Finally he rang off, let out a long sigh and tilted his head towards the beach bar.
‘Come on. I’ll fill you in over breakfast.’
Sam waited until their coffee arrived, his lips tight. Face pale. The story, when he finally shared it, was a shock. Marcus was apparently back with his parents in a state of complete meltdown after his wife Diana had suddenly left him.
‘You are kidding me?’ Melissa could genuinely not believe it. Marcus and Diana were the golden couple. Matching convertibles. Waterside loft apartment. Just two years earlier they had had the dream wedding at an art deco hotel on an island in Devon. They had actually left the reception by helicopter
‘So much for my campaign for wedded bliss,’ Sam stirred two sugars into his coffee.
Melissa blushed.
Sam then explained that his father had been hoping to spare them from the crisis until they got back. Hadn’t realised that Marcus, just returned by taxi after an all-night bender with a friend, had rung Sam. They hadn’t wanted to spoil their trip.
Bottom line – Marcus’s company – was going down the tubes. He had taken out a second mortgage without telling Diana. And she – oblivious over the dosh and suspecting Marcus of an affair – had decided on a fling to balance things up. The rift had apparently all started within six months of the wedding. Marcus wanted to start a family and Diana very definitely didn’t. They hadn’t thought to discuss it properly before the aisle.
‘Run off now with some guy in IT at her bank, apparently.’
‘Oh dear God, no. Poor Marcus.’
‘Well, according to Dad, he’s been a real silly arse himself. Stuck his head in the sand over the financial mess. Ignored pleas from the bank for meetings. Right pickle.’
‘Jeez. And I was always a bit jealous. They always seemed so sorted.’
‘All smoke and mirrors, it seems. Worse thing is Diana doesn’t yet know that the bubble’s burst financially. She’s banking on a healthy divorce settlement, by all accounts.’
‘Well I don’t want to be in the room when that chicken comes home,’ Melissa raised her eyebrow as the waiter appeared with a basket of warm bread and a plate of butter and jam in a small bowl.
‘I’ve told Dad I’ll go over as soon as I get back.’
‘Of course.’
Melissa examined Sam’s face closely as he began to spread the butter on a large hunk of bread.
‘I really am very sorry, Sam. So is there no way back for them?’
He shook his head. Drank more coffee. Swept his hair back. Gazed out at the sea. Sam idolised his older brother. Marcus could be a bit brash, she had thought when she first met him, but he had a good heart, and Melissa, being an only, had rather envied and admired how close the brothers were.
‘So – do you want to talk about it? Marcus?’
‘Do you mind actually if we don’t. How about we talk about you and this job instead? I know you haven’t had the energy to think about it – with the journal, I mean. But you’re going to have to make a decision soon. Or bump the meeting with the editor.’ He was fidgeting with the sugar sachets.
‘Still undecided, then?’ Sam caught the waiter’s eye to order some more bread and two more coffees, setting the extra sachets of sugar ready by his spoon.
‘Oh – I don’t know, Sam. I’m still shit scared,’ Melissa felt a frisson of guilt, realising that she really ought to have been giving this more thought rather than letting her mind wander with ideas for new writing projects. ‘You know me. PhD in fearing the worst. No idea what to do.’
It was all so unexpected. And the fact it was a tabloid made things tricky. Melissa had rather rashly once sworn that she would never work for a red top. But she had already carved out a niche for herself as a consumer columnist, starting with freelance articles in her final year at uni and continuing during her training at The Bartley Observer.
Melissa not only loved consumer journalism but had just pipped more experienced colleagues to win a national columnist award after campaigning against Rachman-style landlords who were taking advantage of the buy-to-let boom and overcharging for under-par and in some cases dangerous accommodation. The whole rented sector had gone nuts since the housing bubble burst. Many potential home-owners were renting, waiting for house prices to fall further. Others were renting simply because they had no choice. No deposits to buy. The mathematics of supply and demand had made it a landlords’ market and some of the less scrupulous were taking serious advantage.
Melissa had been exposing the worst cases in a series of columns. Her editor was turning grey over the pile of litigation threats, but Melissa knew they were all empty. She loved the territory and the threats to sue simply made her more determined. Campaigning journalism was by nature potentially libellous. But she researched each case meticulously, publishing only when she was sure of the defence of ‘justification’ to keep the paper’s own legal team happy.
Very soon trading standards and then the police became involved. A student was burned badly when a faulty immersion heater exploded in a property owned by one of the landlords she had been exposing. The tenant had complained many times about the immersion heater and Melissa had taken up the case in her column but the protests fell on deaf ears.
The story made national television news with Melissa interviewed and quoted across television, radio and the national press. She immediately started to get headhunting calls – the best of which was this offer of a one-year freelance contract to launch a national campaigning consumer column for the tabloid. But Melissa was worried about the reputation of the red tops. Also her future.
‘What I’m worried about Sam is that it’s running before I can walk. That I will balls it all up, get myself fired and be left with nothing at all.’
‘Just to look on the bright side,’ Sam was smiling.
The truth was Melissa was scared of freelancing. The financial uncertainty. She was very much an ideas person, which was good for freelancing. But for all that, she also liked the certainty of a monthly cheque. Yet others on the Bartley Observer were green with envy – arguing that the lights were going out on the local newspaper industry anyway. What did she really have to lose?
‘You know what I think. That you should just bloody well go for it. Take the contract,’ Sam locked eyes as she stirred her own coffee. ‘I mean – look at Marcus. So much for being financially sorted. Reckon there’s nothing safe these days. You may as well take a risk, Melissa. Might just work out fine.’
She held his gaze for just a moment then took a deep breath and looked away toward the beach as the waiter arrived with their second basket of bread and more coffee. For just a moment, Melissa suddenly had a new thought. Maybe the London editor would like the idea of the blog too? Melissa narrowed her eyes and felt the frown. No. Too personal. And I’m not qualified. Don’t know a thing about food. Don’t be ridiculous, Melissa. One thing at a time.
‘Oh, I don’t know. We’ll see. So – Marcus then. Was he very drunk?’
‘Well, let’s just say he phoned me up specifically to tell me how much he loved me. That I was his best friend in the whole of the world.’
And then he clinked his coffee cup to Melissa’s. ‘Happy holidays, eh?’
Melissa tilted her head ‘Is he going to be all right? Marcus?’
‘God knows.’
21
ELEANOR – 1994
‘So you don’t think this gene trial wotsy – this new work Dr Palmer is doing – has any real knock-on for Melissa?’ Max was checking his tie in the mirror. They had not talked of this since Eleanor’s last appointment which had so winded each of them. Separately. Secretly.
‘Didn’t seem that way but I’ll ask him again today. To clarify? So what sort of day have you got ahead?’
‘Usual. And you won’t let him talk you into it. No more tests, I mean. Just for his international buddies.’ Max had made it clear this was non-negotiable. Unless there was something involving Melissa, he wanted no part of it. Loo
k, I have gone along with you – not telling Melissa. Preparing her. So I need you to go along with me on this? Yes, Eleanor?
‘I can come with you, if you like. In fact I’d like to.’ Now he was sitting on the edge of the bed, undoing the top button of his shirt beneath his tie. Eleanor felt something inside her shift. It was the idiosyncrasies. Doing up his shirt, putting on his tie and then undoing the top shirt button afterwards. Putting his tea cup down alongside the saucer after the first sip – never back on the china, for a reason he had failed to adequately explain. Something to do with drips. Tearing paper napkins into long matching strips when they were out for coffee. Always firing the central locking device at the car twice. Always scanning a new room for flies. Always forgetting something.
All these things killed her because they had once upon a time annoyed her and now with every repetition she asked the same question.
How many more times?
‘I’d honestly rather you go to work. I’ll be in and out in five minutes today. No point you disrupting your day.’
‘And you promise you won’t be talked into something.’
‘I won’t be talked into something.’
He kissed her on the mouth, closing his eyes and doing what he always did these days, leaving his lips touching hers that little bit longer. One second. Two. Three
‘Go. You’ll be late.’
‘Right. I’ll ring.’
‘Just go.’
She heard him march then into Melissa’s room to wake her, listened to her daughter’s response – Go away, Daddy – then his footsteps on the stairs. The jangle of keys. The front door. She waited. Two minutes and the key was back in the lock. Swearing.
‘Left a book. Sorry. ‘
There was the sound of scrabbling about, more swearing and then finally the slam of the front door for the second time. Eleanor smiled.
‘You awake still, Melissa? Come on into Mummy’s bed.’
Melissa was like Max in the mornings, needing a period of adjustment. Trying to pitch for cooperation in the form of breakfast, teeth or dressing until she was through this zone was entirely counterproductive. So this was the preferred sequence. Max would wake her. Eleanor would pause. Then Eleanor would call her through to do her hair quietly in her bed, by which time Melissa would have surfaced sufficiently to face the day.
It was not only practical but for Eleanor now a highlight; the silent brushing of her daughter’s hair as she sat, hugging her knees with her chin resting on the same. Half asleep still.
Melissa had what Eleanor liked to call suggestible hair. It would quite easily be dried straight and silky – calmed and straightened with the application of heat. But left to dry naturally it had a soft curl. Shiny, dark hair with glints of autumn in the right light.
‘You have lovely hair.’
‘You always say that, Mummy. Every day.’
‘Ponytail?’
Melissa merely shrugged through a yawn and so Eleanor gently continued, wrapping a black velvet hair tie from the bedside table around her wrist and raking the brush through her daughter’s hair – stroke after stroke.
‘So have you got used to Mummy’s short hair yet?’
Another shrug.
‘Well it’s very easy to look after, though I think we should keep yours long. Much too beautiful to cut – not until you are very much older.’
She could feel her daughter yawn again as she took the hair tie from her wrist and carefully wrapped it twice around the ponytail to secure it firmly.
‘Ow.’
‘Sorry, darling. There. That’s done,’ she then hugged her daughter tight. ‘We should teach Daddy how to do your hair.’
‘I don’t want Daddy to do it.’
‘Well. Maybe he would like to. Just sometimes.’
‘I’d have to get up earlier.’
Eleanor laughed. ‘No, darling. You wouldn’t have to get up earlier.’
She made pancakes as a treat with lemon and sugar and just thirty minutes later watched Melissa disappear across the playground, turning for a final wave.
How many more times?
Eleanor had an hour before her meeting and so fired up the computer to see what she could find out. Max was the computer whizz in the house. She the dinosaur. Recently he had been trying to explain the new internet search function but she had been cynical – a wet blanket, certain it would all be the death knell for proper libraries and intellectual integrity. But now Eleanor needed it and so struggled to remember the instructions Max had given her. She tried a few keywords as he had explained. The gene names. BRCA-1 and BRCA-2. A number of pages were slowly listed and Eleanor began to read – her heart sinking.
She had no idea that things had come this far. But the more she read now, the more she understood why Dr Palmer was interested in her case.
The latest work seemed to be suggesting that the faulty gene they had found could be carried silently, not just by women but by men too. Eleanor was an only. Her mother had no sisters – only two brothers. So what did that mean? For the risks? For their gene tree? That the only two women in the tree for three generations had got ‘unlucky’?
The article she found suggested only families with multiple cancers pointing to a link or gene fault were likely to be offered counselling and testing in the future. This wasn’t yet widespread. Mainstream.
Eleanor turned off the computer and took out her journal for Melissa. She had been pasting in old family pictures and a very basic family tree with some anecdotes from her mother. She turned then to the back of the journal where she had started a new, separate section on motherhood.
Eleanor realised that a young Melissa would have very little interest in this part initially, which was why she had put it at the back. She remembered herself at 25. Goodness – parenthood drew such a line in the sand.
The before. The afterwards.
It also divided your world into two sets of people. Those with children who understood. And those without who did not. It was not a judgemental thing – suggesting that one group was better or worse than the other. Just a fact.
Until you had paced a house in the early hours with a colicky child, you did not know. Until you had watched a nurse put a needle into the arm of your baby, half wanting to punch them as your child howled, you did not know. You might guess and you might imagine how all of this might feel, but you could not know.
And so she was writing this section on parenting because she hated to think of Melissa’s future. A mother without a mother. A mother with no maternal compass.
Also, it was quite simply the loveliest part to write. Practical tips on the colic and the teething and how to survive the madness of no sleep (remember that sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture; it is normal to feel insane). Brutal honesty about the moment when the sheer tiredness of those early days made you ask wicked questions of yourself. The shameful daydreaming over whether you had really done the right thing. Whether you would ever again feel in control of your life? The hallucinating about the old days. Long baths and reading books.
But always in the end….the joy, Melissa. The indescribable joy. That smell. The ache of your arm as the baby slept in the crook of it. The sound of the sucking as they fed. The eye contact.
Goodness. She had almost forgotten that. The eye contact.
Of the lurch inside every single time your child caught your eye, from the playground, from the front of a school stage or from a climbing frame in the park.
* * *
I get that pull, that lurch, over you, my darling girl. Every day. And one day, I hope that you will know exactly what I am wittering on about.
Because, I promise you, it will suddenly become what you live for …
* * *
Shit. Eleanor checked the clock and realised she would have to hurry. Too often it was like this. Tired. Hurrying. Late.
She phoned the oncologist’s secretary to reassure that she was on her way – ten minutes late at the very outside – and the
n grabbed her coat, tucking the journal beneath her underwear in the second drawer down; pausing just a moment to look at the title to wonder if it gave the wrong impression? Worrying about keeping this from Max and what he would think in the future and realising also that within these few short weeks the whole idea and purpose of this book for Melissa was beginning to change.
22
MAX – 2011
Max was about fifteen minutes early as he pulled into his parking slot and so listened to the latest on the Greek Euro crisis. The second bailout was finally agreed. A fifty per cent reduction in the Greek debt and a trillion Euro rescue fund.
Various European leaders were eloquently upbeat in their sound bites but Max shook his head. They seemed to be forgetting that Greece was still broke. Bailout or no bailout.
He snapped off the radio and turned to the back seat to discover that the green folio of assignments which he was one hundred per cent sure he had put alongside his keys was impossibly not there.
Shit.
He turned and stretched awkwardly to feel around the floor. Must have fallen into the well behind the driver’s seat. But no.
Shit and damn and fuck. He had left the bloody assignments plus his feedback at home. And he hadn’t updated it online. He was swearing some more, checking his watch to work out if there was time to dash home after his first lecture, when he turned to open the door to feel his body jolt half out of his skin.
‘Sorry. Sorry.’
She was blushing as Max fumbled for the electric window control, heart pounding.
‘I didn’t mean to startle you, Max. It’s just I saw the car. And I wanted…’
She was wearing running clothes. A black vest with purple stripes and charcoal sweat pants.
Max had not the foggiest idea where to look. Jesus. He thought she ran on Wednesday lunchtimes.
‘I thought you ran on Wednesday lunchtimes.’
‘Oh. Yes.’ She pulled her head back – apparently surprised that he had remembered this. ‘I do. Wednesday lunchtimes. But I’m getting myself into a paddy about this half marathon. Not ready. Easier to do the extra training here and use the showers before I start.’
Recipes for Melissa Page 13
