The Alphabet Sisters Page 36

  She nodded.

  “ ‘When asked about his future plans, Mr. Hilder gave another insouciant shrug, clearly being short of gestures that day, and said, “It’s up to Ms. Quinlan, really. Loath as I am to resort to clichés, in this case the ball is in her court.” The press corp then gathered around Ms. Quinlan seeking her reaction.’ ”

  She could feel his fingers all the way down her back now. “ ‘Ms. Quinlan responded to reporters’ questions by first checking what the time was—’ ”

  Daniel lifted his wrist. “Six thirty.”

  “ ‘And then wondering aloud if it would be possible for Daniel Hilder to make love to her so beautifully one more time before they left the tent that morning.’ ”

  He moved closer, then kissed her lips. His fingers caressed her body again. It seemed it was a yes.

  Bett deliberately didn’t turn on her mobile for the journey home later that morning. It was a one-hour drive along curving roads, the yellow stubbled paddocks stretching out on either side. They talked and laughed, easily, eagerly. He stopped the car once, didn’t speak, just reached over to kiss her. She met him halfway again.

  It was early afternoon by the time they arrived at the Valley View Motel. They had taken the slow way home. He pulled into the drive in front of the reception area and turned off the ignition. Bett smiled at him. She felt like just sitting here and smiling at him all day.

  “Can I see you tonight?” he asked.

  “Again?”

  “It’s fine if you don’t want to.”

  “I’d love to. Let me just check in with everyone, make sure nothing’s happened while I’ve been gone.” She’d been away only one night, she laughed to herself. Back here motel life would have gone on as normal, yet it felt like her life had changed completely overnight.

  “I’ll call in and see my mother, too. But I’ll ring you afterward? About six?”

  “Perfect.” She waited on the steps of the motel until he had driven away, then turned. She felt like she was radiating happiness. “Hello?” she called as she came into reception. There was no answer. She checked the bar. It was empty, too. She’d already noticed Anna’s car wasn’t in its usual place. She and Richard must still be in Adelaide. There was no one in the function room either. Or in the kitchen. “Hello? Where is everybody?” She went outside and heard her name being called.

  “Bett?” It was Carrie, coming from Lola’s room. She was crying.

  Cancer?” Bett looked at the faces in front of her. Lola was ashen. Carrie’s eyes were swollen. Her mother and father were tightly holding hands.

  Jim Quinlan repeated what Anna had phoned and told them. She had called from the hospital. “She had an MRI scan this morning. There’s a tumor in her lungs. A very large tumor. They admitted her straightaway.”

  Bett stared at him. “But I don’t understand it. She hasn’t had any symptoms.”

  “She has. It’s just they were mistaken for other things. Stress. Exhaustion. Anxiety attacks. And she’s always been so thin, so even the weight loss wasn’t too out of the ordinary.”

  “But what made her have the scan? Why didn’t she tell us?”

  “A young doctor in Adelaide arranged it.” Jim’s voice was dull. “She didn’t want to worry anyone, she said. Not with so much else going on.”

  Bett tried to take in everything as her father kept talking. The doctors had told Anna she may have had the tumor for months, even years. It was only now that it had grown so large that it had started causing her problems.

  It was as if the world were slightly off-kilter. As if voices were not in tune, the colors not right, as if she were several steps behind. She wanted to blink, to start this again, to get out of Daniel’s car, come in the door, and see Lola reading in the bar, her parents working, Carrie in the office, Anna and Ellen playing Scrabble. Not this gathering.

  Someone was missing. “Where’s Ellen?”

  “She’s in her room playing. Anna spoke to her on the phone, but she’s asked us not to tell her too much yet. Not until we all know more ourselves.”

  “So can we go to Anna? Ellen, all of us? Now?”

  Geraldine shook her head. “She said there was no need to come down tonight. They’re giving her sleeping tablets. She’d be asleep before we got there. Richard’s with her in the hospital. They’re starting radiation treatment first thing in the morning.”

  “So it’s treatable? So she’s going to be all right?” Bett looked around again, knowing she hadn’t been the first to ask that question in that room tonight.

  No one would answer her.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Time started moving at a different pace, as though they were in slow motion, in a bubble of their own, while outside things continued as normal. Anna’s treatment started immediately, a team of people working with her—a specialist, a doctor, nurses. Bett felt she was always two steps behind what was happening, barely taking in the news that Anna had cancer in the first place, before they were talking about doing a biopsy, operating or not operating, chemotherapy or no chemotherapy.

  Geraldine and Bett were the first to go to Adelaide to be with Anna. Richard returned to Clare. They took it in turns talking to Anna’s doctors, getting reports, phoning back to the motel. Everyone had questions, and no one was satisfied with the answers they were getting. “What do they mean it’s an aggressive tumor?” “If they hadn’t found it now, what would have happened?” “Will she lose all her hair when they start the treatment?”

  There was test after test. Anna spent most of every day in bed, already exhausted from the X rays, the scans, the drugs, the shock. Bett and her mother sat beside her, reading, talking a little, watching her while she slept. Bett couldn’t reconcile that this already more frail-looking Anna was the same woman who had been smiling up onstage just a few days before. She was still bright and cheerful at first. But the mask dropped when the two of them were alone for the first time. Geraldine had left the room to get coffee.

  Anna reached for Bett’s hand. “I’m scared, Bettsie. I’m really scared.”

  “We all are, sweetheart. But we’ll know more soon, won’t we?”

  “I don’t know. The specialist said I could be in here for weeks. What about Ellen? Who’ll look after her if I’m in here for that long?”

  Bett squeezed Anna’s hand. “All of us. We’re fighting over who gets to look after her. Don’t worry about Ellen.”

  “Will you ring Glenn?”

  None of them had even thought of telling Glenn.

  Bett called him in Singapore that night. She could hear the shock in his voice. “I’ll come back as soon as I can, to help look after Ellen. I can be there by the end of the week. She’s going to be all right, isn’t she? What about the hospital? Is it the best one? Money’s no problem, Bett.”

  She could tell he was truly concerned. It made it easier to talk to him, to put her anger toward him aside. Did some love survive at the bottom of all failed marriages? she wondered. “It’s a very good hospital. They’re doing every test, every scan. We can’t get near her for doctors and nurses.”

  “What does Ellen know?”

  “We don’t know what to tell her yet. She knows Anna is in hospital, but we just said it was for a day or two, that she’d be home soon.” Lola had sat with Ellen and explained that Anna wasn’t feeling very well, that there was a germ in her body the doctors were trying to get rid of, and that fighting the germ sometimes made Anna very tired. They would bring her down to visit Anna very soon. In the meantime, Ellen was talking to Anna twice, sometimes three times a day on the phone.

  “And will Anna be home soon?”

  Bett had told him the truth. “We don’t know.”

  And you’re sure there’s nothing I can do, Bett? Nothing you need brought down to Adelaide? Nothing I can do at the motel?”

  “I’m sure, Daniel, honestly. But thank you anyway.” She’d called him from the public phone in the hospital corridor. It was the first time she’d spoken to hi
m at length since they’d spent the night together. They had spoken briefly when he had phoned her, the night they had learned about Anna. She’d been barely able to talk, in deep shock. She had asked him to tell Rebecca the news. Rebecca had rung the next day, offering help as well, with everything from making beds to driving the family to and from Adelaide. “Don’t even think about work, Bett,” she’d said. “Just stay close to your family. Will you ring me if there’s anything any of us can do? It doesn’t matter how small.”

  There was someone waiting to use the phone. “I’d better go, Daniel.”

  “Of course.” He hesitated. “I’m thinking of you, Bett.”

  “I’m thinking of you, too.” She hung up and went back into Anna’s room.

  Lola and Carrie came down several days later. They brought Ellen with them. They’d told her the truth—that Anna needed to stay in the hospital for longer than they expected, while the doctors did more tests on her. Ellen seemed to take it all quite calmly. As Lola said, she was used to hospitals.

  Bett drove her mother back to the motel, lost in her own thoughts as she passed the car yards and housing developments of the city’s outer suburbs, the scenery gradually changing to open countryside, farms, and small towns the farther north she drove. Her mother made calls on her mobile throughout the journey, speaking to cancer support agencies, arranging for information to be sent to them, returning phone calls from friends in the Valley inquiring about Anna, offering their help. Her manner was direct, matter-of-fact. Things to be done, practical issues to be organized. Geraldine specialized in those, Bett thought.

  She had seen her mother walking down the corridor with Anna the previous night. All around them were other families, some of them in even worse situations, one or two older women in distressed tears. Geraldine had held herself erect, composed. She’d helped Anna get back into bed, hadn’t flinched when Anna’s gown had lifted slightly and they had seen just how thin she was. She had been almost businesslike when the nurse had come in and expressed concern about how little Anna had eaten of her evening meal.

  But an hour later Bett had gone in search of a cup of tea. She had been about to turn on the light in one of the side sitting rooms when she’d heard a noise. Standing still, she had seen a figure in one of the armchairs in the corner of the room. It was her mother, staring out the window, softly crying.

  Bett had hesitated, about to go in and comfort her, when her mother had noticed her first. Geraldine had stood up immediately, briskly wiped away the tears. “A cup of tea, Bett? Let me get one for you. And Anna, too?”

  Neither of them mentioned her tears.

  Anna and Lola were alone in her room. Lola had been reading to her, picking out bits of ten-year-old gossip from a magazine she had found in the waiting room. Midway through an article about the cast of some since-axed soap opera, Anna put her hand on Lola’s arm. “Lola, I’m so scared.”

  The magazine was put away. Lola took both her hands in hers. “Darling, of course you are. You don’t know what’s going to happen. That’s always scary.”

  “Come with me. I want you to come with me and help me.”

  “I would if I could, darling.”

  “What’s going to happen to Ellen if I don’t get better? How is she going to cope without a mother? It’s not fair, she’s suffered too much already.”

  “Anna, you mustn’t think like that. And you must never worry about Ellen. She’ll never be on her own, Anna, I promise you that.”

  There was a knock at the door. It was Glenn, in his suit, straight from the airport.

  Lola stood up and moved aside immediately. As she shut the door she saw him reach down and hold Anna tight.

  Carrie refused to talk to Glenn. She ignored the concern he was showing, the offers of financial help, the offer—gently declined by Anna—to move her to a private hospital in Sydney. Outside, in the waiting room, Carrie railed at Lola.

  “It’s his fault. This wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for him. I read all about it on the Internet. Stress can cause cancer and that—” she searched for the insult “—that bastard caused her so much stress and pain. How dare he come here like this? How can you even let him stay here, Lola?”

  “It’s not Glenn’s fault. It’s no one’s fault, Carrie. It’s just happened. We can’t waste time blaming someone, fighting among ourselves. We have to think of Anna.”

  Carrie was in tears. “I know. I’m trying to, but I’m so mad, Lola. And I feel useless, and I feel like there’s nothing I can do. It’s all happening too quickly.”

  Their lives started revolving around visits to Adelaide, taking it in turns to sit with her, talk to the nurses, listen to the doctor, wait for the specialist. They spent a lot of time in Anna’s room, talking, reading, or sitting quietly while she slept, exhausted from the latest round of treatment.

  Her room was on the second floor of the hospital, looking out over the parklands. A glass office block stood to the left. The day-to-day movements of the workers, dressed in suits, behind desks, drinking coffee, or talking on their phones seemed more and more ridiculous to Bett as each day passed. The hospital waiting room seemed more real, with its scuffed plastic seats, misspelled signs about canteen opening hours, even the empty drink can lying underneath the soft-drink dispenser.

  Carrie was with Anna when the specialist came to talk to her, two weeks after she’d been admitted to the hospital. Coolly, succinctly, he explained the situation. It was a very aggressive tumor. They had discovered some secondaries, but so far they were confined. Surgery wasn’t an option at this stage. The tumor was too large. There was more treatment to try—more radiation, some new drugs.

  “And if the new drugs don’t work?” Anna’s voice was as calm as his. Beside her, Carrie was tightly holding her hand.

  His tone softened. “Then we’re looking at a palliative care situation.”

  Bett arrived back at the hospital several days later with more cards and letters from people in the Valley. Word had quickly gotten around. Each day at the motel there had been calls from people offering to help mind Ellen, to cook for the motel guests if Geraldine needed to be in Adelaide. Prayers were being said for Anna. Len the butcher had dropped off a folder of information he had gathered from the Internet on miracle cures. Bett had left that behind in Clare.

  She was shocked at the change in Anna. Her sister was sitting up in the bed, pillows propped all around her, like a tiny bird in a white nest. She was even thinner and her skin seemed to be changing in texture and color. Her breathing was changing, too, becoming more labored.

  She managed a big smile, though. “Hello, my darling. You’ve come to admire my new nose jewelry?” Anna had two plastic clips in her nostrils, carrying oxygen into her system. She wasn’t able to breathe fully without it anymore.

  Bett managed a grin, too. “It’s very fetching. Does it come in a range of colors?”

  “Horrible clear and even more horrible white, I think. I did tell them white wasn’t my color but they can be very obstinate in here. It’ll be all the rage next year, you mark my words.”

  Bett sat in the chair beside the bed and took Anna’s hand. They were touching her constantly now. Whoever was sitting beside her would be stroking her arm, or holding her hand, or just resting their fingers on her. “Can I get you anything? Do you want the radio on? Any tapes?”

  Anna shook her head. “Tell me about Ellen this week.” Ellen came down to the hospital three days every week, but stayed in the Valley, going to school the rest of the week. The doctors had advised them to keep things as normal as possible for her.

  Bett told her the latest stories. Ellen had invited two of her friends over to play after school. Lola had caught them tying hats to Bumper’s head. They had been rehearsing their own mini musical, for when Mum came home.

  “She’d better hurry it up, then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve made a decision, Bett.” Her voice became serious as she explained what the spe
cialist had told her that afternoon. That there was still another course of treatment ahead of her. More radiation. Another course of tablets. Still in the experimental stages. “I agreed, Bett. What did I have to lose?”

  “But isn’t it dangerous?”

  “What? Might it kill me?” She laughed softly at the expression on Bett’s face. “I can joke about it, Bett. It’s me who’s dying of cancer.”

  “You’re not dying of cancer. There’s still lots of things they can try.”

  “I’m too tired. That’s the worst thing about it. If I wasn’t feeling so sick I’d be interested in thinking about it and talking about it. But if I wasn’t so sick I wouldn’t be dying, would I?”

  Bett was shocked by a sudden flare of temper. “That’s not what I meant. How can you joke about it? Why aren’t you angry? Why am I the cross one? Why aren’t you raging against the light and the night or whatever it is you’re supposed to be raging about?”

  Anna was calm. “I am, Bett. I don’t want to die yet. I’ve no intention of dying yet.”

  “Then don’t be so bloody passive about it. Fight it.”

  “You don’t think I am? You really think I want to bow out here and now, slip off, leave all this? Bett, I hate this. I hate every tiny thing of it. Lying here like this, being pumped full of this drug and that drug, getting X-rayed, feeling my lungs trying so hard. All my life I was never conscious of what my body was doing to keep me alive, and now it’s as if I can hear every cog turning, every cell doing its job. Of course I hate this. I see a sunrise, or a bird or the smallest beautiful thing, and I treasure it and I want it forever and I can’t have it. I might not have any of it for much longer.”

  “What would you like? If we could get you anything, make anything happen for you before you went.” Bett stumbled on the word. “What would you want?”

  “It’s not the obvious things. It’s not seeing Ellen walk up the aisle, or holding my first granddaughter. It’s the ordinary things. I want mornings in a coffee shop with her when she’s about twenty-five. I want her rushed, saying, ‘I can’t stay long, Mum, I have to go and meet someone.’ ”