Leah gulped and headed for the kitchen.

  46

  Ruby was having breakfast with a fat man in a suit when Toby came down to collect the mail. They were sitting together at the dining-room table, Ruby in a dressing gown, on the man’s lap, watching him eat toast.

  She turned and smiled at Toby when he walked in the room.

  ‘Morning, Tobes.’

  ‘Morning, Ruby.’

  ‘This is Tim.’

  ‘Morning, Tim.’

  ‘God, I have to say, this is very weird,’ said Tim. ‘This set-up. This house.’

  ‘What’s weird about it?’ said Ruby.

  ‘I don’t know. All these people. It’s strange. Not that I’m saying you’re strange,’ he addressed Toby, ‘just – aren’t you all a bit old to be flat-sharing?’

  ‘We’re not flat-sharing.’

  ‘Well, whatever this is. A commune, or whatever. I mean – I just saw an air hostess. In the full get-up. What’s that all about? I mean, what is an air hostess doing living in a hippy commune?’

  Toby shrugged and smiled. ‘That’s a very good question.’

  Ruby pulled herself off Tim’s lap and ruffled his hair. Her dressing gown gaped open slightly at the front and Toby got a view of her entire left breast. Toby had had many inadvertent views of Ruby’s breasts over the years, which had served only to fuel his desire for her, but glancing at her breast now he felt curiously unmoved. He could see her perfect rubbery brown nipple, but he had no desire to touch it. He could see Tim’s fat hand caressing the backs of her thighs, but he felt not a jot of jealousy. The air was full of the smell of them, of their stale union, but it didn’t offend him in the slightest. He was cured. He was unafflicted. He was free. And with that thought he pulled on his brand-new overcoat and headed across the road to Leah’s flat.

  Toby didn’t notice Leah’s receding figure as he crossed the road towards her flat. He didn’t see her rushing towards Fortis Green, her hair uncombed, a slice of toast in her hand. He was aware that he may have missed her, that she may already be on her way to work, but he had a handwritten note ready to drop through her letterbox, as a contingency measure.

  He examined the front of his T-shirt as he waited at Leah’s door and was pleasantly surprised to find no stains or encrustations of any description. He ran his tongue across his teeth to ferret out any errant morsels of cereal, then he counted to ten. If she hadn’t answered the door by the time he’d finished counting, he’d assume she was out and leave the note.

  At the number eight a figure appeared in the hallway.

  The door opened and Toby prepared his face, arranging his features into an expression of warmth and good intentions. The door opened and Toby’s face collapsed. It was him, the man, the nurse. It was Amitabh.

  He was wearing a very small towelling dressing gown that barely met across his girth. His face was puffed up with sleep and his chin was covered in thick stubble. He was halfway through a yawn when he opened the door and Toby could see all his fillings.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I thought you’d be the postman.’

  ‘No,’ said Toby. ‘Though I do have a letter. For Leah. Is she in?’

  ‘No, sorry, mate. You’ve just missed her. She left about two minutes ago.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Toby, ‘bad timing. Never mind. Well, do you think maybe you could pass this on to her.’ He passed the envelope to Amitabh.

  ‘Sure. No problem. I’ll make sure she gets it.’ He yawned again and began to close the door.

  Toby paused. ‘So, are you, have you… moved back in?’

  Amitabh scratched his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not yet. But watch this space.’ He smiled and he winked, and then he closed the door.

  Toby stood for a while, staring at the stained glass of Leah’s front door.

  What an idiot he was. What a complete and utter fool. Why hadn’t he seen that coming? Why hadn’t he considered the possibility that Leah’s unexpected encounter with her ex-love on Saturday afternoon might have led to some form of reconciliation? Why hadn’t he remembered how messy and unruly life could be, how unmanageable an emotion love was. He called himself a poet, yet he consistently proved himself to be completely out of touch with even the most basic tenets of human nature. He was a novice in this world, a naïf.

  When Karen had left him fifteen years ago he’d filled his house with people from all walks of life, people with stories to tell and journeys to share, but instead of learning from them he’d used them to insulate himself from the world. And now that he was finally unpeeling all the layers and revealing himself, it was very disappointing to see that he wasn’t an eccentric struggling artist with a fondness for unusual people, that he was just plain old Toby Dobbs, the tallest boy at school, the disappointment to his father, the man whose own wife hadn’t wanted to live with him for more than a month.

  He sighed and he turned and he headed back to his house. He made himself a cup of tea and, instead of taking it to his room, he took it up to Gus’s. He lay down on Gus’s shaggy carpet and he stroked Gus’s dying cat and he wondered, really and truly, what was the fucking point of it all.

  47

  ‘Daisy’s not in today,’ said a girl whose vowels were so twisted with poshness that Con could barely understand a word she was saying.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘right. Do you know what’s wrong with her?’

  ‘No idea,’ she said. ‘I didn’t ask.’

  Con felt an icy sense of dread. He took the lift back down to the post room and pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket. She didn’t answer her mobile, so he took a deep breath and called her home number. Again, there was no reply. He tried both numbers every ten minutes until finally, at half past two, someone answered her mobile. It was a man’s voice, impatient and gruff.

  ‘Hello. Is that Daisy’s phone?’

  ‘Yes. Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Con. I’m a friend of hers. Who’s this?’

  ‘I’m Daisy’s father.’

  ‘Oh.’ Con stopped slouching against the wall and brought himself up straight. ‘Hello. Is Daisy all right?’

  ‘Sorry, what did you say your name was?’

  ‘Con. Connor. I’m a friend of Daisy’s from work.’

  ‘I see. Well – we’re all at the hospital right now…’

  ‘The hospital. Shit. I mean, God. Is it serious? Is she OK?’

  Daisy’s father sighed. ‘Well, we’re waiting for some X-rays. It looks like another pneumothorax.’

  ‘What… what’s that?’

  ‘It means she’s got air around her lungs.’

  ‘Shit. Sorry. Will she be OK?’

  ‘Look. I’m terribly sorry, but I have to go now. Maybe you should come to see her.’

  ‘Would that be OK?’

  ‘Of course. She’d love to see a friend. She’s at St Mary’s. Bring her something nice to eat. The food here is terrible.’

  Con followed the signs to Daisy’s ward, clutching a bag of sandwiches and a bunch of roses. A man sat on a plastic chair in a dressing gown, his hand attached by clear plastic tubing to a drip on a stand. A porter pushed a grey-faced woman in a wheelchair towards a lift. Con shuddered. It was wrong to think of Daisy in this environment, amongst all this greyness and decay.

  Her bed was at the furthest end of the small ward, underneath a window. Mimi sat at one side of her bed; a small woman with silver hair sat at the other side. Mimi was reading a magazine and the other woman was laughing at something she’d just said.

  He edged towards the bed nervously. He was about to be confronted by both Daisy’s illness and her family. He felt overwhelmed.

  The small woman turned as Con approached and smiled. She had a dimple and crooked teeth. ‘Connor!’ she cried, getting immediately to her feet to greet him. ‘I’m Helen, Daisy’s mother.’

  ‘Hello,’ he said, accepting a coffee-scented kiss to his cheek.

  ‘Daisy,’ she said, touching her knee, ‘look who’s here. It’s your friend Connor.’

  Daisy was held up by a thick wedge of pillows and had a tube coming out of her chest, attached to a jar of water. She was clutching an oxygen mask in her right hand which was attached to a tank. Her skin was very blue and her hair was lying in lank strands on her pillow. She smiled wanly at him. ‘Sexy, huh?’ she said.

  He rested the roses on the bed and smiled at her. ‘You look lovely,’ he said. ‘A bit pale…’

  ‘You mean a bit blue,’ she croaked. ‘Not to mention a bit tubey and a bit ill.’

  ‘Here.’ Daisy’s mother moved her plastic chair towards him. ‘Sit down, Connor.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, honestly.’

  ‘No. I insist. I’ve been sitting down for so long my bum’s gone totally numb. I think I might just go and stretch my legs, actually. Meems – are you coming?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mimi, getting to her feet. ‘I could do with a wander. See you in a minute.’

  Con waited until the two women had left the ward, then he kissed Daisy on the lips. ‘Your mum’s really nice,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. I told you I had fantastic parents, didn’t I?’

  ‘I brought you some sandwiches,’ he said, showing her the bag.

  ‘Ooh, yum. What have we got today?’

  ‘Tuna and capers.’

  ‘Ooh, lovely. I love capers.’

  He unwrapped the sandwiches for her and passed her a square. Then he poured some water for her, from a clear plastic jug into a plastic cup.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘what’s this pneumo… pneumo…?’

  ‘Pneumothorax. It’s air around the lungs. It’s horrible. I’ve had it before, but not this badly. I thought I was dying, I really did.’

  ‘And is it to do with your cystic fibrosis?’

  ‘Of course. Isn’t everything? Yes, so, I’ve got to lie here with this thing sticking into my ribs for at least three days…’

  ‘And then what – then you can come home?’

  ‘Then I can come home.’

  ‘So it’s not, you know, not something that might…’

  ‘No. It’s not going to kill me. Just ruin my social life for a few days.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Con, ‘oh, that’s good, then, that’s… oh… God…’ And then Con felt all the pent-up anxiety he’d been carrying round all day suddenly leave his body in an enormous whoosh of emotion and he started to cry. ‘Oh, God,’ he sniffed, ‘I’m really sorry. Shit. I just thought… when your dad said you were in the hospital I just panicked. And then he wouldn’t tell me if you were going to be OK and I just thought that you were going to… that you might… and I couldn’t, I really couldn’t handle it if anything happened. I couldn’t deal with it…’

  Con pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, trying to stem the flow of tears. Daisy passed him a paper tissue from a box on her trolley. He took it silently and breathed in deeply, in and out, in and out, trying to bring himself under control. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m being really pathetic. You must think I’m psycho.’

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ said Daisy, clutching his fisted-up hands with hers. ‘I think it’s really sweet.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ he laughed, and wiped his face with the tissue, ‘that’s even worse.’

  ‘I can’t believe you were that worried about me.’

  ‘Of course! I mean, I know we’ve only known each other a few weeks, but you’re really important to me. You’re, you know, special.’ He gulped.

  Daisy squeezed his hand. ‘You’re very special to me, too.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Of course you are. You’re up there, you know, up there with my mother and my father, my sisters, my best friend. You really matter to me. You…’ She stopped and tried to catch her breath. She brought the oxygen mask to her mouth and took a few deep breaths. Her blue eyes peered at him from over the mask, pale and scared and young. ‘Sorry,’ she said, a moment later. ‘I should stop talking for a while… it’s… hard…’

  ‘No. Don’t talk. You don’t have to say anything. Look – here. I’ve got you something else.’ He pulled the poem from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.

  She unfolded it and started to read. Con watched her intently as she read, trying to gauge her reaction. She folded up the poem, rested it on her lap and smiled.

  ‘Con?’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I love you, too.’

  Mimi and Helen came back a few minutes later with plastic cups of coffee and a packet of Fruit Pastilles. Then Daisy’s father returned and shook Con warmly and firmly by the hand. They were a noisy family, talkative and open and full of swearwords and booming laughter. They wanted to know all about Con and acted as if many of their friends were teenage boys from Tottenham. They didn’t seem at all fazed or desperate about Daisy’s situation or about the fact that she was dating someone like him. They weren’t like anyone Con had ever met before. They were so confident in themselves, in their unity, in their themness, that there was no room for doubt or fear or awkwardness.

  There was talk of Daisy taking some time off work, of Daisy spending a week at home recuperating. ‘And of course,’ said Helen, touching Con’s knee with her birdlike hand, ‘you must come to visit. You must come to stay, for as long as you like.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Daisy’s father. ‘We’ve already got one fellow in the house.’

  Con looked at him questioningly.

  ‘Camellia’s at home at the moment and of course her fellow couldn’t bear to be separated from her for a minute, so he’s staying at the house. Nice chap. He’s a bassoonist, plays with the LPO. I think you’d like him…’

  Con left the hospital at eight o’clock that night, letting the cold night air swallow him up. He walked quickly through the streets of Paddington, following signs to the Tube station. His breathing was hard and fast, his heart full of the euphoria of escape. He’d just seen reality, the very basic truth of Daisy and him, of what they were doing and where they were going. And he couldn’t handle any of it. He couldn’t handle her close-knit family, their talk of ‘the house’, of bassoon-playing boyfriends and invitations to stay. He couldn’t handle their unquestioning acceptance of him because he knew it was borne out of nothing more than middle-class politesse. But more than anything, he couldn’t handle the fact that the first woman he’d ever loved was going to keep getting ill and that one day she was going to die and that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  48

  Toby spent the whole of Thursday looking out of the window. He saw Amitabh leaving Leah’s flat at two o’clock, wrapped against the cold in his cosy parka and a knitted hat. He saw the builders passing in and out of the house, taking stuff out of their van, putting stuff back in their van, throwing things onto the skip, sitting on the wall eating sandwiches. He saw people, dozens of people, coming and going, children being piled in and out of cars, estate agents doing viewings, cats patrolling their territory. He saw a Tesco delivery van unloading, a woman across the street throwing a sack of rubbish into her wheelie bin, a man with a fluorescent bag dropping restaurant leaflets through people’s front doors. He saw the sun start to fall and the moon start to rise and he watched the two of them share the indigo sky for half an hour as they changed shifts. He saw Melinda park her car and climb the front steps, chatting to someone on her mobile phone. He saw Ruby going out with her guitar. And, at eight o’clock, he saw Leah come home. He watched her open her front door, lean down to pick up some letters, then disappear. He saw her switch on her lights, draw her curtains. He wondered if she’d seen his note yet. He wondered what she’d think of his jauntily worded little message, expressing his desire to join her at Crouch End Public Swimming Baths one day this week (if he promised not to try out his butterfly stroke). He wondered if Amitabh would be coming back tonight.

  He was about to go downstairs, to get himself something to eat, when he saw something else through his window. He saw Joanne, looking flustered and panicky in dungarees and a leather flying jacket. She was walking very fast and kept looking behind her. Toby saw a man, following behind. He was tall and slim with fine shoulder-length hair. He was shouting to her. Toby couldn’t hear what he was saying. He saw Joanne turn to the man and shout something back. And then he saw Joanne start to run towards the house. He heard her footsteps up the front stairs and he saw the man chase after her. He heard the front door slam shut and he heard the man’s fist beating against the door. He got to his feet and ran down the stairs, two at a time. Joanne was standing breathlessly at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Jesus. Joanne. What’s going on? Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, pushing past him to get up the stairs.

  ‘But who’s that man at the door. Why is he following you?’

  The man beat at the door again. Toby could hear his muted shouts from the entrance hall.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He’s no one.’

  ‘My God. Shall I call the police?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘don’t do anything. He’s just mad, that’s all. He’ll go in a minute.’

  ‘But, Joanne. He looks really dangerous. What shall I do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, disappearing up the stairs, ‘don’t do anything.’

  Toby glanced round the empty hallway. The man was still banging on the door. He fell to his hands and knees, and crawled to the entrance hall. He slowly lifted the letterbox and brought his mouth to it. ‘Go away,’ he said, ‘or I’ll call the police.’

  A pair of eyes peered at him through the letterbox and Toby let it slam shut. He stood up straight. ‘Go away,’ he shouted through the door. ‘Go away. I’m calling the police.’

  ‘I want to see Joanne.’

  ‘Well, she doesn’t want to see you. You’re scaring her.’

  ‘I just want to talk to her.’

  ‘I told you. Whoever you are, she doesn’t want to talk to you.’

  ‘Please,’ said the man, ‘please. Just let me see her. I have to see her.’