‘Where’s it all going to end?’ he asks.
I offer him a Chewit to cheer him up. Then I text Adam again: U HVE PROMISES 2 KEEP.
The weather’s changed, the sun hidden by cloud. I open the window. Cold April air shocks my lungs.
The driver drums his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. ‘It’s complete gridlock!’
I like it – the stall and shove of traffic, the deep thrum of a bus engine, an urgent siren in the distance. I like creeping so slowly down the High Street that I have time to notice Easter eggs still unbought in the newsagent’s window, the cigarette butts swept into a neat pile outside the Chicken Joint. I see children carrying the strangest things – a polar bear, an octopus. And under the wheels of a buggy outside Mothercare I see my name, faded now, but still weaving the pavement all the way to the bank.
I phone Adam’s mobile. He doesn’t pick up, so I leave another message: I WANT YOU.
Simple.
At the junction, an ambulance stands skewed, its doors open, the blue of its light flashing across the road. The light even flashes onto the clouds, low above us. A woman is lying in the road with a blanket over her.
‘Would you look at that,’ the taxi driver says.
Everyone’s looking – people in other cars, office workers out for their lunchtime sandwich. The woman’s head is covered, but her legs stick out. She’s wearing tights; her shoes are at strange angles. Her blood, dark as rain, pools beside her.
The taxi driver flicks me a glance in his mirror. ‘Makes you realize, doesn’t it?’
Yes. It’s so tangible. Being and not being.
I feel as if I have sap in my toes, running up my ankles and into my shins, as I knock on Adam’s door.
Sally opens it a crack and peeps at me. I feel a surge of love for her.
‘Is Adam in?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be in hospital?’
‘Not any more.’
She looks confused. ‘He didn’t say they were letting you out.’
‘It’s a surprise.’
‘Another one?’ She sighs, opens the door a bit further and looks at her watch. ‘He won’t be back until five.’
‘Five?’
She frowns at me. ‘Are you all right?’
No. Five’s too late. I might be completely anaemic again by then.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s gone to Nottingham on the train. They’ve agreed to interview him.’
‘For what?’
‘University. He wants to start in September.’
The garden spins.
‘You look as surprised as I was.’
I fell asleep in his arms in that hospital bed. ‘Touch me,’ I said, and he did. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Don’t you dare tell me I don’t.’ He made me a promise.
It starts to rain as I walk back down the path to the gate. A fine silver rain, like cobwebs falling.
Thirty-five
I rip my silk dress from its hanger in the wardrobe and cut a gaping mouth in it just below the waist. These scissors are sharp so it’s easy, like sliding metal through water. My blue wrap-dress gets a diagonal slit across the chest. I lay them side by side on the bed like a couple of sick friends and stroke them.
It doesn’t help.
The stupid jeans I bought with Cal never fitted anyway, so I hack the legs off at the knee. I split the pockets of all my jogging pants, gash holes in my sweatshirts and chuck the lot next to the dresses.
It takes ages to stab my boots. My arms ache and I’m wheezing. But I had a transfusion this morning and other people’s blood runs hot through my veins, so I don’t stop. I slit each boot along its length. Two startling wounds.
I want to be empty. I want to live somewhere uncluttered.
I open the window and throw the boots out. They land on the lawn.
The sky is solid cloud, grey and low. There’s a thin rain falling. The shed’s wet. The grass is wet. The barbecue set is rusting on its wheels.
I haul the rest of my clothes out of the wardrobe. My lungs wheeze, but I’m not stopping. Buttons ping across the room as I slash my coats. I shred my jumpers. I lacerate every pair of trousers. I line my shoes up on the window ledge and cut off their tongues.
It’s good. I feel alive.
I grab the dresses from the bed and push them out with the shoes. They tumble onto the patio together and lie there in the rain.
I check my phone. No messages. No missed calls.
I hate my room. Everything in it reminds me of something else. The little china bowl from St Ives. The brown ceramic jar Mum used to keep biscuits in. The sleeping dog with its silent slipper that belonged on Nanna’s mantelpiece. My green glass apple. They all make it to the lawn except for the dog, which smashes against the fence.
Books fall open as I chuck them. Their pages flap like exotic birds, rip and flutter. CDs and DVDs like Frisbees over next door’s fence. Adam can play them to his new friends at university when I’m dead.
Duvet, sheets, blankets, all out. Medicine bottles and boxes from my bedside table, syringe driver, Diprobase cream, aqueous cream. My jewellery box.
I slash my beanbag, decorate the floor with polystyrene balls and throw the empty sack out into the rain. The garden’s looking very busy. Things will grow. Trouser trees. Book vines. I’ll chuck myself out later and take root in that dark space by the shed.
Still no message from Adam. I throw my phone over his fence.
The TV is heavy as a car. It hurts my back. It makes my legs burn. I drag and heave it across the carpet. I can’t breathe, have to stop. The room tilts. Breathe. Breathe. You can do this. Everything’s got to go.
Onto the ledge with the TV.
And out.
It roars, explodes in a dramatic smash of glass and plastic.
That’s it. Everything gone. Finished.
Dad crashes in. He stands for a moment, still and open-mouthed.
‘You monster,’ he whispers.
I have to cover my ears.
He comes over and takes me by both arms. His breath smells of stale tobacco. ‘Do you want to leave me with nothing?’
‘There was nobody here!’
‘So you thought you’d wreck the place?’
‘Where were you?’
‘I was at the supermarket. Then I went to the hospital to visit you but you weren’t there. We were all frantic.’
‘I don’t give a shit, Dad!’
‘Well, I do! I absolutely give a shit! This will completely exhaust you.’
‘It’s my body. I can do what I like!’
‘So you don’t care about your body now?’
‘No, I’m sick of it! I’m sick of doctors and needles and blood tests and transfusions. I’m sick of being stuck in a bed day after day while the rest of you get on with your lives. I hate it! I hate all of you! Adam’s gone for a university interview, did you know that? He’s going to be here for years doing whatever he likes and I’m going to be under the ground in a couple of weeks!’
Dad starts to cry. He sinks onto the bed and puts his head in his hands and just weeps. I don’t know what to do. Why is he weaker than me? I sit next to him and touch his knee. ‘I’m not going back to the hospital, Dad.’
He wipes his nose on his shirt sleeve and looks at me. He looks like Cal. ‘You’ve really had enough?’
‘I’ve really had enough.’
I put my arm round him and he leans his head on my shoulder. I stroke his hair. It’s as if we’re floating about on a boat. There’s even a breeze from the open window. We sit for ages.
‘You never know, maybe I won’t die if I’m at home.’
‘It’d be lovely if you didn’t.’
‘I’ll do my A-levels instead. Then I’ll go to university.’
He sighs, stretches himself out on the bed and closes his eyes. ‘That’s a good idea.’
‘I’ll get a job, and maybe one day I’ll have children – Chester, Merlin and Daisy.’
Dad opens one eye briefly. ‘God help them!’
‘You’ll be a grandad. We’ll visit you loads. For years and years we’ll visit, until you’re ninety.’
‘And then what? You’ll stop coming?’
‘No, then you’ll die. Before me. The way it’s supposed to be.’
He doesn’t say anything. Where the dark filters through the window and shadow touches his arm, he seems to vanish.
‘You won’t live in this house any more, but somewhere smaller near the sea. I’ve got keys because I visit you so often, and one day I let myself in as usual, but the curtains aren’t open and the post is on the mat. I go up to the bedroom to see where you are. I’m so relieved to see you lying peacefully in bed that I laugh out loud. But when I pull the curtains, I notice your lips are blue. I touch your cheek and it’s cold. Your hand’s cold as well. I say your name over and over, but you can’t hear me and you don’t open your eyes.’
Dad sits up. He’s crying again. I hold him close and pat his back.
‘Sorry. Am I freaking you out?’
‘No, no.’ He pulls away, sweeps a hand across his eyes. ‘I better go and clear up outside before it gets dark. Will you be all right if I go and do that?’
‘Sure.’
I watch him from the window. It’s raining hard now and he’s put his wellies on and an anorak. He gets a broom and the wheelbarrow from the shed. He puts on gardening gloves. He picks up the telly. He sweeps up the broken glass. He gets a cardboard box and piles all the books in it. He even picks up the pages that lie shivering against the fence.
Cal turns up in his school uniform with his rucksack and bike. He looks sane and healthy. Dad goes over and hugs him.
Cal dumps his bike and joins in the clearing up. He looks like a treasure hunter, holding each ring up to the sky. He finds the silver necklace I got for my last birthday, my amberlite bracelet. Then he finds ridiculous things – a snail, a feather, a particular stone. He finds a muddy puddle and stamps in it. It makes Dad laugh. He leans on his broom and laughs out loud. Cal laughs too.
Rain batters softly at the window, washing them both transparent.
Thirty-six
‘So, were you ever going to tell me?’
Adam regards me grimly from his perch on the edge of the chair. ‘It was difficult.’
‘That’s a no then.’
He shrugs. ‘I tried a couple of times. It just felt so unfair, like how come I get to have a life?’
I sit forwards in the bed. ‘Don’t you dare feel sorry for yourself because you get to stay behind!’
‘I’m not.’
‘Because, if you want to die too, then here’s a plan. We go out on the bike. You take a hairpin bend really fast just as a juggernaut’s coming the other way, and we’ll die together – loads of blood, joint funeral, our bones entwined for eternity. How about that?’
He looks so horrified it makes me laugh. He grins back at me, relieved. It’s like breaking through fog, as if the sun comes out in the room.
‘Let’s just forget about it, Adam. It was bad timing, that’s all.’
‘You threw everything out the window!’
‘Not just because of you.’
He leans his head back against the chair and closes his eyes. ‘No.’
Dad told him I’m finished with the hospital. Everyone knows. Philippa’s coming in the morning to discuss options, although I don’t think there’ll be much to discuss. Today’s transfusion is already wearing out.
‘What was it like at university anyway?’
He shrugs. ‘It was big, lots of buildings. I got a bit lost.’
But he glows with the future. I can see it in his eyes. He got on a train and he went to Nottingham. He’ll go to so many places without me.
‘Did you meet any girls?’
‘No!’
‘Isn’t that why people go to university?’
He gets up from the chair and sits on the edge of the bed. He looks at me very seriously. ‘I’m going because my life was crap until I met you. I’m going because I don’t want to be here when you’re not, still living with my mum and nothing being any different. I wouldn’t even be thinking about going if it hadn’t been for you.’
‘I bet you forget me by the end of the first term.’
‘I bet I won’t.’
‘It’s practically the law.’
‘Stop it! Do I have to do something outrageous to make you believe me?’
‘Yes.’
He grins. ‘What do you suggest?’
‘Keep your promise.’
He reaches over to lift the duvet, but I stop him. ‘Turn the light off first.’
‘Why? I want to see you.’
‘I’m a pile of bones. Please.’
He sighs, switches off the main light and sits back on the bed. I think I’ve scared him because he doesn’t try to get in, but strokes me through the duvet – the length of my leg from thigh to ankle, the length of my other leg. His hands are sure. I feel like I’m an instrument being tuned up.
‘I could spend hours on every bit of you,’ he says. Then he laughs, as if it wasn’t cool to say that. ‘You really are gorgeous.’
Beneath his hands. Because his fingers give my body dimension.
‘Is this OK, me stroking you like this?’
When I nod, he slides off the bed, kneels on the rug and holds my feet between both his hands, warming me through my socks.
He massages them for so long I nearly fall asleep, but I wake up when he pulls off my socks, lifts both feet to his mouth and kisses them. He swims his tongue around each toe. He scrapes his teeth along the soles. He licks the run of my heels.
I thought my body wouldn’t feel heat again, not the kind of urgent heat I’ve felt with him before. I’m amazed as it comes surging back. He feels it too, I know. He pulls off his T-shirt and kicks off his boots. Our eyes lock as he unbuckles his jeans.
He’s astonishingly beautiful – the way his hair is short now, shorter than mine, the arc of his back as he pulls off his jeans, his muscles firm from gardening.
‘Get in,’ I tell him.
The room is warm, the radiators piping hot, but still I shiver as he lifts the duvet and climbs in beside me. He’s careful not to put weight on me. He leans up on one elbow to kiss me very gently on the mouth.
‘Don’t be afraid of me, Adam.’
‘I’m not.’
But it’s my tongue that finds his. It’s me that moves his hand to my breast and encourages him to undo my buttons.
He makes a noise in the back of his throat, a deep groan, as his kisses move down. I cradle his head. I stroke his hair as he gently sucks, like a baby might, at my breast.
‘I missed you so much,’ I tell him.
His hand slides to my waist to my belly to the top of my thigh. His kisses follow his hand, work their way down until his head is between my legs and then he looks at me, asking permission with his eyes.
It spills me, the thought of him kissing me there.
His head is in shadow, his arms scooped under my legs. His breath is warm on my thigh. He very slowly begins.
If I could buck, I would. If I could howl at the moon, then I would. To feel this, when I’d thought it was over, when my body’s closing down and I thought I’d have no pleasure from it again.
I am blessed.
‘Come here. Come up here.’
Concern flickers in his eyes. ‘Are you OK?’
‘How did you know how to do that?’
‘Was it all right?’
‘It was amazing!’
He grins, ridiculously pleased at himself. ‘I saw it in a film once.’
‘What about you though? You’re left out now.’
He shrugs. ‘It’s all right, you’re tired. We don’t have to do anything else.’
‘You could touch yourself.’
‘In front of you?’
‘I could watch.’
He blushes. ‘Seriously?’
‘Why not? I need more memories.’
He smiles shyly. ‘You really want me to?’
‘I really do.’
He kneels up. I might have no energy left, but I can give him my gaze.
He looks at my breasts as he touches himself. I have never shared anything so intimate, never seen such a look of bewildered love as his mouth opens and his eyes widen.
‘Tess, I love you! I really bloody love you!’
Thirty-seven
‘Tell me how it will be.’
Philippa nods as if she was expecting this question. She has a strange look on her face – professional, distant. She’s begun to retreat, I think. What else can she do? Her job is to administer to the dying, but if she gets too close, she might fall into the abyss.
‘You won’t want to eat much from now on. You’ll probably want to sleep a lot. You might not want to talk, but you may feel energized enough for good ten-minute chats between sleeps. You may even want to go downstairs or outside if it’s warm enough, if your dad is able to carry you. But mostly you’ll sleep. In a few days you’ll begin to drift in and out of consciousness, and at this stage you may not be able to respond, but you’ll know people are with you and you’ll be able to hear them talk to you. Eventually you’ll just drift away, Tess.’
‘Will it hurt?’
‘I think your pain will always be manageable.’
‘In the hospital it wasn’t. Not at first.’
‘No,’ she admits. ‘At first they had trouble getting the drugs right. But I’ve got you morphine sulphate here, which is slow release. I’ve also got Oramorph, so we can top up if necessary. You shouldn’t feel any pain.’
‘You think I’ll be scared?’
‘I think there’s no right or wrong way to be.’ She sees from my face that I think this is rubbish. ‘I think you’ve had the worst luck in the world, Tessa, and if I was in your shoes, I’d be scared. But I also believe that however you handle these last days will be exactly how it should be done.’
‘I hate it when you say days.’
She frowns. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’
She talks to me about pain relief, shows me packets and bottles. She talks softly, her words washing over me, her instructions lost. I feel as if everything is zeroing in, a strange hallucination that all my life has been about this moment. I was born and grew up in order to receive this news and be handed this medicine by this woman.