Sleight of Hand (33 page)

“So that's why Fred doesn't want to come here anymore?”

“Exactly. And that's why Susan kept warning us about the sea.”

I nod, taking this in.

“She was
Fred's
daughter I think …” Jenny continues. “Not Susan's. I'm not sure about that bit, but that's the impression I got.”

“How does
that
work?”

Jenny shrugs. “A first marriage maybe. I didn't ask. Susan was a bit weird about it.”

“They look pretty young in the photos.”

“Yes. But she kept saying,
‘Fred's daughter.'
Never,
‘Ours.'
And she said she couldn't have kids, which is why they ended up adopting.”

“God, how awful.”

“I know,” Jenny says.

“I'm sorry I shouted at her, by the way.”

“What?”

“When she fell in. I swore at her.”

Jenny laughs. “Don't be daft. You were perfect. God knows what might have happened if you hadn't been there.”

“She might not have fallen in at all,” I say.

“Oh, she would have,” Jenny says.

“I thought … it's just … Well, I thought you seemed funny afterwards.”

“Funny?”

“I don't know.”

“It just made me think about things, I suppose,” Jenny says.

“I thought maybe you were angry with me or something.”

“Angry? Why?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, no, I've been sick. And you haven't exactly been a bundle of joy either.”

I shrug.

“Is it Ricardo?”

I shrug again.

“You thought it was him didn't you?”

“Who?”

“When I said someone had called. You hoped it was Ricardo.”

“Yeah,” I say, with a sigh.

“So what's going on?”

“Nothing,” I say.

“Tell me, Mark,” she says.

“Well … You think he's awful anyway.”

“But it's not my opinion that counts is it?”

“Maybe not,” I say.

“Have you two fallen out?”

I pout and shake my head. “Not as such,” I say. “But we talk less and less. I left him a nightmare message last night because I drank too much of that Bordeaux. And he hasn't phoned back of course.”

“Phone
him
then,” Jenny says.

“No, I think I'll just wait,” I say.

“Sounds like game-playing to me.”

“It's not,” I say. And I try to think how to explain to Jenny where we're at without making her feel guilty. Which is, of course, entirely impossible. I swallow hard and sip my tea, and I see her glance at me sideways.

“Are you crying?”

“No,” I say. “My eyes are just watering, that's all.”

“Right,” she says, then after a moment, she adds, “God! It's being here isn't it?”

“I'm sorry?”

“I'm so wrapped up in my own shit.”

I shrug. “It's not your fault,” I say. “But, you know … three months. It's a long time.”

“Is it really three months?”

“Almost,” I say. “Mid September I arrived.”

“For Mum's funeral. Of course it is,” she says, tutting and reaching out to rub my back. “God, I'm sorry.”

I shrug again. “It's honestly not your fault. And it's not mine. And it's not Ricardo's either. It just is. But it's, you know, unsustainable.”

“Is he still coming for Christmas?” Jenny asks. “Because he was, wasn't he?”

“I don't even know,” I say. “He stopped mentioning it, and I'm too afraid to ask. Though I think I probably did in my magic drunken rant.”

Jenny sighs and rubs my back again provoking a fresh batch of tears to well up.

“Oh, poor you,” Jenny says with a deep sigh.

“I just miss him,” I say, screwing my face up and biting my lip.

“Of course you do,” Jenny says. “I guess we need to do something about that.”

I snort. “Like what?” I say.

“I'll ask Tom,” she says. “I thought about it already, but, no, I'll definitely call him tomorrow.”

“Ask Tom what?”

“To come over here at Christmas. To come and stay.”

“How does that …”

“God, I can't believe I've been so selfish. I'm so sorry Mark.”

“You haven't. Really. But I still don't see …”

“You've been looking after us, and I haven't been looking out for
you
. And that's enough. I'm buying you a flight to go see your man.”

“Jenny, I …”

“No, it's decided.” she says. “If Mohammed won't go to the mountain … or whatever.”

“It's not practical Jenny. Tom's working, flights for Christmas cost a fortune and …”

“He's not,” she says. “Tom has two weeks off. And he doesn't have to come every day anyway. It'll be fine.”

“But …”

Jenny shakes her head. “Don't argue. It's decided,” she says. “We'll sort it tomorrow.”

The day my daughter fell into the sea, I had a new feeling that was so big it took me a while to work out what exactly it meant. But even as it happened, even before I found the time to analyse it, I could sense that almost everything had changed.

The progression of illness may be essentially linear, but you notice it in stages – the need to cut a new hole in a leather belt, the first time your gums bleed as you brush your teeth, the first – and last – clump of hair to fall out.

The fact that I was now too sick to run to save my daughter was a ghastly new revelation. But it was counterbalanced by the incredible knowledge that I didn't
need
to run because Mark could, and Mark did.

I have honestly never seen anyone move like that. Perhaps time was distorted by the nature of what was happening, or perhaps my illness slowed my own thinking down, but the speed at which Mark vanished from the bedroom, the time it took before he reappeared sprinting across the beach – it seemed like a physical impossibility. It was as if everything else – myself, my thoughts, Sarah's slow toppling motion, even the gulls swooping their huge wings as they scrambled to get out of Mark's way as he streaked across the beach – was slowed down.

I knew that she would be fine. I knew that he would save her, and that knowledge gave me a big warm feeling that I didn't know what to do with.

And when he swore at her, I recognised his anger instantly for what it was, fear. I saw at that moment that he had become her parent. The bond
between them was now such that no other solution for Sarah's future would be thinkable. My guess was that though he didn't realise it yet, Mark wouldn't even allow any other arrangement. His reaction to my attempts at contacting Nick, were, I suddenly saw, a demonstration of this.

Over the next few days, I watched them together and everything I saw confirmed this view, and, between vomiting fits, I started to wonder if the time was right to bring the subject up. I knew from experience how resistant Mark could be to any idea he didn't think had originated in his own head. Any heterosexual woman will tell you that the most useful relationship skill a woman ever learns is to make men think that everything and anything was
their
idea, and Mark, bless him, was no different: he needed to come to this realisation of his own accord. But the problem was that I wasn't sure how much time we had for him to get there.

I could tell that the chemo was doing bad things to my body, in fact, I can honestly say that I have never felt so ill. And just as food poisoning from fish can put you off fish for months, my body knew that these pills were bad – it was becoming increasingly difficult to even swallow them, and it could only be a matter of time before they bumped me off the trial altogether. Beyond that it would presumably be a matter of months before the golf-ball in my brain resumed doing whatever it was going to do to me. Amazingly, no one had actually told me how I might die yet. I didn't know if it would be silent and painless, or a slow agony, and I hadn't found the courage to ask. But though it still seemed like an abstract, absurd concept, I was starting to get what remained of my brain around the fact that I was probably going to cease to exist, or at best, cease to
be able to look after Sarah in any meaningful way. My failure to sprint across the beach indicated that this process was perhaps more advanced than I wanted to admit.

So I started to imagine Mark and Sarah ten years down the line. I imagined him looking at the rude adolescent that she had become, and feeling love tainted with sorrow at my departure. And then I imagined him remembering Ricardo as well – remembering everything he had given up to look after her.

Because what if Mark
never met anyone else?
Lord knows, I can vouch for the fact that love doesn't hang around on every street corner. So what if Ricardo was Mark's last chance for love and he felt he had had to choose between Sarah and Ricardo? What kind of shadow would that cast over their relationship?

I couldn't let that happen. Even if they were to split up at some point in the future, I had to make sure that it could never be said that it was my or Sarah's fault.

I told Mark I would buy him a ticket back to Colombia. I would just have to pray that he returned.

The next morning, I awoke with a headache and a fever. Every joint in my body ached like I had a bad case of flu. I lay there listening to the sounds below trying to summon the energy to organise what needed to be organised and wondering how I would survive a fortnight, possibly longer, without him.

And then I hear the doorbell ring. I stopped breathing to listen as Mark opened it.

A familiar voice rang out, and though I'm not sure, I think I heard Mark gasp.

I felt angry and jealous and cheated all over again. I felt apprehensive and excited and thankful too.

I wake up just before five a.m. Initially I simply need to pee, but by the time I get back to the sofa my mind is racing with thoughts about a potential trip to Colombia and the state of my relationship with Ricardo. He has been so distant lately, I'm not even sure he
wants
me to visit.

Deciding that this is probably a burst of five a.m. paranoia, I phone him to get reassurance, but as so often these days, he doesn't answer. Having learnt my lesson, I leave the shortest cutest message I can muster and sit and wonder where he might be at eleven p.m or what I could possibly have said that he no longer wants to answer my calls. One thing is for sure, though. Until I manage to speak to him there's no point even thinking about flights.

At six Sarah pads downstairs. She doesn't even attempt to wake Jenny these days.

“Are you coming in here with me?” I ask.

“I want a drink,” she says sullenly.

“Please.”

“Please,” she repeats.

I make us both breakfast and sit and alternate between watching the sunrise and helping her identify dinosaurs in her book. She has mastered all of the main ones now, though what use that could ever be to anyone I can't help but wonder.

Out of the blue she says, “Is Tom coming today?”

“No,” I say. “I don't think so. Why?”

“I just wondered,” she says, which makes me grin.
Just wondering
strikes me as a terribly grown up thing for a five year old to be doing.

“Do you like it when Tom comes?” I ask.

“Sometimes,” she says. “Do you?”

“Sometimes,” I agree.

“You don't like Sven though,” she says.

I laugh. “What makes you think I don't like Sven?”

Sarah shrugs. “Is this a Tenontosaurus?” she asks.

“Nope, that's that one. It has stripes, remember?”

Her intuition about who likes who is apparently more advanced than her dinosaur vocabulary.

At nine I take Jenny tea and toast for breakfast. She accepts the first and refuses the latter with a queenlike wave of her hand.

“That's your last batch of pills today, right?” I ask.

“Yep,” Jenny says. “For now anyway. Good job too.”

“Well you just rest and get healthy in time for Monday,” I say. “I want you looking like a Bay Watch babe by the time we get to the hospo.”

“I want to look at flights with you later,” she says ignoring my attempts to be upbeat.

“I need to check dates with Ricardo first, OK?” I say.

I return downstairs and sit and eat Jenny's toast, something which is becoming a habit. Every pound she loses is turning into one that I gain.

Thinking about the ratio of calorie intake to expenditure, I ask Sarah, “How do you fancy going for a nice long walk later?”

“Where?” she asks suspiciously.

“How about Eastbourne? We could go around the pier again.”

She wrinkles her nose, unconvinced by the idea.

“We could get a donut,” I say, thinking even as I say it that this has the potential to ruin the original calorie burning aim of the walk.

Sarah still looks unconvinced.

“Um … we might win one of those blue dinosaurs,” I say.

“OK,” she says. Deal clenched.

Behind me the doorbell rings. I glance at my phone and frown. It's nine-fifteen and the only person who has ever visited – Tom – never calls during work hours.

I cross the room and, bracing myself to fend off Jehovah's Witnesses, I rest my hand on the latch. And then I realise that it's probably the postman and yank the door open.

The surprise of seeing who is on the doorstep makes me inhale sharply. I blink twice to check that I'm not imagining things. Tears push instantly at the backs of my eyes.

I had completely forgotten how beautiful he can look, especially when he grins this way.

“Chupy!” he exclaims opening his arms to hug me. “I think I have the wrong house but …”

A huge lump forms in my throat making it momentarily impossible to speak.