by Paula Daly
‘Let me make you a coffee,’ Eve says firmly. ‘I can’t begin to understand how worrying this is for the both of you. Heavens, I’m on the brink, and she’s not even my child. Are you sure you don’t want to go over there? Are you certain . . . because it really is no trouble for me to take care of things this end.’
He shakes his head. ‘Natty’s adamant she can manage. Thanks, though.’
‘Well, if you change your mind . . .’
‘Alice says you’ve offered to stick around to keep her company?’
‘I’m in no hurry to go back,’ Eve says, ‘but if you think you’ll be okay on your own, I’ll get out from under your feet later on today.’
Sean doesn’t speak. He’s weighing what would be the right thing to do. Eve intuits his quandary and looks at him straight. ‘How about I just stay until your mother returns, then she can be here for Alice – make sure she has everything she needs while she’s studying?’
Sean shifts his weight. ‘You mean, till Monday?’
Eve smiles innocently. ‘Sure, till Monday.’
The kettle has finished boiling. Eve walks across the kitchen to fetch the milk. ‘I think Alice might need a bit of support, Sean,’ she says by way of an afterthought. ‘She was very upset about Felicity last night . . . it’d be such a tragedy if it impacted on her studies.’ She continues without turning: ‘Natty says she’s been working really hard recently. What is it she wants to do again? Medicine?’
‘That’s right, medicine,’ Sean says wistfully.
‘Such a clever girl,’ Eve comments as she bends over to grab the milk from the bottom shelf of the fridge.
7
‘EVE’S STAYING UNTIL Monday?’ I repeat back to Sean. ‘That’s thoughtful of her.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ he says. ‘I’m not altogether happy at Eve being in the house without you. It feels a little weird.’
A scruffy orderly passes me in the hospital corridor and I’m immersed in a cloud of alcohol vapour. I’m wondering, if I were to pull out a match and strike it, would the air around me burst into flames?
I’m reminded of Alice’s argument last night for the benefits of underage drinking, how the French – in allowing their children to drink wine at mealtimes – go a long way towards preventing binge drinking and alcoholism in later life.
I have seen no evidence of this so far. I’ve only been here a few hours and almost everyone I’ve come across reeks of either booze or cigarettes. Or both.
‘Eve’s not being a bossy-wife substitute is she?’ I say laughing.
‘No, but—’
‘Eve’s got her own problems,’ I tell him. ‘If she’s offering to help out, let her. It’ll take her mind off Brett, if nothing else.’
‘They having a rough patch?’
‘Before she left the States, he dropped the bombshell that he doesn’t want children after all.’
‘Ouch,’ says Sean.
‘I know. And she’s no spring chicken either. So be nice. If she wants to stay and fuss over Alice, let her. Christ, Sean, we’ve got to learn to accept help from people now and again. Maybe this would be a good time to start?’
I end the call and return to Felicity’s bedside. She opened her eyes for a few short minutes around ten this morning. Frowning a little when she saw me, she whispered, ‘You’re here?’
‘’Course I am. Does it hurt?’
‘Not really,’ she said, though her voice was desperately weak. ‘What happened?’
‘Your appendix burst.’
She tried to nod as it all came back to her. ‘I didn’t feel great on the trip over . . . I was sick on the boat. And then my stomach hurt really bad.’
‘Why didn’t you phone me?’
‘Thought I’d just eaten too much processed crap,’ she said, using my phrase, trying to smile.
I am always going on at the girls for eating too much processed crap. I have a friend whose daughter went away to university last September. She sent her mother a text saying: ‘Guess what? I’ve not eaten a SINGLE VEGETABLE in over 3 weeks! What are you going to do about it?’ and I laughed along merrily with my friend. Secretly, though, I was horrified.
‘I love you, Felicity.’
And then her eyes went heavy again.
She’s sleeping very deeply now as I watch her, and I’m trying to decide whether to chance leaving her to go and find something to eat while I’ve got the chance. The teacher who was at her bedside yesterday left a bag of individually wrapped cakes, snacks and crisps, but I’m not hungry for any of that. After wrestling with the idea for a few more minutes I make the decision to go out now, while Felicity’s resting.
Rifling through my bag, the only paper I can find is my boarding pass, so I write across it: ‘Gone for Food. Love you, Mum xx’, and place it on the bed by Felicity’s right hand.
It’s only when I’m out in the car park that I remember I’ve no currency. There wasn’t time to get Euros at the airport last night. I look around, kind of helpless, because this is no holiday resort. This is rural France. The France that young English families embraced after the deluge of relocation programmes promised cheap property, old-fashioned values, and three-hour lunch breaks. The France of smallholdings, of friendly neighbours, bilingual children and good health care.
The France they tried their damnedest to escape when they realized there wasn’t a whole lot going on.
Within my immediate sight, there are no shops, so I get into the car. The road on which the hospital stands is a single carriageway flanked by rows of plane trees. Their trunks are mottled with patches of taupe and olive, much like desert army combats, and their roots raise the road surface in places, cracking the asphalt. Shuttered houses lining the road are painted in various shades of French grey. Aged Peugeots and Citroëns, rusting around the wheel arches, jut out into the road. There is no shame in bad parking here. It’s as if each driver has jumped out and abandoned his vehicle before coming to a complete stop.
I pass three ladies’ hairdressers’ and am just about to turn back and go in the other direction when I spot Aldi. Breathing a sigh of relief, I take a right.
I wouldn’t be seen dead in a discount supermarket at home, but now, as I push through the glass door, I could kiss the assistant unloading plant seeds and potting compost from a big roll pallet.
The store is small. Four aisles stacked with the absolute basics I’ll need to survive for the next week. And it accepts my debit card, which is the kind of small miracle I was hoping for.
I scan around and reckon I can be in and out of the place in five minutes. It’s practically empty, just one other shopper – a woman with a toddler – loading up her trolley with supersized tins of Toulouse cassoulet.
I grab a baguette (half the weight of the French sticks in England), some Coulommiers Destrier – my all-time-favourite French cheese – and two tins of anchovy-stuffed green olives. Then into the basket I put tomatoes, apples, sanitary towels for Felicity, just in case, as I can’t imagine hospital-issue pads will be welcomed by her, and lastly, as an afterthought, a bottle of Bordeaux. I have the feeling I’ll need a drink once tonight comes around. I refrain from buying any goodies for Felicity, as the doctor said she won’t be eating yet, and when she does it will be a diet of bland food to see how her digestive system copes.
I pay without trouble, the cashier even giving me fifty Euros cash back when I gesture to the till saying, ‘S’il vous plaît?’ apologetically, and I’m almost starting to feel a little better about things, thinking I’m going to be okay here for a while, when I get a text from Alice. It says:
‘Eve being absolutely brilliant!’
I read the words twice and feel a wave of queasiness wash through me. Like I’ve opened the fridge and got a whiff of food gone bad, but can’t spot where it is. I tell myself to read nothing into it. It’s simply Alice’s way of letting me know not to worry about her, that everything is okay at home.
But I can’t shake this feeling. Is this
jealousy? Am I seriously jealous that another woman is taking good care of my daughter?
And I realize I am.
Disgusted at myself, I send Eve a quick text.
Thank you, I tell her. Thank you so much for being there for us.
8
‘SHOCKED?’ DC JOANNE Aspinall says to the surgeon. ‘Of course I’m shocked. How would you feel under the circumstances?’
Three sets of eyes gaze down at Joanne, full of apology.
‘It’s one of those things,’ says the surgeon briskly. ‘Can’t be helped.’ His accent is cut-glass. He’s sixtyish, an old-school type who most likely scares the shit out of his junior staff.
Joanne exhales. She can’t believe this is happening to her.
The last thing she remembers is being wheeled down to theatre, that idiot porter grinning at her (she now recalls she arrested him for joyriding), she remembers the cannula going into her wrist, the anaesthetist telling her to ‘Count backwards from one hundred,’ she remembers the warm, wonderful feeling of something working its way up her arm, like being injected with ‘Love Potion No. 9’ and then . . .
Joanne’s still pretty dozy, so she’s not completely sure if this is real or not.
For all she knows, she might still be under. Or she might be in the recovery room – the room where patients coming out of anaesthetic thrash about in their beds. Where they moan and cry. Where they shout outrageous, filthy, sexual demands at the nursing staff. Her Auntie Jackie worked as an auxiliary nurse before changing to care in the community, so Joanne knows what goes on.
She glares at the surgeon. ‘Am I dreaming this?’
‘Afraid not.’
‘Jesus,’ she says, manoeuvring herself into a sitting position. ‘It had to be me.’
‘You understand we couldn’t take the risk?’ he says. ‘I’m not being overly cautious, there is a very real risk of infection.’
‘I know, I understand,’ says Joanne. ‘I’m just disappointed. I had the time booked off, I’d arranged cover . . . and I’ – Joanne’s unsure whether to say this next part – ‘I really thought I’d be waking up a different person. This is the first day of the rest of my life kind of thing.’
‘We should be able to get you back for surgery in around a fortnight’s time,’ says the nurse, who up till now has remained silent. ‘I can’t give you an exact date, we’ll send out a letter—’
Joanne shakes her head. ‘My colleague’s having his wisdom teeth out. He’s booked the time off. It’ll have to be delayed until later this summer.’
The surgeon looks uneasy. He doesn’t say anything, but Joanne can tell he’s got something in the pipeline.
He’s a wiry, sinewy-looking thing. Most likely a climber or a fell runner. Probably off to do the Inca Trail or K2 – something silly like that.
‘I’ll leave you with Hilary then. Let you two have more of a chat,’ he says, and in true surgeon style he vanishes before Joanne has a chance to pose another question.
Hilary is mid-fifties, devoid of make-up, with short, sensibly cut, greying hair which Joanne reckons she will never resort to colouring. She’s all business and detached. The perfect cosmetic surgeon’s accomplice. Joanne thinks there must be a depository for this type of woman. Married for thirty years, Hilary will keep her home like a new pin, she’ll take no nonsense from her grown-up children, take her summer holidays to coincide with Wimbledon and, though she never mentions him outside of work, she’d lay her life down in an instant for the sake of her boss. The consultant.
Hilary leans in towards Joanne. ‘Shall we?’ she says.
‘If we must.’
Hilary unties Joanne’s gown from behind her neck and lowers it, exposing the whole of Joanne’s white chest. Joanne is immediately self-conscious. But who wouldn’t be if their first boyfriend had referred to it as whale blubber?
‘It’s underneath the left breast,’ says Hilary. ‘Do you want to lift it?’
‘I’d rather,’ replies Joanne, and Hilary gives a tight smile.
Joanne lifts her breast upwards and outwards; it weighs about the same as an Accrington brick. She was told they would be removing around six hundred grams of tissue from each breast today, and Joanne had found herself imagining them to be almost weightless after the operation. Imagining not the normal incessant downward tug-tugging, but instead the light, lovely, buoyancy she feels when submerged in water.
Hilary takes out a pen from the top pocket of her tunic and points at the crease beneath Joanne’s breast. ‘There it is.’
‘Where?’ Joanne asks. ‘I can’t see it.’
‘There,’ replies Hilary.
Rather roughly, Hilary pulls the skin out of the way so Joanne can get a better look.
‘Oh,’ Joanne says, crestfallen.
‘Yes, it’s right where the incision line would be. If you were having a different type of reduction . . . if there weren’t so much tissue to remove . . . it wouldn’t be such a problem. But you’re not a candidate for the vertical scar incision, you need the inverted T.’ She takes away her pen. ‘And that,’ she says, as though she has a bad taste in her mouth, ‘is right on the line.’
The that is a whitehead.
A large, angry, pus-filled spot about the size of a baked bean. Slicing through it and then on into Joanne’s skin and breast tissue would not be a very wise thing to do apparently.
‘Bastard,’ Joanne mutters under her breath.
‘Yes,’ replies Hilary, arching an eyebrow. ‘It is a bit.’
9
‘LET’S EAT OUT tonight, shall we?’ Eve says brightly. ‘My treat.
Where do you fancy, Alice? What’s your favourite type of food?’
‘Ooh, Chinese,’ replies Alice enthusiastically. ‘I’d really love a king prawn chow mein. Dad? Which is the best Chinese to go to? Is it the one behind St Martin’s Church, or do you still go up to Windermere?’
Sean puts his mobile on the kitchen worktop and rubs his face. ‘I don’t know if I feel up to going out, I’m pretty drained. I’m operating on no sleep and I’ve got a killer day tomorrow. Could we have something here instead?’
Alice’s face drops. She quickly becomes aware, however, that it’s inappropriate to get excited about a meal out when her sister is so sick. And especially when her mum and dad are suffering with worry.
Foolish girl, Eve thinks, surveying her now. She’s so childlike. Alice’s emotions are displayed instantly, and in full view, for all to see.
‘I just meant a quick bite,’ she says gently, addressing Sean. ‘To save us the trouble of cooking. I can pop out to get a takeaway instead, if that would be better?’
‘Could you?’ he says, trying his best to smile through the fatigue. ‘Would you mind awfully? That’d be great.’
‘Not at all,’ Eve replies. ‘And I was thinking, perhaps Alice and I can come to the hotel in the morning, help get everything ready for the awards ceremony? Do you think we might be useful, or would we be getting in the way?’
Sean scoffs. Good-naturedly, he says, ‘Alice hasn’t so much as set foot in the place since we got her to chambermaid when she was fourteen. Natty thought it would be good for her to earn some extra money, realize how much hard work you have to put in to pay for a fifty-pound haircut.’
Alice straightens her spine. ‘It was totally disgusting, Eve,’ she spits. ‘Can you imagine, people actually leave used condoms between the sheets for the staff to clean up? It’s so gross.’
‘We did provide you with gloves,’ Sean reasons, grinning at his daughter’s distaste.
‘Never again,’ she says. ‘I’d rather clean up after farm animals than do that.’
‘That’s a firm no, then?’ Eve laughs. ‘C’mon, Alice, tomorrow’s Saturday. We can go in for the morning, lend a hand and chill out in the afternoon. Watch a movie or something. It’ll be fun.’
Every inch of Alice’s being is screaming No! No, she does not want to go to her parents’ place of work and be useful. No, that is not
what she had in mind for tomorrow at all. But she looks at Eve and begins biting the side of her cheek. Eve can sense that the gently applied pressure is making Alice recognize she’s acting like a spoilt brat. Eventually, Alice says, ‘Okay,’ reluctantly. ‘Okay, we can go.’
‘Great. Now that’s settled, I’ll go and get dinner.’
Half an hour later and Eve returns with the takeaway, just as Sean is finishing a phone call with Natty.
Eve can tell things are settling down in France. The desperate urgency and worried tone of Sean’s voice is diminishing, and it’s obvious from his words that practicality is setting in.
‘I will,’ he’s saying, yawning. ‘Yes . . . I know. No, I’ve not forgotten . . . Libby spent the afternoon wiping down the spare seating . . . Yes, we’re putting him in the Lakeview Suite . . .’
He tells Natty to tell Felicity he loves her, and ends the call.
‘How are they doing?’ Eve asks.
‘Better. Felicity’s not up to talking, though. She’s just due for another round of painkillers so she’s pretty uncomfortable. Natty says the nurses seem happy with her progress.’
‘And how is Natty bearing up?’
‘Like the trooper you’d expect. She’s holding it together much better now that she’s at Felicity’s bedside.’
‘Had to be a huge shock.’
Eve begins unpacking the food, finds the large serving spoons and sets the table with the rest of the cutlery and three wine glasses. ‘Do you want to give Alice a shout?’ she says, before asking Sean if he’s going back to the hotel later on.
‘I should,’ he says, a little guiltily, ‘and I’ve told Nat I will be, but to be honest, I’m tempted to duck out, make an early start of it tomorrow instead.’
‘If you don’t mind my saying, you do look dead beat, Sean. I think you could do with a night off.’ She reaches inside the other bag on the worktop. ‘I picked up a few cans for you. Not sure if they’re the right ones, I couldn’t remember what you like to drink, so . . .’
