The Mistake I Made (8 page)

We were in the nutritionist’s room. There wasn’t enough work for a full-time nutritionist at the clinic, so Helen Miller split her time between four or five other set-ups around the North-west. This meant that her desk was always clear of the general detritus which accumulated on mine, as she moved her files and whatnot around with her. I had closed the blinds as the heat was fierce now on the west-facing windows, the sun having arced its way overhead, and the fan was on full blast.

My cheeks were hot and red.

Henry Peachey wore a polo shirt that was faded around the collar, along with olive-coloured canvas trousers that would be classed as jeans in certain establishments, therefore denying entry. I could smell his aftershave.

‘Full name?’ he asked.

‘Rosalind Veronica Toovey.’

He typed fast. His face was relaxed, he was totally at ease, and I watched him unashamedly. The only men we ever got at the clinic (other than patients) were medical reps, and they were like androids. They would move amongst us, tricking us with their good skin, erect postures, spotless shirts and their keen, interested eyes. In the first moments of meeting them, you would rarely feel more engaged, more attuned, to another person. And then, suddenly, and without warning, their façade would fall.

The rep would reach into his briefcase, the spell would be broken and you would realize:
Ah, a salesman
.

The sharp banter of earlier cannot be continued as he is only able to sustain it for his opening pitch. At this point you might find yourself throwing in a joke to ease the discomfort. But you would be met with a dead, vacant stare. A stare that said:
Does not compute.

Henry Peachey was not like that at all. And when he looked up and said, ‘Place of birth?’ his eyes locked on mine. It was as if he’d asked me to undress.

I was not imagining it, there was an immediate mutual attraction, and I stammered out, ‘Kendal.’ Following it with ‘How is it you don’t like Christmas? Are you anti-religion?’

‘I’m not against Christmas as such,’ he replied, as he typed. ‘It’s more that we seem to have reached a point in society whereby we have to spend inordinate amounts of money just to show that we love each other. I suppose it’s more that I don’t like being told what to do by the advertising industry.’ He looked up. ‘Qualifications?’

‘You want all of them?’

‘The most recent is fine.’

‘A BSc in Physiotherapy. I started an MSc but, you know how it is, life got in the way. Are you anti-birthdays then as well?’

There was mischief in his eyes, and he paused before speaking. I had to look away to catch my breath. ‘I got a message from Apple last week,’ he said, ‘saying I should treat my dad to an iPad for Father’s Day. The sentiment being that if I really loved him, etc., etc., that I would fork out for one. Three hundred pounds on Father’s Day? Crazy. Do you smoke?’

I hesitated. Then said, ‘No,’ firmly.

‘Never?’

‘Okay, sometimes when I’m drunk,’ I admitted ashamedly. ‘If I get a bit bored I do go off in search of a smoke. Not often, though.’

‘That counts.’

‘Really?’

He nodded grimly. ‘We’ve had a couple of cases this year … the families of people who’ve been in car accidents have not been eligible for a payout upon their deaths. The policy holders claimed to be non-smokers, but because there was evidence of nicotine in the hair samples – well,’ he said, and shrugged.

‘That’s a bit harsh.’

‘The world we live in, I’m afraid. Occasional smoker,’ he murmured, as he typed.

‘What is this for exactly?’ I asked. Wayne had told me, but I hadn’t listened properly. Practice managers were always trying to get us to do irrelevant stuff; Magdalena the Austrian physio claimed it was simply to justify their existence. If I did half the things Wayne asked of me, I would see four less patients a day.

‘It’s to bring the public-liability insurance payments down.’

‘But we’re all insured up to a hundred million with the Chartered Society.’

‘That’s your individual insurance,’ he explained. ‘The company that owns this chain is also accountable if there’s an accident with a patient. By doing these extra in-depth assessments of their staff, they are able to reduce their contributions. It’s a bit like doing an advanced motoring course – you’re considered a safer driver on completion, so your car insurance is reduced.’

I nodded.

‘I forgot to ask, are you married, Miss Toovey?’

‘Separated,’ I answered too quickly. ‘And it’s Roz.’

He had such beautiful skin. And a mouth so soft that when I gazed at it I got a surge of longing all the way down to my—

‘Okay, Roz,’ he said, ‘any operations, medical procedures?’

‘I had a car crash four years ago and suffered a pneumothorax.’

‘Pneumo—?’

‘Apologies, I thought you were medical. A collapsed lung,’ I said. ‘I broke my arm, too, but I don’t think that’s relevant.’

‘Any operations, any surgeries performed outside the UK?’ he asked.

I paused.

He raised his head and looked at me with concern.

When I didn’t continue he winced a little before saying, ‘I’m sorry about this, but I need you to be fully transparent here. It’s important.’

I exhaled. I didn’t want him to know. Up until this point I’d been under a kind of lovely, hazy, dream-like spell where the real world was locked firmly behind the clinic door.

Now it was as if that spell was broken.

‘I lost a baby whilst on holiday in Gran Canaria,’ I said. ‘I was twenty-six weeks pregnant – quite far along.’

He tilted his head and gave a sad smile. ‘So sorry to hear that,’ he said softly.

‘It just wasn’t meant to be,’ I replied.

What I didn’t say was that this was the beginning of the end for me and Winston. He had been screwing around. I was unaware of this at that point, but I knew we weren’t what we once were. I failed to see what was right in front of my eyes and, somewhat delusionally, thought a new baby would bring us closer together again.

Silly, really, but in my defence I’m sure I was not the first woman to think a man would change his ways once he had a new baby in his arms. If women were to stop kidding themselves with that particular fantasy, I reckon the human race would die out pretty quickly.

Sadly for us, I started spotting blood when I boarded the plane at Manchester, and by the time we arrived in Gran Canaria it was clear something was wrong. We went straight to the hospital, whereupon I was hooked up to a saline drip, examined briefly and told I would be scanned first thing in the morning. They told Winston he could do nothing and, since I would be sharing a room with another woman, he was not welcome to stay.

At around ten that night there was a change of plan. A gruff obstetrician performed the scan, notifying me in her limited English, ‘There is nothing.’

When I asked what she meant exactly, she said, ‘No more baby,’ and the assisting nurse informed me that I would be induced at seven in the morning, and would need to go through normal labour. I would have nothing to show at the end of it. Half consumed with grief, half terrified, I begged for a Caesarean. But I was denied.

I changed after that. I think I just gave up trying. I had neither the grit nor the energy and determination required to run our lives effectively and, ultimately, everything began to unravel. Winston slept around more. I didn’t attend to our financial problems. And we lost it all.

‘I’ll need to take some blood from you,’ Henry Peachey said now, apologetically.

‘A blood test? Why?’

‘Anything surgical performed outside the UK carries an increased AIDS risk. Did you have a D & C?’

I shook my head. ‘Labour.’

‘That’s still classed as surgical, I’m afraid. The test is a thumb pinprick. I’ll just need enough for …’ His voice trailed off as he rummaged around in his briefcase, looking for, it transpired, two polythene envelopes, each containing a small plastic vial.

‘Here we go,’ he said.

He set about cleaning my thumb with an alcohol wipe. I was conscious of the drop in mood and Henry’s careful way with me. The earlier playfulness between us was gone.

‘Gives you quite a privileged insight into other people’s lives, an assessment such as this,’ I commented as he punctured my skin.

He squeezed my thumb and positioned the vial.

‘As does your job,’ he replied, screwing on the cap. ‘You must see all sorts.’

He wasn’t wrong. I carried more secrets from the folk around here than I cared to remember. It’s an odd arrangement, the relationship between patient and therapist. Not really replicated anywhere else. I used to think it was the vulnerable condition of the patient – the fact that they were in pain, in a state of undress – which caused them, perhaps from a nervous response, to divulge. But I’ve since changed my mind. I don’t think my patients ever really feel vulnerable. I work hard to put them at ease, to present myself as an affable, capable person who can be trusted to get on with the matter in hand with the minimum of fuss. So, no, it wasn’t that. It was the closed door. The soundproof room. Something about knowing you wouldn’t be overheard, about talking to a person who is bound by patient confidentiality, liberates people to unburden themselves in a way they can do in no other area of their life. Except, perhaps, with a priest. But who confides in clergy any more?

When Henry Peachey was finished he passed me a wad of cotton wool and told me to put pressure on the puncture hole. He was very efficient.

‘Do you cover the whole of the north of England?’ I asked, making small talk. ‘Is that why you’re only available around here on Tuesdays and Wednesdays?’

‘No. I only work two days a week.’

I must have gaped at him then because he said, ‘Is that odd?’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Lucky, more like. How on earth do you manage that? Do you have a trust fund or something?’

He laughed, the light returning to his eyes. ‘No.’

‘So how is that even possible?’

‘It just requires a little self-control, and I suppose the determination not to buy into the common belief that hard work is a good thing in itself. That we should all be working our arses off just so we can spend more money on crap we don’t need.’

‘Ah,’ I said, smirking, ‘you’re one of
those
people.’

He stopped and regarded me quizzically. ‘One of what people?’

‘You know – basket weavers, self-sufficiency. Do you have spider plants growing out of old work boots on your doorstep?’

‘No.’ He laughed.

‘I used to go out with a guy like that. He spent so much time building wind turbines from bits of recycled tat, trying to live off the land, that he didn’t have a penny to his name. It would have been far quicker and a lot less work just to go out and get a part-time job.’

He looked at me. Arched an eyebrow. Waited for it to dawn.

‘Which is exactly what you have done,’ I conceded. ‘Oh, okay, good for you. Those of us with responsibilities have to earn a proper living.’

‘Nice rant,’ he said, passing me a plaster.

‘Thanks.’

A moment passed.

‘Did you go on to have children … I mean, after what happened to you abroad?’ he asked gently.

‘I already had one child. A son. But there were no more because we couldn’t afford it.’ And when he frowned, as though questioning my statement, I added, ‘We didn’t have travel insurance. My ex said he’d arranged it for the trip, but he hadn’t. We had to pay for my stay in hospital by credit card, which I’m still paying off, along with a lot of other stuff. Anyway,’ I said, more brightly, trying to change the tone again, ‘in just a few short minutes you know everything there is to know about me.’

He held my gaze, and there it was again. The jolt of mutual attraction.

‘Not everything, I hope,’ Henry said.

9

THAT EVENING GEORGE
and I picnicked in the back garden. I grabbed a few bits and pieces from the village: a pot of reduced-priced hummus, some locally produced pastrami (with a same-day expiration date), a cucumber and a baguette that was down to ten pence because it had taken a bit of a bashing in transit.

From the outside looking in, you might think things were pretty much perfect. The heat of the day was on the wane. George was happy, pushing slices of peppered beef into his mouth, his school polo shirt covered with a combination of grass stains, spots of pollen and a formless yellow mark around the collar that I would later realize was sun cream.

I could hear Celia and Dennis over the fence pottering around in their garden, Dennis softly whistling the theme to
The Waltons
, Celia keeping up a low-level steady chatter, punctuating it occasionally with ‘Dennis, start listening to me
now
,’ when she needed to impart something crucial.

The holiday cottage on the other side was home for the week to a quiet, bookish, newly wedded couple from Billericay. They were the type of people who wore perpetual looks of apology simply for being there, which, I have to say, made a nice change from the boisterous, unrestrained groups of late. Last week, I had politely asked a gentleman in a Leeds United shirt if he wouldn’t mind repositioning the barbecue a little further from the house so that the crosswind didn’t carry the thick smoke right across our patio, and he’d responded by calling me a fucking lesbian.

I watched George chew, the straw-coloured light bouncing off his hair, the missing patch above his ear less apparent now. I really should neaten that up, I thought, though I knew I wouldn’t. Petra said I was in the habit of holding on to George’s babyish traits, which I thought of as endearing rather than babyish. She often chided me if I failed to correct George’s speech, but I
liked
it when he said ‘brang’ instead of ‘brought’, when he told me he’d ‘writted’ me a letter, when he confused his Ps and Bs, asking me to pass the PBA glue. These things, I knew, would be gone all too soon, and I was in no hurry to see the back of them.

I pulled a daisy from the grass and passed it to George. He rolled his eyes. Too girly.

‘What did you do at school today?’