Chapter 5

Suzanne had driven over herself so they parted outside the Pool. Andrew was still early for his penultimate shift at the Food Bank and it struck him that he was not far from the Sick Kids. With an unthinking resolve he got into the car and drove the 10 blocks or so to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, known universally as the Sick Kids. As he headed through the visitor’s doors and took the lift up to the wards the memories came flooding back, not overwhelming but definitely vivid. Andrew was unsure of the protocol and so stood outside the pediatric oncology ward wondering what to do. That hesitation was swept away as an older looking nurse, who he discovered was a ward sister, a senior nurse, approached him and asked what he was doing there, in a rather brusque, no nonsense manner. Andrew haltingly explained he had been a patient there five years before and wanted to see if he could provide hope or inspiration, or something like that. He finished his ramble, looked sheepish and shrugged. The sister’s attitude had softened remarkably as he stumbled through his story. She led him over to a small waiting room and asked him to sit for a minute.

“There is a process that we ask volunteers to go through before they come and sit with patients. While I am sure that nobody would ever deliberately upset someone in the ward, we have had occasional instances where someone has said the wrong thing. If you wait here I will go and find the volunteers leaflet explaining what you need to do.”

Andrew was not unhappy at having the moment of truth delayed but also knew that he would complete the form, or the Addenbrooke’s equivalent. The sister returned.

“Here you go. If you don’t mind me asking when were you a patient here and what was the particular cancer you were suffering from?”

“Almost exactly five years ago. I was diagnosed with skin cancer on my lower back and neither surgery nor radiation treatment worked. I ended up being transferred to the Infirmary for chemotherapy and it was not until the end of January I got the all clear.”

“Well it certainly did not stunt your growth, that’s for sure.”

Andrew chuckled with her.

“I am the poster child for following the diet and exercise instructions you provided. Lots of proteins, both vegetable and animal.”

He thanked the sister for her time and escaped from the hospital. He sat in the car feeling okay and not freaked out. He believed he could do this, so would head to Addenbrooke’s when he got to Cambridge to see if he could encourage someone or make a difference in an individual’s life. So Andrew ended up at the Food Bank early and got to work, lugging cases of beans or whatever over from the pallets to the sorting benches. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned and there were Gord and Dave.

“We know that you are not one for a fuss but we were chatting with Nikki and Fran last night on the drive home. You have done some amazing things Andrew. We are both died in the wool Labour men and it is only you that could have had us sharing a drink with a Tory MP. It was completely weird to be honest. I am not about to turn into a Tory but he seemed a decent bloke. And that Lord Barnes, he acted like you were his own son. Anyway, the party was good fun, with the oddest mixture of guests I will ever meet. And as Fran said in the car last night, we will be able to dine out on the tales of Andrew McLeod.”

He stopped and looked at Andrew.

“You really gave most of it away?”

Andrew nodded.

“Yeah, after tax the three of us split £7m or something close to that. The government got the same in tax and the other £25m is for cancer research.”

They both shook their heads.

“And you came here every Sunday afternoon. We will say cheerio next Sunday at the end of the shift but we wanted you to know that it is an amazing thing that you have done. That bloke that spoke, it was his daughter that died and drove you to do all this?”

“Yes it was. We were side by side in the ward, the two youngest people in the place. I got a reprieve and she didn’t. Her older sister is one of my closest friends.”

They drifted apart and the rest of the afternoon passed in a bit of a blur. Lots of bits of memories kept popping up but they were mostly good. The one thing Andrew did think about a lot was Lord Barnes’ behaviour. Dave and Gord were right, he was acting unusually and it was continuing, he wanted to see him again that week. Hmmm. When he got to the Campbell’s it was just Leslie and the four of them had dinner as usual. He was effusive in his thanks to Mary and Brian for allowing him to have the party at their house. He didn’t say it but they all knew that without them offering the party would have been cancelled. Andrew also thanked Brian for the speech the previous night but Brian looked oddly hesitant.

“I hope you are okay with me rather spilling the beans. I want to shout this from the rooftops sometimes but you have influenced Leslie and Julian so that they are like you and nobody really talks about the company, the Trusts or the money. I had too much to drink and I am sorry for blurting it out but it felt like the elephant in the room last night. How many people knew, 10?”

“A few more than that maybe. You three, Julian and his parents, Mhairi and Creighton. I had told Suzanne, Nikki and Fran. I don’t know if Julian or Leslie have told anyone. Julian senior had mentioned it, without naming amounts, to Lord Barnes.”

Andrew suddenly became aware that the three of them were staring intently at him.

“Er, what?”

“Do your parents not know about this Andrew?”

Ah.

“You were only 17 when the deals were signed. Please tell me you didn’t forge your dad’s signature.”

“No I didn’t do that. I downplayed the details and got Dad to sign the last page of the agreement.”

He could see they all had a million questions to ask but didn’t know how to phrase them. Brian just had to move on.

“Well there were a lot of shocked faces when I blurted out the amount. And we didn’t even get into the other fund that you have set up as well.”

He shook his head and seemed to sink in his chair slightly.

“Don’t worry about it Brian. I thought about it this morning while I was running and swimming. It is now history, and I am more excited about the future than I am about what I achieved in the past. This summer has been one long series of events signifying the end of my childhood. I am hugely proud of what the three of us achieved and the good that will come out of that but it is now done. None of us are carrying on with computing, we all seem to be needing a break from it. I sit and program odds and ends that catch my eye in a book or magazine. So I don’t care that you told everyone, it doesn’t change anything for me. How other people act towards me, maybe but there is nothing I can do about that. And two thirds of the people had left before you talked about it.

“Changing topics completely, I went to the Sick Kids this morning to find out about volunteering in the children’s cancer ward. Apparently, there is an application process you have to go through and a form to submit so I will get all of that sorted out at Addenbrooke’s next month. The interesting thing was I did not feel panicked or unsettled. I was nervous but other than that I felt okay. We will see when I am sitting bedside.”

Mary and Leslie took this and ran with it. Brian seemed out of sorts all night and Andrew figured Brian would tell him in his own time if he wanted to talk about it some more. After dinner Andrew and Leslie went up to her room to chat.

“Whew, I am sorry about Dad, I don’t know what is with him tonight. It seems like we have not done this forever. I am sorry that Julian and I got wrapped up in our own lives. It seems like it is six or seven weeks since you have been over and probably longer since it was just the two of us.”

The barriers fell away as they reconnected, they weren’t even barriers, just busy lives and the realisation that they were growing and changing. Leslie would be 23 the following month and her priorities were different. If Andrew had not had Suzanne to talk to then perhaps the transition would have seemed more jarring but in a lot of ways he and Suzanne were closer than he and Leslie ever were or could be. But this was still Leslie, the young woman who had played the key part in defining who he was, how he behaved, especially around women, and had anchored his goals for all these years.

Andrew insisted that she catch him up with all the news of her and Julian first before he unburdened himself on her. She had moved into Julian’s flat, with her parent’s blessing, and they were talking about buying a house by the summer. Andrew figured they would be engaged by then with the wedding the year after as soon as Julian graduated. Leslie was incredibly impatient to get started on actively managing both the Trusts. She had already laid out a plan for the year and expected that the three of them as trustees would have a meeting with the Imperial Cancer Research Fund during the Easter break so that they were ready to award grants by the summer. He smiled at her energy and determination, but was hoping and expecting to be a very passive Trustee. He would be involved but Leslie was driving this forward. Other than that Leslie was all loved up. She and Julian were compatible but sufficiently independent to not have to do everything together. She apologised again for being so out of it over the summer but Andrew waved it off. When you find ‘the one’ you are allowed some initial self-absorption.

He spent most of the next hour filling her in since they had last sat and chatted. The two weeks on the farm were easy and he had plenty of tales from the holiday in Italy but all the stuff that he and Suzanne discussed he kept private from Leslie. The change in their relationship, and the growth of the one with Suzanne, meant that some things were no longer going to be shared. It was the same with the modelling with Monica. He didn’t talk about that with anyone, although he was not sure why he kept it to himself. Leslie was taken aback when he told her he was now her near neighbour as he had bought a flat less than half a mile from Julian’s place, as much at the speed of the purchase as anything.

“Now I feel even worse that I have not been here for you. You would never have done something like that without talking about it with me and probably Dad first.”

“I talked to Suzanne and Mhairi so although it is relatively sudden it was not an impulse buy. I looked at the particulars of more than 20 places and went and viewed three. The one I bought is a nice two bed place, less than 50 metres from Warrender. I might get a lie in and still be finished my swim by 8.00.”

The mention of Suzanne did not go unnoticed but Leslie didn’t say anything. She just laughed when he told her he had completed his Level 2 coaching certificate the previous week, expecting nothing else.

“The one thing I would like to chat to you about is Lord Barnes, and his frankly odd behaviour. Now I ran into Freya Moray completely by accident outside the Central Library but when he turned up they invited me to dinner and frankly it was an offer that I couldn’t refuse. Now him coming to the party was entirely my own doing, I decided on the spur of the moment to invite him but it was only after a very sincere thank you from him for thawing out the relationship between him and Moira all those years ago. But yesterday he was ‘hail fellow well met’ with everyone, as if he had known them for years. Now I figured he would stand around with Julian’s dad, Rifkind the MP and maybe your dad. But he chatted to everyone, Gord and Dave, Nikki and Fran, and that everyone was so cool with them was great, he even chatted to Grandma and Mrs. Graves from the school library. It was like his goal was to meet everyone there. And then he started the storytelling. What am I missing here Leslie?”

She pondered this for a minute and Andrew could tell she was mentally rewinding parts of the evening in her head.

“It seems genuine Andrew, you can’t fake all that. There have been lots of coincidences in your meetings, most of them have been totally random, the dinner at the North British and two weeks ago being obvious examples. By the way, when I left everyone was talking about the dinner with Allison and the dress. It was the story of the night, well up until Dad talked later. But most of us had gone by then. Was Suzanne jealous that her night out wasn’t discussed as well?”

“No, in fact she was relieved. It was also just the two of us so there was not a raconteur to embellish the tale in subsequent retellings. They both admitted to telling the tale at dinner parties all over town.”

Leslie snorted in a mildly derisive way and carried on.

“I think it is nothing more than he likes you Andrew. He must get his arse kissed all the time from lawyers and so you are someone completely outside that world. He doesn’t have a son and is a widower with one grown daughter and I think that you provide an outlet for some of those father son feelings. I wouldn’t be surprised that he asks you to keep in touch, infrequently to be sure, but not just a Christmas card either.”

Andrew in turn thought about it and that made as much sense as anything else. Leslie carried on though.

“The one thing I do think that you have not realised is that you have a lot of powerful friends. Dad is a successful businessman and the other guys that he brought along to that individual investment club are all big time as well. Freya Moray is the number two civil servant at the Scottish Office and may become the next permanent secretary, not to be trifled with. Lord Barnes and Julian’s dad are senior people in the legal profession. Mhairi made partner at Drummonds on the back of the work she did for us, but starting with you. Doug Somers is a walking rolodex of contacts in the investment and banking world. Plus your MP got involved with you at both the Education and Industry departments. Not bad for an 18 year old engineering student.”