A Passionate Love Affair with a Total Stranger

by Lucy Robinson

  Dad peered at the machines. ‘No idea!’ he said cheerfully. ‘But she’s alive! Look at her, eh? Our fine little girl! Battling on!’

  Mum shot a stern look at him and opened the curtain of my cubicle. ‘Nurse, could you please come in and help my daughter?’ she said firmly. So direct and confident, Mum. Calm in a crisis. My best qualities had come from my mother.

  Well, most of them, I thought, looking fondly at Dad, who had pulled the blanket off my leg and was examining the plastering with a face of great wonder. ‘Do you know what, Charlotte? This technique hasn’t changed since I was a senior house officer! Not a jot! Oh, hello, Nurse. A few bells and whistles going off in here. Any thoughts?’

  I giggled, in spite of the alarms. Dad was still wearing the swimming trunks he must have had on when they got the call.

  The nurse strode over. It was the same moody one who had refused to euthanase me when Dr Nathan Gillies had left earlier. In the face of Dad’s most childlike smile, though, she melted a little. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ she said gruffly. ‘Just time for her next dose of Diclofenac.’

  ‘We used to eat Diclofenac on Friday nights when I was a registrar,’ he said. The nurse blanched. ‘Oh, we had some merry old times!’ he added, gazing happily into the distance.

  The nurse retreated from the cubicle, clearly disgusted.

  ‘What time is it, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘Just gone half twelve.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, it’s way too late … You guys should go and get some sleep. Come back in the morning,’ I said weakly.

  Mum took my hand. ‘Charley, dear, it’s half twelve in the afternoon.’

  ‘What? How?’

  Dad chuckled. ‘You’ve been in a coma, Charleychops!’

  ‘What?’ I clutched the side of the bed.

  ‘CHRISTIAN!’ Mum roared. She shouted rarely, but when she did, it brought traffic to a standstill. The ward beyond the curtain froze in abject terror. Only the timid beep, beep, beep of a machine convinced me that her blast hadn’t turned them all to stone.

  ‘Christian, your daughter has gone through the most frightening experience of her life. Pull yourself together, man, and don’t you DARE make jokes about comas.’

  ‘It was a figure of speech, Jane,’ Dad said reproachfully, slinking back to the corner with his banjo. I caught his eye and smiled quickly while Mum rearranged my blanket. Dad spent his life being sent off to the naughty corner. I had hundreds of photos from family get-togethers of me, Mum, Ness and Katy sitting around the dining table with Dad relegated to the corner, hugging Malcolm or pulling a face of comic remorse behind Mum’s back.

  ‘Yes, Charley,’ Mum continued quietly. ‘It’s Sunday afternoon. Apparently you saw your boss yesterday afternoon, then slept for fifteen hours!’

  Dad stretched out his arms and fingers and pretended to be a sloth from behind Mum’s back in the corner of the room.

  I found myself suddenly mirthless.

  John. Of course. John was engaged. I was assailed by a terrible emptiness and had to focus hard on the dog-tag on my wrist for a moment. (1) Don’t cry. (2) DON’T CRY, my head commanded sternly. I did what I was told but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep it up much longer. My aversion to crying seemed less explicable by the minute.

  Mum pulled up the other chair and sat down. ‘Now, dear,’ she said briskly, getting out a pad and pencil. That businesslike voice meant she would Take Care of Things. Dad began to tinkle away at his banjo.

  Mum shot a frustrated glance in his direction. ‘Now, Ness said you wanted to move hospitals. I think not, dear. It sounds like you shouldn’t be moved for at least another week. OK?’

  ‘I told Ness that?’

  ‘Yes, she was here when you came round from your op. You told her that you wanted to move to a private hospital where you could get on with work.’

  I smiled. ‘That sounds about right.’

  ‘Well, it’s out of the question. These people operated on you so you will remain here,’ Mum continued. ‘And when you’re well enough to be discharged, you’ll be coming back to East Linton with us. You will not be working during that time.’

  I nodded, crossing my fingers under the blanket. If anything was going to help me deal with the wreck my life had suddenly become, it would be work. The great panacea. My own personal cure-all.

  ‘Also, I’ve spoken to Sam and transferred him some money to hire a cleaner while you’re in hospital. I shudder to imagine what will happen to your flat otherwise,’ she continued.

  ‘Thanks, Mum. Good idea.’

  ‘Now, I know you’ve seen your boss but I did put in a formal call to the duty HR mobile at Salutech,’ Mum said. ‘Everything’s fine, there’ll probably be forms to fill in but you’re not to worry about that now.’

  I felt a twinge of fear. ‘Did everything sound OK?’

  ‘In what sense, dear?’

  ‘In the sense that my job’s never been busier or more important than it is right now. I’m really worried that they’ll have to get rid of me, Mum.’

  Mum shook her head. ‘Don’t be silly. That would be against every employment law in Scotland.’

  I rather wished I had inherited Mum’s unshakeable conviction in absolutely everything she said.

  Mum was the practice manager, receptionist and head nurse at Dad’s general practice in East Linton, the pretty but functional little town where I had grown up. Even though Dad was the doctor I was fairly sure that it was Mum’s no-nonsense bedside manner that convinced locals to reject the new medical centre in Dunbar and keep on coming to Dad.

  ‘As long as you’re sure,’ I said gingerly. ‘I’m just worried. I’ve worked hard, Mum.’

  ‘Yes, dear, I know. Hard work gets rewarded. Everything will be fine.’

  ‘And, if not, I’ll bomb them,’ Dad offered. Mum ignored him.

  Please, please, let her be right, I thought. The scientists at Salutech had spent more than a decade developing Simitol, the first ever HIV vaccine. It was a breakthrough that no other pharmaceutical company had come close to, and after years of clinical trials, it was ready to go. Now, in the final few months before it was launched, it was my turn to take the reins. My job to make sure the government and medical industry were clear that Simitol was the most innovative product in the last twenty years. That it could actually prevent HIV, which, even in recent memory, had been a death sentence – and deserved long-term funding. I had to bottle up the support we had from patient groups and transmit it to our drug reps so that they could sell Simitol with total confidence.

  Being responsible for the public face of a company while it changed the course of medical history was a gigantic feat for anyone, let alone a girl of thirty-two. Being bed-bound was simply not acceptable. I’d sack me.

  ‘Now, my love, can you please tell us what happened?’ Mum said, taking my hand. ‘Why were you running down Salisbury Crags in sandals?’

  A large pair of breasts arrived in the cubicle, followed by Hailey and then Matty. ‘Because she never stops bloody well running!’ she said. ‘Hello, Chas! You poor thing, how’re you feeling?’ She kissed my parents.

  Dad loved Hailey. ‘Ah, wonderful!’ he exclaimed delightedly. ‘And you must be the famous Matthew! Welcome to the family, young man!’

  Matty beamed all over his round little face. ‘How lovely to meet you, Dr Lambert,’ he said excitedly, as if he were meeting Hailey’s father, not mine. ‘Hello, Charley,’ he said brightly. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Not amazing,’ I mumbled. I’d put on a brave face for John but it looked like that was my limit. ‘It’s hard to say what part of me hurts the most.’ Probably my broken heart, I thought sadly. Matty nodded sympathetically but was quickly distracted by the amount of electronic equipment behind me. Hailey, meanwhile, got stuck into the opened box of Milk Tray by my bed. What a fantastically odd couple they were. Hailey, small and curvy, looking like a slutty country-and-western singer with her long golden curls and a cowboy shirt; Matty, in hiking p
ants and a multi-function fleece, mirrored sunglasses on his head and probably a compass in his pocket.

  I glazed over a little while my parents chatted to them, Hailey popping chocolates into her mouth as if they were grapes. I wished I cared as little about my figure as she did about hers.

  Then it struck me: in the wake of John’s engagement, my figure had ceased to matter. Fuck my waist, I thought grimly. In fact, fuck everything. ‘You know what?’ I interrupted. Everyone looked at me. ‘I’m STARVING,’ I said. ‘Gizza chocolate, Hailey!’

  Hailey was surprised. ‘I didn’t think you ate chocolate,’ she said.

  ‘I do now. Who brought them?’

  ‘Me,’ Hailey said.

  I giggled, stopping abruptly when bolts of pain attacked my throat. ‘Thanks, Hails. Kind of you to purchase a present that you could eat yourself.’

  Dad roared with laughter. ‘She’s always had an appetite, this one! I don’t blame you, Hailey, someone’s got to eat some chocolate round here! That crackpot organic diet Charley follows!’ He rolled his eyes and winked at her.

  At that point Sam ambled in, raffish and beautiful, poncy sunglasses on his head, a present under his arm. In spite of it being June, the present was wrapped in Christmas paper. ‘Hiya, Chas,’ he said, as if he’d just walked into our sitting room. ‘What’s up?’

  Hailey gave him a despairing look. ‘What’s up? She got carted off from your engagement party unconscious, Sam. That’s what.’

  Sam picked up the box of chocolates. ‘True.’ As he pored over them, large green eyes alight with childish pleasure, I found myself smiling like an indulgent mother. Although he was the best-looking man in Edinburgh, I had never wanted to do any more than parent him: give his neck a good scrub; get some healthy food down him, that sort of thing. Sexually I wouldn’t have touched him with a barge pole. Partly because he was a grubby pig with women but mostly because, having lived with him so long, I knew he was basically a big child in a beautiful man’s body and that it would be tantamount to paedophilia.

  The day I’d met Sam he was wearing his T-shirt inside out and – apart from his incredibly good looks – he was indistinguishable from the sea of nice boys who were shuffling around my halls of residence. They all had an air of having been cast adrift; lost without their comfortable homes and clothes-laundering mothers (but greatly comforted by the opportunities for unlimited drinking and sexual intercourse that university life was offering). Sam had been suffering a terrible hangover and had exited the lift too early by mistake; when he walked into Hailey’s and my room on floor nine, he’d believed he was walking into his own on floor ten. ‘Oh, hi there,’ he’d said, surprised but unperturbed to find two girls on the floor, poring over an Edgar Allan Poe poem that they claimed to love but couldn’t really understand.

  ‘Hello,’ we’d bleated, slightly awed by the beautiful man who’d just walked – voluntarily – into our room. Sam eventually realized he’d made a mistake but showed no signs of departing. Instead he wandered over and opened the bottle of Glenfiddich that Dad had given me as a going-away present. He drank it on our sofa while trying to figure out – with an expression of genuine puzzlement – how he had slept with so many girls since arriving in Glasgow. ‘I really haven’t been trying,’ he mused, sleepy green eyes clouded with confusion. ‘I even went to the theatre the other night and some girl bought me a drink and pretty much stuck her wangers in my face. It was the weirdest thing …’

  Hailey and I had shaken our heads in surprise, even though we knew full well why the girl had stuck her wangers in his face.

  And yet, awed though we might be by his looks, we both knew instantly that we would never want to Go There. It would just be wrong. Instead we became an unlikely triumvirate: me, a lanky nerd who got twitchy when out of the library; Hailey, leading a more classic life of drinking, occasional lectures and failed romances; and Sam, drifting around studying something called ‘Drama’, growing mad hair for his theatrical productions and leaving a trail of crazed girls in his wake. He picked them up everywhere. I even saw him pick one up in the university Spar shop while wearing an inexcusable pair of ethnic ‘rehearsal pants’. I concealed myself behind a huge display tower of Haribo and watched enviously, wondering why, when I always made an effort to dress well, I couldn’t so much as muster a smile out of other men. They just ran from me, seemingly terrified.

  Sam popped a chocolate into his mouth while Dad struck an excitable and tuneless chord on his banjo. ‘Well, the gang are all here now. All we need is Nessie and little Katy and then we can have a party! Shall I go out and get some pizzas in?’

  ‘Christian.’ Mum sighed. ‘I … Oh, it doesn’t matter. Come on, let’s give Charley and her friends some space. We can come back later.’

  Dad looked disappointed but gathered up his banjo. ‘OK. Bye, darling!’ he said, planting a smacker on my forehead. ‘I’ll sneak Malcolm in later. Never understood why you can’t bring animals into a hospital.’ He wandered out of the cubicle, whistling ‘You Are My Sunshine’ even more tunelessly than he had sung it. Sam, grinning, took his seat in the corner.

  ‘Dear God,’ Mum said, following Dad out. ‘I really could punch him at times, Charley.’

  I tried to laugh but it hurt. ‘You’re made for each other,’ I croaked. Mum shrugged, blowing me a kiss as she left. However improbable their marriage might seem to an outsider – in fact, even to them – it worked.

  I’d often imagined John and me as a married couple. We’d be busy, of course, with Salutech, but we’d make sure we created time to eat around our large scrubbed-pine table in John’s loch-side house. Our children would be naughty, clever and beautiful and would speak at least five languages by the age of ten. They’d be skilled at sports and music, and the most popular kids in school by some margin.

  Stop it, I told myself. Don’t do this.

  For once, I obeyed. I didn’t remotely wish to believe that a long-term future with John was now impossible. It was impossible in the first place, you moron, my head snapped. Why would he want a gigantic weird-looking fool like you?

  Hailey removed the chocolates from Sam and handed one to me but I felt so engulfed by sadness that I was unable to do much more than roll it around in the palm of my hand. ‘Where’s Ness?’ I asked eventually. When I was feeling vulnerable I felt a visceral longing for Ness who, born a mere twenty-six minutes before me, was pretty much part of me. Our younger sister Katy, who had followed nearly ten years later (the result of one of Mum and Dad’s pseudo-spiritual holidays to Asia), often grumbled about being the Lambert family wallflower, what with Ness and I ‘living up each other’s arses’. We were the exact opposite; in my eyes I was a big, tall, corporate beast while Ness was a little, soft, chilled-out flower fairy. I imagined her kind blue eyes set in her delicate face, framed by her dark pixie-cut hair, and struggled not to weep.

  ‘She’ll be here any minute,’ Hailey replied. ‘She sat up with you all night; your parents sent her home to sleep.’

  ‘Wow,’ I mumbled, moved and grateful. I had a feeling I’d really need Ness in the coming weeks.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Sorry I ruined your party, Sam,’ I said eventually.

  He chuckled, shaking his head. ‘Chas, you fucking rocked that party, brother,’ he said. ‘How often does an out-of-work actor get to fly across Edinburgh in an air ambulance? It was AWESOME!’

  ‘Oh, Samuel Bowes. You really are an insufferable penis.’ Hailey sighed.

  ‘Takes one to know one, Hai–’

  I interrupted. ‘Er, what? I came here in a helicopter?’

  Sam got a can of beer out of his satchel. ‘Course you did. What sort of an ambulance gets up the Salisbury Crags?’

  I stared at him, shocked. ‘And you came with me?’

  Sam nodded enthusiastically. ‘Fuck, yeah! I got shotgun what with it being my party and all. I wasn’t going to miss out on that!’

  Hailey tried to look disapproving but couldn’t help laugh
ing. ‘I did try to come with you, Chas,’ she said. ‘And Ness really wanted to but, of course, she’s terrified of flying. Sam just basically shoved his way in shouting, “SHOTGUN.” ’ Matty nodded confirmation, looking green with envy. An emergency helicopter ride would be just up his street.

  I smiled. ‘And how was the flight, Bowes?’

  ‘Wicked! A bit too short, plus there was this bird making horrible noises, but the paramedics pumped her full of tranquillizers and she shut up.’ He looked up at me sharply to check I was still amused. I was, just. His face softened. ‘Chas, it was pretty horrible. We’re all really glad you’re OK.’

  I realized I still had the chocolate in my hand and popped it into my mouth. My wholesome home-cooked diet could go and fuck itself. What good had it done me? I had never been attractive enough for John. Six a.m. runs, endless trips to Beetroot Deli, the farmers’ market, Crombies. Everything organic, fair-trade, high-quality, sodding expensive. What a pitiful waste of time, my head mocked. It would be all about chocolate from now on.

  A second later I spat out a mouthful of Turkish Delight. ‘Hailey!’ I cried, appalled yet unsurprised. Hailey did not take chocolate-sharing lightly. ‘I’ve broken my leg! Give me a good one, you horrible girl!’ She handed me a caramel.

  ‘And you’re calling me an insufferable penis?’ Sam asked her mildly. He scratched his testicles and, watching him with the usual horrified fascination, I felt a renewed sense of shock at his engagement.

  Then the curtain was thrown aside and Katy came sauntering in, like a scene from an east London art gallery. She wore vintage sporting breeches, a sparkly cropped bustier and some sort of feather construction clipped into her cropped hair. A pair of vintage pearls hung from her earlobes and she had smudges from last night’s make-up under her eyes, making her look simultaneously dirty and vulnerable. I began to smile. I didn’t see anywhere near enough of Katy: she was too busy being a fashionable electropop singer in London to hang out with her two old-granny sisters in Edinburgh.