Seven Days of Us(4)
Emma hesitated. “Just one thing,” she said. “My daughter’s been treating Haag in Liberia, and she’ll be quarantined with us over Christmas. Is that a risk, I mean, in my situation?”
“Haag?” said Dr. Singer. For the first time she saw him look ruffled. “Well, yes, my advice would be that, in view of the biopsy, you should avoid any risk to your immunity—particularly something as serious as Haag.” He shut her file, as if to signal that the consultation was at an end. “Have a good Christmas. Try not to worry.”
Emma pushed open the door to 68 Harley Street, with all its little doorbells for different consultants. It was a relief to leave the hot, expensive hush of the lobby, and be out in the December air. Across Cavendish Square she could see the reassuring dark green of John Lewis. She had arranged to meet her oldest friend Nicola there, after her appointment, because, as Nicola said: “Everything is OK in John Lewis.” Emma had secretly thought that La Fromagerie in Marylebone would be nicer, but now that the bad news had come, dear old John Lewis seemed just right. Nicola was the only person who knew anything about Dr. Singer and the lump—the lump that had just become cancer. Emma hadn’t told Andrew, or the girls, because there hadn’t been anything concrete to tell them, or to worry about. Usually Emma delighted in department stores at Christmas. But today, the lights and window displays and people crisscrossing her path were exhausting. She just wanted to be sitting down. She had already sent Nicola a text: Bad news, because she couldn’t bear to see her friend’s face waiting, poised between elation and sympathy. It took forever to reach the fifth-floor café—every time she got to the top of one escalator she had to walk miles to the next one. Then they couldn’t speak properly for ages, because they had to push their trays around a metal track, like a school canteen, asking nice young men for Earl Grey and fruitcake. Nicola kept a hand on Emma’s arm the whole time, as if she were very old, and kept shooting her sad little smiles. Nicola does love a crisis, thought Emma, and then felt guilty.
At last, they were seated. “Right,” said Nicola, “tell me.” And as Emma explained how she was to have more tests tomorrow, which would come back after Christmas, and would quite likely need chemotherapy in the New Year, she heard the diagnosis taking shape as the story of her sixtieth year (Lord, how could she be so old?). By the time she had been through it several times, her mind had stopped galloping, and she felt more able to cope. Nicola was full of fighting talk, promising Emma, as she grasped her hand, that she could “beat this thing” with her friends’ and family’s support. Emma swallowed a last mouthful of jammy cake and managed a smile. “I’m not going to tell Andrew and the girls until after the quarantine,” she said.
“What? Why not? But you must! You can’t be shouldering this all alone!” Nicola’s voice shot up the scale with dismay.
“I can’t. Olivia won’t come home if I do. I know it. He said it was a risk, to be spending Christmas with her. But I have to, Nic. She has nowhere else to go.”
“Emma! This is silly. She’ll understand, she’s a doctor, for God’s sake. The last thing she’d want is to be putting you in danger.”
“But—look, you know how it is with Olivia. This is the first Christmas she’s been home in years—even just home for more than a few hours. It was the Calais camp last year, Sudan before that, the Philippines before that. I want her there. I don’t care what Singer thinks. It’s only a risk—a tiny risk at that. If she goes down with Haag, my creaky immune system will be the least of our worries.”
“But Andrew? Surely he ought to know.”
She knew Nicola was right. But she was loath to go into how little she and Andrew shared these days, or how self-sufficient she had gradually become. Ever since the psychotherapy course Nicola had taken after her divorce, she was apt to counsel one at any opportunity. And it wasn’t as if Emma and Andrew were in trouble. Whose marriage was still wildly intimate after thirty years? Easier to blame Haag again.
“He’ll say the same—that Olivia can’t do her quarantine at home. And what if it is my last Christmas? I’d never forgive myself if I turned her away, and missed a chance to have one more Christmas just the four of us. I’d been so looking forward to it. The girls being at Weyfield again, like when they were little.”
Nicola’s eyes were moist. “OK, sweetheart,” she said. “You know best.”
Phoebe
THE DE BEERS CONTINENTAL HOTEL, 4TH FLOOR, KNIGHTSBRIDGE, 7:10 P.M.
? ? ?
Here it was, room 131, an executive suite. Phoebe knocked, the sound deadened by thick wood and plush carpet, and stood wondering if George was looking at her through the spyhole. He opened the door. He was wearing a white waffle robe and smiling with his lips closed and eyebrows raised, the way he did when Phoebe had proved herself endearingly incompetent. Behind him, dozens of tea lights flickered. George took her hand, leading her into the dark, candlelit suite. Crimson petals were scattered over the fortress-like bed. She decided to edit out this detail when she described the scene, as she already knew she would. Concentrate, Phoebe, she thought. It’s actually happening. The thing you’ve been waiting for. There was George, down on one knee. From the robe pocket he took a little blue velvet box, and opened it with a flourish that she suspected might have been rehearsed. The ring was a huge sapphire surrounded by diamonds, like Kate Middleton’s. It looked nothing like any of her jewelry. She pushed down a surge of disappointment, and its accompanying shame for being so awful.