Bookends (28 page)

Back home, two years later, Eva went to university. Middle class, bright, she was studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and trying, unsuccessfully, to give up heroin, turning to alcohol on the rare occasions she managed to go without.

And then the ‘tombstone’ adverts appeared. Adverts warning about AIDS and HIV, warning of the dangers of unprotected sex, of not knowing your partners’ sexual history. Of shared needles and drug use.

It couldn’t be me, she thought. Things like that don’t happen to middle-class girls like me. To rule it out, she went to her doctor and requested a test. Two weeks later she went back in for her results. The doctor said, distractedly, you’re positive. Go to the STD clinic at the local hospital.

Twenty-one years old, HIV positive, perhaps she should have felt that her life was over, but Eva didn’t feel that. She didn’t feel anything, her emotions still cushioned by the drugs, the drinking, and it was only a year later, when she lay in bed, thinking about her lifestyle, about how she was treating herself – smoking, drinking, not eating – that she realized she had to make a choice.

She realized that by giving in to HIV, by expecting it to take her life, she was removing all choice, and that, for her, was untenable. She didn’t choose to die, she suddenly realized. She chose to live, and she refused to give in to the fear, because fear, she still says, is the most toxic thing of all.

A year after being diagnosed, Eva set up an illness and recovery group. She threw herself into working with AIDS awareness groups, for various charities, teaching, helping, advising. Then one day she woke up, and, in spite of everything she’d done, everyone she’d taught, she still felt that one day this
thing
, AIDS, was going to get her.

And that was when she decided it wasn’t. She turned to Buddhism, to believing in one day at a time. She stopped believing there was no point in training in anything worth while because her life was about to end, and started to train in Cranio-Sacral Therapy, finding a spirituality there that had been missing in her life.

And she found a therapist who refused to allow her to become a victim. If she had a cough, her therapist would turn to her and say: ‘So you’ve got a cough? So what?’ He didn’t say it would be the onset of PCP pneumonia. He didn’t say it was a symptom of full-blown AIDS. He said it was just a cough, and you know what? He was right, and she learned that even when you have been diagnosed, not everything is HIV related.

Now, thirteen years on, she is the picture of health. It may not work for everyone, she told Si, as she was coming to the end of her story, but what works for her is to believe she’s fine.

‘And she really is,’ Si told me, in wonder, in awe, and then he said goodbye and put down the phone, because he had the rest of the night to think about what she’d said.

Chapter twenty-nine

‘Cath, my love?’ Si and I are walking Mouse on Primrose Hill, and Si is almost, almost, back to his usual self. Of course he’s not the same, he says that something inside him has shifted, but the clouds have passed and his outlook is sunny again.

He and Eva swapped phone numbers. She said if he ever needed to talk, all he had to do was to pick up the phone, and I know they’ve got together a few times since then.

She took him to Body Positive in Greek Street, where she seemed to know everyone. She introduced him, made him feel welcome, and persuaded him to sign up on the Recently Diagnosed Course.

His first session was last Saturday. He phoned me from Soho Square, just around the corner and said, ‘Cath, wish me luck. I’m going in.’ I laughed and told him I’d keep my fingers crossed, and told him to call as soon as the course was finished.

He called the next morning, because a couple of people also on the course had invited him out for a drink afterwards, and instead of hitting a busy, buzzy bar in Soho, they went to a quiet little pub on the other side of Regent Street, and spent the evening sharing their experiences.

‘Cath,’ he said, sounding brighter than he had for ages, ‘I feel like I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Christ, I can’t even begin to tell you how much better I feel. How
normal
I feel, now that I know I have this support.’

And he told me about the course: about having to wear a name tag, which everyone groaned about, but which seemed to break the ice; about sitting in a circle and introducing your neighbour to the rest of the group, having to find out when they were diagnosed, plus a couple of other, silly things that made everyone laugh.

They were told about Body Positive as an organization; about HIV, the immune system, the tests that they would come to expect. And towards the end of the day they gradually shared their stories, their feelings, and for the first time Si saw that he was absolutely not alone.

They were told what would happen on the rest of the course: about meeting dentists, dieticians, complementary therapists; about dealing with transmission, reinfection and the practicalities of living with HIV.

He decided today that he will start treating himself to a weekly massage, and has already booked his first one at the Brick Lane Natural Health Centre, which only surprises me because, in the past, he’s always taken the piss out of people who actually believe in that stuff. Yet another thing that has changed.

For a Saturday, Primrose Hill isn’t too crowded, the darkness of the sky with the impending threat of rain evidently putting people off, and Mouse is happy to run around looking for fellow four-legged playmates.

We huff and puff our way up the hill (well, me, because Si’s a damn sight fitter), and when we reach the top I collapse, as usual, on one of the benches and beg for mercy as Si agrees to give me five minutes’ rest.

‘Has Portia told you about Marcus?’ he says, after we’ve been sitting for a while.

‘Portia, your new best friend?’ This is somewhat sarcastic, I know, but ever since Portia introduced Si to Eva, she’s been promoted from evil wicked witch of North London to Saint Portia the Heavenly Angel. I’m not jealous, it just pisses me off slightly.

‘Now, now. She’ll never take your place, Cath. But she has this friend, Marcus, and he’s got an apartment in Tenerife, and apparently he lets his friends use it when he’s not there.

‘He’s offered it to Portia in a couple of weeks, but she can’t go, too much work, so she thought I might like to go.’

‘It sounds amazing! Who would you go with?’

‘Actually, I thought I might go on my own…’

I shoot him a worried look, but he starts laughing. ‘No, no, don’t worry, I’m not going to sink into a deep depression and throw myself off a cliff or anything. Actually I’d just love some peace and quiet, and I think the sea would be incredibly healing for me.’

‘Si, come on, you’d be lonely as hell.’

‘You know, six months ago I would have agreed with you, but everything’s changed now, and, bizarre as this sounds, given all that’s happened, I feel incredibly serene at the moment.

‘I just want to go by myself, read my self-help books, sunbathe and sit on the terrace at night, breathing in the smell of the pine forest and listening to the sea.’

I snort with laughter. ‘Pine forest? As if! God, Si. Ever the Romantic.’

‘Only this time there’s no man involved. Nor is there likely to be.’

‘Si, being HIV positive doesn’t preclude relationships, you know. It just means you have to practise safe sex.’

‘Do I know it doesn’t preclude relationships? Darling, you’re talking to the expert. I’ve been through the whole safe sex issue with the counsellor, and it’s not the practicalities, it’s just that it’s the very last thing on my agenda right now. I need to heal myself, and until I’m whole I won’t be ready for anything else.’

I press my palm on to his forehead. ‘Simon Nelson, are you sure you’re feeling all right?’

‘Oh ha bloody ha. Meanwhile, how about moving that big bum of yours and getting some exercise?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I mutter, ‘I see that some things, like insults, never change.’

We carry on walking round the field, Si picking up sticks and branches that are just beginning to fall off the trees, and throwing them for an ecstatic Mouse.

‘There’s something else I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ he says. ‘About telling the others. I think it’s time I told them, now that I’m doing the course and I’m coming to terms with it. What do you think?’

‘I think that if you’re ready, and you’re sure, it would be the right thing to do. How are you planning to do it?’ I don’t tell him that Lucy and Josh know that something is up, even though they haven’t got a clue what it is. They know because when Si was in ‘the darkness’, as he put it, he cut himself off from everyone except me.

And even now, since Eva and the course, he’s still been reluctant to see them. He’s changed, he says, and he doesn’t want them to see the change until he’s ready for it.

‘I’ve decided to hold a dinner party,’ he announces grandly. ‘Well, actually I thought it would just be us, you, me, Josh and Lucy. I thought when I’m back from Tenerife, but definitely before Christmas. Give me a chance to dust off Queen Delia, because God knows she hasn’t seen the light of day for a while.’ Si stops and looks at me, anxiety clouding his expression. ‘Cath, do you think it’s a good idea?’

‘That you tell them? God, yes! Definitely.’

He sighs. ‘The thing is that I’m sure Lucy will be fine with it, but what about Josh? You know how straight he is, I think this might completely freak him out, and I couldn’t bear it if he did one of those numbers where suddenly he’d start dragging Max away or something because he thinks I’m infectious.’

‘Sounds like heaven to me,’ I mutter, but then I compose myself because Si is genuinely worried. ‘First of all I’m sure Josh wouldn’t react like that, and secondly, even if he did, do you really care what that unfaithful sod thinks?’

‘I suppose not. Anyway, I may as well get it over and done with before I go away. Do you really think I’m doing the right thing?’

‘I really think you’re doing the right thing.’

We wander round Primrose Hill, then sit outside one of the cafés for a quick coffee, where Mouse misbehaves himself horrendously by trying to mount every dog – male and female – that has the misfortune to pass. After we’ve dropped Mouse back, I tell Si to let me off at Bookends, because, even though it’s my day off, I can’t resist seeing how busy it is every Saturday.

And at the end of the day, I get home and am about to listen to my messages, when the phone rings. It’s James.

‘And what are you up to now?’ he asks, when I have finished burbling my news down the phone, trying hard to push the picture of his forearms out of my mind. ‘I hope you’re doing something extra special.’

‘Actually I’m staying in,’ I laugh. ‘Everyone’s busy, and I’m treating myself to a lovely lazy night in.’

‘Cath, you can’t possibly stay in tonight. It’s not allowed. You are, on the other hand, allowed to have a lovely lazy night in, but I’m afraid it will have to be at my place, because I’m bored too and I want some company. Say, eight-ish?’

How could I possibly refuse?

Just before I leave the house I record a message on Si’s machine telling him he’s a pain in the arse, but that I’ve finally done something I think he’d be proud of. And it isn’t a shopping spree in Designer Heaven.

I check myself in the mirror and grin at my reflection, which, thanks to the stress of the last few weeks with Si, is looking just the tiniest bit smaller, and are those… could they possibly be… cheekbones?

Ten minutes later I’m standing outside James’s door, and when he opens it he gives me a big hug and immediately hands me a glass of champagne.

‘Hmm,’ I say, as soon as I walk through the studio and into the living area. I inhale deeply, sniffing what smells suspiciously like lavender furniture polish, and today, unlike the last time I visited, James really has put me to shame. Today the piles of papers have all disappeared and the furniture is gleaming, helped somewhat by the flickering candlelight emanating from the huge gothic torches on either side of the fireplace.

‘This smells far too clean for you, James,’ I say, running my finger along the coffee table and feigning surprise at finding no dust.

‘Oh, please, you’ve only been here once. And correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you the woman who wouldn’t know clean if it came up to her on the street and spat in her eye?’

‘Charming! As it happens, James, I vaguely remember you saying that housework wasn’t your thing either. In fact, no, no, I remember you saying you were horribly messy and couldn’t get your act together.’

‘Let’s just say I wanted to prove to you that I had another side,’ he laughs, sitting down next to me on the sofa.

‘I can see,’ I say, raising the champagne glass together with an eyebrow. ‘Are we celebrating something?’

‘The fact that you haven’t cancelled me, perhaps?’ he says, grinning.

‘Now, now. The night is still young. Give me half an hour and I’ll be doing another runner.’

‘You had so better not do that,’ he says sternly. I apologize and tell him that really is the last thing on earth I will be doing tonight.

‘So.’ He reaches for his glass on the table.

‘So.’ I smile, as we toast one another.

‘To health, happiness and your future as a bookshop mogul or, failing that, a cleaning woman.’

‘A bookshop mogul or a cleaning woman?’ I laugh. ‘What a choice!’

‘Look at it this way,’ he says, taking a sip. ‘You’ll be the Mr Waterstone of your generation, or the Mrs Mop, even if it kills me,’ and I laugh.

‘How’s your friend,’ he says, putting the glass down. ‘Is he dealing with it better now?’

‘He’s really okay, actually.’ I flush slightly at the memory of the state I was in the last time I saw James, but he doesn’t mention it, and I push the thought out of my mind and carry on. ‘He’s started doing a course for people who have been recently diagnosed, and he’s met this amazing woman. She’s had it for thirteen years, and it’s just completely changed her life, for the better. So he seems to have started coming to terms with it now, which is extraordinary, given the state he was in.’

James shivers. ‘Horrible thought. Here we all are, thinking it couldn’t happen to us, and boom, suddenly someone you know gets it and it completely changes your opinion.’

‘God, I know. Tell me about it,’ and I lapse into silence, desperate to talk about something else before I start getting morose, but luckily James seems to realize and he changes the subject.

‘Just keep still!’ he says suddenly, and I freeze, expecting him to brush off an insect of some kind, but he reaches down and pulls a sketchbook out from under the sofa. ‘Keep still!’ he says, grabbing a pencil and starting to sketch.

‘Wonderful, wonderful,’ he murmurs in a crap French accent that makes me laugh, even as he stares at me intently, glancing at the paper as he scribbles away, then back to me, as I start to feel increasingly uncomfortable. ‘Beautiful, beautiful.’

I sip the champagne awkwardly, trying to keep my face as still as possible, just opening my lips a tiny bit to sip the champagne every now and then, and eventually James puts the pencil down, closes the sketchbook and picks up his glass again.

‘So how’s everything at Bookends?’

‘What!’ I practically shriek as I dive for the sketchbook, and he leaps out of my way as I open up the page to reveal a beautiful little sketch that looks exactly like me, only far, far prettier.

‘This is beautiful!’ I gasp, ‘even if it is the most flattering thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘Rubbish,’ James says. ‘That’s exactly what you look like. Trust me. I’m an artist,’ and I start to laugh.

Soon we have relaxed into the sofa, talking softly, about relationships, marriage, and then, after a while, about Josh and Lucy.

I tell him how hurt I am by Josh’s behaviour, that it’s putting me in an impossible situation, and that I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone, to know about an affair and not to be able to tell. The weekend that Josh is going away with Ingrid, I tell him, Si and I are spending Saturday night with Lucy, and I don’t know how good either of us will be at pretending that everything is normal.

And James surprises me yet again. He surprises me because on the one hand I think of him as this estate agent who has a huge talent for painting, and who doesn’t seem to take life very seriously, and then on the other he can be incredibly wise and sensitive, weighing up a situation and offering exactly the right advice.

He thinks that, however much we love Lucy, and love Lucy and Josh as a couple, it is not our place to interfere. He says that he knows it must hurt, but that whatever will be, will be, and that nothing we say or do will resolve things. It may in fact make things worse.

He says that sometimes an affair, while not, obviously, the ideal, can make a marriage stronger. That there are usually reasons why one of the partners is straying in the first place, and often when they stray a step too far, they realize what it is they actually have at home, and come bouncing back with all the vigour of a newly-wed.