‘Katie, the neurologist thinks it could well be malignant. I’m not sure I can stand any more tests only to be told exactly the same thing. I feel all right. Funnily enough, I can deal with this. I can’t deal with your father spilling coffee all over the cream carpet but …’
‘Mum,’ I try to slow her down, ‘I don’t care about Dad spilling coffee right now.’
‘I can deal with this. I need to prepare myself, organize things, that’s all. I don’t feel ill. In fact, it’s hard to believe anything is actually wrong with me. I want to enjoy the time I have left.’
I shake my head. ‘Mum, you need to see the surgeon.’
‘I want to go on holiday with your father. We always promised ourselves we’d go on a trip down the Nile, or else go back to Paris again. Or visit our old friends in France whom we haven’t seen for fifteen years.’
‘The ones you pretended to be visiting.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made your father lie. We were wrong about that. I would love to see them,’ she insists. ‘None of us will have changed, we’ll just have grey hair.’
‘You can go, you can do anything you want, but I think we should follow the doctor’s advice and see the surgeon.’ I lean closer towards her, my elbows pressed hard against her worktable. ‘I can’t live with the knowledge that we didn’t even try.’
‘Nor can I,’ Dad says as he walks into Mum’s studio in his frayed dressing gown and leather slippers. He sits down at the table looking more positive this morning. ‘I was going to say exactly the same thing.’ He’s holding the piece of paper with the surgeon’s name and number on it.
*
Dad, Mum, Bells and I are sitting around the kitchen table. Dad has made a pot of tea but no one has touched their cup.
How are we going to tell Bells?
When I picked her up from the station earlier this afternoon her first question was ‘How’s Mum?’ I took her purple zip bag. ‘She’s looking forward to seeing you,’ I said, unable to look her in the eye.
‘How’s France? They have good holiday?’
How are we going to tell her?
Mum is now wearing slim-fitting linen trousers with a white cotton shirt, her bobbed hair pulled back into her tortoiseshell clip. ‘Bells, would you like some of your special sage tea?’ she asks, handing her a plate of chocolate digestives.
Here we are, trying to be a normal family having tea, when everything is falling apart. Dad and Mum look at one another. It’s like a game of ‘winking murder’, each trying to signal the other to start.
‘Darling,’ Mum says, looking directly at Bells, ‘I wanted you to be here because I have something to tell you. I’m so sorry.’ She reaches out to hold Bells’s hand, but Bells won’t let her take it.
‘What sorry for?’ she asks.
‘I have a brain tumour.’ The words are out so quickly that I have to catch my breath.
We all wait for Bells to say something. Anything. She clenches one of her hands into a fist and uses it to hit the other. ‘You going to die like Uncle Roger?’ she asks, rocking backwards and forwards in her chair. The room is utterly silent except for Bells’s heavy breathing.
‘Yes, I’ll be joining Uncle Roger. I’m sure we’ll have lots of fun up there together,’ Mum says, her eyes looking upward as if to heaven. ‘We’ll have whisky and cherry cake parties.’
Bells stands up and leaves the kitchen. ‘Going to watch Titanic,’ she says.
Mum sits back with a look of relief. ‘I’ll talk to her again when she’s ready. Let her watch Titanic.’
Dad nods. Mum takes a digestive biscuit. ‘Well done, darling, you bought the dark chocolate ones.’
‘No!’ I shout, slamming my cup on to the table, tea spilling everywhere. ‘You talk to her now. You tell her that we’re going to see the surgeon, that we’re waiting for the scans to be sent to him and that when they are, we’re seeing him.’
Mum and Dad stare at me.
‘Bells doesn’t want jokes about Uncle Roger, for Christ’s sake. She needs to understand. I’m fed up with none of us talking, pretending it’s all normal and everything is OK, when it isn’t.’
‘Katie? Are you quite finished?’ Mum asks.
We can hear the theme music to Titanic playing in the background.
‘No, not quite,’ I reply. ‘I don’t care if the boat’s about to hit the iceberg. You go in there and turn Titanic off. You tell her now.’
*
I’m eavesdropping outside the sitting-room door. ‘You scared?’ Bells asks Mum.
‘Yes, but I’ve got all my family around me.’
There’s another long silence. I think Mum is comforting her. Suddenly the door opens and I move away, but it’s obvious I’ve been listening. ‘I’m sorry … for shouting earlier,’ I say to Mum. She looks exhausted.
‘You were right. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to be on my own.’ She touches my shoulder gently before walking upstairs. I hear her bedroom door shut before I go into the sitting-room to join my sister.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It is the morning of Mum’s operation. Dad, Bells and I are by Mum’s bedside.
‘I think we can do something about this,’ the surgeon had said, holding the MRI scan. ‘I think the tumour could be benign, I can’t be absolutely sure until we operate, but I would strongly advise you to have the operation.’
‘What makes you think it might be benign?’ Dad asked, trying to contain his hope.
‘From how it looks on the scan. It may also have a clear margin to cut around.’
‘So you’re saying it isn’t malignant?’ I asked, glancing at my father. We had been expecting confirmation, not a different assessment altogether.
‘I can’t be absolutely sure, but if we do nothing, we shall never know.’
I wanted to hug him, get down on bended knee and pray to God. Dad held Mum’s hand so tightly that I thought her bones might crack.
‘Thank you very much,’ she said, as if he had told her she could have pickle with her cheese. ‘When can you slot me in?’
Now Dad sits awkwardly in the light blue armchair next to Mum’s bed. I know he hates hospitals despite being so used to them. ‘It never gets any easier,’ he’d confided in me. Bells is sitting next to him. She hasn’t said a word this morning. The only thing I can hear is her rattling chest.
‘How are you feeling?’ I ask Mum.
‘Great.’ She clutches my hand. Besides her hospital gown, she is wearing only her gold wedding band and the plastic hospital wristband with her name and date of birth on it. Normally Mum wears her aquamarine engagement ring, watch and her two gold bracelets. Everything about her looks bare, stripped down.
‘I’m ready to face it.’ She breathes deeply. ‘I’m so glad you’re all here with me.’
Bells bangs her forehead with her fist. She stands up, sits down, stands up again and then circles the bed like a trapped animal in a cage. ‘Sweetheart, will you sit down?’ Mum pleads, clearly upset. Were we wrong to bring Bells here? No. We couldn’t have left her at home. Besides, Mum wanted her here.
Bells grabs her inhaler from her pocket.
‘I’m really thirsty. Can you get me a drink?’ I ask in desperation. Dad immediately takes Bells off ‘on a coffee run’.
I look at Mum. It is the first time we have been on our own today. Her green eyes are large and focused. ‘Tell me about Sam,’ she says. Anything to fill the silence. ‘Why did you break up? Was it because of Bells?’
‘In a way. I think I would still be going out with him had it not been for her staying with us,’ I admit.
Mum raises her eyebrows inquisitively. ‘What do you mean? Did she hit him in the balls?’ A small smile lights up her face, making her eyes look less penetrating.
‘No, Bells has replaced whacking men hard in the balls with swapping their CDs around. Sam wasn’t nasty to her,’ I continue. ‘He did take us out for a meal once, but he was so embarrassed when we met his old boss at the
next table. Some of it’s my fault. I never told him about her properly, he didn’t …’
‘Oh, rubbish, Katie.’ Mum does that familiar crow of incredulity that I have always found off-putting and heavily critical. Funnily enough, now I am pleased to hear it.
‘I don’t know Sam, but all I will say is that when we had Bells it sifted the good friends from the bad. Some of them disappeared overnight; they couldn’t handle it at all. Will-o’-the-wisps.’
I can’t help but smile. ‘Will-o’-the-wisp? Wasn’t there a TV programme called that?’
‘I don’t know, darling, probably. Off they go at the first sign of trouble, and then – puff!’ She claps her hands together. ‘As if by magic they come back when it suits them. Gerald and Sue are like that,’ she says.
‘You’re right. Sam is a will-o’-the-wisp.’ I have this image of him disappearing from my life like a plume of smoke evaporating into nothing. He came to collect his car, told me how sorry he was to hear about Mum, handed me my mail, and then he was gone. He told me he would keep in touch but I am quite certain I shall never hear from him again.
‘Sometimes you find out about people the hard way,’ Mum says. ‘It’s often the least likely ones who become wonderful friends. There are people who are outstandingly nice, others who are mediocre, and some who are bloody awful,’ she concludes, as if visualizing ticking the appropriate box. ‘It sounds to me like Sam was pretty mediocre. Not good enough for you, Katie.’
‘We weren’t right for each other.’
‘No, he wasn’t good enough for my Katie.’ I can see she is trying hard not to cry. ‘Tell me more about Bells’s visit,’ she says, smiling bravely.
I decide to tell her about Bells running away that wet afternoon. I tell her about my saviours, Mark and the American lady in the park. ‘I was terrified. I would never have forgiven myself if something had happened to her. It was all my fault.’
‘It’s easy to lose your rag.’ Mum looks directly at me now.
‘I didn’t realize what a full-time job it is,’ I run on. ‘Being with Bells is fun but exhausting. A trip round Sainsbury’s took hours! She wanted to talk to almost every shopper.’ It makes me think of Mark and how much I’d like to see him again.
Mum laughs knowingly.
‘How old you are?’ I imitate.
‘What wrong with you?’ Mum follows.
I tell her about the poker night and Mum laughs so loudly while thumping her hand against her thigh that the other people in the ward cannot help but look our way. ‘It sounds like you had a very funny time. You see, it’s much more fun for Bells to visit you than her boring old parents all the time.’
‘We went on the London Eye. Mum, it was wonderful. Bells and I did bond, we got to know one another again. I want you to know that.’ I reach into my bag and take out a letter she wrote to me.
‘“Dear Katie Fletcher”,’ I read out. ‘I love the way she writes my surname,’ I add, smiling. ‘“Very kind you to have me to stay in London. Very nice bedroom, lots of white. Nice house. You do that remember going to London Eye. I …”’
She has Tippexed a word out here.
‘“I loved to go, saw all London and very loverley time with you on London Eye. Mark a very loverley man. You seen Mark? Mr Vickers too a very nice man. I am sorry I had to go, very kind you to invite me to come to London. Wonderful you. Hope not very Longtime to see you again. Nice you, very kind you, please send you my love. Thank you.”’
She has signed it in pen: ‘“Love, Bells. Ps Please RSVP me soon.”’
Mum rests her head back against the pillow. ‘Your father knew it would be good for you to spend time together. He’s a wise old thing.’
‘When you’re better, we’ll go on the Eye. You’re going to come up to London and we’ll go out for lunch and do fun things. Pact?’
I wait for her to answer.
‘Katie, if I die …’
‘You won’t.’
‘If I die,’ she continues calmly, ‘you’ll take care of Bells and your father, won’t you?’
‘Mum, don’t …’
‘You were the one who made me realize we must be honest and say what we feel.’
I nod, reluctantly.
‘I need to say it while they’re not here. They’ll be back in a minute.’ She adjusts her position in the bed. ‘Your father and I were going to redecorate the house and … well, he wouldn’t have a clue,’ she whispers, leaning closer towards me. ‘You’ll help him?’
‘OK,’ I say, feeling my bottom lip quiver, just like Dad’s does when he’s about to cry.
‘And you’ll be there for Bells? You’ll go to her open days and visit her at weekends?’
‘Yes, I promise. All the time.’
‘I’m so glad we can talk like this, that we didn’t need Mr Shackleton!’ Mum starts to laugh and cry in between with relief. ‘Do you remember his plastic belt and greasy hair? Your father still won’t talk about it.’
‘Funnily enough I was thinking about him only the other day.’
Mum looks like she is gearing herself up to say more. ‘But who will look out for Katie?’ she says, taking my hand again.
At that moment Dad and Bells return. Dad is holding a plastic tray with two cups of coffee on it. He sits down at the end of the bed. ‘How’re you, Mum?’ Bells asks, rocking forward.
A nurse comes to the bedside. ‘They’re ready for you now,’ she says.
Then they will shave Mum’s hair, I can’t help thinking.
Bells walks away. ‘Don’t like it here … not nice here.’
‘Bells!’ Mum calls out. ‘Please come back. Will you go and get her?’ she urges Dad. ‘Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible.’
Dad brings her back, trying to reassure her that nothing bad is going to happen.
‘Say goodbye to your mother,’ the nurse says impatiently to Bells.
I give her a hard, accusing look. How could she make it sound so final?
Bells is rubbing her head and breathing heavily. ‘’Bye, Mum,’ she says finally, throwing an arm over Mum’s stomach and resting her head against the theatre gown. ‘’Bye, Mum.’
Mum strokes her hair. ‘I love you. I’ll see you later,’ she says.
*
Dad is furiously writing lists at the kitchen table.
Bells is watching Titanic but she doesn’t make any sound when it’s about to hit the iceberg.
I don’t know what to do with myself. All I can do is look at the clock and watch the seconds tick by. Slowly.
*
Eventually the telephone rings and Dad and I move to it like lightning. ‘You take it,’ I say.
Dad picks up. ‘She’s conscious,’ he is saying, clearly repeating what the surgeon is telling him. ‘It certainly looked benign.’
‘Bells!’ I scream. ‘Bells! Mum’s OK!’
‘Mum going to be all right,’ Bells says, joining us.
‘But what?’ Dad asks.
I stop abruptly. Bells stands next to me. ‘Mum all right,’ she repeats.
‘Oh, I see,’ Dad says gravely.
‘What? What?’ I demand.
‘What?’ Bells follows.
Dad flaps his hand furiously to shut us up. ‘OK, we’ll be there right away,’ he says.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
‘Go home,’ Mum insists again, after I have given her some more water. ‘You look even worse than me.’
I look at her. Her skin is so pale that she is almost camouflaged by the white pillow and sheets. Nothing covers her head except for a fine stubble of hair and a scar on the left-hand side of her face, curved like a question mark. It’s two weeks after the operation. It was a success in that the tumour was benign and was taken out; but the surgery left her weak and with virtually no movement on her right-hand side. She couldn’t even turn herself over in bed. Everything had to be done for her and she slept a lot of the time. None of us had had any idea that she might not be able to walk after the operati
on. ‘What’s a Zimmer frame doing at the end of the bed?’ was the first groggy question she asked us. Her next concern was not being able to sign her own name. ‘Mum, why are you trying so hard to write your signature?’ I had asked her, watching her wrestle with the pen and paper.
‘I’ve told you. If I’m going to be like this for ever I want at least to be able to get at my money,’ she said breathlessly.
Thankfully the physiotherapy is already helping her to regain strength and mobility. She has started to get up and walk very slowly, up and down the ward. To say we are relieved is a gross understatement. It is a miracle. When I watched Mum walk for the first time, I was clapping so vigorously that the palms of my hands were burning red.
‘Please, Katie, go home, darling. Take the awkward squad home too.’ She is referring to Dad, who is talking to one of the doctors. She thinks he fusses too much over her. She shuts her eyes. ‘I need to get some sleep. And you do too,’ she adds.
*
When I walk into the house it’s quiet. No Stevie Wonder. No Beatles. I find Bells in the kitchen again, wearing Mum’s denim apron, now quite grubby with a blob of spinach down the front, her small hands encased in red-spotted oven gloves. Yesterday Dad and I returned home and she had made us a cauliflower cheese, using all the leftovers in the fridge. It was the most delicious cauliflower cheese I had ever tasted too. The day before that she cooked a courgette and asparagus quiche. She chose not to come to the hospital today. In fact she hasn’t been since the morning of Mum’s operation. Each day we ask her if she wants to come but all she says is, ‘Tell Mum get better.’ Dad and I make a point of not leaving her for long on her own, coming and going in shifts.
‘Hello, how’s Mum?’ she asks immediately, putting a white dish into the oven and then turning to face me. ‘Mum all right?’
‘She’s OK, a bit grumpy and tired. She sends lots of love. Bells, wow, what are you cooking?’
‘Stuffed pancakes with ricotta and spinach.’ Suddenly the smell makes me ravenous. ‘Made strawberry fool too. You like strawberries? Mum loves strawberries.’
‘I love them. You’re a star,’ I tell her, collapsing into a chair. The table is littered with a cooking bowl, broken eggshells, flour, a greasy block of butter and a few bruised strawberries that haven’t made it into the fool. It’s a comforting mess.
Letters From My Sister Page 16
