Maggie Rose Steele passed her daughter to her sister, and stood up from the sofa. ‘I need to stretch,’ she said, as she stood the baby’s empty feeding bottle on the coffee-table. ‘In fact, I need to exercise. My abdominal muscles are still weak from the surgery.’
‘Margaret,’ Bet reminded her unnecessarily, ‘you’re having chemotherapy; you’re supposed to be taking it easy.’
Maggie raised her right hand and touched her head. Much of her hair had gone; that which was left felt rough under her fingers. ‘I know,’ she admitted. ‘You don’t have to lecture me. The drugs are holding me back anyway: I’m truly knackered.’ She looked across the room, catching her reflection in a mirror. ‘One thing I am going to do, though; I’m going to take the hospital up on its offer of a wig. My treatment nurse gave me a form today, and told me where to go for a fitting. Tomorrow morning I’m going to look out Stevie’s grooming set and crop this lot right down with the clippers, then I’m off to the hair studio.’
Bet smiled. ‘What colour do you fancy?’
Her sister made a face. ‘I’ve always had a secret notion that I’d have liked to be a blonde, like you.’
‘You know I fake it.’
‘And a wig is real? Hell, I’ll see what they’ve got. I don’t imagine they’ll have a colour chart.’ She moved back to the sofa and sat down again.
‘Margaret, go to bed,’ Bet urged her.
‘I’m okay, really. I seem to be getting used to the stuff they’re pumping into my belly. I haven’t been sick this time, nor even felt like it. Mr Ronald my consultant’s chuffed with me, you know. I saw him today and he gave me a rave review.’ She said it casually, but a tremor in her voice betrayed her.
‘You didn’t tell me that. What did he say?’
‘He showed me the pictures they took at my scan the other day. The cancer’s completely gone. They’re going to complete the chemo, but he told me that my prognosis is entirely positive.’ She reached out and touched baby Stephanie’s wispy red hair. ‘I’ve got this wee one to thank for it. If I hadn’t been carrying her, the disease wouldn’t have presented … his word. . until it was much more advanced, and I’d have. . I’d have had much less chance of survival.’ She hesitated. ‘He said something else too. I’ve been working up to telling you about it; that’s why I didn’t mention it earlier.’
‘What?’
‘He asked about you, what age you were and so on, whether you were married, had children, et cetera.’
‘What the hell has that got to do with him?’
‘Apparently we’ve always been high risk, Bet, you and me. It runs in the family.’
‘So?’
‘So he’d like you to go and see him. His inclination, that’s how he put it, no stronger than that, is that you should maybe have your womb and ovaries removed as well, as a precaution.’
‘Jesus, would they do that?’
‘It’s not uncommon, so he said.’
‘Bloody hell. That would mean I couldn’t have kids, Margaret.’
‘Since when did you want kids? You don’t even have a partner.’
‘I’d be hollowed out inside.’ She blurted out the words thoughtlessly, then bit her lip as she saw the look on her sister’s face. ‘Oh, God, I’m sorry. Me and my bloody mouth.’
‘It’s all right.’ Maggie grinned, quickly, to put her at her ease. ‘It doesn’t feel like that, honest. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not as if they stitch your fanny up. You can’t have kids, but you can still have sex, as normal.’
‘Best of both worlds, eh?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘No, maybe not,’ said Bet, quietly. ‘Do you think you will again?’
‘What?’
‘Have sex.’
Maggie wrinkled her nose. ‘It won’t bother me if I don’t. I was never any good at it, apart from with Stevie. I did it because. . well, we just did, didn’t we?’
‘I know what you mean. I had this bloke once, not so long ago, a real Aussie charmer. He told me I was the worst shag he’d ever had.’
‘Bastard.’
‘Yeah, he surely was. He said I was a walking advert for necrophilia.’
‘Did you shoot him, stab him, or rip his balls off with red-hot pincers?’
‘No, I told him that word had three more syllables than I’d ever heard him use before; then I told him to go and fuck himself, since I wasn’t up to the job.’
Maggie began to laugh, then cut it off short as the baby stirred in Bet’s arms. ‘Good for you, Sis. But it just takes the right man, you know, even for ladies with our repressed background.’
‘I can’t imagine how much you must miss Stevie.’
‘I hope you never know the feeling. But it’s not for that I miss him most. It’s for everything else. The companionship, the laughs, the. . I don’t even know how to say it. The way he made me feel. The peace he brought to me when we were alone together.’ Her face set hard. ‘And that’s all gone; even in my dreams I can only see him dead. You know my big ambition, now that it looks as if I still have a life? I want to find the man who killed him. Oh, I know that Bob Skinner and Mario feel the same way, and they’re in a far better position to do it than I am, but I want the personal satisfaction of finding him.’
‘And what will you do when you have him?’
‘Hand him over. Let him take what’s coming, a life sentence with a high tariff. Then I’ll think of him, every morning for the next thirty years, waking up in a locked room, with someone else holding the key. I’ll think of him, a rich and powerful man, banged up like an animal. I’ll think of him, growing old in there, waiting for the day when the gate is finally opened. And then, only then, when he steps back into the outside world, aged about sixty, free again to enjoy all the stuff that his wealth brings him. . then I’ll kill him.’