When Jake died, Si, as always, shut down, and even when he came out of hibernation he still found it difficult to talk about him. We’d all learned to leave the subject alone unless Si brought it up, which he rarely did.
But tonight it’s as if the floodgates have opened. Si talks about how much he loved Jake, and then, later, sheds more tears as he remembers his illness, his pain, and sobs in my arms as he cries that he does not want to go through this.
There is nothing I can say. I am still numbed by the horror of it all, because, out of all of us, Si is, or I should say, was, the most careful. He was the one who would shout at me on the rare occasions I got carried away by the moment, forgetting the condom in the heat of passion.
When Si eventually leaves, I sit for a very long time on my sofa, and I do something I have not done for years. I pray. I, who have not believed in God since I was a little girl, who do not believe in religion, sit there with my eyes clenched tightly shut, and I pray that if there is someone out there, then he must make Si be negative.
I pray and I pray, and I offer a few disjointed lines from the Lord’s Prayer, half remembered from school assembly all those years ago, in the hope that this will appease any God that may be up there. I even offer myself up for sacrifice.
‘I will do anything,’ I pray, ‘anything you want, as long as you make Si well.’
After a while there is nothing more to be said, and I climb under the covers in bed, closing my eyes and praying for a quick and dreamless sleep, but nobody hears that particular prayer, and I lie wide awake for hours, thinking about Si and wondering how I’m going to cope.
The phone rings at eight o’clock the next morning. Si tells me to get my skates on, as he’ll be picking me up in fifteen minutes to go to the clinic. I ring the bookshop and leave a message on the answer phone, telling Lucy I’m going to be in late as I’m not feeling well and am off to the doctors, but that I’ll call her later. I figure that after the test, when the results come back negative, I can always explain my late start away with a stomach bug.
Si sounded suspiciously cheerful when he phoned, and when he eventually arrives I look at him with concern, my head slightly cocked to one side, and I ask gently, ‘How are you?’
‘Oh God,’ he moans, raising his eyes to the heavens. ‘Don’t you start already.’
‘What? What have I done?’
‘That sympathetic look. The cocked head. “How are you?” ’ He imitates cruelly, accurately, and I apologize and laugh.
And all the way to the clinic Si seems in great spirits. If I didn’t know better, I would think we were going out for breakfast, or for a walk in the park, and we talk about everything but the main event until we actually arrive.
Even then, looking for a meter, driving around until Si spots someone leaving and nips in to steal their space, even then we both avoid talking about it. It’s only as we reach the building, as we climb slowly up the steps to the entrance and ring on the doorbell, because it’s so early, only then does my breath catch in my throat, does the colour drain from Si’s face.
We are shown into a front-facing waiting room. Slightly shabby, rather gloomy. I note that piled on a coffee table are old, faded copies of Hello!, OK!, various glossy magazines, and I wonder whether it helps people take their mind off the results, to read these magazines, or whether they are far too frightened to pick them up in the first place.
A nurse comes in. Australian. She is bustling, matter-of-fact, smiling, and I think that whoever employed her is a wise person indeed, for she is exactly the sort to make you feel comfortable. Despite her youth she clucks like a mother hen, even while handing Si a form on a clipboard to fill in.
He picks up the pen to complete the form and I see that he is shaking. Normally, knowing how much Si loves forms, I would giggle with him over the questions. Many’s the time Si has saved junk mail, only because it contains a questionnaire, and for years he would make me save the surveys in the glossy magazines, because he just loves answering those questions.
But this form is different. And now is not the time to comment, to make a joke, to say anything at all. He ticks the boxes silently, chewing on his lower lip slightly, which surprises me, as I have never seen him do this before. When he is done, he stands up and hands it to the nurse just outside the door.
‘The doctor won’t be a moment, love,’ she says. ‘He’ll come out and get you in a second.’
And less than a minute later a door at the other end of the waiting room opens, and a young, dark-haired man in a white coat comes out, clutching the clipboard and looking at Si with a smile. The doctor.
‘Please come in.’ Si stands up and just as he turns to go he holds my gaze and I nod because there is still nothing to say, and he walks to the door, which shuts behind him.
Now I understand why they have copies of the magazines. I flick through Hello!, glancing at the photographs but barely taking them in, tapping my right foot quickly on the floor, a nervous habit that hasn’t plagued me for ten years.
The door of the clinic opens again, and a girl comes in, young, pretty, trendy, and the nurse hands her the clipboard and she sits opposite me, head down, deep in concentration, and she looks so calm, so together, I wonder what circumstances might have brought someone like her here.
But of course, I mentally kick myself. AIDS, HIV, does not necessarily choose its victims because of their sex or their sexuality. I am reminded of a story I heard a long time ago, when we had just left university, when everyone laughed at the government campaign, the warnings of a worldwide epidemic. Not us, we thought. Never us.
A student from our university who had had two lovers. One, a long-term relationship of two years, and then, just after they broke up, a summer fling with a boy a couple of years older.
And then, a year or so later, she started to feel ill. Nothing serious, just tiredness, a few headaches, swollen glands. The doctor offered her an HIV test, just so they could rule out the possibility, he said with a smile, just so they could firmly discount it, and she laughed, because how on earth could she possibly have HIV?
The test came back positive. It seems the summer fling had unknowingly contracted it from someone who had slept with someone who had caught it from who knows where.
I don’t remember the girl’s name. I remember she was a friend of a friend, not someone I actually knew, but someone I could well have known. Someone who would have been at the same balls, the same parties, walked down the corridors of the same halls of residence.
Someone, in fact, much like me. And mostly I remember being shocked that someone like me could contract HIV, because of course that wasn’t supposed to happen.
But we now know it does happen. I sneak furtive peeks at this girl, this girl scribbling on the clipboard, and I know that she is just as susceptible as Si. And then I check my watch.
Twenty minutes. Why is this taking so long? And, just as I think that, the door opens and Si walks back into the waiting room.
‘Well?’ I try to gauge the result from his expression, but there is no result, not for another hour or so.
Si shrugs, and we huddle together for privacy, as the door has now opened again and the waiting room no longer feels quite so safe. ‘He was lovely,’ he says, almost in a whisper. ‘Not at all what I expected. He’s worked with people with HIV and AIDS for five years, and was very calm, very matter-of-fact. I almost feel normal.’