A Taste of Love (4 page)

Annette
agreed and Richard said, ‘OK. It looks like it’s me and you then, Helen.’

Chapter Five

‘Helen, it’s me,’ Karen sobbed. ‘Th-they’ve found something on the mammogram!’

When
Helen saw Karen’s number while she was driving home, she’d quickly pulled into a lay-by to take the call and cursed herself for not having her hands-free set. ‘OK, sweetheart, take a deep breath,’ she soothed. ‘Where are you now?’ She heard Karen breathe in deeply and then start to cough and splutter – she could tell she was overwrought.

‘I’m
sitting outside Dad’s house in the car. I-I didn’t know where else to go…’

Helen
squeezed her eyes tight shut and lay back against the neck rest. She shook her head trying to stop the horrid old memories crowding into her mind. Surely, it couldn’t happen again, and not to her beautiful sister?

Stay
focused and concentrate on Karen, she willed herself, then sitting up straight she turned on the ignition. She made her voice sound calm and steady. ‘OK. It’s going to be all right, Karen. We’ll sort this out together. You just stay exactly where you are and I’ll be there in a jiffy.’

She
swung the car round and headed to her father’s small house on Highfield Road. Karen was sitting in her cream Mini parked outside the house and Helen could tell her father wasn’t at home. He’d most likely still be at his bridge club, she thought, as she jumped out of her car and ran to the passenger side of the Mini. She opened the car door and gasped in shock at the sight of her sister. Karen was dressed in blue jeans with a zipped denim-look jacket and was totally devoid of any make-up. Tears poured down her cheeks and Helen could tell she’d given up wiping them away and was letting them run off her face to drip down onto the blue zip. Helen sat on the seat and whispered her name, ‘Karen?’

She
didn’t answer but looked at her with eyes that were red and glazed. They seemed empty and filled with such sadness that Helen caught her breath.

Manoeuvring
herself in the seat Helen awkwardly managed to get her arm around her sister. ‘Do you want to go into Dads? I’ve got my spare key – we can make some coffee.’

Karen
shook her head. ‘No. I don’t want to go in; it’ll only remind me…’

Helen
was frightened – she’d never seen her sister in such a mess. ‘My house then? I can drive us over and we can pick your car up later.’

‘No,’ she sniffed, staring down at her hands. ‘I-I don’t know where I want to be or what to do. I came here because it seemed the only place to come but then I knew if I went inside to the kitchen all Mum’s memories would come flooding back.’

Helen
spotted a rug on the back seat– she reached for it then eased Karen’s drooping shoulders forward and draped it around her, tucking it under the front of the jacket. Then she took a tissue from her bag, gently turned Karen’s face towards her and wiped her wet cheeks. ‘Can you tell me a little about what’s happened? You mentioned a mammogram on the phone.’

Karen
lifted her shoulders and clutched Helen’s hand. Nodding, she croaked, ‘I didn’t want to tell you because you’ve had such a rotten time with Rob and I was determined to do this by myself. I was so convinced it was nothing to worry about that I haven’t even told Greg, yet.’

Helen
nodded understandingly. ‘Go, on. Tell me what you know.’

‘I
found a small thing – I’m not calling it a lump, because it’s not. It just feels like a small, hard pea in this one,’ – she touched her left breast – ‘I went to the GP and she told me it felt like a cyst and she wasn’t concerned but because of Mum and our family history she was going to send me for a mammogram, which I had two weeks ago. And now I’ve got a letter calling me back for an assessment tomorrow. ‘

‘And
that’s it so far?’ Helen asked, raising an eyebrow suspiciously. ‘Honestly? You’re not keeping anything back from me?’

Karen’s
voice broke and she sobbed, ‘Yes, that’s it. But I-I’m bound to be like Mum and have it – aren’t I?’

‘There’s
nothing concrete to say that you’ll be like Mum,’ she said, deliberately avoiding the word. ‘Women get called back from mammograms for all kind of things. Sometimes it’s just because they want to get a better picture, or, if this is a cyst, they might just want to check it out and give you some antibiotics.’

Karen’s
small blotchy face brightened. ‘Oh, do you think so? But what if it’s not?’ she asked. ‘Helen, we are going to have to say the dreaded words – breast cancer – at some stage.’

‘I’m
not, and neither are you. We’re not saying those words till we know something definite and we see it written in black and white,’ Helen said determinedly.

Suddenly,
the sound of a man’s whistle broke the silence between them and they both looked at each other knowing their father wasn’t too far away. It was the usual tuneless noise that they’d listened to all their lives and the whistle they’d recognise anywhere.

‘It’s
Dad,’ Helen said. ‘If you really don’t want to go in then you’ll have to think of an excuse pretty quickly and I’ll have to lie to him, which I’m not very good at!’

Karen
grinned. ‘I’ll be okay now. I’ll have to tell him at some stage so we might as well go in…’

*

Charles Robinson was seventy, six foot three, with bushy grey hair and still walked proudly with the swagger of his youth. He’d spent the best part of his working life as a manager in a huge laundry in Acton. In the early days of the fifties Acton town had nearly 170 laundries and had been known as “Soap Sud City” because of the soft water – the laundries had served all the hotels and the rich living in London’s West End.

As
the girls climbed out of the Mini he waved to them and Helen could tell at a distance that he sensed trouble as he quickened his pace until he reached them.

‘What’s
wrong?’ he asked, looking from Helen to Karen.

Helen
put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t panic. We’re all right – it’s just Karen’s had a bit of a shock and some sad news so we thought we’d just call around and have a cup of tea with you.’

Charles
was staring at Karen’s face and he gently put out his large hands and cupped her cheeks. ‘Come on,’ he reassured her. ‘Let’s get you inside. I’ve got a bottle of brandy in the cupboard…’

Settled
in his small cosy lounge with tea and glasses of brandy Karen sat next to him on the old Chesterfield settee with his arms hugging her tight – she looked about twelve years old. Helen sat in the armchair opposite t them, in front of the gas fire, sipping her tea and looking around the room, which was scattered with photographs of the girls at various stages in their childhood. Framed posters from theatre plays with Karen in costume adorned the chimney breast and her qualifications from stage school stood on the mantelpiece. Karen was quietly telling Charles the events when the telephone in the hall rang and Helen jumped up to answer it. She told the salesman that her father wasn’t interested in double glazing and ended the call but couldn’t stop herself from glancing into the kitchen.

The
room had changed substantially over the years and the old two-bar electric fire, where they’d found their mother lying dead with her hair singed onto one of the elements, had long since gone. But she could remember the scene as if it was last week. In fact, Helen thought, it was hard to remember her mother in any other place than sitting in an old wooden chair staring into the fireplace and rocking herself backwards and forwards. She’d sat in the same position like a zombie for hour upon hour, day after day for most of Helen’s schooldays – not eating, drinking, talking or moving. Although Karen, being four years older, always claimed she could remember her before that in normal happy situations.

Most
of the time she’d been heavily sedated on tranquillisers and antidepressants. It had been on a normal Friday morning, after Charles had gone to work and they’d gone to school, that she’d swallowed a whole bottle of the pills and had lain dead on the floor with her beautiful black hair fanned out on the hearth.

Shaking
the memories from her mind Helen went back into the lounge just in time to hear Charles reassuring Karen.

‘But
just because your mum and aunt had breast cancer it doesn’t mean to say you’ll have it, sweetheart,’ he said, looking up at Helen for confirmation. She nodded in agreement. ‘I mean, in those days there wasn’t much that could be done about it and they automatically took the breast off. And of course we didn’t even know that the doctor had found a lump in your mum’s chest before she took her life...’

He
looked across the room towards the main photograph in a silver frame on the coffee table. It was of his stunningly beautiful, thirty-five-year-old wife taken just before she died. Half Italian, with huge oval, brown eyes and her long black hair flowing around the same face as Karen’s and Rachel’s, he sighed with her memory. Helen could see his eyes water, which meant he was going to relate the same story that they’d heard many times before.

‘And
I still say if the doctor had told me about the lump I would have watched her more closely because I knew the thought of surgery would have terrified her. She’d seen her own mother go through the operation in Milan and had never been the same,’ he said, slowly shaking his head.

Quietly,
Helen said, ‘Yes, Dad. But the post-mortem did say that the cancer had spread all through her body and it wouldn’t have mattered whether the doctor told you or not because he hadn’t planned to send her for a mastectomy. And it was documented that she wouldn’t have survived an operation in her mental state…’ Helen knew that as hard as it was, her father would never accept the fact that her mother had been classed as mentally unbalanced, even though he’d read the documents over and over again. This was mainly due to his guilt because she had died alone. She carried on, ‘Anyway, Dad, none of that is going to happen to Karen because she has us and Greg, and is surrounded with people who love her. And whatever happens tomorrow, we’ll hit it head-on and get through it together.’

Charles
shook himself from his reverie and put his arms back round Karen. ‘Of course we will. And I know, deep inside here’– he stroked his broad chest – ‘that she is going to be clear and all this worry will be for nothing.’

‘Right,
I’m just going to ring work and ask for tomorrow off so I can come to the hospital with you,’ Helen said. Then without waiting for a reply she walked through the hall, out of the back door and into the garden to get a good signal on her mobile.

Richard
had given her his personal mobile number and she decided before speaking to him that it would be best to tell the truth rather than make an excuse. While his number rang out she looked around her father’s pride and joy – his beloved garden and greenhouse. She could see his seedling trays were ready and his big pots cleaned to fill with spring plants. It was just after six o’clock. She knew Richard would have left the office and hoped she wouldn’t be disturbing him.

‘Hello,’
a breathless voice answered.

‘Hi,
Richard. It’s Helen.’

He
panted. ‘Let me just get my breath back, Helen. I’m running in the park.’

She smiled, feeling strangely reassured by his quiet, comforting voice. ‘Oh, sorry, to disturb you,’ she said, and then told him about Karen, and apologised for such short notice.

‘You
haven’t disturbed me. I was just getting a run in before dinner,’ he said. ‘It’s absolutely fine. You take whatever time you need and we’ll see you back when you’re ready…’

She
reassured him she would be back on Friday and if not she’d stay in touch. Richard wished them both well before ending the call.

*

While Helen sat next to Karen in the waiting area in the breast assessment centre she nervously picked up magazines form the stand and lay them unread on her knees. ‘So how did Greg take the news? I’d like to say I’m surprised he’s not here with us but I’m not really…’ Helen remembered years ago Karen saying that Greg treated her like a fragile doll in a box – he would bring her out every now and then to be made love to, and then return her wrapped in crêpe paper till the next time he wanted to play.

Karen
gave her a shaky smile. ‘You know what he’s like. He told me I was silly to worry about something that hadn’t happened yet and then printed me out the latest research update from NBCAM about dominant traits in the female line of families with breast cancer,’ she said shrugging her shoulders.

‘Jesus,
Karen, he’s the bloody limit at times!’ Helen muttered between gritted teeth.

Karen
nodded. ‘I know you don’t understand him. But that’s because you expect him to be something he’s not. You see, I know his limitations and although he’s not here today I know he’ll be knotted up inside, and if I do get bad news he’ll be there for me when it really counts.’

Helen
knew this wasn’t the time or the place to berate Greg although she could have cheerfully throttled him for being such a useless specimen of mankind. ‘Of course, he will be,’ she pacified.