four I crept along the hall and stood outside Nicola’s closed door. Her breathing was slow and regular, but coarse and very loud.
I thought about the rattle that came out of my sister Madeleine’s throat ten minutes before she died. ‘Listen,’ I said to her son who was sitting red-eyed by her bed with his elbows resting on his knees. ‘She’s rattling. She’ll die soon.’
‘Nah,’ he said, ‘it’s just a bit of phlegm she’s too weak to cough up.’
In the kitchen I switched on a lamp. There was a banana on the bench. Someone had started to peel it, eaten half, and lost interest. The rest of it lay abandoned in its loose, spotty skin.
THE BACK of my house faced south, but a triangular window had been set high into the roof peak, so that north light flooded into the kitchen. I was standing in a patch of sun when Nicola made her entrance. I looked up, ready to rush to her. Her hair was damp and flat against her skull. Her nightdress, dark with moisture, clung to her body. But her shoulders were back, her neck was upright, and she was smiling, smiling, smiling.
‘Hello, darling!’ she carolled, in her blue-blood accent. ‘What a glorious morning! Oooh, there’s that banana. I think I’ll have it for breakfast. How did you sleep?’
My mouth hung open. ‘How did you?’
‘Oh, I was fine, once I dropped off. Actually I did perhaps sweat a bit. I’ll run the sheets through your machine in a tick.’
She strolled in and established herself on a stool opposite me at the bench. Lord, she was a good-looking woman. She had the dignified cheekbones, the straight nose and the long, mobile upper lip of a patrician: the squatter’s daughter that she was.
‘My God, what a flight,’ she said. ‘I had a family with four kids behind me, and they fought all the way to Melbourne about who’d sit next to the mother.’ She mimicked a high-pitched whine. ‘I want to sit with you, Mummy. Look after me, Mummy. I don’t love you any more, Mummy. I don’t even like you. I hate you, Mum!’
She tossed her red wool shawl round her shoulders, raised her chin, and sparkled at me as if we were settling in at the Gin Palace for a martini and an hour’s gossip.
‘Now,’ she said. ‘Where’s your phone? Professor Theodore told me to call him first thing.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘He’s the big cheese,’ she said grandly. ‘The whole thing’s inspired by his theories. He’s got to go overseas on Friday, though—that’s why he made me come down a week early. He insists on seeing me this morning before I start the treatment.’
I passed her the cordless, went into the bathroom and closed the door. I could hear the tune, if not the words, of her telephone manner: innocently imperious, but sweetened by a confidential note, a bubbling stream of laughter. They’d be eating out of her hand. I turned on the shower.
When I emerged in my towel, she was sitting on the stool, holding the black handset in her lap. The flesh of her cheeks, what was left of it, had collapsed.
‘He’s already gone.’
‘What?’
‘To China. They said he left yesterday.’
A violent thrill ran down my arms and seethed in my fingertips. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, her smile was back in place.
‘But it’s all right. They said to come in anyway. A different doctor will see me. At four o’clock.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘Oh no, darling—I’ll take the train. Just point me in the direction of the station.’
‘You’re not in any condition to walk to the station.’
‘Of course I am! Look at me!’ She spread her arms. The dark red shawl was draped becomingly this way and that.
‘What about yesterday? I didn’t know what to do. You could hardly put one foot in front of the other.’
‘Oh, Hel! Did I give you a fright?’ She gave a gusty laugh. ‘You mustn’t worry when I get the shivers. It’s only a side-effect of the vitamin C driving out the toxins.’
‘You mean you’d had the vitamin C yesterday? Before you went to the airport?’
She nodded, smiling hard, with her lips closed and her eyebrows high up into her forehead.
‘Jesus, Nicola—is it always that brutal?’
‘That was nothing. You should have seen me the first time. I had an afternoon appointment at a clinic on the North Shore. They pumped a bag of it into me. When they’d finished with me I was pretty shaken up. I needed to lie down for a while. But it was five o’clock and they were keen to close the rooms. They said to go home. I went out to the car but I knew I couldn’t drive. I could hardly even see. I felt so sick, all I could do was crawl into the back seat and lie down. I thought I’d stop shaking if I could get control of my breathing. But it kept getting worse. In the end I just got behind the wheel and drove home.’
‘From the North Shore to Elizabeth Bay? At peak hour? You drove?’
She shrugged. ‘Had to. Iris was a bit taken aback when I staggered in.’
She reached out for the remains of the banana, took a small bite and began to chew it carefully, with her front teeth and her incisors, right at the front of her mouth.
‘Are your gums sore?’
‘They’ve pulled out a couple of my molars.’
‘Give us a look.’
She gulped down the scrap of banana and opened her jaws wide. I leaned across the bench on my elbows and peered in. Her tongue was quivering with the effort of lying flat. Halfway back, on either side, gaped a pink and pulpy hole. In the depths of each one I could see a lump of something white.
‘Is that pus? Have you got an infection?’
‘No, darling,’ she said, wiping her lips on a tea towel. ‘It’s just bone. The gum hasn’t grown back over the gap. I can only chew with my front teeth, like a rabbit.’ She laughed.
‘But is it going to heal? Did they say it would?’
‘Just watch me, babe. By the middle of next week, once the Theodore Institute’s on the job, I’ll have turned this whole damn thing around. The cancer will be on the run.’
Again the bright laugh, the twinkle, the eyebrows flying up towards the hairline. I couldn’t meet her eye. I turned aside and looked out through the glass panels of the back door, into the yard. A streak of frilled fabric was darting along the path behind the broad beans. Oh no. Flamenco shoes rapped on the bricks, thundered on the veranda. The back door burst open.
‘Here I am! Are you ready for my show?’
Nicola couldn’t turn her head. She had to swing her whole body around. ‘Who is this glorious señorita?’
