This is a Love Story (18 page)

I remembered my mother’s blotchy eyes hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses as she drove me to school, a red, shiny nose poking out from the layers of chestnut hair. Her shoulders were always tense and hunched in front of the wheel. That’s the clearest memory I have of her in terms of looks. It’s not a happy one. Most of my memories before that are a bit of a blur, as if I got so angry at her I wiped a lot of them away. She also had a habit of biting her bottom lip with furious worry until it bled. ‘It’s just a cold sore, darling,’ she would say – another lie to gloss over the truth.

By the time I was ten, Dad couldn’t laugh or cry without collapsing onto the floor, sofa or pavement in a deep sleep. It finally dawned on everyone that something was seriously wrong. Doctors squinted through their thin-rimmed spectacles, neurologists made pointless, empty notes, and his case was passed around the best specialists in the country. No one could find the answers.

He spent more than his fair share of time in brain-scanning machines or hooked up to a network of wires, but the frantic study of wobbly lines and charts proved to be nothing but an impossible puzzle. Narcolepsy was known, but not well, and a large number of medical professionals had never heard of it. The resentment between Mum and Dad got worse. In the end there were no more kisses, hugs or family days out. Their wedding picture was turned to face the wall. They kept telling me everything would be fine, but I knew the family unit was eroding and it would soon plop into the ocean like a small, deserted cottage on the edge of a crumbling cliff.

It probably wasn’t terribly surprising that Dad developed an unnatural interest in documentaries on Sky; taping everything, watching it all again and again. His fascination with the outside world started there and then spread into his writing in hundreds of notebooks, where he explored what things might feel like as his memories got weaker. He had been writing in them ever since he’d got really ill. There were boxes of books in his room now, each stickered on the front and arranged in date order. I bought them for him so he could write about the bad dreams and visions that go with his cataplexy, about his frustrations and fears.

It was a wet Sunday afternoon when Dad made his discovery. He told me all about it when I was a little older.

An American documentary called
Sleep Wake
was being aired; he had drawn a circle round the listing with a thick red biro and double ticked it for good measure. He’d even set an alarm clock so he would be reminded, and put a video in the recorder to capture it.

The opening sequence showed a rich, green field in the sunshine, reminiscent of the opening credits of
Little House on the Prairie
. A cute fluffy lamb came bounding out into the natural playground and bam. That was it. The creature suddenly keeled over, lifeless, as if it had died. Dad said it was tear-inducingly funny but heart-wrenchingly sad all at the same time. The lamb soon jumped up again, but within minutes it was back on the ground, four little hooves twitching away.

Dad sat in front of the TV alone; I was at a friend’s house, and Mum was gossiping with a neighbour over a bottle of wine. As the programme continued, his hands trembled at the sickening familiarity of what he was seeing. The viewer was introduced to Martha from Illinois who was unable to stay awake for more than five hours a day, passing out wherever she was. But she was obese, deeply unhealthy and obnoxious. He didn’t want to belong to her world. He wasn’t
like that
. . .

Two more case studies later and dad had his answer – narcolepsy. After this, he didn’t hang about. The very next morning he slowly dressed himself and requested that Mum take him to the doctor’s surgery. He wore a shirt this time; he wanted to be taken seriously. I remember this episode clearly.

Dad plodded slowly from the front door into the front seat of the family people carrier, holding on to the door frame at one point to stop himself from falling. Word had spread that something wasn’t right, that he was ill in a most unusual way. He had collapsed in our front garden a few times. People talk. Neighbours stood still in their gardens, staring at him. Jack didn’t, but he did give us strange looks sometimes. He wasn’t one of the gossips, but you could tell that in his own way, he was curious about what he’d heard uttered over fences and landscaped borders on his way to get milk and bread.

Mum drove the short distance to the surgery, noticing a videotape in Dad’s hands, his knuckles white as he held it tightly. I was sitting in the back.

‘What the hell is that, George?’ she asked with her usual contempt.

‘I think I know what’s going on,’ he replied. ‘I think I have narcolepsy.’

‘Narco-what?’ she said, flicking her fringe indignantly across her face. She threw her right hand into the air angrily, perfectly manicured nails glinting like sharp blades. The comment was followed by a deep sigh and then more silence.

The wait to see a GP seemed to go on forever. Mum flicked angrily through the glossy pages of
Hello!
magazine, barely reading the articles. I tried to talk to Dad but he wasn’t very receptive. I remember noticing for the first time the deep crinkles across his forehead. He was ageing. As he tapped the black video case with his index finger, an elderly woman looked at him sternly from across the walkway with visible irritation.

‘Mr Walker?’ the petite receptionist called out from behind her glass pane. This was it. Dad got to his feet but he’d started to look really tired again. Mum and I knew what this might lead to. He tried to steady himself and take a few deep gulps of stale waiting-room air in an attempt to come back from the brink, but it was too late. The strength was pulled from his legs like a tablecloth whipped from beneath a banquet. Dad’s body went crashing to the floor, his head narrowly missing the edge of a wooden table, hitting the carpet with a dull, hard thud. Mum sank to her knees to hold his head up, and for a second they looked how I’d always hoped they would. Together.

The waiting room was thrown into chaos. All ten occupants leaped to their feet and gathered round Dad, Mum and me; an atmosphere of panic had hijacked the space. ‘Please, please, can you all just go away?’ I pleaded. I hated this and how humiliating it was. It scared me as well. I was all too used to ushering nosy crowds away from Dad’s limp form on the floor of some dusty public space.

‘He doesn’t look OK,’ said an interfering woman – the same one who had glanced at him with such contempt just a short while earlier. She pulled her red glasses down her nose so she could take a better look.

‘He must be having a fit!’ another shrieked, so loudly that even a hard-of-hearing lady in the corner of the room flinched.

Someone appeared with a glass of cold water and a chocolate biscuit, hovering uselessly in the background.

‘Right, that’s enough!’ screamed Mum, her voice cutting through the hysteria in the small magnolia waiting room like a knife. The garbled, gossipy chatter came to a halt.

Suddenly Mum started to cry. ‘This, everyone, is my husband!’ she cried. I tugged her arm to stop her, aware that a major emotional breakdown was about to ensue. Even the reception staff were craning their heads like owls, jostling in the small window to get a good look, their ID badges rattling on the glass counter. It was like a train crash and no amount of arm-tugging on my part could stop it.

‘This man was the most amazing person I had ever met,’ Mum began, her voice wavering in the madness of it all. ‘He made me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. He was happy, ambitious, energetic . . .’ I knew Mum was aware of the assembled audience, but a certain deadness in her eyes indicated a complete loss of control. As she spoke she flung her arms to the ceiling, a wristful of tiny silver bracelets clattering against each other. I went red.

‘This man, my husband, is very unwell. None of us know what it is, and I can’t cope, I can’t . . . I can’t do this any more. He isn’t the man I married. Please, someone, help me!’ And that was it, the show was over and she was curled up in a ball on the floor next to Dad’s seemingly lifeless body. It was like the scene of a crime. Something had been lost, gone wrong, come unravelled, and this small family was failing to put the pieces together. Mum and Dad were like children. I had to clean up the mess.

Stern glasses woman put a tentative arm on Mum’s back, rubbing it gently. No one really knew what to say. A few of the less voyeuristic members of the public crept back to their polyester covered chairs to immerse themselves in their newspapers; maybe the sports results or the latest stocks and shares might pull them away from the naked vulnerability of this emotional outburst. Others came close to the action, looks of genuine sadness and concern on their faces.

Tea was made, space was given and eventually Dad came to. His eyes brimmed with tears. He had heard everything. He sat down again and tried to hold Mum’s hand tight, but she pulled away. I saw it. I will never forget it.

After a few minutes, when Dad was ready, he shuffled slowly to the consulting room, one hand gripping the bar screwed into the wall, the other still clutching the videotape.

We knew his doctor well by now. Rebecca Knowles was a young GP, she couldn’t have graduated much more than five years previously. She had a delicate, heart-shaped face and mousy-brown hair, pulled back by a thick black headband. She looked mouse-like, but she was far from that. She had often expressed her frustration at Dad’s worsening condition, cupping her face in her hands over her desk. This was such an unusual case and she had failed to crack it. She had admitted that it was becoming an obsession, amid the routine cracked ribs and throat infections.

‘I know what’s wrong,’ Dad said, thrusting the video at her. I sat on a chair next to him. Mum was nowhere to be seen.

Dr Knowles sat upright in her chair with a look of bewilderment on her face, presumably wondering firstly what on earth Dad’s diagnosis could be, and secondly where on earth she was going to find an old VCR player.

She said nothing but merely put her index finger in the air, as if trying to sense where the requisite clapped-out old machine could be. She moved left and right, clearly thinking as she went along. Suddenly, she darted towards a cupboard and pulled out an elderly-looking TV with built-in VCR, its lead and plug catching on a pile of paperwork, which came tumbling to the ground. Within a minute or so she had plugged it in and slammed the tape into the mouth of the box, which gratefully accepted the challenge, chewing away at the white cogs inside with hungry satisfaction.

The room fell silent as we witnessed for the first time what this big breakthrough could be. It emerged later that Mum was sitting in a toilet cubicle down the hallway, frantically drawing on a cigarette.

I remember looking at Dr Knowles; she was crying. ‘Of course,’ she kept saying, again and again. Dad was right.

We never saw Mum again after that.

Nick

There is a new girl in the office.

I noticed this straight away because our office is quite small and mainly full of miserable-looking people, and she is gorgeous.

Her name is Chloe. I’m technically allowed to like ‘new girls’ now, because I finally ended things with Kate. It was hard, but I couldn’t be her support any more. It wasn’t good for either of us. I felt sad for a few days, but relief was the overwhelming feeling. She wasn’t very impressed, of course . . . But I know in time she’ll realise it’s for the best.

I guess it’s too soon for me to be thinking about anyone else, but I’m a man. We can’t really help but pay attention when a stunning female struts into the office. I’m single and now I’ve finally realised that things with Sienna will never be more than friendship, I am free.

It all started a bit like this. At about 10 a.m. today, I had fed Dill, done the tea round and swapped a few of the letters on Tom’s keyboard when there was a voice from my doorway.

‘Hi – Nick Redland, is it?’

The voice prompted me to look up from my monitor and see that it was coming from a pale face with sparkling brown eyes surrounded by a glossy blonde mane. The blonde mane was dotted with random, very tiny plaits and looked quite messy. Bed hair, I think the fashion magazines like to call it . . . but whatever. And the voice came from a pair of full, heart-shaped lips.

The face was unusual, actually. Not instantly stunning, but a grower. By this I mean that it took a couple of hours for me to fancy her, rather than the instant attraction that normally materialises when I see a woman I like. To be honest, I thought she was a bit funny-looking at first. Kind of feline. She had one of those pure but very naughty looks about her, which I eventually decided I liked.

‘Yep, I’m Nick,’ I replied with a smile, rising to my feet and shaking her hand. It felt smooth and slender.

‘Ah, great,’ she said, stepping into the room properly. I pulled my trilby from my head, suddenly feeling slightly embarrassed by it.

She was wearing a delicate navy dress with grey tights and a pair of black boots. Her hair was much longer than I’d initially thought – from the front, the wisps and curls just touched her shoulders, but when she turned around it fell further down her back. Smudged black make-up surrounded her eyes, making them stand out even more.

‘I’m Chloe. I’m just here for a week as an editorial assistant – it’s a work experience role.’

I was surprised. The thought of the company providing the resources and time for a work experience placement seemed pretty unlikely considering that I almost had to dress up as a French maid and beg Ant every time I needed a new ink cartridge for the printer. In fact, we’d had a policy introduced that stated we weren’t taking work experience people any more. Letters were screwed up and thrown in the bin. Emails deleted. It was all very brutal. Ant said it was because we didn’t have the time to train them now redundancies had been made, and that our focus should be entirely on our own workloads. What happened to that?

‘Oh, OK, great,’ I said, still confused. I looked through the doorway and up to Ant’s office. He pushed himself back in his chair and gave me a smarmy smile. Gross . . .