DAY 7
Spend time with family
Bing-a-ling-a-ling.
Even the doorbell was upbeat. Annie stood once again on the doorstep of Polly’s parents’ house, nervously wiping her hands on her jeans. She’d spent ages choosing a bottle of wine, bewildered by the choice in Sainsbury’s. Rioja. Sauvignon. Chablis. In the end she went for one at eight pounds, thinking it had to be decent at that price.
She wasn’t sure why she’d said yes to Polly’s casual invite, intended to “make up” for the surprise of all the nudity: “Come around for Sunday lunch tomorrow. Mum and Dad like to make a big thing of it.” Manners, probably. Or the idea of spending yet another Sunday alone. They were always the hardest—the day when she and Mike used to go to the pub for lunch, or take Jacob to the park.
The door was opened by a young man with dark-rimmed glasses and a scowl. “Yes? You’re not one of Mum’s God-botherers, are you?”
“No, I’m, um, Polly’s friend?” It felt presumptuous to say the word.
“Oh. Shall I take that?” He examined the bottle, holding it away from him. “Hmm. Okay.”
“Is that Annie?” A woman in a purple wrap dress came out into the hallway. Chic and slim, with bobbed gray hair and glasses on a jeweled chain, which she put on to peer at Annie. “Darling. We’re so glad Poll has a new friend. You are brave.”
Annie didn’t like the sound of that. She wasn’t up for anything brave. Polly’s mother looked at the wine, too. “How lovely! My favorite.”
“Chardonnay?” the young man said doubtfully. “Really?”
“Shh, now. There was a piece in the Obs food just last week about how it’s coming back in.”
Annie looked between them. Had she brought the wrong thing?
“I’m Valerie, darling, and this naughty boy is George, my son. Georgie, get Annie a drink. We have a Sancerre, or a Malbec, or we could even scare up some Riesling, I imagine?”
Annie had no idea what those things were. “Um, whatever’s open, thanks.” Valerie led her in—she smelled of some exotic musky perfume that made Annie think of orange groves and desert moons. Her own mother had always smelled of cooking and Hall’s soothers. Now she just smelled of the hospital.
“You mustn’t mind George,” Valerie whispered in her ear. “He’s very protective. This nasty business has brought all manner of people out of the woodwork. Grief tourists, you know. It’s horrible, the way they want to gawp at Polly being ill.” Did they think she was a grief tourist, too? Annie looked behind her at the door—if only she’d changed her mind and not come, after all. This was going to be a disaster; she could just feel it.
Polly was perched on the arm of the pink Indian-print sofa, talking to an older man in a navy jumper and slacks.
“You see, the problem with the euro is...” He had a booming voice and was sloshing back a giant glass of red wine.
Polly saw Annie and jumped up. She was in dungarees, her hair tied back with a red scarf. Annie felt drab in her jeans and hoodie. “Annie! Thank God you’ve come to rescue me from this hellish discussion of finance. I don’t care, Dad! I didn’t care even when I was going to be around to see the consequences.”
Annie tensed, but Polly’s father just tutted, as if she’d made an off-color joke. “Like it or not, Poll, the outcome of the referendum has a lot more impact on the future than what type of shoes you’re going to wear.”
“But the shoes bring me joy. And other people joy.” She waved one foot, which was shod in an embroidered teal slipper, its gold thread winking in the sun. Annie hunched down slightly to hide her own scuffed Converses.
“Roger Leonard,” the man boomed, crushing Annie’s hand. “What about you, Annie, do you have any burning thoughts on the state of the EU, or indeed on my daughter’s footwear?”
“I like the shoes,” she ventured.
“Another one.” Roger knocked back more wine. “I gather you met Polly at the hospital?”
“They are wonderful there,” said Valerie, who was stirring something on the stove. “When P was first poorly we thought we’d have to go private. We were all ready to chuck money at it, weren’t we, darling! But she said no, she’d tough it out on the NHS. Little trooper. And they have been marvelous.”
Annie nodded along. Did they realize some people had no other option than to “tough it out”? She’d no idea how she was going to pay for a care home when her mother came out of the hospital.
Polly sat down at the table, tipping her chair so it wobbled on three legs. “Especially Dr. McGrumpy. Mum loves him.”
“He is terribly dishy. That accent.”
“He looks like someone wearing a Chewbacca costume.”
Valerie said, “Oh P, you do exaggerate. He’s just manly is all.”
Annie quite liked the way Dr. Max was hairy. It made him seem cuddly, like a giant friendly bear. As they sat down, she wondered again about Polly’s domestic situation. Why did she live with her parents, and had she ever been married? Did she have a boyfriend or anything? Annie imagined that terminal cancer was a bit of a barrier to dating.
“Here we are,” Valerie said, setting down a steaming terra-cotta dish.
George groaned. “Dear God, Ma, not couscous again? You know I’m on a low-carb diet.”
“Bad enough your sister’s got so thin, without you wasting away, too.”
“I’d love to waste away. I’m well jel of how skinny she is. I’ll just have the chicken.”
So that’s what it was. Annie was struggling to identify the contents of the food, a sort of yellow stew with a strong spicy smell. She let Roger slop some onto her plate. “Valerie does love her Moroccan.”
She prodded about in the mix, trying to find something edible. That was a tomato, she thought. Tentatively, she put it in her mouth, only to turn red and let out a small yelp. Not a tomato.
George was smirking. “Mum likes to load her tagines up with Calabrian chilies. Be careful.”
“Get her some water, Georgie,” said Valerie. Annie gulped it down, feeling embarrassed. Everyone else was perfectly at home, eating the red-hot stew, drinking wines with different complicated names, discussing stories from that day’s papers. She tried to piece together what they all did. George, she gathered, was an aspiring actor who enjoyed trashing all the stars in accompanying magazines. “Look how bald he is. She’s had Botox.” Roger, it seemed, worked in the city, and Valerie had been the head of a girls’ school and was now retired. The table was covered in papers and magazines, even academic journals with titles such as Advances in Oncology. As they ate, they bandied about medical jargon.
“We really think P would benefit from alternative therapies,” Valerie said, eating daintily. “There’s a lot of studies now about acupuncture, and Chinese herbs seem to be quite effective. I’m going to a talk on homeopathy next week, too.”
George groaned loudly. “Please, Mum.”
“What? There’s plenty of evidence about the power of positive thinking. What harm can it do to try things?”
“McGrumpy says it’s all hokum.” Polly had once again only taken a few bites of her food.
“Yes, well, it’s not in the hospital’s interests to fund nonmedical therapies, but we think there’s every chance. Don’t we, Roger darling?”
George rolled his eyes. Roger had his eyes on his food and just said, “She’s a trooper, aren’t you, P? She’s going to fight this thing.”
Annie was puzzled—Dr. Max had told her there was no hope for Polly. She had nothing to add to the discussion, so she ate around the chilies in her food, and felt boring. Why had Polly even asked her? She could have been in bed, watching a boxset of Grey’s Anatomy while listening to Costas talk loudly in the next room. He always rang his mum on Sundays. She was suddenly shot through with a longing to do the same. Just to have her mother know who she was, discuss her life, dissect the week’s soap operas. Such a little thing to ask for.
George pushed his plate away. “Right, I’m off.”
“Where to, George?” Polly asked innocently.
He shot her a look that Annie didn’t understand. “The gym.”
“Oh, yes, anyone special going to be there?”
George said, “Hey, Poll, speaking of special—are you ever going to call Tom back? He’s been texting me again asking about you.”
Who was Tom? Valerie and Roger exchanged a quick panicked look, but Polly ignored the comment, toying with her tagine. “Have fun with all those bench presses, bro.”
Valerie wailed, “But you haven’t had pudding! I made clafouti!”
“Um, no carbs and no sugar, remember?”
“But, Georgie—”
“Not now, Ma. I’ll be late.” He pulled on a leather jacket. “Will we be seeing Annie again?”
Annie blushed. Polly said, “Don’t be so bloody rude, G. She can hear you.”
Roger ignored this tension, sloshing more wine into Annie’s glass before she had time to say no. She’d hardly been able to eat any of her food—she’d be drunk at this rate. Valerie was staring ahead of her, eyes suddenly blank.
“All right, Mum?” said Polly.
“I think I’ll go for a little nap, darling.” She fixed Annie with a bright smile. “I’m so lucky having both my children at home with me! Are you close to your parents, Annie?”
“My mum’s not too well just now. She’s in the hospital.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. What about your father?”
Annie could feel Polly’s eyes on her. “Well, he’s—he’s not really in the picture.”
“Oh, what a shame.” Valerie looked vague again. “Perhaps you’d get the dishes, Roger darling. I think I’ll just...”
“Hmm?” Roger was looking at his phone, peering over his glasses. It vibrated suddenly, making everyone jump.
Valerie’s voice soared and broke. “I do wish you’d put that thing away. It’s family time. Family, Roger.” She stood up, scraping her chair. “You can clear up. I’m going to lie down.”
Polly stood up, too, scraping out a slice of clafouti, which turned out to be a sort of custardy pie. “Come on. I’ll show you the garden, Annie.” Annie trailed out after her, aware of some undercurrent of tension and with a vague niggling worry it might be something to do with her.
* * *
“Sorry about George. He’s gunning for an Oscar in the role of Most Bitchy Brother, I think.”
“That’s okay.” Annie was still trying to take in the garden. She could have fitted her entire flat into it twice over. It meandered down the hill, full of green nooks and wrought iron furniture, fruit trees and little statues. “Did you grow up here, then?”
Polly looked around, disinterested. “Yeah. Didn’t expect to find myself back living here at thirty-five, though. I guess you grew up not far away?”
Only two miles or so. But worlds apart. “Is that the Shard?” She could see the wedge-shaped skyscraper soaring through the gap in the trees, across the wide gray ribbon of the Thames. Annie had a sudden stab of jealousy again. Imagine if she’d grown up here, with this garden, with the shops and cafés of Greenwich just around the corner, instead of on her Lewisham council estate, doing her best not to get pregnant before she left school.
“We should go up it,” Polly said, taking a running jump and leaping onto an old wooden swing that was tied to the branch of the apple tree. It looked like a photo shoot, her carefully chosen outfit, the disheveled garden behind and the view of the city across the river. Something Instagram-worthy, a picture of a perfect life.
“What, the Shard?”
“I have some tickets I bought a while back for me and George and his boyfriend and...anyway, he split up with his boyfriend, thank God, because Caleb’s awful, so we never used them. Fancy it? Another happy thing? Bring your flatmate, too.”
“Costas?” She got enough of him singing Mariah Carey in the bathroom and melting cheese all over everything. “I suppose I could see if he’s free.”
“George thinks it’s tacky.” She smiled. “Annoying my brother is another thing that makes me happy, I have to say. Do you have any brothers or sisters, Annie?”
“Not that I know of,” she said. She might have any number of half siblings, of course.
“Oh, right, you said your dad wasn’t about. Where is he?”
“I’ve no idea. As far as I know he buggered off when I was two days old. Couldn’t handle it, the whole family thing.” Leaving Maureen Clarke, twenty-four and broke, alone with a new baby in a drab council flat. Stunned, lonely, wondering what happened to her life. It was all so different from this family, with Polly’s successful father and stylish mother, her confident clever brother, this beautiful house, like a sagging-down wedding cake, the garden full of fruit trees.
“That’s rough.”
“Not really. You can’t miss what you never had, after all. I hardly think about him.”
Polly gave her another irritating inspirational look. “Life’s too short for regrets, Annie. Maybe you should try to find him?”
“I did the happy-days stuff,” Annie said, changing the subject firmly. “I wrote down some things, anyway.” Swimming, walking, visiting her mum—it didn’t seem a lot. “How’s yours going?”
Polly didn’t answer, and Annie saw she’d stopped swinging, her face pale. “Are you okay?”
“It’s just... Oh, crap. I shouldn’t have had that pudding.” And she lurched forward onto her knees and threw up on the grass with a retching sound.
Annie ran to her. “Polly! Are you all right?”
Polly sat up, shaky, wiping her mouth. “It’s just Bob. It happens all the time. Sorry you had to see.”
Annie helped her up, feeling how hard Polly was trembling. “Why don’t you go and lie down? I’ll see myself off.” It was easy to forget how ill Polly was, but underneath all this cheer there was no escaping the fact that the tumor was gnawing away at her, a little bit every day.