We Are Family

by Nicola Gill

  Laura kneaded her temples. ‘I know everyone thinks what Mum said about Billy that day was nothing, and it was nothing. It wasn’t about what she said per se, it was about her pitting Billy against Lola and Hannah just like she has you and me all these years. Why couldn’t I have got A level results like yours? Why don’t you have my creative flair? You must see it yourse—’

  Jess put her hand on Laura’s arm. ‘She’s sick, Laura.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s got cancer.’

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  It was the longest eight days Laura could ever remember.

  On the Tuesday she took Jess to the hospital, and looked away as the nurse inserted a large needle into Jess’ left breast. She had already had an ultrasound and a mammogram and she looked grey and strained.

  ‘All done,’ Edith the nurse said, applying a dressing. She was a big, solid-looking woman with an easy laugh and a toothy smile. The sort of person you couldn’t imagine giving you bad news. Except you knew that was ridiculous because she must give people bad news day in and day out.

  ‘Your breast will probably feel a little sore and you’ll probably get a bit of bruising.’

  Jess nodded and Laura squeezed her hand. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her sister like she had been the last couple of days. Jess was a classic doer, and normally when something went wrong, she threw her considerable energies into trying to fix it. Now she was just quiet and compliant. She hadn’t so much as mentioned getting back to their mum’s to sort through more of her stuff, and when Laura had said she had phoned the mortgage company and checked that they still hadn’t found a buyer, Jess looked impassive. It was like she wasn’t really there.

  ‘The biopsy results come through in about a week,’ Edith said. ‘I know,’ she continued, seeing their faces. ‘It feels like a very long time. But try to remember that most breast lumps are nothing to worry about. And don’t Google!’

  The days that followed saw Laura split herself into several different people. When she was with Jess, she was upbeat and positive. She cooked meals, made sure the girls did their homework and cancelled Jess’ work commitments and social plans. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to tell Ben?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Jess snapped.

  She was so adamant that, even though Laura thought it was the wrong call – that Jess could do with her husband’s support right now and that Ben would want to know – she didn’t push. She was grateful to leave at least one area where her sister was still in charge.

  When Laura was away from Jess, she was so busy trying to keep on top of her work and make sure Billy was okay and not thumping any of his classmates, she barely had time to think. A couple of times she’d felt a panic attack coming on but she forced herself to breathe until she was okay. She didn’t have time for panic attacks.

  But at night when she went to bed, and she didn’t have the distraction of being busy or the need to be strong and positive for Jess, her mind spiralled into panic.

  She would be wide awake and sobbing at 2 a.m. She was haunted by memories of their row. Why had she let them fall out over something so trivial? And she couldn’t stop thinking about her dream and whether it meant something. Well, of course it didn’t. Dreams were horseshit, everyone knew that. Jess would be okay.

  But what if Jess wasn’t okay?

  The next morning, she would be back to the various other Lauras. Eat your Cheerios, Billy. I’ll get that copy to you by end of play tomorrow, Karen. Let’s run through your spellings, Hannah. Jess, eat some of your pasta.

  ‘Is it really only Thursday?’ Jess said suddenly as Laura stacked plates into the dishwasher.

  ‘Yes. But it’s nearly the end of Thursday.’ She tried not to think about the fact that Jess wasn’t even trying to rearrange the things she was stacking, or telling her she was doing it all wrong.

  It was the Easter weekend and, while Laura would normally have been delighted to have four days off work, all it seemed to do was make the clock tick even slower. To add insult to injury, the weather was absolutely glorious. What good was bright sunshine and blue skies when you were carrying a dark cloud around in your heart?

  On Good Friday, at Laura’s insistence, they all trekked to Battersea Park, but Billy wanted to play football and the girls said football was boring. Laura and Jess trailed behind the bickering kids, Laura talking and talking, her tone way too bright. ‘Do you remember when Mum was at the station buying a sandwich and the guy behind the counter asked her if she wanted to go for a drink and she said no thank you, she had a boyfriend. And the poor guy said, “No, I was talking about the meal deal. When you buy a sandwich, you get a drink free.”’ Jess managed a flicker of a smile.

  Then they went to the cinema and no one liked the film. ‘How about sausages and mash for tea?’ Laura chirruped.

  On Saturday, Laura suggested that Jess and the girls came to hers ‘for a change of scene’, which meant she found herself making everyone lunch in a kitchen that was roughly the size of Jess’ island unit. Jess sat on the sofa, her feet curled beneath her and Laura suddenly realized how weird it was to see her so still. ‘Ben’s not working this weekend,’ she suddenly volunteered, apropos of nothing. ‘But it would have been crazy for him to come home when he’s got another meeting in New York next week.’

  After lunch they all headed out down Turney Road. ‘Aren’t all the blossoms gorgeous?’ Laura said, but Jess didn’t seem to be listening. In Dulwich Park, they rented banana bikes for the kids. ‘It’s going to be fine,’ Laura said. Jess’ eyes filled with tears.

  They walked back home through Dulwich Village. ‘Did you know most of these are the original eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings?’ Laura said. Christ, what was she, a tour guide? They stopped to have tea and overpriced cakes in a crowded café that Laura normally couldn’t stand but was prepared to put up with today on the basis that her flat was just too small for five people and all the unhappiness they were carrying around with them.

  On Easter Sunday, they were back at Jess’ and Laura hid small, brightly coloured Easter eggs all over the garden, while simultaneously cooking roast lamb that no one would really want to eat. By the time the kids got around to hunting for the eggs, most of them had melted in the sun.

  Laura was almost grateful when Tuesday morning rolled around. Later that afternoon they would get the results. Which would have been great if later hadn’t actually been 348 hours away.

  The editorial meeting crawled. Laura shuffled in her seat and tried to look interested as Harriet talked about next week’s ‘Celeb News’. The next few hours were similarly slow with Laura trying to force herself to concentrate on her work and squash down irritation as the people around her wittered on about how they may or may not try going gluten free, what they’d watched on telly the night before and goodness knows what else. Don’t you know my sister might be dying?

  At two o’clock she rushed over to Jess’ house.

  ‘I’ve been Googling,’ Jess said to her in the kitchen.

  ‘Edith told you not to.’

  Jess shrugged. ‘If something happens to me, will you help Ben take care of the girls? He’s great but he’s a bloke and sometimes girls need their mum. A mum.’

  ‘Stop talking like that.’

  ‘It’s good to be prepared.’

  ‘You’re going to feel like a right neurotic Nancy when you get the all-clear. Now, get your coat on.’

  Back at the breast health clinic, Laura sat in the pale green waiting room feeling sick. Jess was sitting beside her, staring into the middle distance.

  ‘It’s going to be fine,’ Laura whispered to her. She took a swig of Gaviscon and looked around the waiting room, which was filled with anxious faces. A man was cracking loud and unfunny jokes to his wife. A woman with pink hair was crying noiselessly. Laura weighed up the idea that if five of the people in this room were waiting for results, it was likely that at least one of them would get bad news. She was filled with a fierce
hope that it was anyone but Jess. Because it may be a commonly peddled idea that suffering makes you a nicer person, but suffering can actually make you pretty damn selfish, and right now, Laura didn’t give a damn about any of those other women as long as her sister was okay.

  Chapter Seventy

  Then

  If Evie had been a nightmare before she got sick, she was even worse afterwards. Now, no one could challenge her. She was dying, for goodness’ sake.

  During the few months Laura and her mum hadn’t been speaking, Laura had kept thinking about how, when Billy had been born, it was as if some kind of switch had been flipped inside her. She was enraptured by this tiny human. She gazed endlessly at his beautiful face (beautiful to her, at least. When she looked back at photos now, she could see he looked a lot like a potato in the beginning). His slightest cry pulled at her heartstrings and she couldn’t stop touching his podgy feet. She could have been a mother in a nappy ad.

  Laura knew with certainty that her mother had never felt that way about her. (Maybe she was just unlovable?)

  Now Laura pushed all those thoughts to the back of her mind. Every time she visited Evie, she steeled herself. Whatever her mother said or did, she would be the epitome of the perfect daughter. After all, motherhood had humbled her; taught her that there is no such thing as the perfect mother. Hadn’t Evie just been doing her best all these years?

  Laura resolved that she would exclusively focus on her mother’s good points. She would marvel at how brave and uncomplaining Evie was about everything from the nausea to the pain. Be proud that she was still cracking jokes and caring about putting her lipstick on.

  If she and her mother talked about the past, Laura would make sure she described an idyllic childhood and a perfect mother. She’d run into trouble so many times before when her memories didn’t match Evie’s, who had always stubbornly refused to acknowledge there had ever been so much as a cross word. Now Laura vowed to only serve up the airbrushed tales her mother preferred.

  And it wasn’t just the past Laura planned to cede control over. She wouldn’t react when Evie told her she was putting on weight. She would smile sweetly when her mum said it was a shame she didn’t have a nice house like Jess’ and imagine renting when you were pushing forty. Laura would not say a word when Evie said she wished Billy was doing as well at school as the girls were.

  But there was always at least one remark that just chafed too much. One thing that made Laura snappy and irritable. And, of course, that would be the moment that some nurse came in to check her mother’s canula or to see if she needed more pain meds.

  They all loved Evie, thought she was a hoot and a trooper. And they would look at Laura like she was the most horrible daughter in the whole wide world.

  And she would think: if only you knew.

  Chapter Seventy-One

  The wait seemed interminable and Laura felt a prickle of irritation. She knew the NHS was overstretched but it was cruel to keep people waiting in this sort of situation.

  The woman with pink hair had started reading a book, although Laura couldn’t help noticing she hadn’t turned a page once in the last ten minutes.

  She glanced at Jess, who looked grey and tired. ‘How’s work?’ she said, simply for something to say.

  Jess looked at her strangely (as well she might because Laura never asked about her work). ‘It’s okay. I’ve been a bit distracted recently. What with this … and everything.’

  ‘Everything?’

  Jess pulled at the sleeve of her jumper, staring down. ‘It’s just—’ She stopped herself.

  ‘What?’ Laura said.

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’

  Laura looked at her sister, knowing that she was holding back. ‘What?’

  Jess met her eye briefly and then stared at her shoes. ‘You know, sometimes life gets a bit … complicated.’ She pulled at her sleeve again. ‘Is it me or is it very cold in here?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject.’

  Jess gave her a small unhappy smile. ‘Oh, and I’ve got a troll.’

  Laura felt her heart start to thump and her throat constrict. MsRealityCheck was coming back to bite her. ‘What sort of troll?’ she said, her voice sounding slightly strangulated.

  ‘A horrible one.’ Jess sighed and leant back in her chair. ‘I wish they would call us in.’

  ‘What has the troll said?’ Laura said, trying to sound casual.

  ‘That I deserve to be raped and then killed.’

  Laura breathed an inward sigh of relief that Jess wasn’t talking about MsRealityCheck before realizing she was breathing a sigh of relief when someone was threatening to rape and kill her sister (her sister who could be dying of cancer). She was a bad, bad person. ‘That’s terrible. When you first mentioned a troll I thought you just meant run-of-the-mill sniping.’

  ‘Oh, I get lots of them too. But this guy is different.’

  The woman with the joke-cracking husband walked back out into the waiting room after her appointment. She had obviously been crying and neither of them looked much in the mood for a gag anymore.

  ‘Poor thing,’ Jess whispered.

  ‘Awful,’ Laura agreed. ‘What are you going to do about the troll?’

  Jess shrugged. ‘Not much I can do. Ben was all for tracking down his IP address but I don’t think it’s that simple.’

  Laura was wrestling with a complex and contradictory mass of emotions as Jess’ name was finally called. The two of them stood up.

  It wasn’t Edith, and Laura suddenly felt panicky. Where was Edith? It had to be Edith.

  ‘Take a seat please,’ not-Edith said.

  Laura swallowed down a feeling of panic. She had been willing away the hours, desperate for this moment to arrive, and yet now it had, she suddenly couldn’t bear it. When she’d told Billy that it was time to apologize to Lola about the Switch, he’d protested, saying he ‘wasn’t ready’. Laura felt the same now. NOT READY, NOT READY, NOT READY, she wanted to scream.

  She reached over and took Jess’ hand.

  And then not-Edith told them that the lump in Jess’ breast wasn’t cancer, it was a fibroadenoma and harmless. It didn’t even need treatment, Jess should just keep an eye on it.

  And Laura sat back in her seat, clutching her sister’s small, cold hand and trying to take everything in.

  Jess was going to be okay.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Fibroadenoma. Laura was still turning the word over in her mind as she sat at grief group. It sounded like something serious but it wasn’t. Jess was going to be okay. She looked at Preena guiltily: I get to keep my sister.

  Laura hadn’t planned to come tonight. After the first Lilypad session, she had been sure she would never return, that she’d eaten her first and last Bourbon there (a slightly soggy Bourbon, if truth be told – even the biscuits were sad at grief group). But Billy was with Jon this evening and somehow Laura had found herself reaching for her jacket and shoes and walking down Turney Road almost as if she was on autopilot.

  ‘Sometimes I call her mobile just to hear her voice,’ Preena said, dabbing at her eyes with a balled up tissue.

  Laura felt even more guilty. If Jess had died, would Laura have called her mobile just to hear her voice? She’d certainly never even thought to call her mother’s phone. And her mother had such a nice voice; soft and mellifluous.

  The harsh fluorescent lighting was too cruel for the faces beneath it. Everyone looked weighed down by sadness; defeated. Even Emma, who couldn’t be more than sixteen, looked old. Like she’d seen things that couldn’t be unseen and inside her smooth skin was a wizened little old lady.

  Laura suddenly thought back to her mum’s reaction when, as a teenager, she had announced she wanted to be a therapist: ‘You’d be rubbish, darling. You’re so over-emotional.’ Laura had (naturally) been discouraged but occasionally as an adult, the idea had popped back into her head and she’d flirted with the possibility of retraining. But really she knew she was bei
ng silly. She would be rubbish as a therapist – she could barely deal with her own pain let alone other people’s. Besides which, she didn’t even have the guts to apply for the job at Inlustris, so a radical career change would definitely be beyond her.

  Rob didn’t know what he was supposed to do when his daughter had ‘women’s problems’; Lynn had always dealt with stuff like that.

  ‘You mean period pains?’ Emma snapped.

  Rob nodded, scratched the tattoo on his neck.

  ‘Just give her some painkillers and a hot water bottle.’ Emma’s voice dripped disdain. Just what Rob needed, Laura thought, to come out to have other people’s teenagers make him feel as inadequate as his own did.

  Jenni was nodding so hard it was a wonder her head didn’t fall off. ‘Sometimes it’s difficult to take on parenting roles previously filled by our partner.’

  Laura thought about the parenting roles she and Jon fulfilled, how they had taken shape without discussion but now seemed immutable. Sometimes it made her furious that she didn’t get to be Fun Parent and she would have given anything for Jon to care if Billy ate his broccoli. Jon was good at calming her down when she was worrying about Billy though. He’d been brilliant about both the hitting and the Switch stealing. ‘I wouldn’t put him down for a place in a youth offender programme just yet!’

  Mary was talking about how little time there had been between her husband’s diagnosis and his death. He had been dead by February and yet in December, everything had been normal. She’d rushed around like a crazy person while he sat in his armchair saying you could eat chocolate all day long because it was Christmas. You could even have a tipple before midday! When he’d asked her what she wanted from him, she had got cross and told him it would be nice if he surprised her occasionally; if buying her own gift wasn’t yet another thing on her already too long list of things to do. She was ashamed of that now.