Sleight of Hand (16 page)

Once Sarah has been dispatched, I head for the motorway.

“It's normal,” I say. “The routine will take a while to kick in.”

“Yeah,” she replies.

We drive in silence for half an hour before I say, “You're quiet this morning. Are you scared?”

“Not really,” Jenny says. “They said you don't feel anything. And I don't think they're actually zapping me till Monday anyway. No, I'm more scared of the chemo. They said that will make me feel
really
shitty.”

“You're a brave little thing really aren't you?”

“No choice,” Jenny says. “Having no choice makes bravery that much easier.”

“Well, I still think you're brave,” I say.

“I was thinking about the car actually. Mum never really used it much.”

“No, I saw that. Four thousand miles. It's practically new. Is it weird for you, me driving it?”

“No, not really.”

“Rain!”

“Yeah.”

I put the wipers on to clear away the spotting on the windscreen. There is something about the sound of those wipers, something so familiar about being in a right hand drive car driving along a motorway beneath a grey drizzling sky with Jenny by my side that is so incredibly, stunningly familiar that my
vision mists. I think,
“Of course, this is me,”
and have a sudden feeling of belonging, here, now. It's strange and unexpected.

“No, the car's so new,” Jenny continues. “It's just, you know, a car.”

I'm surprised that she hasn't noticed my brief wave of emotional turmoil, but then why should she? “Right,” I say, the feeling fading as fast as it arrived. “Not like the house then.”

“No. I should maybe sell it or something,” she says.

“Maybe.”

“I would if all this shit wasn't going on.”

“Sure.”

“God, I haven't phoned that guy back about probate.”

“I'm sure it can wait a couple of days.”

“You know, I forget about Mum sometimes. Just for a few minutes.”

“I think that's normal,” I say.

“It's a relief. But then I remember, and it's worse.”

“Yeah. I had that. With Steve. It slowly gets easier though. You just have to trust in the process.”

“I forget about the cancer too.”

“That's pretty impressive.”

“It's like I can only think about one of those at a time.”

“They're both quite big thoughts I guess.”

“I suppose. Plus I only have half a brain and a golf ball now, so …”

“Funny girl.”

I leave Jenny at the hospital and walk over Westminster bridge and through St James' park. The rain has stopped now, but the grass is wet and
fragrant, the air heavy with moisture. I sit at a kiosk and drink a cup of frothy coffee but Jenny phones to tell me that she's going to be two hours, not one, so I drink up and continue across the park. When I realise that I'm on the Mall, I head for the ICA. I love a bit of weird and wonderful, and the Institute of Contemporary Art always has plenty of that.

By the time I pick Jenny up I have watched five of the most peculiar short films I have ever seen, and am almost feeling guilty for having had a nice time.

“God,” I say, when I see her expression. “You don't look like
you
had fun.”

“They didn't do anything,” she tells me, moving towards the exit. “They just made this horrible plastic mask so they can bolt my head to the table.”

“Yuck.”

“You have no idea. I look like Hannibal the Cannibal.”

“To stop you moving your head presumably?”

“To stop me biting anyone I think. And so they don't zap the remaining good bits. Tomorrow I have a mock up session. They put me in the machine but don't actually do anything.”

“Right.”

“And then Monday, they zap me.”

“So Monday is chemo
and
radio?”

“Yip. Presumably Tuesday is when all my hair drops out.”

“Really?”

“Nah, they said four weeks or so. Maybe. Some people actually escape it. But I thought we could go wig shopping one of the days next week just in case. I'm going for platinum blonde.”

“Oh me too!” I joke. “We can pretend to be twins.”

My new life is all-enveloping.

Some days, I don't even find time to phone Ricardo. Some days I worry about the distance between us. Some days I worry he'll meet someone else. And some days I honestly don't
think
about him once.

Jenny's needs, Sarah's needs, combining their double schedules, getting everyone fed and watered and delivered to the correct address at the correct time is a full time job.

I start to understand how it must feel to be heterosexual – to be a family man. I start to understand just how different the experience of life is, when every second of the fabric of the day is wound around the needs and destinies of dependant others.

The lack of options feels reassuring, safe, worthy … And incredibly dull.

I realise maybe for the first time exactly what we gay guys miss out on in the great no-dependants deal. And I realise everything we gain.

I can't help but think that we probably get the better deal.

The day they made me that mask, was the day it all became real. Up until that point my cancer was just a story. It was a story born in the hysterical aftermath of my mother's death. It was just a story and it didn't have an ending. I didn't seem able to think about possible endings.

But when they made me that perspex mask, when they bolted my head to the table; when experts in white coats made calculations and marked exposure angles on my perspex prison and ordered that vast machine to glide around me in robotic silence, I couldn't avoid thinking about endings any longer. Because at that moment I couldn't avoid the fact that I looked, and felt, and was being treated, like a woman who might die.

They say that having multiple personalities is an illness, but I think we all have them. Or maybe I have always simply been mentally ill. Whichever it is, one of me, let's call her Marge's daughter, surprised me by not turning out to be that attached to life. When death looked her in the eye on that cold treatment table, Marge's daughter looked back over her life and didn't particularly mind the idea of not being around any longer.

Maybe some people really do have lives full of money and love and support and joy … You see them on TV sometimes, and someone must have written those stories, so maybe they do. But mine hadn't been that way – my life had always been a struggle. A struggle to lose weight, a struggle to find a boyfriend, a struggle to come to terms with my
brother's death, to escape Nick's violence, to cope as a single parent. I felt cheated. I felt like this product called life wasn't as it had been advertised. And I felt through with trying to make the reality correspond with the image. Because I was old enough to know now, that it really never would.

But there was another me, Sarah's mother. And Sarah's mother would never give up as long as her daughter needed her. When I thought of my daughter, every cell in my body, cancerous or not,
screamed
in resonance with hers. Sarah felt more integral to me than my own body, if that makes any sense.

If my cancer had been in a leg or an arm or a breast I would have insisted that it be removed if that increased my chances of seeing my beautiful child into adulthood. I would uncomplainingly have had
all
of my limbs removed if that's what it took. That will sound like an exaggeration, but it isn't. I mean every word. And if you don't believe me, then maybe you're not a parent. Because only a parent can understand how intense, how gut wrenchingly total is the need to protect the child.

But my cancer wasn't in a limb. It was in my brain. It was right at the
heart
of
me
and it was right at the heart of my love for Sarah.

So no matter what anyone thought I was thinking about or worrying about – Mum's death, my treatment, Mark or Tom or wigs or probate – I was always thinking about Sarah: I was always stumbling over how I could assure her future. And I only came up with two ideas.

One was quite simple – it was not to die. It was that if I had
any
power over my body, I
would not die
. And if there was any God or any spiritual set up in
this life that could be influenced by a woman's love for her child,
I would not die
. It was obvious.

But I had always suspected the universe to be mechanical and unfeeling rather than fluffy and responsive. And I suspected that no one, not even my own brain-cells were going to listen to my prayers.

So the backup plan was to find Sarah's father. My instinct insisted that the DNA Nick shared with his daughter would drag him, no matter where he might be in his life, to exactly where he
needed
to be. My instinct
knew
that once he found out that his daughter was in danger, he would have no option but to be exactly what she needed. This went against every observation I had ever made of Nick's alcoholic, destructive behaviour in the past, and it went against everything my intellect could predict about how he would behave in the future.

But instinct is a powerful master, and parental instinct, perhaps the most powerful of all. And so, secretly, when Mark wasn't looking, I started trying to track him down.

Two weeks into Jenny's double-treatment, my Visa card is refused at Waitrose. I have been paying bills willy-nilly with it, earning nothing, and secretly dreading this very moment. But money is one complexity too many right now, so I have been refusing to think about it.

For the first time, I try to use the card that Jenny gave me instead.

“I'm afraid that's been refused as well,” the cashier, announces. According to her badge her name is Cheryl.

I'm not the only person interested in names, though. “Mrs M. Holmes,” Cheryl reads from the card. She looks up at me and raises both eyebrows.

The woman behind me in the queue tuts, Cheryl frowns, and I feel myself blush. “It's not what it looks like,” I say. “I'm, um, shopping for a friend. She's ill in bed.”

Cheryl, looking unconvinced, reaches for her internal phone. “I'm sorry, but I'll have to call the supervisor,” she says.

“The shopping's for Mummy,” Sarah says, amazingly coming to my rescue. “She's got cancer and she sleeps a lot.”

I stroke Sarah's head and watch Cheryl's hand hover over the handset then relax as her eyes mist. “Right,” she says, clearing her throat. “Um, do you have some other way to pay for this or … ?”

“I don't think I do,” I say. “Do you want me to … you know, put it all back?”

“No, that's fine,” the girl says. “I'll get someone to deal with it. I'm sorry I can't, you know … but …”

Even the woman behind us in the queue smiles sadly at us as we leave empty handed.

When we get back to the house I find Jenny sitting at the kitchen table. The room smells of cigarette smoke.

“Phaw!” I exclaim, crossing the kitchen floor and opening a window.

“Don't lecture me,” Jenny says. “I'm not in the mood.”

“I wouldn't dream of it.”

“Where's the shopping?”

“Well, we have a bit of a problem.”

“Yeah?” Jenny says, raking one hand through her hair. “Me too. Look at this.”

She holds her hand up to show me the strands of hair that have come away.

“Oh, already?”

“Yeah. Four weeks my arse. Lying buggers.”

“God. Well, we have another little problem too. My Visa was refused.”

“What, your card?”

“Yeah.”

“But I gave you Mum's.”

“Yeah. Well that was refused too.”

“That doesn't make any sense,” Jenny says, pulling out another handful of hair.

“God, don't
pull
it out!”

“No,” she says thoughtfully forcing her hand to the table. “You're right. Did you use the right code? Three-six …”

“Three-six-oh-two.”

“That's it. But Mum's account has, like, twenty grand in it. Unless they've put a stop on it.”

“I'm thinking they have,” I say.

“Shit, I didn't call that probate guy,” she says.

“No.”

“Do you think that's why? Maybe I should call him now.”

“Not on a Saturday.”

“No … God. You can try mine, but there's not much in there either to be honest,” she says.

“If you want food,” I say. “It might still be worth a try.”

And so, Sarah and I return to do a complete repeat of our shopping experience. At least by the time we reach the checkout Cheryl has gone to lunch.

On the way home, I stop at an ATM to check Jenny's bank balance and see that she has the princely sum of ninety-seven pounds left in her account.

With Sarah eating, and Jenny sleeping, I text, then Skype Ricardo.

“Chupy!” he shrieks.

“Hi babe, how are you?”

“Happy! I have Saturday off and my Chupy call me!”

“How's the new phone?”

“It's good. I like. I don't like to use it in public so much. In case it get stolen. But yes, I like it. And how are things in England?”

“Oh, OK.”

“You sound worried.”

“I'm broke actually babe.”

“Broken?”

“No, broke. It means I have no money.
Je suis fauché.”

“Vraiment?”

“Yes. My card was refused. I've been just paying for everything … bills, food, petrol …”

“Well
of course
you have.”

“And I haven't even
looked
at my account. I can't seem to access it with the phone, and the ATMs here won't give me a balance, and Jenny's PC won't start up …”