Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart (30 page)

Cynthia shrugged. “You’re breathtakingly late,” she went on, “even for you.”

“I’m sorry,” Sylvia began. “There was a problem with the buses.”

But Cynthia cut her off with a haughty wave. “Oh Syl,” she said, “spare me the tedious details
please
.”

The small group of people gathered around Cynthia watched this exchange with faint amusement. As if abruptly aware of her audience, Cynthia turned to them and announced, “My sibling, Sylvia.”

Sylvia felt herself beginning to flush. This was simply ghastly; she should never have come. She smiled foolishly at the onlookers – three extremely thin women of varying ages all with extraordinary haircuts and a quite ridiculously effeminate young man – and waited for Cynthia to introduce them but she didn’t. She said disdainfully, “Well, take a look at my paintings Syl and let me know what you think of them.” She laughed and turned away.

Sylvia plunged towards the back of the gallery where there was a table with drinks. She helped herself to a glass of Buck’s Fizz and downed it in one go. Feeling at a loss with nothing in her hands, she took another one and began to move slowly along the walls.

One of the thin women from Cynthia’s entourage appeared next to her and introduced herself: “Chloe Butt,
Art Review
.”

Sylvia smiled embarrassedly. She took a gulp of her drink to fortify herself against whatever was coming.

The woman smiled back, wolfishly. “May I ask you a few questions?” She peered at Sylvia’s glass. “That’s looking a bit empty. May I get you a refill?”

Sylvia tried to make her escape while Chloe Butt was at the bar but she pursued Sylvia and caught up with her at the far end of the room, holding out another very full glass of Buck’s Fizz. Her expression, Sylvia thought, was like the wicked stranger offering a child a sweet in a story. But that didn’t stop Sylvia fortifying herself some more with another almighty gulp.

“So tell me,” Chloe Butt began and Sylvia was alarmed to see her taking out some sort of little hand-held computer, “would you say you and your sister were close?”

Sylvia laughed a bit too loudly. “What do
you
think? Did it look like that to you?”

Chloe Butt asked, “Would you say your relationship was conflictual?”

Sylvia laughed again, this time a little wildly. She took another slug of her drink and, as she searched for an adjective artistically to describe her relationship with Cynthia, she realised that she was not tongue-tied anymore; the Buck’s Fizz had loosened her tongue and made her in fact extraordinarily eloquent.

Travelling back to Maida Vale on the bus afterwards, she kept giggling naughtily as she remembered Chloe Butt’s pretentious questions and her own outspoken answers. She had told Chloe Butt all about their childhood rivalry: the pinches and the hair-pulling, the spit in favourite puddings, the stolen dolls. She had told her about the time Cynthia believed that Sylvia had thrown
her first high heels into a pond and then pretended it had been an accident and how Cynthia had virtually set fire to Sylvia’s first perm. She had told her about the adder.

The paintings from the exhibition kept careering past her, inducing vertigo with the motion of the bus: dizzy puce and mauve canvases full of torment. Only one stood out. Chloe Butt had pointed it out to her: a wretched-looking, bedraggled lilac bird cupped in a pair of protective but pecked hands – and hadn’t that one been called “Sylvia”?

It was only when she got off the bus on the corner of Sutherland Avenue and the cool of the evening revived her a little that Sylvia began to wonder queasily if maybe she had not gone a little too far. Cynthia was her flesh and blood after all and, besides, her revenge would be terrible. She must ring Chloe Butt first thing in the morning, she had her card in her bag, didn’t she and tell her not to print a word of it.

She was distracted from this worry by the unexpected message she found on her answering machine. She had feared, when she saw the red message light flashing, that it would be some problem involving Jeremy and Anand. But she didn’t recognise the voice on the recording and she had to press “replay” and listen to the message all over again before she realised, in her befuddled state, who the voice must be and why he was calling her.

“Good evening,” the voice began politely. “This is a message for Mrs Sylvia Garland.” The caller had a cultured, beautifully enunciated male voice. “My name is Siggy Greenborough. I’m calling you on behalf of my sister Ruth
who is seriously ill in hospital. Could you please call me as soon as possible on 078 something, something something something zero? Thank you so much. Goodbye.”

Sylvia lurched for the replay button to listen to the message again and to take down Siggy’s number. But in her haste, she accidentally pressed the wrong button and a few moments later she discovered to her horror that she had erased the message completely.

It was hard not to imagine that she was being punished for her mischief in the gallery. But fortunately, an hour later – by which time, in floods of tears, she had telephoned every London hospital she could think of but not found Ruth – Siggy rang again.

“Good evening,” he began, rather formally. “Is that Mrs Garland?” And Sylvia was so hugely relieved, she nearly shrieked, “Yes! Yes it is!”

“This is Siggy Greenborough,” he said gravely, as if she hadn’t shrieked at all. “So we meet finally on the phone, if not in person.”

“Well, yes,” said Sylvia.

“My sister is very ill Mrs Garland,” Siggy said sorrowfully. “It seems she has had a stroke. She has been taken to St Mary’s Hospital. I’m afraid she’s only barely conscious. She is in the intensive care unit. She keeps saying your name.”

“My name?” Sylvia repeated in astonishment.

“Yes,” Siggy answered wonderingly. “Your name: ‘Sylvia’. She is partially paralysed but she keeps saying ‘Sylvia’.”

“Should I come right away?” Sylvia asked. Shamefacedly, she imagined herself unsteady and smelling of drink in the intensive care unit. She imagined the baby brother looking her up and down – blotchy red face, smudged make up – and wondering what on earth his sister saw in her.

“That is extremely kind of you,” Siggy answered. “I’m not sure what to suggest. It’s terribly late, isn’t it? I don’t feel I should drag you across town in the middle of the night.”

“No,” Sylvia said firmly. “If Ruth is asking for me, of course I must come right away.” She squinted at her wristwatch. “I’ll call a taxi. I should be there within the hour.”

She washed her face and made herself a restorative cup of tea while she waited for the taxi. But when she got to the hospital, Siggy wasn’t there. The nurse on duty outside the intensive care unit passed on his message; since patients in the ICU were only allowed to have one visitor at a time, Mr Greenborough had just nipped out to get a breath of fresh air.

Although Sylvia stayed at Ruth’s bedside for nearly an hour, Siggy didn’t come back. Ruth lay with her eyes closed, her face fallen in, hooked up to a frightening collection of tubes and machines. It didn’t seem to Sylvia that she was capable of saying anything. When she finally decided to get up and leave, she patted Ruth’s cold hand gently and said to her, “So I’m off now dear but I’ll be back in the morning. Chin up.”

She realised that Siggy’s phone call and her visit must
both have been based on a complete misunderstanding because Ruth stirred, one of her eyelids flickered but the name she mouthed was not Sylvia but quite clearly Siggy.

Everything just seemed to go from bad to worse. At the beginning of July, Jeremy told her that the divorce had finally come through. Sylvia imagined that a page would now be turned and the horrid interim period of wrangling over every little thing would come to an end. After all, a divorce was an agreement of sorts, wasn’t it? Now they could hopefully each go their separate way and stop fighting over every single second she and Jeremy got to spend with Anand.

What happened instead was worse than Sylvia’s worst imaginings. There had been vague discussions of summer holiday plans which she didn’t like the sound of at all; it seemed Smita was making good her threat to take Anand to Disneyland. Naisha was coming along too. Sylvia wondered desperately what on earth she could do to counteract such an intense period of exclusive exposure to Smita and Naisha. Obviously many of the experiences Anand would enjoy too: the aeroplane, the rides and roundabouts at Disneyland, the easy infantile aspects of American life. He might turn his nose up at her big garden and the aquarium when he came back. Sylvia worried but she came up with an idea which she thought might do the trick. She went and chose for Anand his own little bright blue wheelie case. It had on it the smiling face of a bottle-nosed dolphin. He would trundle it happily everywhere
and it would remind him daily of his other grandma, the main one, waiting faithfully for him in London. Doubtless Smita would disapprove of the dolphin suitcase; it wouldn’t go with all her designer luggage. But Anand would cling on to it loyally and refuse to leave it behind and Smita would be stuck with it, gaudy, grinning, a doubtless infuriating daily reminder of her former mother-in-law.

Sylvia took comfort in the suitcase. She had no idea what she herself would do during the long month of August when they would be away. She still visited Ruth from time to time but you couldn’t really have a proper conversation with her anymore, poor dear. These days, Heather was often not much better. As for Jeremy, they still couldn’t spend more than twenty minutes together without getting on each other’s nerves. How had it come about that the only person in the world with whom she really wanted to spend time was less than five years old?

A week before Anand and Smita and Naisha were due to leave for Florida, Jeremy turned up on Sylvia’s doorstep one night, unannounced and in the most pitiful state. His hair was a mess, his clothes were scruffy and when he came through the dark hall into the living room, she could see that he had been crying or maybe drinking.

“Smita has just told me the most horrible thing,” he burst out. “I don’t know, I don’t know –”

He sat down heavily on the sofa and covered his face with his hands.

“What?” Sylvia cried out. “What? Tell me. Is Anand alright?”

Jeremy nodded, without taking his hands away from his face. “It’s not that.”

“What?” Sylvia gibbered. “What?” She longed to say, “For goodness’ sake, Jeremy, pull yourself together, sit up straight and spit it out” but he was obviously too far gone for that.

She sat down beside him and, very gingerly, laid her hand on his arm. “What’s the matter?” she asked gently. “Tell me dear.”

Slowly, Jeremy lifted his head. He looked at her as if she were a ghost. He opened his mouth once and then shut it again before he spoke. “Smita wants to go and live in America,” he said.

The room seemed to darken. Sylvia thought she gasped but she couldn’t hear anything beyond the ringing in her ears. For a few seconds, she teetered on the edge of a black void until Jeremy yanked her back by putting his hand on her shoulder and saying “Mum? Mum?”

Sylvia summoned all her failing strength. “You have to stop her,” she said. But, even as she said it, she knew it was no good; when had Jeremy ever managed to stop Smita doing anything? He would fail this time the way he had failed every single other time. Smita was all-powerful and Smita would get her way.

Exactly as she feared, Jeremy shrugged. “How can I stop her?”

“Well,” Sylvia said sternly. “Isn’t there something in the divorce, surely?”

“No,” Jeremy said. “No, there isn’t. She’s been very clever. As you would expect. She’s managed to keep all this
under wraps until the divorce went through. Otherwise I might have been able to do something, stop her taking him out of the country or something. But she kept the whole thing secret until it was too late.”

Sylvia asked uneasily, “What thing?”

Jeremy grimaced. “Oh, she’s got it all worked out. Apparently, she’s been having a thing with this guy in her New York office for the past year or so. Maybe even longer; how would
I
know? Anyway this guy, he’s her boss, he’s divorced too, he’s got a little girl a bit older than Anand. She’s got this idea they could be a perfect ready-made family. They have so much in common, she says.”

Sylvia tried to control her rising panic. She bitterly regretted her gift of the little blue suitcase with which Anand would trot happily aboard the aeroplane which would carry him away. She quavered, “What if they don’t come back from Florida?”

“Oh, there’s no danger of that,” Jeremy answered. “Smita never does anything which she hasn’t thought through thoroughly beforehand. The whole trip’s a trial apparently.
He’s
coming to Florida with
his
little girl and they’re going to see how the children get on together and how they both react to their parent’s new partner. That’s why Naisha is going along too; she wants to look over her prospective new son-in-law.”

Sylvia felt a sharp pang of jealousy; how long had Naisha been in the know?

“Well, I think the whole thing sounds like an absolute nightmare for Anand,” she pronounced. “How can Smita think of inflicting such a thing on her own child?”