After the Last Dance (12 page)

‘Are you? I always wondered exactly what that was,' Rose said. ‘Leo, will you go and tell Liddy we're ready for pudding and coffee?'

When he got back to the dining room after finally teasing a reluctant smile from an unforgiving Lydia, Jane was silent and seemed grateful to no longer be centre stage as the grown-ups talked politics.

Leo was pleased to be quiet too. He sat down and tried to catch Jane's eye so he could signal that everything was A-OK, but she was looking everywhere but at him.

‘Where do the two of you live, then?' Rose asked, as Lydia came in with the coffee. ‘You mentioned San Francisco, Jane, but, Liddy, didn't you say that Leo had been living in LA?'

It was a horrible feeling when your heart suddenly hurled itself against your chest wall.

‘They're not that far apart – it's just over an hour's flight and I travel so much for work that it's never really been an issue,' Jane said smoothly. ‘Once Christmas is out of the way, we'll make a decision about where we're going to live.'

‘I can live pretty much anywhere,' Leo said. ‘It's not like I have a commute to get to my job.'

‘So, you do have a job, then, because —'

‘Actually, talking of travelling, I know we've hardly had a chance to get to know each other, but I'm fading fast,' Jane said. ‘I always seems to end up with a terrific headache after a long-haul flight. Would it be terribly rude if I excused myself?'

‘Of course not,' Rose demurred. ‘You poor girl, and there was I doing a good impersonation of the Spanish Inquisition.'

‘You should have said,' Leo choked out. ‘Shall I come up with you?'

Jane gifted him with another of those sweet, sweet smiles that Leo was learning not to trust. ‘No need for that, darling. You stay. I know you and Rose have
so
much to catch up on.'

Dinner had gone well, Jane thought, as she got undressed. She'd faced down worse foes than Rose, even if Rose did have a grande-dame hauteur that made Jane think of a dowager duchess refusing to secede the family manse to her young upstart of a daughter-in-law.

Jane didn't know if Rose had believed her, but there was no reason why she shouldn't. She'd told that story so many times, to so many people, and familiarity and repetition had given it a degree of authenticity. Jane could easily imagine the glamorous, distinguished father who could pilot his own planes; the flighty and discontented mother still chasing the last vestiges of her own youth who didn't want to be saddled with a kid. She could even imagine the dormitory in that Australian boarding school: the giggling and whispers after lights-out, someone in the bed by the window crying because they were homesick.

It shouldn't really have mattered whether Rose believed her or not and Jane shouldn't have really cared. Jane was just meant to be passing through, that had been the plan, except it hadn't been a plan but a series of catastrophic events that had placed Jane in Rose's orbit.

But now she was here, there was no harm in trying to make the best of it. The Google search she'd done earlier had been very interesting. Enough to make a girl quite giddy.

On first meeting her, Jane had imagined that Rose was a wealthy widow with all her equity tied up in the house and her art collection.

Not even close. Rose reigned over a property empire. She owned whole streets of houses, charging rent on mansion blocks, shops and offices from Kensington to Chelsea, Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove to Westbourne Park. Not to mention three estate agents, a building maintenance company and an interior design business all run from her company offices in a converted stable block in a little road behind Kensington High Street.

And although her other business interests included a partnership with a Housing Association that provided affordable accommodation for essential workers and a right-to-buy scheme for her employees that had earned Rose a Queen's Award for Industry, it was obvious that Rose was no soft touch.

Jane had married into money after all. One thing was clear, though: she'd need to tread very carefully. Not just with Rose, but with Leo too. No point in killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

For the first time since she'd sat in that bridal suite in Las Vegas and wondered if she might faint, Jane felt hopeful. At least now that she had a husband, she had options.

She was expecting Leo to turn up imminently, so Jane rushed through her skincare routine then rummaged in the chest of drawers for a T-shirt she could sleep in. And in case Leo got the wrong idea, Jane shoved two pillows down the centre of the bed. She wasn't handing out freebies any more, not with so much at stake.

By the time Leo did come up, half an hour later, Jane was asleep. Or she was pretending to be asleep. She heard him approach the bed. ‘Are you awake?' he whispered loud enough that she might well have woken up if she really had been asleep. ‘Are we cool? Do we need to talk?'

Jane would be quite happy if she didn't have to say another word to anyone for at least a week.

‘So, that story about your parents and the Australian boarding school, was any of that true?'

She could feel him coming nearer and she held her breath, until she remembered that she was meant to be asleep. She made her breathing slow and measured, threw in a snuffle for good measure and Leo took the hint.

Jane heard him move away, go into the bathroom, then come out of the bathroom. Heard him unscrew something, the clatter of pills, everything amplified in the dark. He took one, no, two tablets. Then toed off his sneakers, clothes falling on the floor, and she tried not to freeze again when he pulled back the covers and the mattress dipped as he got into bed.

‘You've got to be fucking kidding me,' he muttered when he discovered their pillow chaperone, then he made a sound in the back of his throat like it was funny.

Five times Jane watched the second hand of the clock on her nightstand do a full sweep and that was all the time it took Leo to fall asleep.

 

Jane was still asleep when Leo woke up with a furry feeling in his mouth and rocks in his head. He lay there and was happy to watch her for a while, even though that was probably a little creepy. She even slept perfectly. Limbs curled up into a tight ball, her face a beautiful blank because Jane would never do anything as ungainly as sleep with her mouth wide open or dribble and snore.

Leo still felt guilty about throwing her to the lions the night before. Talking of which, it was time to head for the Coliseum. It was eight o'clock. The house had come to life. He could hear the distant sound of someone vacuuming, a door being opened, voices.

Leo pulled on the same clothes as yesterday. And the day before that. He doubted there was anything in the house that still fitted him, but he didn't want to wake Jane by yanking out drawers and rattling hangers.

He walked down the stairs, smiling at Anna, who averted her eyes as she dragged the vacuum cleaner behind her, and hurried along the corridor to the heart of the house.

‘Ah, Leo, we were just talking about that wife of yours,' Rose said jovially before he'd even made it in to the kitchen.

She and Lydia were having breakfast together. Pride of place on the scrubbed pine table was the big blue and white Cornishware teapot that Leo remembered so well from other breakfasts in this kitchen. The chunky china mugs, the silver rack full of toast and Lydia's homemade jams spooned into little mismatched bowls were old and familiar.

The cosy scene reminded Leo of sneaking home ‘with the milk' as Rose called it, coming in through the back door, only to find Lydia and Rose already in the kitchen.

‘Do come in, Leo. We won't bite,' Lydia said, and now he was remembering how they'd always used to tease him then, too. Calling him a dirty stop-out and telling him he needed to settle down with a nice girl. ‘Do you even know any nice girls?' Rose would ask and she and Lydia would both giggle. It was a nice memory.

‘You smell less than fresh,' Rose said now, as Leo sat down next to her. ‘Weren't you wearing that rather grubby T-shirt yesterday?'

‘Yeah. I didn't bring any luggage with me. Long story.'

It wasn't that long a story really. The last time he'd seen his luggage it was in Melissa and Norm's pool house.

Rose looked at him wearily as if everything was always a long story with him. ‘Anyway, about your Jane…' she said. ‘We were just discussing how extraordinary-looking she is.'

‘I've never seen anyone so beautiful in real life,' Lydia added. ‘Did you want me to make you some eggs, Leo?'

He shook his head and grabbed a piece of toast.

‘One wants to sit down opposite her and spend hours simply staring at her face,' Rose said with a wry smile. ‘Do you ever get tired of looking at her?'

Leo took a bite of toast and jam and munched contemplatively. ‘She's all right, I suppose,' he said at last. ‘To tell you the truth, she looks a bit rough first thing in the morning.'

‘I'm sure she doesn't, you rude boy.' Rose tapped him smartly on the arm and in the pitiless morning light, with no make-up on, her hair covered by a scarf, he could see the deeply ingrained purple circles around the blue eyes that had grown filmy and red-rimmed. Even her hand where it rested on the table had changed. Rose had had beautiful, long-fingered, elegant hands. Pianist's hands, Leo had always thought, but now he could see raised veins like fat blue worms and her fingers were crabbed and crooked.

It wasn't just the cruelty of ten extra years on her face, her thin body, or the new rasp to her voice. There was a new hesitation to her movements as if she had to think hard before she lifted her mug to her mouth or spooned a blob of jam onto her plate. To make each action an economy so she could save her strength for when she had to tense her muscles to ward off the pain.

She was doing it now. A tremor made her fingers twitch and she lowered her head, took two short breaths, then sighed in relief. ‘Your Jane, she's quite the character, isn't she?'

‘Well…'

‘I can't imagine what the two of you actually have in common,' Rose said tartly and she hadn't lost any of her edge. That edge could cut him into slivers, but Leo was rather pleased it was still there. ‘Are you really married?'

‘I know it seems unbelievable but yeah, we really are. Way out of my league, isn't she?'

Lydia was putting more bread in the toaster but she looked over at Leo and grinned. ‘Definitely. Have you got something on her that forced her to say “I do”? Do you know where all her bodies are buried?'

It seemed a pity to puncture the light atmosphere but he couldn't ignore Rose's careful stillness any more. Before he left, she'd always been so restless, in constant motion. Leo covered her beautiful, ruined fingers with his hand. She was cool to the touch. ‘How are you? Really?' he asked.

She caught his eye, held it and the connection that they'd always had flickered hopefully back into life. ‘Not bad, I suppose,' she replied. He was dimly aware of Lydia leaving the room, so it was just the two of them. Leo and Rose. ‘All things considered.'

‘Cancer?' He could barely say it. ‘Lydia said it was. Said you'd had it before. Why aren't you fighting it this time?'

If Rose could give up, then what chance did he have?

Now it was Rose holding his hand, not the other way round. ‘The first time, I put up one hell of a fight,' she said. ‘But that was nine years ago. When you get to my age, nine more years wreaks all kinds of havoc on one. Besides, I knew it would come back. It
always
does. With more teeth and claws.'

‘But you're tough,' Leo protested. ‘You could fight it again.'

‘Oh, my darling boy,' she said as if he still meant that much to her. ‘I've cheated this too many times. My mother, your great-grandmother, died not that long after the war. She was only forty-three. And your grandmother, my sister Shirley, barely made it past fifty, so I've done very well to get this far.'

‘But why aren't you having chemo or what is it? Radiotherapy?' he demanded. Rose rubbed her thumb against the back of his hand in a distracted way that did nothing to soothe him.

‘Because I had them before, both of them, and I was so very tired and weak. I didn't want to do anything. Go anywhere. See anyone.' Rose's eyelids drooped down as if it were exhausting just remembering the treatment. ‘Leo, I have stage four secondary liver cancer. I have a couple of months if I'm very, very lucky. Weeks, if I'm not…'

‘But the chemo would definitely give you months…'

‘I'd rather spend what time I have left not feeling like a worn-out dishrag. Quality of life, my doctor calls it. You shouldn't worry, I'm stuffed full of tablets.' Rose smiled valiantly, and swayed very carefully on her chair. ‘If you listen very carefully, you can hear them rattling.'

She wanted him to smile, was waiting for it. Leo stretched his lips wide obediently. ‘Are you in a lot of pain?'

‘Not too much. Last week I even strapped on a hard hat to inspect a renovation project, though I thought it best not to climb up any ladders.' Rose's smile was more convincing than his had been. ‘Pain-wise, I'm about a three when the tablets have kicked in. Sometimes I'm up to a six if I'm late with my dose. That's not so bad, is it?'

‘I suppose not.' He nodded his head decisively. ‘But if gets worse than a six, they can give you something stronger, right?'

Lydia had come back into the room and the mood shifted again. Rose took her hand away, reached up to adjust her scarf and when she glanced at him he was aware of all his failings. From the jam at the side of his mouth, to the days-old stubble, T-shirt straining over his gut, the sour, parched smell if he didn't keep his arms pinned to his sides.

‘While we're being honest with each other… do I need to worry about having prescription painkillers in the house, if you're staying?' she asked him and it wasn't always a good thing that Rose was so candid. Sometimes, like now, it was like being cut open, sides pulled back, pinned down and displayed under a microscope.

‘God, no. No! You don't need to worry about that. I would never…' He could only breathe through his nose.

‘Do you still take drugs?' Lydia asked him baldly. The pair of them were merciless.

‘From time to time. Only weed.' A half-truth was better than trying to explain that you could have a gram of coke over a weekend and then not go near the stuff for ages. There were months, even longer, when he hadn't wanted it. Like the two years he spent in Sydney, when he'd painted houses, done a bit of bartending, surfed. He might even have stayed if his visa hadn't run out. ‘I haven't got messed up again. Like I did that time.'

‘Really? Because we watched a TV show about these two men who cooked up crystal meth,' Lydia said.

‘We did,' Rose confirmed. ‘I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to take
that
. It didn't look like any kind of fun.'

Leo snorted with laughter, then hid his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. He might even have cried a little bit. ‘If I did crystal, I wouldn't be as fat as I am now,' he managed to say once he'd stopped laughing.

‘That's something, I suppose,' Rose said. ‘Are you back for a while, then?'

‘I hadn't thought that far ahead. Never do, do I?' There was still something else bothering her. Not just his complete inability to come up with even a half-arsed apology. Some people wouldn't look at you when they were about to tell you something unpleasant, but not Rose.

‘You might as well know that your mother's in town,' she said.

‘Right. OK.' The news was like a note pinned to your door that you could see as you climbed up the stairs and with every step you took, the dread deepened until it had almost swallowed you. ‘She's not staying here, is she?'