and left a message explaining that I needed replacement medicine. Augmentin. Because I’d made a mistake. I explained that I needed it as soon as possible and perhaps he, being parent to a kid who’d need antibiotics on a regular basis, might have a spare bottle in the back of a cupboard.
Then I drove towards Hampstead.
I got his text message. Beep, beep, at a set of traffic lights, red. I checked it. It was his full address followed by a cross: a kiss, a hug perhaps?
Green, go, and up, up into leafy Hampstead where strong sun had followed the day’s earlier rain and people had probably bunked off, escaping the dry air of the office onto the heath because how amazing did this day turn out to be? Wandering around, sweating through a film of sun cream, holding hands or playing football. Resting against grassy banks or standing outside pubs, dewy pints in hand. Nuts in glasses, chips in bowls. Nothing else to do for the evening but talk and laugh.
The last time I’d been in this neck of the woods was visiting my almost-friend Julia, who lived nearby in Gospel Oak. We’d met while we were both pregnant. Her baby was born a day after mine, we had the same make of buggy and a shared taste for romantic comedies. It should have been the start of something beautiful.
The last time I’d seen her, we’d met on the heath with our babies, and, for about fifteen minutes, it was all I had hoped for; all smiles and sunglasses and normal talk about breastfeeding and TV binges and bad sleep and I thought well this is going to be fine, I don’t need to tell her about Mia. Mia had been diagnosed a week earlier.
But then she said her baby had a cold and that the doctor had prescribed saline drops to put in his nose and wasn’t that wrong because you weren’t supposed to give a baby salt like, ever?
When I swallowed it was like there was a big round pebble stuck in my gullet. Looking back, I should have turned the pram around and gone home but I kept walking with Julia at my side, clinging to the day.
Soon enough Mia needed feeding and I had to stop the pram and get her medicine. Julia saw me prepare it all and although she didn’t comment, because we didn’t know each other well enough for that, I did think: perhaps I should tell her about Mia’s CF anyway? Maybe if I share it all with her she’ll reciprocate by telling me she’s in an abusive relationship, or that she’s dying: something terrible like that. We might have a motherhood of shared loves, shared heartaches, that kind of thing.
But when I told her all she said was: Gosh, I’m sorry and: Is there a cure?
And I said: No. There is no cure.
Then she fell silent and she had to look down at her shoes trimmed with scarlet, which only made me feel bad for her so I said something like, It’s not as bad as it sounds because medical science is very hopeful in the current climate. Which seemed to make her feel better.
We pushed our prams around the lake and I wondered about the fountains spraying bacteria into the air. What does a single bacterium weigh anyway? Do they float like pollen or sink like fish eggs?
Julia confided that her best friend’s middle child had recently been diagnosed with asthma.
Did that count?
No, Julia, it did not.
On the far side of the heath the roads were broad with gaps between each sprawling, wide-fronted residence: some gated, others hedged. I found his road easily. No house numbers, just names. His was The Cedars.
I parked on the road, wound down the window, breathed an early evening air that was still thick with summer warmth.
The driveway to his black-and-white house was big enough to have a garden with a shed in the front. The shed was painted pale grey and guarded a side path that, I imagined, led to something landscaped and lush – space enough for a dozen picnic blankets in the sun. A place for watering cans and wine bottles, teapots and teepees. I pictured a woman lying there, her face towards that sun, hair fanned like a halo. His hand stroking her forehead, or maybe holding her there.
Even as I stood at his doorstep, even as I rang the bell that trilled like an electric bird caught in a brass cage, I didn’t know what I would say. Richard had a wife, and a daughter I couldn’t be near; whose air I didn’t want to breathe. I tried to remember the rules for cross infection. Was it twelve feet between patients? And no shaking hands. A distance to leave between us.
What if she answered the door? What if she spoke and the air carrying her words wafted an infection that stuck to my clothes, perched in the strands of my hair? What if I carried it home to Mia’s skin as I bowed my head to feed her, to kiss her?
I stepped back abruptly and turned to walk away when I heard, ‘Cath.’
It wasn’t a question and there was no surprise in his voice. It was a statement, said like I’d been standing in front of him, all day.
When I turned around I saw that there was no surprise in his eyes, in the creases around them or the circles under them. His mouth was a gentle smile which suggested I was not a hindrance, not a hindrance at all in fact.
‘I’m so sorry to interrupt you,’ I said. ‘I left Mia’s medicines out in the heat. I forgot to put them back in the fridge and they won’t work for her now …’
‘I know, I listened to your message. I can help. It’s nice to see you.’ He smiled. ‘You look …’ I didn’t know how I looked. I hadn’t checked for a long time, not since before I’d got ready to go to the supermarket with Mum that afternoon. Suddenly I was conscious of what I might look like; the tangled hair, the mascara that had probably run, the eyes all puffed and glazed with tears.
But he smiled like he didn’t mind any of it. ‘You look like you’ve just woken up.’
For a moment we stood there – him inside his house, me on the doorstep – listening to the sounds of fun in the background. A music track with a sing-song voice, bass and drums, a party popper, laughter, the high pitch of a woman’s voice. And then he was stepping over the threshold, quickly, to me, and pulling the front door to, slowly and silently – as if he were trying not to wake a sleeping baby.
‘Dinner. I’d ask you in, but …’
‘No, God, no, thank you—’
‘Believe it or not it’s only the three of us in there. We try and make sure we eat together once a week, on a Sunday usually, because things get so busy. There’s school, treatments, work and the charity. Rachel, that’s my daughter’ – he said it like I’d forgotten, but I’d remembered – ‘she likes to get out the party poppers and streamers. And she loves her music. Sometimes we save time and she uses party blowers as part of her physio. Like now, can you hear? You have to blow through them really hard to get your lungs moving.’
‘Sounds like a lot of fun,’ I said, imagining the scarlet and emerald shine of coned party hats, a pot roast, wine, talk and laughter. And the muted and colourless dinners I’d had with Dave since we tried to make a family.
‘It is fun,’ he smiled. ‘But it’s also loud. I could do with a break. Come with me.’
‘Are you sure? I don’t want to take you away from your family. I need, I only need …’
But he took me by the arm and led me towards the entrance of the grey shed. I hesitated at the threshold, looked up at the trees – all willowed and gentle, their leaves like black paper cut-outs against the darkening blue of the sky – and felt him stand behind me, for a moment, as if he too felt the shape of another person between us.
‘Cath?’ He said my name again, this time like he’d read it from the engraving on a precious antique. Curious about its provenance. Amazed that its shape had survived time.
I stepped out of the twilight and into the darkness of the shed where I breathed damp wood and engine oil. He grabbed me abruptly, painfully, by the elbow before I even knew I was falling, over a coiled snake of hose on the floor.
‘I’m sorry, I … There was …’ My hand