What She Wants (29 page)

got the better of her. She began to weave her way back through the lush, expensive streets of Holland Park. And then she stopped suddenly. A wave of nausea hit her and she sank down onto the kerb, her legs so weak they weren’t able to hold her up any more. Sam wasn’t sure what was worse; the feeling of being so utterly feeble that she had to sit on the dirty kerb or the fact that she was no longer in control of her own body. Shaking, she put her head between her knees and tried to breathe deeply. Even that failed her. She could only draw in ragged, short breaths. Tears pooled in her eyes. What was happening to her? What was wrong? And how was she going to get home? After a few minutes of feeling her legs and bum going numb with the cold of the kerb, she got shakily to her feet and leaned against a fat cherry tree for support. If only she’d brought her mobile phone she could phone someone for help. Only who could she ring? Sam thought bleakly. There was nobody she could think of. She’d let her friends drift away from her. She was truly alone. Two women, in fresh new tracksuits, power walked past with the zeal of the January exerciser determined to shift the Christmas spare tyre. Leaning against her tree, Sam barely looked at them. But they noticed her. They walked briskly past and then stopped, before returning. ‘Are you all right?’ asked one tentatively. Sam shook her head. ‘I was jogging and I suddenly thought I was going to pass out.’ She tried to laugh. ‘I’ll be fine in a moment, I just need to rest. I only live half a mile away.’ ‘You’re as white as a sheet,’ said the other woman. ‘You don’t look fit to walk another yard.’ ‘I’m fine, honestly,’ protested Sam, still clinging onto the tree. The women looked at each other. The first one produced a tiny mobile phone from a pocket. ‘I’m phoning Michael to bring the car round,’ she said firmly. ‘We can’t leave you here.’ Michael turned up in ten minutes in a gleaming new Range Rover and they all piled in. Sam was feeling too weak

to protest too much and she sat in the back wondering what exactly was happening to her. They stopped outside her house. ‘I can’t thank you enough,’ she said, tearfully. ‘Please give me your names so I can repay you in some way.’ ‘Nonsense,’ said Michael’s wife. ‘This is our good deed for the day. Take care of yourself, my dear. You really should see a doctor.’ In the flat, Sam lay down on her bed with her track shoes still on, not caring that she’d leave marks on the creamy bedclothes. They’d been so kind to her. If she’d seen a strange woman leaning against a tree, she’d have walked by as fast as she possibly could and thought ‘drug addict.’ Today, she’d learned that there were nice people out there, people who weren’t riddled with cynicism like herself. She’d definitely phone the doctor. On Monday.

On Monday, Sam was in her office by eight. She worked steadily through the paperwork on her desk, only stopping to drink a cup of coffee and to make a doctor’s appointment for that lunchtime. She felt fine, really, she convinced herself. She was probably premenstrual or just run down. A tonic was what she needed. And no gin. At half ten, Karen Storin came into her office for a meeting. As usual, Karen looked marvellous, vibrant in a cream trouser suit that looked incredible against her black skin. ‘I love that suit,’ Sam said. ‘It’s Joseph, isn’t it? You look wonderful.’ Karen stared back at her. ‘I wish I could say the same for you, Sam.’ Sam felt herself tense. ‘I don’t want to overstep the boundaries but Sam, you look terrible. You’ve lost so much weight and you look … well, worn out.’ ‘Do I?’ There was no need for pretence with Karen.

‘Yes,’ she answered bluntly. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Sam shook her head and gave a tight little smile. ‘I think I’m run down and I’m going to see the doctor today, OK? Can we keep this between us, though?’ Karen looked hurt. ‘I wouldn’t dream of saying a word to anyone.’ ‘Lydia,’ Sam said via the intercom. ‘Can we have a pot of coffee in here, please?’ Anything to change the subject. When Karen had gone, Sam got Lydia to cancel her appointments for the rest of the day. ‘I have to go out,’ she said, ignoring her assistant’s startled face. Sam Smith never cancelled appointments, Lydia knew. She was an automaton and would work until nine at night every day if she could. Something was up, Lydia decided.

Sam was rarely sick. She took vitamins, was addicted to the herbal immune booster Echinacea and was convinced she always did her best to look after herself. Which was why she’d never spent much time in the doctor’s surgery. Today, she fidgeted in her seat, looked at her watch and glared at the surgery door crossly. She was a busy woman; she didn’t have time to hang around while people had major conversations with the doctor. The woman who’d gone in before her had been in there ages. What was she doing? Having her tonsils out? Finally, Sam gave up and rifled through the dog-eared magazines on the coffee table in front of her. As Time magazine was the only one not dedicated to telling her how to get a man, enchant a man or cook for a man, she picked it up and was engrossed in an article on internet piracy when her name was called. The doctor was a brusque forty-something man with tired eyes. As briskly as if she was in a ten-minute meeting, Sam outlined her symptoms. The tiredness, the pains, the nausea. ‘Heavy periods too?’ he asked. ‘Well, yeah …’ she admitted.

‘How long have you had these problems?’ the doctor said, reading through her file. ‘Six months,’ Sam admitted, a bit ashamed. ‘I’ve been busy…’ she said, breaking her own management rule about never giving an explanation to someone who didn’t need one. ‘Should never be too busy to look after your health,’ the doctor said, looking at her properly. Sam stared at him stonily. He asked a lot of questions, discussed her periods, how much menstrual blood she lost each time, and the exact position of the pain, talked about her diet and her bowel movements, and then said he’d better give her a pelvic exam. Sam lay down on the examining table, feeling vulnerable and exposed with her naked lower half pale and ridiculous looking compared to her fully dressed upper half. With practised ease, the doctor appeared not even to look at her when he came behind the curtain. His hands were cold as he palpated her belly, fingers surprisingly nimble as they splayed over her pale skin. She winced in pain. ‘Does that hurt?’ he said unnecessarily. ‘Mmm,’ she said, biting her lip. He prodded some more and she winced again. After a few minutes more of this, he slipped on a rubber glove, spread jelly on it and slid it inside her. Sam felt as taut as elastic as his fingers probed painfully. Ouch! God, what was he doing? Prospecting for gold? Looking for his car keys? ‘Relax,’ he said. Relax! thought Sam grimly. You bloody well try and relax when a total stranger is sticking his enormous hand up inside you! She said nothing and tried to ignore the pain as he probed from the inside. Finally, it was over. Sam dressed quickly. Her clothes back on, Sam felt more like herself, more in control.

The doctor didn’t waste any time. ‘I’d say you’ve got fibroids and irritable bowel syndrome,’ he said brusquely, writing as he spoke to her. ‘What are fibroids?’ Sam asked. She knew all about irritable bowel: every woman in the gym had it. No dinner party in London ended without some discussion on the latest cure and what herbal remedy worked best. Sam was bored rigid by those conversations. ‘Fibroids are benign tumours of the uterus. They can make you anaemic, which is probably why you’re so tired. They cause heavy, painful periods, abdominal and pelvic pain, fatigue and sometimes painful sex.’ Sam scowled. Not a problem she had. ‘The other spasms you describe are most likely the bowel problem although you can get fibroids attached to the uterine wall and they twist, which is painful. You need an ultrasound to be sure. At your age …’ Sam winced but the doctor didn’t notice. ‘… there are several options, myomectomy, endometrial resection, endometrial ablation, but in my opinion, the only final way to deal with them is a hysterectomy. But that depends on whether you want to have children or not.’ Sam opened her mouth to say ‘I don’t,’ and then shut it again. How many times had she said that? At parties and to people like Hope or Aunt Ruth? Aunt Ruth, when she’d been alive, had always nodded firmly and said ‘good idea, Samantha, I don’t see you as the children sort.’ Hope always looked sad and told her sister that you never knew when you might change your mind. Hope had desperately wanted children. Sam knew she wanted to create the sort of loving, happy family atmosphere they’d been denied as children, which seemed a bit futile. You couldn’t make up for the gaps in your own childhood by reinventing yourself as an earth mother complete with a huge adoring family. Then again, Sam reflected glumly, she was trying to make up for the gaps in her childhood by ensuring that she didn’t have children, so there were no small beings to feel unloved and

abandoned with an unmaternal, stern adult saddled with looking after them. The doctor was scribbling again. Sam would normally have tried to see what he was writing: she was an expert at reading upside down and sideways, the result of years of office politics where being able to read memos on other people’s desks was a vital survival skill. But today, she didn’t bother. She fiddled with her watch strap aimlessly. ‘If you come back tomorrow you can pick up a letter for the specialist about the fibroids,’ the doctor said, still writing. ‘I’ll get my receptionist to make an appointment for you or you can make it yourself if you’ve a tight schedule. When that’s sorted out, it may be sensible to have tests done to check your bowels too. Just to be on the safe side.’ ‘About the hysterectomy thing …’ began Sam. ‘I mean, the other things you mentioned are options?’ She didn’t know why she was saying this. It was a bit pointless. ‘Yes there are but I haven’t gone into them because it might be easier to let the specialist do that. Some women are totally against a hysterectomy but you didn’t seem unduly worried about the prospects of having one. At your age, women either have children or don’t have them. If you’d had any fertility treatments they’d be on your file so I assumed you weren’t interested.’ ‘Rather a lot to assume,’ Sam snapped. How could he get away with it? He should have been struck off, fired, hung, drawn and quartered. How dare he assume that just because she didn’t have children yet, she didn’t want any? And did she look that over the hill? Obviously. ‘Are you this rude to all of your patients?’ she asked drily. ‘I didn’t mean to be insensitive,’ he said, startled. ‘We can discuss all the other options, drugs to shrink the size of the fibroids …’ He didn’t get any further. Sam walked out of the surgery. She’d see the specialist and if he was rude to her, she’d hit him. Men.

There was no point going back to work, so she went home, stripped off her suit and changed into slobbing around clothes which consisted of an old grey-T shirt, black gym leggings and a lambswool cardigan. Taking her crammed briefcase, she sat at the dining room table to work. But her brain refused to focus on marketing reports and budgets. She kept thinking of the doctor’s words. Fibroids. Hysterectomy. Tests. Just to be sure … She wished she’d asked him more but she’d been too shocked and too angry. Still, she could look it up on the internet. Honestly, what was she turning into? Two months off her fortieth birthday and she was falling apart. She made another cup of coffee and wandered over to the dining room window to look out. The garden belonging to their house was long and narrow, almost all patio except for a wild bit at the bottom. The couple with the ground floor flat had several lovely containers planted up and even in the bad weather, the shrubs flourished. Sam opened the window to let some air in and looked into the garden next door. It had been a complete mess for years but since He’d moved in, He’d been clearing it and now the overgrown briars were gone and a plot of freshly turned earth stood in their place. Sam leaned forward nosily to see exactly what He’d been doing and then drew her breath in suddenly. He was there, carrying a huge paving slab from the side of the house. Making sure she was partially hidden behind the big brocade curtain, Sam watched him place the slab beside a carefully laid group of others. He was laying a patio, she realized in astonishment. Who’d have thought that Mr Trust Fund Playboy could do anything so practical. He was obviously warm despite the cold day and was stripped down to just jeans and a white T-shirt. Sam cradled her cup of coffee and watched him work. It was interesting how he did it. Each slab took ages to hammer into place and then there was a whole palaver with bits of string and some measuring implement to see if they were level. A couple of times, Sam noticed him glancing up

towards her window, but he couldn’t see her, she was sure… After a few minutes, he stopped, looked directly up at her window and yelled, ‘Are you going to watch all day or are you going to help?’ Sam shrank back from the window as if she’d been scalded. Caught out. She hadn’t thought he could see her. How embarrassing! Peering carefully from behind the curtain, she saw him put down the big hammer and lope towards the house. Boy, he could lope too, those muscles rippling through that white T-shirt and those legs striding in the jeans. Levis would pay him to advertise their product, she was sure of it, because he was a magnificent animal. That’s all he was, of course, an animal. A party-mad animal who screwed around with girls miles younger than him. Sam sighed. Why was she even wasting her time looking at him? Just because he’d given her goose bumps when she’d seen him that first time at the party didn’t mean anything. When the doorbell rang a moment later, the blistering noise in the quiet of the apartment made her jump. Who would be looking for her at this time of day? She was never, ever at home during the week. It had to be someone ringing the wrong bell. Window cleaners or something. ‘Yes,’ she said into the intercom phone. ‘Delivery of flowers,’ said a voice. Sam perked up. Flowers! Lovely. Karen Storin was so kind. She’d obviously been talking to Lydia and discovered that Sam wasn’t going to be back at work that day. Grabbing her front door keys with a smile on her face at the thought that someone cared, she hurried out of her apartment and down to the street door. She whisked it open and gasped. There, still in jeans and a smudged white T-shirt, with a small bouquet of wild narcissi in his hand, was Him. The Man From Next Door. ‘I thought there was someone here with flowers,’ Sam said, still in shock.