The Dilemma Read online

  My heart sinks. A glass of champagne is the last thing I want.

  ‘Max and I won’t mind if you leave some for us.’

  She bends to stroke Murphy, who’s emerged at her legs.

  ‘I’m sure that can be arranged,’ she says, her tone light.

  ‘Did you have a nice day?’

  ‘Yes, it was wonderful! I had a massage and facial.’ She looks mock-severely at Josh. ‘You were meant to notice the difference.’

  ‘I did think you looked a bit more – radiant? – than usual,’ he says, making Livia laugh.

  She lifts a hand, shading her eyes. ‘Where’s Dad?’

  ‘He’s upstairs. He’s got a migraine.’

  ‘Oh no! He hasn’t had one of those for a while. Didn’t he go into town, then?’

  ‘Yes, but he was a bit off when he came back and when I asked him if he was alright, he said he had a migraine.’ He lowers his voice but not low enough so that I can’t hear. ‘I probably shouldn’t say this but I think it might have something to do with your present.’

  ‘Gosh, I don’t want him stressing if he hasn’t got me anything. It really doesn’t matter. Do you think I should say something, put his mind at rest?’

  ‘No, leave it for now because it might turn out alright. But if it doesn’t, at least you’ll have been warned. I have done the right thing telling you, haven’t I?’ he adds.

  Livia nods. ‘Yes, definitely.’ She looks resignedly at the champagne. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll feel like this if he’s got a migraine.’ She slides her bag from her shoulder and puts it on the table. ‘I’d better go and check on him.’

  Her disappointment gives me the push I need. I move towards the bedroom door. I can do this, I can do it for Livia. One glass of champagne, that’s all.

  I run down the stairs, through the kitchen and onto the terrace.

  ‘Dad!’ Josh says. ‘How’re you feeling?’

  I find myself faltering because Max has joined Livia and Josh on the terrace. Liv comes towards me.

  ‘Josh says you’ve got a migraine,’ she says, giving me a hug.

  ‘Had,’ I correct. ‘It’s gone. I took some paracetamol.’

  She searches my eyes. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. You smell wonderful.’

  ‘It’s the creams they used at the spa, they smelled so good I wanted to eat them.’

  Josh pulls a face. ‘Gross.’

  ‘Hi, Adam.’

  ‘Hi there.’ I don’t look at Max, I look at the bottle in Livia’s hand. ‘What’s that?’ I ask.

  ‘Champagne. It’s from Kirin. I don’t suppose you feel like a glass?’

  ‘I’d love some,’ I lie.

  ‘Great! Josh, Max, would you like some too?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Max says politely.

  ‘Are you sure? There’s plenty.’

  I look at Livia, wondering why she’s suddenly going out of her way to be nice to Max.

  ‘Let’s have it on our own,’ I suggest.

  Josh throws me a look. But then he gets it – or thinks he does because he raises his hands in a backing off gesture.

  ‘You’re right, we’ve got stuff to do. We need to take Murphy round to Max’s dad before 5 p.m.’

  At the sound of his name, Murphy nudges Livia’s hand. ‘He could stay here, in one of the bedrooms,’ she says. ‘In Marnie’s room. She won’t mind.’

  ‘No!’ Josh and I say at exactly the same time. He laughs and shakes his head.

  ‘He’ll still be able to hear the noise, Mum, he’ll hate it.’ His brown eyes meet mine. ‘Drink the champagne with Mum, Dad, and don’t let her go up to the grass. It’s out of bounds. Come on, Max.’

  ‘See you later.’ Livia gives them a little wave, then turns to me. ‘Shall I fetch some glasses?’

  ‘No, sit here and don’t move.’ I take a chair and place it alongside the table so that she won’t be tempted to put her legs under it. I don’t think she’ll be able to feel the box, but I’m not taking any chances.

  ‘I’m being spoilt today,’ she says, sitting down with a smile.

  It takes me a while to find champagne glasses. I find two at the back of the cupboard and carry them out to the terrace. I know Josh thought I wanted him gone so that I could explain about the present and so does Liv because as soon as I’ve poured the champagne, she asks how my trip into town went. At the same time as the nightmare of the crash comes back, I glance in her bag and see her phone wedged down the side, almost hidden by a clear plastic bag containing a wet swimsuit. A wave of alarm spreads through me. It hadn’t occurred to me that she might already have read about the crash. What if she decides to check her messages and starts talking about it?

  ‘It was fine,’ I say, replying to her question about my trip to town. ‘So,’ I reach for one of the glasses and hand it to her, ‘you OK with Max?’

  ‘Of course. Why?’

  I look at her curiously but she refuses to meet my eyes, lifting her glass so that the crystal sparkles in the sunlight.

  ‘These were a wedding present,’ she says.

  ‘That explains why they were still in the box.’

  ‘Do you remember who gave them to us?’

  ‘Well, it certainly wasn’t your parents.’

  ‘No, it was their friends, Mary and David. I wonder if they ever told Mum and Dad that they gave us a wedding present and came to see me in hospital when Josh was born? We had wedding and birth presents from a lot of their friends, from nearly all of them, in fact.’

  I raise my glass; if she prefers to pretend she didn’t have a problem with Max, there’s not a lot I can do. ‘Happy birthday, sweetheart.’

  She smiles happily. ‘Thank you. I can’t believe I’m forty today, it’s crazy! I don’t feel any different to how I did at twenty.’ She laughs at this; we’ve both come a long way since then.

  ‘Tell me about the spa.’ I nod towards her bag. ‘I see you went swimming.’

  ‘Yes, Jess gave me a beautiful swimsuit for my birthday and there was a pool there. I’m guessing that you had a lot to do with organising it?’

  ‘I had to be in on the secret in case you changed your mind and went ahead and booked a spa yourself. If you had, I was meant to tell you that I thought it was too expensive and that you shouldn’t be wasting your money on it.’

  ‘Except that you’d never say anything like that, so I’d have guessed straightaway.’

  I take a sip of champagne.

  ‘Aren’t you going to sit down?’ she asks.

  ‘I will. But first I’m going to rinse your swimsuit.’

  ‘I can do it,’ she protests. ‘Anyway, I rinsed it at the spa.’

  ‘I’ll hang it up to dry then.’ Before she can tell me that she’ll do it later, I reach into her bag and gather her phone into the folds of the plastic bag containing the swimsuit. ‘I won’t be a moment.’

  In the utility room, I put her phone on silent, bury it at the bottom of the laundry basket, then drape her swimsuit on the drying rack.

  ‘Done,’ I say, walking back out onto the terrace and sitting down opposite her. ‘So you had a good time, then? At the spa?’

  ‘I loved the facial but I wasn’t as keen on the massage. I feel very relaxed, though. And we had a lovely lunch, with champagne.’

  I raise my eyebrows. ‘This isn’t your first glass, then?’ I say, trying to joke with her as I usually do, about how she quickly feels drunk on small amounts of alcohol.

  ‘No, and Jess and I had to drink Kirin’s because she’s—’ She stumbles over her words, ‘—she was driving.’

  ‘She could have had one glass, surely?’

  ‘She had a little, but she’s very strict about drinking and driving. She needs to be; she’d be stuck if she couldn’t drive.’

  I nod. ‘How’s Jess?’

  ‘Not so good. She didn’t look great and her balance was a bit off.’

  ‘Poor Jess. It’s just as well that Rob is working from home now.’


  When Jess was first diagnosed with MS, we were all in shock and none of us really knew what to expect. Jess lost some of her mobility fairly quickly, and her confidence along with it, and everyone around her reacted in different ways. Rob, initially supportive, changed jobs within his company, which meant he began travelling a lot, leaving Jess alone and vulnerable. We were in the pub together when Nelson challenged him about it.

  ‘Surely if you explained Jess’s situation to your boss, he’d give you your old job back?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve already told you – this job is a promotion, which is exactly what Jess and I need, with her future being so uncertain,’ Rob explained petulantly, unused to his normally protective and adoring big brother disapproving of him. ‘She’s managing to carry on working for now, but how long will that last?’

  ‘But with you not around to help, won’t her health deteriorate faster?’

  ‘It’s a chance we have to take. I’ve talked it over with Jess, she’s fine with me being away a couple of days a week. And if her health does get worse, then I’ll see about asking for a desk job again. Jesus, Nelson, let it go, OK?’

  I get on alright with Rob, but I’m not close to him, not since he tried to drive a wedge between me and Livia during the early years of our marriage over the motorbike. It used to drive me mad when we were younger, the way he tagged along whenever Nelson and I met up. Nelson, for some reason, has always felt responsible for him. Rob can be funny, but most of the time he irritates the hell out of me. It’s not just the way he plays on his film-star good looks, pulling out his aviator sunglasses at the first ray of sunshine, or the way he turns on the charm, it’s more the way he has to be the centre of attention. But I was probably the only one who worked out that the reason he accepted his new job without complaint was because he was glad to get away, glad to have a break from the worry of Jess’s illness. I could sort of understand, even if I’d never do the same to Livia, if she was ever in Jess’s position.

  Rob finally bowed to family pressure, from Jess’s family as well as his own, and went back to his desk job in January this year. The only time he left Jess was at the end of April, when he took Cleo to see Marnie in Hong Kong for her birthday, because Jess didn’t want Cleo going on her own.

  Jess moved in with us while Rob was away, and although there weren’t any problems, there’s been a bit of a shift in the relationship between her and Livia, not on Jess’s part, but on Livia’s. It’s really sad, but I think being with Jess on a daily basis for ten days made Livia realise how much Jess can’t do for herself, and is having a hard time coming to terms with what’s happening to her friend. Because ever since, she’s been keeping her distance, arranging for us to see her friends from the office at weekends instead of Jess and Kirin, like we usually do, almost as if she wants to have an excuse not to socialise with them anymore. When I asked her about it, she didn’t deny it.

  ‘Don’t you sometimes feel that the six of us live a little too much in each other’s pockets? Surely it’s good to widen our circle of friends.’

  I couldn’t disagree, because I like her colleagues and we always have a great time with them. But I miss our weekend dinners and impromptu lunches with the others. It’s why, a couple of weeks ago, I told Nelson and Rob to bring Kirin and Jess over for a barbeque at the weekend. Livia was fine when I mentioned it, but we ended up cancelling on the day because she wasn’t feeling well. I’m not saying that she pretended to be ill, because she did look awful. But it felt too much of a coincidence and I hate that Liv can’t cope with Jess’s illness.

  Liv touches my arm. ‘What are you thinking about?’

  I realise I’ve been miles away. ‘Sorry. I was thinking how good the garden looks.’

  She reaches for my hand. ‘I want to remember this moment forever,’ she says softly. ‘You, me, Josh, the party. And Marnie, of course.’

  Marnie. How could I have forgotten, even for a second? If only I knew for sure that she was safe. Livia has her eyes closed, her face tilted towards the sun. I take my phone from my pocket and give it a quick glance.

  Nothing.

  Livia

  ‘Isn’t this lovely?’ I murmur.

  Adam doesn’t answer so I turn my head and squint in his direction to check he’s alright. His eyes are closed and I realise from the tautness in his face that he lied about his migraine having gone. I’m glad he didn’t probe too much about Jess. I know he’s wondering what’s going on, why I no longer see her as much as I used to. I’ve told him that we need to widen our circle of friends, but he doesn’t know why, he doesn’t know that I’m preparing for the future.

  My friends have always been more important to me than they are to most people, because I don’t have any family. I’ve always considered Jess and Kirin as the sisters I’ve never had, and Nelson and Rob as my brothers. But I know how fragile the future is; I know that very soon, everything is going to change. It’s why, every time I’m with Jess, my heart breaks a little bit more.

  She looked so frail today. Maybe I should send her a text, tell her that I’ll understand if she prefers to stay at home and rest tonight. The rush of relief I feel, that she might not be up to coming to the party, makes me hate myself. I couldn’t do that to Jess, she’d be so hurt if I suggested she didn’t come. She knows that I know she wouldn’t miss my party for the world, even if she has to be carried here.

  Max is another person I could do without tonight. It was awkward back there. I haven’t seen him for a while so I thought he might have forgotten that since October, I’ve barely been speaking to him. I thought that if I behaved towards him as I used to, everything would go back to normal. But it doesn’t work like that. He must be so confused. The thought of all the explaining I’m going to have to do is depressing.

  I grope for my glass and take a sip of now-warm champagne. Marnie has a lot to answer for. It was such a relief to hear her sounding happier back in October, when she called to tell me that she didn’t want Max to go and see her, and it carried her all the way through Christmas and into January. But when February came, she seemed depressed again. Adam thought it was because she’d just worked out that she wouldn’t be able to come home for my party, and he suggested I went to Hong Kong to see her. I spoke to work about it and we agreed that the best time for me to go would be at the beginning of April.

  But before I could tell Marnie, she FaceTimed me. She was sitting on a bench outside her university building, her sunglasses perched on her head. I could see the glass entrance doors behind her and students coming through them, some carrying books, their bags slung over their shoulders. I loved it when I got these glimpses of her life in Hong Kong, instead of views of her bedroom wall.

  ‘Mum, guess what? Cleo is coming to see me!’

  ‘That’s wonderful!’ I said, relieved to see her upbeat again. ‘When?’

  ‘April, for her birthday. Rob is bringing her because Jess doesn’t want her coming on her own.’

  ‘That’s funny, I saw Jess a few days ago and she didn’t mention it.’

  ‘That’s because she and Rob have only just thought of it. It’s going to be Cleo’s birthday present.’

  ‘Wow, that’s nice of them.’

  ‘I know, I can’t wait!’

  ‘Good job I didn’t book my ticket, then,’ I said, smiling at her excitement.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was thinking of coming to see you.’

  ‘Really? When?’

  ‘I was going to come at the beginning of April. But now that you have Cleo and Rob coming, maybe I should come in May instead.’

  ‘Mum, you don’t need to come, honestly. I mean, it’ll be lovely if you do and I’d love to see you, of course, but once Cleo and Rob leave, it’ll only be a couple of months until I come home.’

  ‘I’m sorry you haven’t enjoyed your year in Hong Kong more,’ I said.

  ‘I have enjoyed it,’ she insisted. ‘It’s just that it’s a long way from everyone.’ She hesitate
d. ‘It hasn’t been easy.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, understanding that she was referring to the break-up. ‘But it would have been harder if you’d been in England. Distance is a great leveller.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ she said. ‘It is.’

  When Adam came back from seeing Nelson, I told him I probably wouldn’t be going to Hong Kong after all.

  ‘Jess and Rob are buying Cleo a ticket for her birthday and there’s no point both of us going in April. Did you know about it? Cleo’s birthday present?’

  ‘Yes, Rob mentioned it to Nelson in the pub just now. They thought of it a while back but Jess was worried about Cleo going on her own, which is why Rob is going with her.’

  ‘She’ll only have to make the journey by herself,’ I protested. ‘She’ll have Marnie once she arrives.’

  Remembering that conversation, I turn my head towards Adam. I’m sure he knows I’m looking at him and is keeping his eyes closed so that he doesn’t have to talk to me. The party’s going to be a nightmare for him if he’s not feeling well. I should have cancelled it weeks ago. And when I tell Adam what I need to tell him, he’s not going to understand why I didn’t. He’s going to think that I wanted my party to go ahead no matter what. He won’t understand that I wanted to preserve him for as long as possible, before his world falls apart.

  Mine fell apart six weeks and three days ago, about a week into Cleo’s visit to Hong Kong, when I FaceTimed Marnie for a chat before I went to work. It was eight in the morning, so four o’clock in the afternoon Hong Kong time. Adam had already left to go to his workshop and Jess, who was staying with us, was still in bed. I knew Marnie’s timetable pretty well so I knew she’d be back from lessons, waiting at the hotel for Cleo and Rob to come back from sightseeing. Marnie had practically moved into Cleo’s room for the duration of their stay, glad to get away from her cramped student room, if only for a while.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

  ‘Brilliantly! It’s so lovely having them here. It makes me realise how long I’ve been away.’ She was sitting at a wooden desk in front of her computer and behind her on the far wall I could make out beautiful prints of lotus flowers. She was wearing one of the hotel’s white bathrobes and from the way her head was bent over her hand as we talked, I guessed she was painting her nails.