There’s the awkward sound of someone clinking a glass and coughing, and the room quiets. Toby looks at his wife standing by his side, with a look of such joy and tenderness it brings a lump to my throat. I can’t begrudge them their happiness; they earned it. She fought for him to survive.
“Thank you, everyone, for coming,” he says, his voice lower and richer than I expected, with a pleasant hint of a Yorkshire accent in the flat vowels. “I can’t tell you how wonderful it feels to be here, alive and well, Frances by my side and my lovely Maisy here with her Ryan. I know how lucky we are. My story has been a popular one. You’ve all probably heard me banging on about my time on the boat on the TV or the radio, or seen one of my five thousand articles on it for the Guardian.” A sprinkle of generous laughter.
“The people I was on that boat with made a lifelong impression on me and I’m sorry more of them can’t be here with us. Only seven people survived of the three hundred originally on the boat. As you probably know, this book is the story of the two years I spent on the Silver Lady, the letters I wrote to Frances and the story of some of the people who died beside me. I needed to know what happened to their families, and their stories. Lots of you have read the book already and the person people ask me the most about is Bella. What happened to her husband, her son and her daughter? I wish I could tell Bella that everything was okay, but like the story so often is with the Plague, it is a sad one with a chink of hope. Bella’s husband and son died in the Rome outbreak and her daughter nearly died of starvation, alone in their apartment for over six days. Thankfully, Bella’s sister-in-law, Cecilia, traveled by car, bus and foot from Puglia to Rome to rescue her niece. Bella’s daughter, Carolina, now lives with her aunt in Puglia and is a very happy child. Cecilia kindly allowed me to include a transcript of my conversation with her in the book, for which I’m very grateful.” He pauses, and it looks like he’s bracing himself.
“There’s obviously one person I wish could be here more than anyone else. My brother, Mark.” An awfully long moment stretches out in the room as Toby visibly tries to control his breathing so he can talk again. He makes a now-familiar face, looking into the distance with an expression of total despair fighting with the desire to hold it together. I can practically see the ribbons of connection between him and Frances as her eyes implore him to be okay, to recover, to keep going.
“Mark got me through months on that god-awful boat,” Toby says shakily. “And then, right when our rescue began and food appeared from the sky as if from God himself, he died. It feels unfair, and you can read more about it because it’s too painful to talk about for too long. I just want you all to know he’d have been so pleased to see you all here. He really would.”
The room erupts with the relief of a British crowd that’s just watched a barely contained emotional admission. I realize I’m running late, offer a quick good-bye to Toby and Frances, who are surrounded by well-wishers, and walk through London to a very important date.
“You’re looking well,” Amanda says, as we hug and settle ourselves at the table. I regale her with the story of the book launch and am greeted with a very Glaswegian response. “Mixing with the high and mighty in literary circles,” she says with a raised eyebrow. “I always knew you’d go far.”
“Says the famous doctor.”
“Famous? Fuck off.”
“You’re the most famous doctor in the world.”
Amanda smiles ruefully as she sips her wine. “I think the grand Nobel Prize–winning Dr. Lisa Michael might claim that particular title.”
“Well, I don’t envy her. I don’t envy her callousness.”
“I envy her bank balance,” Amanda replies with a laugh.
The waiter comes to take our order and I realize, with a happy look around the bustling restaurant, how glorious it feels to be having dinner in a nice dress with a friend in a restaurant. Amanda, far from being angry, was more understanding than I could have hoped after my meltdown at Heather Fraser’s house. She found me, sitting by the sea across the road, furiously bargaining in my head with a man who I’ve never met and who will spend the rest of his life in prison. “What’s done is done,” she said softly, and for a moment I hated her for her acceptance and then I stopped. I stopped and I thanked her. I told her it was hard to imagine it all could have been different and I had the first truly honest conversation I’d had since I lost my family about what it means to be alone. To feel alone, and to realize it didn’t have to be this way. But it happened, and there is no changing it.