Numbered Read online

  Poppy shuddered. ‘It would look like a fairy had thrown up by the time Missy was done with it. Besides, I don’t think public-hospital budgets run to that kind of extravagance.’

  Julia sighed. She supposed that was true. ‘Even so, it wouldn’t take much. Change the curtains, rip up the carpet, some neutral colours and a bit of modern art on the walls.’

  ‘Modern art is not going to stop me thinking about dying.’

  Julia felt the same hot fist of fear from yesterday afternoon, when she’d first learned about Poppy’s scare, slug her square in the solar plexus. She gripped her best friend’s hand with ferocious determination. ‘You are not going to die. I won’t let you,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘You are twenty-nine with no family history of breast cancer. And anyway,’ she continued, her grip easing up at Poppy’s wince, forcing her voice to be less maniacal, ‘they wouldn’t let you wait out here for almost two fucking hours if you had cancer, would they?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Poppy muttered.

  Julia hugged her then. A hard, life-affirming hug. She could feel the slightness of Poppy’s frame and the hot fist burrowed an inch deeper under her diaphragm. She’d always felt like an Amazon next to Poppy, but that simple fact suddenly felt sinister instead of just part of some wildly unfair genetic lottery.

  ‘Why didn’t you ring me straightaway on Friday?’ she said, pulling away. ‘I could’ve stayed with you over the weekend.’

  She’d known Poppy since they’d both found themselves at a boarding school where neither of them had wanted to be. Julia’s parents had thought the freeform curriculum at the expensive Montessori school would give their spirited daughter room to express herself and develop self-discipline – they’d been wrong. Poppy’s mother Scarlett, a single mother who’d always been hazy on the identity of Poppy’s father, embraced the alternate education philosophy as if she herself had come up with the concept. She’d hoped it would encourage her quiet, serious daughter to look beyond her narrow world of numbers – she’d been wrong, too.

  At the age of eleven Julia and Poppy were standing next to each other on the morning of their first assembly when Julia turned to her and said, ‘Bloody hell. I think we joined the circus.’ Poppy had laughed and they’d been BFFs ever since. Told each other everything, no matter how intimate.

  Like Poppy’s first experience with a rather frightening-looking vibrator called the Orgasmatron. Or Julia’s blow-by-blow retelling of her sexual encounter with a man who’d wanted to be slapped across his backside with a paddle while she yelled at him for being a naughty boy.

  They hadn’t kept anything from each other.

  ‘Sorry,’ Poppy said, pushing her glasses up her nose. ‘I needed to … think for a bit. And,’ she said, removing her phone from her bag, ‘I also took some time to knock a couple of items off my bucket list.’

  Julia felt sick at the mention of the list they’d compiled several years ago after the movie had first come out. It had seemed like a fun, crazy thing to do at the time, but today it was coming back to bite them in the arse. ‘No, I won’t have you talking that way, do you hear?’ she said, coming over all Mama Bear again as her heart raced in her chest. ‘I simply refuse to believe—’

  She was cut short by Poppy pushing the phone at her. ‘Meet Number Ten.’

  Julia automatically grabbed the phone as she looked down at it but it took a few seconds to compute the image as her brain grappled with the potential of her best friend having cancer. ‘Whoa,’ she said as she examined the shirtless guy with the dirty-blond fringe staring into the camera with a very content look.

  Julia knew that look. She rather fancied she had a particular penchant for producing just that look on many a man’s face. The I’ve-had-the-life-shagged-out-of-me look.

  ‘His name’s Quentin. And I jumped out of a plane with him on Saturday morning and then had hot, dirty, stranger sex with him for pretty much the rest of the day.’

  Julia blinked at the image and then at Poppy. Poppy, who never did anything that could be classified as wild or impulsive. ‘You jumped out of a plane?’

  Poppy rolled her eyes. ‘Trust you to be more shocked by the jump than the stranger sex!’

  Julia shrugged. Poppy sighed. ‘Number one on the list, remember?’

  ‘I know, but …’ Julia was lost for words for a second or two. ‘A plane?’

  ‘You’re always telling me I should take a risk so … I took a risk.’

  That was true. Julia’s entire life philosophy consisted of the three-word mantra take a risk. She’d built up her highly successful events-management company with nothing but a couple of contacts and the ample seat of her pants.

  But that was her …

  ‘Well look at you.’ Julia smiled. ‘And was I right, or was I right?’

  Poppy gave her a huge smile and Julia tried to remember the last time her friend had ever smiled this big. Maybe when Julia had dragged her on the Wild Mouse roller coaster at Luna Park a few months ago and it had been so beautiful with the night lights of the harbour below them. They’d both screamed as the coaster had seemed destined to fling itself and its passengers right off the rails and plunge them into the cold black water before whipping them around at the last minute and plunging them down, down, down into the belly of the next loop.

  ‘Let’s do it again,’ Poppy had said as the ride had ended. Maybe she was a closet adrenaline junkie?

  It wasn’t that Poppy wasn’t a happy person. She was. God knew Julia had never laughed so hard over the years than she had when she was with Poppy. It was just that her friend was generally a more considered type. Poppy brought the quiet maths professor. Julia brought the brash and loud.

  ‘That good, huh?’

  ‘The jump or the sex?’

  Julia laughed. ‘The sex, of course.’

  ‘Oh, god.’ Poppy shook her head as she took back her phone and looked at Quentin. ‘It was like … a smorgasbord.’

  Julia laughed again. ‘There’s a reason why the first six letters of smorgasbord are an anagram for orgasm, you know.’

  ‘Hah, so they are.’ Poppy grinned.

  ‘So come on, spill,’ Julia demanded. ‘If I have to sit here getting a numb bum and possibly,’ she added as a man across from them coughed fit to hack up a lung without covering his mouth, ‘a communicable disease, I might as well be titillated. Titillate me, woman.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Poppy groaned, closing down the image on her phone. ‘I picked a bad time to blot my copybook. He’s twenty-two. I’m going to hell for sure.’

  Julia laughed a little too loudly, ignoring the reference to mortality. ‘Way to go, girlfriend! I’m seriously impressed.’

  ‘You’re a terrible friend,’ Poppy said, though she was smiling. ‘You should be lecturing me on acting my age.’

  ‘Hah! As if.’ Julia shuddered. ‘I say you should fuck as many twenty-two-years-olds as your heart desires.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Poppy found the image in her phone album again and traced the floppy fringe. ‘I think I’ll just stick with the one.’

  ‘So this Quentin, was he the skydive instructor?’

  Poppy shook her head. ‘Nope. He’s a cook here at the hospital canteen. I met him on Friday and he was flirting with me and I thought what the hell. So I asked him to come with me.’

  Julia blinked. ‘Oh. That was …’

  ‘Risky?’ Poppy said, lifting an eyebrow at the irony.

  ‘No.’ Julia rolled her eyes. ‘Unexpected.’

  And also, Julia admitted, a tiny bit hurtful. Why hadn’t her best friend of eighteen years asked her to go along for the skydive? She’d have been up for it – more than up for it. And Poppy knew that. They did everything together. Everything.

  Poppy shrugged. ‘It was an impulse. I was taking your advice.’

  Julia smiled, kicking the green-eyed monster to the curb. Poppy was doing something she’d urged her to do for years – she couldn’t be angry or jealous about it. Particularly today. ‘About bloo
dy time,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Poppy said, and Julia felt a hitch somewhere in the vicinity of her heart at the gratitude she could hear in her friend’s voice. Maybe Poppy had been worried that Julia would feel left out?

  ‘So you scratched off number one and number ten in a day,’ Julia mused. ‘I think you might need to pace yourself.’

  ‘Actually, we also crossed off number twelve.’

  Julia tried to remember her friend’s list but all she could think of apart from the skydiving and sex with a stranger was how specific it had been. Actually, posing for a life-art class had also been involved if her memory served her correctly. But god knew what number it was on the extensive list. Julia’s list had consisted of three items: Find a soul mate. Keep a journal. Paint something.

  So far she was zero for three.

  Poppy had been puzzled at the simplicity and staidness of it considering Julia’s usual flamboyance. But Julia knew that when it got down to it, she lived her life in fast forward most days and there were few things she’d have left to regret.

  ‘Remind me what number twelve was again?’

  ‘Eating Mexican.’

  Julia nodded as it came back to her. ‘The real deal. No Tex Mex.’

  ‘Absolute blow-your-head-off real deal.’

  ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘Nowhere.’ Poppy’s smile was dreamy and for a moment Julia wondered if she’d been possessed. ‘He cooked it for me.’

  ‘Ah,’ Julia said, puzzled at the strange look on her friend’s face. ‘He is a cook though, right?’

  ‘And a musician. He’s the lead singer in a band.’

  Julia gritted her teeth. ‘Of course he is.’

  ‘You’ll have to meet him. You’ll love him. He does old-movie quotes, too.’

  Crap. Houston, we have a problem. ‘Isn’t the purpose of having sex with a stranger to … you know … keep him a stranger?’

  Poppy dropped her head to one aside, and with her black-rimmed glasses perched imperiously on her nose she looked exactly like a maths professor contemplating a particularly difficult equation. ‘No,’ she said, slowly scrunching her brow in concentration. ‘I don’t think so. I think it counts as long as you didn’t really know them when you hit the sheets.’

  Julia sighed. Trust Poppy to want to befriend Number Ten. She opened her mouth to explain the etiquette of stranger sex, but a rather severely groomed nurse who could have given Nurse Ratched a run for her money called, ‘Poppy Devine,’ and everything seized inside Julia. The fist was back, worming its way right through to her middle.

  ‘Okay, babe,’ she said, taking her friend’s hand and hauling her up. ‘It’s going to be fine. Let’s go kick cancer’s arse.’

  The walk across the floor seemed to take forever. A young guy in a blue uniform pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair almost ran into the wall checking Julia out. Julia was used to men looking at her. She had an honest-to-god, old-fashioned hourglass figure and from the age of thirteen, when her breasts had grown rapidly to a double D, she’d been the object of the copulatory gaze. And she’d worked out early that if she truly had to be lumbered with one of those classic fifties movie-star bodies instead of the petite package that Poppy came in, then she might as well dress like one. She had a bottom and thighs and boobs and she’d been alive long enough and had a good enough eye for fashion to know how to dress them up or dress them down.

  But right now it just didn’t seem appropriate for anyone to be noticing that and she wanted to hiss at the orderly to fuck off. Nurse Ratched looked Julia over as they got closer, in a much less flattering light than the orderly had done. Like she could tell, through one narrowed gaze, that Julia was going to be trouble.

  The room they were ushered into suffered the same sense of decay and lack of style as the rest of the department, but the doctor who sat in the chair behind the desk looked comfortingly middle-aged and experienced, and his smile as they entered was encouraging. He had thick, dark wavy hair that was turning grey and a don’t-scare-the-horses look on his face. He introduced himself as Richard Bradshaw, an oncologist, and there were a brief few minutes with banal pleasantries before he got down to it.

  Julia instantly nicknamed him Dr Dick. Because that’s what she always did when faced with authority – mentally belittled it. She’d made a habit out of it as a child when she’d encountered endless rounds of boring adults, friends of her parents, who’d talked down to her as if she was of no consequence.

  Dr Dick folded his hands on a chart in front of him as he surveyed them both, making sure to meet their eyes, and Julia absently noticed he had a piano-player’s hands. ‘Poppy, I have the results from your biopsy here.’ His voice was low and calm and Julia felt soothed and less worried suddenly. ‘I’m sorry to tell you that the lump is malignant and, as is often the case in younger women, quite aggressive.’

  A strange noise came out of Poppy’s mouth and Julia turned to her and grabbed her hand. It was cold and her face looked frozen. ‘It’s going to be fine, just fine. Stay calm.’ She smoothed Poppy’s hand gently, before turning serenely back to the doctor and taking a deep breath. ‘What the fuck do you mean it’s cancerous, it’s aggressive?’ she demanded. ‘She’s only twenty-fucking-nine! She has no family history!’

  Julia had been angry most of her life. She may have grown up in wealth and privilege but she’d had to fight to be heard and seen. To be validated. To be something other than a piece to be moved around her parents’ Monopoly board. Rage had given her a voice against their manipulations and the guts to walk away. But it had also become ingrained.

  There were times when she’d contemplated therapy for it. Right now, she was pleased she hadn’t.

  If anything could kill this cancer it would be the weight of Julia’s wrath.

  Dr Dick, obviously used to the gamut of emotions playing out in his office day after day, nodded calmly and said, ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  After that, Julia didn’t hear a lot. Something about scans and hormone receptors and surgery and margins and nodes and chemo and radiation. Options. Taking it one step at a time. Needing more information.

  Blah, blah-de-fucking-blah.

  None of it could get past the overwhelming sense that this shit couldn’t possibly be happening to Poppy. One glance at Poppy’s face told Julia that Poppy wasn’t taking in a whole hell of a lot either.

  And then before they knew it, Poppy was being whisked off for a combined CT/PET scan – whatever the hell that was – ­leaving Julia to pace the floor of the X-ray waiting room. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to spraypaint Cancer Sucks on the walls of yet another department with depressing decor or throw up.

  At least this looked like a place that knew what to do with vomit should the urge to lose her stomach contents come to pass. The last place she’d barfed had been in a pot plant at her cousin Freya’s daughter’s first birthday party. Freya had certainly not known what to do at the sight of her cousin hurling in front of twenty-two toddlers and their horrified mothers. But in her defence Julia had learned long ago that one had to be drunk to get through any party thrown by Freya. Ridiculous extravagance combined with large amounts of prissy were hard to deal with sober.

  Julia looked at her watch for the twentieth time. What the fuck was taking so long?

  She paced some more, oblivious to the way it stretched her Betty Page skirt across her Betty Boop derrière and the gawping of every male with a pulse in the near vicinity.

  This couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be happening.

  Poppy Devine did not deserve cancer. Poppy was sweet and industrious and careful and measured and always, always did the right thing. If anyone deserved cancer it was Julia. Julia was loud and opinionated and disagreeable. Rude, some might even say. She went out with bad men, took unnecessary risks, pushed people to their limits, swore like a sailor and flipped the bird more than any female in the history of the world.

  It should be her number coming up in the cancer lott
ery.

  And all the time she paced, the lyrics of ‘Only the Good Die Young’ played louder and faster in her head.

  Poppy should have been badder. Why hadn’t she been badder?

  Why, why, why?

  And then the door opened and Poppy wandered out looking tiny and lost and like someone or something had just punched her in the gut, and Julia wanted to yell at that insidious lump inside her, ‘Get away from her, you bitch,’ like some crazy Ripley wannabe.

  And as she crossed the room and pulled Poppy into her arms, Julia knew she’d do anything – anything – to help Poppy through this. With the strained relationship that existed between Julia and her upper-class parents and Poppy’s disconnect with her own mother, it had always felt a bit like the two of them against the world anyway.

  But now it was for real.

  Cancer was the enemy and she was putting it on notice. If it wanted a tug of war, it was going to get one, because she wasn’t going to sit idly by and let it take her best friend away.

  ‘The doctor wants to see me again,’ Poppy said and her voice sounded muffled and so small Julia wanted to punch the wall.

  They went back to the office and waited. ‘Well one thing’s for sure,’ Julia said as she sat in another uncomfortable chair. ‘You’re abso-fucking-lutely not having any treatment done here. You’d probably have some paint chip peeling off the ceiling drop into your wound and get septicaemia.’

  Julia watched as Poppy absently reached for a plastic mould sitting on the desk. It was a spinal column that looked like someone had taken a hammer to it; it also sported the name of a well-known, over-the-counter analgesic. Julia figured the person owning that back bone was going to need something way more heavy duty than that – crack cocaine possibly.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Poppy said, not looking up from the macabre drug-company toy.

  ‘It looks like it’s about to come down around our ears.’