn’t have told Donna… Anyway. I was still going out with Pete so nothing happened, but it was one of those nights when it felt like everything happened. Do you know what I mean?”

  Kath looked confused and Tess sighed. “I know I’m not explaining this well.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  “But I met this guy, Eddie. He was a friend of this doctor, the one who owned the flat…”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “A friend of his from school, or they’d grown up together or something. But anyway, he was from Bristol, this Eddie, but he’d moved to London and he was starting out as a lawyer. Bit flash, you know the type.”

  “Player.”

  “Yeah, a bit, I guess. But we just hit it off, immediately. We just, you know, clicked. It was like, I don’t know. It was like it was meant to be. Don’t give me that look.”

  “Sorry, something stuck in my teeth, that’s all.”

  “I know it sounds ridiculous. I do realise that. Especially when you hear the latest, but at the time it felt really special. He didn’t know anyone else there and neither did I, Donna spent most of the night tangled up with Dan, and I was really just hanging around out of a sense of duty, wanting to make sure I didn’t leave her in some bloke’s flat on her own. Anyway, I bumped into him, Eddie, in the kitchen, where he was getting a bottle of beer, and he said something funny and I smiled and it was one of those shared moments, you know. He asked me what I did and I asked him, and we just chatted about working versus being a student, about Bristol, about him being in London. About the fact that he wasn’t sure he really wanted to be doing law, that he’d wanted to be a vet. And how I’d always wanted to be a doctor. And we talked about friends and holidays and books we’d read, and loads of other stuff; art we liked and history and things I wouldn’t normally talk to a bloke about; things I wouldn’t talk to most people about…”

  “Okay, getting the picture.”

  “Yeah, well.” Tess poured herself another glass of wine. “D’you want one?” she called to Kath, getting another glass from the kitchen in anticipation of an affirmative response.

  “And a plate. Please.” Kath unwrapped the pack of chips she’d come home with and popped one into her mouth. Morris circled her feet expectantly. “Oh, so you’re interested now, sunshine,” she said to him sternly. “Hmmm, chips and wine. Food of the very angels, so it is.” She stretched her feet out in front of her, luxuriating in the ludicrously fluffy socks she’d pulled on as soon as she got in the door. “So, you really hit it off then, you and this random guy from five years ago at some bloke’s flat in Clifton?”

  Tess laughed. “I know. It’s a shit story.”

  “Ah, well, no. It’s got potential. Does it improve? Pick up the pace a bit? Is there some actual riding goes on, or is it just, you know, chatting like?”

  “No actual sex. Sorry to disappoint. We did spend the night together, as in, we were in the same room all night, but he was the perfect gentleman, insisted I got the sofa, he was on the floor on some cushions. It seemed sensible really, for me to stay. There was plenty of room. Donna was upstairs with Dan. It was really late by the time I even looked at my watch, like maybe three in the morning. So, we just carried on talking, and talking. And it was as if neither of us wanted the night to end. There was that feeling of pretending that the outside world didn’t exist for those few hours. When we were on our own and everyone else had gone home. It was just the two of us, with the occasional thump from the bedroom upstairs, but even that wasn’t awkward, the fact that both our friends were actually having noisy sex in the room above us. It was just…”

  “The perfect soundtrack?”

  “Hmm.”

  Kath continued with the steady procession of chips. “So, did you end up going out with him or what? I honestly can’t remember ever hearing about an Eddie.”

  “No. I was still with Pete, I told you. And I told him, Eddie, about Pete, I mean. He knew I had a boyfriend. I think he might have had a girlfriend too, back in London. But he asked if… well…” She cast her eyes down to the sofa.

  “What?”

  “He asked if he could see me again. He asked if I wanted to spend the day with him, before he went back to London. And I said no. Because of Pete. And, you know—”

  “Because he was a bit of a player and you thought he’d mess you around and you didn’t want to risk it?”

  Tess nodded sadly. “And I never saw him again. I tried casually mentioning him to Dan when we were at the hospital the following week and he just sort of said, ‘Oh yeah, Eddie took a bit of a shine to you, didn’t he?’ but then we were on a ward round, you know, and I couldn’t really go on and on about him. And we finished the ENT block that week so I didn’t see Dan again, and he was the only connection I had. I tried googling him but I didn’t know his surname, so I was just putting in things like ‘Eddie, lawyer, London’, which didn’t exactly narrow it down. And I don’t know what I’d have done if I had been able to contact him anyhow. He still seemed like this unattainable dream, like, who was I kidding, thinking that he was really interested? Anyway. As it happens, it’s a bloody good thing I didn’t track him down. I keep imagining wh
at might have happened, me phoning him or turning up at his London flat declaring undying love, now I know he doesn’t even remember me…” She cringed, hunching her shoulders up. “God, how mortifying.”

  Kath had paused in her chip consumption. “Wait, so how do you know…?”

  “I saw him. Today. That’s the reason I’m telling this over-complicated rambling story.”

  “Ahhh.” Kath nodded wisely. “Sure, I knew there had to be a reason.”

  “Yeah. His mum was admitted.”

  “To the hospice?”

  “To the hospice. He was there. It was a massive shock.”

  “I’ll bet. And did you fall into each other’s arms and it was all, ‘Oh my God, where have you been all my life, you beautiful woman…’?” Kath was acting out the dramatic moment.

  “No! You’re not listening. He didn’t remember me. He didn’t remember any of it.”

  “Oh.” Kath looked contrite, “Sure, sorry. That’s pretty shite.”

  “It meant absolutely nothing to him.” Tess’s face was downcast. “That night, all the things we talked about, him asking me out, it all meant nothing. I was probably just one of a long string of girls he routinely chatted up, and he forgot all about me as soon as he hit the M4.”

  Kath passed her the plate with a few fragments of chip remaining on the greasy paper. “Go on,” she said. “You have ’em. No?” Tess shook her head. “Well, look, I can see it’s not, like, a nice thing to have happened but, in the grand scheme of things…”

  Tess stood and pushed Morris off her lap. “I know. It’s no big deal really. It was a shock like I said, but…”

  “Wait, though.” Kath licked her fingers in contemplation. “ENT… Was that not your peroxide pixie-cut phase?”

  Tess frowned. “Yeah, I think it might’ve been.” She paused. “Yes, you’re right, it was. It was in the last few months of going out with Pete, wasn’t it? I wanted to do something radical.”