On Top of Everything

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  In this climate, again, keeping my own awful secret wasn’t as hard as I might have imagined. I’ve heard it said before of people who have been in terrible accidents that they don’t feel all their injuries at once, only the worst one: the head injury overwhelms the shattered leg, which covers up the broken wrist, which blocks out the multiple lacerations, and in a way I suppose the same could be said of me.

  I felt terror on Poppy’s behalf, first and foremost, and that obliterated my other worries. They would be there, waiting for me, when distress over my sister lessened, I knew that, but in the meantime every time I looked at her or my parents my own problems blurred into the background.

  Apart from first thing in the morning, of course, when myself and my situation were crisply reunited in the harsh light of day and found each other extremely lacking. I’d wake up, stretch out in the bouncy single bed piled high with the goose-down quilts that I’d had since I was three and for those few blissful moments all would be right with the world. Then I’d remember that Harry was gone, Monty was married, Poppy wanted to kill herself, and I had cancer.

  I thought I could feel it then, physically, my disease, lurking in my innards. It felt like a big, oily, slow-moving, dark mass that was oozily forcing its way into the various corners of my body, like some sort of sinister asphalt. Why me, I would think, over and over and over. What had I done to deserve this? As those bleak morning minutes ticked by, this historical disinterment took over my worries, shadowing my fear for the future. I upturned every flowerpot of my past looking for a hidden reason why I might have attracted cancer when I felt as though I had done nothing in my life but pay attention to my manners, be kind to strangers, and generally try to do the right thing.

  Was it because I had turned my nose up at Mum and Dad’s alternative lifestyle? For all I knew cynicism was the number one cause of cancer. Or was it because I’d been secretly pleased when school bully Susan Steiner was hit by the number 18 bus and broke both legs and her big ugly nose? I didn’t know how far back cancer searched when it invaded a life looking for a reason to visit hell upon it. Had it chosen me because I’d been a bit smug at ending up a happily married mother of one at such a young age? It had made life easy for me being Harry’s wife and Monty’s mother, I sort of knew that, although I only knew it around the edges, not down the middle. I hadn’t had to go out in the big wide world and find a husband or a career but that wasn’t a deliberate statement, it was just happy coincidence (or not so happy, as it turned out). And anyway, as far as I knew being unambitious and a tiny bit smug wasn’t a crime, especially not one punishable by what was being dealt to me.

  It was more plausible, I supposed, that I should blame white flour and red meat and an absolute inability to meditate for more than a split second without wondering whether you can still buy those little mushroom things to darn socks with; or whether chocolate cream best fills the gap between the layers of a coffee cake or whether it should be coffee cream or just plain cream.

  Whatever it was, I didn’t like to be left alone for too long applying such twitty forensics to my past life. This propelled me out of bed on those Tannington days, despite the cosiness of the goose-down quilts, and into the freezing cold bathroom for a shower so I could then get about the business of helping my family get over Poppy’s near-demise.

  Still, every morning as I dried myself in front of the pathetic one-bar heater in my room, I imagined myself telling Mum and Dad about what was happening to me. I could see Mum’s face crumple, Dad’s fade to ghostly white, him clutching her, she falling back into her chair. But when it came to picturing the words I would use, I choked. How would they bear it? How would Poppy bear it? If I was terribly ill, if I was terminally ill, and I had fairly much talked myself into the fact that I was, what would be gained by talking about it now?

  If I kept it to myself, I reasoned, teeth chattering, when it came the blow would fall short and sharp, as it had with Rose. Charlotte’s father, on the other hand, had died a year or so before after a very long drawn-out battle with pancreatic cancer. I swear the family had done so much grieving before he actually popped his clogs that his death and the funeral that followed it all seemed a bit of an anti-climax. Everyone was thoroughly exhausted by then, physically and emotionally. Charlotte’s sister had all but had a nervous breakdown trying to deal with her loss. An aunt had thrown a spectacular hissy fit at the graveside — over the matter of some dusty heirloom as it turned out. The stress had caused Charlotte to starve herself down to Posh Spice proportions and her mother had been hospitalised four times in a single week with what emerged to be panic attacks.

  The old bugger damn near took his entire family with him and I most certainly did not want to do that to mine. Nor did I want the looks of pity and the hushed whispers behind my back and the gentle pats telling me how brave I was, which were all sure to come if I spilled the beans. It was all so horribly public. Like being pregnant, only in a bad way. When I was carrying Monty I had been embarrassed that my status was so apparent to complete strangers, some of whom felt the urge to actually touch my growing belly. I didn’t want to share my pregnancy. And I didn’t want to share what was happening to me now.

  Until the time was right I would deal with it my way, without bothering anyone else. That was the decision I made shivering in front of the rusty three-legged Belling in the spare room at Tannington Hall, pulling my clothes on before I was properly dry for fear of freezing to death right then and there. In my interest and the interests of the dwindling numbers who knew and loved me, it was better to not say anything, not do anything, not even know any more than I already did.

  Poppy, meanwhile, remained as delicate as a rose petal and my parents remained utterly shaken by this, by her. I granted myself my wretched mornings, but for the health of my family I vowed to remain a pillar of strength otherwise.

  After nearly a week of Mum’s kidney bean casserole, however, she and Dad seemed to be getting back to their old selves — their gas emissions were overtaking their rotating updates on Poppy’s state of mind as a topic of conversation — and I knew I needed to think about going home.

  I did not want to talk about gas emissions. I was off the subject of digestive systems. And I did not like the bean casserole in its first incarnation, let alone when it returned as bean casserole ‘bake’, followed the next day by bean casserole bake ‘pie’ and, worst of all, the following morning, bean casserole bake pie ‘jazzed up breakfast fritters’.

  I don’t even want to imagine what jazzed them up. A hundred million mould spores, most likely. Or hashish.

  Had my digestive system been in perfect working order to begin with, it would have been lucky to survive such an insult. As it was, I could not help but feel extra concern for its welfare.

  Also, I needed to do some real baking. I had been doing my best in Mum’s country kitchen but it just wasn’t the same with rice flour or spelt. Everything I made looked and tasted like bricks and no matter what anyone says, I just do not believe that carob is a proper substitute for chocolate. I do not believe anything is a proper substitute for chocolate.

  I did what I could — carob zucchini cake (harrumph), dairy-free oatmeal cookies (not bad), blueberry and parsnip muffins (disgusting). Dad ate everything and asked for seconds. Mum suspected me of sneaking butter on to the premises (if only) and refused to partake; Poppy picked sadly at whatever I placed in front of her before eventually pushing it listlessly away.

  I felt confident that my parents were now in better shape to take care of her, though, even if she herself had not appeared to gain quite as much ground as I had hoped.

  ‘It’s not over for you, you know, Poppy,’ I told her as we sat out on the porch overlooking the vegie patch one crisp afternoon, Poppy tucked under a pale cashmere throw, me in one of Dad’s old jumpers. ‘Just because the face reader was a lemon, it doesn’t mean the right person isn’t out there for you somewhere. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t some way to get your baby girl.’


  ‘I’ve thought about a sperm donor, of course I have,’ Poppy answered, patting Sparky, who’d made a suitably mournful companion during our stay. ‘But I’m not sure if I’m a sperm donor sort of person. I want to know where my angel’s come from. Is that wrong? I think I have to aim for a life partner, even though I am thirty-five and people are writing books and making movies all the time about how hard it is when you’re thirty-five. Or about how everyone thinks it’s hard but it’s not, if you follow a few simple rules like … oh, I don’t know, settling for someone who bores you to tears and kills puppies for a living and has buck teeth and no hair. And a sperm donor could be a puppy killer too, couldn’t he? I bet they don’t ask specifically on the form. No, I think an actual non-puppy-killing flesh-and-blood man is the way to go, although I’ve got more chance of getting hit by lightning than finding one at my age.’ She shuddered suddenly and her jaw dropped open, her eyes widening in horror. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Effie, I don’t mean …I didn’t want to … oh, what is the matter with me?’

  It took me a moment to realise why she was upset but it soon dawned on me that if it was hard to get a life partner when you were thirty-five, it was most likely impossible when you were four years older.

  ‘God, don’t worry about me,’ I laughed, and I meant it. ‘That’s the last thing on my mind.’ The last in a pretty impressive list, mind you, I thought, a collage of faded blue denim and tanned skin flashing in my brain.

  ‘But if it wasn’t the last thing on your mind,’ Poppy said wistfully. ‘What would you do?’

  If my life was totally different, if my world was turned upside down again, or right way up again, to be more precise? If finding a life partner, oh bugger that, a boyfriend, a husband, a whatever, was the first thing on my mind? I knew what I would do. I had an option. I would find Will, wherever he now was since I’d fired him from my house, and I would spend all day and all night having wild, abandoned, extremely un-gay sex with him, and then I’d live happily ever after with him.

  If.

  ‘Oh, Effie, please don’t look like that,’ Poppy said desperately. ‘I’m just a total ninny talking nonsense, as usual. Why would you be thinking about that with everything else that’s going on in your life?’

  ‘Of course I’ve thought about it,’ I said breezily, my balloon of blue denim popping. ‘In fact, I saw an episode of Oprah after Harry left and she said San Jose in California was the best place to get a husband. All the men there are apparently super fit and healthy and straight and what’s more there are a lot of them.’

  ‘San Jose?’ Poppy didn’t look convinced. ‘I wouldn’t last five minutes in the Californian sun. And all the fit, healthy, straight men would like the tanned girls better than me anyway.’

  I couldn’t truly see Poppy as a Californian either, but nonetheless perhaps Oprah was on to something. If the life partners weren’t coming thick and fast wherever Poppy was, perhaps the trick was to go somewhere else.

  ‘Do you think you could bear to get out in the world a bit more, Poppy? Maybe move to Bury St Edmonds or maybe Norwich or …’ I couldn’t see it. She needed too much looking after and she knew it, she was shaking her head.

  ‘I’m a home body and that’s the truth,’ she said. ‘If my life partner isn’t going to find me here then he’s probably not going to find me at all. I’m not like you, Effie, I don’t feel at home in the city. I feel lost. You, you just fit in so well.’

  Was that true, I wondered?

  ‘I just love that house,’ I said. ‘And I’ve never wanted to live anywhere else so I suppose I must fit in there.’

  ‘And you like the Tesco,’ she said, ‘even though the organic department is woeful.’

  ‘True,’ I agreed.

  ‘And the Formosa Dining Room, even though it’s a rort.’

  ‘True again. And Gordon Ramsay’s bought the Warrington pub just up the road.’

  ‘Never mind him, soon you’ll have your tearoom!’ Poppy crowed, colour crawling across her cheeks. ‘Something to really look forward to. How wonderful for you.’

  It was a delight to see her face wrenched away from its sadness and I only wished I could hand Poppy something to really look forward to.

  ‘Did Dad tell you about the dry rot?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes, but he said half of London is rotten. And the other half is radiated. And anything that’s left is politically incorrect.’

  ‘He’s loaned me some money to fix it,’ I confessed, blushing, because I felt so guilty about the money.

  Poppy smiled, albeit wanly, and rested her head against the back of her chair closing her eyes, her gold-red lashes pearlescent on lily-white cheeks.

  ‘He’s so chuffed,’ was all she said. ‘I can’t tell you.’

  She was so still, so lifeless, sitting there, I couldn’t even see her chest rising with her breath and it frightened me.

  ‘You’ll be okay, Poppy, won’t you?’ I asked her, suddenly desperate for something to go right, to be all right. ‘Will you promise me you won’t try anything, you know, again?’

  She turned to look at me, pulling the cashmere throw closer around her shoulders and offering me another sad smile.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ she said.

  ‘Because Beth and Archie would just die,’ I said, wondering how they would survive if both their daughters were taken from them.

  ‘And I would …’ But I couldn’t finish. For a million reasons I couldn’t finish. Poppy reached her hand out for mine.

  ‘Will you promise to make at least one gluten-free goodie at Rose’s?’ she asked, giving me a squeeze. ‘And while you’re at it, could you please just for me skip the dairy?’

  She was so solemn, I meant to laugh but instead I just made a strangled gurgling noise. There wasn’t going to be a Rose’s, after all. I was more than likely going to spend the £30,000 on shoes and hair extensions. But I couldn’t tell her that. Not then.

  ‘Of course I will, silly,’ I croaked instead and I was off my chair and giving her a hug in the blink of an eye. ‘Just be good to yourself,’ I whispered into her hair. ‘Please, Poppy, just be good to yourself.’

  ARCHIE

  The girls laugh at me for being in touch with my feminine side but it was my masculine side I worried about when Poppy was so ill.

  I felt like I had failed her, as a father, that I hadn’t looked after her well enough. Beth doesn’t hold much truck with that line of thinking, she insists we’re on equal footing and we are, mostly, but just because I can do macramé doesn’t mean I don’t expect to be able to protect my family.

  I’ve had the most wonderfully lucky life but by far the best part of it has been being a father to these two remarkable people, Florence and Poppy. They’re like chalk and cheese in so many ways, always have been. Florence is extremely self-contained whereas Poppy is open to the universe, too open, possibly.

  She can’t take the blows the way her sister can. Just look at the way Florence handled Harry changing sides, or however they put it these days. She just boxed on, quite incredible really. She’s never been one to ask for help, ever since she was a tiny little thing insisting on walking around the place on her own, no hand-holding thank you very much, despite the falls and knocks and scrapes. ‘I do it myself!’ she would say. ‘I do it myself!’

  That’s why I nearly fell off my chair when she told us about the hiccup with the tearoom and then, blow me down, accepted a bit of assistance. Money is the one thing we have enough of in this family. It’s embarrassing, actually. I’ve had the most extraordinary luck with the share market and believe me it is luck, there’s no skill involved. Even when I make ridiculously risky investments that the white collars wouldn’t even sniff at, they seem to pay off. I can’t help it. Green stock mostly. Who knew being environmentally friendly would take off so well? We have more money than we need and even though we are funding an irrigation scheme in Darfur and a school in Sri Lanka, it keeps adding up.

  If I could have solved P
oppy’s problem with money I would have been a happy man but money couldn’t buy what she needed just then.

  As for Florence, well, I was chuffed, obviously, when she took the cheque but then I saw the two of them sitting outside talking by the vegie patch. Florence was wearing an old jersey of mine and it swam on her. She looked so small inside it. So pale. She’d lost quite a bit of weight, I suddenly noticed. In fact, I couldn’t help but think both my girls looked like they were suffering.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It wasn’t until I got in the car to drive back to London that I realised how much being a tower of strength had taken it out of me. I blubbed all the way back to Little Venice, thrilling the dog, of course.

  I quite enjoyed feeling sorry for myself for a while, to be honest, but then I developed those hideous sad hiccups which gave me a hell of a stomach ache and encouraged me to pull myself together. When I got home it was after five and Will’s truck wasn’t there, but the secondhand mint-green scooter Monty had recently bought was. I hated it because scooters seemed such a dangerous way to get around in London and what if he was killed? Or lost a leg? Or suffered a terrible head injury and was in a coma for the rest of his life?

  Inside the house, to my enormous shock, to the right of the front door where the floor of my old office used to be, there was now a large jagged hole, about the size of a dining table, from which emanated a smell like a thousand rotting cabbages.

  I stood there, my mouth hanging open, and stared, despite the vile vapour wafting around me. I could see some sort of complicated scaffolding holding up the bits of floor that weren’t a hole. It seemed glaringly obvious that the hole had not made itself and that Will and Stanley and possibly the rattly man had been working while I was away, despite my asking them to stop.

  How dare they? When they knew I couldn’t afford to pay them!

  Although, of course, now it turned out that I could afford to pay them three times over so I needed to come up with a whole different excuse to keep them from turning my house into the tearoom that I would soon be too sick to run.