About the Book
About the Author
Also by Anna Maxted
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Helen Bradshaw, 26, has a lot to get over. A dogsbody job on a women’s magazine. An attraction to unsuitable men. Being five foot one. Driving an elderly Toyota.
She is about to ditch the infuriating Jasper when she hears the news that will change her life. Her father has collapsed with a massive heart attack. Initially Helen thinks of this as an interruption in her already chaotic lifestyle. But with his death everything starts to fall apart around her – her relationship, her mother, even her cat. Her flatmate Luke has the tact of a traffic warden with toothache, her friend Tina is in love with her new man, her landlord Marcus is in love with himself, and, after the tequila incident, it looks as though Tom the vet will be sticking to Alsatians.
Seems like Helen will be dealing with this one herself…
Anna Maxted lives in London with her husband Phil and their three sons Oscar, Conrad and Casper. Anna read English at Cambridge and works as a freelance journalist. She is also the author of the international bestsellers, Getting Over It, Running in Heels, Behaving Like Adults, Being Committed and A Tale of Two Sisters.
Running In Heels
Behaving Like Adults
Being Committed
To Leslie Maxted
So many people to thank: Phil Robinson for his love and jokes, Mary Maxted for courage and insight, Leonie Maxted for Russians and encouragement, Caren Gestetner for kindness, Jonny Geller for being the best agent ever, Lynne Drew for exquisite editing, Andy McKillop for excusing the missing chapters, Wendy Bristow for friendship, Emma Dally for pushing me into it, Jo Kessel for knowing everyone, e.g., Dr Michael Kessel, Dr Maurice Cohen for noticing the full catheter, Mark Curtis for explaining probate, Jeanette King for wisdom, Andy Robinson for the HK information, Evelyn Smith for expecting a novel from me since I was eight, Daniel Silver who doesn’t wear Joop!, Jason P. Worsnip for being fabulous. Also enormous thanks to: everyone at Random House, Laura Dubiner, Mandi Norwood, Margaret Carruthers, Sarah Vassel, Heather Blackmore, Sybil Sipkin, Paul Bern, Paul ‘TCB’ Burke, Hudson and Gina Britton, Sasha Slater, Anna Moore, Lisa Sussman, Grub Smith, Alicia Drake-Reece, Martin Raymond, Dr Raj Persaud, Christabel Hilliard, Lynne Randell, Women In Need, Sam Leek, and James Buchanan.
WHEN IT HAPPENED, I wasn’t ready for it. I expected it about as much as I expect to win Miss World and be flown around the planet and forced to work with screaming children. Which is to say, it was a preposterous notion and I never even considered it. And, being so awesomely unprepared I reacted like Scooby Doo chancing upon a ghost. I followed my instinct, which turned out to be hopelessly lost and rubbish at map-reading.
Maybe I was too confused to do the right thing. After all, the right thing rarely involves fun and mostly means making the least exciting choice, like waiting for the ready-cook pizza you’ve torn from the oven to cool to under 200 degrees before biting into it. Or deciding not to buy those sexy tower-heeled boots because they’ll savage your shins, squeeze your toes white, lend you the posture of Early Man, and a vast chunk of your salary will moulder away at the back of your wardrobe. If we always made the smartest choice we’d never get laid.
That said, the day it all began, I came close to making a very smart choice. Here it is, bravely scrawled in black ink, in my blue Letts diary:
I am dumping Jasper, tomorrow.
Words that whisk me back to another time. Barely one year ago but it seems like an age. Yet July 16th remains as sharp in my mind as if it was today. Maybe it is today. And this is how today begins:
I am dumping Jasper, tomorrow.
He deserves it for being called Jasper, for a start. And for a finish, he falls several thousand feet below acceptable boyfriend standard.
Funny thing is, at the age of five I knew what that was. I was dating the boy across the road and I routinely ate his tea before embarking on mine. I also tantrumed until he surrendered his Fisher Price wheely dog. And I refused to play in his bedroom because it smelt of wee. Then I grow up and start taking crap.
Unfortunately, Jasper is beautiful. Tall, which I like. The only time I’ve had dealings with a short man is when my overbearing friend Michelle set me up on a blind date. He rang the bell, I wrenched open the door, and looked down. And I’m five foot one. Two Weebles wibble wobbling their way down the road. Michelle’s excuse was that when she met him he was sitting down. So Jasper, at six foot, is a delight. I wear five-inch heels so he doesn’t notice the discrepancy. He has floppy brown hair, eyes so paradise blue it’s incredible he actually uses them to see and, my favourite, good bone structure. And despite being the most selfish man I’ve ever met – quite a feat – he’s a tiger in the sack.
I’m on my way there now. Sackbound. For one last bout. Except I’m stuck in traffic on Park Road. There appear to be roadworks with no one doing any work. I’m trapped in my elderly grey Toyota Corolla (a cast-off from my mother who was thrilled to be rid of it, please don’t think I’d go out and buy one even if I had the money) and trying to stay calm. In the last twenty minutes I’ve rolled forward a total of five inches. I might ring Jasper to say I’ll be late. The road converges on approximately fifty sets of lights and everyone is barging – as much as you can barge when you’re stationary. It’s 2.54. I’m due at Jasper’s at 3.30. Great. My mobile is out of batteries. I pick the skin on my lip. Right. I’m phoning him.
I assess the gridlock – yes, it’s gridlocked – leap out of the car, dash across the road to the phonebox, and dial Jasper’s number. Brrrt brrt. Brrrt brrt. Where is he? He can’t have forgotten. Shit, the traffic’s moving. I ring his mobile – joy! he answers. ‘Jasper Sanderson.’ Never says hello like a normal person. He’s so executive. I hate it but I love it. He sounds suspiciously out of breath.
‘Why are you out of breath?’ I say sharply.
‘Who’s this?’ he says. Jesus!
‘Your girlfriend. Helen, remember?’ I say. ‘Listen, I’m going to be late, I’m stuck in traffic. Why are you out of breath?’
‘I’m playing tennis. Bugger, I forgot you were coming over. It’ll take me a while to get home. Spare key’s under the mat.’
He beeps off. ‘You’re such an original,’ I say sourly, and look up to see the gridlock has cleared and swarms of furious drivers are hooting venomously at the Toyota as they swerve around it.
Forty minutes later I arrive at Jasper’s Fulham flat. I ring the bell, in case he’s already home, but silence. I kick the mat to scare off spiders, gingerly lift a corner with two fingers, and retrieve the key. Ingenious, Jasper! The place is a replica of his parents’ house. There’s even a silver framed picture of his mother as a young girl on the hall table – and a right prissy miss she looks too. Happily, he’s never introduced me. His most heinous interior crime, however, is a set of ugly nautical paintings that dominate the pale walls. Thing is with Jasper, just when I think I can’t take any more he does something irresistible, such as iron the collar and cuffs of his shirt and go to work hiding the crumpled rest of it under his jacket. I poke the scatter of post to check for correspondence from other women and see the green light of his answer machine flashing for attention. Jasper calling to announce a further delay. I press play.
As the machine whirrs, the key turns in the lock. Jasper flings open the door and I turn, smiling, to face him. Oof he’s gorgeous. I’ll dump him next week. This week, he’s mine to have and to hold and to feel and to feel bad about. He’s like eating chocolate for breakfast – makes you feel sluttish, you know you shouldn’t, you ought to stick to what’s wholesome but Weetabix is depressing even with raisins in it. Jasper is un-nutritious and delicious. He opens his eminently kissable mouth to say ‘Hiya babe!’ but is beaten to it by a high silvery voice that echoes chirpily over the tiled floor and bounces gaily from one eggshell wall to the other.
‘Hiya Babe!’ trills the voice. ‘It’s me! Call me! Kiss! kiss!’
The smile freezes on my face. Jasper and I both stare at the answer machine which, having imparted its treachery, is now primly silent. Knowing the answer, I croak, à la Quentin Tarantino, ‘Who the fucking fuck was that?’
Jasper is not amused. If this were Hollywood there would be a muscle twitching in his jaw and his chiselled face would turn pale under its caramel tan. As it is, he carefully places his sportsbag on the floor, and rests his tennis racquet neatly on top of it. I feel a rip of fury tear through my chest and I want to snatch up the Prince and wallop him. At least he was playing tennis, although he’s so damn sneaky I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an elaborate cover. He gazes at my red fear-ruffled face and says smoothly, ‘My ex. She likes to keep in touch.’
I’ll bet she does.
‘When did you last see her?’ I snarl.
‘A week ago,’ he replies. ‘We just talked.’ Ho really.
I’m like Fox Mulder. I want to believe. And Jasper wants me to believe too. He’s tilted his face to a penitent angle. Cute, but from what I know of Jasper, plus the gut-crunching phrase ‘it’s me’ induces scepticism. ‘It’s me’ is as proprietorial as a Doberman guarding a chocolate biscuit. A woman does not ring an ex-boyfriend and say ‘It’s me’ because for all she knows – and she obviously doesn’t – there is now another me. Me.
‘Did you have sex with her?’ I roar.
Jasper looks hurt. ‘Of course I didn’t, Helen,’ he purrs. ‘Louisa calls everyone Babe.’
Names ending in ah. Argh! I narrow my eyes and give him my best shot at a cold stare. The big brave words ‘You’re sacked’ are warm, ready to roll, but they stick, feeble and reluctant, in my throat. Now, I tell myself, is not the moment. Why, he’ll think I’m in love with him! The only decent thing to do is to walk. ‘I’m going home,’ I say huffily. The rat steps gratefully aside. I intend to sweep out in a Gone With The Wind flourish and it’s going to plan until I reach the doorstep and trip. I stumble, and I’m unsure if the snorty-gasp I hear is Jasper not quite trying to suppress mirth but I don’t look back to find out. Face clenched, I stomp down his concrete garden path, plonk into the Toyota, lurch hurtle a three-point turn during which I dent the door of a parked MG, and rattle off into the fading afternoon.
You wanker. You wanker. I wrestle my mobile out of my bag in case he calls grovelling then remember it’s dead. Piece of crap. I am driving as the crow flies. You wanker. I have no intention of gracefully erasing myself from the picture so Louis-ah can steal the scene. I can’t decide if he rutted or refused her. Jasper likes to be in demand. But then he likes to lead a streamlined existence. When he first saw my bedroom he murmured, ‘I think you’ve been burgled.’ He also tells me with pride about the morning he sat next to a bearded guy on the tube and tried to read the Telegraph over his shoulder. The man rustled his property in pique and snapped, ‘Papers! Forty-five pence from the newsagent!’ Jasper replied narkily, ‘Razors! Forty-five pence from the chemist!’ Jasper – unironed shirts aside – likes his life and all that surrounds it to be just so. Shagging his moony old ex would be too messy, it would disrupt his timetable. Then again. You wanker.
She’s reared her smugly head before. A month into our relationship, as I like to call it. Jasper called to say he couldn’t meet as he was staying with his friend Daniel in Notting Hill. Beyond my surprise that Jasper had a friend in Notting Hill, I didn’t question it. We were at that googly-eyed stage where you kiss in public and annoy everyone who is less in lust than you so I trusted him. The next afternoon, he suddenly said, ‘I told you a pack of lies last night.’ What. ‘I . . . I stayed with my ex.’ Turned out he’d missed the last tube home (he doesn’t drive, his most unfanciable trait) and so he’d walked to Kensington and rung on the ex’s doorbell. ‘She was really good about it.’ Good about it! I’m sure she was great about it! Further interrogation revealed that she’d fed him Cornflakes with brown sugar for breakfast. The sly witch – she was trying to nurture him! Happily, she was too needy to appeal and so a large bowl of cereal was wasted. But maybe she’s sharpened up. And maybe my appeal is blunted. Oops, my personality is showing.
The first weeks were glossy enough. I met Jasper at a book launch – for a paperback sex manual. I’d gone from work with Lizzy and Tina. Partly because Laetitia our misnomered features editor didn’t want to go and it is my job as features skivvy on Girltime magazine to pick up her slack. And also because Tina, the fashion assistant, and I are hardcore champagne tarts – anything for a free chug of Krug (or Asti, let’s face it). And although Lizzy is health & beauty assistant in professional and personal life and her drink of choice is soya milk – she’s so sweet, really walks the talk – she can be persuaded. We twisted her well-toned arm.
The launch was in a smelly Soho backstreet. I’d glammed up for the occasion – black trousers, black boots (five inches – that’s the lowest I stoop and not just in the shoe department), black top. The celebrity funeral look. I’d also smeared a blop of metallic silver glitter on my cheekbones. It looked scarily Abba-ish but that evening I felt quite strongly I could not attend the launch without it. I’d have felt awkward and incomplete. The older I get and the more tediously responsible I’m forced to be the more I hanker for tokens of childhood. I now own: a tiny pink zippy purse with coloured beads that you itch to pick off. A plastic helicopter that you attach to the ceiling on a string, that whizzes round with flashing red lights. A kaleidoscope. A copy of Elmer by David McKee. A dartboard (well, it’s not a sophisticated pursuit, is it?) And a spoilt kitten named Fatboy.
Usually I don’t talk to people at parties. I survey the hordes of glamorous best friends all gabbling, laughing, bonding in inpenetrable cliques and I want to run away home. I feel my make-up turning shiny, my face creaks from one unsettled expression to another, and I’m the podgy teenager of twelve years ago, complete with dorky specs, a brown satchel and a blue scratchy duffel coat with shark tooth buttons and a huge hood. Now, of course, I’d be a fashion victim. But the Jasper party was different. I was one of a sparkly three-girl group, I glugged two glasses of sparkly wine in the first twenty minutes, and I was smeared in more sparkly glitter than a Christmas fairy. I sparkled! So it was only natural that Jasper appeared before me and offered me a fag.
‘I don’t smoke,’ I said primly. In a flash of brilliance I added coyly, ‘I’m a good girl.’
He didn’t miss a beat. He replied, ‘Well, you look filthy.’
It was the best compliment I’ve ever had. What could I do but shag him out of gratitude?
Jasper was ‘in publishing’ which turned out to mean he wrote press releases for a pipsqueak company based in Hounslow. I, therefore, terrier-torso assistant on Girltime magazine based in Covent Garden, was a great contact. Not that we review many books on Elizabethan sanitation or the indigenous insects of Guatemala but, roughly at the point I looked on his ravishing face and he gazed at my sparkly one, we decided to do business together. For a few weeks I upheld my airbrushed image. I exaggerated the importance of my job. Tina advised me on what to wear, i.e. grey, occasionally. I avoided taking him to the flat. And I edited all trace of squareness from my conversation and pumped up the wacky free-spirit factor. Like Bjork but better dressed. Shameful but it works. Of course, I realised after three days that we had bugger all in common – he called orange juice ‘OJ’ and was stockpiling to put his son through Eton (a tad premature as he didn’t yet have one) – but I don’t like sameyness so it was fine by me.
He likes to be amused so it was fine by him. But sometimes, more recently, I’ve been sure the bubble is at bursting point. We spent an afternoon in the park last Saturday and I swear we had nothing to say to each other. He walked me to my car, and I was certain he was going to end it. Sure he was going to sock it to me sledgehammer straight in that efficient, emotionless, poshboy way – ‘Helen, it’s not working out.’ But he didn’t. He kissed me a breezy goodbye as if nothing was amiss.
I brooded all the way home. I dislike silence. I fear its potentiality. I prefer to fill it with my own voice which inevitably gabbers out something goonish. Last week, I blurted, to a shop assistant offering help: ‘No thanks, I’m just mooching.’ To the receptionist at Lizzy’s health club who enquired how I was: ‘Ready for a bout of exercise.’ To Jasper, horny an hour after lunch at Pizza Express: ‘I think I’m still digesting.’ Sexy lady!
So, as the silences grow, I slowly blow my sassy cover. He doesn’t seem to have twigged, but I feel increasingly uncomfortable. He doesn’t get my jokes and I feel wrong and not right. I am so not right for Jasper and he is so not right for me but he still seems amused by me and he has a decent-sized penis. Breaking up is hard to do. Louisah does not make it easiah.
I swing into Swiss Cottage and begin the three-hour search for a parking space. You’d think no one ever went out around here. Sometime the next day I manage to squeeze the Toyota between a Saab and a Mini an hour’s walk from the flat and start plodding down the road. I’m scrabbling for my keys when the door is wrenched open. My flatmate Luke looks, if possible, even scruffier and wild-eyed than normal.
‘What!’ I sing, to his loud silence. He is regarding me oddly. ‘Jasper’s rung!’ I suggest. ‘I’ve won the lottery! Not a pissy three hundred grand – an eight million rollover! You want a bike and a house! And a trip to Bali – we’ll fly Concorde!’
God knows why Bali, I don’t even like hot countries – I get heat rash if I stand too near the toaster – but Luke’s expression makes me want to keep talking.
He shakes his head. Then he reaches and grasps my upper arm.
‘No, Helen,’ he says. ‘Your mum rang. Your dad. Your dad’s dead.’
WHEN I WAS fifteen and never been kissed (I meant what I said about the duffel coat) I fed the hunger on a gluttonous diet of pre-1970s Mills & Boons. The willowy innocence of these paperback heroines was as far removed from my fat chastity as a diamond from a lump of coal, but nonetheless gave me hope that one day I’d swoon at the sight of – ooh, let’s say a gunfight, and a powerful, masterful, aquiline-nosed businessman would spring from his immaculate car, gather up my flaccid form, and spirit me away to a life of love, happiness, and endless passion.
Sadly, the closest I came to this swooning scenario was when I arose one Sunday feeling doddery, staggered downstairs in my pyjamas, and fainted in the hallway. The loud thud alerted my parents, and my mother grabbed my arms, my father grasped my ankles and together they huffingly hauled their too solid daughter on to the lounge sofa. The most unromantic part of it was that amid the heaving my pyjama bottoms wormed their way downwards and, semiconscious, I was wholly aware that the beginnings of my pubic hair were in full springy view of my dad.
At least, when Luke informs me of my father’s demise I am, like a Mills & Boon heroine, well dressed. Furthermore, Luke keeps hold of my arm so when the words penetrate my skull and whirl crazily around my head and make me dizzy, I sway slightly but remain on my feet.
‘Your dad is dead.’ All that came before this moment hurtles into it. My dad is dead. My father is dead. Daddy is dead. But he isn’t dead! He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead yesterday, or the day before that. He’s been alive ever since I’ve known him. A minute ago, he wasn’t dead. And now he’s dead? Both my parents are alive. That’s how it is. How can my father be dead? Dead is old other people like Frank Sinatra. It doesn’t happen to me. Or my parents. Death. Don’t be mad.
‘Wha-what? When?’ My mouth is a gob of jelly, it’s wobbling all over the place. Poor old Luke looks terrible. He isn’t a drama queen like Michelle – she of the blind date dwarf incident – who probably has wet dreams of imparting news of such import. Breaking anything to anybody is purgatory for Luke. When he broke it to me that he’d just popped into our landlord’s room to borrow a razor and that Fatboy appeared to have done a large pooh in the middle of Marcus’ white duvet he was – until we both killed ourselves laughing – puce and stuttery with the stress of prior knowledge.
This is different. The words pour from him in a torrent. ‘He just collapsed massive heart attack your mother rang she keeps ringing about an hour ago your mobile’s off I didn’t know where you were I thought maybe Jasper but I couldn’t find the number looked in your room but it was a tip I didn’t know where to start I thought of going through the phone bill but I don’t know where Marcus keeps everything I don’t know where he is to ask him she keeps ringing she’s at the hospital she’s really upset I mean really upset you’ve got to call her but they keep saying she’s got to turn off her mobile so if—’ Luke is very worked up and a large fleck of spit lands on my cheek. I surreptitiously try to wipe it off without him noticing. My hand is trembling. It’s too late. Too late to decide not to come home just yet and to drive to Tina to moan about Jasper in blissful not-knowing. Too late to drive to Hampstead and buy a pair of shoes I don’t need in Pied à Terre. Too late. Luke has said the words. They can’t be unsaid. Saying it makes it real. Luke insists on driving me to the hospital.
Both my parents are alive. No, I mean it. My dad is nearly dead. Luke, the berk, got it wrong although – seeing as he spoke to my mother – I can guess how the misunderstanding occurred. Luke swerved into the car park and I ran dippety skippet into Casualty and started babbling at the first uniformed person I saw. She directs me to the relatives’ room next to ‘Resuss’. Resuscitation. Shit. I run down a corridor, past a man stripping sheets off stained mattresses. Then I hear the sound of my mother’s voice and bolt towards it. Oh no, Nana Flo.
‘Helen!’ chokes my mother, and bursts into tears. Nana Flo, who thinks extreme emotion is vulgar and would adore Jasper, looks on disapprovingly. My mother clings to me as if snapping me in half will make it all go away.
Although I am gasping for breath, I manage to wheeze ‘Wa, when did he die?’
At this, my mother flings me from her like a flamenco dancer. ‘He’s not dead yet!’ she shrieks as I stagger to right myself. ‘Oh Maurice! My poor Maurice!’
My mistake. My father is, as we speak, being fiddled with by experts after an almighty heart attack during lunch. As his lunch tends to involve four scrambled eggs – when I know, from Lizzy, that the recommended intake is two per week – this doesn’t greatly surprise me. Also, he smokes like industrial Manchester. My mother, who was upstairs re-doing her make-up, found him slumped and groaning into his plate, egg on face. Being my mother, she wiped the egg off his face with Clarins and – I kid you not – cleaned his teeth, before calling the ambulance. I’m not sure if the teeth cleaning pre-empted her panicked attempt at mouth to mouth resuscitation. I say ‘panicked’ because he was still conscious. Thankfully, he’d shaved this morning and was wearing clean underwear and a nice shirt otherwise the ambulance wouldn’t have been called till tomorrow morning.
There is nothing for us to do, according to some busybody calling herself the A & E sister, until the doctors have finished working on my father. She talks about drips, monitors, oxygen and blood tests, and drops the bombshell that he’s ‘very unwell’. So we sit in the drab peely-walled cafeteria. At least the coffee is filtered. My mother keeps bursting out crying and jumping up to ring everyone she knows. Then she decides she can’t cope with anyone fussing so I have to ring back and dissuade everyone from descending on the hospital.
I gaze at Nana Flo. Shock has drawn her thin mouth even tighter, like a purse string. Her skin is as washed out as her beige nylon dress and her eyes are saggy like a salamander’s. I feel a twist of pity but know better than to voice it. As ever, she converts all anguish into aggression and today, Luke is on the receiving end of it. Nana assumes he’s my boyfriend and is grilling him. ‘Your hair’s too long, it makes you look like a young girl,’ is one of her kinder observations. Her swollen hands are clasped on her lap but not tightly enough to disguise the tremor. And she doesn’t look at me, not once, and I know it’s because she won’t let me see her pain. Indeed, if you weren’t looking for the signs, you’d never think her only son was breathing his last.
I allow Luke to flounder and ignore his pleading glances for assistance. I stare unseeing at the peely walls, and my grandmother’s gravelly voice, usually so penetrating, floats disembodied around me, a vague, scraping, far off sound. Everything feels unreal. Actually, everything feels nothing. I feel hollow. What am I doing here, sitting in a hard orange chair. I should be shagging Jasper. My father should be sitting in his study smoking a cigar and reading the Sunday Times. Parents are just there, a constant, in the background. Wallpaper. Peely walls.
Imminent death – the ultimate in suspense. An excuse to call Jasper and make him feel guilty. For both reasons, my heart is whapping along at 140 beats per minute. At least it is beating. First though, I ask Luke if he’d be sweet enough to go home and feed Fatboy.
He leaps up and cries happily, ‘I’d love to!’ before glancing fearfully at Nana Flo and adding sombrely, ‘Anything I can do to help.’
I give him detailed instructions. ‘Whiskas kitten food, if he won’t eat that, then try him on the Hill’s Science Plan. If he’s really stroppy then open a can of tuna and pour the juice into a bowl, not the oil one, he hates that, it has to be springwater. But don’t let him eat the actual tuna or he’ll be sick.’ Fatboy, while greedy, has a delicate stomach. He pukes up ordinary, expensive cat food. Only the really expensive stuff which isn’t sold in supermarkets and requires a long detour to Pet World stays the distance.
Nana Flo sniffs. ‘Cats,’ she says. ‘Vermin.’
I feel sorry for Nana Flo. That is, I feel sorry for her in general. She finds very little in life to smile about. She’s not at all what you want in a grandmother. No jolly fat legs and a bun, no five pound notes on birthdays, no cooking of mushy pea and poached fish dinners, no letting you plink-plank on her old piano, no talking you through yellow crackly photo albums and buying you sweets behind your parents’ back. She’s the Anti-Grandmother and I suspect she speaks highly of me too. My father – the few times he’s ever spoken about her – rolls his eyes and says she’s had a hard life. Well, excuse me but most old people I know have had a hard life, doesn’t mean they’re all miserable goats. Michelle’s grandmother’s a scream and she worked in a sausage factory for twenty-six years. Think Barbara Cartland but with more make-up. My grandmother just watches television. I leave her to her gloom and run to the payphone.
My conversation with Jasper is infuriating. He starts off with a wry ‘Oh hi, it’s you,’ and I derive brief satisfaction from telling him the news and jerking him out of his indifference. I can’t really believe it myself, can’t believe I’m saying the alien words aloud. So, maybe not that amazingly, Jasper refuses to believe me! He keeps repeating, like a posh Dalek, ‘I’m sure it will be okay.’
I say firmly, ‘No Jasper, he is actually seriously ill,’ but to no avail.
His last offer is ‘Call me tomorrow and tell me how he is.’ After Jasper’s disappointing response I don’t want to speak to anyone else.
Another hour of wall-staring and we return to the relatives’ room next to Resuss. It’s drab, poky, stinks of smoke and is a dead ringer for my sixth-form classroom. Finally, a red-eyed scruffy adolescent in black jeans and a nasty chequered shirt approaches and informs us that my father has been moved to the coronary care unit, and to follow him. The teenager has a stethoscope hanging round his neck, but even so Nana Flo looks like she wants to belt him. The lift ascends to the eleventh floor at the pace of a retarded snail, stopping at every floor. I start giggling. I can’t stop myself. I’m shaking with laughter. I don’t even stop when my mother screams ‘stop it!’ Then, I have the brilliant idea of biting my lip so hard I taste blood. It works. Minutes later, the house officer as he claims to be, stops in front of a wizened old man flat on a bed and it’s a moment before I recognise him.
My father, senior partner, who makes Boss Hogg look like a wimp. My father, the quiet but respected king of every golf club soirée. My father who only ever wears tailored suits. My father who deems nudity on a par with Satanism. My father who only last week told me – via my mother of course – that he thought it was time I moved into a flat of my own and would I like him to advise me on location. This shrunken, helpless creature who lies motionless, bare-chested, attached to a spaghetti of wires, smelling faintly sickly sweetly, pale and hollow-cheeked, rasping, unseeing, in an ugly metal bed. This is my father. He looks fucking dreadful.
While I am mute with shock – although I can’t help thinking this is a week off work at least – my mother is loudly inconsolable. Nana Flo says nothing but she looks at her son, little more than skin stretched tight over a skull, and her hooded eyes glisten. I reluctantly place a hand on her bony shoulder. To my surprise, she pats it. Then I hug my mother, murmur useless words into her ear, and watch her hold my father’s still hand and wail into his sheet. Nana Flo has blinked away the tears and sits silently beside her, like a grouchy angel of death. The adolescent quietly suggests that if we go to the relatives’ room he’ll explain what’s going on, but as my boss Laetitia is always reminding me – demanding direct quotes from the Queen not a Buckingham Palace Press Office clone – you must speak to the organ grinder not the monkey. I run after his retreating back – ‘Excuse me!’ He turns around. ‘I, ah, I don’t mean to be rude,’ I say. ‘But, is it possible to speak to the specialist? To find out what’s going to happen? I mean, how long . . .’
The adolescent sighs and says he’ll fetch the medical registrar. Five minutes later, he returns with a bloke who I am sure is twenty-two, max. He introduces himself as Simon, and he tells us that ‘Dad’s very sick.’ Surprise! Then he explains, in kindergarten language, what a heart attack is. He tells us they’re doing all they can. Very powerful drugs. But so much heart muscle affected. No blood pressure. Kidneys failing. Fluid collecting on lungs. Hard to make a precise estimation. Doesn’t have a crystal ball. Got to take it an hour at a time. To paraphrase, this heart attack was a vicious one. Judging by the woeful look on Simon’s face, my father hasn’t got long to live.
Nana, me, and my mother sit helplessly by my father’s bed until the sky turns black and we’re ushered into another dingy relatives’ room. There are no curtains and when I press my face to the window I see all of London twinkling prettily under the dark sky. We spend the night sitting, pacing, staring, sighing. Hilary, a soft-voiced specialist cardiac nurse, keeps popping in to update us. Hilary happens to be a he which is a source of great displeasure to Nana Flo who keeps tutting, ‘It isn’t right.’ Twice, thanks to my mother’s wailing and gnashing, we’re allowed into the unit for a brief vigil. Every time my father rasps I have to restrain her from pressing the red emergency button. During vigil two, Hilary asks her to keep her voice down as other people in the unit are trying to sleep. My mother gives a shriek of rage at his audacity and runs into the corridor. I make an Englishy-apologetic cringe to Hilary and scamper after her. It’s a long night. By 5a.m., I am indecently ravenous so I walk out of the hospital and into the corner shop and buy a pack of Pringles Cheez Ums. I could have bought my favourite, salt & vinegar, but feel it would be inappropriate. My mother ‘can’t eat a thing’. Nana Flo chows down at least half of my Pringles. She makes such a lunge for the tube I’m surprised her arm doesn’t pop out of its socket.
Shortly after dawn, my mother goes to ‘stretch her legs’ and Nana Flo goes to the Ladies – which happily takes her twenty minutes. Hilary leans round the door and says, ‘Would you like to see him?’ I nod. My heart thuds. A second later I am alone with my father. A rash of dirt-grey stubble covers his chin and the shock hits me like a slap. I gently rest my hand on his. I ought to say something. But it’s embarrassing. The most embarrassing thing, the thing my father would be most embarrassed by, is the large square transparent plastic wee bag which hangs from a tube that thankfully disappears under his bedcover. The other patients’ bags are full of orange urine. My father’s – I am relieved to see – is empty.
I hate to sound like someone who works for a women’s magazine but you’d think they’d try for a more stylish, more opaque wee bag. I am idly wondering if Prada would agree to an NHS catheter commission or if Louis Vuitton might be a more judicious choice, when my father emits a loud rasp. Shit! Say it, say it, now, now, say it! But I am dumb. I clutch my father’s hand and think, stiffly, I love you, in my head. Dad, I love you. Dad, did I tell you, Dad, I hope you know, Dad, I know we weren’t, we didn’t . . . Just say it. Can’t. The words are glue. Think, ‘you’re sacked’ but a million times stickier.
The hours pass and I still don’t say it. Instead, I squeeze my father’s hand and bring my forehead to rest on it. This hand, this hand that’s waved for taxis, summoned the bill, signed cheques with a flourish, caressed my mother’s face, and walloped me on the backside, this warm, solid, big paw of a hand will soon be cold and dead, flesh rotting, peeling away deep under the cold hard ground. Jesus Christ. My mother bustles in with a copy of the Daily Mail and marches off to bother Hilary. So, instead of saying ‘I love you, Daddy,’ and crying daughterly tears all over my father’s frail dying body, I read him extracts from the Daily Mail financial section.
Nana Flo returns and regards me suspiciously. ‘He can’t hear you!’ she barks, before stalking off again. I get up, walk into the corridor, kick the wall and nearly break a toe. I lean against the wall and breathe deeply. Then I hobble back into the ward – ignoring the wide stares of the ill and wretched – and continue my private lecture. And from nowhere the quiet murmur of the ward becomes chaos, with screams of ‘he’s arresting!’ and ‘put out an arrest call!’, and swarms of people in blue and white run towards me shouting, pulling, clanking the bed, pushing trolleys, yanking curtains, and in the blur as I am dragged away I see the orange reading on the black heart monitor screen is a wild scribble and my father has slumped on his pillow. So I am with my father when he dies, but each of us is alone.
Twenty minutes later, the medical registrar, flanked by the adolescent, is explaining to my sobbing, shaking mother and my silent, still grandmother. There is brief confusion when he says my father suffered a cardiac arrest and has now ‘gone to another place’ but the hurried addition of ‘I mean, he’s dead,’ clears it. My father is dead. He dies at 7.48 p.m. He dies during the golden hour – when the setting sun cloaks the world in a warm yellow blanket of enchanted light. No more golden hours for Maurice. It is a beautiful day and my father is dead.
CINDERELLA’S GLASS SLIPPERS were made of fur. But when the French interpreted the original text, they translated furlined as verre. My mother’s voice warms as she tells me this and I know she is reassessing Cinderella as a more homely, snuggly girl than the brash madam who click-clacked around the royal ballroom in hard shoes of glass. She loves stuff like this which is why, as an infant school teacher, my mother kicks butt.
That, and she shouts louder than any person I know. The children adore her, far more than she likes them. Her motto is, ‘You can’t get involved.’ Not even when Ahmed’s mummy rings to ask if Ahmed, five, can stay the night at school because the white people on their estate have been smashing their windows and beating up Ahmed’s father and shoving dog shit through their letter box for three years and Ahmed needs to get some sleep. My mother does not take work home with her.
At home, my mother reverts to a fairytale of her own. She is a north-west London princess, with a handsome prince called Maurice to look after her. You’d never guess she was an intelligent, educated woman. She flaps if she has to program the video. She is famed for not returning phone calls from Nana Flo or anyone else who is emotionally taxing. She follows the thick ostrich school of thought – that if you ignore your demanding friends and relatives they’ll go away instead of getting angry and offended. She wants everything to be nice and if it isn’t she stamps her feet until it is.
This is partly why my father’s death – my father’s death! – is a problem. She doesn’t want to get involved. She didn’t want to ‘view’ his body (although to be fair, neither did I), she refused to see the hospital’s Bereavement Services Officer – ‘Don’t say that word!’ – and she wanted nothing to do with the funeral arrangements. So it’s been left to me and Nana Flo who, amazingly, has become a whirr of efficiency.
Work have been great. I called Laetitia on Monday morning. She was sympathetic but pressured and suggested that I come into work ‘to take your mind off things’. I said, ‘Er, I think he’s on the brink, actually.’ She also offered to send me some magazines ‘To keep you ticking over’. I accepted, it’s rude not to. Anyhow I’ve got a week off, free, compassionate leave. If I’m still off next week, I get half-pay. Feeling mad and light-headed, I ring in to confirm what’s happened to my Dad on Tuesday morning. I say the words but I’m not convinced. Immediately, the Editor’s secretary sends a huge bunch of orange flowers to my parents’ house. Luke’s agreed to nanny Fatboy and my mother’s a wreck, so I’m staying there. One thing I’ll say about Girltime, they do a good bouquet.
Lizzy calls me, says how sorry she is, and asks in a hushed voice if I’m okay.
‘I’m fine,’ I say quickly, before I can think about it.
She says, ‘Are you sure?’
Really, I tell her, in a brittle pantomime voice, I’m fine, I’m busy, my mother’s freaking because she can’t believe the Passport Office are ‘cruel’ enough to demand back my dad’s passport.
Lizzy wants details and when I tell her about collecting my dad’s clothes and his watch in a plastic bag and my mother not wanting to leave the hospital, she starts sobbing. Unfairly, I am annoyed by this. How dare she cry! She then tries to regale me with jolly tales from the office. Today, she says, the managing director showed the former hostage Terry Waite – she actually says that! ‘the former hostage’ – around the office and everyone ignored him because there was a beauty sale on. This is when the beauty department sell off all the cosmetics they’ve accumulated for 50p apiece and give the proceeds to charity. Everyone bites and punches in their determination to nab the designer stuff. I couldn’t give a shit but I muster a small appreciative snort.
Then Lizzy says something no one else would dream of saying. ‘Helen,’ she says solemnly, ‘I’m sure you were a wonderful daughter. I’m sure your father was very proud of you.’ Jesus! That is horrible. What a horrible thing to say.
‘Lizzy, please don’t say things like that,’ I whisper, and hurriedly put the phone down. I’m trembling. My head feels leaden and unstable, like a boulder about to topple off a cliff. I grit my teeth so hard my whole face is a rictus. I breathe in quick short sniffs until the comfort blanket of numbness resettles. Only then do I trust myself to speak. ‘This house is pitch dark and freezing cold,’ I say crossly to Nana Flo. I add spitefully, ‘It’s like a bloody morgue.’ I stamp around turning on radiators and switching on lights. I remain chilly but feel calmer.
My mother is sitting on their, her bedroom floor sniffing my father’s jumpers. I leave her a cup of decaffeinated tea as I fear the real thing would send her into a drug-crazed frenzy. I’ve also hidden the Nurofen. Meanwhile, Nana Flo and I have divided the death duties of which there are roughly a million. Lawyers, notices, certificates, application forms, wills, probates, pensions, policies, insurance, tax. Jesus. If I think about how much I have to do I will scream and go mad so I am trying not to think. All I’ll say is I hate looking after people and I hate organising so today is not a great day. Ideally I’d like to slump on my bed and stare into space but my heart is still pounding so it’s impossible to relax. It’s doing wonders for my metabolism and I now know why bereaved people get so thin. Michelle will be rabid. Also, I never thought I’d say this but thank heaven for Nana Flo. She managed to shake my mother out of her stupor for long enough to show us where Dad keeps his paperwork. She’s phoned all our ghastly relatives and told them not to come round just yet and she insisted on registering Dad – which involves an exhausting trek to Camden Town Hall.
I make her take a cab. She starts to protest that the bus is fine so I say ‘my treat’. I tell the driver to wait for her and drop her back and I’ll pay. Hey, it’s only money, my dad’s dead, let’s live a little. I don’t know if it’s the delirium but I’m beginning to talk in clichés. When I phone the local funeral home listed in the Yellow Pages – home! are they kidding? – I say, ‘I’m ringing on behalf of my father.’ Like I’m booking him into a hotel!
I haven’t a fucking clue what I’m doing and am using a blue leaflet the bereavement woman gave me entitled ‘What to do after a death in England and Wales’ as a recipe book. It’s a lot more use than my useless friends. Lizzy rings again to tell me she’s been talking to the Health & Beauty Director who says there’s an organisation called the Natural Death Centre which does eco-friendly funerals and biodegradable coffins. Then she says the words ‘woven willow pod’ and I say ‘I’ll stop you right there.’ About six hours later, Nana Flo returns triumphantly with the death certificate – huffing because it cost her £6.50. I drop the cash into her purse while she’s in the loo. She’s also got the infamous green form everyone’s wittering on about. It allows you to bury the body and dead people wouldn’t be seen dead without it. Ah ha ha ha.
Despite the laughable horror of the situation the funeral guy is very sweet. He looks, as I expect, like Uriah Heep (or what I imagine Uriah Heep to look like having never got further than the first page of any Dickens novel apart from Great Expectations which we were forced through at school). He is tall, bony, with watery blue eyes, and grey hair in a critical stage of combover. His handshake is creepily limp. I brace myself for a grasping parasite but he turns out to be kind. He ushers me into a room, the focal point of which is a very unsubtle painting of a stag in a dark forest, a bright ray of sunshine pointing directly at the stag’s head. He offers me a coffee and talks me through the options. We flick through a coffin brochure. Any minute now Nicky Clarke will appear. Uriah says that if a client chooses a cremation, ‘We recommend what I call a plain, dignified coffin.’ He adds tactfully, ‘It’s not top quality wood, but you know what happens in a cremation.’ I nod and smile as if I discuss cremating my father most days. Uriah continues, ‘It looks beautiful and on the occasion, you would not be dissatisfied if you saw it.’ Bless his heart.
He also shows me a wreath brochure full of big blowsy angel, pillow, trumpet and chair shapes. Weird – surely death is more of a lie down than a sit down. The cost of a grave is unbelievable and Uriah is suitably disparaging about London prices. ‘A plot of land that would eventually cater for three people’ – excuse me? – ‘would cost a thousand pounds.’ He sees my shocked face – although I’m less shocked by the rip-off cost than the prospect of a threesome – and adds, ‘London land is very expensive. A plot in Highgate cemetery can cost fifty thousand! Whereas, not so long ago, I had cause to bury my mother, in Cornwall. The plot was five pounds!’ At the punchline I raise my eyebrows and say that, despite the cost, I think my family want a burial.
My father’s burial grave death body – a new vocabulary of ugly, alien, disgusting words. It’s grotesque and I can’t believe I’m here. I sit frozen in my seat, feet neatly together, and all the while my head is spinning like I’m riding on the big dipper and my brain is screaming this is ridiculous it can’t be real and I want to run and run until it’s not. Uriah, meanwhile, is keen to stress that he’d liaise with the hospital, the minister, provide the hearse, the cars, remove all the hassle from my girlish head, and until the funeral, ‘Dad would stay here with us.’ I smile and nod although I can’t imagine anything Dad would like less. ‘You can,’ adds Uriah, ‘pop in and see him whenever you want.’ He suggests that I go home, discuss the finer details with my mother, and ring him tomorrow. He sees me off with another weak handshake and ‘It’s a horrible day, isn’t it?’ He’s right. It’s raining hard and the sky is as funeral grey as Uriah’s grey suit.
‘Thank you,’ I say, and run to the Toyota.
I walk in the door and, do I believe my eyes! (I love that phrase – the Wizard of Oz says it – I even prefer it to my other favourite, ‘Would you credit it!’) Who do I see sitting at the kitchen table charming the bloomers off Nana Flo – who is old enough to know better – and my mother – who has magically applied full dramatic widow’s make-up plus long black dress – but Jasper.
‘Jasper?’ I say in a shrill squeak.
‘Heeelen!’ bleats my mother, sweeping out of her chair and crushing me in a long, sorrowful hug. ‘You’ve been gone so long! I was terrified! I thought you’d had an accident!’ Oh please! Like she ever hugs me!
‘Mum, don’t be silly,’ I say. ‘I was sorting out Da—, the funeral. I’ll tell you about it later.’ I wriggle out of her steely arms and kiss Jasper chastely on the cheek. Foolishly, stupidly, I am delighted he’s here. Nana Flo and my mother show no sign of wanting to give us any privacy, so I suggest to Jasper that we go upstairs. We plod up to Dad’s study, which is in fact my old bedroom. My parents turned it into a study the day I moved out.
Jasper has got something to say. His face is very serious. ‘Helen,’ he begins. ‘I am so sorry for your loss. Poor you. At least he didn’t suffer. And he had a good innings. And, I promise, time does heal.’ He stops. I am furious. Mealy mouthed twit! What else? Try to keep busy? It’s good to talk? Have a bubble bath?
‘That’s very comforting,’ I say, not bothering to hide the sarcasm, ‘although Jasper, I’d actually prefer it if he was still alive.’ This throws him. In Jasper’s world of Victorian etiquette women don’t snap back.
He falters, and adds, ‘Quite. It must be very difficult for you. And it must be even worse for your mother, she’s known him for longer than you.’ Jesus Christ! It must be worse for all of us, you stupid prat!