“What’s happening?” she said. “Dad? Are we still going to school? Are we going to be on the telly?”
I scrambled out of bed and into the hall. “It’s even better than that,” I told her. “Just you wait and see.”
PERFECT
6th March
Some things are perfect, from start to finish.
That’s what going up in an airship was like.
We had to drive all day, nearly. It was very cold. There was a creamy white sky, with no clouds, and only the faint, silver disc of a sun. Most of the snow had gone and what was left clung in pale, frozen icebergs on the motorway verge. Me and Ella were buried under duvets and blankets in the back of the car.
The airship was in a big field under Helvellyn, all bustling with people and trucks and equipment. It was moored to a mobile boom truck, which is a sort of van with a boom on top of it, which can be attached to the front of the airship. There were about twenty people looking after it. We had to wait for ages while they did things like check the instruments and refuel the engines. Then Stanley and the co-pilot, Raoul, showed us the inside.
Most of an airship is the envelope, which is like a long, bean-shaped hot air balloon. All the bits that aren’t the envelope are in a cabin at the bottom called a gondola. There are engines at the back, a cabin with seats for passengers to sit, and a flight compartment, which is where the pilots sit. The flight compartment has two seats, lots of dials and meters and a wheel, which you use to steer. Stanley and Raoul let me and Ella sit in the pilot seats and they spent ages telling us what everything did. Then they made us go back to the passenger bit. We were the only passengers.
The third best thing about an airship is taking off. First you get the excitement as the engines begin to whirr. The noise gets louder and louder until suddenly the airship shoots almost straight up, so you’re pushed right back into your seat. It’s brilliant.
When the airship had levelled off, we were allowed to take off our seatbelts and move around. Stanley and Raoul let us go in the flight compartment while they were flying. Stanley let me hold the wheel and turn it right and left. So I have flown an airship! That was the second best thing.
Stanley told us all about how you become an airship pilot. He said he started out flying aeroplanes, but then he tried airships and he liked them better. You can look out of the windows at the ground in an airship and you can see all the birds flying past, rather than just zooming by them like planes do.
“Sometimes,” he said, “flocks of ducks overtake us, look back and laugh!”
The absolute best thing about the airship was what you saw out of the windows, though. You were allowed to open them and lean right out, so you got the wind blowing all in your face and in your hair. You could see everything really clearly, like a picture, all the tiny hills and mountains and lakes, drifting slowly past below you.
It felt very funny, looking out, because you were sort of separate from everything – you couldn’t talk to anyone down there or swim in the lakes or climb the hills – but at the same time you were still kind of part of it. It was as though you were looking at a picture, except you weren’t outside the frame. You were still there. You were just looking at it all from a different angle, from very far away.
A DECISION
7th March
The morning after we got home, Annie came to see us. She came twice; the first time to do a blood test and clean my line and the second time to give me platelets.
The second time, she sat on the floor and talked to me. I told her all about the airship and the cottage we slept in and I showed her the photos on Dad’s camera.
“It sounds wonderful,” she said.
“It was,” I said. “It was amazing. The best ever.”
“That’s really great, Sam. But listen, tell me. How are you feeling? In yourself?”
I didn’t want to talk about that. “I’m OK.”
“Oh, Sam,” said Mum. She looked at Annie. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, actually. He’s been very tired, falling asleep during the day – I thought it might be the morphine, but. . .”
“I didn’t fall asleep on the airship,” I said angrily. I didn’t see why Mum had to tell Annie all this stuff. But I suppose Annie knew it all already. Mum carried on talking anyway.
“He’s had more bone pain too, though we’ve got that under control now. I wondered. . .” She stopped. “The stuff they’ve been giving him from the hospital doesn’t seem to be doing much any more. Should we talk to Bill, try something else?”
For a long moment, Annie didn’t answer. Then she said, “If the chemotherapy really isn’t working, there isn’t a lot else we can offer at this stage.”
My stomach clenched. I knew Annie would say that. Beside me, Mum tensed. She said, “But I thought . . . Bill said we’d get a year.”
“Up to a year,” said Annie. She looked at me. “I’m sorry.” She did look sorry.
“But. . .” Mum sounded frightened. “Are we supposed to just stop?”
I didn’t want to listen. I leaned against Mum and rested my head against her chest. She put her arm around me.
“No one’s going to force either of you to do anything you don’t want to do,” Annie was saying. “But. . .”
“You, you, you,” I thought. It’s me that has to take it! I felt my face grow hot with anger. I thought about it all, all the pills and needles and hospital waiting rooms, that didn’t make me better. They were such stupid things to spend my time worrying about.
“I want to stop,” I said. “Annie said – it doesn’t work any more. I think you should stop fussing about it.”
Annie broke off. She and Mum looked at me. “Are you sure?” Annie said.
“Yes,” I said. I was. “It’s my life. I don’t want to spend it taking stupid things that don’t do anything.”
My muscles tightened, waiting for Mum to fight. She didn’t. She just nodded a few times and gave a shaky little laugh. “Right,” she said. “Right. Well.” She took a deep breath. “How . . . I mean how . . . how long do we have if he stops taking anything?”
Annie reached up and took Mum’s hand. “It could be anything up to two months,” she said. “Or it might only be a couple of weeks.”
Mum nodded. “Two months,” she said, and the tears spilled out of her eyes. “Bloody God!” she cried. “We were supposed to get a year.”
I buried my head in her shoulder. “Don’t cry,” I said. “Please. I’ll tell Him it’s not good enough,” I said, to make her smile. “When I see Him.”
Mum squeezed my shoulder. “You do that,” she said. She gave a shaky little laugh. “Tell Him we want our money back.”
Later, after they’d both gone, I sat with the cat on my lap, looking out of the window. Columbus butted his head against my wrist, wanting to be stroked. I felt dull and heavy all over. “Two months,” I thought. And then, “Two weeks!”
I wished Felix were here. I wondered what he’d say. I imagined him, leaning back in his chair, his old fedora hat pulled low over his forehead. “Two weeks!” I told him.
“Oh, well,” the imaginary Felix said cheerfully. “Make the most of it. I would. Just think – they’ll never say no to you ever again!”
I blinked. Would Felix really say that? Maybe. I thought about it. “There isn’t anything else I want,” I told him. It was true. Nothing Mum or Dad could give me anyway.
Felix shook his head. “I thought you were going to see the Earth from space?” he said. “You never did that, did you?”
I sat up a bit. “That wasn’t a real one,” I said. “Not one to really do.”
But Felix never let me get away with that. We’d done a world record. We’d seen a ghost. Kind of. Even an imaginary Felix wouldn’t let me get away with that.
“Wimp,” he said. “Go on.” He grinned at me. “I dare you.”
THE MOON AND THE APPLE TREE
8th March
When I was a little kid I saw a TV programme with an astronau
t talking about seeing the Earth from above. It’s like a giant globe in space, only alive, and you can see the seas and the mountains and the cities and all the clouds moving and swirling and you’re like, the whole entire human race except for me is there. I remember watching and thinking, “I’m going to do that when I grow up.” I didn’t realize then how difficult it would be.
And now it was the only thing left on my list to do.
I sat and tried to work out how somebody could do it. Maybe you could ring up a charity and ask them to fly you to America and blast you up. But probably not. Or maybe there was a cheaty way of doing it. Like, I’ve seen the Earth from an airship. Did that count? And I’ve seen photographs from space. That’s sort of doing it. Except it wasn’t what I’d wanted. It was like saying you wanted to meet the Queen and getting a photograph instead.
I stayed on the sofa for a long time, not doing anything, just thinking about it. Then I fell asleep.
When I woke up, I was in my own bed. It was the middle of the night. My room was very dark. Too dark. The shadows looked wrong, like when it snowed and the light was suddenly brighter – like that, only this time everything was darker. I lay on my side, trying to understand the new strangeness. Then I realized. The streetlight outside my window was gone.
I sat up and pressed the light switch. Nothing happened. “A power cut!” I thought. “It’s night-time and there’s been a power cut and everyone except me is asleep.” As I thought it, I was filled with a strange, quivery excitement. All of a sudden, I couldn’t stay in bed.
I got up and went into the kitchen. I know where we keep the torch – in the muddle drawer, with the hammers and wire and glue – but I had to scrabble for ages before I found it. I was terrified that Mum or Dad would hear me and come down. When I went into the hall to look for my coat, I didn’t dare turn on the torch in case they saw it. In the end I put on Dad’s jacket and Granny’s walking hat and Mum’s trainers and went outside like that.
It wasn’t as cold as I’d thought it would be. It was eerily bright. Our garden wasn’t a garden; it was a mass of bright, silvery shadows and dark lumps that turned into trees and bushes when I shone the torch on them. And it was very, very still. I stood for a long time on the doorstep, picking things out. There’s the patio, where I used to spread out all my Lego. That’s the pond that my cousin Pete and I made. We spent all day digging at it. And then my dad and Uncle Leigh finished it off properly and Pete and I stole some frogspawn from Granny’s allotment to put in. There are still frogs in there now. The great-grandfrogs of our tadpoles.
The pond looked bigger in the dark. It’s not actually that wide. Me and Ella can jump over it, no problem. Or we could. I hadn’t tried since I got ill again. “I dare you,” I thought, “I dare you,” and then I knew I had to do it.
I looked at the pond, making sure of how far I’d have to jump, trying not to think about what would happen if I missed. Then I ran up to the edge, and leaped.
I landed heavily and fell forward on to my hands and knees, breathless, the torch falling on to the grass and rolling forward. I froze, expecting to hear Mum or Dad calling. They didn’t. I sat up and inspected myself. No blood. Bruises, probably, but I’ve got lots of bruises already anyway, so it doesn’t matter. “I did it!” I thought. This thrill of excitement ran through me and I thought, “What shall I do next?”
Our garden isn’t that big. There’s the pond and the lawn, with splodge-shaped flowerbeds growing in the middle of it, all very neat. At the bottom there’s the apple tree and a hedge with a fence behind it. You can squeeze all the way along between the hedge and the fence, like a secret passage.
“That’s what I’ll do,” I thought. “I’ll go through the secret passage in the middle of the night.” But when I got there and saw the apple tree, I had a better idea. I put my torch in my jacket pocket and started to climb.
It was harder than I’d thought. For one thing, I was wearing Mum’s trainers and they kept trying to fall off. I had to keep my toes clenched tightly inside them. And I was only wearing pyjamas, so my legs kept getting scraped. I used to climb up the apple tree every autumn, no problem. But this time was the hardest it’d ever been. It was hard finding all the footholds. Even pulling myself on to the next branch was harder. It stopped being fun. “I’m going to fall out,” I thought. “I’m going to fall out, I’m going to fall out.” I knew I ought to go back. But I didn’t. I kept right on pulling myself up, even though my arms and legs were aching, until I got to the top.
And that’s when I saw it.
We don’t get stars properly where I live. We get some, but not really. Dad says it’s the streetlights. But that night they were all off. All you could see, for miles and miles and miles, right up until the universe curled around the edges of the sky, were stars. There was Orion and the Plough and lots of others I didn’t know the name of. And there, huge and round and sort of silvery-shiny, was the Moon.
I stared and stared. I’d never seen the Moon that big or that bright. It looked like someone had cut it out of silver paper with big school scissors and stuck it on to the sky. I don’t know why it was so good – maybe because I was still tired and tingly or maybe just because I was absolutely alone in absolute middle-of-the-night-ness, or maybe because of what Annie had told me. I don’t know. I sat there for what felt like hours and stared and stared and stared.
I don’t want to write about climbing down or trying to find pyjamas without green branchy mess on them, when all I wanted was to sleep for hours and hours. The Moon and the sky were the important bits. And I know what I did wasn’t the same as seeing the Earth from space – it wasn’t what I’d wanted, when I wrote it – but that’s OK. It was the feeling I wanted and I got that.
Isn’t it funny? When I wrote that list, I never, ever thought I’d do half those things. They weren’t things to do. They were just . . . things. Ideas.
And now I’ve done them all.
WHY DO WE HAVE TO DIE ANYWAY?
I can understand dying when it’s old people. You wouldn’t want to live forever. I read a book once where some people did and they didn’t like it much. They just got bored and old and lonely and sad. And then there’s practical things too. Like, if no one died and people kept getting born, the world would get fuller and fuller, until everyone would be standing on everyone else’s heads, and we’d all have to live underwater, or on Mars, and even then there wouldn’t be enough room, probably.
I know all that.
But it doesn’t explain why kids have to die.
Granny says looking at it like that is all wrong. She says dying is like caterpillars turning into butterflies. She says, of course it’s scary, just as it’s scary for caterpillars going into cocoons. But what would happen, she says, if caterpillars went around going, “Oh no, I’m about to go into a cocoon, it’s so unfair”? They’d never turn into butterflies, that’s what.
What she means is, it’s the next stage in a life cycle. Like turning into Spiderman was the next stage in Peter Parker’s life cycle. So you shouldn’t be frightened, you should be excited. But I’m not frightened anyway. It’s only going back to wherever you were before you were born and no one is frightened of before they were born.
We used to do life cycles at my old school. I know the water cycle and the carbon cycle and the how-new-stars-get-born cycle. They’re all about old things dying and new things getting born. Old stars turning into new ones. Dead leaves turning into baby plants. It might be something dying or it might be something getting born. It all depends how you look at it.
DIFFERENT
26th March
Things are different now.
I don’t go to clinic any more. Annie comes more often. If she doesn’t come, she rings Mum up and talks to her.
People keep coming to see us. Grandma and Grandpa came all the way from Orkney and stayed with Granny. Auntie Jane came and gave me a wooden elephant and Auntie Nicola came down from Edinburgh, gave me a book about castles, and went b
ack up the same night. Uncle Richard came while I was working with Mrs Willis, deciding what order to put all the lists and stories and things in my book. Mum said I had to come and talk to him and I wouldn’t. Mum got angry and said he’d come all the way from Lincoln to see me. I got angry too. I don’t want to be nice to aunts and uncles all day.
“I want to do my things!” I said. “I don’t have any time to do my things!” I bent my head over my piece of paper and wouldn’t look at her.
Mrs Willis said maybe she shouldn’t come as often.
“No!” I said. “I want you to keep coming.”
Uncle Richard got very flustered and said he didn’t want to cause any trouble. He gave me a jumper that said “SURFING USA” on it and then he and Mum sat on the sofa talking while me and Mrs Willis tried to work.
After that, Mum said people could only stay for twenty minutes and not when I was doing school. School isn’t as regular as it used to be, anyway. Mrs Willis rings up before she comes, in case I’m asleep or something. I sleep quite a lot. It comes in useful. Mum’s friend Maureen came round three times to see me last week and I just squeezed my eyes tight shut and pretended to be asleep.
Ella is funny too. People keep wanting to take her out to the cinema or to dancing lessons or something, but she never will. She won’t go to school either. Mum has a big fight with her every morning. Mostly Mum makes her go, but sometimes she gets to stay at home. When she’s allowed to stay, she does her Good Brownie routine. She comes up to me and puts her hands behind her back and says, “Mum says do you want anything?”
That’s Mum’s way of saying, “Do you want something to eat?” She had a big talk with Annie about me not eating properly. Now she doesn’t make me eat dinners, but she keeps feeding me bits of things like fruit or ice cream. So yesterday I said, “Yes, I want a bottle of beer and a speedboat.” Ella started giggling and ran back to Mum. She was gone for ages. Then she came back in a big apron, like a chef, with a tray and a bottle of beer that she’d got from next door, giggling away.