The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton - Catherine Alliott [146]
We'd talked at length last night, Bella and I. And when I'd finally come back up the stairs to bed, my knees cramped from sitting on the stairs in one position for so long, I'd repeated it all pretty much verbatim to Ant. I was tired – wrung out too – but he needed to be brought up to speed while it was still fresh in my head. I told him about the medication she'd been offered at vast expense, but which the NHS didn't pay for and which would only prolong her life for a couple of months in any case, and how she'd rather leave the money to Stacey. About the white mice treatment she'd plumped for instead.
‘White mice?’ Ant propped himself up on one elbow as I kicked away my slippers and shrugged my dressing gown off.
‘It's early days research stuff. The sort of thing Bella says they give to white mice.’ I gave him a wry smile as I got into bed. ‘She's volunteered to give it a go, since it's too late for conventional medicine. It makes her pretty sick, though.’
‘Oh.’ His eyes widened slightly at me. ‘I didn't know that.’
‘Didn't you ask what she was on?’
‘Well…’
‘What about Ted?’ I plumped my pillow, trying to hide my impatience. ‘Didn't you talk to Ted about it?’
‘I tried but he got so upset. He's very emotional, Ted,’ my husband informed me gravely, as if perhaps I didn't know. ‘Blew his nose a lot.’
I smiled. ‘I'll talk to him. He'll have to come and stay often, certainly at the beginning, so that Stacey's got an ally, a friend. Bella agreed. Long weekends, that sort of thing. I thought he might even come on holiday with us.’ I turned to switch the bedside light off.
‘Right.’ I heard Ant say faintly.
We carried on talking quietly in the dark, or I did. He listened. Familiar roles. I told him about Stacey's reservations about contacting us in the first place, how it had been her mother's idea and how, initially, Stacey had resisted. How she'd said she'd like to live with her granddad, stay up north with her friends, cling to what she knew, maybe not even go to Oxford at all, or any university come to that; how, under the circumstances, it all seemed stupid and irrelevant. They'd argued. Stacey had talked of getting a job, doing a secretarial course. Bella had had to push.
‘She's scared,’ I'd said to her mother on the phone. ‘Terrified of being without you.’
‘Of course she is, but the thing is, Evie, Dad would just give in to her. He's a complete softie, he'd let her have her way, say – whatever makes you happy, luv – and that would be such a waste. And I'm running out of time here. I'm having to edge her on all the time, persuade her.’ A note of panic had crept into her voice.
‘But her reservations are understandable. We're strangers, effectively.’
‘Of course you are, and she loves her granddad very much, and doesn't want to leave him alone with his grief either, and I understand all of that, and there's an element of me that says – oh, let her be, Bella. Let her have a year off at least, she's so young after all. She could apply next year, or even the year after, but an even bigger bit of me knows she wouldn't.’
‘What, wouldn't reapply?’
‘Not without me there to push her, no. If she spent a year up here, she'd spend another. Start a job and sink without trace. She'd still be in Russell & Bromley in three years' time with her friend Jordan. She's clever, but she's not brave. Not remotely.’
‘Like Ant,’ I said suddenly.
‘Oh?’ She snagged on that bit of information like it was barbed wire.
‘Yes. I mean… well. It just sounded a bit familiar. Go on.’
‘I just need to know she's on track before I die,’ she said with an air of desperation but not a hint of martyrdom. ‘Is that so selfish of me?’
It occurred to me to wonder how anyone could think this remarkable woman selfish. ‘Not at all,’ I said slowly, ‘and you're the best judge. You know her better than anyone. Presumably you're equally certain