‘You are seriously cute,’ he said, and he had the decency to look serious, even though his eyes were crinkled at their corners. ‘So mums and dads were …?’
‘One of them had the baby. They got to choose.’
‘How very equal. When did you realize?’
‘At med school,’ I joked, and he grinned.
‘I like learning new Rachel-things,’ he said.
That’s what he called them. He had made a list, after we’d known each other for two months, and published it instead of a weekly column. It was called 50 Things I Love About My Girlfriend and it began with: ‘1. The way she tilts her head back when she really laughs.’ I had read it with tears in my eyes. Nobody had ever done such a thing for me.
‘Let’s do it,’ Jack said softly, and I knew what he meant. ‘This. Us.’
It was something to do with his open body language and his clear love for me that made me agree.
‘I’ll put my flat on the market.’
‘You’ll come and live with us?’ His face cracked into a broad smile, his eyes crinkled. His body suddenly relaxed, as though he’d been tense for months.
And that was the thing that sealed it: the us. With him and Howard.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘But we’ll have to move somewhere else,’ he added. ‘Somewhere new.’
Later, I kept thinking of Matt Douglas. I took my iPhone into the bath with me and googled him. There wasn’t a single relevant result. Matt Douglas didn’t seem to have done anything at all. No assault. No atrocity. But how could I tell Jack that?
I typed the full headline of the email into Google. I couldn’t help myself. No results found, said Google.
Satisfied, I locked my phone and dropped it on to the floor beside the bath with a thud.
9
One year ago
‘We can wait again,’ I was saying to the boy. His leg was in a brace, his skin mottled and bruised, like it was covered in black mould. ‘We can leave the brace on longer.’
‘It weighs nine pounds,’ he said. ‘It’s a pain in the arse. With no guarantee the bone will even knit.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But the alternative is …’
‘I want it gone,’ he said. ‘Let’s just get it over with. Not prolong the agony.’
‘We’ll speak to your mum. I shouldn’t be discussing it with you alone.’
‘Because I’m a child.’
I spread my hands wide. ‘Yes,’ I said honestly.
‘You’ve taken almost all my bone out. Just get it over with,’ he said, turning away from me.
‘We’ll see,’ I said. I fussed with his bedding, even though it wasn’t my job.
He turned to me. ‘This is all pointless,’ he said. ‘And it’s distracting.’
‘Distracting?’
‘All this faff trying to save my leg. All this time. All these resources. All these drugs. I don’t need my leg saving. I see the prostheses. They’re realistic enough. Let’s get on with the main event.’
‘Trust me. You’re in good hands. No one’s distracted.’
‘I’m so scared, Rach.’
‘I know.’
‘Are you?’
‘Scared?’ I said.
He had a vase of sunflowers on his window sill. He wasn’t supposed to have them in his room – too much risk of germs for the immunocompromised – but he’d picked them himself; he’d been so pleased with them that I had bent the rules for him.
‘For me. Honestly.’
His eyes met mine. They were a navy blue, almost violet.
I answered honestly. ‘Yes. I wish you didn’t have it. I wish we could guarantee a cure. I wish your bones were knitting better.’
‘Cut the leg off. At least that’ll be over.’
‘It’ll feel differently when you’re the other side of the operation,’ I said. ‘You can’t take it back.’
‘He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Nietzsche.’
‘You’re a nihilist now, are you?’
His face gave way to a smile. He’d discovered philosophy, during his treatment. He was forever spouting off about it. I enjoyed it, learning those brief nuggets whenever I spoke to him. It was like speaking to a prodigy or a prophet, sometimes.
‘No. I just like that quote. Once the chemo’s back underway, I’ll feel better.’
He was right. We amputated two weeks later. The surgeon said he was a surprisingly clear-sighted boy. He seemed to know more than any of us.
I told Ben about the boy’s amputation the day it happened. He didn’t always listen to work stories; he used to say the same stock phrases to either commiserate or celebrate with me.
‘Yeah, the one you looked up,’ Ben said curtly. He often spoke like this. As though his aim was always to curb how much we chatted.
‘Yeah. I don’t know. With Mum and everything,’ I said, ‘it’s like they’re running in parallel.’
Mum had been diagnosed right before I had seen the boy for the first time. They were linked, in my mind. Her cancer and his. The boy’s overprotective mum. My hands-off mum.
‘You know what, Rach,’ Ben said, his expression forthright but kind. ‘You care too much.’
He switched on his PlayStation after that.
I said nothing further: he was right.
10
Present day
It was Jack’s father’s birthday the following weekend. We were on the motorway again. It felt as if Jack and I were stretched thin, like cheap cling film, pocked and wrinkled; trying to get to know each other, our families, all our friends, all at once, all before the baby came. We were in a relationship moving at speed, as if we had jumped on to a freight train.
I wish he’d told me the previous weekend that we’d be going again, or that I had known. But how could I know? I had to think twice about when Jack’s birthday was, after all.
It was a five-hour drive, and it all fell to me. It was also, of course, five hours, regularly, of watching the windscreen wipers go back and forth – ruminating, which didn’t help.
‘The M74 again,’ I said conversationally.
‘Oh. God, I don’t even know.’
‘How can you not know that?’ I said, looking across at him. He was grinning sheepishly. He was a typical non-driver. He didn’t know anything. He didn’t know which roads were which or how to get anywhere. Audrey and I used to have a thing about adults who didn’t drive. We called them kidults. We had a whole host of kidult criteria: people who didn’t do their own washing or who couldn’t use an iron. Kidult, Audrey would sometimes whisper to me when we were in the cinema watching a film featuring a man-child.
I privately wondered what she thought about Jack.
‘You did pass your test, right?’ I said to him.
‘Yeah.’
‘What happened? Did you never drive again?’
I frowned as I said it. Oban wasn’t exactly London. He would have driven. He would’ve had to. It was so spread out.
‘Was always pissed,’ Jack said. He stretched his legs in front of him and put his arm around the back of my shoulders.
‘Ah,’ I said with a smile. ‘I see.’
‘I did drive, till I was in my twenties. A bit. But then I stopped. A few years ago. Now I’d have no idea.’
‘Why did you stop?’
‘Just got out of the habit.’
‘Hmm. Well – we were on the M74 last weekend, is all,’ I said.
‘Okay, Mr Grumpy,’ he smiled.
‘Me?’
‘Yeah.’ He stretched lazily. His hand was still resting on my shoulder, his forearm on my back. It was nice; warm, even though a new layer of fat sat around the back of my waist. I had naively thought I would grow only a bump.
‘It’s just a long way. It would be nice to stay in. Saturday mornings. Netflix and chill,’ I said, looking sideways at him and laughing.
‘Did you just say Netflix and chill?�
�
‘Yes. I did.’
‘You’re almost thirty,’ Jack said, but he was laughing, too; a soft, knowing laugh.
‘Do you even know what it means?’
‘Oh, I know what it means,’ he said to me.
And I felt a rush of pleasure move up my body, and down my arms as they gripped the wheel in the driving rain. He could always do that to me.
‘Why don’t we Netflix and chill in Oban?’ he suggested.
‘Mmm.’
‘It’s home,’ he said simply, the teasing flirtatious atmosphere evaporating.
And I understood that. He’d only lived in Newcastle since he’d met me. Seven months. Barely any time at all. He didn’t even know where the Tyne was, not properly, not in the way locals always knew whether it was on their left or their right. He wasn’t brought up by a native Geordie father who used to sit up and drink Newcastle Brown Ale. And he wasn’t interested, either. He’d had a temporary placement here, and then he’d met me, and everything had changed. But he didn’t love Newcastle; not the way I did, anyway. He thought it grubby, thought the locals strange. He never said, but I could see it in the way he looked at the city’s underbelly: the hen and stag dos that flooded in every Saturday night. The Primark with the graffiti written on its side – hope, it said – which I quite liked. The virulent Thatcher-hating. The social housing. Oban was remote and rich and empty; the opposite of Newcastle, really.
‘I’m an ex-pat. A nomad,’ he said. ‘A foreigner.’
‘You’re hardly a foreigner,’ I said.
But maybe he was.
We lapsed into silence then. It was raining, as it always was on that motorway. He produced two Wagon Wheels.
‘Are you willing to share?’ I asked, changing the subject.
‘Yes,’ he said, slowly proffering one. ‘You are very, very special.’
‘Thank you,’ I said seriously, taking it out of his hand.
‘They’re jam ones,’ he told me. ‘The best. Not so easy to find.’
‘How many do you have?’ I was giggling; he was forever producing Wagon Wheels.
‘Approximately one hundred,’ he said, yawning. ‘There’s a man on the checkouts in Tesco who thinks I have a lot of parties.’
We stopped at the services. He went in for coffees and came out with a doughnut cushion to relieve pregnancy piles, which he handed to me, unable to stop laughing. ‘Saw this and thought of you,’ he said, one hand covering an impish smile.
‘Oh, thanks.’ I took it from him. ‘Why would you need one of these urgently in the services?’
‘Who knows when piles can strike,’ he laughed. And then he handed me a decaf coffee – my favourite Starbucks Caramel Macchiato – and as I took it he turned the cup around. Rachel is so cool was written on its side in black marker pen.
‘You told them to write that on there?’ I said with a laugh.
‘I told them that was my name. Very seriously,’ he replied.
We were in Oban by 10 p.m.
Netflix and chill by eleven.
Jack’s father, Tony, wanted to go on a walk for his birthday. His mum, Cynthia, was frantically finishing making three different batches of cupcakes. She was one of those people who were always busy doing non-essential things. The kind of person Kate and I secretly laughed at when we were run off our feet in our mid-twenties, me with medicine, she with tennis. Our successes had come so easily to us then; they had made us arrogant. Our mum had been a civil servant. Always working. We’d grown up with it. Once, soon after Mum’s death, Kate had asked me if I wished it had been different; that we’d had a cuddly mother who picnicked with us in the garden, making dens. I’d said no. Not because it was true, but because I didn’t want to talk about it, and Kate had stopped asking.
‘We’d need to go quite soon, if we definitely are walking,’ Tony said.
‘Why didn’t you say so earlier?’ Cynthia hissed at him. ‘Davey,’ she added.
They walked off huffily. I looked at Jack questioningly.
‘He doesn’t like new places,’ Jack said. ‘Or wearing his coat.’
‘No?’ I said, wanting to talk about him. I didn’t even know his diagnosis. I had a few guesses in mind, but nothing seemed to fit.
‘He just … he likes things the way they are,’ Jack explained. ‘No changes.’
‘Was he always like this?’
‘Yeah.’ Jack leant his elbows against the kitchen counter. ‘It was weird, growing up. To have such a … particular brother.’
‘With my patients I always asked how the siblings were,’ I said. ‘They suffered too.’
‘Bet you were a good doctor. I didn’t really suffer,’ Jack said. ‘He is so lovely. So uninhibited. When he was fifteen he grabbed Mum’s hand in the Post Office and asked why a woman had a moustache.’ His cheeks dimpled. The same smile he reserved for me; reserved for people he loved. He reached over and covered the cakes up.
‘What is his …?’
‘Autism, but other things too. He’s childlike.’
Davey appeared then, thundering down the stairs with his heavy steps. He was lanky, with long, thin hands and feet. He had pale skin, dark red lips and bright blue eyes.
‘Alright,’ Jack said, gently, to him. ‘Fancy a walk?’
‘No.’
‘We’re going on a mission. A World of Warcraft mission.’
Davey looked at him warily. ‘Really?’ he said, his voice flat.
‘Yeah, mate. Will you appoint me at your mission table?’
I turned to look at Jack, but he wasn’t looking at me. For once he didn’t care what I thought. He didn’t care that World of Warcraft wasn’t cool.
‘Okay,’ Davey said. ‘Okay. If … is it a Garrison mission? Outside?’
‘Of course,’ Jack said. He smiled at Davey, and Davey looked at his feet.
‘Okay,’ Davey agreed, after a few moments.
‘And then tonight – you know what it is?’ Jack said.
‘What?’
‘It’s bin night,’ Jack said.
Davey loved taking the bins out. He pretended they were horses.
‘Yes!’ Davey exclaimed, raising his hands in the air.
I walked into the living room and surveyed the weather out of the mullioned front windows. They made the mist look even more oppressive, distorted it; made it look thicker or thinner, depending on the angle. Cynthia came into the living room where her walking boots were standing in the corner.
‘Where is he?’ she said to me. ‘Not gazing at that bloody mole again? I’ve stopped him twice.’
‘Jack?’ I said.
‘Yes, Jack. Bloody hypochondriac. What would doctors say it is – hysteria?’
‘Health anxiety. OCD,’ I replied.
I used to tell Audrey stories of the occasional hypochondriacs I saw while I was on a general medicine rotation. We used to laugh while telling each other we were being unprofessional. Audrey would tell me about her juiciest cases and I told her about the time a patient thought they had a ‘widespread unexplained painful sensation’ on their skin but they had actually just got sunburnt.
‘Right, well. That.’
‘Has he always been that way?’ I said, trying to get closer to her, trying to understand Jack better.
Anxiety usually came from somewhere, especially obsessive checking. Some event. Mine had. It didn’t take a psychiatrist to work it out. Mum’s affair had taken root, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, like a persistent weed; a poisonous plant. It made me think things that weren’t true. I had to resist them. I hoped one day Jack would tell me what his was. I thought about it sometimes when I watched him triple-check the gas was off.
‘Jack? Oh, absolutely not. Most relaxed child you could meet,’ she said.
The weather was drizzly, misty. But rather than detracting from the atmosphere of the place, it added to it. Oban was better in the mist. I felt safer shrouded in it.
We went to Loch Melfort. It was bright blue, even in the dr
izzle, with wisps of cloud that looked like pieces of torn-off candy floss floating above it. The Scottish heather purpled the grass; a two-tone shade of green-pink which seemed to shimmer in technicolour as we moved.
I had thought we were going to walk around the entire loch, until we arrived, and I realized it was more like a small sea. I could see some Scottish hills in the distance, but only just, and the water lapped and had a shoreline made of stone and shingle. It smelt like the sea, too: tangy.
A mansion stood casually at the edge of the loch. There was no division. No front garden. No fence. The land just sort of stumbled down to the shore, becoming thinner and lower, until it became water. I liked the informality of Scotland. I turned around, looking west of the house and back up the hill we’d just driven over and down. The evergreen trees rose up behind us. They looked bent, buckled, rising out of the hill in the mist; taller than they really were. The clouds were moving quickly, like a stop-motion film, and my face was getting wet as I watched them.
‘Bonnie Scotland, hey?’ Jack said to me, watching me looking.
I nodded.
It was just us: Jack, his parents, Davey and the dogs. They bounded off. Nobody else was around. I’d borrowed a mac from Jack’s mum, given wordlessly to me in the car as we drove over.
Davey wandered off. He liked to be alone, muttering to himself. He kept turning around and miming at Jack; holding up imaginary World of Warcraft weapons and ducking behind trees.
Jack was laughing, shouting, ‘Look out for the dragon spawn,’ and, ‘Bang!’
‘Do you play?’ I said. ‘With Davey?’
‘God, no. He’s a control freak. But I educated myself about it. To – to reach him, I suppose. Speak his language.’
‘So if Wally turns out to be a geek …’
‘I’ll be set.’
We lagged behind the others. Jack held my hand. It was warm, but clammy with rain. ‘Look,’ he said, pulling me over to a patch of undergrowth. It was a plant so red its shiny fruits looked like pomegranate seeds, bright in the grey weather.
‘Mountain bearberry,’ he said. He plucked a leaf and passed it to me. ‘It’s rare. And very Scottish.’ He stood up straight and grinned.
‘Nice,’ I said. I reached inside the mac and put it in my own coat pocket, safe. The leaf’s surface was rough against my fingers, like calloused skin.
Everything but the Truth Page 6
