“Sure.” I am a tiny bit concerned that he’d prefer to run rather than have sex, but I go and pull my running gear on, lace my feet into my trainers, pocket my phone, and overcome my regret that I just shared a part of my soul with George and he couldn’t have cared less.
He stretches, clicks the timer on his watch, and sets off at a pace the moment we leave my flat. I jog along behind him as thenight settles into a light drizzle. I’m a fair-weather friend and really hate running in rain, but I keep going. George is a few paces ahead of me and the music on my earpods is interrupted by the sound of my ringtone. I stop, slide to answer my phone, but pause as I see it’s a +1 number. My heart lurches. It’s not Davey. It would say if it was Davey’s mobile number, but it’s a US number and I immediately think of Davey. I don’t answer. I look up to tell George that I’m stopping for a sec, but he’s long gone—no backward glance at me. I don’t think he notices I’ve stopped.
The caller is going to ring off if I don’t do something about this and so, reluctantly, my heart racing, I answer it.
“Hello?” In my heart of hearts, I really want this to be Davey. I know that now. I’m scared itishim. I’m scared it’s not.
“Hey,” someone with a faintly Australian accent says. “Hannah?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“It’s…Grant, Davey’s friend, do you remember? I messaged you a while back when he came out of surgery and I’ve still got your number,” he states, obviously.
“Yes, I do remember.” I glance around to find a park bench and walk quickly over to one. I need to sit. Why is Grant phoning me? I hesitate, as cold fear rains down on me. The worst has happened and I don’t want to ask the next question, but I do. “Davey’s dead, isn’t he?”
“What? No,” Grant says.
Relief floods through me so fiercely that I make a strange noise in the back of my throat and feel tears form behind my eyes. “Oh God,” I cry and the tears fall. “I’m so sorry,” I say between tears. “I really thought…I thought that’s why you were ringing me.”
“No.” His voice is soothing and kind. “No, he’s not dead. But, Hannah, I think he is going to die and I don’t know what to do. He doesn’t want to go through with his final round of chemo. I’veshouted, I’ve pleaded. I have nothing left. I don’t know what to do,” he says again and I can hear the despair in his voice. I’m quiet. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do, either.
“Are you still there?” Grant asks me.
“Yes.”
“If he doesn’t go through with this, everything that he’s just been through will be for nothing. Can you help?” Grant asks.
“How?”
“Can you…call him?”
I shake my head, although Grant can’t see me. “He doesn’t want that. He made it clear I wasn’t to contact him again.”
“He really liked you” is all Grant has to say about that.
“I don’t think he likes me now” is my retort. “Or else he wouldn’t have…gotten rid of me, told me not to contact him.”
“Are you kidding?” Grant says. “He really liked you. He talked of nothing else but you. You and he would be curled up somewhere in London, freezing your asses off together right now, if it wasn’t for…”
“The cancer,” I finish for him.
“The cancer,” he repeats. “Which is gonna kill him if he doesn’t have that final treatment. Not today. Or tomorrow. But in a year, two years. I have to do something. This is the something I’m doing: I’m begging you. You are all I have left. You are all Davey has left to convince him. Even evil-fucking-Charlotte is on his side, feeding him the poison he wants to hear. Now you have to do something.”
Who the hell is evil-fucking-Charlotte? “There have got to be other people more qualified to talk to him than me. Doctors? His parents even?”
“Please, Hannah,” Grant pleads and I suspect he’s crying. “He was my only friend when I moved over from England. We’ve been best friends ever since. I can’t lose him, Hannah.”
Davey will die. Even if we aren’t together, a world without Davey in it strikes fear into me and I feel tears behind my eyes again.
“I’m not sure what I can do.”
“You have to try. Please, Hannah, I’m begging you. For Davey.”
—
I’m going to have to swallow any sense of pride I have left. I have to try. My stomach twists and I feel my kale dinner on its way back up again.
But first I need to call my dad. He’s a GP. He’ll know what to say. I glance up at the sky. The rain has stopped and I am quite damp now, but I hardly notice.
