A Hundred Pieces of Me (37 page)

‘He’s not some gorgeous bloke,’ said Gina, sitting down next to her. ‘He’s a client. And up to this point, I’d managed to hide the fact that I wanted to live in his house, thank you very much.’

‘Oh, come on. He doesn’t care. He’s flattered that the only tasteful person in this place liked it but couldn’t afford to buy it. And I didn’t know you did Saturday appointments.’ Naomi jiggled her well-shaped eyebrows. ‘You’re a long way from Langley St Michael too. Or did he bring his binoculars?’

‘I bumped into him. He bought me a coffee while I was waiting for you.’ Gina put her head in her hands. What had that expression on Nick’s face meant as he’d left? Was he wondering if that was the reason she was taking an interest in the house, because she’d wanted it?

‘Well, I’ve said it from the beginning. There are worse ways to take your mind off a break-up than—’ Naomi started.

‘No.’ Gina sat up, determined to nip this in the bud. ‘Look, I know you’re joking but
no
. It’s not like that. He’s married. We were just talking about his and his wife’s plans to start a family, actually.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Really. He’s an interesting guy. He’s a photographer.’

‘Don’t tell me.’ Naomi’s eyes were twinkling, though her expression was serious. ‘He wants you to pose for him?’

‘I already have. Just my hands!’ she added. ‘I happened to be there. He needed a woman’s hand.
Don’t
.’ She raised a warning finger.

‘How have I missed all this?’ howled Naomi. ‘
Why
have you been droning on to me about how you can flog off your twenty boring black dresses and missed out the bit about having your body parts photographed by a proper creative type who looks like some kind of stubbly-jawed model?’

Gina glanced down at Willow who was staring happily at Buzz. Buzz was staring at Gina’s legs. ‘There’s nothing to miss,’ she repeated. ‘This is the first time I’ve seen him outside his house.’

‘Well, you could do a lot worse.’

Their eyes turned towards the bottom of the hill where, in the distance, Nick was holding the gate open for someone with a buggy (of course), his other hand deep in his jacket pocket.

‘Did you hear the
he’s married
part?’ Gina balled up the bag that her muffin had come in. In a way she was glad Nick was married: it meant they could maybe be friends, without any awkward overtones creeping in. He knew she knew about Amanda. Her divorce was now out there. They knew where they stood. She needed new friends.

‘The best ones always are,’ sighed Naomi. ‘It’s just the crap ones that get thrown back in. Speaking of which, did Stuart come and get his stuff last night? You didn’t call.’

‘I wanted to tell you in person. Bryony’s pregnant,’ said Gina. It came out surprisingly easily now. Nick’s reaction had removed some of the pain, as had letting the thought breathe, instead of stuffing it away and ignoring it, as she would usually have done.

‘What?’ Naomi was getting something out of the bag for Willow but she spun round, mouthing the swearword she’d have used had Willow not been there. ‘She’s . . . Seriously?’

‘Seriously. I wanted to see your face,’ said Gina, wryly. ‘Plus, I thought you might be able to fill in some more details.’

‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said Naomi at once. ‘Nothing! I’d have told you.’

‘I didn’t mean now,’ Gina replied mildly. ‘I meant, maybe you could find out. From Jason?’

‘Oh. Right. Yeah.’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘I’ll try. But Jason takes a weird line on repeating stuff he hears at football. I’ve tried to ask him things before, but he gets all changing-room brotherhood on me.’

‘Actually, forget that, I don’t know if I want to know,’ said Gina. ‘I don’t have to, do I?’ She probed the new sensation like a loose tooth, concerned that she might just nudge it out, and the desire to know every miserable detail of Bryony’s baby would flood in, followed by humiliation and regret and guilt – the mighty triumvirate that roamed around her subconscious. I don’t have to give this space in my head, she thought. Just like I don’t have to give space in my flat to unreadable books or jeans that don’t fit.

‘Are you OK?’ asked Naomi. ‘Is it delayed shock?’

Gina shook herself. Not shock, just the dull disappointment that would hurt then fade, like a bruise. She made her attention turn to the first green shoots on the cherry tree that arched over the entrance to the park. Maybe she could photograph it every day when she came in with Buzz and Rachel. Like time lapse.

‘Gina!’ said Willow. ‘Out, please. Doggy.’

From the other side of her leg, Buzz eyed the buggy with wariness, his grey nose twitching cautiously at the beam of love Willow was directing at him.

‘Let’s be very careful,’ said Gina, to both Willow and Naomi. ‘He’s a shy doggy.’

‘Gently,’ agreed Willow. It was a word Naomi used a lot.

And they set off walking, very slowly and very carefully, around the park. Willow in the middle, with Gina and Naomi holding her mittened hands, the buggy and Buzz on the outside.

At the top of the hill, Gina lifted her phone over her head, and took a wonky but happy photo of them all.

Chapter Sixteen

ITEM
: my wigs

Annabella: long blonde human hair wig

Sophisticated and well-groomed, Annabella enjoys lunchtime cocktails, the races, hedge-fund divorcees, and tossing her head from side to side while laughing enchantingly

Robin: dark brown curly crop

Robin is bubbly but thoughtful, the sort of girl who organises office birthday cakes, ideal for parties when you want to look like yourself but with shorter hair

Matron of Honour: a pale apricot bob

The perfect colour to match your matron-of-honour gown for your best friend’s wedding, if it’s a sort of apricot colour

Longhampton, 1st July 2008

‘I don’t think any of these are going to be me,’ Gina whispers to Naomi.

‘Not even this one?’ Naomi holds up a very Eighties wig, the sort of cut Janet would have called ‘perky’. Or ‘jazzy’.

‘Definitely not that one.’ She grimaces. ‘I’m having chemo, not going into news-reading.’

Naomi made this appointment for her the day Gina got her chemotherapy dates. Her first session is next week; the first of six courses, spaced at three-weekly intervals, to give her body time to recover from the chemicals that’ll be dripped into her veins while she sits and watches one of the many boxsets that she’s stockpiled on the advice of the patient support group. Stuart’s marked the appointments on her calendar, with ‘The End’ in red. Gina can’t think that far ahead. She’s thinking in terms of
24
and
The West Wing
.

Naomi’s taken charge of the cosmetic cheerleading side of the next few months. She took Gina to get the pixie-cut she’s sporting now, so the hair loss won’t feel so bad, and she’s been boosting her with compliments ever since.

‘I think you should go for a short wig anyway,’ says Naomi, encouragingly. ‘That crop suits you. Makes your eyes look huge.’

Gina’s not sure. She feels very exposed. The back of her neck feels cold, and it turns out her ears are a weird shape, without the mass of dark curls around them. Her mother looked as if she was going to burst into tears when she saw it, and that was straight out of Naomi’s expensive salon.

‘I prefer the long ones,’ she says, reaching for a model that looks exactly like her old hair, which she misses already. Tumbling dark brown curls, like Gina Lollobrigida.

‘That is a very popular style,’ agrees the assistant, who has appeared at Naomi’s side. ‘Very feminine.’

Dawn, their assistant in this fancy-dress session, has clearly done this before. She’s sensitive to Gina’s nerves, which, coupled with Naomi’s cheerful honesty, means the hour passes quickly but not without a few laughs.

Gina sets aside a shorter version of her own hair, and a long straight dark wig for variation. She doesn’t want to look at reds or blondes: she wants to look like herself. Herself with no hair loss.

But Dawn persists, showing her lighter browns, shorter cuts until Gina’s curiosity is piqued.

‘Have you never thought about being blonde?’ Dawn asks, handing Gina an angular blonde bob. ‘We get a lot of ladies with dark hair wanting a wig to wear for a change.’

‘Go on,’ Naomi encourages her. ‘You’ve got pale skin. It’d work.’

Gina lets Dawn pull the wig over her hair, tugging it down around her ears until it fits. She tweaks and flicks the hair until it’s natural, then lets Gina see in the mirror.

I look like Kit, Gina thinks, in shock. That halo of blonde hair, my eyes, my mouth – our kids would have looked like this.

Naomi and Dawn are making approving noises but Gina’s properly spooked. She can’t think about Kit right now. There are days when she never thinks of him, but since her diagnosis, she’s been spending more time in hospitals and it’s impossible then not to wonder where he is and what he’s doing.

She pulls the wig off, and is almost relieved to see her spiky black hair beneath, like a newborn chick. ‘Maybe something auburn?’ she suggests, seeing Dawn’s red face. She doesn’t want to seem ungrateful. ‘I’ve often wondered what I’d look like ginger.’

The red hair is more of a success, and slowly Gina starts to engage with the effect the different hairstyles have on her, the way she smiles and looks at herself. Her eyes do seem enormous in her pale face, now all the focus is on them and not her hair. She’s never studied herself so closely before. It’s strange, noticing how large your nose is, how uneven your eyes are.

‘Fringes are good,’ Dawn tells her, ‘because you might lose some eyelashes and eyebrow hair . . .’

‘We’ll be looking into false lashes,’ Naomi butts in. ‘I’ve got that covered.’

‘And you can opt for human-hair wigs or synthetic . . .’

Gina’s not sure she likes the idea of having someone else’s hair on her head. Her own body is feeling less and less like hers as it is.

When Gina’s lined up ten wigs on stands in front of her, Dawn leaves to deal with another customer while she chooses. ‘Take your time,’ she says kindly. ‘You’ve got to love it, if you’re going to wear it every day.’

‘Thanks,’ says Naomi. When Dawn’s gone, she turns to Gina with a theatrical sigh. ‘You know what’s really unfair?’

‘More unfair than cancer?’ Gina demands. She can only be dark with Naomi. Their humour is outrageously dark now.

‘More unfair than that. You look
stunning
in all those. If you get the blonde one, can I borrow it?’

Gina runs a hand over her crop. Her head’s tingling. That’s the trouble with reading up on the Internet about symptoms: you start getting them even before the treatment.

She wants to say, ‘I don’t need a wig, I’m just going to let my hair go,’ but it’s easy to say that, while it’s still there, however short. Her hair’s always been the most beautiful thing about her, and it’s already gone. Gina doesn’t miss it as much as she’d thought she would. In a really odd way, it was a silver lining to be forced into cutting it all off. It does suit her. And she’d never have had the nerve otherwise.

I’m finding out some really strange stuff about myself, thinks Gina, and she stares at her reflection in the mirror. She doesn’t recognise the woman staring back, but that’s not all bad. This woman is already surprising her with what she can bear, what she can do.

Naomi appears behind her, wraps her arms around Gina’s shoulders and hugs her. Their eyes meet in the mirror, and Gina manages a smile.

Gina could translate Naomi’s requests about Willow and Jason’s super-shed but one thing she couldn’t control was the weather.

As a sunny March tipped into a cooler April, the weather turned greyish and the work on the Magistrate’s House was concentrated on the insulation and roof line, parts of the building where Gina had no real input. On the positive side, it meant she had more time to spent chivvying Tony’s final details on the playhouse. The installation of Willow and Jason’s finished shed was arranged with as much complication and secrecy as a moon landing. And only slightly less expense.

First, Naomi had to take Willow and Jason away for a three-day pre-birthday break at Center Parcs to give Tony the joiner time to get it dug in and set up. It wasn’t a quick job – the electrics for Jason’s beer fridge and reclining chair had to be run in from the main house, and Tony had finishing work to do on the roof, which had proper red tiles and a weather vane in the shape of Peppa Pig.

By Thursday morning, Naomi was supposed to be in the middle of an intensive programme of face-painting and general ballpark fun, but she seemed to be sneaking off every half-hour to send Gina texts. Gina was at the Magistrate’s House, walking Nick through the renovation process for the linenfold panelling in the dining room when her phone beeped for the fifth time since breakfast.