‘Were the two of you close growing up? I’ve always envied people with siblings.’
‘Have you? Well. There was a three-year age gap between us,’ she said, as if that were an answer.
Lexi waited, evidently expecting more. When Eleanor offered nothing further, she asked, ‘So, what was Ed like?’
Is she fishing? Perhaps this was why Lexi had invited her out on the boat. She needed to pick her words carefully. Filter. ‘He was sporty. On all the teams – football, cricket, rugby. He worked hard. Liked to do well.’ Maybe she could just get a CV printed.
‘Did he get on well with Sam?’
Tension fizzed down the length of Eleanor’s neck. She thought of the two of them in the same room together, the way it made her skin feel too hot, her clothes too tight, like she couldn’t get enough oxygen. She ploughed the oars into the water. ‘Ed and Sam were very different.’
‘I know Ed worries that he can’t help, that he isn’t doing enough.’
‘It isn’t a problem you can fix with a credit card.’
Lexi baulked.
Eleanor’s filtering clearly needed work. Still, she didn’t have the patience for dealing with other people’s sensibilities, not when she could still remember being led into a private room in the hospital, told to wait there for the doctor. She had paced, eyes to the door, watching for whoever was coming. Finally, a woman in scrubs entered, her hair pinned back in a low, neat bun. She wore frameless glasses and Eleanor wondered if they slipped down her nose when she operated, and whether contact lenses might be more suitable. The doctor clasped her hands together as she spoke and Eleanor noticed how dry the skin on her knuckles was and decided it must be from all the washing. She was still looking at the cracked skin at the edges of her thumbs, and wondering whether the woman had ever tried using Neutrogena, because Eleanor suffered with dry skin in winter when the studio was cold, and she’d tried just about every hand cream and it was the only one—
‘Miss Tollock?’ the doctor was saying. ‘Do you understand?’
Eleanor had looked up, right into her eyes. ‘Sam is dead.’
‘Yes. I’m so sorry.’
Later she was told that she could see his body if she wanted to, and she did want that. She needed to see him because this big, terrible thing was happening, and she needed to tell him about it, and hold his hand because that’s what she did when everything was too much – she held his hand. But of course his hand felt all wrong – cold, unyielding, not his big bear grip, just a flaccid, empty hand. She kissed the back of it, but it even smelt wrong – antiseptic, sterile – and her lips brushed the bee-sting mark where the IV line had been. Then she’d clamped her teeth around a few hairs. She ground them between her teeth, then swallowed. She couldn’t say why she did it. She knew it was odd, but she didn’t care. She would have swallowed him whole if she could, because she knew that was the last time she would ever see or touch or be with him.
Now she looked up and found Lexi staring at her expectantly. Had there been a question she’d missed?
She couldn’t say any of what she’d been thinking. You don’t tell people the ins and outs of death, the same way women don’t tell other women the full horrors of childbirth because, what’s the point? People will still die. Children will still be born. Let’s just say it’s hard, and then focus on all the other stuff that happens in between.
Lexi said, ‘Ed tries his best. I think it’s hard for him to understand fully because he hasn’t been through it.’
Eleanor stared directly at Lexi. ‘Actually, it’s quite simple: it would be like you – right now – dying. And Ed being expected to carry on. That’s what it would be like.’
55
Bella
Bella pushed her fingers through the roots of her hair, tousling for added volume. She licked her lips, then sauntered into her bedroom.
Fen was reading on their bed, one arm pillowing her head, the pale hollow of her underarm exposed. The shutters were thrown open, filling the room with light and welcoming in a faint sea breeze.
‘Hey,’ Bella said, coming to Fen’s side and perching on the edge of the bed. ‘Want to come float on a lilo with me?’
‘Thanks,’ Fen said easily, placing down her book, ‘but I’m going to stay out of the sun for a little while.’
Bella peered at the cover of Fen’s novel. ‘A Theatre for Dreamers. Any good?’
‘Yes. It’s about this group of bohemian artists and writers who live on a Greek island in the sixties. One of the characters reminds me a little of my aunt.’