‘Oh . . . Oh God,’ I whispered. ‘Javi. I’m so sorry. I . . . Oh God, why did I believe her? Iknewit was today.’
I glanced at the kitchen door. ‘How’s she been?’
He shrugged, but his face told me all I needed to know. He was lost. Out of his depth. For years, there had remained avenues of hope, and keeping Jenni plugged into them had been Javier’s job. It had shielded him from the lead weight of her fear, given him an active role. Now, there was nothing, and his wife – whom, for all his emotional limitations, he loved with every cell in his body – was in a deep well of grief. He no longer had a role, or any hope to offer.
‘She has not said too much. Silence in theclínica. I don’t think she is letting herself think about it. Not yet, anyhow. I thought she would tell you and then she would cry, let heremotions come, you know? That’s why I went out. Normally when she can’t talk to me, she talks to you.’
‘Oh no. Oh, Javi, I am so sorry.’
He swigged his beer and sank back into his chair, staring out of the window.
I looked over at the door. Still nothing. The clock on their kitchen wall ticked, bomb-like.
Several minutes passed.
‘She went to the bathroom on purpose,’ I said suddenly. ‘To hide. She knew you’d tell me. We should . . . we should go and get her.’ I got up, but Javier was already up. He strode across the kitchen floor, shoulders hunched.
I hovered uselessly in the kitchen as he knocked at the bathroom door. ‘Baby?’ he called. ‘Baby, let me in . . .’
After a pause the door opened and I heard it: the desperate sound of his wife, my loyal friend, who’d postponed her own grief so she could look after mine, gasping for breath as tears and despair erupted savagely from within. ‘I can’t bear it,’ she wept. ‘I can’t bear it. Javi, I don’t know what to do.’
Then the unbearable sound of raw human misery, muffled only by the flimsy cotton of her husband’s shirt.
Chapter Thirty
When the hysterics had finally subsided, Jenni had sat on the couch between me and Javier and methodically binged her way through everything we hadn’t already eaten. I’d ignored the scream of jet-lag tiredness and stayed with her until midnight, eating the odd sliver of cake to keep myself awake.
Now morning was here: the bright hot morning of which I’d dreamed, my first back in LA. During my final week in England I’d become certain that this first morning would bring with it renewal and hope: a sense of perspective I’d been unable to find in London or Gloucestershire. I would be happy. Purposeful.
In reality I was bloated and uncomfortable, and far too cold after a night with the air-conditioning at super-freezing. I curled up in Jenni’s spare bed, too exhausted to get out and turn it down. I stared at myself in the mirror across the room. I looked puffy, white, unwell. Before even realizing what I was doing, I reached out to check my phone in case Eddie had replied to my farewell message. He hadn’t, of course, and my heart ballooned with pain.
Add friend?Facebook asked, when I looked at his profile. Just to check.Add friend?
An hour later, still awaiting serenity, I left the house for a run. It wasn’t yet eight, and Jenni and Javier – for once – were still in bed.
I knew that running wasn’t kind, after a transatlantic flight and an evening of emotional tumult. Not to mention the sleepless night I’d had in London the night before, or that the thermometer on Jenni’s deck was already scorching its way to a hundred degrees. But I couldn’t sit still. Couldn’t be with myself. I needed to move so fast that nothing could stick to me.
I had to run.
Three hundred metres down Glendale Avenue, I remembered why I didn’t run in this city. I swayed on the corner of Temple, pretending to stretch out my quads so I could grab a lamp post. The heat was suffocating. I looked up at the sun, soupy and indistinct today behind a smear of marine haze, and shook my head.I had to run!
I tried again, but as the Hollywood Freeway loomed ahead, my legs gave way and I found myself sitting on the grass by a municipal tennis court, sick and dizzy. I pretended to readjust my shoelaces and admitted defeat.
Somewhere I could hear Jo’s voice, telling me I was a fucking fruit loop, and did I haveanyrespect for my body? And I agreed with her; I agreed wholeheartedly, remembering how sad and sorry I used to feel when I’d seen skinny women rasping up the hills of Griffith Park in the scorching heat.
I went back to Jenni’s, showered and ordered a cab. It didn’t look like Jenni was going to make it to work anytime soon, and I couldn’t sit here a moment longer.
During my journey to our offices in East Hollywood, I planned next week’s pitch to the directors of a hospice company in California. We were so used to having our services solicited by medical units nowadays, that I was a little out of practice at the art of sales. Vermont was all snagged up, so I got out at Santa Monica and walked the last two blocks, rehearsing the pitch under my breath while sweat dripped,plock, plock, plock, down my back.
Then: Eddie?
A man in a taxi, waiting in the traffic jam on Vermont. Heading straight towards my office. Cropped hair, sunglasses, a T-shirt I was sure I recognized.
Eddie?
No. Impossible.
I started to walk towards the car. The man inside, who I would swear was Eddie David, was looking out at the confusing proliferation of street signs and checking his phone.
