Numbered Read online

  Poppy turned and looked at her and Julia’s breath caught in her throat at the lacklustre flatness inside her usually vibrant tawny gaze. ‘It’s fine, Julia. It may be a little worn around the edge but the hospital’s reputation is second to none. I did some online research last night. Their stats are impressive.’

  Julia’s anger dissolved in a heartbeat. Poppy always had been a balm to her fiery temper. The door opened and Dr Dick entered the room. She knew by his sombre look that the news wasn’t good. The man should never, ever gamble!

  He didn’t bother with the pleasantries this time. ‘I’m sorry, Poppy, but the scans have shown us that the cancer is grade four, which means it’s invasive. It’s spread to the lymph nodes under your arm and there’s a spot on one of your ribs and your left hip that is most certainly metastatic growth.’

  Julia had no words this time as she groped for her friend’s hand. Poppy managed, ‘I see.’

  Dr Dick glanced at Julia, obviously expecting another emotional outburst with frequent use of the f word, but the fear that had been gnawing at her since yesterday afternoon had moved from her chest to her throat, threatening to strangle her. When it became obvious that neither of them was going to say anything, he filled up the stunned silence by explaining what the hell it all meant and where to go from here.

  It took ages for Julia’s brain to come back online. When it did, she shuffled her chair closer to Poppy and snaked her arm around her friend’s shoulders. ‘I want a second opinion,’ she demanded, desperation making her bold and bolshie as she interrupted him. The thought that maybe Dr Dick had got it terribly wrong had taken hold and she seized it with both hands.

  Maybe Dr Dick was just a dick?

  ‘Julia …’

  Julia squeezed Poppy’s shoulder. ‘It’s going to be fine, you’ll see,’ she told her. ‘There’s been a terrible mistake.’

  ‘You are of course most welcome to get a second opinion,’ Dr Dick said, his voice a soothing baritone. ‘I could arrange for another oncologist from here to see you or you could see one of your own choosing privately and I would forward all the scans and tests to them.’

  And that’s when Julia knew it was real. And that Dr Dick was telling the truth. She could see it in his crap-at-poker face.

  Poppy must have seen it too because she shook her head. ‘No, it’s fine. I don’t need a second opinion.’

  Dr Dick nodded. ‘I know you’ve had a lot dumped in your lap today, but I’d like to schedule you for the mastectomy we talked about as soon as possible and then get straight on with the chemo. I can get you on the theatre list the day after tomorrow,’ he said.

  Julia blinked at the rapidity of it, but now that it was happening, she didn’t want Poppy to be lumbered with a cancerous breast. She wanted it off, gone, along with that prick of a lump inside blinking away like the freaking mother ship, spreading its poison. No longer able to do any more damage.

  ‘She’ll take it,’ Julia said.

  ‘No.’

  Julia blinked at the vehement word coming from Poppy’s throat. It was loud in the small room. ‘Babe, we can’t muck around with this,’ she said, squeezing Poppy’s stiff shoulder. ‘The sooner you start treatment, the better the outcome, right D … er, Richard?’ she said, turning to Dr Dick for confirmation.

  ‘It’s always better to get on to these situations right away,’ he agreed in that calm, quiet way of his.

  ‘I can go a few days, surely?’ Poppy implored.

  ‘Babe, no,’ Julia said, jumping in ahead of Dr Dick, whose mouth was opening. ‘How can you even want it inside you for any longer than you have to? Is this a body-image problem? Because Richard mentioned reconstructive surgery and in the meantime we can fake it. God knows I’ve been tutoring you in that since the seventh grade.’

  There was a pain behind Julia’s eyeballs which came purely from the pressure of words building in her brain. Sharp, sane, persuasive words. She hoped she was being coherent because she needed to convince Poppy to follow the doctor’s orders. ‘You know I’ll love you no matter how many boobs you have, right?’

  Poppy didn’t look at her as she addressed Dr Dick. ‘I just need to … think about some stuff. Absorb it all.’

  Dr Dick nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said gently and smiled at Poppy. ‘Take whatever time you need. It’s important to feel confident in your choices.’ He lifted a card from the holder on his desk. ‘Ring me if you need to know anything else. And when you’re ready, we’ll go from there.’

  Julia shook her head. What the fuck? ‘Poppy.’

  It was Poppy’s turn to squeeze her hand now and Julia felt the squeeze wrap its fingers right around her heart. ‘Julia … I need some time …’

  Julia swallowed. Hard. She was used to being the one in charge of the twosome. Boldly leading on, Poppy happy to follow. But when Poppy gave her that look, it was All Over Red Rover. Her best friend of eighteen years was asking her to back off and she knew she had to respect that. ‘Okay.’ She forced a smile. ‘Sure. A few days isn’t going to hurt, right?’

  She turned back to Dr Dick, her eyes fiery, silently pleading with him to contradict her even though he’d already said it was fine. Julia couldn’t go against that look but Dr Dick sure as hell could. For god’s sake, the man had a medical degree. And a PhD in calm.

  Instead, he smiled at her in that reassuring way and said, ‘It’s not going to hurt. Poppy’s been dealt a huge whammy. It’s perfectly fine to take some time to consider it all.’

  She glanced at Poppy, who looked like an inflatable toy that had sprung a leak and was deflating at a rate of knots. ‘Right, then,’ Julia said briskly as her nose prickled with emotions and her tear ducts felt like a red-hot needle had been jammed into both of them simultaneously. She pulled Poppy into her side and gave her a fierce hug. ‘We’ll have a think. And get back to you.’

  A minute later they were outside, mute and confused like they’d just emerged from years of darkness into the bright sunshine. Like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Julia could feel a rising urge to shake her fist at the sky. How dare it be so fucking bright and gorgeous on such an ugly day? They didn’t say anything as they made their way to where Julia had parked her cute Beetle so many hours ago.

  They climbed inside and the fake flower near the steering wheel mocked her. Julia grabbed it, crushed it in her hand and tossed it in the back seat.

  Silence reigned as they both stared out though the windscreen at the sweltering parking lot. Julia turned to face her friend, her friend who had a fucking horrible disease that she’d read about and heard about on the news but which had never personally touched her. Until now. Tears burned hot in her eyes.

  ‘Don’t,’ Poppy said, her voice strong and commanding. ‘Don’t you cry. Don’t you dare cry. You are my rock. You have always been my rock. You’ve been the buffer between me and the world since I was eleven. You are the one who’s going to get me through this. I’m sorry, but if you lose it now, I’ll never come back from that.’

  Julia heaved in a breath. Aggressive, invasive cancer. Aggressive, invasive cancer. She wanted to cry hysterically. She wanted to take a knife to the beautiful leather seats in her beautiful car – bought with the very first hefty paycheque she’d earned from her business – and slash great big gashes in them. Like the gash that was in her heart.

  But she didn’t. She sucked in a deep, deep breath. She had to be who Poppy needed her to be. She had to be that rock. Poppy needed Julia’s anger to propel them through this. Not her tears. ‘Where to?’ she asked.

  Poppy shrugged as she stared out of the windscreen again and she looked so lost Julia had to bite her tongue to stop the first tear from falling. Because if that leaked out – she was never going to stop. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.

  Julia thought for a second. ‘I do. Give me your phone.’

  Poppy frowned. ‘What?’

  Julia held out her hand. ‘Your phone.’

  Poppy handed it over and Julia quickly scro
lled to the app she knew held the bloody stupid bucket list she’d insisted they do years ago. A list she hated almost as much as she hated cancer right at this moment.

  Trust Poppy to have it all neat and organised and readily available like a freaking shopping list. Julia had made out her own list on paper sourced from some women’s cooperative in Ethiopia. Scarlett, Poppy’s mother, had given the paper to Julia for her eighteenth birthday. Julia had then stashed the list in a box with shells glued to the outside. Julia and Poppy had made the boxes under Scarlett’s watchful eye when they’d camped at Byron Bay the Easter they’d been in grade nine.

  Bloody hell – did she even know where that freaking box was now?

  Julia’s fingers scrolled through Poppy’s precise list, searching for the right number. There it was.

  Number six. Tell boss (whoever it may be at the time) to go fuck him/herself and shove the job where the sun don’t shine (note – ensure other job already in place).

  ‘This,’ Julia said, passing the phone back and starting the engine.

  Poppy consulted the list. She raised a ragged nail to her lips and gnawed on it. ‘Really?’

  ‘Fucking A,’ Julia said. ‘Damned if you’re going to waste your time researching losers in love who need some computer algorithm to be happy when we have a dragon to slay.’ She paused. ‘And how many times have you told me how much you hate that lecherous old plagiarist you work for?’

  * * *

  Several hours later, in the weird way that the world often serves up, Julia found herself following Poppy into a dingy alley to an even dingier doorway guarded by a dubious-looking dude with a webbed neck and tree-trunk legs who looked them up and down like they may possibly be dinner for him later should he run out of regular, everyday food. His official-looking nametag proclaimed him to be Charles, but Julia couldn’t help but think he’d be right at home performing the haka for his bikie homeboys.

  ‘What decent club even opens on a Monday night?’ Julia bitched as Charles grunted his approval and the door closed behind them.

  They were immediately plunged into an eerie neon glow and Julia half expected to see illegal Asian prostitutes lined up against the corridor asking them if they’d like a bit of girl-on-girl. It was only the heavy bass beat thudding around them that gave her any confidence that they might actually be in the right place.

  She was relieved when the corridor opened out into a relatively normal bar area and her gaze skimmed immediately to the band playing on the small narrow stage. The room was only half full, but the scantily dressed women at the front were gyrating in a most unseemly fashion, reaching out their hands, trying to grab at the lead singer’s legs. Someone really needed to explain to them the principles of playing hard to get.

  And there he was. Number Ten. A tall string of energy, flicking his dirty-blond fringe away with a casual toss of the head that increased the screaming up front another notch or two. His eyes were shut as his fingers flew across the frets during a garishly loud guitar solo that hissed and squealed in an almighty frenzy.

  Julia stared open-mouthed.

  ‘Isn’t he amazing?’ Poppy murmured.

  He was something, alright. Julia had a feeling she was going to need some kind of animal book to figure out just what.

  Julia had been surprised when Poppy had wanted to come here. It hadn’t been a surprise when Poppy had chickened out of ringing her boss, but this … this was unexpected. Julia had wanted to spend the night strategising and web surfing together or at least getting messy drunk, but Poppy, who’d been texting Number Ten for most of the day, had said, ‘Let’s go to his gig. You’re going to love him, Julia. He’s a movie nut like you.’

  And it wasn’t a day to deny Poppy anything.

  So here they were and, mercifully, the solo drew to a close with another flick of the fringe and spray of sweat over the audience, and Julia could actually hear herself think enough to come up with a suitable adjective for the guy who was so unlike Poppy’s usual type he may as well have been Prince Harry.

  But then Poppy was waving at him and he spied her through the girls swarming around him at the front and the tacky disco lighting and he jumped off the stage, pushing through his groupies to get to her. Julia blinked as Poppy ran the last few steps into his arms and burst into tears.

  What the fuck?

  She watched as his big hands stroked Poppy’s hair, and he murmured words in Poppy’s ear, obviously giving her the comfort that Julia had wanted to give Poppy all afternoon but had been firmly rebuffed.

  Eventually, this stranger who was taking her place looked at her and gave her a suave nod of his head. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You must be Jules.’

  Julia shuddered at the bastardisation of her name. ‘And you must be Number Ten.’

  She hated him already.

  Chapter Three

  Quentin studied the two women carefully, trying to remember a time when he had felt so unsure of himself. It was two in the morning, and instead of reviewing the high points of the gig with his band over two or three or seven beers, or enjoying the affections of one of the enthusiastic music lovers in tight jeans from the front row, he was making Italian hot chocolate for a tiny woman he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind for two days, and her very drunk, and even more terrifying, best friend.

  As he melted Swiss chocolate the right way – in a glass dish over a saucepan of water – he tried to work out what the two women were saying to each other as they were seated on flat cushions at his coffee table. The petite brunette was gesticulating wildly, her fascinating lips moving as quickly as lightning. The tall redhead, with the kind of body that would normally make Quentin want to write a song about the sweetness of life, was slumped down, forearms on the table, head resting on them. Occasionally, she would lift her head to mutter something at Poppy. It was clear, even from the vantage point of the kitchen, that whatever they were arguing about, Poppy was winning.

  Quentin poured melted chocolate over warm milk, stirred several marshmallows into each mug, and shook powdered chocolate over the top. He settled each mug on a matching plate, and reached up to retrieve a Tupperware container from the top cupboard. He extracted several sticky-date-and-caramel cookies, and arranged one on each plate. Then he sashayed back into the living room, such as it was, with the kind of dramatic flourish for which lead singers and guitarists were known, and arranged his features to receive some praise. As he did, he caught the tail end of the conversation between the two women.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ Poppy was hissing into the untidy clump of hair that was her best friend. She poked her shoulder viciously as she said it. ‘I mean it.’

  Julia grunted from under the hair, her face flat against the coffee table. ‘Whatever,’ she mumbled. ‘But I think you’re wrong.’

  Quentin would have been curious about what the women were discussing, except that the sight of Poppy, all flustered and red-cheeked, had a disturbing way of making him lose his train of thought. She was sitting cross-legged like a sweet, compact Buddha. Her brown curly hair was tied up in some kind of fascinating pigtail, tantalising tendrils of the stuff he knew smelled like chocolate escaping from the hair tie. Her fine hands were clasped Zen-like on the coffee table in front of her, and her nose was wrinkled with the remnants of her snarl at Julia. Her lips were painted a really pretty shade of pink, and the mascara she was wearing made her lashes look incredibly long.

  Quentin realised Poppy hadn’t been wearing makeup the last two times they had met. The effect with makeup was different – a cross between sexy and something like a kid playing dress-up. He decided he liked her better without it. Which was weird, for him. He loved makeup – all that pretty colour and glittery yumminess and good smells. Makeup took women, who were already ­puzzling and amazing and kind of scrumptious, and made them into altogether magical creatures. Except this one, he decided. The makeup looked good on her, sure. But she didn’t need it. There was something plain old magical about her without it.

>   Quentin cleared his throat, deposited his offerings on the table in front of the two women, and waited (again) for the adulation. After all, not every guy knew how to make Italian hot chocolate. The proper way. Let alone sticky-date-and-caramel cookies. From scratch.

  The gentle noise drew Poppy’s attention and she finally looked at him. ‘Oh,’ she said, smiling at him in a way that used her whole face – eyes, lips, teeth, and even those pretty round cheeks – and made him forget how to breathe. ‘Ta.’ She wrapped her hands around the mug and nudged the bundle of hair that was Julia. ‘Drink, Juju?’

  She said it way more sweetly than she’d said don’t you dare, and Quentin wondered again what that was all about. He never brought drunk best friends home along with the girl he was interested in, so he wasn’t sure if this was how they always behaved. He wasn’t even sure how this had happened. One minute Poppy had been wrapped around him dancing, her body all small and soft and relaxed, giggling and asking muffled questions into his chest about what it felt like to have groupies, the next they had all been out on the street in the dark, and Poppy had looked like she was planning to head home. With Julia. Without him. And well, a man had to do something about that, even if it meant bringing the mountain to Mohammed. So to speak. So he’d suggested they head back to his for hot chocolates.

  Julia had shot him a look that suggested she’d had more appealing invitations to go for a pap smear, but Poppy had stopped dead, right there in the alley, and nailed her friend with a pleading look, and it had been all over. Julia had grumbled and bitched, broken a heel on her shoe as she’d fallen into the cab, and generally been a pain in the arse. But she’d capitulated to Poppy’s wishes and come along for the ride. And, more importantly and as a direct result, so had Poppy. Which, Quentin reflected as he watched Julia’s head snap up from her drunken reverie facedown on the coffee table, was kind of a weird situation. Especially as he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes off the ball of manic energy that was Poppy, but he felt that if he looked at Julia too long or the wrong way she might actually bare some fangs and rip out his throat.