Exciting Times(51)

Edith stopped to take a picture of the two of us. I asked if it was for Instagram and she said no, it was just to have. I could see her browsing filters. As usual, I felt excited to feature on her feed, but anxious that I would look mismatched with everything else there. I knew her caption would remind the people she was out to that I was her girlfriend, but wouldn’t give it away to anyone else. That was more than I ever did to advertise our relationship.

The pier was just ahead of us now. We saw the next ferry was due in ten minutes. Having finished his phone call, Julian caught up. Edith asked if either of us wanted chewing gum or water, and when we said no, she went to get some for herself.

‘That was fun,’ I said to Julian once she’d left. ‘I thought you guys got on well.’

He’d started on a cigarette and gestured at the packet to offer me one.

‘I don’t smoke,’ I said, ‘remember?’

‘Sorry,’ he said.

We could see the ferry coming in now, chugging and ripple-making. The sky bled yellow into blue. It was early for a sunset. I told Julian this and he nodded. Then he cleared his throat.

‘I’d better tell you before she gets back,’ he said. I followed his gaze and saw Edith leaving the shop.

‘Tell me what?’ I said.

‘They rang just now. Sorry, just let me –’ He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another.

‘What’s happened, Julian?’

He exhaled. ‘My dad’s had a heart attack.’





40

Julian said they were properly referred to as acute myocardial infarctions. At first, he’d thought the textbook had misspelled ‘infractions’, but it was a different word – infarctions. The first hour after it happened, ‘it’ meaning ‘an acute myocardial infarction’, was crucial in determining the outcome. The ‘outcome’ Julian referred to was binary in nature.

‘He has coronary artery disease,’ Julian said. ‘Sixty-three is young for it. The doctors say it’s the booze and fags. That or genetic predisposition.’

Julian lit a cigarette, then appeared to remember what he’d said about the factors that had compromised Miles’s arteries. It didn’t stop him smoking, but he was quiet.

When he’d finished, we went back into the hospital. I gestured towards the lift, but he wanted us to take the stairs.

‘You’re both making a tremendous fuss,’ Miles said. ‘I lived through Thatcher.’

Julian buttoned and unbuttoned his shirtsleeves. ‘I phoned Mum,’ he said. ‘She’s getting the next flight.’

‘It’s kind of her to come and support you,’ said Miles.

‘Dad.’

‘Aren’t you needed at work?’

‘They can live without me for a day.’

‘Goodness, you really must think I’m nearing expiry.’

That night in the sitting room I saw Julian watch a video on his laptop. It showed a heart like a rubbery boxing glove. A black patch spread from one of the arteries. Then came the plaque build-up, artistically realised as yellow bumps. Julian learned that Miles should have chewed an aspirin. It would have lowered the risk of a blood clot.

I said, ‘Maybe you can tell him now.’

‘Thanks for the input,’ said Julian, ‘but I’m not sure I want to give my father advice for the next time his heart stops working. Not exactly blue-sky thinking, is it.’

A few days later, the last of Miles’s tests came back. Julian found them reassuring enough to go back to work, but his habits got weirder and more erratic. When he was hungry enough to remember about food, he’d have whatever required the fewest steps: dry cereal, bagel not even cut in two. Small things irked him.

‘Why did you put my phone on the couch?’ he said.

I said: ‘I thought it was mine until the screen came on.’

‘You should have put it back. I might have got a call.’

‘You would have heard it ringing.’

‘No, I wouldn’t. It’s in silent mode from the hospital. Why can’t you leave things where you found them?’

Later he apologised. I told him he could be as cross with me as he wanted, and he replied: ‘Don’t say that. I need you to be normal.’

‘I don’t want to upset you,’ I said.

He said: ‘If I ever say the words “It upsets me”, please have me shot.’

Florence arrived three days after Miles was hospitalised. She stayed four nights. She knew Julian had a two-bedroom flat and didn’t know I was living there, but he got her a hotel room on the pretext that he worked late and wouldn’t want to wake her.

Miles could only have two visitors at a time, so I never met Florence. Julian said this was for the best. She didn’t take to other women. I asked if he meant their being in his life or their existence full stop. He didn’t respond.

After a few weeks, they released Miles with a full complement of medicine and a list of substances that could and couldn’t enter his body. We visited him at his home. I asked Julian if he’d prefer to go alone, and he said absolutely not.

‘I don’t even say anything,’ I said. ‘I sit there and watch you guys talk.’

‘You keep us civil. He hasn’t held me personally responsible for the global financial crisis even once since you came into our lives. And I’ve stopped comparing him to Stalin.’