The Perfect Girl

SAM

It’s late when I finally phone Tessa back. I try her mobile but it goes straight to voicemail again, and I’m loath to phone the landline in case her husband answers.

Outside the windows of my flat, I can see that the evening crowd has turned out. They’re on their way to the pubs on the riverside, or wandering home from work.

I sit on a chair on my balcony with a beer in my hand, but back from the edge, in the shade, where I can feel concealed but also watch the people below.

I’m in that frame of mind where your own life feels as if it has been sucked so hollow that every detail of the lives of others seems designed to wound you. I resent the pair who wander, holding hands, beside the water. I resent the young office worker who walks jauntily along, phone to his ear, chatting to somebody he’s going to meet later.

I even resent the old woman who walks along with a small dog trotting in her wake. I’ve seen them before. They take the same route every day. The dog is never on a lead. It knows where they’re going and they’re happy to be in each other’s company.

I’m shy. I’ll never be the rowdy guy having beers in a big crowd at the riverside pub, like the one I can see across the water. I’ll be the man in the corner meeting a carefully chosen friend, or my lover.

But will my lover want me now?

I was her refuge, but now I’ll be a drag. There will be attacks of my disease where I may not be able to move, where my pain might be excruciating. They’ll probably worsen over time, so what use will I be to her then? I’ll be more like her husband, with his alcoholism, which drains her. My state of mind and physical capabilities will be no better than his in time, and will inevitably become worse.

I poke at the palm of my left hand, willing the numbness to be gone, desperate to be able to feel more sensation there, but of course nothing has changed.

I pick up the bag of medication that I brought back from the hospital, which has been sitting at my feet, and I peel away the sticker that’s sealing it and peer into it.

It contains three different boxes of pills.

‘Diagnosis is often the trickiest time for our patients,’ said the MS nurse who I went to see after the consultant. She was heartbreakingly lovely. ‘Do you have somebody at home with you tonight?’

‘Yes,’ I lied. I didn’t want her pity.

She gave me leaflets with titles like ‘Coping with MS’ and ‘Information for Patients’. Leaflets that I still believe are for other people, not me.

I drink my beer slowly and think about the frailty of life. I think of Zoe Maisey and her poor mother.

I must begin to take these tablets tonight. I must take careful note of dosages.

I must try not to wallow too much in how little I appreciated my life before the passage of time was marked by the popping open of pill packets, the rattle of a bottle full of tablets being picked up, and the tearing sound as a nurse liberates a new syringe from its packet, just for you.

I can’t face taking the tablets yet. I will, but not just yet.

My parents will take this hard. They’ll phone soon, to ask me what happened at the appointment, and I’ll have to tell them.

I think of the other messages that were left on my phone, from both Tess and her husband; the ones they left hours and hours ago.

I wonder if the police have made any progress.

I look online, idly really, to see if anything has happened, because it would be pushing things too far to phone DS George again, and I sit up straighter when I read that an arrest has been made.

‘The suspect has not yet been named, but he’s believed to be a member of the family,’ a news website tells me.

‘He’. So it’s not Zoe. Thank God.

Did I think it was Zoe? No. Do I work in criminal law and see what’s possible, however little you want it to be? Yes. So I would never have ruled it out.

More internet searching turns up a grainy long-lens photo that shows a man in the back of a police car. I’m pretty sure it must be Chris Kennedy, Maria’s husband. No surprises in a way; he would naturally be a prime suspect for the police.

Tess will be absolutely shattered because she thought that marriage was saving her sister.

I try her mobile, which goes to voicemail, so I have no choice but to brave the landline.

I don’t know if I’m going to tell her about my diagnosis, but I want to know how she is, and what’s happening and I want to hear her voice, and tell her how sorry I am and that I’m thinking of her. And, if I’m honest with myself, I also want to know when she’s going to be able to see me again, because I need her.