by Louise Voss
We’d waited until after dinner, a stodgy paella cooked by his girlfriend Jeanine. Ed and I sat together on Ben’s black leather sofa, our hands just touching, looking meaningfully at each other over the top of Ben’s iPad as he showed us hundreds of digital photos of his and Jeanine’s safari trip. I loved Ed always, but there was a kind of magic in the post-coital connection we had.
Jeanine sat on the opposite sofa, with a slightly anxious expression on her face, as if we were an interview panel. She and Ben had been together a year, but she had only moved into his flat in Kingston a few weeks before and still had the air of a guest, as if she was about to ask his permission to make a cup of tea. Mind you, I thought enviously, the pair of them went on so many holidays that she probably hadn’t time to work out where he kept the kettle.
I liked Jeanine. Although she had the appearance of one of Ben’s standard bimbo types – manicured and groomed to within an inch of her life, two great slabs of dark-brown eyebrow dominating her tiny face – she was really sweet, with a diffident, obliging manner. Ed, in a rare comment about his first wife, once said how like Shelagh Jeanine was, and I felt sad for Ben. I couldn’t blame him for subconsciously seeking out a life partner to try and replace the mother he’d lost at such a young age.
‘Look at the focus on that lion’s head,’ Ben boasted. ‘You can see every whisker, and he was at least fifty metres away!’
I swallowed a yawn. Not from boredom – even though looking at 698 photographs of trees and wildlife was undisputedly dull, however impressive the zoom lens or exotic the landscape – but because I always yawned when I was in stressful situations. I Googled it once and discovered it was to do with lack of oxygen to the brain; the shallow breathing constricted the blood vessels, or something.
‘Hey, guess what? I got a new job,’ I said.
Ben looked disapproving, as if it was inappropriate to mention it during the slideshow. He paused the slides. ‘Really? What is it?’
‘Concert organiser at Hampton Uni,’ I said. ‘Part-time.’
‘Congratulations!’ Jeanine chirped, leaping up and clinking glasses with me. ‘That sounds like fun.’
‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘It’ll get me out of the house anyway.’
I glanced at Ed as I said it, but he seemed to be concentrating on the photographs and didn’t look up at me.
‘That’s great,’ Ben said. ‘Now, check out this hippo!’
I watched my stepson swipe proudly through the photographs with a practised finger. Ben had been thirteen years old when his mum Shelagh had gone AWOL, fifteen when I moved in and seventeen when Shelagh was finally declared dead, after Gavin Garvey confessed to her murder. I could forgive him a lot of his bad behaviour after going through what no teenager ever should, but even to this day Ben treated me with a vestige of the supercilious condescension that he’d already mastered when I first met him.
He turned out OK, though. Only twenty-four, he’d been promoted up the ranks until he was manager of a swanky car showroom in Thames Ditton, selling cars for the sort of money you could spend on a small house somewhere up north, feeling very pleased with himself. He never mentioned his mother.
I yawned again and Ben noticed. ‘Sorry, am I boring you?’
His personality was so like his dad’s. That was exactly what Ed would have said. The older Ben got, the more he looked like him too, except that Ben’s sandy hair was already beginning to recede. I always thought how much that must piss him off, when his dad’s hair was still a great luxuriant shock.
Ben was tall and strong as well, but his eyes were starting to look as though they were retreating into his skull, hooded like Ed’s, the dark circles beneath them becoming more prominent. Yet despite this he had turned into a very good-looking man.
‘Of course not, darling,’ Ed said, on behalf of us both. ‘We just…’
I heard the catch in his throat.
‘…need to talk to you about something.’
Ben and Jeanine exchanged alarmed glances. ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ Jeanine said, practically sprinting into the kitchen. I followed her, putting a hand on her arm and gesturing back towards the living room. ‘Come back in? I think Ben might need you there too. And you’re part of the family.’
‘Is he ill?’ she whispered.
‘Let him tell you,’ I said, leading her back by the hand – something that I’d never done with any of Ben’s previous girlfriends, and certainly never with Ben himself. Jeanine submitted like a little girl, and I felt a pang that she was like the grown-up daughter I had never had. I had a flash of imagined memories: Jeanine as a wispy-haired toddler, a pink-obsessed tweenie, a stroppy teen glued to a smartphone. I’d have loved a daughter, however moody. I was holding out for grandchildren now.
But if Ed was going to die of dementia, I very much doubted that Ben would make much, if any effort at all, to keep in touch with me, so perhaps I wouldn’t even get a step-grandchild to cuddle.
Ed and I never talk about the baby I lost.
He stood up and I hovered nearby. Ben and Jeanine were now sitting together gaping up at us.
‘What, Dad? You’re making me all worried now.’
Ed gazed out of the window at two motionless cranes. Ben had bought off-plan, in Priory Vale, a bland luxury apartment in a development with more identical buildings springing up every month.
Ben was getting irritated now, as was his wont. ‘Dad!’
‘Sorry, Benj. The thing is … oh God, this isn’t easy to say…’
I saw Ben’s knuckles turn white. Poor boy, he really did love his dad.
‘Is it cancer?’
‘No! It’s not that – it’s nothing life-threatening.’
Yes, it bloody well is, I thought. I’d looked it up: the average life span of someone diagnosed with Pick’s disease was eight years. If that wasn’t a death sentence I didn’t know what was.
I was feeling a lot more pessimistic than I had been last night. I slipped my hand into Ed’s and squeezed it, feeling his big fingers squishing my diamond. My emotions were up and down every five minutes; it was exhausting.
‘You’re emigrating!’ Ben tried, plastering a fake smile on his face. ‘That’s OK, don’t look so stressed, I’ve always thought you two would end up living in a shack on a beach somewhere hot – no worries, we’ll come and visit, won’t we, Jeanine?’
When Ed didn’t reply, Ben’s shoulders drooped.
‘Do you want me to tell them?’ I offered. It was as if Ed couldn’t physically form the words. But he shook his head and took a deep breath.
‘I’ve got what Pops had,’ he blurted. ‘Pick’s Disease. We found out last week.’
There was a long, long silence. Ben kept looking between Ed and me, eyes narrowed in disbelief, as if he was waiting for one of us to go, Just kidding! Then he leaned forward and hid his face in his hands, his elbows resting on his big thighs. His shoulders began to shake. ‘Oh shit. Oh fuck, Dad. No. Not that. Not like Pops…’
My heart went out to him. He must have the same kind of traumatic memories of his grandfather as I had of the man, but so much more painful because of their close relationship – and with the added shadow cast over him of the knowledge it was hereditary.
Ben jumped up and hugged Ed tightly, sobbing into his neck like a little boy. The two of them stood there like that for a long time while I went and sat next to Jeanine. This time it was Jeanine who took my hand.
‘We’ll help you,’ she said, and I started to cry, too.
7
Our friends April and Mike bought Fringilla five years ago, when Mike sold his home thermostat company for somewhere north of 300 million pounds, part of a new wave in technology called the Internet of Things – bins that told the council when they needed emptying, streetlights that measured pollution, radiators that sent you email updates; basically, connecting things instead of people to the internet. Ironically, Mike was the least computer-literate person I knew. He couldn’t even cope with Facebook.
Fringilla was a beautiful thirty-foot vintage motor yacht, all varnished teak interior and chrome fittings. They had her moored up at the next lock along to ours and they took her out most weekends, until the days grew too short. I loved getting an invitation aboard, and this would probably be one of her last outings of the year. Even so, I wasn’t looking forward to this one so much, though, because of what we had to tell them. They were amongst our oldest friends. Mike, April and Ed went way back, from their am-dram days.
Fringilla’s white hull appeared round the bend downstream at the appointed time as we were walking along the towpath – Mike was almost anally punctual.
April was at the wheel. She waved at us, her face blurry behind the plastic windows that kept the bow deck area warm and protected. Mike climbed around the edge to the prow, in preparation of mooring up by the lock. He threw the rope over towards Ed, clearly expecting Ed to pick it up and secure it around the bollard, but Ed just stared blankly at it.
‘Ed!’ I put down the wine carrier and lunged for the rope just before it slid into the river. ‘Sorry,’ I laughed fakely, as Mike raised his eyebrows.
‘Too much vino collapso last night, Edna?’ he called. Ed finally snapped out of his reverie and came to help me moor the boat.
We climbed aboard, passing April a bag with the dessert and wine down from the dock. She hugged us and gestured over to the table built into the bow, which she’d decorated beautifully with a lace table-cloth, linen napkins, a selection of olives and homemade cheese straws, and a bottle of champagne in a cooler, glistening with condensation.
April looked stunning, as usual. She had a knack with subtle make-up that always made her look about twenty years younger, giving her the same peachy bloom she’d had when I first met her. Her hair was expertly highlighted and her jeans were those expensive ones from the boutique up the road, costing about three hundred pounds. I bought all my jeans from Next, their ‘Lift and Shape’ range.
She smiled at me and I suspected she’d had her teeth bleached again – they were looking dazzlingly white. Good on her, I thought. I’d do the same if I had the sort of unlimited funds Mike’s role in the Internet of Things had bestowed on them.
‘Do the honours, love, would you? I’ve just got to help Mike with the salad and then we’ll set off. We’ll pootle back upriver for a few miles, shall we, then moor up by the willow tree and eat there, catch the last rays of sun. Gorgeous evening, isn’t it?’
It was; like summer’s last hurrah. I eased the cork out of the champagne, muffling its pop with a napkin, then filled four glasses an inch at a time, so as not to waste a drop. I carried one through to April as she began to chop tiny red chillis in the galley – she was always sous-chef to Mike – then headed back to fetch two others, which I took to the boys, who were both at the stern looking out over the still river. Mike was smoking a cigarette.
‘Still “not smoking”, I see.’ I handed him a glass. ‘It’ll kill you, you know.’
Mike grinned and took the fizz.
‘Maybe I should take up smoking,’ Ed commented to me.
I thrust the other glass into his outstretched hand. ‘Here you go, misery-guts. Cheers!’
I’d been pretending that this was just one of our numerous nights on the river – but Ed’s comment reminded me what we had to tell them later.
The trouble with pretending everything was fine was that, when it hit me afresh that it wasn’t, it felt like a punch that took my breath away.
Mike finished his fag and went to cook the beef strips for the salad. As he squeezed past me in the doorway between the galley and the stern, I felt his belly brush briefly against mine and his nicotine breath waft in my face.
I did sometimes wonder what April saw in him, apart from his money. He wasn’t handsome like Ed; he was the same height as me – just five foot seven – and his stomach looked huge and taut under his striped shirt. He was losing his hair and he had a squint. If April had seen him on a dating site, I was sure she would have clicked past him to someone taller and better-looking.
He could be a moody bugger, too, but April loved him, and that was what mattered. She treated him like a teddy bear, cuddling and fussing over him. And they’d been together for twenty-two years, far longer than me and Ed.
‘How are the twins?’ I asked her, as we slid on to the padded bench seat around the table. The late summer sun was low and bright in the sky, skidding across the water and massaging the back of my head with its evening fingers.
‘Oh, fine. Enjoying their gap year. Monty’s in London working in an architects’ office and Caspar’s getting ready to go and work as a ski instructor for the season.’
Sometimes I wondered how we were such good friends. We were so different. I had never been skiing in my life and wouldn’t have dreamt of naming my children Caspar and Monty, if I’d ever been lucky enough to have any. April was all boarding school jolly-hockey-sticks, nine-hundred-pound handbags and, since she quit her NHS job and Mike retired, a permanent golden tan from their numerous exotic holidays.
It was hard not to envy them. Ed and I went on camping holidays and stayed in B&Bs, recently only in the UK or anywhere in Europe reachable by ferry and car, because of this weird fear of flying he had developed over the past couple of years.
Still, I wouldn’t really want April’s life. Until recently I had been very happy with my own choices.
‘How’s things with Benjy?’ April enquired in return.
I laughed, because April knew full well that Ben couldn’t bear being called Benjy any more. ‘He’s OK. Still with Jeanine. She’s so lovely; I hope they get married. We saw them the other day…’
I tailed off, remembering how horrible it had been to break the news. And now we had to break the same bad news to April and Mike.
‘You haven’t asked me about my new job!’ I teased, pretending to be huffy to disguise how I felt.
‘Oh, sorry!’ April laughed, threw an arm around my shoulders and kissed my cheek. ‘I’m a bad friend. How is your new job?’
‘Great! I love it so far,’ I said, wiping off the smear of lipgloss I could feel she’d left on my face. ‘My boss is a bit eccentric, but seems really nice. Good fun. Drinks too much, but don’t we all? I didn’t think I’d be allowed boozy lunches at work, but it seems it’s par for the course.’
‘Beef’s marinating,’ said Mike, joining us. He was blinking excessively and at first I thought he was just squinting into the low sun, until he loomed over April. ‘I’ve got an eyelash or something, darling, can you see it? It’s driving me mad.’
April tipped her shades back on top of her head and grasped his cheeks between her palms, peering into his eye, while I went to check that Ed was OK. He looked miles away, sitting gazing out at the sunset, contemplatively sipping his fizz.
There was a sudden roar of pain that made me jump: ‘For fuck’s SAKE, woman, you were chopping chillis! Did you not wash your hands?’
Mike started jumping around the boat as though he had a firework in his pants, clutching his eye and swearing.
April leaped up, knocking over her glass. ‘Sorry, sorry, I forgot. Really sorry, honey, quick, splash water in it…’
‘You STUPID COW!’ yelled Mike, brushing her aside and racing to the galley to rinse his eye with a bottle of mineral water. He couldn’t get enough in using cupped hands, so he stuck his head in the sink, tilted it upwards and poured the water over his face, where it flowed through his hair and splashed all around the galley.
Ed and I exchanged glances, both of us getting up to give April a brief discreet hug. She made a face. ‘It’s fine,’ she mouthed to me. ‘He doesn’t mean it.’
She followed Mike into the galley, handing him a towel and soothing him until he calmed down.
Eventually they returned, Mike’s cheeks the same bright red as his bloodshot eye. ‘Sorry about that, folks. Didn’t mean to yell at the old Trouble.’
Ed looked puzzled. ‘Trouble?’
Mike slapped him lightly around the head. ‘Edna! Keep up, mate – Trouble! Trouble and Strife: wife? Not like you to miss that one. Right, shall we set off upriver for a little tootle before dinner?’
I cleared my throat. Ed nodded at me and I put a hand on Mike’s arm. ‘Before we go, we’ve got something to tell you both. Will you come and sit down for a minute?’
I moved along the bench to make room for Mike and April, who looked concerned. ‘Oh yes. You said on the phone you wanted to say something. You’re not splitting up, are you?’ April asked.
‘No, nothing like that.’
A big Dutch barge chugged slowly past, making Fringilla rock gently from side to side in its wake, as though the little cruiser was trying to comfort us all, I thought, as I gathered my words.
I took a swig of champagne. Perhaps it was the alcohol in my system, or the charged atmosphere from Mike’s outburst, but I found myself unable even to try and sugar-coat it.
‘Ed’s been diagnosed with dementia. Frontotemporal, same as his dad had. It’s called Pick’s Disease. We’ve been concerned he might have it for a while – Ed went to the doctor about it months ago– but we only just got the diagnosis. You’re the only ones we’ve told, apart from Ben and Jeanine.’
And Suzan next door, I thought, and my new boss, but I didn’t want Ed to know that.
There was a shocked silence around the table, broken only by the sound of the floats protecting Fringilla’s sides as they knocked gently against the wall of the quay. A gust of chilly evening wind blew through the gaps where the plastic curtains hadn’t been fully zipped up, and I shivered.
Mike had a really peculiar expression on his face; blank and almost accusatory in the second that he stared at Ed, and I felt angry with him before I realised that it was just shock. Then his face crumpled, his bloodshot eye and downturned lips making it look as though he was already weeping, and he seemed to gather himself. He reached out and grasped Ed’s hand, squeezing it so hard that Ed winced. ‘Oh mate. I’m so sorry. I thought you’ve been acting a bit funny lately…’
