to reassure me.
Secretly, I’m still hardly convinced of my reprieve, and the lumpy tenderness is still there. But I expect I’ll live with it, since it’s got to be better than the alternative.
It’s put me right off checking my breasts, though. How can you spot one rogue marble in a bagful?
James’s reaction was such a damp squib that I cast about for someone else to tell, then I thought: why not phone Peggy? She’d understand.
Peggy Mulvaney, my friend from the Society for Women Writing Romance, writes raunchy books under a variety of unlikely pen names, Desdemona Calthrop being the best known of them.
She says she spends a lot of time on research.
I haven’t seen much of her since we moved here because it’s so difficult to get to SFWWR meetings as a non-driver, and I do miss her and my other friends in the Society. Being accepted as a member when my first book was published did wonders for my self-confidence. And, of course, since my books keep on selling, I do feel I’m a success at something.
Anyway, I phoned her up and we had a lovely long chat. She understood perfectly what I’d been going through, because she had a similar scare in the past and they’d told her it was some sort of benign thing and to ignore it, which she did.
She said now she’d put on so much weight it would take her a week to do a check, but Gerry, her current lover, was always willing to try.
I felt much happier after this, and thought Mother might like to know what I’d been through, too. But there was such a very long wait before the phone was picked up that I’d begun to imagine her lying in a pool of cooking sherry in the kitchen before there was a click and a cautious voice quavered, ‘She’s not in!’
‘Hello, Granny!’ I shouted. ‘It’s me – Tish.’
‘Who?’
‘Tish – your granddaughter.’
‘Why are you shouting?’
‘Sorry. Where’s Mother?’
‘Gone to the off-licence. She said the library, but when did she ever go to a library? She doesn’t fool me one bit and never has. I answered the phone.’
‘I know, I can hear you. I thought you never answered the phone?’
‘Yes, I answered the phone, and I never answer it.’
‘Then why did you answer it today, Granny?’
‘Don’t whisper, I can’t hear you. I don’t know why I bothered to answer this pesky thing. I won’t do it again.’
‘Granny, I went to the hospital today because I thought I had cancer, but I haven’t. Isn’t that wonderful?’
‘Cancer? I’m Scorpio. Not that I believe in all that nonsense. Your mother does, more fool her. What have you taken up astrology for? I don’t want my charts read!’
‘But I haven’t taken astrology up!’
‘Then why did you want to know my birth-sign?’ she demanded reasonably. I gave up.
‘How are you, Granny?’
‘Your mother is trying to kill me.’
‘Kill you? But Granny … !’
‘Yes, kill me! Brown sherry bottles left on brown carpets and green wine bottles left on green carpets. She does it on purpose. Soon I’ll be falling over your mother.’
‘She’s not that bad, surely?’
‘“My daughter-in-law drinks,” I told the doctor, and do you know what he said? “Drink is necessary to sustain human life, Mrs Norwood.” “That may be,” I told him, “but sherry isn’t!” Then I told him where to stick his stethoscope, the patronising fool!’ She cackled evilly, and I winced.
‘Oh dear – you really shouldn’t have done that, Granny! And I thought you liked Dr Reevey.’
‘Stuffed shirt. Said he wasn’t going to come and see me again. Good riddance!’
‘Oh dear!’ I said again, helplessly. ‘You’ll run out of doctors at this rate.’
‘No such luck. They breed like flies, and always looking for old people to experiment on. That’s what they do in geriatric wards – experiment on old folk. That’s why you never hear of them coming out again,’ she said darkly.
‘I’m sure you’re wrong, Granny!’
‘Can’t hear a word you’re saying. Why does everyone whisper at me? Here’s your mother coming – I’m off.’
And the phone went suddenly dead.
It rang again almost immediately and I picked it up thinking it would be Mother – only it was just silence.
‘That’s funny,’ I told James as he walked into the room. ‘No answer again.’
‘Wrong number.’
‘N-no … the phone wasn’t put down and I’m sure there was someone there. That makes four I’ve had like that, and they always withhold their number.’
‘Oh, come on, Tish: it’s just a fault on the line! But if it will make you feel better I’ll phone British Telecom from work tomorrow and get it checked out. OK? I mean, it wasn’t like it was a rude message, or heavy breathing, or anything, was it?’
‘No,’ I conceded, feeling silly. ‘You’re right – I’m getting in a state about nothing.’ (Mind you, it wasn’t me who was imagining they were being followed everywhere, though he does seem to have dropped that idea pretty quickly.)
I managed a smile, since he was looking a bit impatient, but later, when I was standing in the dark lane with Bess, the silent caller gnawed away in the back of my mind like a rat.
I want everything in my Eden to be perfect – no worms in this apple!
As I quietly let myself back in I heard James exclaim crossly, ‘Just stop doing it!’
‘Stop doing what?’ I demanded indignantly, sticking my head round the door, only to find him holding the telephone receiver.
‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow,’ he added, putting the phone down.
‘Sorry – I thought you were speaking to me,’ I explained. ‘Who was that?’
He stared blankly for a moment, then said: ‘Howard.’
‘What did he want? You sounded a bit terse with him. Stop doing what?’
‘Oh, you know Howard! He’s been moonlighting behind some pub bar and the Social Security have found out about it. Told him either to stop working or stop claiming benefit.’
I lost interest (except for a faint surprise that Howard’s
