Lifesaver (37 page)

‘Weird—Alex’s just come in and told me that the florist said they couldn’t deliver them, that the address didn’t exist.’

I had been prepared for this, and laughed nonchalantly, thanking my lucky stars that I happened to be an actress and not a bank clerk. ‘They must have got the orders muddled up. I got them all right, I’m sitting here looking at them. They’re beautiful, thank you so much, honey.’

It was true that I was indeed sitting there gazing at flowers, only they weren’t the flamboyant bouquet Ken would have sent. They were instead a small, rather drooping bunch of primroses Max had picked out of a hedgerow for me at the weekend.

Ken hadn’t once suggested taking a day off work and coming down to visit me, or expressed any interest in meeting my ‘friends’ from the soap. He had asked to see a VHS of one of the shows, but hadn’t pushed it, and didn’t seem bothered at my frequent forehead-slapping assertions that I kept forgetting, or that the production secretary had promised me one that hadn’t yet materialized. He was travelling more than ever, and often we went for three weeks at a time without seeing one another. I began to wonder if he’d even notice if I moved out altogether. After the conversation about the flowers, I had hung up, feeling aggrieved. My life with Ken had become more of a charade than my life with Adam and Max—after all, the only part Ken had played in my Valentine’s gift had been to whip out his credit card at the appropriate juncture and hand it to his secretary—it had been she who’d arranged the whole thing. I thought of her tight, lithe body in its cropped tops and mini skirts, and wondered idly if she might have been the reason Ken wasn’t enquiring too closely about my own domestic arrangements.

‘Morning, darling,’ Adam murmured into my ear, on the frosty March sunrise of the day that I had decided to leave Ken.

I loved the way Adam woke up with me, limb by limb, as if he wanted to stretch my own body at the same time he stretched his. Not for Adam the immediate dash to the bathroom, the hasty dressing; out the front door before his half of the bed was even cool. Thanks to Max, who obligingly didn’t wake up until after eight o’clock, Adam never climbed out of bed for at least half an hour after first opening his eyes. Usually we made love first, languorous but passionate and intense—he’d flip me over and curve his body behind my back, wrapping his arms around me and pushing into me from behind.

After we’d finished and were lying in a post-coital doze, the sound of tuneless singing would announce Max’s new morning. Shortly afterwards the door would slide open, catching on the carpet in a wheezy breath, and then the bed would be full of Max, his skinny arms and legs everywhere, giggling and rolling on top of me to squeeze into the coveted middle space.

The first time he came in after we’d made love, he’d made a face. ‘Whewee, what’s that smell?’ We’d blushed as we smelled what he did: the warm, yeasty, loamy scent of semen and sweat, but somehow I liked that he’d said it. It was part and parcel of the intimacy which made up a family.

Most mornings he told us a joke—the same joke. It had been funny the first three or four times, but over the weeks his daily recitation of it became what made us laugh, which encouraged him still further:

‘What do you get if you play country music backwards?’

‘We don’t know, Max, what do you get if you play country music backwards?’ we’d recite, like a mantra.

I always started giggling before he answered, and by the time he’d finished, I was in fits: ‘Your lover comes back, your dog don’t die, your car doesn’t break down and… (pause for dramatic effect, final punchline delivered in appalling American accent accompanied by wagging finger): ‘...
it don’t rain no more!
’

That morning in March, though, he didn’t tell his joke. He hadn’t woken up singing, either, but just padded in silently and burrowed into his usual spot.

‘How are you, mate?’ asked Adam, concerned.

‘My throat hurts. And my eyes hurt.’

I felt Max’s head. ‘He’s a bit warm.’

Adam laid his own palm against Max’s forehead. ‘Yes, but he’s just woken up.’

‘He wasn’t feeling great last night, though, was he?’ I persisted. ‘And tons of his class have had this little fluey bug thing.’

‘I don’t want to go to school today,’ Max said, in a feeble voice, relishing the fuss. ‘It’s PE, and I really don’t want to do PE.’

Adam sighed. ‘It would be today. I’ve got that one-day course over in Marlborough, and I can’t get out of it. I’ve got twenty students coming. Anna, I don’t suppose…’

‘Yeah, of course I could. I was only going to learn lines today anyway, but I’m pretty much up to speed for the next episode.’

I beamed with delight at the prospect of a whole day alone with Max, fetching him cold drinks and playing board games with him. He clearly wasn’t very ill; nothing that administering Calpol wouldn’t fix. And whilst I had decided to leave Ken, there was nothing I could have done about it at that precise moment, not while he was away in LA.

‘You’re a star,’ Adam said with relief, kissing my hair. ‘All right, mate,’ he added to Max. ‘You can have a day at home. But no
Tweenies
, mind, and no more than two videos all the way through, OK?’

‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. ‘We won’t have time to watch TV, will we, Max? We’ll be too busy having fun.’

‘I love you, Anna,’ Max said, cuddling up to me in bed and twining his arms around my neck. I breathed in his sleepy warm skin and felt, as I always did when he told me he loved me, that I knew perfect happiness.

‘Max is supposed to be sick, remember,’ said Adam with a mock-stern expression.

‘Got to keep his spirits up though, haven’t we?’ I called after him as he retreated into the bathroom. Max gave me another long, warm snuggly hug, and I thanked God for the two of them.

Later, after Adam had driven off issuing injunctions and instructions, Max and I retired to the kitchen table, with the blank canvas of the day laid out in front of us. Max was attired in the Spiderman dressing gown and slippers I’d bought him for Christmas, his hair was sticking up in spikes, and his eyes were huge in his pale face. He started idly doodling on the back of a letter to Adam from the college. He seemed a little bit spaced out and quiet, but I wasn’t overly concerned.

‘Want some cereal, sweetie?’

He shook his head.

‘Grapes?’

Another shake.

‘Banana?’

‘I’m not hungry, Anna,’ he said.

‘What are you drawing?’ I came and sat next to him, gazing at the wobbly shape which undulated over the page, punctuated every now and again by a thick dot.

‘It’s a nap.’

‘A - ?’

‘A nap. Of the world. Look, here’s the North Pole.’ He pointed at a dot at the top of the page. Taking another biro, I carefully wrote
NORTH POLE
in small neat capitals next to the dot. He rewarded me with a faint beam.

‘What’s that one?’

‘That’s our house.’ I wrote
OUR HOUSE,
just south of the North Pole.

Warming to the task, he pointed again. ‘That’s Daddy’s work. That one’s where the people die. That one’s where the horsies live. And that—‘ jabbing his pen at the southernmost point of the map - ‘that’s really, really, really, actually Heaven.’

I duly transcribed
REALLY REALLY REALLY ACTUALLY HEAVEN
next to it. My favourite spot was in the middle of the country, and it was a place called
PICNIC? IF SUNNY
. It was near the train station, bordering
AN ORCHARD WHERE APPLES ARE MADE
, and backing onto
WHERE 3 GOOD LITTLE PIGGIES LIVE
.

‘This is a fantastic map!’ I said ten minutes later, utterly lost in our task. ‘Daddy will love it. What’s this dot?’

‘The South-East Pole,’ Max said, but his voice had dropped to a whisper, and when I looked at him, my heart jumped with fear. Two bright red spots, like places on his imaginary ‘nap’, had sprung from nowhere into his white cheeks, and his eyes did not seem to be focussing. He pushed the map away. ‘I don’t feel very well,’ he said, and leaned into me.

I picked him up and carried him through to the sitting room, laying him on the sofa. ‘Stay there, darling,’ I said. ‘I’ll get your duvet, and the thermometer. Do you want a drink of water?’

He didn’t seem to hear me, just muttered ‘we didn’t put Mummy’s house on the nap.’

I ran up the stairs, feathery wings of panic beginning to sprout at my heels, my breath coming in fast gulps. Once on the landing, I had to lean against the wall to try and compose myself. ‘Keep calm, keep calm, keep calm,’ I chanted. ‘It’s just a bug, it’s just a bug. He’ll be fine. Calpol. Doctor? Maybe. Calpol first.’

I grabbed his duvet from his bed, looking away from the blank undersheet crumpled and vulnerable, and charged into the bathroom where I located the Calpol and the digital thermometer. As an afterthought I ran a facecloth under the cold tap, hastily squeezed it out, and cantered back downstairs with my arms full.

Max was moaning slightly, his hands moving in front of his face, clutching at fistfuls of air as if he was trying to bat away some invisible irritant. His pupils were enormous, and his skin had turned a livid pink. Meningitis, I thought, my throat almost completely closing with fright. What if he’s got meningitis, or that this means his leukaemia’s come back? He might die, oh God, no, please no…

I peeled the dressing gown away from his sweating body, and lifted up his pyjama top, looking for a rash. There was none, just his skin, pale and swampy and humid, but unblemished. With shaking hands, I managed to insert the thermometer into his ear and click the green button to read his temperature. One hundred and three. It sounded bad, high, but was it dangerous? I had no idea.

I grabbed my mobile from my bag and rang Vicky. No answer. When it switched into voicemail, I ran into the kitchen and dialled Max’s doctor’s number off the cork pinboard on the wall. It was busy. I tried again. Still busy. I dialled Lil’s number instead.

‘Hello?’

‘Auntie Lil, please help me, it’s an emergency, I don’t know what to do.’

As I said the words, I recognized them as the ones she’d used on me that time when she’d seen me running past her window, to lure me back into her life. I remembered how scared I’d been then, but it seemed like a lifetime ago. And this was a whole different league of fear.

‘Anna? What’s the matter, darling?’

‘It’s—I’m—I’m looking after a little boy. Max. His temperature just suddenly shot up to a hundred and three. The doctor’s number’s engaged. Should I dial nine nine nine? I don’t know what to do!’

I heard Lil inhale. Exhale. That brief pause of hers both infuriated and comforted me. ‘Stay calm, Anna. You have to stay calm. I’m sure he’ll be OK. How old is he?’

‘Almost six.’

‘Their temperatures often go up and down at that age. You have to cool him.’

I remembered the wet facecloth which I’d left lying on top of the duvet, which were both now dumped on the sitting room floor. ‘I’ve got a facecloth,’ I gasped, dashing in and peeling it off the quilt, where it had left a dark accusatory wet stain. Berating myself for not putting it on him earlier, I spread it across his forehead. He moaned again, still clawing the air.

‘What’s he wearing?’

‘Pyjamas. Should I take them off? He’s going all floppy!’

‘Sponge him down. Sponge his head and his chest.’

I pressed the cloth against Max’s narrow ribcage. Even after just seconds in contact with his skin, the chill had been removed from the cloth. He made a strange sound in his throat, half rolled over, retched, and vomited across me, a thin spray of yellowish liquid.

‘He’s being sick!’ The panic in my voice was rising steeply. I heard it shrill, unfamiliar.

‘Anna! Listen to me!’ Lil’s own voice was sharp now. ‘It’s
vital
that you keep calm. Do as I say. Get a towel, clean him up as best you can, then take his temperature again. It’s probably just a bug. He’ll be fine.’

Max looked blearily up at me, and the trust in his eyes broke my heart. ‘That really wasn’t very healthy, was it?’ he mumbled briefly, before sinking back down into the stained sofa cushions, turning his head away from me as if to indicate that it was his last word on the subject. He reminded me agonisingly of Adam.

‘No darling, it wasn’t. But don’t worry, we’ll soon have you feeling better,’ I said, stroking back the wet hair from his forehead. In almost as much of a daze as Max, I found a tea towel in the kitchen, brought it back into the living room and wiped up the worst of the sick, cleaning Max’s face and body first. Then I took his temperature again.

‘Nearly a hundred and four,’ I whispered into the phone, unable to believe this could really be happening. Not again, Lord, please, I begged. Not my Max.

‘Very well. Try the doctor once more, and if you can’t get through, then I think you ought to call an ambulance. Bearing in mind his medical history…ust to be on the safe side. It’s him, isn’t it? The little boy you gave the bone marrow transplant to?’

I was in no fit state to laugh at her perspicacity, but I managed a noise which was half-sob, half-sigh. She’d known all along. ‘Yes.’

‘Go on then. Ring me back later and let me know what’s happening. Promise?’

‘Yes. Bye, Lil.’

I managed to get through to the surgery on my next try. Getting the words out in the right order to the receptionist was somewhat more problematic, but I just about succeeded. She put me on hold for what seemed like several hours, then returned with a brisk answer: ‘Doctor Lark will come right round. She knows Max.’

By the time the doctor rang the doorbell, I was nearly hysterical, weak-kneed with fear and practically gasping with the effort of not letting Max see my panic.

I was convinced he was going to die, and all I could think was ‘how am I going to tell Adam?’

‘Is he any better?’ the doctor asked. She was younger than I’d expected, about my own age, in a smart suit and sharp haircut which made her look more like a stockbroker than a doctor.

I shook my head, unable to speak at all. I pointed in the direction of the sofa.

‘Hello, Max,’ she said in a voice that managed to be both soothing and businesslike. ‘It’s me, Dr. Lark. Feeling poorly, are we? What a shame...Let’s have a little look at you now, shall we?’