Sleight of Hand (17 page)

“Your laptop didn't arrive yet?”

“No. Not yet.”

“I post it a week ago.”

“Well, hopefully soon.”

“So how much do you need?”

“Well Jenny has money. Or rather, her Mum did. But we have to go to the lawyer and everything to get that sorted, and what with going back and forth to the hospital, there isn't really time, and …” My voice is running away with itself, and changing in pitch and tone. I realise I'm starting to cry.

“Oh Chups,” Ricardo says. “Slow down.”

“It's just that, there's, you know, so much to deal with,” I say, my voice wobbling crazily. “And now we don't even have any money, and …”

“I know babe. You're doing really well. So. Money. How much? I transfer it today.”

“Are you sure? Can you?”

“Of course.”

“I mean, you'll get it back. I promise. But …”

“My money, your money. It's the same. So how much?”

“I don't know. I don't even know what's in my account. Nothing I suppose.”

“How much? A hundred? A thousand?”

“Can you?”

“Hang on … Look. I'm looking now. Hold on … password … and … here it come … OK. I
have three thousand euro in my French account. You want I transfer it now?”

“Are you sure it's OK?”

“It's the rent money. From the flat. Of course I can.”

“I'm really sorry …”

“Stop. Either we're a couple or we aren't.”

“Right.”

“And if we are, it's your money too, so just tell me what you want me to do with your money.”

I hang up and dry my eyes and sit on the sofa and think about a whole new set of complex feelings.

I'm relieved to have some money to live on again of course. But I'm also profoundly uncomfortable at having had to ask Ricardo. Our finances have always remained entirely separate and borrowing money from him seems a far from insignificant milestone in our relationship.

And then the discomfort fades a little and is replaced by a wave of love. For the ease with which Ricardo offered to do this, the fact that he is generous enough to not even question my spending on Jenny and Sarah, to not even
ask
when he's likely to get it back; his statement that we're a couple, and that his money is my money … well relationship wise, it's one of the loveliest things that has ever happened to me.

I didn't know that money could be so symbolic. Or at least, I didn't know it could be symbolic of anything wholesome. I didn't know it could be a symbol of love.

By week four we are all well and truly settled into our new routine. It feels, in fact, as if life has forever been like this; it feels as if it will go on like this forever more.

As far as I can tell, Jenny is as solid as a rock. She seems to become tougher and cockier and funnier with each day that passes. I'm sure that most of this must be constructed bravado, but it's truly impressive – inspirational in fact.

My relationship with Ricardo too feels surprisingly solid. The complexities and costs of calling him on weekdays – from London – mean that our daily chats have now reduced to weekends only. But despite that, Ricardo is endlessly reassuring. He continues to offer every kind of support he can from such a distance, and his every word continues to project a future for us both. He is even discussing coming over for Christmas should I still be here by then, an idea I have yet to mention to Jenny. Her cancer has become a trial our relationship simply has to undergo. At least we know it's one that
we
will survive.

As week four is Jenny's second chemo week she has to spend three hours daily at St Thomas' rather than one. And because it's raining, and because it's cold outside, and because I have now visited pretty much every museum in London – or every
free
museum at any rate – I offer to sit with her during chemo. For the first time, she accepts.

When the male nurse appears and starts to insert Jenny's IV he strikes me as instantly familiar, so I sit
and struggle to remember where I have seen his face before. He looks like a little bearded blue-eyed angel.

Finally he catches me staring and frowns at me quizzically.

“Sorry, I …” I say, shaking my head. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“Nice,”
Jenny murmurs.

“I'm sorry?”

“Original,” she says.

I tut and roll my eyes. “Seriously, though …”

The nurse shrugs. “I haven't been here long,” he says.

“Hum,” I say.

“I was in Surrey before if that helps.”

“Ahah! Camberley hospital.”

“Frimley Park, that's right,” he says tapping Jenny's arm in order to raise a vein. “Nice veins,” he says.

“Aw, all you boys say that,” Jenny flutters, shaking her new Marilyn wig.

“Being blond is turning you into such a tart,” I say.

She laughs. “Says Mister Haven't-I-seen-you-somewhere-before …”

“You know who this is, Miss Clever-clogs?”

Jenny shrugs.

“He's the nurse who looked after you when you had your seizure.”

“Really?”

“Well one of them. There was a Polish girl too.”

The nurse frowns and nods. “It's possible,” he says. “You see so many patients in a day … I'm sorry.”

“Hey, don't worry babe. I don't remember you either,” Jenny says. “It can't have been
that
good a night.”

“Well you
were
unconscious most of the time,” I point out.

“There's no telling
what
those nurses got up to,” Jenny says.

The nurse blushes and grins, and starts to tape a plaster over Jenny's IV entry point. “Well, well spotted anyway,” he says, shooting me a grin.

“Oh Mark never forgets a pretty face, do you Mark?” Jenny says.

“Jenny!” I protest, blushing myself.

“Right, that's you done. Enjoy,” he says.

We watch him leave and then Jenny turns to me.

“His name's Florent,” Jenny says.

“Florent?”

“It's French, I think.”

“He doesn't sound French.”

“He isn't. Just his name. Florent Nightingay.”

I laugh. “Nightingay, ha! Very good Jen. Is he? Gay, I mean?”

“Well what do
you
think?” Jenny says. “How many straight men have arses like that?”

“How many
gay
men have arses like that?”

“He's like a little cherub, isn't he?”

“He is.”

“God I suppose I'm going to have to put up with you two making eyes at each other every time I have chemo now.”

“Well it's you he's following from hospital to hospital,” I point out. “I think it's you he's stalking.”

“Maybe this isn't chemo. Maybe he's murdering me.”

“Perhaps. Can you feel that stuff going into your veins?” I ask, nodding at her suspended IV bag.

“A bit. It's cold. But not much.”

“Yuck.”

“But then after twenty minutes I start to feel vomity. It happens every time.”

“Nice.”

“I know.”

I glance over at the door and Jenny says, “He'll be back in precisely forty minutes. Don't worry.”

“Jenny … I
am
married.”

“Yeah, well … You know what I think about that.”

“Not really, but I can guess.”

“You could do much better,” she says.

“Not a nice thing to say about the man who is putting food on the table and petrol in your tank.”

“True,” she says. “Still, I should be getting the money from probate soon.”

“Yeah.”

“A week or two, they said.”

“Right.”

“And then you can pay him back and hook up with Florent Nightingay.”

“Jenny!”
I protest, frowning seriously now.

“God,” she says. “If you can't even take a joke.”

I roll my eyes at her. “I can, it's just …”

“But you actually
could,”
she says. “Do better, that is.”

Jenny's wit fades again as her week of chemo progresses. On Wednesday I have to leave the M3 early so that she can vomit in a lay-by, and by the time Friday evening comes around, she looks, with her green skin and vacant expression, like a zombie. Her platinum blonde wig suddenly resembles an absurd stage-prop – she looks like an Almodovar tranny. But of course, I don't say a word.

On Saturday she cancels Tom's Sunday visit which means that thankfully I can stay in. I too am feeling shattered, and with the pouring blustering October weather outside, the last thing I want is to have to vanish for the day. Which is why I'm sitting reading a picture-book with Sarah when the landline rings on Sunday afternoon.

Wondering whether the caller will be my ex or my current, I swipe the phone from the base before it can wake Jenny up.

“Hello?” asks a woman's voice. “I'm, um, trying to get in touch with someone. Jenny Gregory. Or Jenny Holmes. I'm not sure which name she uses now.”

“Holmes,” I say.

“Yes, of course. My, um, aunty mentioned that she was trying to get in touch with Nick and this is the only number I have for her.”

“I doubt that,” I say. “I doubt she's trying to contact Nick, I mean.”

“Well that's what Joan said. Only Joan doesn't talk to Nick these days so …”

“Right.”

“So, sorry, who is this? Because I'm not even sure if this is the right number.”

“It isn't really. I'm … a tenant,” I say, wondering why I'm lying before I have even realised that I am. “But I can give her a message.”

“Oh, OK. Do you
have
a number for her?”

“I'm sorry, I don't. But I'll see her, um, when she comes for the rent.”

“Right. It's a bit personal really, that's all.”

“I'll make sure she gets the message.”

“OK. Well, can you tell her that he's in High Down. Or I suppose I could just leave my number, maybe that's better?”

“High Down?”

“Yeah. It's, you know, a prison.”

“Oh.”

“What a family, eh?”

“Can I ask what for? Why he's there?”

“Um, well, it was just driving on a ban.”

“I see.”

“It was drink driving on a previous ban actually. And leaving the scene of an accident, I think.”

“Hit and run?”

“Well, yeah. I suppose.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah. Anyway, if she wants to visit, it's Wednesdays. I'm sure he'd love to see her.”

“Right.”

“He doesn't get a lot of visitors.”

“I bet.”

“And not the
first
Wednesday of the month. That's when I go, you see.”

“Of course.”

“Can you give her my number. Just in case?”

“Sure,” I say.

“So it's 0771 …”

“0771,” I repeat as if I'm writing down the numbers, which I'm not.

“You'll make sure she gets the message then?” she asks once I have finished pretending.

“Oh yes,” I say. “She'll get the message.”

Because Jenny stays in bed most of Sunday, and because when she does get up she looks so thoroughly dreadful, it's not until we're driving to London that I get a chance to speak to her.

“You and I have to talk,” I say, once we're safely on the motorway.

“That sounds ominous,” she says.

“It is.”

“I thought you seemed funny. What have I done now?”

“Nick,” I say, simply.

“Nick,” she repeats.

“Your ex.”

“Well I know who he
is,”
Jenny says. “I just don't know why you're saying his name.”

“I think you do,” I say.

After a pause, Jenny says, “I'm sorry Mark, but can you stop playing games?” Her tone has shifted from ‘amused' to ‘irritated.' “Nick. Yes.
And?”

“You've been trying to contact him,” I say.

“Oh that.”

“Yes, that.”

“It's just a precaution. Anyway, how do you know?”

“A precaution?”

“It's just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“Shit the traffic's bad today.”

“Yes, it is. In case of
what?
In case you fancy a punch in the mouth, or a kick in the stomach?”

“Look I know you don't like him,” Jenny says.

“Don't
like him,”
I repeat incredulously.

“OK, understatement. Nor do I.”

“So why?”

“Well, he's Sarah's father, isn't he.”

“We're talking biologically here?”

“I'm sorry?”

“Well, he knocked you up and then he …”

“We
were
married,” she interrupts.

“He knocked you up, and then he knocked you about. If that's a definition of father then it's more of a biological one than a social one.”

“Sure. You're right. But he's still her father. He's her biological parent.”

“And a violent, alcoholic waster.”

“Yes, he was.”

“Is.”

“Well we don't know that do we?”

“Oh, yes we do. He still is.”

“Has he been in touch?”

“His niece phoned when you were asleep.”

“Oh, Tara? Excellent. How is she?”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh.”

“Busy on Wednesdays.”

“Busy on Wednesdays?”

“Yeah.”

“Mark. Please don't be so cryptic.”

“Shall I tell you where wonderful Nick is? Shall I tell you where you can find him?”

“Well that might be an idea. Unless you want me to guess.”

“He's in prison, Jenny.”