Omega

Two days had passed. I’d been back at the hospital with Tanya on both of them, doing a lot of sitting around in between various neurological tests that had exhausted me. No Owain in that time, I was certain, just Tanya tending to me. She was feeling the strain. Which wasn’t surprising.

“Anything I can do?” I called up the stairs.

“It’s all under control. Take a look at the meat if I’m not out in twenty minutes. Otherwise, just behave yourself. Stay away from the knives and forks.”

I heard the bathroom door close, the key turn in the lock.

I couldn’t bring myself to face up to what must be happening. It was too threatening, too frightening to contemplate. I had to stay calm, be as mentally strong as possible. Root myself in the here and now as firmly as I could.

I went back into the dining room and began fiddling with the napkins in the wineglasses. I squared and re-squared the place mats, mad"3">Twor adjustments to the chairs. On the mantelpiece there was a photograph of Tanya’s wedding day. I refused to scrutinise it, registering only the flowing but unfussy cream dress, the slimmer-than-ever figure in a navy suit, church ivy framing them.

Tanya and Geoff had married within six months of returning from California. Tanya sold her grandmother’s house and they bought a venerable place in Twickenham. To me, the sales marked the end of our student era, but at least they were now living relatively close. There was the prospect of seeing Tanya more frequently.

Shortly before they returned Tanya sent a postcard congratulating us on Sara’s birth. I don’t know how she found out. The card contained no hint that they might soon be returning to the UK. But one Saturday morning the phone rang and it was Tanya’s voice at the other end of the line, telling me they were home, that they themselves were getting married in the New Year.

I still remember vividly the circumstances of the call. I was reading the colour supplement in an armchair right next to the phone. When I picked it up and said my name, the response was: Guess who?

Of course I recognised her instantly, despite the faint American lilt to her accent. At some point Lyneth came in from the garden and sat down on the sofa opposite me. She looked on with interest, a pair of secateurs in her hand, as Tanya and I brought our respective lives up to date. We kept it brief but ended with Tanya promising she would call again soon. We should get together and she hoped very much that we would come to the wedding.

I told Lyneth that I’d been talking to an old friend from university whom I hadn’t seen in over three years. Without rancour or suspicion she asked me if it was the same woman I’d been seeing as a student.

The phone in the hall was ringing. I picked it up, said, “Hello?”

A silence, followed by a fumbling, as if the receiver had been dropped. Finally a voice said, “Yo, bro.”

“Rees?”

“The one and only. We still on for tonight?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. It occurred to me that Tanya must have invited him to dinner. That was why the table had been set for four. But because I wasn’t certain, and because I wanted to avoid embarrassment I said, “What time did she say?”

“Seven.”

Rees sounded quite definite. Which was a relief in more than one sense.

“Seven it is,” I told him.

“Better get my skates on. Might be bringing someone else.”

“What?”

He had already hung up.

I tried to ring him back but the line was engaged. He was often hard to contact on the phone; he had no mobile and spent hours on the internet when he wasn’t deliberately leaving the phone off the hook.

I couldn’t recall whether I’d seen him since the hospital visit. I thought not. It was impossible to guess what his current state of mind might be. There were times when he could be perfectly normal, times when he flipped between sanity and the skewed world of his illness.

When had he and Tanya first met? Certainly not during my university days. Or in the years afterwards when we’d seen one another clandestinely. Perhaps they’d met at the hospital. And now she was inviting him to her home. To help me, no doubt.

A few months after Tanya’s return the four of us finally met up at a restaurant. Tanya was wearing her hair in an unfamiliar pageboy bob, while Geoff had shed two stone and was dressed in chinos and a button-down shirt so that he looked five years younger. Unsurprisingly they were both Americanised, though lightly so.

The atmosphere was friendly enough on the surface, but with an undertone of tension, much of it emanating from Lyneth. She was scrupulously polite but cool in her responses to Tanya’s queries about Sara, whom Lyneth had insisted on bringing and who remained asleep in her buggy throughout. Geoff was his usual jovial self, which eased matters. Some of the talk inevitably focused on their wedding preparations, and Geoff startled me by asking me to be his best man. I hedged, feeling like a churl.