by Fiona Neill
She had terrible dark thoughts about something bad happening to me and often I sat up with her until the early hours of the morning so she could share what was going on in her head. A couple of times I caught her wandering around the house in the middle of the night, turning lights on and off and opening and shutting kitchen drawers. I would beg her to stop, and when she couldn’t I sat at the kitchen table sobbing while she counted the knives, over and over again, just so she wasn’t alone. Max could have coped with moving house, but not Daisy.
I cautiously push open the door and stand on the threshold, staring into the hallway, nervously turning the manila envelope in my hands. Lisa’s familiar spotty wellington boots and Nick’s old walking shoes take centre stage in the space where the old fireplace once stood, and their coats and jackets hang on pegs. For a split second I’m puzzled why Lisa’s belongings have replaced my own. This lurching adjustment used to occur a lot the first couple of years after Nick left me, especially when I woke up in the morning. Then I remember.
I wonder what my mum would have thought of how things turned out. She adored Lisa for the same reasons the rest of us did: she never allowed her shitty childhood to undermine her optimism and zest for life. She had this ability to transform dull days into something memorable and create fun from the least promising circumstances. I remember Nick seeing her, the morning after his magic mushroom experience. Lisa came over with Barney, and as she stood in Nick’s kitchen bathed in the early-morning sun, he started worrying he was tripping again because everything about her was so radiant. It occurs to me now that maybe I had lost him to her before he even belonged to me. Mum always warned me to watch out for her ruthless streak. ‘What Lisa wants, Lisa gets, no matter who she tramples along the way,’ she always used to say. ‘She’s a survivor.’ But I never dreamt I would be the one who ended up being trampled.
It is eerily quiet. I know that Nick is in London today, because he is buying Max a suit for the wedding, and that Ava lands tomorrow. So this is my only opportunity to see Lisa alone until she gets back from Mexico – and from what Barney said, by then it could be too late.
I walk through the hall. I can’t resist poking my head round the door on the right that leads into the dining room used by my parents at Easter and Christmas. It has been transformed into a sitting room with a large L-shaped sofa in front of an inglenook fireplace that must have been hiding behind the ugly electric fire.
I head into the kitchen and the big revelation is a modern-looking conservatory where the washroom and back wall used to be. My eye is immediately drawn to the views down through the garden to the cliff and the beach beyond. There is a new gate that leads straight into ‘The Wild’, as Max used to refer to the scrubland betwixt land and sea. Lisa has done all this so much better than I ever could.
A collage of photos hangs on the wall beside the fridge and I go over to take a look. There are pictures of Lisa and Nick on holiday, sometimes together, sometimes with friends, including a couple I see regularly who have never mentioned they still see them. I admire their diplomatic skills. There is a picture of Nick on a camel, staring into the middle distance with a strange intent look that I recognize but don’t miss. The shelf on the left is full of self-help books: The Spiritual Power Of Empathy, The Complete Crystal Bible, How To See, Hear And Feel Your Angels. It makes me smile to think of the effect their presence must have on Nick.
‘Hello, old friend.’
I jump. The voice is so familiar but it has a desiccated quality that I recognize from my patients. I look in the direction that it has come from. All I can see is the back of a huge cane recliner. The joke used to be that Lisa always had to get in the first word. She speaks in a calm, measured tone that makes it sound as if she has been expecting me, even though I have turned up unannounced. I walk towards the bed and find her propped up by an arc of cushions.
‘I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come.’
I’m glad she’s spoken first because it gives me time to recover from the shock of her appearance. Her face is hollow, her cheeks pale, and her eyes are sunken, although their cat-like shape and vivid green colour are unnervingly the same. She has put lipstick on, and for all that it highlights her beautifully shaped lips, the contrast with her skin tone is too severe. She’s wearing a sweater but it hangs off her like a child in oversized school uniform on the first day of term. There’s a half-finished glass of green sludge on the table beside her that resembles pondweed.
‘I know I look like shit. You don’t have to pretend.’
‘That’s because you’re drinking shit,’ I joke.
She laughs weakly.
I hadn’t really planned how to greet her. So my reaction is an instinctive one; I sit down beside her on the edge of the bed, careful not to make the mattress bounce in case her back is sore, and lean over and hug her gently. She’s as bony as a chicken carcass.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not breakable,’ she smiles. She hugs me back but there’s no strength to it.
‘The house looks great. You’ve done such a good job.’
‘How do you always look for the best in people, Rosie?’
‘It makes life easier,’ I shrug. I cradle her hand with my own as if I’m holding a baby bird.
‘You always knew the right way to behave in any situation,’ Lisa says, squeezing my fingers. ‘Whenever I’m unsure what I should do I try to imagine how you would handle the same situation. I was a better person when I had you as a friend.’
‘I’m not here to talk about the past,’ I say firmly. This is one of the few lines I have rehearsed. Barney’s best piece of advice was to take the emotion out of the situation by viewing Lisa as a patient rather than a friend. ‘We’ve all moved on. Truly.’
‘Having cancer is like time travel. There’s so much time to think and I go backwards and forwards, pondering everything that has happened and all the possible scenarios to come. I only get time off when I’m asleep. So I’ve been thinking a lot about the consequences of my behaviour towards you and my monumental selfishness.’
‘It wasn’t just your responsibility. It was Nick’s too,’ I remind her. ‘We all have the right to happiness.’
‘Not if so many other people pay such a heavy price. I’m so sorry, Rosie, for everything that was lost. I’m sorry for all the deceit and lies and the way it affected our children, especially Daisy, and the way I made her so ill. Most of all I’m sorry for the loss of our friendship.’ She slumps back into the cushions.
I have waited seven years for Lisa to say something like this. Although I don’t respond the cynic in me wonders if she has rehearsed these words with Gregorio because, surely, some of the content of the letter was his idea. But as she struggles to speak it dawns on me that the person she is apologizing to is not the same person who was wronged years earlier. It is a strangely liberating discovery. I realize I no longer wish the past could be different, and while I don’t believe in the power of forgiveness because of its religious connotations, I do believe in the freedom of forgetting.
‘It’s fine. Really.’ And it is.
Lisa’s body relaxes. Her hand feels cold so I pull the rug up to her chest and tuck it in around her.
‘I’m like an old lady,’ she smiles.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Better than I was.’
‘I should have brought you Prosecco and lifeguards.’
‘Is that what you usually prescribe for your patients?’ she asks.
‘It’s as likely to work as the regime you are following,’ I say dryly. ‘And it would be a lot more pleasurable.’
She doesn’t ask how I know, although anyone could guess from the piles of fruit and vegetables everywhere and the dirty juicing paraphernalia, not to mention the jars of murky coffee.
‘My healer, Gregorio, has a holistic approach to deal with the symptoms and the cause of the illness,’ Lisa says. But she hesitates like someone speaking a foreign language.
‘Have you spoken to o
ther people he has cured?’
‘He’s shown me testimonies.’
‘It’s all anecdotal, Lisa. When we do a trial we recruit thousands of people to get the most accurate results. It takes years and years, and then it has to be rigorously investigated and replicated by the scientific community to make sure it is a true result. Even when patients start medication we share information about their progress with their GP, nurses and all the members of my team, to make sure we all agree that we are giving them the best possible chance.’
‘He’s helping me deal with the guilt.’
‘You didn’t get ill because you went off with Nick,’ I say gently.
‘And what I did to Daisy?’
‘Daisy is fine now.’
I explain to her about the clinical trial I am running and how a last-minute space has opened up. I tell her that the oncologist she saw in Norwich can refer her to me and she could start immunotherapy treatment within the next three weeks. I try to keep my voice calm and steady as I explain the basic science behind the treatment. But I also mention that she won’t lose her hair.
‘You know me too well,’ she smiles, her wispy papery skin wrinkling around her eyes.
‘You’ll need to get some blood tests done before you go on your honeymoon but we can arrange for the results to be sent to me from Norwich. The oncologist who saw you is a good friend. He’s a lovely guy. He’ll help sort out the paperwork.’
I check the time. Nick will be here soon and I don’t want to cross paths with him. I urge her to consider my proposition and let me know her decision before the end of the week. Neither of us speaks for a while. We both look out of the window, staring at a landscape almost devoid of content. I wish we could swim in the sea together one last time.
‘You would do this for me after everything I did to you?’ she asks.
I nod.
She doesn’t cry. She’s never been the self-pitying type.
‘Everyone is entitled to a chance. You’re no different. Don’t let Gregorio make you think you deserve less than this.’
I ask Lisa if there is anything she needs before I leave and reluctantly pour her another glass of sludge.
‘Rosie. Before you go, there’s something I have to tell you.’
The words are lifted from her letter. I had assumed this promise of intimacy was no more than bait to lure me here because it so closely mimicked the dynamic of our friendship. From the moment we met as sixteen-year-olds it was tacitly agreed Lisa always had the best secrets and it was my privilege that she chose to share them with me. When we drifted apart, after she gave birth to Rex and I was still studying at Leeds, she used this exact phrase when she got back in touch after fourteen months of radio silence.
Lisa must sense my reticence. She awkwardly shuffles to the edge of the wicker recliner, chewing her lower lip with the effort, and pulls herself upright. She puts her hand on my shoulder.
‘I get so light-headed,’ she says wheezily.
‘It’s your diet, not the illness,’ I say. ‘You’re sodium deficient. We can sort that out too.’
Now that she is standing up I can see how brittle she is. Her thighs are probably the same circumference as my calves. I walk close behind her as she heads towards the kitchen table so that I can catch her if she falls.
‘I’m not asking for your sympathy, because it’s what I deserve.’ She passes me an iPad. ‘Nick is up to his old tricks.’
I look at the screen. It is full of photos. The first dozen are all the same girl dressed in a T-shirt with spaghetti straps brushing her short brown hair. It’s a strangely intimate scene. At first the pictures have an intrusive quality, as if she is being photographed unawares, but as I scroll along she turns to the camera and smiles. I would guess she is older than Daisy, perhaps late twenties. It’s difficult to tell. More photos of the same girl follow. This time she stands behind a shop counter. Lisa gives a running commentary.
‘Nick isn’t good in stressful situations. He likes all the attention to be on him. And cancer is like a jealous lover. It never leaves you alone,’ she says.
‘Where did you get these?’ I ask, still puzzled about their relevance.
‘He’s a middle-aged man. He doesn’t understand that we share the same iCloud account. He’s obsessed with this girl.’
She scrolls through more pages and there are pictures of the girl with one arm around Nick’s neck and the other inside his shirt. I feel like a dirty voyeur.
‘Why are you showing these to me?’
‘I want you to understand that, whatever I decide, it has nothing to do with you. I know you will see it as a personal failing if you can’t change the course of history here. But I’m finding my own way through all this, like you had to.’
As I leave the house I get a text message from Barney.
No more becoming strangers.
17
Daisy
It’s Dad’s wedding today and I’m back in my old bedroom in the attic of the Norfolk house. It has been reincarnated as Lisa’s yoga studio and apart from the view from the window overlooking the sea there’s nothing to remind me of how it used to be – which is good, because otherwise I might be engulfed by all the memories.
I just have to get through the next couple of days and then everything will get easier. I have said these words so many times over the past week that I’ve decided they deserve to be officially annexed to the end of my special incantation. Although, strictly speaking, they should be copyrighted to Max because they were his promise to me after I finally blurted out what happened all those years ago.
I hadn’t planned on telling Max. I guess I was desperate for him to understand why I was so worried about Lisa seeing Mum and the effect it would have on her to realize for the first time that Dad had been having an affair with Lisa for months. But mostly it was a panicked reaction to the feeling that Max is pulling away from me. Unusually, he didn’t interrupt once, except at the very end, as we reached the front door. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, he said, over and over again, until he started to remind me of me. His face did that corrugated expression that I recognized from our childhood when he was trying to stop himself from crying.
I was about to give him a hug when he suddenly lifted his arm and smashed his fist so hard into the wall that I thought he’d broken his knuckle. I don’t know what was more shocking: the way blood started to seep out of his hand, or his anger. He did it again. I grabbed his arm. Fuck medicine. Fuck Dad. Fuck Lisa! he yelled. Max has never been an angry person. But if this was his reaction to what I’d told him about Dad and Lisa, I was right to be worried about Mum’s. I persuaded him to come into the house so I could bandage his hand but really I didn’t want him to leave until he had calmed down. For the first time in my life I was scared of my little brother.
The walls of my old bedroom are now covered with mirrors so it feels as if I’m under surveillance from myself. A statue of Buddha sits beneath the window, mocking me with his serene half-smile, and there is a futon where one of the bunk beds once stood. The wallpaper has been painted over in grey, but when I put out my hand I can feel the triangle of marks from the last time I was here. I close my eyes and read them like Braille, waiting for the urge to make patterns. But the anxiety has subsided since Dad let slip shortly after we arrived this morning that he and Lisa are going on honeymoon to Mexico for a month.
‘Four whole weeks!’ I said ecstatically, compensating for his apparent lack of enthusiasm.
Dad shot me a suspicious look. He probably thought it was another example of me being contrary but I was genuinely pleased, because while they’re away I should get some proper time off from the thoughts. I felt so good that I took a mug of tea from Lisa without even worrying that the fact she had touched it might trigger the obsessions. I wish Max had been in the kitchen to witness my progress but he had disappeared to check on Connie, who had taken to her bed with a migraine shortly after we got here.
Max is being so spiky. It’s like I l
it the flame of hatred in him. He’s furious with Dad and Lisa. But there’s also the effort of trying to please a girl who doesn’t want to be pleased. I don’t think Dad notices anything. He’s too busy arguing with the spiritual healer about where the wedding should take place, with Lisa over her juicing diet and with Max over his refusal to wear the suit he bought him. I see the vein in his temple throbbing when he presses the lid of the juicer. He’s even angry with the curly kale. He’s never been good under pressure.
I sit on the futon bed and get out the diary that Geeta has instructed me to fill in each day until my appointment. I list the obsessions – same old, same old – and add up how many hours I have spent on each compulsion the past couple of days, noting that although things haven’t got much better, equally they haven’t got any worse. Flatlining gives me a glimmer of hope, because there’s something to build on.
I decide to do one of the exposure and response prevention exercises. This means I have to think about one of my obsessions and then see if I can resist doing the rituals for fifteen minutes. Under Obsession I write: ‘Thinking something bad will happen to Mum.’ I look at my list of how to fight back and focus on number nine. ‘Let the thoughts pass without acting on them and their strength will weaken. The more you practise the easier it will become.’
I set the timer on my phone. I’m glad I’ve got this room to myself. It was bad enough spending two hours on the train with Max and Connie, pretending that I had a bad stomach so I could lock myself in the toilet to run through my stuff without any interruptions. For once I was grateful for the thoughts, because I can’t bear how Max is so in thrall to her. He behaves like an over-eager puppy and I can tell she finds the devotion irritating. Why on earth would he bring a Tinder date to Dad’s wedding? Maybe he should do some of my exposure and response prevention exercises to reduce his obsession. Except then he’d realize I’m seeing Geeta again. I haven’t told him, because he’s made it pretty clear he wants nothing to do with my illness.
