Best of Friends (33 page)

When Lizzie and Erin had bumped into one another in the supermarket earlier, they’d decided that visiting her together would be a good idea.

“What do you say to someone who’s probably dying?” Lizzie had wondered. It was so different from pretending not to know in the surgery.

“I was hoping you’d tell me,” Erin replied.

On the way up to Sally and Steve’s front door, Erin admired Lizzie’s plant. “I didn’t know what to bring,” she said, gesturing to the magazines. “I thought these would amuse her, then I’ve just realised that they’re all about the fall fashions and new hairdos, and it’s like I’m just reminding her that she’s lost her hair with the chemo, and chances are she may not be around to wear the fall fashions.”

“Magazines are a lovely thought,” Lizzie said, touching Erin’s arm. “I’ve seen a lot of sick people come through the surgery and they generally don’t want to be treated as if they aren’t part of the normal world. If Sally was in bed after a run-of-the-mill operation, you’d bring her magazines, right?”

“Right, I guess.” If only this was a run-of-the-mill operation, Erin thought sadly. “How are things with you, Lizzie?”

“Fine, fine,” Lizzie said automatically, then thought better of it. “Actually, I’m not fine. I’m shell-shocked to be honest. This,” she gestured up at the pretty Richardson house where they’d all partied just over a month ago, “seems all wrong.”

“I know,” agreed Erin sadly. “It’s terrible that it takes someone else’s tragedy to do it, but I feel so ashamed of all the things I’ve been worrying over. This is real pain. Death, leaving Steve and her little kids behind, that’s tragedy, not all the silly problems of my own making.”

“Snap,” said Lizzie. “When I think of what’s been bothering me …” She didn’t run through the list because it seemed so trite: Debra’s wedding; Myles managing to move on while she hadn’t; her boring non-life—all stupid things that could be resolved with a little effort. There was no such quick fix for Sally.

Both women were silent for a moment before Lizzie sighed and remarked that they couldn’t stand outside on the footpath all day. Somehow they had to go in and talk to Sally as if the shadow of death wasn’t looming.

If anyone in the Richardson house looked ill, it was Steve. Erin remembered how Sally had described him to her when they’d first met—a blond Rock Hudson—and was shocked that Steve’s handsomeness had worn away to reveal a gaunt face with hollow cheeks.

“Lovely to see you both,” he said warmly, embracing them. “I was just taking some tea up to Sally, would you like some?”

“Sure,” said Erin. “I’ll help.”

“No, really.” Standing over the kettle, Steve looked almost fierce, a man pushed to the limit. “I can manage perfectly well on my own.” It was as if this was the mantra he’d been repeating to himself endlessly, hoping that it would become true.

Lizzie had never been upstairs in the Richardsons’ house and it was just as pretty as the rest of the place. Decorated with Sally’s flair, the upper landing was a buttery parchment colour with a creamy orchid in a primrose pot dominating a small table, while one entire wall was dedicated to collages of family snapshots in various different-shaped frames. It was a wall of happy family memories and Lizzie could hardly bear to look at it.

“Hi, love. Lizzie and Erin are here to see you,” called Steve, pushing open the door with his foot and going through carefully so as not to spill the tea.

Behind him, the two women exchanged anxious looks and then followed him into Sally’s bedroom.

“Lizzie, Erin, I’m so thrilled you’re here!” cried Sally, sitting up in bed looking uncannily like an older version of herself. Her soft slenderness had become a scary thinness and somehow her teeth looked too big for her face. Her head was wrapped in a pink polka-dot scarf.

If they were both shocked by her appearance, they didn’t betray it. She’d looked better in hospital, certainly, where you somehow expected people not to look themselves. But here, on her home territory, the contrast with the old Sally was horrible and the gravity of her condition was suddenly brought home to them.

Lizzie sat on a small stool on one side of the bed and hugged Sally gently.

“Sally, love, how are you?”

Erin sat carefully on a chair on the other side and grasped Sally’s hand in greeting.

“I’m fine,” said Sally brightly. “Steve, thank you for the tea, darling.”

Nobody said anything else until Steve had carefully put the tray on a small bare table next to Erin, and had poured for everyone. He handed his wife a cup, touched her cheek with a tender finger, and left the room. Sally waited until they could hear his tread on the stairs before she spoke.

“I’m OK,” she said. “I know that’s hard to believe but I am. I can cope because I have to cope for Steve and the boys.” She smiled ruefully. “If I was single with no children, I’d rage against the world or God or whoever for doing this to me. But I have to be strong for them.”

Erin’s hand shook as she handed Lizzie a cup of tea. “I don’t know what to say, Sally,” she admitted.

Sally shrugged. “Nobody does. As long as neither of you tell me I’m going to a better place, then I’ll be all right!” She smiled but the light and warmth everyone associated with Sally were absent from her smile. “I had this wonderful plan to cut my hair and dye it blonde before it all fell out, but it beat me to it,” she added lightly, changing the subject. “I’ve always wanted to go blonde and that was my last chance.”

Lizzie and Erin laughed uneasily.

“Blondes don’t have more fun,” said Lizzie, touching her streaky tortoiseshell curls. “Take my word for it!”

“Red, then?” Sally asked Erin.

There was a brittleness in her voice that had never been there before, Lizzie noticed.

“Too temperamental,” Erin advised. “Stick with the Little Red Riding Hood look.”

And they were off on safer subjects, talking about how they’d first met and how Sally still hadn’t got rid of that red hooded coat.

Lizzie remembered when Daniel had been a baby and they had come to the surgery for the first time.

“I thought you were some sweet little teenager with two kids. You looked so young, I couldn’t believe you were in your early thirties.”

“Royal jelly,” laughed Sally. “I swear by it. My mother used it and she had the most youthful skin.” Her voice softened. “She told me that if I used it every day, I’d end up as a pensioner with baby-soft skin.”

A pensioner. The word hung in the air. Sally would never get to be a pensioner. Erin clasped Sally’s hand again tightly. Every normal subject came inexorably round to the same awful conclusion.

When she and Greg had talked about Sally’s illness he said that it was like a nightmare, but it wasn’t: you woke up after a nightmare.

“You know my mother died of breast cancer when I was twenty? Steve never met her; that always upset me,” Sally continued, the tone of false gaiety now gone. “I knew life wasn’t always easy. That’s why Steve and I were grateful for what we had. Funny,” she said, “I was always scared of breast cancer but, in some ironic way, I never thought I’d get it. I thought it couldn’t strike my family twice. Or that at least I didn’t have to worry about it yet. My mother was forty-eight when she got it.”

Erin thought of her mother, her real mother. Shannon would be forty-five or -six now. Was she well? And Gran, she would be in her late sixties. Had she faced serious illness?

“But your mother is always with you, isn’t she?” Lizzie said gently to Sally. “My mother’s dead too but she’ll always be part of my thoughts, my memories.”

“That’s true.” Sally nodded. “What worries me is that the boys are so young—how will they remember me at all? I had twenty years with my mother but they won’t have that time. I can’t remember things from when I was three or four, so how can they?”

Erin knew that it was wrong for her to cry. Sally was the one who should be crying, but instead Sally was composed and Erin was the one who felt like bursting into hopeless tears. It must be pregnancy hormones, she thought, and then she did cry.

Sally reached over and handed her a tissue. “Don’t cry, Erin,” she begged. “I’m not. I mean, I did at first but I don’t seem to be able to cry anymore. There’s nothing I can change about the disease. It’s been terrible coming to terms with my powerlessness.” She looked at the two women. “That’s the irony of modern life. We think we are in charge, that we can change
everything—
our jobs, where we live, our lifestyles—but there are some things we just have to accept we can’t do anything about. The only thing I’m in control of is how I deal with the cancer.”

She sipped more of her tea, needing both hands to raise the cup to her lips.

“Maybe I
haven’t
come to terms with it, after all, and I’ll go mad screaming in a day or so, but I have to make it right for my family. Steve will have the burden of bringing up our babies on his own. I can’t leave him with the memory of my dying being a drawn-out horror story. We can enjoy what we’ve left, can’t we?” She was pleading with them, hoping they’d say she was right, that being positive was a choice and not a way of hiding from the truth. But Erin and Lizzie were silent; neither of them could think of anything to say that wasn’t a platitude. So Sally went on: “I knew the cancer had spread even before they did the second bone scan. I just knew it. Every time I think I can beat it, it comes up with something else to throw at me. When they told me, it felt like being stuck in a lift with no air. I couldn’t breathe. The hospital gave me a tranquilliser and I was like a zombie. I probably needed it at the time, but I don’t want to be like that now; I want to know what’s happening. Morphine makes you dopey at the end, not yourself,” she added. “My mother was like that. It was horrible.”

“Is there anything we can do?” asked Lizzie.

“Come to see me, make me feel a bit normal, as if I’m not dying,” Sally said slowly. “People get scared, you see. They did with my mother. Her friends didn’t know what to do so they stayed away because they felt their visits wouldn’t be any help. She wanted to see people, actually, but the ones she wanted to didn’t come. I understood,” she added. “What do you say to someone who’s dying?”

“You’re not dying,” cried Erin. “There’s always hope.”

“I am dying,” Sally said bluntly. “We’re all dying. Sooner rather than later for me, though. Treatment can delay it but I’ve discovered that accepting what’s happening is the only way I can deal with it.”

They left soon afterwards, when Sally’s pale face grew paler and she began to yawn. “I know,” she smiled, “I’m a great hostess. I can last an hour and then I pass out with exhaustion.”

“We’ll come again,” Lizzie said. “Promise.”

Outside on the street, they stood talking beside Lizzie’s car. “Can I drop you home?” Lizzie asked.

Erin shook her head. “I think I’ll walk. Fresh air might clear my head, but thanks.”

“How are you feeling?” Lizzie asked. “I mean with the baby.”

“Fine but tired,” Erin admitted. “I thought working two jobs when I was in Boston was exhausting but this tiredness is like nothing on earth, and I’m not even working.” She paused, thinking that her tiredness must be nothing to the weariness Sally was dealing with.

Lizzie smiled. “I remember when I was pregnant with Joe, I had to go to bed every night at eight. I used to cry with tiredness. Poor Myles thought everything would be perfect because we’d got married but he didn’t know what hit him, coping with a pregnant woman.”

“I haven’t started crying with tiredness yet,” Erin said, smiling. Then she stopped. “It feels awful to be able to smile, doesn’t it? When Sally’s so ill.”

Lizzie agreed.

“You know, I’ve been thinking, if I got news like Sally’s got, I’d want to see my family again,” Erin went on, starting to cry again. She wiped her nose with a tissue. Pregnancy hormones were really something. “It’s like being estranged from someone but saying you’d go to their funeral—so the upshot is you’d wait until they died to make it up. Greg says, why wait until something bad happens? So the thing is, I’ve decided. I’m going to find them. And tell them about the baby.”

“That’s wonderful,” whispered Lizzie, hugging Erin.

“I’d begun to think about finding them when I found out I was pregnant. Expecting a baby changes everything.” Erin’s face lit up. “I don’t know why I was ever worried about having the baby. Shock, I suppose. I mean, I’m scared because I don’t know how to be a mom but I wouldn’t want not to have him or her. I can’t deprive the baby of a family either.”

“You’ll be a fabulous mum,” insisted Lizzie. “And if you need a surrogate mum until you find yours, I’m here. Somebody needs to boss you around and make sure you’re getting enough rest and are taking your iron tablets!”

Erin was too touched to speak, so Lizzie gave her one last hug and hopped into her car.

When she got home, it was to find Debra’s Mini parked outside the house.

“I thought it was your half-day?” were the first words out of her daughter’s mouth when Lizzie reached the kitchen. Today, Debra had made tea for herself and found some foil-wrapped chocolate biscuits. Dressed in an expensive-looking pair of suede trousers and a winter-white sweater, she was lolling elegantly against the sink unit. “I’ve been here ages,” Debra said unnecessarily. “I left work early on purpose.”

“Remember Sally Richardson at the beauty salon?” said her mother. “Well, she’s got cancer and she’s dying, God help her. I was visiting her.”

“Oh. The cute salon with the pink and white gingham curtains?” Debra asked.

Lizzie nodded. “It’s so sad. Sally has a husband and two young kids. I can’t imagine what they’ll do without her.”

“Men are better at getting married again,” Debra said blithely, choosing another biscuit from the box. “I saw an article in the paper about it. Although if anything happened to Barry, I know I’d have to get over it. Life goes on.” A thought occurred to Debra. “Wasn’t she going to do your nails for the wedding?”

Lizzie stared at Debra in disbelief. “It hardly matters about my nails. It’s not as if I have them done normally.”

“Well, Barry’s mother is having hers done, and her make-up too.” Debra was shocked at this sign that her mother wasn’t taking the most important day of her daughter’s life seriously enough.