Numbered Read online

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said quickly, not meeting his eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter, we don’t need to know. I don’t need to know.’ Then she dragged her eyes up to his. ‘Honestly.’ She repeated herself for emphasis. ‘I honestly don’t care.’

  But he could see it, in her face.

  She’d made him as a high-school dropout. Her little chin was jutting out and she was valiantly playing the I don’t care card, but it was bullshit. And normally he wouldn’t have cared less. Having women think he was some deadshit was all part and parcel of the offering and the escape route. It suited him fine. Just fine.

  ‘One,’ he said finally, leaning back against the sofa behind him and stretching his hands above his head.

  ‘One?’ Julia repeated the word like a jumbled parrot. ‘One, the top score? One, the highest? One?’

  He nodded. ‘The very One.’

  Julia looked like she wanted to break something. Preferably his face.

  * * *

  Quentin looked down at Poppy, sleeping all twisted up in his sheets. Her hair was loose now, released from the confining shackles of that lopsided pigtail. Her shoulders were bare – milky-smooth. He traced a finger along her collarbone, amazed that something so small and fragile could hold such power. Because, if possible, tonight had been even better than Saturday. Shorter, sure, but it was actually sweeter. It was like some demon was driving Poppy. Like she wanted to screw up all her power and passion into a ball and hurl it at him.

  She’d left him breathless and all the more baffled.

  Maybe he should tell girls his school leaving score more often.

  Poppy’s irritating black iPhone buzzed and blinked on his bedside table. He looked over and considered throwing it across the room. How dare it interrupt his appreciation of her? But as he glanced at it, something caught his eye. It was a message, from Julia. All in caps.

  DON’T FORGET, YOU PROMISED. I DON’T TELL HIM, BUT YOU AGREE TO HAVE THE OP. IT’S ALL GOING TO BE OK. XX

  Chapter Four

  Julia couldn’t breathe. The ticking of the clock was like clashing cymbals keeping time with Poppy’s shallow breaths in the silent room. She was so still and pale – Poppy who was usually so tanned and vital. She seemed to blend in with the white sheets and the white blanket pulled up to her chest. She looked alien, foreign, this strange, motionless creature without glasses, and Julia’s diaphragm refused to cooperate. Refused to lift itself under the weight of crushing fear.

  Julia hadn’t thought she could be any more scared than when they’d wheeled Poppy’s bed into the operating theatre. She’d been wrong. She really needed to stop underestimating what a scary bitch cancer could be.

  Drops of clear fluid plopped into a burette that fed into a drip in the back of Poppy’s right hand, and, on the left side a large tube protruded from underneath Poppy’s awful blue hospital-issue gown.

  Seriously, who designed those things? Julia understood their purpose was to be functional, but did that mean they had to be ugly, too? Jesus, why didn’t they just stamp ‘property of the state’ on them and be done with it?

  The tube led to a drainage bag where a small amount of blood had already collected.

  Poppy’s blood.

  Julia’s gaze was drawn to it again and again, and as she watched the slow ooze of Poppy’s life force, the fear left her and anger took over and built, a perfect accompaniment to the swelling of her rage. It flooded Julia, building like a crescendo until she could taste it in her mouth, thick and metallic.

  Tears welled in Julia’s eyes and she fought them back. She wouldn’t cry. Poppy needed her to be brave and she hadn’t given in to tears yet.

  Being someone’s rock sucked.

  She glanced across the bed instead and her fury found a different focus.

  Number Ten.

  His head was bowed over Poppy’s right hand, so all she could see was his dirty-blond hair. Why she was looking at a twenty-two-year-old rocker/footballer/surfer/interloper who had known Poppy for less than a week, she didn’t know.

  Why was he here? What did Poppy see in him? Why did Julia have to play nice with him? She grabbed hold of the questions and let them simmer in the cauldron of seething emotions that had taken up residence in her gut, preferring them to other, bigger questions.

  Like why.

  Why Poppy? Why now? Why cancer?

  With his head bowed so that he looked like he was praying it took all Julia’s willpower not to demand he cease and desist. If he wanted to pray to a god that gave twenty-nine-year-old women aggressive breast cancer, that was his affair. But he couldn’t do it in front of her. Because she’d shove all that power and glory crap in a place it was never going to shine.

  Play nice.

  They were the words Poppy had used this morning. And Julia had promised she would. But as she watched Poppy’s blood oozing into the drain, it was killing her. She wanted to reach across the bed, yank him up by his silly rock-star hair and hiss at him to leave. More than that, she wanted to hurt him. To make him pay. Slash her crimson nails across his rock-god face and watch him bleed.

  Number Ten. Not Poppy.

  ‘Ah, here you are!’

  The harried yet still somehow melodic interruption startled Julia out of her murderous daydream and Number Ten out of whatever the hell it was he was doing.

  He stared at the older, less conservative version of Poppy as she jangled into the room, drowning out the noise inside Julia’s head with the gentle tinkle of bangles and anklets.

  She leaned down and swept Julia into a warm embrace where she sat. ‘How you ever put up with this traffic, I’ll never know.’

  Julia sagged into the hug. ‘Scarlett.’

  That was it, just the one word, because Julia knew if she said any more right now she was going to burst into tears. Being hugged by Poppy’s mother was like being wrapped in a cloud of incense and summer rain. Unlike her own mother, who smelled like old money and the calm before the storm.

  ‘How’s my girl doing?’ Scarlett said as she pulled out of the embrace and searched around in her voluminous hemp bag for something.

  ‘She’s only been back for about twenty minutes. We haven’t seen the surgeon yet. Apart from opening her eyes briefly, she’s been sleeping. She’s very groggy.’

  ‘Sleep is good,’ Scarlett said, her entire head practically inside the bag now.

  Julia nodded, her relief at having Poppy’s mother here already starting to wane. Growing up, Julia had found Scarlett utterly enchanting with her dreamy expression and funky, veggie-growing, additive-free, organic lifestyle. It had been a far cry from her own dress-circle existence.

  But the second Scarlett plucked a crystal out of her bag exclaiming, ‘Aha!’, Julia realised she’d made a mistake and Poppy was going to kill her. Poppy had vetoed her mother being here today, insisting she’d let Scarlett know after the operation. And Julia had agreed. But last night she’d caved. And now here Scarlett was. With a crystal and god knew what else. For sure there were homeopathic drops somewhere in that bag. She could feel the heavy glare coming from Number Ten already.

  ‘I’ll pop this under her pillow,’ Scarlett said, leaning forward to do just that, dropping a light kiss on Poppy’s forehead as she did. ‘This will protect you, my darling,’ she whispered.

  Julia was relieved that Poppy was too zonked to see it. Poppy believed in numbers and science and facts. She had no patience with crystals. Julia, however, was prepared to use whatever the fuck might work from both modern and woo-woo medicine in any and all combinations.

  ‘Well hello there and who are you?’

  Ten rose from his seat. ‘I’m Quentin, Mrs Devine,’ he said, flicking his hair back as he stretched out his hand across the bed. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Ms,’ Julia hissed.

  ‘Delighted.’ Scarlett smiled as if Julia hadn’t just sprouted snakes from her hair. ‘Are you a friend of Poppy’s?’

  He glanced at Julia, clearly unsure of what to say, b
efore he looked back at Scarlett. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Recent,’ Julia clarified stiffly.

  Scarlett smiled again. ‘Lovely.’

  Oh yes. Lovely. Like a cyanide pill.

  Julia stood and dragged over an empty chair propped against a faded cream wall and they all sat again, their eyes returning to Poppy.

  Still asleep. Still bleeding. Still looking small and pale.

  ‘I’m going to get a coffee from the cafeteria,’ Ten announced a few minutes later. He stood. ‘Anyone want one?’

  ‘No thank you, Quentin, I try not to put any toxins in my body.’

  Ten looked confounded that anyone would consider the world’s most slavishly adored hot beverage in such a way. Julia felt momentarily sorry for him. He seemed like a guy who’d had it all figured out – join a band and get himself laid every night of the week. Living the dream.

  He had no fucking clue what was ahead of him. And that was without Scarlett and what Poppy liked to call her Hogwarts hogwash.

  ‘Probably a good idea,’ he said finally. ‘They do serve a fairly toxic brew down there. Jules?’

  Julia stiffened at the horrible name and the even worse familiarity. She and Ten needed to talk. ‘No thank you.’ She rose from her chair. ‘But I’ll come for a walk and stretch my legs.’

  He placed a kiss on Poppy’s hand and Julia suppressed the urge to ask the nearest nurse for some anti-bacterial foam. God alone knew what dive bars and their skanky inhabitants he usually frequented, but given that he’d been spreading his germs all over Poppy for days now, she was probably immune. ‘We won’t be long,’ she assured Scarlett, who gave her one of her beatific smiles.

  She followed Ten’s lanky stride out of the room and down the corridor. There was something urgent in his gait today. No loose-hipped, rock-god swagger about him at all.

  ‘You called her mother?’ he demanded as he stabbed the lift button. ‘Poppy expressly asked you not to.’

  Julia glared. What the ever-loving fuck? All her fear and rage and unshed tears welled inside and built with all the menace of a tornado. She drew herself up to her full six feet. Most men would have cowered. At six-foot-six, Ten didn’t blink an eyelid.

  ‘This is none of your business,’ she said, her voice low and ominous. The voice she kept for men with wandering hands and recalcitrant contractors – often the same beast. ‘You don’t know her. You don’t know what she wants.’

  He crossed his arms and Julia caught a glimpse of maturity. Of the man he might be one day. If he ever got himself a haircut and a proper job.

  ‘Maybe I know her better than you think?’

  Julia stared at him. He had to be kidding. He’d known her for less than a week. She couldn’t decide whether she should laugh or have the men in white coats come for him. If it hadn’t felt so serious, so gladiatorial, she’d have chosen laughter. Here they were in the hospital of the damned, marking their territory.

  The lift arrived and the doors opened. He gestured for her to precede him. If he tried to lift his leg on her in here she was going to neuter him.

  She walked to the back and turned to face him as the door slid shut, stuffing all the anger and grief back down inside. It was time for a different tack. ‘Listen, Ten …’

  He laughed then, a harsh noise that echoed around the confines of the metal box that seemed too flimsy to contain their antagonism. ‘Are you seriously going to call me Ten?’

  ‘Are you seriously going to call me Jules?’

  He shrugged. ‘It suits you.’

  It was Julia’s turn to laugh. If her mother was here she’d be reaching for her Xanax.

  ‘In a Pulp Fiction kind of way.’

  ‘I’m a black hit man to you?’

  He rested his butt against the back wall. ‘You’re the most terrifying white woman I’ve ever known.’

  A grudging kind of smile tugged at the corner of Julia’s mouth. Good. Now that he was sufficiently scared of her, it was time for her to employ the first part of speak softly and carry a big stick.

  ‘Look,’ she said, sidling a little closer to him in the lift. ‘I understand this wasn’t what you bargained for when some cute girl at the café dared you to jump out of a plane with her. You were in it for thrills and sex and you got breast-cancer girl, her terrifying friend and her flaky mother. That’s above and beyond. And I totally get you’re here because you’d feel like some louse if you left her now, but it’s okay, she’s going to be fine, I’m going to take good care of her. And … if you’re short on cash at the moment, maybe I can help you out with that?’

  The lift dinged and bounced slightly as it touched down on the ground floor. ‘You’re trying to pay me off?’ he said incredulously as the doors opened.

  Julia grimaced in the same way she’d seen her mother do a hundred times when anyone was vulgar enough to mention money out loud. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Think of it as a kind of thank you for helping Poppy out with some of her list.’

  He stared at her for a few seconds. ‘Please do not be offended when I tell you this, but—’ he pushed off the back wall, ‘—fuck off, Jules.’

  Unoffended, Julia scurried out of the lift after him. ‘The longest relationship you had was seven weeks. I was there when you said it. And while I may have been resoundingly drunk, even then I thought you were being economical with the truth. Do you think she needs her heart broken while she’s trying to fight this?’

  ‘I think she needs to be loved.’

  ‘Oh. You love her now?’ Julia scoffed. ‘After a week?’

  His step faltered. ‘I meant that in a generic sense,’ he clarified. ‘I think she’s going to need all the support, all the love she can get, Jules.’

  Julia felt the hot scald of tears again. She didn’t need him to tell her about what Poppy did and didn’t need. ‘Oh I’ll just bet you do.’

  Ten paused mid-stride. ‘Because you have her best interests at heart, I’m going to pretend you didn’t imply I’m only in this for the sex.’

  He took off again and Julia followed. Her father used to say she was like a dog with a bone. But today she was ten times worse. Today she was Mamma Bear with a bone.

  ‘So you’re up for all this, are you? For Poppy only having one breast and the pain and recovery and the body-image crap that’s sure to go with it? For when she’s throwing up from chemo and losing her hair and too damn weary to lift her head off the pillow let alone service your needs. You don’t get to love and leave this girl. She’s not one of your groupies and I swear to god,’ Julia grabbed his arm and they halted in the middle of the foyer. ‘You break her heart and that band of yours will be looking for a new lead because you’ll only be singing soprano.’

  ‘Noted,’ he said and jerked out of her grasp.

  * * *

  Half an hour later Scarlett stood up from her seat. ‘I’m going to get some air,’ she announced. ‘All this tension and sickness is messing with my chi.’

  Julia, used to such pronouncements, barely acknowledged the statement. Ten looked like he was going to say something but nodded politely instead.

  As Scarlett swept out two nurses entered. ‘Goodness, you’re both still here,’ one of them said. She was a tall, willowy bottle-blonde in her mid-twenties, who had introduced herself earlier as Nina.

  Her comment seemed more an accusation than a statement of fact.

  Where else would they be?

  The shorter, older one smiled at them. ‘Just going to do some obs and give her some antibiotics,’ she said almost apologetically in a soothing Irish lilt.

  Julia was relieved that Scarlett had already left. She didn’t have the wherewithal to endure a lecture on the evils of unnatural chemicals. Maybe her chi had sensed the impending doom.

  They checked Poppy’s armband together with Poppy barely stirring.

  ‘Do you think … Is she okay?’ Julia asked. ‘She hasn’t moved.’

  ‘She’s just had a major operation,’ Blondie said, peering down her nose at them.
Then she checked her watch and said, ‘We have strict visiting hours here and they finish in five minutes.’

  Julia was so gobsmacked at the distinct lack of caring in the nurse’s voice she was rendered speechless. She must have been out pulling wings off flies the day they’d taught bedside manner. There was nothing warm and fuzzy about her. By the time Julia had roused herself enough to tell Blondie there was no way she was leaving this hospital unless it was on the inside of a paddy wagon, visiting hours or not, the nurse was out the door.

  Julia stared after her, mouth open.

  A hand slid onto her shoulder and gave a little squeeze. ‘It’s alright,’ the soothing Irish voice crooned. ‘We don’t like her much either and she’s off in a jiffy.’

  Julia, her eyes glassy from the sting of such casual heartlessness at a time when she’d never felt so frightened and so in need of assurance, gave a half-laugh. ‘I think she needs to get laid.’

  ‘Ooh no. I’m pretty sure she only gives the fellas five minutes, too.’

  Julia laughed genuinely this time and the nurse, who introduced herself as Siobhan, joined in. ‘I’ll shut the door on the way out.’ Another squeeze to the shoulder. ‘Give you all some privacy. Just push the buzzer if you need anything.’

  She left then, closing them in as promised, and Julia felt relieved knowing that Siobhan was in Poppy’s corner.

  ‘You okay?’

  Julia glanced across the bed. They hadn’t spoken since Ten had pulled away from her. ‘Fine. Thank you.’

  They lapsed back into silence, Ten taking up his meditative state over Poppy’s hand. It wasn’t until Poppy moved her other hand a few moments later that Julia became aware she was awake. ‘Poppy?’

  Ten looked up then he stood. ‘Poppy?’

  Poppy ignored both of them. The flat of her hand slowly moved up her body over the top of the bedding until it reached the place her breast had been since she hit puberty. It groped the empty space as if searching for it.