On Top of Everything (16 page)

My hip ached where the bathmat had bunched beneath it. It would not be altogether unpleasant to die, I allowed myself to think. Life was hard. At the moment, too hard. The tearooms, although a lovely dream for the future, were beyond me. The house was revolting. Maybe it didn’t want to be opened to strangers again. It was costing me more money than I had and I didn’t want to confront that particularly. I’d lost my husband and son to people I didn’t know and I was tired and lonely, which was also hard to confront. Maybe slipping away to a better place would be easier than staying in this one.

I felt my poor frantic heart beating unhappily against my rib cage. You know, if I could have died right then, I would have. But the chipped, grubby tiles were no place for a half-dead completely mad woman to die, or lie, for that matter. I was cold and my hip was getting sorer. Slowly I got up and washed my face in the basin, which at least warmed my hands. And then I looked at myself in the mirror.

There it was: the sadness. In fact, I was the picture of sadness. My eyes filled with tears as I stared into them, my mouth crumpled, my cheeks wobbled, everything pointed horribly downwards. I placed my hands on my abdomen, so flat and firm. But what chaos lay behind that paltry muscle?

How could this be happening to me? On top of everything? How could it?

I had not even known my colon was so important until being told it was in grave danger. It was just part of the boring bit of being alive, as far as I had always been concerned; the mechanics of it all. You breathe so the oxygen can do something
or other with your blood; you eat so you have energy; and you drink so you’re not dried up like a coconut. If you’re in a car accident and hurt your spleen it can be chopped out and you’ll never even notice. I knew nothing about colons. Would never have guessed how essential they were. I mean when breasts got diseased it was tragic but you could still lop them off and go about your business with the right bra. What would happen if I lost my colon? Why hadn’t Nick told me? Why hadn’t I asked? Why was this happening to me?

I thought about ringing my parents but again couldn’t picture myself saying the right words. And anyway, they would probably think I had brought it on myself by eating white bread. And maybe they were right. But I didn’t need to hear that right now. Had I been wrong to mock vegetarianism all these years? I ate red meat but to be honest, I didn’t even like it that much. I preferred chicken. Was it the hormones and antibiotics in the chicken that had killed me? Was it Khan’s prawn korma? Pumped with toxins from some hideously polluted ocean on the other side of the world and laden with full fat cow’s milk cream?

I considered calling Tannington Hall and asking to speak only to Poppy but I knew she would just cry. And that would be as hard to stomach as a lecture on the perils of salami.

Harry? Well, I wasn’t sure if he was still a relative. Or a friend for that matter. In a perfect world, the perfect world that up until recently I had inhabited but from which I had been wrenched thanks to him, he would be there already. There would be no need to call him. He would be holding my hand or standing behind me as I stared into the mirror, assuring me that I was just being silly, that it was all so sudden, that I wasn’t dying, of course I wasn’t, that everything would be all right, he would see to it.

But there was nobody behind me, nothing but a butterfly kimono Mum had given me for my birthday years before, which had hung on the back of the door on the unreliable hook ever since because the sleeves collected marmalade and got stuck on doorknobs.

There was Monty but I couldn’t really go worrying him because he was just a boy. And how awkward would it be anyway, given we were barely speaking to each other? I didn’t quite know how to go from, ‘I’m not that fussed on your secret wife,’ to ‘I’m dying of the world’s most boring disease.’

Never in my life had I been so alienated from so many people, I thought, in astonishment, as I continued to stare at my sad self. And what kind of a life was I having anyway?

Then I heard the sound of something being dropped on a foot two storeys below and turned to look at the kimono-covered door. It was Stanley’s foot, I deduced, by the sound of the curses that followed. Then there was the low murmur from Will, no doubt offering consolation.

I turned around and caught my reflection again. To my surprise, this interruption from the outside world had pointed my face slightly upwards once more. It was the bloody garbage man all over again! The planet was still spinning! Yes, my eyes were still great wells of sadness but my face was no longer the picture of it.

I looked just like I had before the phone call.

How the hell could I have cheered up so quickly? It wasn’t right. Nothing was right. I couldn’t even go about having a fatal illness the normal way. I’d lost my job, been left by my husband, had a secretly married son and a half-renovated house, and now I was no doubt going to make a complete and utter mess of being poorly and, soon enough, dead.

This terrible truth made me ache all the more. And even
the ache wasn’t normal as it wasn’t, the way one might expect, for a cure for cancer or the secret to eternal life. It was for dark chocolate and banana cake with fresh raspberries and sour cream icing.

Rose had made this cake for me once, after Janie McPherson invited everyone in the class but me to her twelfth birthday party. Truly, biting into that decadent slice piled high with gooey chocolate made me forget, if only briefly, the pain of such a bitter blow. It wasn’t the secret to eternal life, but it was bloody delicious.

So, I might not have the coffee enema thing but I had something: the will to bake.

Or the will to at least think about baking.

At least it was will.

Preheat oven to 180˚C and place the oven rack in the middle of the oven. Butter or spray a cake tin.

In a large bowl combine the flour, sugars, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and chocolate. Set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl combine the mashed bananas, eggs and melted butter. With a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, lightly fold the wet ingredients (banana mixture) into the dry ingredients until just combined and the batter is thick and chunky.
Add raspberries and spoon the batter into the prepared tin. Bake about one hour or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Place on a wire rack to cool for five minutes and then remove from tin.

Let cool and ice.

Melt chocolate in a double boiler or a large metal bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water, stirring occasionally. Remove bowl from heat, then whisk in sour cream and vanilla. Cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally (icing will become thick enough to spread). You must work quickly and spread it before it becomes too thick. (If icing does become stiff, reheat over simmering water, then cool and try again.)

Top with a layer of fresh raspberries.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As it happened, the will to bake, or think about baking, or live for that matter, came and went over the next couple of hours.

I stayed in my room to begin with, but the telephone tortured me with my inability to pick it up and use it to ask someone, anyone, for help. This gave me the shakes, which in turn meant more violent outbursts in the bathroom.

Meanwhile, my funeral had turned into a state event like Princess Diana’s during which no one would be able to get to the hairdresser’s or the supermarket, causing the population in general to end up hating me.

I needed a break from myself, I knew I did. Lurching between visualising my mourners and my diseased colon was starting to overwhelm me. Rose’s banana and chocolate cake with fresh raspberries would definitely sort this out, I reasoned, and I was trying to summon up the energy to go out and shop for the ingredients for it when I heard Will’s voice
sail up the stairs and snake its way through the cracks in the door to find me.

‘Florence, fancy a cup of tea?’

Stanley must have gone home. I imagined Will standing at the bottom of the stairs by the kitchen, thinking of me, calling up to me.

‘Yes, please,’ I answered in a voice I knew he could not possibly hear.

‘Florence?’ He called again. And again. Then I heard his boots on the stairs, his voice getting closer until he was obviously just outside the bedroom door.

‘Florence, are you in there?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, dully, again. I was in a sort of a trance. Quite pleasant actually. In my own feeble way I was luring Will towards me. I don’t know why. Or I pretended I didn’t.

He rapped gently on the door.

‘I’m here,’ I said, although who knew for how long. And anyway, I had been ordered to seek out a friend, had I not?

Then the door opened and his head appeared around the side of it. ‘Florence, are you all right?’ he asked, looking around as if expecting to find someone else there.

I just looked at him. He had a white shirt on, as crisp as you like, and not at all dirty. How could that happen? He was a builder, for God’s sake. I couldn’t wear white from my bedroom to the bathroom without getting thirty-two different-coloured stains on it.

‘May I come in?’ When I didn’t reply, he stepped cautiously into my bedroom.

As I looked at him I felt every healthy cell in my body stand up and go, ‘Oh, yes, please!’

It was a bit like being electrocuted or shot with a Taser gun, only none of the outside of me moved. Just the inside.
But it wasn’t a made-up thing, it was real. It was more real than the measles. I’d only been told about them — mysterious people in white coats had identified them under a microscope somewhere, had written reports, had maybe even felt a quiver of emotion themselves at delivering their malignant opinions — but I couldn’t feel the measles. I couldn’t feel them at all. Will, on the other hand, I felt. In the marrow of my bones, in the flow of my blood, in the goose bumps of my skin, I felt him.

‘Florence?’ he said softly again, moving towards the bed.

I did nothing, just kept looking at him, feeling him and wondering just how my insides and my outsides could be at such odds. I don’t think I had experienced that sort of distance from myself before. How strange, that in the space of a single day, my body would deliver two such peculiar revelations.

One: that I harboured a disease that was probably killing me.

Two: that Will and I were quite possibly made for each other.

Scientists may not have had a piece of that in a Petri dish to poke at but it was every bit as much a lethal diagnosis as the colon one. It was what my cellular structure was telling me. My silly cells had been looking the other way when the measles walked in the door but when Will arrived they had stood up and paid attention.

Did I believe in love at first sight? Yes, of course I did. It’s what I thought had happened with Harry. But in retrospect, what did a fourteen-year-old’s cellular structure know? That chocolate fuelled pimples and a boy with a cute fringe smiling at you meant you finally had a boyfriend. And a good boyfriend, too, there was no denying that. Well, I’d never worried about him cheating on me with my girlfriends, although as it turned
out there was a reason for that. And we loved each other, there was no denying that either. From the beginning, we loved each other. But maybe it was a brotherly/sisterly sort of love? I couldn’t remember Harry setting me on fire with lust or whatever it was that set people in love on fire. It was more like he fanned whatever fire I already had.

Will and I, though, were two good old-fashioned sticks just made to rub together. I don’t mean that we were made for each other in a lovey-dovey romantic novel sort of a way; the way where it all falls perfectly into place just because one’s a square hole and the other’s a square peg and oh, whoopsie, here we both are, how marvellous.

No, it was chemical. I reacted to him. It was as simple as that. And it wasn’t because I’d just found out about the measles and was losing my marbles. From the moment I had first opened the door to him there’d been a whiff of it: a stiffening of the arm hairs, a darkening of the pupils, a scent of something wonderful just around the corner. And then there’d been the moment at the kitchen table when he’d made the cup of tea when it became a tangible thing. Or as tangible as something invisible can get, especially something invisible that may or may not exist.

Yes, we were made for each other. I knew that now. Maybe that was a measles or a marbles thing but I still knew it. But what a truly, deeply awful time to figure it out because for a variety of different reasons — I was so much older than him and so recently separated from the love of my life, and mother of a son with whom I was engaged in a complicated sort of war I didn’t know how to fight or surrender from
and
I was ill — nothing could ever come of it.

Will crouched in front of me and put one hand on my knee, the chocolatey one. He had such concern for me, this
surprise addition to my household. His eyes were full of it, his face was full of it, his body too. And there was something else. Something more than concern. In my current state I seemed to be able to see right through him, like Superman, and what I saw was that Will was full of all this wonderful love, wonderful endless unused love. I could tell that because I recognised the symptoms. I was full of wonderful endless unused love too.

This was how we were made for each other. It was too tragic for words.

‘Florence, you’re worrying me,’ he said. ‘You look so upset. Whatever’s the matter?’

The tears I had been holding back, keeping teetering within the brim of my eyes, spilled over and flowed down my cheeks. Why is it that sympathy brings them on? Shouldn’t sympathy dry them up? What was that about?

‘Oh, Florence,’ Will said. ‘Whatever it is, please tell me. Please let me help.’

If only he could. He squeezed my hand and I realised I could trace his calluses already, so familiar was the territory of his lovely, young, healthy body, its geography somehow already imprinted on my mind.

I looked into those blue eyes of his and right down at the bottom of my heart where I trusted only a few scant droplets of truth — like Monty was the best thing that ever happened to me, I actually had really good legs, my fresh date scones were better than anyone else’s — I knew that in this tiny pocket of time Will felt the same way about me as I felt about him.

But even if I’d had the guts to act on this instinct, I’d just been told in no uncertain terms by my body that it was not to be trusted and that it was the boss, so I could take my delicious chemistry and stick it up my arse, along with every gloved hand known to medicine.

While I was busy not acting on my instincts, however, Will kissed me. His lips swept away my fear like a smooth velvet curtain. I don’t think I had ever properly been kissed before, no offence to Harry, sort of, and actually I only thought of him embarrassingly fleetingly. To be kissed by Harry was lovely, is what I actually thought, but to be kissed by Will was exquisite. I felt it in my toenails.

His hand was on the back of my neck, stroking some little strip of me that I didn’t know until then only existed to be stroked just like that. The smell of him was like baking bread and sunshine and salt. His energy, without wanting to sound too Tannington Hall, pulsed from his lips to mine and down my body to the poisonous parts and I could almost feel it light up the dark like a shooting star or an emergency flare.

We perched on the end of the bed, twisted around each other, kissing like teenagers, although not the teenager I had been myself, and I could almost see a neon light blinking the word DESIRE above us. I desired him. I desired him like I had never desired anything before ever in my life. And because of our cellular bonding, I knew he desired me.

And then we were lying down and I could feel his weight on top of me, his hips on my hips, his thighs on my thighs, his chest on my chest, his tongue on my neck and the power of him, the good health of him, was suddenly too much to bear. I was damaged goods, in more ways than one, and he deserved better. Better, younger, stronger, other.

‘No!’ I cried and turned my head away. ‘No.’

We lay there panting, then I pushed him off, sat up, buttoned my shirt, bit my aching lips, and ignored my invisible quivering.

Will stayed on the bed. I couldn’t look at him but I could see out the corner of my eye that he was lying on his side, up
on one elbow.

I would have thought he would be embarrassed or apologetic, but he wasn’t.

‘But why not?’ he asked, with almost laughably polite curiosity.

I ran my fingers through my hair and straightened my collar.

‘Florence, why not?’ He reached for my elbow and I was amazed I didn’t burst into flames at his touch. ‘There’s something there, you know there is.’

Why was I being tortured like this? What woman in the world did not pray to God to be sent a man who looked and felt like Will and who said such things? But to be sent
this
man on
this
day? Someone somewhere was having a huge laugh at my expense. Someone somewhere knew that today was not the day to have sex with the man I was meant to be with.

If I had sex right now with the man I was meant to be with and I got pregnant then I would die and leave him with a poor little motherless baby. Although this was a slim chance because I was old and my ovaries were buggered and my body was riddled with some disease that no doubt ate pregnancy hormones for breakfast, it was still not a chance I could take. Even if I didn’t get pregnant I would still die and leave him anyway. And the fact of the matter was I couldn’t do that. Because if the shoe was on the other foot, if Will died and left me I would not want to survive without him. I knew now what it was like to be left and just imagining leaving Will, even for a really good reason like being dead, tore a piece from my heart and I couldn’t do it.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, covering my face, shaking my head. ‘I’m so sorry.’

He sat up then and took me in his arms, rocking me gently
and resting his perfect chin on the top of my head.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s too much for you, Florence. It’s just all too much. And too soon. There’s time,’ he said, in a lullaby voice. ‘There’s plenty of time.’

Only now I didn’t believe him.

She tasted just the way I’d imagined. Like chocolate, but sort of floral. I’m not much good when it comes to flowers so I couldn’t exactly pinpoint it but there was definitely a hint of something rose-like, I think, or maybe lavender. It was a very feminine taste, anyway. Not girly, not even womanly, just feminine in all the best ways I could possibly imagine.

I shouldn’t have kissed her, I kicked myself afterwards, it really was too soon, but it’s just that the moment seemed so right. And a woman doesn’t kiss back like that, with her whole entire body, with everything she has, unless the moment is right. I’m sure of it.

But something was holding her back. The thing that had her holed up in her room in the first place, I suppose. It wasn’t Harry, or Monty, or Crystal, or the construction problems. It was something else.