Simon's Choice Read online

  And the money! Simon was not a cheap man, but he was cautious. His formative years had been spent not in poverty but certainly on the strictest of budgets. His parents' careful planning and saving had been handed down in his psyche. Friends reported back that burger meals in bog-standard, well-known burger joints had set them back £60 for a family of four. For a burger! Not only that – it was a burger which you collected yourself and which you would be expected to clear away. For £60, Simon calculated, he could take his family to a fabulous French restaurant, perhaps by a river, perhaps on the coast where he could introduce them to the gastronomic delights of France. Oysters, lobsters, cheeses, cassoulets … but a burger?

  No. Simon had remained adamant. Melissa was largely in agreement. There was no reason to buy passage to France, only to immerse themselves in what they saw as an oversized shopping mall with roller coasters. Their parental gift to Sarah was to feed and stimulate her mind. They wanted to show her wondrous sights that were not experienced by everybody. They wanted to immerse her in the histories and cultures that had created the world in which she lived. To bequeath an appreciation of the foundation on which her society was built. If they truly loved their daughter, they felt, then they would deny her the tawdry falsehood of a theme-park holiday and lavish the gift of knowledge on her instead. Disney could be experienced on television. Versailles could not.

  Leukemia or no leukemia.

  “Free meals, Daddy. So it won’t be thirty pounds for a burger. It will be free. That’s good isn’t it, Daddy?” Sarah continued to chirrup, patting her daddy on the knee. Simon and Melissa looked at each other with unspoken defeat. Sarah sensed impending victory and moved in for the kill. “So we can go then, can’t we, Daddy? We can go to Disneyland. When I’m better. When I’m in remission again?”

  “Dr. Bailey, Mrs. Bailey, Miss Bailey.” Mr. Abnam, a charming and good-looking Brahmin, in a beautifully tailored suit, approached the bed. “Miss Bailey, you are looking, ah, how do you say … perky today. Not giving my nurses too much trouble, I hope?” He looked kindly at Sarah, who forced a smile. She was pleased with the consultant’s manner of addressing her, but irritated to have her Disneyland plea interrupted. “If you are quite happy with, ah, let’s see, oh yes, Ben Ten, then I think I should like to take your parents off for a little chat. Would that be okay, Sarah?” Sarah nodded. “Good. Then Dr. and Mrs. Bailey, would you please be following me?”

  As she rose, Melissa kissed her daughter on the head. She dropped the empty coffee cups back into the paper bag and checked that Sarah’s jug of squash, as well as paper and pencil case were all in easy reach. Sarah gave a small smile, her disappointment at being left alone again obvious. Simon felt a stab of sympathy as he turned to follow the consultant.

  “Hey, Sarah.” Simon turned back to his daughter. “You’d better decide which of the hellish hotels you want in Disneyland. I’ll pick up a brochure for you later.” With a wink he was gone, leaving an ecstatic Sarah sitting up in bed, clapping her hands.

  Chapter 7

  “I know this is a terrible shock.”

  The consultant assessed the silent couple sitting before him. They had not responded as he had expected. In ten years’ experience as a Consultant Pediatric Oncologist, Mr. Abnam was uncomfortably used to giving bad news. Colleagues in adult cancer wards had the onerous task of informing patients that their battle was unwinnable and that they were going to die. Mr. Abnam had the far harder task of informing parents that their child was going to die.

  He was used to anger and demands for further treatment. Men often paced the room. Some even punched walls or kicked his waste paper bin. The women tended to cry. A few had been physically sick. Many had walked out of the room. Most blamed him.

  It was natural. He was acquainted with the Kubler-Ross model, commonly known as the five stages of grief. He was forced to give the worst possible news to parents. Each differed in their starting position on the arduous journey to acceptance. Many had lived in fear of this conversation for months, perhaps years, knowing deep down that they would outlive their child.

  Some parents held onto their optimism so firmly that the news pulled the rug from under their emotional feet, plunging them straight into the first stage of denial. These parents would demand second opinions, accuse him of misdiagnosis, campaign for further bouts of treatment. Normally quite calm, they would remain seated while their minds searched desperately for a way to stop the thing they had been told from being true.

  The second stage was anger. These were the bin kickers. Sometimes they moved into anger from denial within the short time they were in his office. Often they had already been in denial for months and the confirmation their child was dying simply jolted them onto this next step on the stairway of grief. They raged and ranted. They accused Mr. Abnam of malpractice, of not caring, of withholding drugs, of not holding a proper degree. He was Asian. Where had he learnt medicine? What did he know anyway, with a tin-pot degree from Karachi?

  Mr. Abnam glanced at his University of Cambridge medical degree, framed and displayed on the wall.

  Bargaining was the third stage. A uniquely personal experience, this stage usually happened sometime after the conversation in his office. Often the negotiation for an extension to the life of their child was made with a higher power, pleas to God or Gods for their child to be spared. Parents promised to lead better lives, to go to church, to give up drinking and occasionally begged their God to take them in their child’s place.

  Depression and then acceptance, the final stops on the exhausting emotional expedition, came later.

  Right now, he would likely be dealing with either denial or anger.

  He surveyed the mute couple again, assessing their body language, unsure as to which well-rehearsed line to use next. The man, the GP, Dr. Bailey, stared at the floor, his teeth clenched. His wife sat next to him, gazing out of the window, occasionally closing her eyes for a few seconds as if, by closing her eyes and re-opening them, she would wipe away the image in front of her. Like a reality Etch-a-Sketch.

  He interrupted the silence cautiously. “Sarah may be quite well for a few weeks. Two months, perhaps three. There will be a quality of life there, and you will have the opportunity to enjoy time with her. As I have already explained, there really is no point in giving her any more treatment. It will only make her feel unwell with no discernible remedial effect. The downturn will be rapid, the leukemia is aggressive. When, and I am afraid it will be soon, she takes a marked turn for the worse, she can be swiftly moved into a hospice specially for children, where she can be made comfortable. Palliative care will be carried out in a specially designed environment. In her last few weeks, we will largely be concerned with pain relief. I have here,” Mr. Abnam reached for a folder by his desk, “a brochure for Madron House. You can go and look around. It is a truly inspiring place, I’m sure that you will find the work of the staff there a comfort.”

  Neither parent looked up. Both stared determinedly at their chosen spot.

  The consultant broke the silence again. “Sarah is keen on animals, I think. They have rabbits…”

  Mrs. Bailey shifted slightly, tears beginning to course down her face, though her expression remained impenetrable. She continued to look out of the window, her hand over her mouth, her head tilted slightly to one side.

  “I don’t want her to be scared.” Dr. Bailey’s whisper brought Mr. Abnam’s attention back to the man. The GP shifted in his chair, lifting his eyes for the first time and holding the consultant’s in his gaze.

  “I’m scared,” said Mrs. Bailey, and silence resumed.

  Chapter 8

  The wailing increased in volume, as a woman, her sari the most vivid red Simon had ever seen, began to walk calmly out of the crowd towards the funeral pyre.

  Other women stepped forward, clawing at her clothes, imploring her to step back from the inferno. But still she glided, emotionless towards the intense heat. Within the hungry flames, her husband’s flesh mel
ted, his fat causing the fire to flare and pop.

  Covering his mouth and nose in an attempt to block out the stench, Simon strode out with her. The fire roared and the howls of the women grew in a desperate crescendo. The woman looked back, shaking her head, angrily gesticulating her wish to carry out her self-immolation alone. Simon paused, his desire to join her anumarana, to be ravaged by fire, to step over the boundary of life and death, overwhelming.

  The keening of the mourners heightened in pitch as another of the women, incongruously dressed in western clothes, flung herself at Simon, her imploring face known to him, though her blonde hair was stained with the black smuts which floated down from the azure blue sky.

  Don’t, her voice sounded in his head, though her lips did not move. Don’t.

  * * *

  Simon woke with a jolt, confused and disorientated. He didn't recognize the room he was in. The bed felt alien, too hard. He sat up. Melissa mumbled something and stirred.

  “This is real, isn’t it?” Simon swung his legs out of the hotel bed and rubbed his hands over his face. “I had a nightmare. This is worse.”

  Melissa propped herself on her elbows. “Shit.”

  Simon filled the tiny electric kettle and plugged it in. Tea bag. Plastic milk pot. Packet of sugar. Going through the motions. Keep going. Keep moving forward. Wade through the mental glue. He turned the television on, letting the chirpy presenters’ vacuous banter relieve the silence.

  “Rombouts coffee biscuits, Mel. Didn’t think they did these anymore.”

  “What?”

  “Rombouts. Remember? You used to love them. You nicked a handbag full from that hotel we stayed in just before you had Sarah. Remember? Here.” Simon passed Melissa a cup of weak, warm tea and a familiarly wrapped biscuit. “Rombouts, Mel. You love them.”

  Melissa sat up again and took the little biscuit. She had developed her taste for them while at Marshal & Snelgrove’s, the old-fashioned department store in Leeds, where she had first worked supporting herself and Simon through his medical degree. She and the girls from Handbags, along with the lasses from Lingerie, would meet for coffee at 11 each morning, in the austere cafeteria of the store. Its décor, atmosphere and etiquette had gone unchanged since the 1950s. There they played at being grown-ups, taking turns to pour the tea, sharing the tiny cinnamon biscuits and discussing the more amusing customers of the day. They gossiped and bitched, consoled and comforted. “Of course he likes you. It wasn’t just a one-night stand. I’m sure he’ll call tonight … Of course Melissa is so lucky, settled down already with a soon-to-be doctor!”

  Melissa would glow, so proud of her senior marital status, so proud of growing up so quickly. Sitting in the time-warped cafeteria, the career-driven world of the early nineties existing only outside its flock-papered walls, Melissa’s old-fashioned goals focused merely on being a ‘Mrs.’ and becoming a mother.

  Her future stretched out luxuriantly before her. She was to be married to a doctor. They would fill their house with laughing children, dogs and Laura Ashley cushions. There would be wickedly witty guests for dinner and committee ladies in hats for lunch. She would have an Aga, and a dog to sleep before it.

  And her dreams had been fulfilled. She had the doctor already. The house came a few years later, and the baby shortly after that. Laura Ashley being momentarily unfashionable, the curtains were instead from Habitat and her range cooker was a Rayburn, but the sparkling dinner parties and charitable luncheons went ahead. Porridge, the puppy, chewed everything and enchanted everyone. Melissa was content.

  Now it was as though, in a moment of spite, someone had fed Melissa’s contentment into a shredder. The macerated strips of her life had been reduced to a pile of incomprehensible remnants, carelessly heaped on a hotel bed.

  They had checked into the St George’s Hotel the night before, having spent the day with Sarah. After leaving Mr. Abnam’s office, they stood in the lift lobby for a while, steadying themselves, checking their emotions. Without discussion they headed back to Sarah, united in their overwhelming desire to be with their little girl.

  “Did you get my brochure, Dad?” No preliminaries. Sarah could pick up a conversation three weeks after it was interrupted and expect her conversant to keep up. “When will you be getting the brochure? They’ll have them at Thomas Cook, Daddy. There’s one in Huddersfield.”

  Simon paused, confused. His mind seemed to be struggling to compute basic information. Brochure. Brochure? Disneyland. “Sarah may be quite well for a few weeks, two months, perhaps three.” Disneyland. Simon attempted a smile, though his mouth refused to contort upwards. He gave up.

  “Do you know what, darling? I think I’ll go and get that brochure now. I suppose if we’re going to see Mickey, we had better get planning. Don’t you think, Mummy?” Simon turned to Melissa. She was startlingly white, her expression unfathomable. Shock. “Mummy? Would you like to come with me? We’ll only be half an hour. Melissa?”

  “No, you go ahead.” Melissa turned to him, a blank-eyed rictus passing as her smile. “I want to hear what happens next to Harry Potter.”

  “Yey! Me too!” Sarah grinned, grabbing the book and holding it out towards her mother.

  “Okay. I’ll, erm … I’ll be back soon. You okay, darling?” Simon asked his wife.

  “Yes, fine,” she snapped brightly, the unnerving faux-smile flashing once again.

  Simon headed out of the ward, stopping briefly at the nurses' station. “Hi. My wife, she’s had a shock. Could someone …” His brain once again stalled, its basic mechanism apparently seized up.

  “Of course, Dr. Bailey. She’s had a terrible shock. I’ll get her a strong tea and something to eat and we’ll keep an eye on her.” A young nurse smiled sympathetically, completely unaware of the rage that she had stirred within the handsome GP. ‘Of course?’ Of course? Did they all know? How long had they known? Had they all been muttering and pitying them as they had sat watching television with their daughter that morning? Had they known last night? Had these, these women all known the fate of his daughter before he had?

  “Do that.” Simon spat out the words, then turned on his heel, unable to hide his hostility towards this ... nobody, who knew more about his daughter than he did.

  * * *

  “I’ve still got a couple of those biscuits, you know.” Melissa spoke in a dull monotone. “I must have eaten about twenty but I kept the rest in my dressing case. They’re still there, tucked into the little pocket at the back. They even went into hospital with me. I had one with the cup of tea the nurse gave us after the birth. Do you remember? That horrible nagging midwife had just been lecturing us about cot death.”

  Simon did remember. The midwives had left the newly formed family to get to know one another. As Melissa and the baby sat up in bed, Simon took his shoes off and climbed onto the bed beside them. The urge to hold both his wife and his new daughter outweighed the discomfort of three in a bed made for one. For a blissful few minutes they had lain together, his arm around his wife, hers around the child. All linked. Team Bailey. A familial triumvirate.

  An unpleasant midwife with an abrasive personality looked in and scolded them for ‘unsafe practices’ around a baby. With a strong Glaswegian accent, the stout red-haired woman ranted incomprehensively about ‘the bairn’ and ‘the beed’. Simon and Melissa caught each other's eye and then failed desperately as they both tried not to giggle. Hysteria welled up in both of them in the manner of naughty children. When they could hold on no longer they both exploded, tears of laughter coursing down their cheeks. The midwife strode out in a huff. A member of the nursing staff, one blessed with a sense of humor, made them a cup of tea and Melissa, remembering the pilfered biscuits, shared one with the father of her new child.

  “Simon?”

  “Yes.” Simon’s voice was little more than a whisper as he sat down next to his wife on the king-sized hotel bed. The decision to book into the hotel had been mutual. Somehow an unspoken agreement had been made
and after settling Sarah down for the evening and checking that she was happy on her own for a night, they got in the car and drove wordlessly to the town centre hotel, past laughing students falling drunkenly out of university bars in a ritual of bad behavior for which Simon and Melissa would never have the privilege of scolding Sarah.

  Home had become a hostile place. No comfort could be drawn from a building so reverberant with memories and stuffed with objects that were now so sacred. They didn’t want to see the crayon and felt tip scrawls stuck to the fridge door. They could not cope with the pile of shoes and skipping ropes entangled by the door. They were incapable of facing the closed door to Sarah’s room, its ‘Kids Rool!’ sign somehow mocking them.

  Far better the impersonal sanctuary of a hotel bedroom, with its bland yet tasteful furnishings, and none of the painfully familiar accoutrements of domestic life.

  Thank God for text messages. Unable to face speaking to either of their parents, they had sent a short message to Diana, who had been both watching the florists that day as well as dog-sitting the indefatigable Porridge: CAN U PLEASE LOOK AFTER P TONIGHT? Diana, intuitive and wise, responded with a mere YES. Explanations would be given later. She allowed herself the fragile fantasy that Melissa and Simon had gone to the cinema, or perhaps the new tapas bar they had talked about.