‘How did you choose this one?’ was the reply I eventually went with. I didn’t want to come across as overly saccharine; I figured bluntness with a drop of curiosity might work better.
He still hadn’t responded, but I hoped he would. I just needed him to let his guard down, to trust me just enough to let me in.
‘For the love of God, Ruth, turn that shit off,’ Ben said, yanking me out of yet another deep-swirling, all-absorbing vortex of thoughts. I wasn’t sure what he was referring to at first, but then I saw him jabbing a finger towards that old television unit in the corner of the room, the nasal-voiced presenter clearly didn’t find his own voice frankly as nettlesome as we did.
‘They make it sound like it’s not actually real people being killed. All they do, all day long, is talk about this disgusting cretin like it’s celebrity gossip,’ Ben said cantankerously. ‘I bet we’re missing some major news as well, Wetherspoons might have started a political party, China could be invading Taiwan, Claudia Winkleman might become prime minister and we’d never know. All they’re interested in is a murderer,’ he grumbled before spluttering a cough. ‘Blockheads,’ he managed to say through a series of throaty hacks and expectorates. Maybe he was right about thetumour changing his personality; it was like he had accelerated into a grumpy old codger in only a matter of days.
I glanced around for the remote and watched Ben’s face shift from anger to a kind of invigorated determination. He hauled himself upright, gripping the IV stand for balance, and padded carefully across the hospital floor in his bright red compression socks. I’d warned him to take it easy multiple times over the past ninety minutes, but he’d brushed me off every time, saying whatever pre-chemo medication they’d administered had given him a sudden buzz of energy. I wondered if he truly hated the news presenting style or if he was causing such a fuss to protect me in some way from having to hear about the TellTale Killer. While he may not have known how deeply I’d gotten myself mixed up in this, he knew listening to this wouldn’t exactly be soothing for my soul.
I had tried to reach out to Chlo with an apology, hoping she’d reply so we could talk about anything – even the price of a Tesco Meal Deal – to try and take my mind off things, but she didn’t respond. I told myself she might have missed it, though I suspected a quiet friend break-up, it had been almost a week since our double date.
After a few laps of the hospital room to try and get some feeling back into his legs, Ben shuffled back to his chair and quietly pulled what looked like a small glass bottle out of his blazer pocket.
‘Is that whisky?’ I asked, astonished.
Ben pressed a finger to his lips as he poured a small measure into his plastic hospital cup and took a sip.
‘I read somewhere it helps with chemo, so I make sure I never leave the house without it now. I’m just glad Bill has so much, he’d never notice a missing bottle.’
I scoffed at his brazen nonchalance but couldn’t help the scowl that came with realising he wasn’t taking his treatment half as seriously as he should.
Not only was I dealing with the grief and trauma of watching someone I loved endure a terminal illness, but I also had Ben withan overly forced cheerfulness informing me that chemo had turned his wee a bright neon colour, ‘like blue Lucozade shooting out of my dick’ as he so eloquently put it. Which, frankly, was not information I needed in my life.
‘Just don’t let Bill see, I think he’d hit the roof if he knew you were drinking during chemo,’ I said, trying to hold back an exasperated guffaw.
‘You know he wants to get married,’ Ben said, just as I’d finally willed myself back to focus on the most boring book ever written rather than lecture him on safe alcohol consumption.
‘Oh, wow,’ I replied, caught a little off kilter by how casually he’d dropped that bombshell onto his ex-wife. ‘I mean, congratulations? I guess.’
‘I don’t want to get married,’ he grumbled curtly to me in response.
‘Oh,’ I said, feeling a bit perplexed again but trying to sound sincere in my response. ‘Then… good choice? Well done? Congratulations, again? I mean, I don’t know the right response here.’
‘It’s just…’ His gaze drifted to the IV as he fiddled with the drip, stopping when the nurse glanced over and shot him a scornful look as if he’d been caught with his hands down his pants. ‘We always said we’d never get married, that I’d done it already, and it wasn’t us. And now, out of nowhere, Bill is saying he wants to go out and buy engagement rings. Like, I know he’s going just as crazy as I am, but he must know he doesn’t need a ring on his finger to get my life insurance payout. He’s already pencilled in.’
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or not at that comment, so I just gave his knee a light, comforting pat.
‘It’s like he’s trying to cram a lifetime’s worth of relationship into what little time we’ve got left, Ruth. It’s exhausting, frankly. He’s been talking about going to an all-inclusive in Cancun, about following AC/DC on tour, asked if I’d like to go bungee jumping. I’m afraid of heights!’ he exclaimed. ‘The man’s gone insane. I don’t think I’d do any of those things even if I lived to ninety.’
God, death really does make us all a bit loopy.
‘How are you feeling about the whole treatment process? It can’t be easy,’ I asked him. In that moment, I wasn’t thinking about the TellTale Killer or the tangle of emotions I was wrestling with; I was thinking only of the man I’d known for so long, trying to come to terms with the multitude of cancer cells swirling poisonously around his brain. He spoke about it only with a kind of artificial optimism that anyone who knew him well could see was a deflection.
He didn’t respond to me at first. He just sat there, still and quiet, mulling things over like he wasn’t entirely sure himself.
‘I’ve been thinking about what to have as an epitaph,’ Ben said eventually, yet again, skirting the question. ‘I quite like, “£100 buried here, yours if you dig deep enough.”’
‘Oh, stop,’ I said, rolling my eyes, not even dignifying that with a forced laugh this time. I wasn’t about to point out that there wasn’t much sense in spending too much time on finding the right words for his headstone. It wasn’t like he’d ever get the joy of reading it himself.
‘I’ve started planning a funeral, though, got some ideas that I’ll run by you at some point,’ he remarked; interesting conversational pivot. But no, before you ask, unfortunately Camborne and Sons didn’t offer mates’ rates.
‘It’s just to make things easier for everyone else, really,’ Ben continued. ‘Do you have thoughts on burial or cremation? Which one is cheaper?’
‘I don’t really think it matters in all honesty, Ben,’ I said, sounding more morose than I’d intended. But it was how I felt, nothing lasts forever, right? So, what’s the point in caring about a leaving do you can’t even enjoy. It was like what Greta told me on the day she died, what was the word? Wabi-sabi? A whole concept about accepting that things aren’t permanent, everything will at some point, wither and die.
‘I think I’ve realised, strangely, that it’s not death that scares me most,’ Ben posited.
‘What is it, then?’ I asked when he didn’t follow up immediately to his own trail of thought.
