State We're In Page 5
‘Visiting hours are eleven until one and then three until five and seven until nine,’ the nurse replied firmly.
‘A little longer. Please.’ Dean wasn’t sure why he’d asked for more time. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t think he should be here. He couldn’t remember when he’d last been inside a hospital. During his twenties he used to visit various A&Es on a fairly regular basis on a Saturday night; in fact, a stag weekend wasn’t really considered to be a total success unless someone broke a limb or needed stitches. His company had insisted he take a medical, for insurance purposes, but he hadn’t had to visit an actual hospital, rather a luxurious consultant’s practice on the second floor of a swanky Chicago office block. He couldn’t remember ever visiting anyone in hospital. Sitting by a bedside. Watching, waiting, festering. When his sister had her babies he’d been in the States and so he’d met the newborns once Zoe was safely back at home, surrounded by soft toys, piles of disposable nappies and welcoming flowers.
The hospital was bleak, rammed with blatantly baffled patients who drifted through the wards and corridors. There appeared to be an infinite number of anguished or sorrowful souls propping up the walls or slumped on the bedside chairs. Some were no doubt anticipating news about their friends and families; others had already received it. Dean sighed. This was not his sort of place. He liked attractive, successful, resilient sorts. He liked to be cushioned by the lucky and the charismatic. He worked hard to surround himself with luxury, decadence and delights. Now he was surrounded by skinny hardback chairs, tubes, trolleys and a faint smell of disinfectant.
Dean didn’t want to be sitting on one of the uncomfortable chairs by Eddie Taylor’s bed. Why didn’t he simply leave? It was true that he was anti-authority and it was possible that he wanted to negotiate extra time just to prove that something as petty as rules regarding visiting hours didn’t apply to him, didn’t tie him.
Maybe. Or maybe he actually wanted to stay by this man’s bedside.
He wasn’t thinking straight. He probably needed some fresh air.
‘Sorry, I didn’t know the rules.’ He treated the nurse to one of his grins. He flashed this particular grin regularly. It was practised, perfect, showing off a line of teeth that had had the benefit of a top Chicagoan orthodontist. He used this grin when he needed a shop assistant to accept his returned item even though he had failed to retain proof of purchase; he used it when he needed a female maître d’ to find him a table, even though he’d failed to make a reservation, and he used it when he needed some hot woman to drop her morals and her knickers. It never failed.
‘Are you family?’ The nurse was already looking for a way to allow this man to stay until official visiting hours started, even though she could get into trouble for doing so.
‘I’m his son,’ said Dean, turning back to glance at his father, as though he too needed confirmation that this was the case.
‘Eddie’s never mentioned a son,’ pointed out the nurse, unaware, or at least unconcerned, about any potential hurt her comment might cause.
‘No, he wouldn’t,’ admitted Dean with a sigh. The sigh seeped like an ink stain on to the hospital sheets. ‘I think I’ll go and call my sister. I’ll come back at the proper hours.’
‘Oh, he has a daughter too?’ The nurse turned toward Eddie Taylor and beamed, clearly pleased for the sick man. ‘How lovely.’
‘Yeah, lovely.’ Dean turned away quickly so she wouldn’t see his glower.
‘Hi, Zoe.’
‘Dean. Is everything all right?’
Dean wondered whether there would ever come a day when his sister would simply pick up the phone and be pleased to hear from him. He doubted it. She’d probably always assume that he was the bearer of appalling news. Their exposed and lonely childhoods had taught them to expect the worst. They both made a valiant effort to pretend that this was not the case; they’d clawed their way out of their inheritance and become decent, hard-working members of society, but the fact was, they lived with an awareness of the world’s underbelly.
Zoe was the epitome of upright and reputable. She drove an old but reliable estate car to toddler dance classes and to resident association meetings; she dressed in White Stuff jumpers and bought her jeans from Gap. She usually carried a cotton shopping bag; ordinarily it was filled with responsibly farmed produce which she made into delicious meals for her family. Most people would probably peg Zoe at a little older than twenty-nine; she had dashed towards being an adult, as childhood wasn’t a place either sibling had wanted to linger. But if anyone watched her striding through the cobbled streets of Winchester, where she lived in a small but cosy house, they would never guess that she wet her bed until she was thirteen and that she still couldn’t sleep without leaving a light on.
Dean had pulled off an even more stupendous transformation. He was a wealthy and extremely successful advertising executive, who oozed charm and composure. There was nothing about his expensive and elegant style of dressing, his confident swagger in the boardroom, his affable generosity when buying rounds at the bar that suggested that as a child his wardrobe was limited to charity shop purchases and second-hand clothes donated by well-meaning do-gooders. Nor was there anything to betray that he had been treated by a child psychiatrist for anger management until he was sixteen. They had managed to construct convincingly respectable, balanced personas for the benefit of almost everyone else they knew. It was trickier with each other; they couldn’t hide the truth of their histories from one another.
‘Hey, don’t panic,’ he said soothingly.
‘It’s just that it’s so early for you. Ten fifteen here means it must be just four fifteen your time. If you call in the middle of the night Chicago time then of course I’m going to assume that something is wrong.’
‘Actually, I’m in the UK.’
‘Are you?’ Dean could hear Zoe’s relief and pleasure. ‘You never said you were coming over.’
‘Yeah. It was sort of impulse.’
‘Great! Will you get time to squeeze in a visit to Winchester and come and see us before you have to fly back?’
‘That’s my plan.’
‘I know your work is always hectic, but we do love seeing you. The kids have grown so much since you last saw them. You won’t recognise Hattie.’
‘I’m not here on work as it happens.’ Dean paused, searching for the right words. He wasn’t sure he’d ever find them, so he just blundered on. ‘It’s our father.’
‘Our father?’ Zoe sounded stunned.
‘Edward Taylor,’ added Dean, just in case she didn’t know who he was talking about.
‘Is he dead?’
‘No.’
‘More’s the pity.’
‘Come on, Zoe, you can’t mean that. You’re too lovely to think that way.’ Dean thought that way but he considered Zoe to be the more compassionate of the two of them.
‘I really do. I am lovely, except when it comes to him.’
‘He’s dying.’
‘And?’
‘And I thought you’d want to know.’
‘You thought wrong. I’m not interested.’ Dean could hear her breath down the phone line; it was increasingly rapid, as though she’d just completed a ten-kilometre run. She must be wondering why he’d called her about Edward Taylor. Why had he brought this to her Thursday morning? She was probably just on her way out to take the kids to the park, walk their dog. She didn’t need this. ‘How do you even know?’ she demanded.
‘He got a nurse to call me.’
‘How did he know where to find you?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t imagine I’m that hard to find.’
‘Yet it took him twenty-nine years.’
Dean ignored the interruption and carried on. ‘I’ve never been missing. He was the one who disappeared.’
‘Oh, so you do remember that much.’ Dean did remember that much. Every day of his life.
‘Zoe, I’m as angry with him as you are.’
‘No, you clearly are not, or else you wouldn’t have come from Chicago to be by his bedside. I’m assuming that is why you are here. You’re planning on visiting him.’
He couldn’t lie to her. ‘I’m actually at the hospital right now.’
‘You’ve spoken to him?’ Her fury and disbelief caused her voice to crack, and she squawked down the phone. Zoe had always suspected that Dean nurtured a secret need to forgive his father; she did not harbour any similar compunction.
‘No, he is asleep or maybe unconscious. I’m not sure.’
‘Why has he got in touch after all this time? Does he want a vital organ?’
The thought hadn’t crossed Dean’s mind and now he felt stupid. It was possible. ‘I don’t think so,’ he mumbled.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘They said he only has days.’
‘I don’t care. I don’t know him.’
‘That’s my point.’
‘You think you are going to get to know him in his last few days?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You’re an idiot to visit him. A bloody idiot. Has he ever visited us?’
Silently the siblings began simultaneous but independent mental tallies of the times that they had waited in vain for Edward Taylor to come and visit them, maybe even rescue them. For the first three years after he’d left, Dean had believed his father would turn up at his school sports days; he’d hoped for this with all the energy and commitment that a young boy could muster. His size had given him an advantage and he’d always been a good athlete, but there was never anyone to cheer him on or witness his victories. What was the point of romping home a good ten metres in front of the other boys if there was no one to feel proud? Dean would be shocked to know that Zoe had harboured similar secret fantasies until she was much older. Right up to her wedding day she’d dreamt that maybe her father would turn up out of the blue to give her away. But he didn’t, of course, underlining the fact that he’d already done so, many years previously.
‘We had each other.’
‘Only because there was no one else around.’
‘Still, it was enough, wasn’t it?’
They both knew it hadn’t been, but neither could insult the other by saying so. After a brief pause Zoe added, ‘Well, I’m not interested. I don’t want to know anything about him. I don’t want details. Don’t talk to me about him again. Not until you call to tell me he’s dead.’
‘Zoe,’ Dean pleaded.
‘Don’t make me hate you too, Dean. Not you too.’
‘That’s not what I’m trying to do. I don’t want to disappoint you but I couldn’t hide this from you. I don’t want to fight.’
‘I have to go. The dog is going to pee in the kitchen otherwise.’
Dean knew the chocolate-brown Labrador was perfectly well house-trained; Zoe just wanted to get off the line.
‘OK, sis, I’ll call you when—’ He didn’t get to be specific. Zoe had hung up.
6
Jo
This is the start of something big. This is important. Well, it could be. It might be. I’m not an idiot – well, not all of the time. I’ve had enough false starts, my hopes have been raised more than enough times, for me to be aware that true love – whilst certainly in existence – isn’t easy to stumble on. But still, I cross my fingers.
I lie awake and concentrate on not moving. I don’t want to disturb and wake Jeff. We only fell asleep at twenty to three this morning and the smart, enormous aluminium clock on the wall says it isn’t yet six a.m. But I can’t go back to sleep. Emotionally, I’m too full. Too charged.
I try not to fidget or wriggle, but staring at the ceiling is boring. It’s entirely blank; there’s no impressive coving, no offensive polystyrene tiles, not even a patch of damp that would suggest a financial struggle or a lackadaisical neighbour who might have forgotten to turn off the bath tap. The ceiling tells me nothing at all. I slide my eyes around the room. The decoration is immaculate; I can smell new paint. I wonder whether Jeff might be the sort of person who has professional decorators in every couple of years to ensure that the place always looks spick and span. Some people do live like that, don’t they? Well, my parents do, obviously, but other people too.
I can imagine living here, with Jeff. I know, I know, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m just saying, if things panned out, this would suit me very well. At least it would once I conquered my concerns about breaking something or messing everything up. This really is an exceptionally clean and tidy environment. Slowly my confidence picks up and I dare to move my head from left to right. I don’t want to wake Jeff yet, but I need to get my bearings. Last night, I was too drunk on wine and lust to take in much. I remember him fumbling with a massive bunch of keys and then, once the door slipped open, I flung him against the hall wall. We had exciting, wild, uninhibited sex, right there and then, followed by a second round in bed; that time it was slower, more meaningful. Twice! Ha, that is something I have on my married friends. How many of them can say they have sex twice in one night? Most of my friends hint that twice a month is average. It is a mystery to me how I can be privy to such information but still be more than keen to join their club.
Jeff’s bedroom is gorgeous! So modern and comfortable. He has great taste. The prints on the wall are dramatic black and white photos of a beach in winter time. It’s unusual for a man to appreciate throws, candles and cushions, but Jeff has them all. I glance around for photographs that might give a sneaky insight into my new boyfriend’s world. I can’t remember any of the details he told me last night, not specifically. We didn’t do that much talking about personal stuff really; there wasn’t time. I gleaned that he liked going down to Bude to windsurf; I remember that, and the fact that he works nearby, in Hackney – we discussed the joy of a short commute. Although I can’t quite remember what he does for a living. Did he say? He has a brother, or it might be two. The details are patchy.
There are no photos to help fill in the gaps, nor are there any books or clutter that could give clues. Wow, this man is a neat freak. If I ever moved in here I’d have to buy one of those jewellery trees because my necklaces are always getting tangled and I have a feeling he isn’t the type to appreciate puddles of jewellery littering up the place (or discarded clothes and stray shoes come to that). I’d also have to buy a set of those laundry boxes that say ‘Whites’ and ‘Darks’; it’s clear that Jeff is the sort of guy who likes a system.
I turn my head and drink in the sight of my new boyfriend, who is sleeping peacefully beside me. Exhausted. Spent. He looks a bit like Mark Wahlberg, or maybe Ryan Reynolds. Like them, he’s sort of boy next door but better. Tighter, more taut and toned. Properly hot. He has a great jawline, dark eyes, dark hair, plump, pink – let’s face it – sensual lips. I wonder how old he is. It’s quite possible that he is a year or two younger than I am, maybe three or four. I’ll have to take care not to let him see my driving licence, at least not too soon. That’s not the sort of thing I want to lead with. This properly hot guy will undoubtedly be in demand; he could choose from a queue of women. Younger women, taller women, prettier women, funnier women, women with more successful careers. All of the above. The thought causes my breath to quicken. It is tough out there. It is busy and predatory; twenty-first-century dating rituals are like being continually embroiled in the first day of the January sales. Elbows out.
Still, he is here, right next to me. I am here, in his bed. I push a long, slow breath out into the word. As I do so, I try to let go of my panic and worry, just as advised by the yoga teacher on the DVD I bought myself last Christmas. I can take this slowly. We have time. Obviously not years and years. I am thirty-six next month, for God’s sake (back to that again!). But we have some time. I could skive off work today and then we could stay in bed. In fact, if I rang in and said I had a stomach bug, I could play truant on Friday too. Then we’d have four whole days of uninterrupted loving. Who knows where those four days might lead. To weeks? Months?
But this time, this time I think there really is something to get excited about, because there is one thing I remember with crystal clarity from last night. Something he whispered to me after the second bout of lovemaking. He said, ‘You’re just the sort of girl I should marry.’
Men don’t say that sort of thing lightly. He has to have meant it.
And the sex. The sex was phenomenal. I really have never, ever experienced anything like it. Just thinking about it causes a fleeting spike of excitement between my legs. It was so … I search for the exact word to describe the marathon session we enjoyed. My head is still a bit fuzzy. What is the perfect word? It was so … energetic.
I really need to pee. Carefully I inch the duvet aside and edge out of the bed. I glance around, hoping to locate his robe so that I can cover up. No matter how acrobatic I was last night, in the cold light of day my body demands sanctuary. I can’t see a robe, nor is there a jumper or hoodie flung across the back of the bedroom chair. I have no alternative but to dash naked into the bathroom.
The bathroom is a delight! It looks like it has sprung from a magazine. He must have a cleaner. He can afford a cleaner! I know it is shallow to care, but the idea of having a boyfriend with an income that allows him to employ a cleaner is fantastic. I’ve spent far too many ‘dates’ cleaning the homes of various exes. To start with it is always smart restaurants and a club, then a couple of weeks down the line it’s often a trip to the cinema and a bag of popcorn, and before I know it, I’m lucky to be watching a DVD from the sofa. I try to tell myself that dates that consist of me scouring ovens or defrosting freezers are intimate and domestic, part of a real relationship, but in my heart of hearts I know that I’m simply being taken advantage of.