“That’s absurd.”
“I know it’s absurd, but it’s true.” He felt a glow of a kind he never expected to feel, this morning of all mornings. He was talking to Jean more frankly than he had ever done.
“Why?” she asked. “You’re not dying.” She paused. “Are you?”
She was scared. Well, perhaps it was good for her to feel a little scared. He began to untuck his shirt, just as he had done in Dr. Barghoutian’s consulting room.
“George…?” She steadied herself with a hand on the back of the chair.
He lifted his vest and lowered the waistband of his trousers.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Eczema.”
“I don’t understand, George.”
“I think it’s cancer.”
“But it’s not cancer.”
“Dr. Barghoutian said it was eczema.”
“So why are you worried about it?”
“And there are these tiny red spots on my arm.”
The phone rang. Neither of them moved for a couple of seconds. Then Jean shot across the room at a surprising speed, saying, “Don’t worry. I’ll get it,” though George had shown no intention of moving anywhere.
She picked the phone up. “Hello…Yes. Hello…I can’t talk right now…No, nothing’s the matter…He’s here now…Yes. I’ll call you later.” She put the phone down. “That was…Jamie. I rang him last night. When I was wondering where you were.”
“Have you got any of those codeine tablets left?” George asked.
“I think so.”
“I have a very bad hangover.”
“George?”
“What?” he asked.
“Do you think it might be a good idea if you went to bed? See if you feel any better in a couple of hours.”
“Yes. Yes, that might be a very good idea.”
“Let’s get you upstairs,” said Jean.
“And the codeine. I think I really do need the codeine.”
“I’ll dig some out.”
“And maybe not the bed. Maybe I’ll just lie on the sofa.”
47
Ray didn’t turn up the following morning. Or the following evening. Katie was too cross to ring the office. Ray was the one who needed to make a peace offering.
But when he didn’t turn up the day after that she gave in and called, if only to put her mind at rest. He was in a meeting. She called an hour later. He was out of the office. She was asked if she wanted to leave a message but the things she wanted to say weren’t things she wanted to share with a secretary. She rang a third time, he was away from his desk and she began to wonder whether he’d left instructions that he didn’t want to talk to her. She didn’t ring again.
Besides, she was enjoying having the house to herself and she was in no mood to give it up before she had to.
On Thursday evening she and Jacob laid out the Brio train set on the living-room carpet. The bridge, the tunnel, the freight crane, the chunky track with its interlocking jigsaw ends. Jacob arranged a crocodile of trucks behind Thomas then crashed them into a landslide of Lego. Katie arranged the trees and the station and made a mountain backdrop from Jacob’s duvet.
She’d wanted a girl. It seemed ridiculous now. The idea that it mattered. Besides, she couldn’t quite picture herself kneeling on the carpet mustering enthusiasm for Barbie’s visit to the hair salon.
“Bash-crash. It chops the driver’s…it chops…it chops the driver’s arm off,” said Jacob. “Nee-naw, nee-naw, nee-naw…”
She knew nothing about petrol engines or outer space (Jacob wanted to be a racing driver when he grew up, preferably on Pluto), but in twelve years’ time she preferred the prospect of body odor and Death Metal to shopping expeditions and eating disorders.
After Jacob had gone to bed she made herself a gin and tonic and sort of looked at the latest Margaret Atwood without actually reading it.
They took up so much space. That was the problem with men. It wasn’t just the leg sprawl and the clumping down stairs. It was the constant demand for attention. Sit in a room with another woman and you could think. Men had that little flashing light on top of their heads.
What if Ray never came back?
She seemed to be standing to one side, watching her life pan out. As if it was happening to someone else.
Perhaps it was age. At twenty life was like wrestling an octopus. Every moment mattered. At thirty it was a walk in the country. Most of the time your mind was somewhere else. By the time you got to seventy it was probably like watching snooker on the telly.
Friday came and went with no sign of Ray.
Jacob said he wanted to go and see Granny, and it seemed as good a plan as any. She could put her feet up while Mum did a bit of child care. Dad and Jacob could do some man stuff at the aerodrome. Mum would ask about Ray but in Katie’s experience she never liked to spend long on the subject.
She rang home and Mum seemed unnaturally excited by the prospect. “Besides, we’ve got to make some decisions about the menu and the seating plan. We’ve only got six weeks to go.”
Katie’s heart sank.
At least Jacob would be happy.
48
Jean rang Brian. She said George hadn’t been feeling well and had come home. He asked whether it was serious. She said she thought not. And he was so relieved he didn’t ask any questions, for which she was very grateful indeed.
He’d been fast asleep on the sofa for the last five hours.
Was it serious? She had absolutely no idea what to think.
He’d turned up at nine thirty that morning with a gash on his head looking like he’d slept in a ditch.
She assumed something terrible had happened to him. But the only explanation he offered was that he’d stayed in a hotel. She asked why he hadn’t rung to stop her worrying but he wouldn’t answer. He’d obviously been drinking. She could smell the alcohol on him. She got quite cross at this point.
Then he said that he was dying and she realized he wasn’t well.
He explained that he had cancer. Except it wasn’t cancer. It was eczema. He insisted on showing her a rash on his hip. She actually started to wonder whether he was going mad.
She wanted to ring the doctor, but he was adamant that she do nothing of the kind. He explained that he had already been to the doctor. There was nothing more the doctor could say.
She rang Ottakar’s and the school office and said she’d be off work for a few days.
She rang David from the phone upstairs. He listened to the whole story and said, “Maybe it’s not so strange. Don’t you think about dying sometimes? Those nights when you wake up at three and can’t get back to sleep? And
