On a Beautiful Day Page 20

  And if he did – if he looked at her and nodded and said, ‘Of course I forgive you. We were kids! I was a romantic idiot who shouldn’t have put so much pressure on you, it never would have worked out’ – oh gosh, the relief she would feel, the lifting of the burden that had weighed down on her for so long. It would be worth seeing him for that alone, surely?

  The cat wound, purring, around her legs as she entered the house, taking care to close the door quietly so as not to disturb her slumbering children. Dan was in the living room, his head tilted to the side with a scrunched-up tissue stuffed in one ear, his expression mournful as she sat down next to him. He suffered from waxy ears that sometimes needed drops in them to clear the blockages, and India knew she should try to be more sympathetic, but the thought of the gooey, sticky wax secretly revolted her. Plus, he was the world’s worst invalid, feeling sorry for himself whenever he had to deal with the slightest ailment. It was a total turn-off, in India’s eyes.

  ‘I don’t suppose you could bring me a glass of water, could you, love?’ he asked plaintively, gesturing at his ear. That was the other thing – the minute he felt remotely off-colour, he seemed incapable of doing anything for himself, if she could do it for him instead. Presumably having a tissue stuffed in his ear rendered him incapable of getting up and walking to the kitchen, she found herself thinking darkly as she went to do his bidding. (Catch Robin acting like such a big baby? Never, was her next disloyal thought.)

  Filling the glass at the kitchen tap, she remembered how, when the children were tiny and she and Dan were struggling through broken night after broken night, they would sometimes murmur to each other, ‘I suspect Wild Sexual Shenanigans might be off the agenda tonight’, when one of their offspring was teething or throwing up or had a hacking cough. It was a rueful sort of joke between them, shorthand to let the other one know they were still valued, still loved, still fancied, only . . . well. Sometimes parenthood got in the way of a couple’s sex life, and sleep became a more yearned-for commodity. ‘Do you remember the golden years of WSS?’ Dan had sighed sorrowfully on occasion, when they’d woken up with a child or two in bed with them after a particularly dreadful night.

  ‘What’s that, Daddy?’ Esme had asked in reply one time. (Toddler Esme had never stopped asking questions. What THAT? What HE called? What THIS do?)

  ‘Ah, it’s a magical place your mother and I used to visit, far, far away,’ he’d replied, winking at India.

  ‘Can we go there?’ George had piped up.

  ‘Um . . . maybe not with me and Dad,’ India had said, trying not to laugh as she caught Dan’s eye.

  God, she’d forgotten all about that. The kids were growing up so fast, it was rare that one of them even wanted to pile into the big bed any more. Nights were mostly silent now as the family slumbered peacefully till morning. And yet the Wild Sexual Shenanigans had never really cranked up again, not to the lusty, dizzying heights she and Dan had enjoyed pre-babies. It had become something that nagged away at her periodically, another thing on her never-ending list of Things To Do: must initiate sex tonight. Must make a move on him. Which wasn’t exactly sexy in itself, was it?

  She turned off the tap, tired and befuddled after half a bottle of wine. Chances were she was not in for any WSS tonight anyway, she thought. Was it very wrong that she felt relieved at the prospect?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Eve reversed neatly into a space at the hospital car park, turned off the engine and then sat behind the wheel for a few moments, eyes closed. Okay. Here she was. Ready to face the music. Ready to find out the truth. Ready – sort of – to meet Lewis Mulligan, after some kind of mania had descended on her and she’d asked him to come along with her today. (What had she been thinking? The minute the words had left her mouth, she’d regretted them – but before she could go snatching them back, there he was nodding and saying, Cool, yeah, no problem.)

  Deep breath. Don’t forget to lock the car. Got your handbag and appointment letter? Right. And off she went, trudging reluctantly towards the main entrance, where she’d agreed to meet her unlikely companion. Please God let Lewis not seize this opportunity of her being a captive audience to start lecturing her about mindfulness or to tell her that positive thinking could beat cancer, she thought grimly, when everyone knew that it was only cold, hard science that could change anything. What if he tried to get her to meditate with him in the corridor, or started tootling ruddy pan-pipes at her, or whatever other new-age crap he was into? That was if he turned up at all, of course. Knowing how bloody disorganized he was, he would be late or would have got the times muddled up, and then she’d end up flustered and really cross that she’d been so stupid as to ask him along and . . .

  Oh. Wait. Was that him, already there by the main doors, checking out a map of the hospital? ‘Hi,’ he called, seeing her approach. ‘You okay? Right, according to this, we need to go along here.’ This with an authoritative gesture towards one of the corridors.

  Okay, so perhaps she had been a bit hasty to write him off, Eve thought, managing a weak smile. ‘Hi,’ she said, falling into step beside him as he headed off. ‘Thanks,’ she remembered to say.

  In fact, she realized, as he guided them through the maze of corridors, it was oddly nice having someone else take charge like this, for a change, to steer her in the direction she needed to go. Just once in a while anyway.

  ‘Eve Taylor? If you’d like to follow me, please.’

  A pretty Asian woman in a uniform had appeared in the doorway and Eve rose from the slippery vinyl chair, bars of doom-laden music crashing in her head. On the next seat along, rather more hesitantly, a man she barely knew was unfolding his gangly body and turning his head towards hers. ‘Um, should I . . . ?’ he asked. ‘Do you want me to . . . ?’

  His unfinished question hung in the air. Did Eve want Lewis Mulligan to come into the room with her while she stripped off and allowed a radiographer to X-ray her boob? Er . . . no. She did not. ‘Could you wait here for me?’ she asked. ‘Hopefully I won’t be long.’

  The look of sheer relief on his face as she replied in the negative was almost laughable. Bless him, he was only young and had probably never seen a middle-aged woman’s naked bits and pieces before; he could have been scarred for life, at the sight of so much sagging and dangling. And yet how sweet of him to have asked in the first place, to have been so considerate, she conceded in the next moment.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, sinking back down into his seat, pale bony knees sticking out of his ripped jeans. ‘I’ll be right out here.’

  Feeling rather as if she were walking to her own execution, Eve followed the radiographer down a corridor and into a small room, where she was asked to undress to the waist, before being guided, semi-naked, across to the machine. She had never been particularly comfortable about stripping off casually in front of strangers; not for her the indignity of a communal changing room in a leisure centre or gym; give her a cubicle any day.

  ‘That’s it, if I could just ask you to position your breast on the plate here,’ the radiographer said calmly, seemingly immune to Eve’s embarrassment. ‘And your arm like this . . . smashing. It’s so we can see the muscle at the back of the breast as well.’

  ‘Right,’ mumbled Eve.

  ‘Now I’ll be doing four X-rays in all, two of each breast at different angles, so we can have a really good look at what’s going on in there, okay? The breast will be compressed during this, which is the uncomfortable part, I’m afraid. Try and relax. I know it’s a bit strange, but it won’t take long, I promise.’

  Try and relax. Eve looked down at her small brown breast, sitting there on the Perspex plate, goose-pimples prickling up all over the flesh, and a lump rose in her throat. You stripped away all the outer trappings of life – clothing, work, family – and this was what you were reduced to: a scared, vulnerable creature, your future swinging perilously in the balance. What was relaxing about that?

  The radiographer, satisfied with Eve’s posit
ion, moved behind a screen in order to start the X-rays, and Eve’s heart-rate accelerated into a Derby-winning gallop. Everything about the room swam into sharp focus as adrenalin flooded her system: the squeezing sensation of the machine as her poor little breast was squashed painfully flat, the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead, the clean floral scent of the woman’s shampoo as she came back to help Eve switch sides.

  Deep breaths, Eve. Keep it together. You will get through this. For comfort, she thought of her children at school, their dark heads bent over exercise books in their classrooms. They were such good girls. Did she tell them she loved them often enough? Grace still hadn’t confided in her about this boyfriend. How could she earn her daughter’s trust on the matter?

  ‘That’s it, and the arm just . . . here. Perfect,’ said the radiographer, repositioning her.

  Eve’s thoughts turned to Neil as a means of distraction, picturing him clearing his throat and clutching his cue cards in preparation for his presentation at the conference. She remembered how he’d been grinding his teeth in his sleep recently, and hoped he wasn’t too stressed. The two of them badly needed to talk, to carve out proper time together again, rather than shielding themselves with their laptops and phones evening after evening. And then her mind drifted to her friends, who were going about their days elsewhere in the city, and to Lewis outside in the corridor, jiggling a leg to some unheard beat as he waited. I don’t want to die, she thought desperately, as the radiographer pressed a few buttons behind her screen again and then came back to tell her it was all over, that she could get dressed and return to her seat.

  ‘You all right? How was it?’ asked Lewis when she emerged a few minutes later.

  She swallowed, feeling tired and emotional. Guilty, too, that she’d involved him in this at all, poor random stranger that he was. This was why she never usually went to anyone else for help: because you ended up feeling bad for putting them out, and were obliged to reciprocate and . . .

  ‘Listen, I’m sorry,’ she blurted out. ‘I should never have asked you to come along today. It was . . . stupid of me. Selfish. You’ve probably got far better things to be doing with yourself.’ She sat down next to him and plucked up the last dregs of her courage and dignity to say, rather shakily, ‘I’ll be fine, you know, if you’d sooner go. I won’t mind.’

  She didn’t wholly mean it, of course. Part of her was desperate for him not to leave her on her own, when she felt so uncertain and scared. But she had to give him the choice at least, if only for the sake of her pride.

  He looked at her warily, trying to read between her words. ‘If you want to be on your own, that’s cool,’ he told her after a moment had elapsed. ‘But I don’t have to be anywhere else, so if you’d rather I stayed, then . . .’ He spread his hands wide in front of him. ‘I’m totally fine with that, too. It’s your call.’

  She had to press her lips together hard then, because she wanted very much to cry with relief. How she hated feeling like this, so weak, so needy! It was awful what this wretched lump was doing to her, just awful. ‘You are very kind,’ she said eventually, feeling so overcome with emotion that her voice wobbled again. ‘First I nearly run you over, and now I’m asking this massive favour – I owe you one, okay? Actually, I owe you twice now.’ Three times, really, if you counted him overhearing her insult him in the office, she realized, cringing.

  ‘Really, it’s fine. My mum went through this, I know it’s grim,’ he said. He bowed his shaggy head a little, his red hair unnaturally bright beneath the strip-lighting. ‘And I wasn’t able to sit with her while she waited like this in the clinic. So I’m sort of glad to be able to help. If that doesn’t sound too weird.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound weird,’ she assured him. ‘You’re probably thinking I’m the weird one, asking you, rather than my husband or a friend, but—’

  ‘Mrs Taylor? If I could just have a word?’

  And then Eve’s adrenalin surged, because it was the radiographer again, looking poker-faced as she beckoned her over.

  The mammogram had shown a density in the tissue, which meant that Eve needed to have an ultrasound as well, in order to determine whether it was solid or cystic. So that was another stressful experience, lying there, naked to the waist once more, an arm above her head, as a sonographer anointed her breast with cold gel and then slowly moved a transducer around it while peering at a screen. The sonographer, Irish, young and chatty, explained that she was looking for fluid in the lump, which would indicate a cyst, but then stopped talking and frowned at the screen, confessing that – hmm, it was quite hard to tell, to be honest; she was going to have to take some pictures and get a radiologist’s opinion. Which was not exactly the reassuring and cheery response Eve had been hoping for.

  They’d had to wait again, in a different corridor, before a doctor called them in to say that the sonogram had proved inconclusive, and that Eve would now have to endure what was called a core biopsy. This apparently involved a massive needle being plunged into her poor soft breast in order to suck out some tissue, which would then be sent on to a laboratory to be tested.

  It had been the weirdest thing: Eve had been listening to the doctor and seeing her mouth move – open, close, open, close – but for some reason she couldn’t concentrate on what she was being told. Instead she was thinking about how vile it would feel to have a needle stabbing into her breast, how intrusive and unpleasant, how actually she wasn’t sure she wanted to know any more about the wretched lump; she just wanted to go home and lie in bed, with the covers over her head. Maybe it was better to remain in the dark as far as some things were concerned; take back control by refusing to find out.

  ‘We’ll give you a local anaesthetic and provide you with painkillers before you go, as it can be a bit sore – and there may be some bruising afterwards,’ the doctor was saying now.

  A tear had worked its way from Eve’s eye and was rolling busily down her face. She hadn’t even been aware she was crying until it plopped wetly onto her skirt.

  ‘I know it’s not a nice thing to have to go through,’ the doctor said kindly, passing her a box of tissues. ‘We’re just erring on the side of caution, but nine times out of ten . . .’

  Oh, but Eve was sick of that statistic. Nine times out of ten, it’s something benign: yes, she knew, it was on every breast-cancer messageboard and web page in every leaflet. Which was great for those nine people, yes, lovely. But it still meant one person was given the big head-shaking diagnosis, the big ‘You’re Screwed’. Eve dealt with numbers every day, she understood percentages and calculations, it was what she did. And however good ‘nine times out of ten’ sounded, there was no escaping the fact that she could quite easily be that one person in ten. The unlucky one.

  The doctor had finished speaking and was looking at her with professional concern.

  ‘Any questions?’ Lewis prompted when Eve made no comment.

  ‘Sorry. Um . . .’ Am I about to die? Will I be leaving my children without their mother? How will Neil cope, when he doesn’t even know how to work the washing machine? ‘Yes,’ she said eventually, when a less hysterical question occurred to her. ‘Will you be able to give me the result of the biopsy today?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. We have to send the tissue samples off to our laboratory.’

  Eve cringed because she remembered then that the doctor had already mentioned this. ‘Oh right, yes, sorry. You did say. I’m finding it a bit hard to . . . I’m not concentrating very well.’

  ‘That’s quite all right,’ the doctor replied. ‘And I’m happy to repeat myself as many times as you like.’ She was broad and tall, in her fifties at a guess, with cropped fair hair and a calm, no-nonsense air about her. ‘Once at the laboratory, the tissues will be examined under a microscope. We can usually let you know the result in a week.’

  A whole week, Eve thought, trying not to groan. Seven long days of tearing herself apart with worry. ‘Right,’ she managed to say. She could feel Lewis giving her an an
xious look from her left and with good reason, because she was scared; she was really scared – she had no idea how this was going to pan out. But then she pulled herself together, took a short quick breath and nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it.’

  Afterwards, when the biopsy was over, when she had a small dressing taped across her breast and dull pain thudding through the skin, despite the painkillers, Eve was free to leave. It was over. And yet she couldn’t face returning immediately out into the real world, with its people, traffic and noisy normality. She felt wounded and battered, wrung out from the morning’s events. Lewis suggested that they go for a cup of tea in the hospital coffee shop, just until she felt better, and she accepted gratefully. ‘Thank you,’ she said in such a small voice it didn’t sound like her any more. ‘For all of this. I don’t really feel like going straight back to work.’

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ he agreed, patting her arm clumsily. ‘Christ, you’ve just been through an incredibly stressful ordeal, there’s no way anyone could carry on as if nothing had happened.’ He narrowed his eyes a fraction. ‘You’re allowed to feel overwhelmed, you know. It’s completely understandable.’

  She stirred milk into her tea, the spoon clinking against the mug. Understandable? He was only saying that because he was a stranger and didn’t understand her. He had seen her at her worst and weakest; he didn’t realize that she was normally the poster girl for self-sufficiency. ‘Well, I’m usually pretty good at that,’ she found herself replying. ‘Carrying on, I mean. I’m usually the sort of person who keeps going, who doesn’t just give up when the going gets tough.’

  He choked on a biscuit crumb in his haste to reply. ‘Giving up? I wouldn’t call this giving up!’ he spluttered. ‘Cutting yourself a bit of slack after three different rounds of tests is absolutely fair enough. Do you hear me? Giving up, indeed. You should give yourself a break.’ Then he shot her a shrewd look. ‘Is that why I’m here, then?’