The Reunion

I’d had my heart comprehensively stamped on by some guy, and then Mum was diagnosed with cancer, and one night, I just…’ she mimed the action, cutting into her wrist. Andrew flinched. ‘Anyway, as I said, I only managed one, and being a total fucking wimp I couldn’t take the pain and called an ambulance.’ She smiled. ‘Mum and I were actually in St Thomas’s at the same time for a spell. Only, she didn’t know why I was there. I told her I’d fallen down the stairs while holding a champagne glass. She believed me, I think. I hope she did.’ She paused for a moment, continued to pick at her nail polish. ‘So anyway, I was in a pretty crap way, and they kept me in hospital for a few days to make sure I didn’t have another go. One afternoon I’d gone out for a cigarette and there was this guy coming out of the main lobby, on crutches, and he smiled at me and told me that I should quit, because I was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen and that it would be a shame if I died of cancer.’
    ‘And that was Zac?’
    ‘That was Zac.’
    ‘Very smooth.’
    ‘I thought so. He had a… ligament something… I can’t remember, some sort of sports injury, anyway, and he was coming in for physiotherapy. We ran into each other a couple of times, after that, when I was there visiting Mum. He asked me out for coffee, and of course I said no, but he was persistent and… Well. He was the best thing, the best possible thing for me. Kind, strong. No bullshit. He took care of me. He enjoyed taking care of me. And you know how much I enjoy being taken care of.’
    Andrew nodded. ‘I know.’
    Lilah slid down off her chair so that once more they were sitting side by side. ‘So that was the first time. That was the first time he saved me.’
    ‘And the second?’
    She cleared her throat. ‘It was a while later. I’d got a job by then, a crappy PR job, and Mum was very ill. I couldn’t go in every day, to the hospice I mean, because I was working. Zac was doing bar work at that time, a bit of fitness training in the day, but he was mostly free. So he used to go and sit with her. We’d only been seeing each other properly for about four months, he barely even knew me. And I don’t think Mum had a clue who he was half the time, she was pretty out of it by then, but he went anyway.’ She started to cry, her shoulders heaving. ‘Every day, he’d just go and sit by her side, hold her hand, talk to her about
EastEnders
. For four months, at the end, I was there in the evenings and he was there in the day. She was never alone.’ The tears coursed down her cheeks unchecked. ‘I will always love him for that.’
    Andrew threw the remaining log on the fire. ‘I’m so glad, Lilah, that you had someone there for you, that you have someone. I’m so glad that you’ve found someone who loves you as much as you need.’
    She sniffed. ‘Me too.’ She smiled at him, opened her mouth as though she had something to say and then closed it again.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘The way I am. I was always going to be like this.’
    She turned her head towards him, big blue eyes lowered under long, wet lashes; up close like this you could almost see the bones underneath her skin. She slipped her hand into his, lightly scraping her teeth over her lower lip.
    ‘It wasn’t your fault. But I want to say, because of what she said – I mean, I want to tell my side. To you.’
    ‘What are you talking about, Lilah?’
    ‘Earlier. The thing with Natalie, that day in the pub.’
    ‘You don’t have to say anything to me, not now. It’s history now.’
    ‘Listen. My mum, she said that you were pulling away from me, that I wouldn’t have long. She said it and I told her it was bullshit. Only it stayed in my head. It was in my head whenever the three of us were together after that, it was in my head that morning at the pub. You were sitting next to Nat at lunch, she was telling you about a book she’d read. I don’t remember what it was now, but you were captivated.’
    ‘
Alias Grace
.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The book she was talking about. It was
Alias Grace
, by Margaret Atwood.’
    ‘Jesus Christ, you remember the book.’ She shook her head. ‘I doubt you can remember a single thing I said to you that entire year.’
    ‘Lilah.’
    ‘There was a reason I needed a drink that morning. A reason I needed to do a line. And that’s all I did, you know, one line. I’m not justifying what I