The neat tap of sheaves of paper on tables, me and Hugo squaring off edges before we got stuck into the day’s work. The debate over which CD to put on while we cooked dinner, No way, we had your French bistro whatever last night, it’s my turn! Looking back, I’m amazed by how quickly they took shape, those rituals, how solid and smooth and immutable they felt after only a few days; how quickly it came to feel as though we’d been there for years and would be there, all of us, for years more.
It’s difficult to give a clear description of my state of mind during those weeks; even harder to imagine how it might have developed, if things hadn’t gone the way they did. It wasn’t that I was getting better, exactly. In some ways and to some extent, I was—the weird vision glitches had subsided a lot, so had the leaping at shadows, and although I couldn’t bear to have faith in this I thought the droop in my eyelid might be receding—but I was no nearer feeling like myself again, or even really like a human being. It was more that that didn’t seem to matter as much, at least not in any immediate way. Every day included plenty of things that should have sent me into a full-on spiral—mugs falling through my fingers to shatter on the floor, forgotten words leaving me gabbling—and yet I wasn’t a shaking wreck pacing my room and gnawing at my revenge fantasies; although I did feel like a meltdown was the only, the inevitable response, I also felt like it could wait till some other time. I suppose it was a bit like being mauled to rags by a savage animal, and then somehow dragging myself to a safe place and slamming the gates: I could still hear the animal padding and snuffling outside, I knew it had no intention of leaving and sooner or later I would have to go out there again, but at least for now I could stay in shelter.
The rest of the family came in and out. On Sundays there was lunch, and during the week Oliver or Louisa or Susanna drove Hugo to doctor’s appointments and radiotherapy sessions and physiotherapy; my mother and Miriam brought over armloads of shopping bags; my dad, sleeves rolled up, hoovered the rugs and scrubbed the bath. Phil played endless games of draughts with Hugo (and brought me the late birthday present Susanna had warned me about: an indescribable gilt construction that he informed me was my great-great-grandfather’s pocket-watch holder, and that I had no idea what I was supposed to do with). Leon brought over ultra-hip takeaways for lunch and stayed for the afternoon, making Hugo laugh with stories about the time he and Carsten had been landed with an up-and-coming ska-punk band spending a week on their living-room floor. Hugo’s friends came, too, more of them than I would have expected: dusty, courteous old guys who could have been antiques dealers or handymen or college professors, smile-lined women with confident walks and surprisingly elegant clothes. I always left them to it in the living room, but I could hear the voices coming up through the floor, absorbed and overlapping, punctuated by bursts of real laughter.
I liked it best when it was just the three of us, though, me and Melissa and Hugo. My dad and my uncles were so wretched that their misery stampeded into the house with them like some rampaging animal, upending all the delicate balances that Hugo and Melissa and I had constructed. My aunts were jumpy, losing weight, heads ceaselessly whipping back and forth as they tried to make sure everyone was OK. Louisa kept rearranging stuff, and under stress Miriam was turning into a parody of herself, covertly reiki-ing Hugo behind his back while he sat at the kitchen table obliviously eating apricots and Leon doubled over biting one knuckle in an extravagant cringe-mime, and Susanna and Melissa and I huddled over the cooker to hide the giddy giggles.
I was actually getting on better with my mother. Finding out she had covered for me with the family had shifted something; that terrible urge to pick fights with her was gone. She had too much sensitivity to try and do anything useful inside the house, so instead she went at the garden, dead-heading and weeding and cutting back for autumn. I didn’t really get the point—it wasn’t like Hugo cared whether