“Well, it’s too late for me—I can try to enjoy my last hundred-or-so days, but I can’t have any more. You’ve still got your whole life. What are you going to do with it? Remember, it’s not about counting the days—it’s about making the days count.”
Annie said nothing. That was a question too terrifying for her. Her rage and pain had given shape to her life, the way a pearl forms around grit in the oyster shell. When she was no longer Annie, wife of Mike and mother of Jacob, she was Annie, who hated Jane and Mike. Who’d been hard done by. Who was angry, and unforgiving. What would she be without those things? If she let go of them?
“Big questions,” said Polly. “What do you say for now we just watch TV and have a cup of tea?”
“I’d love that,” Annie said gratefully.
“But tomorrow, Annie Hebden-Clarke, you will wear the red dress, and put on this lipstick the way I showed you, and do your hair nicely and you will do something positive toward changing all this. Agreed?”
Annie nodded. It was easier just to go along with it; she’d learned that now. “Let me wash this makeup off and I’ll make us some tea.”
Polly looked exhausted, despite her cheerful tone of voice. Her eyes were sunk into green shadows that had nothing to do with makeup. “Okay. I might just close my eyes for a sec.”
In the bathroom, Annie hunted about for makeup remover. It was so long since she’d worn anything more than a slick of lip balm. She found it, then paused as she noticed something else in the cupboard. A little box of blister tablets, the name Maureen Clarke on the front. Sleeping tablets, prescribed for her mother when her symptoms first started, which Annie had hidden because she’d taken five one day, forgetting each time. Annie had a memory from then—everything lost, her husband and best friend living together in her house. The police coming around. Ma’am, I’m afraid we’ve found your mother. Walking in the street in her nightie, no idea who or where she was. Annie had stood in this bathroom and looked at those pills. Run her fingers over the little pouches in the silver foil, and imagined popping them out, and swallowing them, one after the other. Going to sleep, and not waking up from the crushing wall of pain that seemed to have fallen on her. She hadn’t, of course—her mother needed her—but still, she hadn’t thrown them away. She touched the box now, gently, then shut the door on it again.
In the living room, Polly was asleep, breathing slowly, Buster cuddled up in her arms and snoring gently. One of his ears was up and the other down. Annie covered them with a blanket, and settled in, flicking the TV on to Grey’s Anatomy. If only Lewisham Hospital was full of beautiful people, like Seattle Grace. Admittedly there was handsome, stiff Dr. Quarani. And there was also Dr. Max, grouchy and disheveled, with his stubble and unironed shirts. Maybe she would wear that red dress tomorrow, after all. If she wore any more black someone might mistake her for a pedestrian crossing and walk right over her.
DAY 22
Flirt with someone
“Annie?”
Annie turned around from the coffee bar where she was buying her breakfast—a syrupy latte and a sticky bun. There was little else that could get her out of bed on a dark freezing morning. “Oh, hi, Dr. Max.” She slid the coffee over in a vain attempt to hide the bun.
Dr. Max looked like he’d been up all night again. His blue scrubs were crumpled, and his hair was sticking up at various angles like he’d jammed his finger in a socket. All the same, the sight of him made some kind of warmth start to work its way out from her stomach, fanning to the ends of her toes and fingers and the top of her head. He frowned at her. “You look different. Did you do something?”
Annie was wearing the red dress, as instructed, and the leather jacket, and the boots. Her hair was still silky and bouncy from Polly’s rollers, so she’d tied it into a ponytail. “Oh, I just—Polly gave me a makeover.”
He rolled his eyes. “Honestly. That woman. Are you both twelve? What was wrong with how you looked before?”
She hated to admit it, but she had left the house with an extra spring in her step that morning, feeling her hair bounce behind her. Costas, who was covered in glitter and getting in from clubbing as she left, had grrred at her again, which she took to be a good sign. And here was Dr. Max, looking at her properly. “It’s a dress,” he said finally. “Is that what’s different?”
“Oh, yes, it’s new.”
“It’s nice. I mean, a nice color. I mean...”
Annie felt red roll over her cheeks. She risked: “Do you want a coffee? I’m just grabbing some breakfast before work.”
“Hmm. Well, I could do with a five-minute break. I have to operate on someone’s brain in an hour and I’m so tired I might fall asleep with my hands in their cranium.”
“That sounds awful.”
“Par for the course. It’s not a nine-to-five job, this.”
He asked for a triple espresso, and took out a ratty tenner, but Annie waved it away. “I’ll get this. It’s the least I can do for you, now Mum’s so much better.” Even she had commented on Annie’s new look, saying, “That’s a pretty dress, Sally, can I borrow it for the dance?” Sally was some friend from her mother’s youth, dredged up from forty years ago.
They sat at a small greasy table the color of bad news. Dr. Max downed his espresso. “That’s good, but you know it might not last. Sami’s tests are going well so far, but there’s a limit to what the drug can do for her.”
“I know. I’m just glad she isn’t trying to throw chairs.”
His eyes were tired. “It can’t be easy. What about you? Are you looking after yourself? Getting enough sleep and so on?”
“I try. It’s hard making it here every day and to work, as well, not to mention Polly’s schemes. Plus, now I have Buster keeping me awake.”
“How is the wee man?”
“He’s so far eaten five books, three pairs of shoes and a whole avocado. Skin and all.” Not to mention the multiple trips up and down in the lift all through the night, in a vain attempt to prevent puddles of wee on the floor.
“He’ll need shots and that. And you can’t keep him forever, you know. Aren’t you in a flat? And who’s looking after him when you’re at work?”
“Yeah. I know, I know. I’ve had to get a dog-walker in.” Which was an eye-watering expense that Annie hadn’t seen coming. “But it makes Polly happy.”
He finished the coffee and frowned. Annie hid a smile: he had drips of coffee caught in his stubble. “Don’t let her bully you. I know Polly’s very fun and charming, but remember her brain is also in the process of imploding, aye? She may not always be rational.”
“Oh, it’s okay. I think I’ve been a bit too rational for a long time, if you know what I mean.”
He sighed. “Sadly, if I ever have a rationality lapse, people literally die.”
“Do you ever have time off? I mean, er, is it very busy?”
“There’s only two neurologists in post at the moment, and we can hardly keep up with the work. We don’t get paid to come in all the time, but if we don’t, as I said, people die.”