sure, in need of extra nuzzles and funny stories and of having my coffee brought to me on the sofa, but not changed in any essential way. Even though I knew that was rubbish, I couldn’t make myself give it up.
I was aware that I was in big trouble here, but there didn’t seem to be any way out. At the dark heart of the horror was the knowledge that it was inescapable. The thing I couldn’t bear wasn’t burglars or blows to the head, wasn’t anything I could beat or evade or set up defenses against; it was myself, whatever that had become.
* * *
So when I say that I was lucky to have the Ivy House, I don’t mean that in some airy-fairy abstract way, ooh so lucky! to have such a lovely pretty place in my life! For better or for worse, the Ivy House saved me, in the most concrete of ways. If I hadn’t gone back there that summer, I’d still be pacing my apartment all night, getting skinnier and paler and twitchier by the month, having long muttered conversations with myself and never answering my phone; that or else—which seemed like a better and better idea as the weeks wore on—I would be dead.
Susanna rang me on an evening in mid-August, daylight lasting and lasting, barbecue smell and gleeful kid-game shouts filtering in even through my closed windows. The voice message she left—“Ring me back. Now”—sparked enough curiosity in me that I actually did; considering the low level of hassle she had given me over the past few months, I was pretty sure she didn’t want to pressure me about moving home or make sure I was eating.
“How’re you doing?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said. I had the phone a few inches from my mouth, hoping the slurring wouldn’t come across. “Still kind of sore in places, but I’ll live.”
“That’s what your mum said. I wasn’t sure—you know how she always puts a positive spin on stuff. But I didn’t want to bug you.”
The rush of gratitude to my mother caught me off guard—she had actually done it, covered for me like I had asked her to, she hadn’t spread out the full extent of my wreckage for them all to pick and cluck over. “Nah, she’s right. It sucked for a while there, but it could’ve been a lot worse. I got lucky.”
“Well, good for you,” Susanna said. “I hope they catch the bastards.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Listen,” she said, tone shifting. “I’ve got bad news. Hugo’s dying.”
“What?” I said, after a second of total blankness. “Like, now?”
“No, not now now. But this year, probably. No one wanted to tell you yet, in case it upset you or something. Which . . .” A flick of unreadable laughter. “So I’m telling you.”
“Wait,” I said, struggling up from the sofa. The galvanizing rush of anger at the rest of my family was distracting; I made myself shove it aside for later. “Hang on. Dying of what?”
“A brain tumor. A few weeks back he was having trouble walking, so he went to the doctor, and a bunch of tests later: cancer.”
“Jesus.” I turned in a circle, scrubbing my free hand through my hair. I couldn’t get a grip on this, couldn’t be positive whether Susanna had actually said what I thought she had or— “What are they doing about it? Did they operate yet?”
“They’re not going to. They say the tumor’s too involved with his brain; it’s got tentacles everywhere, basically.” Susanna’s voice, level and clear. Even as a kid, she had always got harder to read in crises. I tried to picture her: leaning against one of the old brick walls of the Ivy House, sun scouring the clean pale angles of her face to translucence, ivy bobbing at her red-gold hair. Scent of jasmine, hum of bees. “And they say chemotherapy wouldn’t make much difference, so there’s no point in wrecking his quality of life for his last few months. They’re going to do radiotherapy. That might give him an extra month or two, or it might not. I’m working on getting a second opinion, but for now, that’s the story.”
“Where is he? What hospital?” My room, the polluting smell of it, the soft patient ticking of the blinds in no obvious breeze—
“He’s home. They wanted to keep him in, ‘in case of unforeseen developments,’ but you can imagine how that went.” I laughed, a startled, painful bark. I could see the exact drop of Hugo’s