Just The Way You Are(62)

‘Well, Leanne, it sounds like you’ve done astonishingly well. You are one brave warrior of a woman. We’ve also completed a full tox screen, which with your permission I’ll pass to social services once the results come back. Now, if you’re ready we can talk about what happens next. Alternatively, I’m happy to wait until another day. Today’s been a lot.’

‘You think my girl is going to wait another day to find out what’s going on here?’ Leanne twitched the corner of her cracked lips.

The news was a mixture of terrible, then maybe not so bad, then potentially even worse. Leanne had been incubating the virus inside her for a long time. While hepatitis C was generally treatable with medication, over a decade of the virus combined with years of heavy alcohol use was more complicated. Livers were wonderful things, with a freakish capacity to regenerate, but they had their limits. The unanswered question was, had Leanne’s reached hers?

If so, then the best she could hope for was treatment to prevent things from deteriorating any further.

The worst? Cirrhosis, liver failure, cancer.

The moment that Leanne broke was when the doctor told her that they would have to test Joan.

Once the doctor had moved on to the next patient, Joan returned, and we explained what we could, as gently as possible. I went to find a coffee and some comfort food, leaving an eleven-year-old girl curled up in the arms of her brave mother.





20





We arrived home from hospital in the early evening. I went to let Nesbit out into the back and found a bouquet of wild flowers on my doorstep. The giant daisies, yarrow and purple teasels that were sprinkled throughout the forest and meadows beyond our hedge, tied with gardening twine.

Please pass on my good wishes to Ms Brown. Being without one’s mother can be difficult. Having something pretty to look at may in some small way help.





Right. This ridiculousness had gone on long enough. I took the ten steps over to Middle Cottage and rapped on the door, transferring some of my sadness and anger into the forcefulness of the knock.

I waited for the customary two minutes, then knocked again. And again.

Eventually, after cupping my hands against the door and yelling that I wasn’t going away until he opened it, the back door creaked open and Ebenezer stood there, glowering.

Today, his T-shirt said, Does my head look bald in this?

‘I came to say thank you for the flowers, but if I’m going to pass on your good wishes, I need to know your name.’

He stood there, his eyebrows so long that I could barely see if there were any eyes hiding beneath.

‘Like I said two months ago, I’m Ollie.’

Just as I was about to crack and stomp back home, he replied.

‘Ebenezer.’

‘Um… what?’ I felt a flush rise up my neck, before spotting the definite crease of a smirk hiding in the depths of his beard.

Both caterpillar eyebrows rose, clear body language for yes, I do know what you call me behind my back.

‘It probably suits me. You can stick with that.’

I cleared my throat. ‘I would really like to do you the courtesy of calling you by your actual name.’

‘Really?’ Ebenezer gave a comically slow, stiff shrug. How he managed to prune hedges and construct wooden shelters was beyond me. ‘I’ve always considered a nickname to be a gesture of affection between friends.’

He ducked his chin. ‘Ebenezer is fine.’

Then, conversation over, he closed the door.





‘I’ve been thinking – who’s going to look after Mum when you’re working and I’m at holiday club and then back at school?’ Joan asked while we were eating dinner.

Good question. We’d both witnessed Leanne’s attempt at hauling herself out of bed to shuffle to the bathroom, and it wasn’t pretty.

‘When I’m working at home, I could keep an eye on her. Either at yours, or she could come here.’

Joan pushed a piece of tortellini round for a second lap of her plate. ‘I don’t know if I’m big enough to help her up the stairs and things. What about in the mornings and the evenings?’

‘Dr Kapoor won’t let her home until she’s able to do things like that herself.’

‘But the doctor said she might never get any better!’ She looked at me, eyes wide with panic. ‘Does that mean she won’t be allowed to come home?’

‘No!’ I put down my fork. ‘She will definitely come home. There’s lots of different equipment they can give someone if they’re struggling. You can even have people whose job it is to come in every morning to help someone get up and dressed, just while they’re recovering. But I really think that in a few days your mum will be much stronger again, now she’s having all that medicine.’

‘Not if she has cancer.’

I took a deep breath. ‘Maybe not, then. Depending on where it is and what they can do to treat it.’

Joan slowly chewed another mouthful. ‘I need to find my grandparents.’

‘Oh! Wow. That’s an interesting idea.’ Or a really terrible one.

‘I don’t know anything about them, but sometimes Mum forgets she’s pretending they don’t exist and lets something slip like what they did on Christmas Day or how they sang silly songs in the car.’ She looked at me, forehead wrinkled in thought. ‘They sound like nice people. Not like the people we ran away from, Archer or the other men. I think they might really miss Mum and want to help.’