“You swore you’d stay away from him, Liam.” I force myself to speak quietly so Cal can’t hear but the strain hurts my throat. “He’s toxic, for Christ’s sake.”
“I was only trying to help Dave,” he says even quieter than me so I have to lean forward. He looks up at me. “Okay, I can see it was stupid now but I was desperate, Dee. I haven’t had a decent job for weeks and Dave was promising me work. I just wanted to get him onside.”
“Desperate? We’ll both be bloody desperate now,” I hiss at him. “People will find out you’ve been nicked—it’s a small town—and they won’t wait to see if your name’s cleared. Who’s going to employ you—or me—now?”
Liam comes and puts his arm round me. “It’ll be all right. You’ll see.”
“Of course it won’t.” I shove him away, harder than I mean to, and he bangs into the doorframe. “But I’ve already lost one job, remember?” I say through gritted teeth as he rubs his elbow. “Doll fired me yesterday—and dobbed you in with the police—so you can kiss good-bye your work at the pub. We’ll have to move.”
“Look, love, I know you’re angry but this is going to be okay. Dave owes me big-time now, so let’s not panic. And I’m talking to my solicitor again in the morning. She’ll get it sorted.”
I go to the fridge and pull out a stray cold beer.
“Can I have one?” he says.
I walk away, back into the sitting room. I can’t bear to speak to him.
Thirty-seven
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2019
Elise
Anxiety was gnawing at her brain and Ronnie’s driving wasn’t helping.
“The lights are changing,” Elise shrieked as they sped through on amber.
“God, you sound like Ted,” Ronnie laughed. “We’ll be there in a mo.”
But in one piece? And without a conviction? I’ll drive myself next time.
Ronnie fidgeted beside her in the waiting room, where couples sat, heads together, whispering, their fear echoing off the walls.
“Oh, I meant to say Karen’s doing a cut and highlights half price at the moment,” Ronnie chirped up.
Elise ran her fingers over her still-unfamiliar scalp. She’d gone to Karen’s Hair and Beauty salon to get her post-chemo wisps shaved in May. Karen had talked about wigs, getting out a well-thumbed catalog of synthetic styles, but Elise had decided she wasn’t going down that route.
“I don’t want to look like my mum,” she’d tried to joke. “I’ll stick to scarves and hats until it grows back.”
Karen had clearly shared the conversation, no doubt with a “Bless her!” thrown in, and the sympathetic smiles in the High Street had started. Elise hadn’t been back since.
“I don’t need a haircut.” Elise tried to laugh. “Look at it!”
“It’s growing,” Ronnie said.
It was but it was coming back a different color. Gray, thick, and coarse instead of dirty blond. Elise tried not to care but some mornings she found herself sitting in front of the mirror searching for her old self. It was never a good idea. The stranger staring back at her had dark smudges under sunken eyes and her nose and mouth looked too big for her face. Mrs. Potato Head.
“Anyway, it suits you short,” Ronnie added. “It brings out your eyes—you look gorgeous.”
“Enough!” Elise said, a lump in her throat. “I’m fine.”
“You look low today,” Ronnie replied.
“I’ll do some yoga later—that’ll help.”
“If you say so, but I’m not sure how doing a downward-facing dog is a comfort to anyone.”
Ronnie rummaged in her bag for a tissue, offering to get coffee, a paper, a sandwich, a muffin, until Elise took a deep breath and said: “Okay, a cup of tea, please.” She didn’t want it—the only thing she wanted was five minutes’ peace to get her head together.
“Right, then,” Ronnie said. “Back in a jiffy.”
Elise closed her eyes and breathed deeply until she heard her footsteps fade away. It’s going to be fine, she repeated in her head. But she didn’t know.
She’d found the lump when she caught the pucker of skin near her left nipple in the mirror. She’d stared for a couple of seconds, thinking it was a trick of the light, then reached to touch it. Beneath was a thickening of her flesh.
Her doctor had sent Elise straight to have a mammogram at the specialist clinic. She’d sat cold and numb behind the thin curtain of a cubicle before submitting her poor diseased breast to be squashed between two sheets of glass until she’d yelped.