This Is How It Ends (25 page)

W
HAT POSSESSED ADDIE
now was a strange sense of calm. You could almost call it elation.

Everything seemed very clear to her all of a sudden. It was as if she were flying over the sea on a clear day. On a cloudy day the water looks opaque, you might as well be flying over mountains, or fields. It might be a gray sea or a blue sea, it might be a murky green, but all you can make out is the surface of the water, there’s no indication of anything underneath. But on a sunny day, on a sunny day the water is illuminated, and you can see right through to the bottom. You can see black patches of rock and coral. You can see a shoal of fish sliding through the water. You can see the dark stencil shape of the plane you’re traveling in, there it is moving steadily over the surface, the waves rippling through it.

That was the kind of clarity Addie had now. Her life was lit up from above and she could see it all clearly. A state of mind she had always longed for but never once achieved, not until now.

WHEN BRUNO WOKE
up she pretended she was still asleep.

The whole time he was pottering around the bedroom getting dressed, she lay on her tummy, her face pressed into the pillow, her eyes shut. She was wide-awake, listening to everything. She heard the cupboard door opening and closing, she heard Bruno picking up his boots and carrying them out of the room, she heard the soft pad of his socks on the floor, the hem of his jeans scraping along the floorboards. When he moved out into the kitchen she tracked the sound of the water bubbling in the kettle, the sound of him pouring dry food into Lola’s bowl.

Even while he was out of the room, she didn’t dare to open her eyes. She lay there suspended in time, listening to his day getting under way. Before he left he came back into the room. She was lying on her back now. He leaned down to kiss her and she turned over onto her side. She gave a sleepy groan. Even to her, it didn’t seem very convincing.

“See you later,” she called after him as he went out of the room again. Her voice was spluttering and husky, the first spoken words of the day.

“Absolutely,” he said as he went out the door. “And don’t forget, we have a date with history!”

It was hard, not telling him. Last night had been hard. Every minute that went by she had to concentrate so hard on not telling him. She had to concentrate on behaving normally. It wasn’t his grief that she was dreading, she knew that couldn’t be helped. What she feared most was an overreaction. She couldn’t bear it if everyone freaked out. What she wanted more than anything now was calm.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat there for a moment, stretching her arms up over her head and arching her back. With the stretch, her nightdress was drawn up over her thighs, revealing the clutch of hair between her legs. It was distasteful to her, that tuft of hair, the shameful earthiness of it.

She stood up and moved towards the door, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the back of the open cupboard door. The nightdress was a bit indecent, it only just about skimmed the cheeks of her bum. The straps were too loose, so the bodice was hanging low, revealing a bulge of breast under each armpit. Ripe, that was the word that occurred to her, she looked young and ripe. It was incongruous. It was out of step with her situation.

She pulled her robe from the back of the door and wrapped herself up in it, tying the belt defiantly around her waist.

She was humming cheerily to herself as she made her way into the kitchen, unaware of what it was that she was humming.

Lola was standing there waiting for her, her tail swaying expectantly. Addie gave her a cursory petting, more like a pat on the back. Then she straightened up again, going over to switch on the coffee machine. She couldn’t bear to think about Lola yet.

With her coffee cup in her hand, she found herself wandering around the apartment. Like a museum visitor, she floated from room to room. She looked over her desk, and it looked like a sweet shop. The jars of pens and pencils all in a row, the neat little pots of brightly colored ink. A half-finished ink drawing of a swimming pool spread out on the surface of a piece of dappled watercolor paper.

She wandered into the bathroom next, and stood there with her back against the sink. There was a lone black swimsuit hanging from a hook beside the bath. The fabric was perished in places, Addie could see that from here. The back of the suit was threadbare, the white elastic showing through.

Hopefully it will see me out, thought Addie. And she was relieved that she wouldn’t have to trawl town for a new swimsuit. It had been getting harder and harder to find a decent swimsuit recently, it was all bikinis in the shops these days.

She scanned the bottles of cosmetics at the end of the bath. The conditioners and the shampoos, the glass vial of bath foam, she found herself measuring them. She was gauging what was left in them.

She had found herself doing this on holidays sometimes. Embarking on a manic effort to squeeze the last drop of sun cream out of the tube rather than buy a new one on the last day. She had sometimes found herself cutting open a tube of moisturizer with nail scissors, or digging with her toothbrush into the mouth of the toothpaste tube to prize out enough paste for one last brushing. The satisfaction of eking things out, that was a good feeling. She allowed herself to indulge it now.

The tea bags in the kitchen cupboard, she found herself peering in and taking stock of them. The coffee, the cereals, the dried pasta. Sure she’d hardly need to do any more shopping. If she was careful, she might never have to set foot in a supermarket again.

She was still humming to herself. She realized with a smile what it was that she was humming, and she started to sing along:

This was happening to her more and more now, she would find Bruce Springsteen playing out in her head. Sometimes she would even find herself singing a few lines out loud. Indoctrination, that’s what she’d been subjected to. She was slightly embarrassed to find that it was working. It seemed to her a sign of a weak character. Like finding yourself lapsing into a foreign accent.

She looked down at her plain gray robe. A soft wool jersey, she had chosen it because it was comfortable. Her pale legs were sticking out the bottom, her toenails as always unpainted.

She felt bad about that now. She wished she’d made more of an effort with herself. She thought about her wardrobe, all those corduroy jeans and V-neck sweaters, all those leggings and T-shirts. She ran a hand through her cropped hair, wishing it was long so she could pin it up.

Suddenly, a tremendous desire took hold of her. She wanted to doll herself up. She wanted to spend the whole day getting ready for him. She pictured herself sitting at a dressing table somewhere, carefully applying red lipstick. She imagined what it would be like to squeeze herself into a tight dress. She imagined wearing suspender stockings and high heels. She would be waiting for him at the door when he came home. Already she could feel a current running through her. Already she was pressing herself up against him, she could feel his hand sliding down her back. Taking him by the arm, she turned and moved away from him, pulling him behind her like a girl in a perfume ad.

A flood of regret for all the things she’d never done, it hit her like a slap. She was filled with remorse for this life of hers that had been only half-lived.

SHE DECIDED TO
spend the morning alone, just herself and the little dog. She turned her phone off and left it plugged into its charger on the hall table. She took a tenner out of her purse and stuffed it into the pocket of her coat along with some dog bags and her keys.

For no reason whatsoever, she found herself walking along the canal rather than the beach. A day religious in its beauty, the branches of the trees were bare black stencils against a bright white sky. The reeds along the banks a pale, whispery gold. The canal water was still and dark, the reflections of the trees stretching way down into its depths.

Addie had a moment, maybe two, to take it all in before Lola broke the peace. She went tearing down the grass verge and launched herself into the water, a big belly flop of a dive. A man on the opposite towpath stopped and laughed out loud. Addie’s heart swelled with pride.

There was a heron on the far bank. Addie only noticed him now. He was standing among the reeds, his body perfectly balanced on one skinny leg. His black eye glinting, he was watching Lola’s approach.

The man on the far side was watching too. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, a slow smile on his face. There were some winos gathered on a bench farther along the towpath, they’d all stopped what they were doing to watch the show. Lola had quite an audience as she chugged through the water towards the heron.

Addie watched it all unfold, but even as she was watching it she was thinking about Della. Poor Della was probably at home right now, leaving yet another message on Addie’s voice mail. She might even be sitting outside Addie’s door wondering where she was. Hugh would be pounding the phones, he’d be ringing round every one of his colleagues, demanding second and third opinions, lining up more scans and more blood tests. Addie was exhausted even thinking about it. And Bruno, Bruno would be sitting happily at his desk in the library. Poor Bruno, he was blissfully unaware of what was about to befall him.

She thought about all of these things and yet she wasn’t unhappy. If anything she was more conscious of the big empty sky above her. The damp ground beneath her feet. The silence here, in the middle of the city. She was savoring this stolen time. She felt like she was mitching from school, the pleasure of your freedom heightened by your awareness of the school day rolling on without you.

Lola was almost within reach of the heron now, one leap and she would be upon him. He waited another unbearable second, his magnificent body utterly motionless. Still he waited, as the dog scrambled to gain purchase on the muddy verge. Then slowly, so slowly, he raised his wings. One great thundering beat and he was airborne. Lola was just dragging herself out of the water, she was springing up into the air after him, her bedraggled little body leaping higher and higher with every spring. The heron made a wide turn, coming back low over the canal, his shadow moving along the water below him. A triumphant flyby, he soared over Lola’s head in cool jubilation.

The winos were all laughing. The man in the suit chuckled, then he turned away and continued on along the towpath. Poor Lola stood staring after the heron. She looked baffled. She couldn’t understand how she had been cheated out of her victory. She stared after him for a minute and then she seemed to forget what it was that she was staring at. She shook herself off and plunged cheerfully back into the canal.

Addie waited for her on the bank, registering with surprise this moment of pure, inappropriate happiness.

“AMID GATHERING CLOUDS,”
said Obama.

A freezing-cold morning in Washington, the images on the screen were bleached by the cold. They were like black-and-white pictures that had been retouched. The red tie, the mustard yellow coat that she wore, all vivid blotches of color on a sepia background.

“Chartreuse,” said Addie. “The color of her coat. It’s not mustard, it’s chartreuse. Believe me, this is one of my specialist topics.”

She was relieved that she’d got this far without telling him. A feeling like pride, she had accomplished what she’d set out to do. She’d made it over the line. All of a sudden it seemed easy not to tell him. As if she’d staggered to the end of a marathon only to find that she could just as soon keep on running.

She was caressing her secret like a smooth stone. She had it safely concealed in her closed hand. She had only to open her fingers and it would be revealed. A small movement but one that seemed impossible now to carry out.

She sat cross-legged on the couch. She was conscious of the way her head sat on top of her body. She was aware of the way she was holding her arms, the set of her shoulders. The dog was on the floor below her, looking up at her with steady eyes. Bruno was on the couch beside her, transfixed by what was happening on the screen.

She sat there and she turned her secret over and over in her head. She could think of nothing else. Now that her deadline had passed, every moment seemed like a deception. The joy he was feeling, the delight he was taking in this day, it was all in her gift. She could pull it out from under him at any moment. A horrible feeling, she was like an assassin waiting to pounce.

All of a sudden it was inconceivable to her to go any further without telling him.

B
RUNO SAT IN THE
corridor outside the doctor’s consulting rooms.

Eight o’clock in the morning and already he’d been waiting there for nearly an hour. The secretary kept popping out to tell him that he wouldn’t be seen without an appointment. “There’s no question of you being seen,” she said, a steely note creeping into her voice. “That’s what I’m trying to explain to you. I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.”

Bruno was at his most courteous. “I appreciate that, ma’am,” he kept saying, “but I think I’ll just sit here and wait for him all the same.”

Every so often a patient would come out and shut the door quietly behind them. A few minutes would pass and then another one would come along to knock on the door, a deep rich voice calling out to them to come on in. The secretary would appear with a new armful of files. A short rap on the door before turning the door handle and she would disappear inside. Giving Bruno a wary glance as she went.

He has to come out sometime, Bruno was thinking. Unless he climbs out of the window, he’ll have to come out the door.

It was just a question of waiting.

FOR BRUNO THE
shock of it was physical.

Not since his cocaine days had he felt like this. His head was pounding, his stomach churning like he’d just stepped off a roller coaster. He was exhausted and yet he was wired at the same time.

He hadn’t slept a wink. He had waited until she was asleep and then he had crept out to the living room again. He had turned on his laptop and started surfing the web. And what he had found there was horrifying, it made terrifying reading. He’d never heard of this thing before. He didn’t know things like this even existed anymore.

There was a chart of survival rates. Twenty percent after one year. After three years, five percent. Median survival from diagnosis, three to six months. Bruno knew that Addie had been through all this before him. He was as certain as he could be that she’d already followed this very same trail. He imagined he could see her footsteps ahead of him in the snow.

Virtually without symptoms, it said on all the websites. Notoriously difficult to diagnose. By the time it’s discovered it’s generally too late for treatment.

“Oh, how terrible,” said his sister, her voice straining to understand. Five in the morning in Ireland, midnight back in the U.S., he had phoned her against his better judgment. He was perched on the arm of the couch in his T-shirt and his boxers, his bare toes curled under a cushion. The glow of the laptop screen was the only light in the room. He was whispering so as not to wake Addie.

“What a terrible thing,” said Eileen. “I remember her so well! She’s the younger one, right? Oh, she was the sweetest little thing. Not like the older one! The older one was a piece of work.”

It had been a mistake to ring. As soon as he heard her voice he had known it. She had been alarmed by the call. No, she hadn’t been asleep! Even as she was saying it he could hear her struggling to make the lie sound convincing. He could hear the relief in her voice when he told her he was all right. He could hear her breath settling down. He could almost hear what she was thinking. This was somebody else’s tragedy, not theirs.

In fairness to her, how could she possibly understand? As far as she knew, this was just a midlife crisis he was having, it was just a holiday romance. A girl he’d known for only a couple of months, a girl who would soon be a thing of the past. That’s all Addie would ever be to his sisters, he could see that now. And a thought flitted across his mind, just a shadow of a thought. He would never be able to go back.

He could picture Eileen standing in the hallway, shivering in her nightdress. The phone cradled between her shoulder and her ear. Summoning the energy to be there for him when he needed her. He knew she would be longing to be back in her bed.

“Isn’t there anything they can do?” she had asked.

“No,” Bruno had said, “I’m afraid there doesn’t appear to be.”

It was hard to believe, in this day and age, that there were still things that couldn’t be fixed.

“What about the States?” he had said to Addie after she first told him. “What about stem cells?”

But she’d just kept shaking her head.

“I don’t really mind,” she had said. “That’s what I want you to try to understand. It’s good that it’s me it’s happening to. I don’t mind as much as someone else would.”

At that moment, Bruno would have done anything for her. Anything she’d asked of him, he would have tried to do it. But the one thing she had asked was something he wasn’t capable of doing. He could not understand it. He could not make himself understand. It made no sense to him.

“I know it’s very selfish of me,” she had said. “It’s much worse for all of you, I know that.”

Her voice was clear and steady as she spoke.

“You see,” she said, “I never thought I could be this happy. That’s all that matters to me, that we’ve been so happy.”

Even now, he could hear her saying it. He could hear the lightness in her tone, the cheerful delivery. He knew that she meant what she was saying. But still he couldn’t accept it.

He had the feeling that he’d just lost a monumental argument, that he’d taken one side in a great debate about the meaning of life, and that he had lost without quite understanding why.

TWO HOURS HE’D
been waiting now. Ten patients had been and gone. Ten trips back and forth by the receptionist, ten files delivered. Bruno was just contemplating a dash to the coffee machine when he heard a commotion out at the front desk. The next thing Hugh came barging round the corner.

He looked crazy, his hair standing up on end, huge dark circles under his eyes. He looked like a mad scientist who’d been up all night in his laboratory. He stopped short in the middle of the corridor when he saw Bruno. A startled look on his face, it was as if he were trying to work out where he’d seen him before.

Bruno stood up to meet him. They squared off against each other for a moment, like love rivals.

“He won’t see me,” said Bruno. “I’ve been here for almost two hours already. They keep saying he won’t see me.”

“The hell he won’t!” said Hugh, and he made straight for the closed door. Without so much as a knock, he had wrestled it open, and he was storming into the room with Bruno trailing after him.

The doctor looked up when they came in, a bored expression on his face. The patient who was sitting in front of him swung round to see what was going on. She looked terrified.

Hugh stood there in the middle of the room, his feet planted wide apart, like a bull about to charge. Bruno fell in beside him, trying not to look too ineffective by comparison.

“Hugh,” said Doherty evenly, his eyes drifting over towards his patient in silent apology.

“Dermot. I’ve been trying to reach you for two days! Did you not get any of my messages?”

“Ah yes, I’m sorry about that.” He waved his hand about dismissively on his limp wrist. “I was out of town. I was at a conference. I’m afraid I left my mobile behind.”

He had this slow demeanor, as if every movement were an effort.

“Look,” he drawled, “give me a moment, would you, we were just finishing up here.”

Bruno was about to turn to leave the room when he noticed that Hugh was going nowhere. He was firmly standing his ground. Reluctantly Bruno stayed put.

Doherty had no choice but to wrap up the consultation. His patient jumped to her feet. Clutching her handbag and casting a fearful look at Hugh, she scurried out of the room.

“Now, gentlemen,” said Doherty, gesturing to the two empty chairs in front of his desk. “Won’t you please sit down.”

Hugh didn’t budge.

“What did you think you were doing?” he roared. “Seeing my daughter without telling me!”

“You’re upset,” said Doherty evenly.

“Of course I’m bloody upset, Dermot. I’ve just been told my daughter has an adenocarcinoma. And nobody had the bloody courtesy to ring me to tell me about it!”

Doherty held both his hands out flat in front of him and brought them slowly down in a pacifying gesture.

“Would you calm down, Hugh, I didn’t even know she was your daughter until I came in this morning. How on earth was I to know she was your daughter?”

Hugh could picture the rush to pull the file. He would have stabbed at the button on the intercom. “Get me Adeline Murphy’s file, would you? I need to have a look at it.”

Hugh had taken a step closer to the desk. He was glaring down at Doherty menacingly.

“Is that the way we do things now? We give a young girl a diagnosis of terminal cancer without making sure she has someone with her?”

Doherty looked up at him like a disrespectful pupil. His voice was deep and eminently reasonable.

“We asked her if she wanted to call someone. For God’s sake, Hugh, what do you take us for? She didn’t want to call anyone. We had to respect her wishes. She’s hardly a girl, for Christ’s sake, she’s a forty-year-old woman.”

Thirty-nine, thought Bruno. It seemed like an important detail to him but he didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t have been able to get a word in anyway.

“You broke off the consultation to discuss hospital politics! You were talking about ward closures and nursing shortages while you were giving her the prognosis!”

Doherty raised his eyebrows. His voice, when it came out, was almost a yawn.

“I hardly think you’re in a position, Hugh, to be lecturing anybody about doctor-patient etiquette.”

“You bastard!”

Before Bruno knew what had happened, Hugh had launched himself across the desk. Doherty gave a little yelp and flipped back his chair to escape the attack. Bruno had to spring forward to get a grip on Hugh. It took all his strength to hold him back.

“You bloody bastard,” he was saying, spitting the words out through his teeth. “You miserable bloody bastard.”

Doherty was leaning his chair right back against the wall now, looking almost amused by the whole thing.

Bruno dragged Hugh backwards out of the room. The last image he had before they fell out into the corridor was of Doherty straightening his tie as he brought his chair back down to rest on all four legs again.

BRUNO WATCHED HUGH
as he weaved his way through the rows of cars towards the taxi rank. He had his head hanging down, the bald patch at the back clearly visible. He made a piteous sight.

Bruno had offered to walk him home but he’d mumbled something about an appointment. He had seemed in a hurry to get away.

The fight was gone out of him now. He’d been forced into a retreat. That loping walk of his, he was for all the world like a giant predator, returning home from a day’s hunting without a kill.

The man was a law unto himself. He was everything Addie had said and worse. He was a nightmare, obviously, he was a nightmare. And yet, despite all his flaws, it seemed to Bruno there was something heroic about Hugh.

Bruno couldn’t recall when he had last admired someone so much.