Sleight of Hand (19 page)

“No worries there,” Jenny says.

“Good.”

“So let's do it.”

“You'd have to stay in for the first forty-eight hours, but then you could take it from home.”

“Home?”

“It's in pill form.”

“Wow. That sounds better.”

“But the side effects are essentially the same. Sickness. Diarrhoea, fatigue.”

“Diarrhoea,” Jenny says. “Nice. That's new.”

“Well not everyone has all of the side effects.”

“Yippee.”

The professor frowns. “I'm very concerned about your attitude,” he says. “This is an incredibly serious situation.”

Jenny nods and sighs deeply. “I can cry if you prefer,” she says, sounding suddenly bitter. “I can do that quite easily if you want. Or I can do
this
. I'm sorry but they're the only two attitudes in my repertoire right now.”

The professor nods. “Of course. I just need to know that you understand.”

“I understand,” Jenny says soberly. “So how long before we know?”

“If you can join the trial? As soon as we get the blood work back. I'd say end of next week.”

“And radiotherapy? Do we continue with that?”

“No. No, this trial excludes that possibility.”

“And if it doesn't work? How long before we know
that?”

“We'd be doing monthly scans. So …”

“So you'd see if the tumour is still growing,” I say.

“Exactly.”

“And … I have to ask,” Jenny says. “What if this doesn't work either?”

“Well we'd have to see if we could come up with something else.”

“And if we can't? How long then?”

“How long? You mean mortality?”

“Yes.”

“It's impossible to …”

“I know, I know!” Jenny says. “You always say that. But look, I'm being serious here. It's what you wanted. So if this is the last ditch attempt … I have a young daughter. I need to think about what happens next.”

“Three to six. That would be my guess,” he says. “But it's only a guess.”

“I'm sorry,” I ask. “But is that months or years? That's years, right?”

“Months. It's months, isn't it,” Jenny says.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I'm afraid it is.”

Once a nurse from oncology has filled seven tiny test tubes with Jenny's blood and we're heading downstairs, I try to take her arm but she shrugs me away.

“You were really brave today,” I say. “You amaze me.”

“Don't,” Jenny says. “Just …
don't.”

“Sorry,” I say.

“And stop apologising.”

“Sor … right.”

I look away and pull a face.

We walk through the rain to the car park in silence, and then Jenny smiles unconvincingly over the roof of the car. “Can you do me a really big favour?” she asks.

“Sure,” I say. “Anything.”

“I know it's pissing down and everything, but could you chuck me the keys and fuck off somewhere for half an hour?”

I nod. “Sure. But what … you're not going to drive or … or do anything daft are you?”

“I just need a moment,” she says. “I just need a moment alone in a soundproof box. I … I have to let something out.”

I swallow with difficulty and throw the keys to her.

“Now go, and don't come back for half an hour, OK?”

I smile and nod and blink back tears. “Sure. Half an hour,” I say, turning on one foot and marching away.

I hear her unlock the car, and I hear the door close again.

And even from fifty feet, even from within her soundproof box, even over the sound of the rain, I hear her wail. But I don't look back.

I could do with a soundproof box myself.

With Jenny's treatment (and our trips to London) suspended, her energy levels rise visibly with each passing day.

She slots into her old life as if she has never taken a day off, walking Sarah back and forth to nursery, doing the shopping, and all of this despite the rain.

She claims that this is to “give me a break” but I think we both know that it's more profound than that. She doesn't know how long she'll be able to do these things, and she doesn't know how long she'll be around to spend time with her daughter. And she isn't going to miss a minute.

This all leaves me with a lot of time on my hands to realise both how artificially I have slotted myself into someone else's life, and how much I miss Ricardo and, yes, Colombia. If part of my reason for coming to Britain was to see if I wanted to move back, this much is clear:
I don't
. Other than the need to be here for Jenny and Sarah, the delights of being back home have long since faded to vanishing point. Above all it's the weather that I simply can't bear. It has been raining for weeks now, and this running from house to car to supermarket to car to house has left me feeling like a caged animal. Some mornings when I open the curtains and see the raindrops sliding down the pane I could scream myself.

There is still a possibility, of course, that the South of France will convince me to stay if I ever manage to get
there
, but right now I just want to be back at the beach house; I just want Ricardo to wrap
me in his arms and tell me that this particular adventure was nothing but a bad dream.

I even start hunting the web for cheap flights so that I can perhaps grab a quick cuddle before Jenny's next phase of treatment starts, but it only takes Ricardo's reminder of the dire state of our finances to convince me to look for work instead. Within twenty four hours I have pulled two small freelance translation projects from the agency list and so, as Jenny bursts in and out of the house shaking umbrellas and cursing, I sit at the kitchen table and translate European disability regulations from French to English.

By the middle of the second week I'm feeling grey and washed out, whilst Jenny is looking flushed and buoyant.

“I know,” she says when I comment on this. “I think it's being up and about. I think it's getting out of this bloody house.”

And then we stare at each other for a moment during which I'm pretty sure we both think exactly the same thought: that it's barely possible to believe that she has a brain tumour right now. And that it's totally impossible to imagine that she might die.

*

The letter from St Thomas' hospital arrives on the same day as the cheque from Jenny's solicitors.

She looks at the hospital envelope and then opens the other one. “Hey, I can pay you back!” she says, brandishing a cheque at me. “I must owe you three or four grand.”

I nod and smile.
“And I can pay Ricardo back,”
I think.
“And I can maybe fly home to see him.”

And then Jenny opens the second letter, but hands it to me. “I can't bear to look,” she says.

I scan the letter. “You're in! Wow! It starts on Monday,” I say, disguising my disappointment that any possibility of a brief trip home is now terminated.

The way Jenny whoops you would think we were discussing her entry into the Star Academy rather than an experimental cancer treatment. But of course, her inclusion in the trial provides a smidgin of hope. And sometimes a smidgin of hope is all anyone needs.

That night we celebrate with a decent bottle of wine (for me) and a bottle of
Appletise
for the girls. We also order an obscenely huge pizza.

Because we can't explain it to her, Sarah has no idea what's going on. But the fact that she is allowed to dance around the lounge holding a slice of cheese-dribbling pizza is proof enough that – after weeks of misery – something good is afoot.

The disclaimer was the moment that the euphoria ended.

It ran to twenty three pages and the doctor Stevens running the trial, a young serious man I had never met before, insisted that I read and sign every single page.

These pages described, in detail, the side effects the drug had had on rats, rabbits, dogs and monkeys. The drug had, it seemed, already inflicted a great deal of suffering on many others before me. It struck me as particularly unfair that they had had no choice. In the case of the dogs these side effects were not good – not good at all.

The contract held “harmless” St Thomas Hospital, UK Medtrials Ltd and GSB Inc for all and any effects the drug might have on me
up to and including
sickness, disability and death.

They left me alone with the paperwork for an hour which was just as well, not because I needed an hour to think about whether to sign it – as far as I could see, I had no choice – but because I needed a moment to think about Sarah. Because these documents were saying something unusually concrete. They were saying that this new molecule might kill me. They were saying that I might die
today
. And dying today might be something a twenty-year old med-student being paid for a trial is able to have a laugh about, but as a mother, it shook me to the bone.

Forgetting that it would be in pill form, I asked if I could have Florent administer the drug – he was
good with IVs – and surprisingly they agreed and paged him.

When he arrived, I asked Florent for a sheet of paper and a pen, and together we wrote a letter to my solicitor, the one who had dealt with my mother's estate.

It said that in the event of my death, all of my possessions and all of my money should go to my daughter Sarah. It said that under no circumstances should her biological father be given custody and why. And it said that every decision concerning the management of property or finances, and every decision regarding Sarah's wellbeing, should be taken by her godfather, Mark, who I hereby named as her legal guardian as well.

Neither Florent nor I had much of an idea whether this was sufficiently legal – whether it would, as they say, stand up in court. And I certainly had no idea what Mark would have thought about it had he known. My guess is that he would have run screaming back to Colombia.

But I had no time. And I had no choice. And so I signed the sheet and the lovely Florent witnessed it, and then I signed the twenty-three pages of the disclaimer.

Florent brought me a tiny beaker of water and three pills, and I swallowed them and lay back to see what, if anything, would happen next.

For the first half an hour Florent sat with me, so to pass the time I told him how wonderful Mark was and what a good friend he had been, because that is what I was thinking about. I was thinking about how, amazingly, I had gone from hating him to loving him as deeply as I have ever loved any man. Because when push came to shove, he was the only
safe haven for my daughter, my darling angel, who I loved so much it hurt my chest to think about her.

And Mark was the only person on the entire planet that I could trust to make sure that, in one way or another, she would be looked after.

Lovely Florent nodded and um'd and ah'd in all the right places, and I thought again, that he and Mark would make a good couple, and so, just in case I was dying, I told him that he could do a lot worse than get to know Mark himself.

He um'd and ah'd some more but in a less convincing way this time, and I guessed that Mark wasn't his type, or he already had a boyfriend, or maybe he didn't want to get involved with someone about to inherit my four-and-three-quarter year-old daughter.

I felt sleepy and asked if that was normal, momentarily terrified that death was creeping up on me, and Florent patted my hand and stroked my head and said, “Sure, you have a little sleep now, I'll see you later.”

And I wondered if he would.

The relief of not having to go to London every day is profound, and the fact that Jenny tolerates her new treatment so well gives us both a fresh dose of much-needed optimism.

During her chemo she is still tired and nauseous – even more so than before – but this is clearly a plus, not a minus. As Jenny declares as she struggles not to vomit up the pills, “If these are a placebo then I'm Marilyn Monroe.”

“Well you do have the hair,” I point out.

But within twenty-four hours of ending her chemo-week her energy levels rocket sky-high. Whether this is a result of not being dosed daily with radiation, not having to trudge back and forth to London, the optimism borne by the knowledge that she has ended up in the desired half of the trial, or perhaps even a sign that the treatment is working, is unclear. But we tacitly agree to decide that it is this last explanation that holds true.

Whatever the real cause, Jenny has energy to spare. She deals with every aspect of Sarah's schedule, cooks beautiful meals for the three of us, and even starts to repaint the hall. “Whether I end up getting rid of this place or dying in it, I still don't want a green hall,” she declares.

It's a phrase that sticks in my mind; a phrase I rehear every time she mentions any aspect of her painting project.

I sit in the kitchen and translate incomprehensible marketing babble from French to English and listen to the sound of Jenny climbing up
and down the metal step ladder. I alternate between the cold November air blowing through the cracked window or the stench of paint inside the house when I close it. And I think about that phrase, and wonder again how to get Jenny away from this house. Because that troubling phrase seems to reveal that if she is to stay alive, she, at least, believes that it will be elsewhere.

One Thursday afternoon, I pick Sarah up from nursery. It's the first time I have done this for two weeks. Jenny is in the middle of painting the skirting boards and has declared herself sick of it: she is determined to finish today.

It's a crisp, dry November afternoon and the fumes from the gloss paint are eye-watering, so I'm happy for the excuse to take a break.

Sarah is surprisingly perturbed by the change in routine. “Where's Mummy, is she sick?” she asks me even before she has finished crossing the playground.