Home Truths (31 page)

And off they go, hand in hand, no one is in the lead.

The cubicle is spacious; faux panelled with strangely subdued lighting. There's loo paper on the floor and a Vent-Axia whirring away, affording a contradictory soundproofing of sorts. As soon as they're in, with a giggle and a fast lock of the door, they're snogging and fumbling and grappling and groping again. Matt has pulled her top to one side so he can see her tits in the flesh. They're fabulous: sizeable but pert with keen dark nipples craving his attention. While he sucks, she ruffles his hair through her fingers, backs up against the wall and spreads her legs, guiding his hand up in between. He rubs his fingers ravenously against the gusset of her thong. She gyrates against him and his thumb probes under the material to the lips of her sex. She's shaven. He's aching, there's a sackload of spunk which has been cramped in the holding bay of his balls for what seems like hours.

‘Have you got a condom, then?’ she asks. Matt frowns. ‘You've got to pull out then, all right?’

In spite of the alcohol, Matt's inner voice is suddenly sharply lucid. The harder the facts of the imminence of infidelity, the softer his cock becomes. Man's best friend. Warning balls. He's far more grateful for his flaccidness than he is embarrassed by it.

‘Don't worry,’ she says sweetly, glancing at Matt's limp penis and she sits on the toilet and takes a pee. ‘Another time, maybe? Shall we go to Eddie's?’ she says conversationally, while wiping herself with loo paper and righting her thong. ‘See if Twat and the girls are there?’

‘I'm going to head home,’ Matt says.

‘Will you see me into a cab, then?’ she asks.

And he does. And he says that of course he'll call her though he's aware that she's not aware that she hasn't given
him her number nor asked for his. He flags down a taxi for her and watches it go. He finds that he's now utterly sober. So sober that his mind is reeling with frantic theories on what constitutes infidelity. He doesn't want a cab, he wants to walk and think and fast. As he marches up Wardour Street, weaving his way through all the people, he wonders if he just cheated on Fen. He justifies that he was drunk. He reasons that it wasn't sex anyway, in the penetrative sense. When push was about to come to shove, he had not wanted it, regardless of the state of his cock. But had what he had done amounted to being unfaithful? Was it possible to rank degrees of infidelity and if so, how far down the scale had he just stooped? He'd snogged another woman, had a grope and a feel. So his heart hadn't been in it, his mind hadn't been on it, his dick hadn't been sucked and his conscience had remained firmly trothed to Fen. But the urge had been there and whose fault was that? Could he blame Fen? Or had he only himself to blame? Or should he marvel that his love for her had caused his inner voice to yell out, Stop? He crossed over Oxford Street and walked briskly along Tottenham Court Road, feeling slightly hostile towards the pockets of pissed-up people for whom a night out in town was still young and promising. Despite the crowds of people, no one but him had any thoughts of home so he flagged a taxi with ease.

‘Good night out?’ the cabbie asks him chirpily, having passed comment on the weather, the traffic conditions and Ken Livingstone.

‘Crap,’ Matt says, glowering at his reflection in the window.

‘Coming home empty-handed are we?’ the cabbie chuckles. ‘Your powers of persuasion let you down tonight?’

Matt looks up, straight into the eyes of the cabbie staring back at him from the rear-view mirror. ‘Quite the opposite,’ Matt says. ‘She was up for it. I wasn't.’

‘Heart strings not plucked, then?’

Christ will he not just shut up!

‘My heart's at home,’ Matt says while wondering why he hadn't shut up, himself.

‘Ah,’ the cabbie sighs, ‘so you knocked temptation back to touch. Good for you, mate.’

‘I had a touch,’ Matt mumbles, ‘it didn't feel good at all.’

‘Precisely,’ says the cabbie, ‘so it
was
good for you.’

Cat Out of the Bag

The last thing Matt felt like doing, two days later, was to go out again. However, the choke of guilt, the nauseated regret, became more severe in Fen's presence. When he was at work, he longed to be at home, as if he imagined Fen and, to a lesser extent Cosima, suddenly unprotected without him there. When he was apart from her, he desperately needed her in sight – even if this meant apologizing to her photograph which he carried in his wallet. He stroked the image with the tip of his little finger, proclaiming to her that he'd never drink again, that he'd see no more of Jake, that he'd re-focus his eyes for Fen alone. What had happened was nothing, just stupidity; it had felt vile, a lesson had been learnt. Or so he kept telling himself. Yet in Fen's company, he couldn't even meet her eye, so convinced was he that he wore his sin as a sandwich board, guilt writ large all over his face. All he could do was feign tiredness as the cause for his uncommunicativeness, close himself off by watching
The West Wing
on DVD, while Fen made much of doing all the tidying up, all the cooking and all the laundry. When Matt did glance at her, hoping to bestow a loving, affirming smile, he found himself flinching away, as if her top was emblazoned with You fucking bastard how
could you. So, though a part of Matt felt he should go home directly, to silently beg her forgiveness and declare his utter steadfastness and enduring loyalty, when Ben phoned and suggested they meet at the Mariners, Matt embraced the opportunity to be distracted from both his atonement and culpability.

Ben had beers waiting for them.

‘How's life?’ Zac asked. ‘Pip told me about Cat's non-trip up North. Is she OK?’

Ben took a visibly deep breath. ‘She'll be fine,’ he said, ‘but I have to tell you both something and it's about Django.’ Ben looked from Matt to Zac and saw the same look of surprise and enquiry. ‘He's told me to tell you. It's not nice. The long and short of it is he came to the hospital for some tests and he has prostate cancer.’

‘For fuck's sake,’ said Matt, closing his hand over his eyes.

‘Cancer?’ said Zac. ‘Jesus.’ Ben let the news sit with them a moment. ‘Hang on,’ said Zac, ‘he was down
here
? In London? When?’

‘The day that Cat went up to Derbyshire,’ Ben said, shaking his head. ‘Last Wednesday. I made an appointment and sent him a train ticket. It was the only way I could be sure he'd have it looked into – he wouldn't go to his GP. And I'd noticed some signs a while ago – before all the Derek–Mother shit.’

‘Does Cat know now?’

‘No. He didn't want anyone to know. And now he wants me to tell you. And us to tell them.’

‘Christ,’ Zac and Matt said in unison.

‘Poor sod,’ Matt said sadly. ‘What's the prognosis?’

‘It's difficult to say at this stage,’ said Ben. ‘It's not uncommon and it's usually very slow growing – sometimes the effect of the treatment is much worse than the symptoms
of the cancer itself. Often sufferers can live out a normal lifespan. However, he has pain in his hip, leg and back which suggests it may have spread to the bone. He's only had a physical exam and blood tests. Now he needs an ultrasound, then we're into the territory of biopsies and scans. The results will take a while but they'll show the grade and stage of the cancer.’

Matt and Zac sat silent and shocked. ‘I can't believe this,’ Matt said with audible alarm.

‘What treatment will he have?’ Zac said.

‘It depends on what the tests reveal,’ Ben said. ‘It's not my area. But I know around one in twelve men are diagnosed with this illness. He may have had it for years – it tends to be without symptoms in the early stages.’

‘I can't believe it,’ Matt rued again. ‘What are we going to do about the girls?’

‘I have no sodding idea,’ Ben sighed, ‘which is why I thought we should meet. Cat is up and down at the moment.’

‘Fen too,’ said Matt.

‘And Pip,’ said Zac.

‘Is he OK?’ Zac asked. ‘You know, psychologically?’

Ben smiled sadly. ‘Beneath the neckerchief and dodgy trousers, there's an ill man of seventy-five. And unfortunately, the tests are pretty unpleasant.’

‘Is he coming back down for the tests?’ Zac asked. ‘Perhaps we could arrange for him to see the girls then?’

‘He's been referred to his local oncology department,’ Ben said.

‘He needs support,’ Matt said, ‘he needs his girls.’

‘So what are we going to do about them?’ Zac asked. ‘I could tell Pip,’ he offered, ‘then she could tell the others? She's suggested to them that the three of them should go up to Derbyshire soon, anyway.’

Matt nodded but Ben shook his head. ‘I don't know. I
know their traditional dynamic is to look to Pip for advice – but that dynamic was turned on its head by the mother showing up and the Derek business and the whole parentage thing. I speak for Cat, of course,’ said Ben, ‘because I think somewhere, deep down, she just can't help fearing that she's slightly less of a sister to your two than they are to each other.’

‘Which is horse shit,’ Matt assured him, backed up by Zac raising his glass.

‘I know that,’ said Ben. ‘It's stupid, I know, but it's where her mind is at just now.’

‘They should know at the same time,’ Zac said. ‘I could do a dinner gathering and we could tell them all together.’

‘I don't know,’ Matt said. ‘It's going to be such a massive thing – we don't know how they'll react individually. And then there's Cosima – if we're round at yours, Fen will have half her mind on how the baby is.’

‘Good point,’ said Ben, ‘and I think Cat might feel a bit compromised – like we've engineered a situation. She's very particular about her comfort zone at the moment – even if it is behind the closed doors of our rental place in Clapham.’

‘The thing is, we
are
going to need to engineer it,’ said Zac.

‘Meticulously,’ Matt agreed.

The three men sipped their beer contemplatively, half their thoughts directed to Django, half to their girls. ‘I reckon we tell them separately but at the same time,’ said Ben. ‘We agree on a time, and specific information – perhaps down to the very wording.’

Matt and Zac nodded in agreement. ‘I think we also let them know that we met to discuss this,’ said Matt, ‘that it's what Django wants. And that they're each hearing the news at the same time in the same way.’

‘OK,’ said Zac, ‘this is good. We also need to decide which
order they'll phone each other. I know it sounds contrived but our McCabe girls have a tendency to leap on their emotional high horses and bolt. We can't have them all in a scatter – they're going to need each other.’

‘Agreed,’ said Matt and Ben.

‘You find in traumatic situations, those involved need assistance in deciding what to do and how to do it,’ said Ben. ‘Cat is still insecure, somewhere, about the dynamic between her and her sisters. Perhaps she should make the first call. I'll have her phone Pip – and then Pip can phone Fen?’

Matt and Zac nod. They've gone off their beer.

‘This is crap news,’ Matt said forlornly. ‘Really horrible.’

‘It'll be the making or the breaking of them,’ Zac agreed.

‘As a family,’ defined Ben, ‘as well as individually.’

They dreaded being grilled by the girls when they arrived home because it had been settled that nothing would be said until 9 p.m. the following evening when the situation would be revealed according to the information advised by Ben, the precise wording honed by the three of them.

When Zac arrived home, Pip was watching a cable health channel about having babies, but she zapped over to E4 hurriedly.

‘How was your evening?’ she asked casually, reducing the volume.

‘Fine,’ Zac said, ‘but you carry on. I have a little work to do.’ And he disappeared with his laptop to sit on the edge of the bed, feeling winded and sad.

Matt came home to find Fen already asleep. He spooned up gently against her and mouthed ‘Sorry’ over and over again into her hair.

‘You reek of booze,’ she muttered sleepily, hitching her shoulder up a little to block him out.

Cat was full of beans when Ben returned because Jeremy was leaving to run the Basingstoke branch of Dovidels and had intimated to Cat that she should apply for his post.

‘Everything's looking up,’ Cat exclaimed, giving him a hug.

The Ten o'Clock News

Fen's morning started very well indeed. It was warm enough to dress Cosima in a broderie anglaise sundress with matching puffy knickers and frilled cloche hat which Matt's mother had bought her. The baby looked adorable and her matchless beauty in her mother's eyes made the day seem even more balmy. There were new gurgles, from which Fen could deduce a private language of sorts and she conversed with her daughter enthusiastically, not caring how daft she might sound. Cosima was also trying out a commando slither pre-crawl and Fen could not be more proud had her baby stood up and danced a jig. Strolling along to Musical Minis, chortling to Cosima in gobbledygook, pointing out the red letter-box, the nice mister postman and the big yellow truck, Fen felt her mobile phone vibrate through a message. She retrieved it from the back pocket of her jeans, the pair she'd been able finally to fit back into today, oh joyous day, for the first time, not minding that they felt comfortably snug.

Hi f – drinx 2nite? Al

Feeling comfortingly smug, Fen spent the next half-hour composing various answers whilst singing the tunes at Musical Minis by rote. Her walk home had her weigh up
which order was best – phone Pip to check babysitting was possible, or text Al first to accept and then work through babysitting options later. Her sense of maternal duty was far stronger than her sense of adventure so she called Pip first.

‘Shouldn't be a problem at all,’ said Pip.

‘Are you sure you don't mind coming to mine, though?’ Fen double-checked. ‘I'll be able to give Cosima her supper but then you'll be in charge of bath, bottle, bed.’

‘No probs,’ said Pip, ‘we'll flood the house, drink the fridge dry and have a pillow fight. Who's this friend?’

‘Oh, just Al – we meet up every now and then.’