Dinner at Rose's (21 page)

‘I’m
sorry
!’ Kim cried.

‘I couldn’t give a flying
fuck
whether or not you’re sorry!’ He was nearly incandescent with rage. ‘I’ve just been rung by Brian and driven halfway to Orua to be told by that little prick of a boyfriend of yours that you’ve left with some unknown man. You weren’t answering your phone – I was on my way home to see if you were at Mum’s before I called the police. For God’s
sake
, Kim!’

Kim hid her face in a sofa cushion and sobbed. Her brother looked at her for a second, turned on his heel and went out of the house, closing the kitchen door behind him with an exaggerated softness that was far more shocking than a slam would have been.

There was an awed hush in the room, broken only when the engine of Matt’s ancient ute coughed into life.

Aunty Rose sighed and stood up, abandoning her cup of tea. ‘I’m going back to bed,’ she said. ‘You can sleep in the end room, Kim. The bed’s not made up but there are blankets in the cupboard.’ She nodded to Andy on her way out of the kitchen. ‘Thank you for returning her.’

I fished in a drawer for Panadol, filled the largest glass I could find with water and carried it to Kim. ‘Come on, stop it. You’ll make yourself sick.’

From the depths of the cushion came a strangled gulping sound as Kim made a truly heroic effort to pull herself together. I was touched despite myself and added more kindly, ‘He’s mostly mad because you scared him, Kimlet; he’ll have settled down by tomorrow.’

‘I –’ Kim gasped. ‘I’m so s-
sorry
, Josie.’

‘We’ve all done it,’ Andy told her, and patted her shoulder awkwardly.

‘But Matt n-
never
tells me what to do, and he asked me specially not to go because the guy whose party it was is a crazy druggie, and I – I did anyway!’ she wailed.

‘Well, why did you?’ I asked.

‘Jonno said I was a silly little k-kid, and that he really wanted me to go with him.’ She wiped her wet face on one sleeve of the enormous T-shirt and added bitterly, ‘But then I found Megan Nichols giving him a blow job in one of the bedrooms.’

Andy grinned. ‘Classy.’

‘It was
not
. It was gross.’

‘Yep,’ I agreed, handing her the glass and two tablets. ‘Shame you didn’t throw up on him instead of poor old Brian.’

Chapter 20

I
WAS SEATED
behind the front desk at work during Amber’s lunch break on Monday, idly looking through her extensive nail polish collection as I waited for my next appointment to arrive. Had it not been the middle of winter I’d have been tempted to try the Tangerine Dream on my toenails.

The little bell above the door jingled and I looked up. ‘Hey.’

‘Hey,’ said Matt, closing the door behind him.

‘Which do you prefer?’ I asked, holding up two little bottles. ‘Pale pink with glitter, or bright pink without?’

He gave it some thought. ‘Bright pink.’

‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘I agree. Although it’s never as nice on your nails as it is in the bottle. What’s up?’

‘You told me to come and make an appointment,’ he said. ‘So I am.’

‘Good man.’ I dropped the nail polish back into its drawer and swivelled in my seat to look at the computer screen. ‘When is good for you?’

‘You haven’t got a slot now?’

I shook my head. ‘The next person’s due shortly, and the afternoon’s full. Sorry. Tomorrow, maybe – oh, no, you’re taking Aunty Rose to chemo. Wednesday?’

‘Afternoon would be better,’ said Matt.

I scrolled down Wednesday’s appointment list. ‘Two?’

‘Okay.’

I reached for a card to write the time on the back.

‘I’ll just lose it,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t forget.’

‘Very good,’ I said. ‘Forgiven your sister yet?’

Matt smiled his slow smile. ‘There was a mince and cheese pie on the tractor seat this morning when I went to feed out,’ he said.

‘She feels really, really bad about letting you down,’ I said. Anything more pitiful than Kim at the breakfast table on Sunday morning would have been hard to imagine – tears had trickled steadily down her face and dripped into her Weet-Bix.

‘I know.’

‘And at least she’s not going out with that useless little toe-rag anymore.’

‘Rotten little shit,’ said Matt. ‘I’ve never been so close to smashing someone’s nose into his face in my life.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ I asked.

‘Well, I did punch him in the stomach.’

‘You legend,’ I said admiringly. ‘Hard, I hope.’

‘Dropped him,’ he admitted.

‘That’s
brilliant
.’

‘I didn’t think you condoned violence, Jose.’

‘I make an exception for people who take their underage girlfriends to parties, get them plastered and then vanish into a back bedroom with someone else.’

Matt looked mildly disgusted for a moment, and then brightened. ‘With any luck that means he wasn’t getting any from my baby sister. She’s far too young for that kind of carry-on.’

‘You hypocrite,’ I told him. ‘If I remember rightly – and I’m pretty sure I do – you were doing all kinds of dodgy things when you were Kim’s age.’

‘I was not!’

‘Well, you were lots dodgier than me.’

‘Jose,’ he pointed out, ‘there’d have been nuns dodgier than you were at high school.’

‘True,’ I admitted sadly.

‘Remember that New Year’s party at Wilson’s where you drank about half a can of Lion Red and fell into the wool press?’

‘Was that the party where you spent the whole night with Alicia Beaumont attached to your face?
Man
, she was annoying.’

‘It wasn’t her personality I was interested in,’ he said mildly.

‘Is she still around?’ I asked.

Matt nodded. ‘I see her in town every now and then. She’s really let herself go. And she’s got at least three kids.’

‘None of them yours?’

He merely looked pained.

‘That was during your Kurt Cobain phase,’ I reminisced. ‘When you used to lighten your hair with Sun-In and rip holes in your jeans.’

‘And Aunty Rose bloody patched them up again and gave me a short back and sides.’

‘Did Alicia still put out when you didn’t have sexy sun-bleached hair anymore?’

‘Of course,’ said Matt. ‘I was awesome.’

‘Mm,’ I agreed, and then realised in horror that I’d said it aloud.

He smiled widely. ‘Thanks. You’ve gone the same colour as that nail polish.’

‘A nice person,’ I said bitterly, ‘would pretend not to notice.’

‘Quite likely.’ He went across the waiting room and opened the door. ‘You were fairly awesome yourself, by the way.’

So it was his fault that my next appointment, when she finally arrived, told me it was probably a dietary imbalance making my cheeks so red and advised me to try chelation therapy.

AUNTY ROSE GRIPPED
the arms of the brocade wing chair in the lounge and pushed herself to her feet. I was wading through the hobbits’ visit to Tom Bombadil in
The
Lord of the Rings
and finding it even more painful than I had remembered, and I looked up to see her catch her breath with a little grunt of pain. ‘What hurts?’ I asked.

‘Back,’ she said through her teeth.

‘Can I give it a rub for you?’

She shook her head and straightened fully with an effort. ‘It’s not a muscle problem. It wouldn’t make any difference. I shall feed it a couple of pills.’

I grimaced in sympathy. ‘Nausea
and
a bad back seems a bit unfair. High or low spine?’

‘Low,’ said Aunty Rose.

‘There are a couple of stretches that might help.’

‘Physiotherapy is doubtless a noble profession, Josephine, but it’s unlikely to help a growth on a vertebra,’ she said drily. She went slowly out of the room, and I heard the groan and shudder of elderly plumbing as she ran the bath.

A growth on a vertebra? Holy
crap
. I let my book slide to the floor, got up and fetched the portable phone from the coffee table. Stu’s phone was either turned off or the battery was flat, and it went straight to voicemail. ‘’Ullo, Stuart ’ere, leave a message and h’I will h’endeavour to get back to you.’ This week, it appeared, he was showcasing his rural Yorkshire accent – which was surprising, considering Stu thinks it would be no loss if the whole of northern Britain fell into a deep hole. I gnawed my bottom lip indecisively for a moment and then dialled Graeme’s mobile number.

He answered on the third ring. ‘Graeme Sunderland here,’ he said. I’d forgotten what a nice voice he had – deep and rich, like caramel.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘It’s me.’

There was a longish pause. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I need your professional opinion.’

Another pause. ‘Go ahead, then.’

Calling him had been a mistake. Somehow when
he
rang
me
I had the moral high ground. But I’d done it now, so I asked, ‘If a breast cancer metastasises to the spine while you’re getting chemo, what’s the prognosis?’

‘That’s not my area of expertise,’ said Graeme.

‘I know, but you’ve got a far better idea than I do. Aunty Rose had a six-week course of chemo and then a mastectomy, and then they found that the margins weren’t clear, and now she’s got back pain because of a growth on a vertebra.’

‘Look, Jo, I don’t know what kind of cancer you’re talking about –’

‘Ductal carcinoma.’

He carried on as if I hadn’t interrupted, ‘– or what chemotherapy regime she’s on, or what type of surgical margins they took. I can’t just speculate on a case I know nothing about.’

‘Graeme,’ I said tiredly, ‘for just half a minute could you pretend to be a nice person? I know you can’t say exactly – I just want a bit of an idea.’

Graeme sighed. ‘Had it metastasised before they started the chemo? Did she have an initial CAT scan?’

‘Yes. It was clear, as far as I know.’

‘Then I wouldn’t have thought there was a whole lot of hope.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘I’m sorry, JD.’

His tone had gone from pompous and professional to quite kind, and hot tears rose in my eyes. ‘Yeah, life’s a bitch. Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome. And Jo?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry about everything else, too.’

I nearly fell out of my chair in shock. This coming from Graeme, the man who would rather pull out his own carefully groomed fingernails than apologise for
anything
. ‘Um, thank you.’

‘I’m having an open home this weekend. I’ll let you know how it goes.’

‘That’d be good,’ I said. ‘Talk to you later, then.’

‘Yeah,’ said Graeme. ‘Miss you, JD.’ And he hung up.

It’s funny how things change. A few months ago I would have spent many hours that would better have been devoted to sleep in thinking about the ramifications of ‘Miss you, JD’. Did it mean he’d seen the light? Was he regretting the whole sorry mess? Did he wish he hadn’t replaced me with a woman who refused to leave the house without makeup? Was he on the verge of rushing to Waimanu to cast himself at my feet and beg me to take him back? And so on and so forth.

But who the hell cared about Graeme and his apologies if all this chemo and nausea and – and
bullshit
was for nothing?

‘
HOW ABOUT POPPING
on a pair of gloves for chopping onions?’ Hazel suggested. ‘It saves you from getting that smell all over your hands.’