The Night We Met Read online

  Also by Zoë Folbigg

  The Note

  The Distance

  The Postcard

  THE NIGHT WE MET

  Zoë Folbigg

  AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS

  www.ariafiction.com

  This edition first published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Zoë Folbigg, 2021

  The moral right of Zoë Folbigg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN:

  Paperback: 9781838930691

  eBook: 9781789542141

  Cover design © Leah Jacobs-Gordon

  Aria

  c/o Head of Zeus

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.ariafiction.com

  For Doc

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Two

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Part Three

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Epilogue

  Loved The Night We Met? Then read on for a sneak peak of The Distance…

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Acknowledgements (TK)

  About the Author

  Become an Aria Addict

  Part One

  One

  September 2018

  Cambridgeshire, England

  ‘Olivia Messina’, said the red writing on a white board, above a pillow strewn in billowing hair. The script was fat, as if the magic marker had been lumbered upon with a heavy arm and a carefree hand as it pressed against the wall-mounted board. Fibres splayed. The jovial cursive script said more about the nurse who wrote it than the patient in the bed. The jolly writing didn’t say that Olivia Messina was dying.

  Cables and tubes went into veins and came out of cannulas. A machine beeped. A drip hung from a stand. A small rectangular bag poked out of the sheets from halfway down the side of the bed, its contents the same sepia shade as Olivia’s freckles. Her husband Daniel tried not to look at the bag, he didn’t like to think about how it was attached to his wife with a catheter. He didn’t like to think about how dehydrated she was. The bag revealed too much. That time might be running out. Daniel didn’t want to consider that, not when he was working so hard to find a solution.

  A Glaswegian nurse called Fraser, a stout man with grey eyebrows and a dour charm, wearing a white tunic and a weathered smile, pushed his trolley full of pills and potions onto the ward. The squeak of four small wheels, under the weight of remedies and responsibility, announced his arrival. The cart creaked rhythmically as Fraser pushed it from its back end like an upright piano he didn’t mind bumping. Bottles, scales, notebooks and clipboards hung from the trolley’s ledges and edges, recording the inventory of his medicinal comings and goings. He gave Daniel and Olivia a nod as he passed her bed, noting the newspaper on Daniel’s lap.

  ‘Evening squire,’ Fraser said. ‘Don’t read me that match report, will ya? I can’t relive it.’

  ‘Evening Fraser,’ Daniel nodded back, while the crumpled sports section fell in a whisper to the floor. ‘Shall I read you the Liverpool one instead? Mané and Firmino. Two beauties…’

  ‘Get outta here!’ Fraser said as he rolled his eyes.

  Of all the consultants, nurses, radiographers and carers the family had met in the past – hideous – year, Daniel liked this apothecary the best. He wasn’t quite sure why; they had come across some amazing medics along the journey from Ibiza to Addenbrooke’s via Queen Square in London – but Fraser had a certain no-nonsense wit about him, an honesty to his compassion.

  He didn’t cock his head to one side when he asked Olivia how she was. He looked her straight in the eye, with the acerbic sparkle of his. He had pathos and patience, and talked to Olivia as a woman, not a cancer patient. His broad shoulders looked like they could weather anything for the Messina Bleeker family, that he would dig out his old boxing gloves and fight the fight for them, if only he could.

  Fraser was a challenge to comprehend, but when Daniel could translate his thick Glaswegian tones and keep up with the fast and industrious pace at which he spoke, both men would come alive in conversation about politics, Brexit and sport. Fraser loved that Daniel knew as much about Scottish football as he; and he liked to jibe him for being one of those southern Liverpool fans.

  ‘I was born in the shadows of Firhill Stadium you know,’ Fraser told Daniel about his beloved Partick Thistle.

  ‘I supported Liverpool through thick and thin,’ Daniel would counter. ‘Not just the Eighties.’

  ‘Ach, gauen yersel!’ Fraser would reply with a ruffian’s smirk.

  Fraser was solid, reliable, always dishing out pills at regular intervals, and the squeaking of his wheels brought respite and cheer from the turgid beeping of machines.

  *

  ‘I’ll be back to see you in a bit, Botticelli,’ Fraser said to Olivia with a wry smile. She closed her eyes. He had nicknames for all the patients. Portland Bill. Posh Spice. Agatha Christie. The Don. He called Olivia ‘Botticelli’ because her Renaissance-red hair reminded him of an Italian masterpiece. ‘Just goin to see The Diva over there,’ he said, as he clicked his pen and tucked it into his tunic pocket. Daniel picked the sports pages up from the floor and Fraser shook his head.

  ‘Should never have been a goal,’ he muttered under his breath, as he unlocked the brake and continued to the woman at the end of the ward with brown skin, high
cheekbones and a black and gold turban.

  Daniel waved languidly as Fraser dished out his pilules and potions to the woman with one breast.

  Olivia turned her head slowly, across the plump pillow it was slumped on, to look at Daniel. He gazed back like a tired and adoring child and mentally noted how Olivia looked both young and old. The mole at the end of her lip; her rich olive skin; the cascade of hair – they usually made her look youthful and vibrant. But her skin was paper-thin and pale, wrinkled beyond the laughter lines. Today she looked ten years older than she was.

  She squeezed Daniel’s hand.

  ‘We’ve hit rock bottom huh?’ she said thoughtfully, the once flame-freckled lids of her eyes closing and opening in slow blinks.

  Daniel smiled, sat up and rearranged Olivia’s hair so she didn’t get hot. The open window enabled air to channel through the propped doors of the ward, but it was warm, the tail end of summer making both their brows bead with a slight sweat. He pushed her hair back off her face.

  Rock bottom.

  It had been a long time since Daniel first heard Olivia say that, but he sighed and smiled, awash with relief, to see a spark of humour.

  She remembers.

  Although English was Olivia’s mother’s mother tongue, Olivia grew up in Italy with English as a second language. Despite her fluency, she sometimes got things wrong – much to the amusement of Daniel and their daughters.

  ‘Budgie up!’ Olivia would say if she wanted to squeeze in on the sofa.

  ‘It’s a doggy dog world,’ she would tell Flora, if she didn’t get the part she wanted in the school play.

  ‘Don’t pop your clocks,’ she would snap, when she wanted someone to calm down.

  Rock bottom.

  ‘This isn’t rock bottom, my love,’ Daniel said. His face handsome and earnest. ‘Look around you, all this brilliant treatment! Not just Fraser and his wagon. The research Mimi is doing. The diet I’ve got everything ready for at home. I’ve been juicing like a bastard – even Flora liked the spinach and apple one I made yesterday. This is just the start.’

  Olivia looked at Daniel with the same comforting smile she gave their youngest daughter Sofia, and stroked the hair on his forearm with her bony hand.

  ‘“Crazy, sexy juicing” or whatever it’s called isn’t going to help me Daniel. You need to accept it.’

  He swallowed.

  ‘Don’t be so negative. Elisabeth, at work – the health editor – she forwarded me something about a study in Nature. Some experimental drug that can inhibit cells from spread—’

  A slight woman with lighter red hair, in a soft basin-like style, walked back into the ward to Olivia’s bed by the open doors.

  ‘Got them!’ she interrupted, thrusting a notebook and pen into the air.

  ‘It’s called AMD 3100 apparently…’ Daniel added in hushed tones, quickly trying to sneak it in, so Olivia knew about the breakthrough but his mother-in-law wouldn’t get carried away before he’d had the chance to do more research.

  Olivia looked at her mother and smiled gratefully, her prettiest of noses crinkling at the bridge. She looked more galvanised by the pen and notepad Nancy had just brought her, more eager to prop herself on her pillow and sit up, than she was by talk of miracle cures, curative juices and new drug cocktails Daniel had been trying to drop into conversation.

  Nancy put the pen and notepad on the thin wooden table that lay across the bed and gestured to Olivia to sit forward.

  ‘There you go, love,’ she said as she plumped up the crisp pillows. Nancy was both matronly and warm, a small woman in mustard trousers and a burgundy shirt, a thin silk scarf tied around her pale, wrinkled neck, despite the warm evening.

  ‘It’s not for me!’ Olivia laughed wanly. ‘It’s for him!’ She gestured to Daniel. ‘The pen and notepad.’

  ‘Oh, I thought you wanted it,’ Nancy said, puzzled. ‘For lists and things.’ Her Edinburgh accent was soft and rolling, and so different to Fraser’s.

  ‘No, it’s for Daniel.’

  ‘For me?’ Daniel rubbed his eyes and tried to hide his sleepiness. He wasn’t the one in hospital. ‘I’ve got my laptop!’

  Olivia nodded, her hair tumbling, and some colour seemed to capture across her cheeks again, excited by the prospect of her idea.

  ‘For you! A separate journal. So you can write our story. For the girls. I always wanted to tell them our story. You know, properly.’

  ‘Our story?’

  Daniel looked from Nancy to Olivia in bewilderment. ‘You can tell the girls our story.’

  ‘No I can’t. I don’t have time.’

  Two

  Nancy stopped plumping up the pillows behind her daughter’s head and froze.

  ‘I’ll go refill that water jug,’ she said, fussing and distracting herself from the water welling up in her eyes.

  Olivia and Daniel watched Nancy walk into the corridor with the half-empty Britax jug, her gaze firmly on the nurses’ station ahead of her, the cooler next to it with its blue button offering the cold water Olivia preferred. Nancy liked to keep busy.

  Daniel frowned, his dark brows lowering over soft, khaki-coloured eyes.

  ‘You do! I’m going to get us more time.’

  ‘With what, spinach and apple juice?!’ Olivia had a mutinous look, but she tried to go easy on Daniel. ‘Really Dan—’

  ‘But I read a case study of one woman in Albuquerque or somewhere, she had it worse than you and they trialled this drug on her, plus changing her—’

  ‘Daniel!’ Olivia shot. Silencing him as she always could.

  Nancy walked back in with the water jug as Fraser finished tending to Dionne, who was far from a diva in her silent curtained chamber. The caustic colour of his pale eyes brightened a little.

  ‘Ah! Lady Spencer!’ Fraser smiled.

  ‘Good evening Fraser,’ Nancy replied.

  Fraser nodded to Olivia. ‘I’ll be back in a wee while with your Keppra meds, just heading to the men’s ward, see what those ne’er do wells are up to…’

  Nancy looked flustered.

  ‘I’ll leave you lovebirds to it then,’ Nancy said, a flush in her cheeks. As she said it, she didn’t recall the first time she uttered those words to Olivia and Daniel, at the threshold of a light and bright apartment in a bourgeois district of Milan. Daniel remembered though. He could never forget the feelings of awkwardness and hope – even if he hadn’t just seen them in Fraser. ‘I’d better get back to Maria and the girls, make sure they’re ready for “Back To School”,’ she said, making her fingers into inverted commas, as if it were a new holiday she didn’t approve of. ‘Honestly, the fuss in town today and having to have “new this” and “new that”,’ Nancy wittered, still keeping busy. She re-tied her silk neckerchief and smoothed down her tailored trousers, before kissing Olivia’s cheek and squeezing Daniel’s shoulder.

  ‘Say hi to Mamma for me,’ Olivia said. Olivia Messina was a curious case of having had two mothers from the day she was born.

  ‘Of course,’ Nancy replied. ‘She’ll come see you in the morning.’

  Olivia smiled.

  ‘Love you,’ Nancy said, towards the air between them both.

  ‘See you back at home,’ Daniel answered.

  *

  Daniel and Olivia looked at each other and almost blushed. Both were struck by the weird sensation of finally being alone and able to talk, as if they had both been taken back to the nerves of the apartment in Milan and this were the first night of the rest of their lives, even though Dionne The Diva was now asleep in her bed behind the curtain.

  I’ll leave you lovebirds to it then.

  But the giddiness stopped there.

  Daniel knew there was a quiet conversation to be resumed.

  With a shaky hand, Olivia took a sip of cold water and leaned back on her pillows.

  ‘Here, let me help.’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’

  The iciness of the cold water relieved her parched mouth but s
he couldn’t take in much liquid without feeling queasy, so she carefully placed the beaker back on the table. The queasiness had worsened over the past couple of days, making Olivia’s shrinking throat feel even more vulnerable, to gagging, to vomiting, to choking. The basic human function of swallowing was starting to become traumatic. Daniel wanted to tell Olivia about his research – all the brilliant hope he had found – but he knew she wanted to get back to the issue of the pen and notepad on the table. That seemed to excite her more.

  ‘Listen, I want you to write it up.’

  ‘Write what up?’

  ‘Our story.’

  ‘Really?’ Daniel sighed. He didn’t like this defeatist talk. As if Olivia wouldn’t be able to tell the girls herself. He was working, investigating, researching, day and night, and he was getting closer and closer.

  ‘Yes! You’re a writer. It’s best coming from you. Write down our love story, from the bottom of the world to the top of the Matterhorn.’

  She remembers.

  ‘It’s a cool story. I want the girls to know it all.’

  ‘All?’ Daniel raised a playful eyebrow that was quickly pulled back down by red-raw fibres and capillaries coming from his heart. Levers and pulleys, as if his inside was on the outside. He worried Olivia would see through him, see that he really was scared.

  ‘Why don’t you write it, while you’re stuck in here?’

  Daniel realised how clumsy that sounded. Olivia would struggle to hold a pen in a grip, she hadn’t been able to for weeks. ‘I could bring in my old laptop. It works perfectly well. Or your one if you’d prefer.’

  ‘I can’t, I’m too tired.’ Olivia struggled to swallow and picked up the beaker again. It was a beige sippy cup with the image of a raised bear on its barrel. The vessel had been used by kids with childhood cancers, men after throat surgery and centenarians who had outlived their partners by almost fifty years. Daniel hated the sippy cup. His 43-year-old wife should not be drinking from a sippy cup. ‘And you’re too tired. For now,’ she added, gingerly reaching her arm out to stroke his stubble with the back of her hand. ‘But you have time.’