I was so shocked that I didn’t even have the wherewithal to reach forward and give him a reassuring hand. For the first time since her ‘announcement’ I began to wonder if it could actually be true. The heat of the realization crept up from my toes to my neck, sending a flush across my cheeks. I surreptitiously shrugged my coat off in an effort to cool down.
It hadn’t occurred to me for a second that she’d been telling the truth. I thought about how that would make me look. How my recent behaviour would be perceived by those around me. I was banking on her lies being uncovered. For her to be revealed as the cruel fraud she was. But what if it was all true?
‘What’s it like in there?’ I managed. ‘The hospital, I mean.’ I had to be sure he was saying what I thought he was saying.
‘They make it as comfortable as they can for the patients,’ he said, my heart sinking with every syllable. ‘There are a few other women in the room, you know, all having the same thing, which helps Mum, ’cause you know what she’s like, not one to keep herself to herself.’ He smiled. ‘So it’s good for her to be able to chat, to find out what might be around the corner, to prepare herself for whatever it may be. It also helps her to realize that she’s not on her own, which I think is the most important thing.’
He bowed his head. ‘It’s not looking too good though, Em,’ he said, before his shoulders caved in and shuddered with the rise and fall of his chest.
I moved round to his side of the table and slid along the bench to reach him. He sobbed as I put my arm around him, then grabbed my hand tightly and brought it up to his mouth. ‘I love you,’ he whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Ssh, it’s okay.’ I was at a loss as to what else to say. I’d spent such a long time with the thoughts in my own head, going over the unfairness of it all, and the conspiracy I felt Pammie had been orchestrating since the day she met me, that I’d not thought about how Adam was feeling. I’d just written him off as a fool, a lesser man for allowing himself to be duped. But that wasn’t how he was feeling; he was bereft. He’d cancelled his wedding to the woman he loved, and he believed, for he had no reason not to, that his mother was dying.
‘It’s probably not the best place to have had this conversation,’ I said, half laughing, as we watched commuters rushing by the window.
‘No, probably not,’ he agreed, before turning to me and placing a wet kiss on my forehead. ‘Will you come and see Mum? She really wants to see you, believe it or not, to say how sorry she is.’
Despite myself, I pulled back a little. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said, no longer in control of my thoughts, or how they played out on my lips.
‘Please, it would mean the world to her – to us both.’
I nodded. ‘Okay. Maybe.’
‘She’s got chemo again next Wednesday, your day off. Maybe you could drive down and meet us afterwards? Unless, of course, I can come back home and we can drive down together?’
I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Instead of easing the swarm of thoughts in my head, Adam’s revelation that he was going to the hospital with Pammie only served to feed them, making them buzz and whirr away until they throbbed at my temples.
33
It wasn’t Adam being back home that had given me this excruciating headache. It was the pressure of going to see Pammie that was stressing me out. I could literally feel the tightness working its way across my shoulders and creeping up into my neck.
I instinctively opened the fridge to get a bottle of wine, but stopped short. Alcohol had gone a long way to numbing my nerve endings, but I couldn’t rely on it as a crutch forever. I needed to stand on my own and be in tune with my brain and body, to really feel what it was feeling, rather than exist in the misty cloud of depression and detachment that had enveloped me for a fortnight.
I looked longingly at the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, chilled to perfection. Pippa must have brought it with her when she came round for dinner on Sunday night, though to think that it had lived long enough to tell the tale was a miracle. I hadn’t intended to drink then, either, but when I told her I’d seen Adam, she demanded to come over to get all the details.
She’d sat open-mouthed on the sofa, as I paced up and down in front of her, no doubt boring her with every minutia of mine and Adam’s conversation. Aside from the obvious stress I’d been under, it had been great having Pippa around again. I’d missed us living together, and the chats we used to have. She was the closest entity I had to a second brain; when mine was spouting drivel, hers was the voice of sanity that I so often needed.
‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’ she’d asked. ‘Letting him come back?’
I nodded painfully slowly, whilst wringing my hands, unsure even of my own decisions anymore.
‘But you’re still going to have her to deal with,’ Pippa had said. She hadn’t even been able to bring herself to say the name ‘Pammie’. ‘She’s always going to be there. Is Adam really worth it?’
‘I love him, Pip. What am I supposed to do? And let’s just give her the benefit of the doubt for a moment. She may well be telling the truth.’
‘Nah, I’m not buying it,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Remember when I joked about there not being too many psychotic sexagenarians in the world?’
I nodded.
‘I was wrong.’ We both laughed.
My mobile rang, and made us jump.
‘Hello?’ I’d still been laughing as I answered the phone.
‘How are you, stranger? Nice to hear you sounding happy,’ said Seb.
I instantly felt guilty, that I should put myself back in my sad box, but then I realized that it was the first time I’d laughed in two weeks, and I’d done nothing wrong, though I reasoned that Seb was about to tell me differently.
‘I’m sorry,’ I’d said. ‘I’ve been in a really weird place.’
‘One that you couldn’t trust your friend to help you out of?’
I’d sighed. I was painfully aware that I’d not returned a few of his calls, promising myself each time that tomorrow would be the day, but I’d still not got around to it and it had been nagging at me. Our relationship never used to be hard work. I could only think of one reason why it had become such, but I only had myself to blame for allowing outside influences to infiltrate the special bond that we shared.
‘I really am sorry,’ I offered.
‘Are you at home? Can I come over?’ he asked.
I hesitated. ‘Er . . .’
‘Don’t worry, you’re obviously busy,’ he said dejectedly.
What the hell was I doing? ‘Of course you can. Pippa’s here. It’d be great to see you.’
He gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek as he came through the door, nothing like the hug I would have expected, given the circumstances. We chatted awkwardly through the first bottle of wine, skirting around the issue that seemed to be wedged between us, though what it was, I didn’t know. He was reticent and unusually unanimated, which put me on guard as I constantly waited for him to drop the bomb. I knew I’d avoided him ever since the wedding had been called off, but then I’d avoided everyone aside from Pippa and my mum. But I knew, in my heart of hearts, that Seb would normally have been my stalwart in times of need, and he knew it too.
He was just opening the second bottle of Pinot Grigio when he said, ‘So what was the real reason you didn’t want me to come to your dress fitting?’
Of all the possible scenarios that had been bouncing around in my head over the past hour, that wasn’t one of them. I instantly felt my cheeks redden.
‘As I said to you,’ I said, in a clipped tone. ‘I wanted to save it for the big day.’ Wasn’t that the truth? I’d certainly gone some way to convincing myself that it was.
‘So, it was nothing to do with what Pammie said to you, then?’ He looked up from the bottle resting between his knees.
‘What? When?’ I said, though I was already being hit with a sickening realization.
‘When you were by the pool in Portugal.’
I turned to Pippa for validation of what I thought he was saying, but she just shrugged her shoulders.
‘I’m sorry, I’m not quite with you,’ I said, hoping to call his bluff.