You Me Everything Page 17

  I never succeeded in putting this to the back of my mind; it was always there, like a noisy passenger opposite me on the train, whose voice I couldn’t drown out.

  And it got even louder after I got into my first relationship after Adam, even if it wasn’t that serious.

  I’d avoided getting involved with anyone for a long time. But when I met Toby a few years ago, he was so persistent, in the best kind of way. And he seemed such a lovely, straightforward guy that it was enough to convince me that my long martyrdom just wasn’t necessary. So I told him very early on about my mum’s HD and that I had a 50 percent chance of inheriting the faulty gene.

  He was great; supportive, sympathetic and endlessly optimistic. At least, he was at first. The problem was, as his feelings for me grew, he began making noises about wanting to settle down and have his own family.

  We went out for dinner one night at a little Italian restaurant in Didsbury, and he poured out his heart. “I love you, Jess. I want to make a life with you. I can totally see us as a family . . . you, me, a couple of little kids.”

  “And William,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, of course William.” His hand slid across the table, and he clutched my fingers. “But we need to know where we are, don’t we? With the HD, I mean.”

  The implication was clear: I was a contender to be his future wife and the mother of his children. But only if I took the genetic test and it came back with the right result.

  I realized then that the problem wasn’t just that my feelings for Toby weren’t as strong as his were for me. The problem was that, whatever or whenever I decided about the test, that decision would have to be mine. Nobody else’s.

  So when he banged on about me taking it night after night, telling me he’d come with me, my drawbridge came up. I was not going to be marched to the clinic for a blood test—by a man who’d then decide whether to stay with me or go.

  The more pressure he put on me, the less I wanted to do it.

  So he left, and that was that. I was sad about it for a little while, but if I’m honest, it was a relief to be single again.

  As the years passed though, the issue of the test kept pushing its way back into my head. And as a bitter winter blew in at the beginning of this year, I would arrive at Willow Bank every day and feel the pain of my mum’s worsening condition ever more intensely. I couldn’t tell you if I was imagining the increasing pace of her decline, if the howling January wind intensified the hush of her speech and the gnarl of her hands.

  All I know is that as I sat with her one afternoon nursing a cold cup of tea, I realized that what she was becoming was slowly ripping me up from inside.

  I knew that the time had come to finally find out my own fate.

  So I rolled the dice and took the test.

  Chapter 45

  Dad came with me to get the results of my blood test, four torturous weeks after it was taken. It was not the first time I’d met Dr. Inglis. She’d completed a basic neurological examination shortly after my first meeting with the genetic counselor and concluded after I’d successfully performed several tasks that I was displaying no symptoms of HD.

  I knew that meant nothing in the scheme of things, but it still gave me hope.

  My dad looked nice that day. He was wearing a smart navy jacket and new trousers; he was dressed for a happy occasion. As we sat in the waiting room, I felt an odd sense of weightlessness. I stopped myself from looking at the clock that ticked on the wall and instead concentrated on the receptionist’s luminous manicure and the way the curtain fluttered above the radiator.

  “I dug out my old Frasier DVD last night,” I told Dad. “I’d forgotten how good it was.”

  “Oh, which episode?”

  “I watched three, back-to-back. Including that one where they throw Marty’s chair out of the window.”

  “Ha! Brilliant,” he exclaimed, but the laugh dried up in his throat. “Brilliant.”

  Neither of us had mentioned what we were actually here for since we’d left the house. I thought about saying something briefly but at the last minute moved on to the fact that my neighbor Graham’s basset hound was pregnant.

  Eventually, I found myself blurting out something I’d thought about for years. “You know when you and Mum first got together . . . Do you think if you’d known . . . about her HD, I mean, would things have been different?”

  “You mean would I still have married her?”

  I shrug. “I guess so.”

  He looks disappointed that I’ve even had to ask. “Jess, when you love someone, something like this would never stop you from being with them.”

  I remember thinking, Well, he would say that under the circumstances.

  But then he added something that surprised me. “I love her more now than ever.” I must’ve looked shocked. “It’s true. I mean it. We’ve had plenty to test our mettle.”

  “Jessica Pendleton.”

  Dad and I followed Dr. Inglis down the corridor to her office. As we walked, he reached out and held my hand for the first time since I was eight. The arch of his palm against mine felt strong and smooth, exactly like it always had, and suddenly my heart was too big for my chest.

  Once inside, I perched on the edge of my seat, and I could tell before she started talking what she was going to say. She didn’t drag it out. She got straight to the point.

  “It isn’t the news we wanted, Jess,” she began, and for a moment, before I actually took in the words, I remember feeling sorry for her, thinking what an awful job this must be.

  It was only as Dad and I walked outside to the car park that I realized I was physically shaking, my entire arms trembling hard and the joints in my legs turning to mush.

  We stood next to his car, and he pulled me into his chest and whispered into my hair, “It’s okay, Jess. It’s going to be okay.”

  That must’ve been the first time he’d lied to me since he’d been sober.

  We didn’t break it to Mum that day. The counselor had advised that it’s not always a good idea, when emotion and shock are running so high and the decision is likely, in his words, to cause the parent “distress.”

  But we couldn’t put it off forever, even though I knew what it’d do to her. Because I know what it feels like when there’s only a possibility that you’ve passed a fatal gene on to your own child.

  The force of maternal love fills you up from the first moment you feel the rolls and ripples of tiny limbs inside your belly. You breathe it in with their newborn smell when they are placed in your arms. It swells in you as they grow, when you clasp your fingers around his little hand on the first day of school, or kiss her bloodied knee when she falls.

  And I know there are times when mothers are driven close to madness—from sleep deprivation or teenage tantrums or plain naughtiness and defiance. But you’ll always love them, in ways that simply never existed before they did.

  The worst day of my mother’s life wasn’t when she found out she had HD. It was on the bleak February day when she learned I was HD positive.

  As for me, I couldn’t even process what was going on in my head at the time. Since then, there have been times in the past few months when I’m so scared I’ve barely been able to lift my head from my pillow in the morning.

  This has left a question mark over the future of the person who means more to me than anyone else on earth, my son. As a minor, William can’t have the test until he’s eighteen. So I have at least eight years before I find out if I’ve passed it to him, and that’s assuming he chooses to take the test.

  I am thirty-three. My mum started getting symptoms when she was thirty-seven. I may not have long before things start happening to me that will one day affect my ability to be the person I want to be—the daughter, the friend, the colleague. And, most of all, the mother.

  Someone who’ll be smiling from the sidelines,
as much when William becomes a man as I did when he was a little boy in mittens and a bobble hat.

  I dream about him in middle age sometimes.

  Occasionally, I can picture him vividly—sometimes he’s a scientist, other times a historian; once or twice he’s been a binman. I think about him finding love, having his heart broken, graduating, buying his first car, choosing a university, winning a dream job.

  I find myself dwelling on which of those things I’ll be there to support him through, if any.

  But, oddly, it’s the smaller things that I find myself thinking about most—like whether I’ll still be around when his curly hair has thinned, or if I’ll see flecks of grey appearing in a beard. I think about whether I’ll miss hearing his voice thicken with age, and that Domino’s habit creeping on his midriff.

  The idea that I’ll miss this future is impossible to accept.

  Which brings me to our real motive for being here in France, the reason my mum was desperate for us to come. My son needs a dad, for a far more critical reason than I’ve let on; one that, in the light of my test result, I could no longer ignore. I’m praying that Adam will be able to step up to the mark and be the father William will need more than ever.

  Chapter 46

  A lustrous morning sun floods through my bedroom window. I lie on my back amid the soft white sheets, fixing my eyes on the ceiling, having spent all night convincing myself that William can’t possibly have worked out anything about the HD—and attempting to interpret what happened in the woodshed.

  The only conclusion I can reach is this: I have to pretend nothing happened. Because nothing did happen. I am simply what William would call “weirded out.” Every time I think of the way Adam looked at me and the response it provoked in me, it doesn’t feel entirely real. More of a curious dream sequence.

  We spend most of the morning together as a group by the pool, before Natasha offers to prepare lunch for everyone. Becky and Seb have stopped bickering, but it strikes me that, even when they’re not rowing, communication between the two of them is often little more than functional: she asks him where the water wings are; he asks her if she brought any Sudocrem with her. They discuss eczema flare-ups, toilet training, electronic device usage and milk teeth, but none of the things they used to in the days when their eyes shimmered with desire for each other. And they’re completely unable to relax. I take James and Rufus into the pool at one point myself—to organize a group game of water volleyball—but every time I look at the poolside, one of them is frantically trying to placate Poppy, while the other is rummaging around in a nappy bag.

  They’re the best and worst advert for parenthood I can imagine.

  We gather our belongings and head back to the cottage for one thirty, when Natasha has promised a feast. As the others traipse across the dusty courtyard, Charlie emerges from his door and waves at me. I dump my towel and beach bag on a chair and head over.

  “Been down at the pool?” he asks.

  “We have, but it’s busy there today. Everyone’s trying to soak up the sun after yesterday.”

  “Listen, I wondered if you and William wanted to come for a walk later with Chloe and me?”

  “That’d be lovely. I’m sure he’d be up for that.”

  “Nowhere too strenuous,” he says. “I picked up a trail map from the château, and there’s a nice route by the lake.”

  “It’s a date.” A shot of heat fires up my neck. “Well, not a date as such. But we’ll be there.”

  He laughs, glancing away only when his phone rings. “Excuse me, Jess.” He reaches into his pocket to answer it. He’s got nice hands—smooth and tanned, offset by a watch that even someone whose swankiest timepiece was a Swatch can recognize as expensive.

  I stand there awkwardly, not knowing whether this is meant to be good-bye or not. “I’ll see you later?” I mouth, as I back away.

  He slides his hand over the phone. “About four o’clock?”

  “Sure.”

  Charlie’s nice. Exactly what the doctor ordered: not some big relationship that, given my circumstances, would throw up a dozen complicated and painful question marks over the future.

  But a bright, friendly guy who lives near me. So we could go to restaurants together, or to the movies. We could have a bit of fun and maybe a kiss on a Saturday night. It’d be so pleasant. I can’t emphasize how appealing the idea of pleasantness is at the moment. I’ve had my fill of high emotion and would love something as low-key as that.

  My thoughts disintegrate the moment I step inside the cottage and hear Natasha’s strangled voice. “Look, Becky, I’m not having a go at you!”

  “Well, it sounds like it.” Becky thrusts her bags down on the table.

  “What’s going on?” I ask, but it’s already clear. And neither of them looks ready to back down.

  Chapter 47

  Natasha has the look of someone who is extremely worked up but is trying hard to control it. She’s doing that deep breathing they teach in yoga classes, the kind that’s easy when you’re in a tranquil studio but less so when someone looks like they want to throttle you.

  “You wanted to know why the lunch was late,” Natasha tells Becky. “I was simply saying that it was because the little barbecue you and Seb borrowed the other night hadn’t been cleaned—so I had to do it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry.” Becky doesn’t sound very sorry. “You try dealing with three kids, two of whom are launching World War Three, one of whom has got the trots and another of whom has been up half the night in our bed because he’s having nightmares after watching Coraline.”

  Natasha frowns. “That’s four.”

  “What?”

  “That’s four kids. You’ve only got three.”

  “I know how many bloody kids I’ve got!”

  Natasha crosses her arms. “Becky, I’m sorry I mentioned it, honestly. But you asked.”

  “I only asked because I’ve got a toddler here who starts behaving like a gremlin that’s been fed after midnight when she doesn’t eat for hours. I didn’t expect this reaction.”

  “There’s no reaction,” Natasha says gently. “I really didn’t mean anything by it.”

  I touch Becky’s arm. “Is everything all right?”

  She rubs her forehead. “Let me do something else then, seeing as you cleaned the barbecue. What needs cooking?”

  “You don’t have to do anything else,” Natasha continues, flashing me a glance. “Look. Relax. Please. Just go and sit down and lunch will be ten more minutes, that’s all.”

  Becky nods and looks close to tears. “All right. Sorry,” she mutters, before turning and heading back outside.

  Natasha continues chopping a salad. “Are you okay?” I ask her.

  She nods, then looks round anxiously. “Becky’s been a nightmare lately.”

  “She’s stressed.”

  “I know. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us should have to get it in the neck constantly. We’re meant to be on holiday too. God, look what you’ve got on your plate.”

  “I try not to.”

  She bites the side of her mouth. “How are you, Jess?”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Purely in terms of my health, I’m absolutely fine—at least, for now. But I’m paranoid every time I drop a glass or trip down some steps. I went flying when I was at Château de Beynac with Adam and William the other day. I’m constantly worried that this is the start of it. And seeing the state Mum’s in doesn’t help.”

  “Poor her.” Her eyes crease with concern. “Poor you.”

  I don’t want Natasha’s sympathy. In fact, I hate it. When I first told her and Becky, shortly after Mum broke the news to me all those years ago, the issue of my HD was all they wanted to talk about. Every time we got together for a drink, or a coffee, they were there, endlessly worried and full of questions.

  I know they
meant well, but I became completely sick of it. It’s as if Mum and I were suddenly defined by it—everything became about the HD. Not my new baby. Not my crumbling relationship. Not politics or The Sopranos or new Chanel nail polish colors or all the other things we used to talk about.

  After a couple of months, I told them straight out: I don’t want to talk about this anymore, not every time I see you. I am still me, not one of those “brave” disease-battling victims you read about in the papers, not least because I’m absolutely not brave. I’m the opposite of brave. So enough already. Please.

  And although it all started again—inevitably—after I got the news that I was gene positive, I think they’ve finally got the message.

  “Listen, don’t take it personally about Becky,” I reassure her.

  She straightens up. “Oh, I’m not. I mean, I feel sorry for her. But I’m not prepared to be her whipping boy.” I pick up a knife to start slicing a baguette as a notification beeps on her phone.

  “The Wi-Fi’s clearly decided to be nice to you today.”

  She picks it up and studies the screen. “Joshua’s posted photos of us on Facebook. I think he might be keen.”

  She passes it over to show me a picture of them clinking champagne glasses, another posing with golf clubs.

  “How did your round go?”

  “Josh was brilliant, but I don’t think it’s my sport. I took so long on the sixth hole we gave up and went for a boozy session instead.”

  “So have you . . .” I raise my eyebrows.

  “Slept with him? No, I’m holding out. I’m wondering if he might be relationship material.”

  I look at the phone again and flick through his profile. I really wish I’d warmed to Joshua more; I’m starting to think I might have become more judgmental than I used to be. His Facebook “Likes”—which include several ropy burlesque dancers and a site called Halt the Oppression of White Middle-Class Men—don’t help though.