Mum? In the green envelope?’ She was making conversation as much as anything else.
‘Oh, that. It was a card from Jackie at work.’ Barbara nodded towards the fireplace.
‘Why didn’t you put it up?’
‘I did.’ Her tone was placid, bemused.
‘You can’t have. Those were both here when we came in. I looked at them when Alys was saying goodnight to you and Dad.’
‘It’s the one there with the irises. You must have made a mistake.’
‘But—’
‘You must have made a mistake, Helen.’
Barbara’s gaze met Helen’s: calm, but commanding nevertheless. She couldn’t push it any further. But then why should it even cross her mind to pick an argument over a missing card? It was odd, thought Helen, what coming home could do to you.
*
‘Did the doctor make Nana Barbara better?’ asked Barney, in the car after Helen had collected them from the Harrisons. She was taken aback that he’d remembered where she had been; her little boy was growing up so quickly.
‘Well,’ she began, ‘the doctor can’t make Nana Barbara better straight away. But he did explain everything they’re going to do to try to make her better. She’ll be having an operation soon. Do you know what that is?’
Barney shook his head solemnly.
‘They give you some medicine so you go to sleep and can’t feel anything and then they open you up and have a look inside and try to take out whatever it is that’s making you ill. When they are done, they stitch you back together again as good as new.’
‘So then will she be better?’
‘Well, then she’ll have to recover from the operation, because it’s very tiring. Then they’ll give her some special medicine. And then she’ll hopefully be better.’
In fact, the prognosis had not been particularly rosy. Mr Eklund, the Swedish surgeon who would be operating on Barbara, had gently informed them that the biopsy had confirmed a malignancy in the left breast, and there were pre-cancerous changes in the right one, too. He couldn’t be sure how far it had spread before operating, but he thought the most likely scenario was a Stage 3 diagnosis, which would give her, very roughly, a 50/50 chance after chemotherapy. It was a lot to take on board.
‘Shall I give Nana one of my drawings?’
‘I think that would be a lovely thing to do, darling. Look, I’m just going to call in here …’ They were passing an out-of-town shopping place. The parking was easy and the kids would tolerate a quick trip in. ‘I want to get Nana a new nightdress for the hospital.’
When they got back, Barbara’s delight seemed out of proportion to the gift.
‘That was so thoughtful of you, Helen. You’ve really cheered me up.’
‘And I’ve called work – the kids and I will stay until after the operation. No arguments. Getting you through this is the most important thing at the moment.’
The glisten on Barbara’s eyes was as close as Helen had ever seen her to tears, and the thought of it almost made her well up herself. This Barbara was so different from the Barbara of last night, so hostile and cold over a stupid thing like that card. But then her mum always had been a conundrum. You never knew what you were going to get with her. That way you didn’t get too close.
She had plenty of practical issues to worry about, what with trying to hand work stuff over remotely and making a list of the things she’d need to buy for the kids, but still, somehow, Helen found the image of the green envelope was bothering her. She tried to blame it on tiredness, or perhaps her brain was looking for some sort of distraction from the hideous news at the hospital. But what could it be and why would Barbara lie about it? She kept drifting back to those questions.
Much later, when everyone else was in bed, Helen decamped to the back room to reply to some work emails and stuck on the TV for a bit of background noise. It was only when she finished and went to switch the TV off that she noticed the slim edge of green pushed to the bottom of a pile of papers on the sideboard.
She slid the top section of the pile aside and, sure enough, the green line turned out to be the edge of the small envelope that she’d seen on the doormat. The front simply said ‘Barbara’, written in a nondescript hand with, as she’d thought, black felt tip. The letter looked as though it had never been sealed, and the paper, cheap and green, matching the envelope, slid out easily.
HELLO BARBARA.
CANCER IS TOO GOOD FOR YOU.
DON’T WORRY – I’LL BE WITH YOU ALL THE WAY.
JUST LIKE YOU DESERVE.
JENNIFER
Helen’s hands started to shake; the harsh New York laughter from the chat show on television seemed to be taunting her. This was a joke, surely? Yet, on the other hand, it was no kind of joke at all.
She reread the thing twice or more, but her mind couldn’t process the words. Who was Jennifer? And what could she mean? Whatever it was, the intention behind it was obviously malevolent. But could it be serious? She started to look at the note itself, mechanically noting the flimsy copier paper, the black felt tip, the careful capitals with a few wobbles – she guessed that the author was using their wrong hand. But none of it took her any further.
After a few moments, the credits music startled her into action. She refolded the note and replaced it in the envelope. Once she’d tucked it away, back under a building society statement, she could almost believe she’d imagined it. She focused in turn on the graduation pictures on the wall and the wedding-present china shepherdess that Barbara hated. This was the normal world. It was more than normal – it was the world of dull, petty suburbia that Helen had escaped. It had nothing to do with threatening notes from anonymous villains. She resolved to confront Barbara again the next day. No matter how frosty or secretive her mother could be, she couldn’t simply brush off something like this.
Helen
The thing about Darren was he’d always had a knack for giving people what they didn’t know they wanted. It occurred to Helen later that she probably shouldn’t have been so shocked when he finally managed to turn that talent into hard cash. Perhaps the more surprising thing, she mused, as she tried on her third little black dress and frowned hopelessly at the mirror again, was that it had taken him quite so long. Austerity ground on, and yet here she was, getting ready for a blowout Christmas party that would show the world just how damn successful Darren Harrison was.
The man himself, immaculate in Paul Smith, stuck his head round the bedroom door.
‘Are you getting there, Hels? The car will be here in twenty.’
Apparently they were too grand for minicabs these days.
‘Okay, thanks, I’m just going to swap this for my black one.’
‘I thought you’d got something new during the week?’ His brow creased slightly, with just the hint of a frown.
‘I didn’t find anything.’
The truth was, she’d only managed an hour to dash into a couple of local shops and, ten months after giving birth to Alys, she still found trying clothes on a miserable experience.
The business was called Date Night. Darren had started putting on these ironic telly-themed singles nights, having got the idea after watching one too many cheap nostalgic box sets. It was the seventh or eighth golden business brainwave he’d had, whilst her dull but steadily more lucrative career in financial-services HR supported them both. Finally, this one had stuck.
In