Love @ First Site Page 21

  "Yes I know, darling. Sorry." Mum blows her nose, then sits upright and uses a shaking hand to try to smooth down her hair. "Alan, put the television on to whatever channel is showing an afternoon film, will you?"

  "Helen, I hardly think this is the time . . ." Dad murmurs.

  Mum's voice, much calmer now, slices across his. "I didn't ask what you think. Just do it . . . please."

  He does, and a few seconds later a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie is flickering away in the corner, a jolly backdrop in a room shrouded in gloom. We all stare wordlessly at it, wrapped up in our own thoughts.

  "Look what I've got!" Emily bursts into the sitting room, her nose and cheeks red from the cold. She's brandishing a giant ocher-colored leaf in one hand. "It's just like Mickey Mouse!"

  "Let me see . . ." Olivia smiles and extends her hand towards her daughter. Taking the leaf, she holds it up for the rest of us to see. "Gosh, it is like Mickey, isn't it? There's the ears . . ." Her finger traces the outline, ". . . and there's the chin. Clever girl!"

  Matthew has wandered in behind his sister and is openly staring at his grandma. "What's the matter?" He takes a couple of steps closer and peers at her. "You've been crying."

  I feel myself go rigid, wondering what explanation Mum is going to come up with.

  "Oh, nothing to worry about, darling." She takes his hand and gives it a squeeze. "Silly Grandma has been crying at this soppy film, that's all."

  Matthew turns to the screen to see Fred and Ginger grinning like Cheshire cats and leaping from one chair to another in a highly energetic dance routine. If it strikes him as odd that this would cause Grandma to cry, then he doesn't show it.

  "Oh," he says flatly. "Who is it?"

  "Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers," says Mum, her voice now entirely normal, having clearly switched into "cope" mode. "They did lots of films together. He was a very famous dancer who would spend hours perfecting just one dance step."

  I stretch my arms above my head and stand up, pleased the atmosphere is returning to some sense of normality. "But if you think about it," I say through a yawn, "old Ginger was even more impressive, because she did everything he did . . . except she did it backwards."

  Michael smiles for the first time since we arrived three hours ago. "Come on you two." He stands up and gestures to the children to follow him. "Let's see if we can find any other leaves that look like famous people. I swear I saw Pamela Anderson on the way in."

  "Pamela who?" says Matthew, following him out of the door.

  One hour later, with nothing more said about you-know-what and all the adults making a concerted effort to keep the afternoon as normal as possible for the children, we all pile back into the car for the journey home.

  As we pull out of the drive, all waving cheerily at Mum and Dad on the front step, just for a moment I feel that everything is normal, that life has returned to the days when my only worries were getting to work on time and paying the phone bill before it got cut off.

  Then I turn back to face the front and see Michael casting a concerned eye in Olivia's direction, the inner pain of uncertainty etched on his face.

  And I know the worst has yet to come.

  Twenty Seven

  It's 11 a.m. and the theme tune of Good Morning Britain fills the studio, booming out from the monitors. "Good Morning Britain!" says Eddie brightly, a radical change from the surly git who castigated one of the technicians just seconds earlier for not lighting him correctly.

  "Boy oh boy, do we have an action-packed show for you today!"

  "Yes!" says Tara, as insincere and wooden as ever. "We've got fun!" Cue clip of extremely camp travel reporter pulling a Macaulay Culkin-style face on a roller coaster. "We've got frolics!" Clip of lots of grinning hopefuls high kicking at an audition for a new West End musical. "And we've got luuurve!" Cut to clip of a couple of agency-booked wannabes--him gay, her probably frigid--clinking champagne glasses at a "romantic"restaurant.

  "What a pile of old shit," I whisper to Tab, as we stand in the shadows of the studio, watching the action. "Come on, let's go back to our desks."

  In precisely fifteen minutes' time, whilst Eddie and Tara are happily burbling nonsense to the nation, my sister is having her right breast removed, then reconstructed. Never has my job seemed so trite and meaningless, so downright irritating.

  I wanted to take the day off and wait at the hospital, but Olivia wouldn't let me.

  "I am treating this as a normal procedure, just something that has to be done," she'd said when they dropped me off at home last night. "I don't want everyone sitting around, waiting for a puff of smoke."

  So I have dragged myself into work, where I'm being as much use as an ashtray on a powerboat. Waiting, wondering, worrying . . .

  I sit down and switch on the computer again. Here, you never leave yourself logged on when you're away from your desk, not unless you're asking for trouble. I found out the hard way when I returned one day to find my in-box bursting under the strain of replies to "your application to join"various porn and penis enlargement Web sites.

  At the top of my in-box is an e-mail from Simon. Having left his place early Saturday morning on the false pretext of having a busy day planned with my friends, I have barely thought about him since. Understandable though, given the trauma of yesterday's visit to my parents.

  Hi gorgeous,

  Just wanted to touch base with you after Friday night and say that I had a fantastic time. I can't stop thinking about those sexy stockings!

  I glance nervously over my shoulder to check no one's lurking behind me.

  I was wondering if you're free this Saturday night for a repeat performance. Maybe we could catch a movie first? Let me know,

  Simon xxxx

  A pen wedged firmly in the side of my mouth, I set about composing a witty but laid-back reply.

  Dear Simon,

  Lovely to hear from you . . .

  No, far too twee.

  Wotcha,

  Great to hear from you . . .

  Wotcha? Very cockney geezer. I hit the delete button again.

  Hi there,

  Yes, I really enjoyed Friday too. Saturday would be nice, but I thought you were going to New York this weekend on business?

  Jess x

  Much better. Chatty, positive, but not too keen. A reply comes back within thirty seconds.

  Nah, I just made that up because I wanted to take you out for dinner and get you pissed, rather than a more sober, weekend lunch! So how about it? The new Colin Farrell movie looks a good bet.

  S x

  Just another of his effortless lies, I think, sighing gently. Though I suppose this one is flattering, rather than having the flattening qualities of the last. And at least he's very up front about wanting to see me again. I reply that, yes, Saturday night is fine and to e-mail me later in the week with details of which cinema to meet at.

  My phone rings.

  "Hello, Good Morning Britain. Jess Monroe speaking."

  "Hi Jess, it's Ben. How's things?"

  What a happy surprise. It's been several weeks since I last saw Ben, but his words of wisdom have been on my mind, especially since he remains the one person I've told about Olivia outside the family. Prophetically, he has managed to call just as Olivia is being wheeled into theater.

  "You may regret asking that," I sigh, keeping my voice low. "Olivia is having her mastectomy this morning and yesterday we went for lunch at my parents' house to break the bad news."

  "I don't regret asking at all," he replies softly. "Want to talk about it?"

  "I'd love to, but it's bloody impossible to have a private phone conversation here without the world and his wife earwigging. It's the curse of open-plan offices . . ."

  "Well, no matter, because the reason I was calling was to say I'm up in town later for a fund-raiser. So I thought you might like to meet for a drink, say early evening? We can have a chat about everything then."

  "That sounds like just what I need," I s
ay gratefully, smiling as a small feeling of temporary relief washes over me.

  We meet at 6 p.m. in a small, out-of-the-way wine bar down a side street near to Tower Bridge.

  Ben is already there when I arrive, tucked away in a dark corner with a copy of the London Evening Standard and what I assume to be two gin and tonics. He pushes one towards me.

  "How'd it go?" I ask.

  He wrinkles his nose. "So-so. We need money to build another unit and so far we only have half of the projected $100,000 cost. So we'll have to organize yet another event to try to find the rest."

  "I could help you," I volunteer. "I have a contacts book full of numbers for various celebs we can try and persuade to come along. I'd love to do something to help out the organization."

  "Thanks." He smiles. "But enough of my Sunshine House woes. It sounds like you've had a pretty grim weekend."

  Whilst I fill him in on our visit to the parentals, he sits and listens intently, only interrupting occasionally with a well-placed question when I have unwittingly skipped over some crucial part of the story.

  Once again, it feels liberating to unburden myself to someone who doesn't know my family, someone to whom I can talk about my emotional distress, without feeling I'm being too self-indulgent and eclipsing their own.

  "Your mum was clearly being strong for Olivia's sake," he says, as I finish off with how Mum and Dad stood waving on the step. "But I suspect your father will have had to deal with some significant fallout once your car left the driveway. You'll need to keep an eye on them."

  I nod. "I know. It's weird, because I have always been the little one of the family, the one everyone indulged and kept an eye on. I feel like I'm finally having to grow up and take care of all of them for a change."

  "You're more than capable of dealing with it," says Ben comfortingly, placing a reassuring hand on my forearm. "You always find strength you didn't know you have in these situations. Have you spoken to Olivia since the operation?"

  I shake my head. "No, but I spoke to Michael a couple of hours ago and he said it seems to have gone well. She's probably staying in the hospital for a couple of days and doesn't want to see anyone until she comes home. She just wants to sleep."

  He shrugs almost imperceptibly. "An entirely normal reaction."

  "The children have gone to Michael's parents for a few days, so at least they don't have to worry about them for now. But I just feel so hopeless, moping around. I want to go over there and do something, but I don't know what," I say miserably.

  Ben smiles ruefully. "If it's any consolation, the relatives of someone who's seriously ill often suffer more than the patient, simply because they feel so impotent and redundant. All they can do is wait around."

  "And drink!" I interject, attempting to lighten the mood slightly. "Another G&T?"

  Given the place is empty except for us, I'm back at the table within a minute and keen to move the conversation on to something less gloomy. As Ben now knows my innermost fears about Olivia, I feel no shame in slicing through polite, preliminary chitchat about his life and asking outright what I want to know, what's been on my mind since my conversation with Tab.

  "So, do you have a girlfriend?"

  He balks slightly, clearly taken aback by a question that's a complete non sequitur to what we were talking about before I went to the bar. But I like Ben, and I want to be his friend. I also feel a strange desire to prove Will and all his other rugby thugs wrong--that just because a man isn't a beer-drinking, skirt-chasing sex machine whose idea of fine literature is limited to the sports section doesn't mean he's gay. Even Richard would back me up on this.

  "No, I don't." Ben recovers well.

  "Why not?" I take a sip of my drink, feeling its refreshing kick almost instantaneously.

  "Probably for the same reason you don't," he shrugs. "I haven't met anyone. Anyway, it's kind of difficult when you spend most of the time out in the sticks, surrounded by sick children and grieving families."

  I toy with the idea of telling him about Simon but think better of it, anxious not to steer the conversation back to me, me, me again.

  "Have you ever had a serious relationship?"

  He nods. "Yes, a long time ago though. We met at university and it lasted about three years before she met some dynamic City type and decided he was a better bet than dreary, badly paid old me." He feigns playing the violin to show his self-deprecation is lighthearted rather than heartfelt.

  "Are you still in touch?"

  "Nah. No point really. Our lives went like that . . ." He clasps his hands together, then shoots them apart in opposite directions. "No doubt she's driving one of those giant minivans now, with one Armani-clad toddler in the back and a couple of golden Labradors."

  "Wearing one of those quilted car coats." I laugh, warming to the theme.

  "And don't forget the Alice head band and blue and white stripey Boden top," he grins.

  "So, no one else since then?"

  He shakes his head. "Well, nothing serious anyway. I'm married to my job," he says dramatically, clasping his chest. "But it's shit at giving blow jobs."

  "Just like a real wife then," I say with a smile, "if those marriage surveys are anything to go by. What do they say? If you put a penny in a pot for every time you have sex before you get married, then take a penny out for every time afterwards, you'll never empty the pot."

  "Funny." He smirks. "But utter, sweeping-generalization bullshit. Oh, I'm sure some people do go off sex after marriage, but my parents were always at it when I was a kid. They probably still are to a certain extent." He wrinkles his nose. "Don't want to think about that too deeply."

  An image of my parents having sex pops into my mind too and I shake my head to obliterate it pronto. "Yes, my parents are still very much together and happy, too." I nod. "Maybe people's expectations of what marriage should be are just too high these days. Although my sister and her husband seem to be managing very nicely."

  "Sex is just part of a happy marriage," says Ben, picking a piece of ice out of his drink and popping it in his mouth. "If it's your be-all and end-all, then you'll hit trouble. Take the parents that come to Sunshine House . . . you think they give a shit about how much sex they're having? Of course not. In fact, I doubt they're having any at all because stress and exhaustion are the two greatest dampeners on desire. All they care about is their child's health, and their marriage, if it's a strong one, is their backbone, their support."

  "Like Anne and Ralph?"

  "Precisely!" says Ben triumphantly. "They went to hell and back when Sarah died, but in a way, their marriage emerged stronger than ever. And I doubt it's because they shag like rabbits. People need to move away from this constant obsession with sex, they really do."

  I don't know what to say next. What he's said is absolutely true, even though it seems a jarring contradiction to the relationship rules that I--and everyone else I know--seem to live by. I feel myself flush slightly at the thought of my frenzied sex romp with Simon last weekend, followed by a more gentle, considered session the following morning. Two pennies in the pot already and I've known him only five minutes.

  Ben looks at his watch and drains his glass. "Sorry, but I'd better get going. I'm on duty tonight, so I have to get the seven-thirty train." He stands up and plants a quick kiss on my left cheek.

  "Thanks for listening." I smile. "Sorry if I went on a bit."

  "Stop apologizing," he chides. "I'm honored you feel comfortable enough to tell me. And it makes a pleasant change from the curmudgeon you were when we first met."

  I poke my tongue out at him. "Speak soon."

  "Hope so," he replies. Then he's gone.

  Twenty Eight

  Tab is thirty-four today, so we sneak out of the office early at 5:30 p.m. to get ready for a small, celebratory dinner party she's having at home.

  Having said I'd help her prepare for it, my party outfit which, let's be honest, is barely distinguishable from any other, spent most of the day scrunched
up in a Sainsbury's carrier bag hanging off the back of my chair.

  It's now 7:30 p.m. and we're already quite tipsy, having swigged our way through a couple of bottles of white wine. Miraculously, however, we have managed to prepare a spectacular feast of salmon mousse to start, followed by honey roast chicken and steamed vegetables, and tiramasu. Thank God for the gourmet grocer.

  Tab starts to lay the long, thin table that dominates her kitchen. First, a crisp white cotton cloth, then two matching candlesticks, followed by seven place settings.

  "Wait a minute." I count them again just to make sure. "You've done one too many."

  "No, that's right." She looks slightly uncomfortable.

  I frown and hold up my clenched fists, unfolding a finger as I say each name. "You, me, Will, Richard, Lars, and Madeleine. That's six."

  Tab winces sheepishly. "I forgot to tell you. I invited Kara."

  I look at her with undisguised horror. "Please tell me you're joking."

  "No, deadly serious. Sorry."

  I slump onto a chair, knees together, ankles splayed in a gesture of hopelessness.

  "Why would you do that? You don't even like her."

  "True, but after you told me that she and Dan had split up, I gave her a call last week just to say I hope she was feeling OK . . ."

  I scoff in horror at her hypocrisy. Although, of course, I can hardly talk.