Artichoke Hearts (25 page)

‘I’ve started my periods,’ I blurt out.

‘Really! When? Are you all right?’

‘On my birthday. Great present!’

‘That was ages ago. Why didn’t you tell me?”

I shrug, feeling even more guilty than before.

‘So come on then, what’s it like?’ prods Millie.

‘It’s like blood,’ I say stupidly.

Well, I
know
that. I mean how does it feel?’

‘I don’t know. It’s like everything’s changed. I can’t stop it happening, can I?’

Suddenly Millie looks worried. ‘Does it really hurt then?’

‘Not hurt. I just sort of felt heavy, and a bit achy . . . oh, and I got spots.’

‘Oh, yeah! I remember now,’ laughs Millie.

‘Thanks!’

Was your mum surprised?’

‘A bit,’ I lie.

‘I hope I start soon.’

Why would you
want
to start your periods?’

‘I dunno, I’m just ready for a change,’ grins Millie.

Jidé and Ben join Millie and me on our high wall at break, but somehow there is nothing much for us to say to each other, altogether like this.

After a while Ben and Jidé wander off, leaving Millie and me on our own. I wonder what she’s not saying to me about Ben, because I know what I’m not saying to her about
Jidé, and even though we sit here side by side, like we always do, we might as well be at opposite ends of the courtyard.

I watch Nana sleep. This is the first time I’ve visited her when she hasn’t even known I’m here. Doris, Dr Clem and Question Mark come and go, more often than
before. All I can do is watch her sleep and wait. She is waiting now . . . and we are waiting . . . for the end.

When I see the empty bed, I am sick all over the floor. I hear someone screaming like a siren. That someone is me. Question Mark appears, sits me down and helps me clean myself
up.

‘Your nana has been moved to a room of her own,’ he says. ‘Don’t you remember? We told you yesterday.’

I don’t remember.

‘Is she going to die soon?’ I ask.

‘She’s very weak now, Mira,’ he says, walking me to Nana’s new room. Question Mark’s hand is smooth and cool, like powdered silk. The moment my hand’s in his,
I start to feel calm.

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reads the sign on Nana’s door. Question Mark says that Nana Josie doesn’t want any other visitors, only ‘immediate family’. I ask what
‘immediate family’ means. Dad says it means ‘only us’.

I open the door, but somehow it still feels like I shouldn’t go in, so I stand in the doorway watching Nana. Her Dying Room has a view on to those enormous Hampstead houses that look like
the ones in Mary Poppins that rise up and up ‘to the highest heights’.

Right outside the Dying Room there are two huge oak trees just coming into flower. The window takes up one whole side of the room. The sun streams in and shines on Nana’s face, warming her
blankets. Dad asks if he should close the blinds, but Nana smiles ‘no’ with her mouth. She’s enjoying sunbathing.

Nana talks silently now as much as she can. I think she’s saving her energy for dying. I sit next to her. I don’t dare lie on the bed any more, because she’s so thin I might
squash her. I gaze out of the window and across the street. I can see straight into what looks like an artist’s studio. There are two enormous windows on either side of the room so that,
through the far window, I glimpse the green of the Heath stretching out into the distance.

‘They must have a great view of London,’ I say.

‘Perfect,’ Nana whispers. Her voice is dry and scratchy. ‘I’d like to see that room.’

‘Just imagine, Nana, if I open this window, and they open theirs, you could fly out of here across the street, into that room and then straight out the other side.’

Nana is squeezing my hand. ‘How’s someone someone?’ she whispers, smiling.

There doesn’t seem much point denying it now.

‘He’s fine,’ I whisper, smiling back.

Then suddenly Nana starts to cough. I think I’ve been making her talk too much. Doris comes in and props her up on her pillows. Nana calls Doris ‘the poet’ because of the way
she sings when she talks, so you almost forget the meaning of the words; you can just taste something sweet in your mouth.

Doris sits in the sunshine on Nana’s bed. She takes a little white bag from the trolley. Inside it is a soft stick, like a toothbrush the size of a cotton bud, which she smoothes around
Nana’s teeth. Afterwards, she takes out a tiny sponge, which she dips into drinking water and squeezes into Nana’s mouth. Doris’s hands are small and shiny like they’ve been
rubbed in oil. I think it’s a shame that she has to slide her beautiful hands into those chalky white gloves. Doris dips the sponge in water again and touches it against Nana’s lips, so
gently, dab, dab, dab. I do not think I have ever seen anyone do anything with more love than Doris performs Nana’s tooth-brushing ceremony.

Nana sighs and closes her eyes. Question Mark walks silently in and asks Nana if she’s comfortable. She nods twice with her eyes closed. Everything seems to have slowed down here in the
Dying Room. There is nothing on Nana’s bedside table. No art books, no paintings, no fruit, no water . . . no water.

I try to hold Nana’s hand, but her fingers are all curled up.

Krish brings Nana his Aboriginal picture. My has mounted it on a board, so it looks even better. He doesn’t say anything, but he holds it up for her to see. She just
stares at it, lost in the millions of colours swirling around and around. Then she looks at Krish and mouths ‘thank you’ and Krish bows his head on to Nana’s knee. After a while
he is very still and his breathing is quiet. He has fallen asleep. She lifts her hand and places it on his head; just the effort of that movement makes her breathless. I tell Nana that Krish spent
all night finishing this picture. She gestures for me to prop it up on her bedside table. As I leave the room, Nana is lost somewhere among the billions of coloured dots.

On the way out, we drop into the Family Room. Mum’s talking to Jay, who’s brought a fruit salad for Nana. When Jay opens the fridge door and sees that Nana’s shelf is full of
little plastic boxes of food that haven’t been touched, she puts the fruit salad back in her bag and empties Nana’s shelf. Tears roll down her cheeks as she wipes the shelf clean.

In the hospice people talk with their eyes, with a quiet hand on your arm, or a nod. You have to really look to see what’s going on. Twice today, I have seen Dr Clem and
Doris in silent conversation with my dad and Aunty Abi. They have these conversations where no words escape when they pass each other in the corridor. After one of these silent conversations my dad
walks off to the Family Room with his head and eyes lowered.

Question Mark calls from the hospice.

I put on my watch. It’s the first time I’ve worn it since my birthday. I took it off because I thought maybe it was making time speed up . . . maybe the watch had something to do
with Nana’s coffin arriving and my periods starting, and I thought if I took it off it might make it all slow down, but now I know there’s no going back. Some things you can’t
change, no matter who or what you pray to.

When we arrive, Headscarf Lady quickly buzzes us through the security door. Usually she has a little chat, or makes a joke, but today she just nods and bows her head. As we walk through the
doors, I hear her speaking on the intercom.

‘The Levenson family are on their way up.’

Doris is waiting for us. She has her head lowered. She holds out her arm for us to follow her into the Family Room, where we sit down on the comfy chairs to hear the news. She folds her hands
together on her knees and sits very still for a moment. She has a gentle, sad smile on her face.

‘Josie died this morning. Mark and I were here with her, and Abi sat with her all night.’ She soothes over these words in her honey voice. ‘She passed so peacefully, like a
feather on a breeze.’

‘What time did she die?’ Krish asks.

‘A few minutes after ten o’clock this morning.’

These are the things you have to know . . . the date and the time people die and are born. That was the first question people asked when Laila was born.

The moment when Nana died, when her heart stopped beating, we were driving past Hampstead Heath on our way to the hospice. I think I know the exact moment because I checked my
watch at exactly 10.05 a.m. At exactly 10.05 a.m., eighteen minutes ago, I looked up at the people: young people, old people, children, walking dogs in the sunshine, great big dogs, tiny yapping
dogs, all sorts of dogs. I remember having the thought that all these people could be my Nana Josie in different parts of her life, and then I thought about something that made me feel happy. When
Nana is dead and I walk on the Heath or in Suffolk . . . I could always step into the exact same footprints as she did. Even with my maths, I worked out that Nana has done so much walking in these
places that the probability of stepping where she once did could be quite high.

That thought made me feel happy at exactly 10.05 a.m. That was the moment my Nana’s heartbeat stopped. I suppose that is a number fact.

The
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sign is still up in Nana’s Dying Room. Aunty Abi sits in the armchair next to her bed. Dad and Aunty Abi give each other a long hug.
Dad’s back is heaving up and down and he’s making a horrible strangled crying noise. Aunty Abi is calm, but her eyes are sore and puffy.

‘I was here,’ says Abi. ‘I sat with her all night and I just popped out into the garden with Piper this morning for a few minutes and when I came back she’d
gone.’

Dad says nothing but his back is still shuddering with emotion. Piper is lying on top of Nana’s feet as if he’s guarding her body.

Someone has put an orange lily on the pillow next to Nana Josie’s head. All the windows are open, and the room smells fresh and empty. I look over to the studio. The window facing the
hospice is flung open and the window on the far side is open too. Maybe Nana did get to look around that room after all.

Dad sits in the chair next to Nana’s bed, hardly moving at all. His body is almost as still as Nana’s. I thought I would be afraid to look at her, but with the life gone out of her,
it’s as if Nana’s body is just an empty shell.

This is not like I thought it would be . . . the end . . . so quiet and still and final

Doris and Question Mark say we can stay in the room with Nana for as long as we need to. Of course, now that Nana has gone, it’s all about what
we
need. But we
don’t know what we need so we start packing Nana’s clothes away, because it doesn’t feel right to sit and stare at her body when it really does feel that Nana has left it behind.
So all of us help to pack away her clothes and everything we’ve brought to the hospice.

The way we move around the room, folding and packing away, is like a strange silent ceremony. Mum goes to pack up Krish’s Aboriginal drawing but I ask her not to, not yet. I tell her to
leave it till last. I don’t know why. Then we take Nana’s clothes out of the wardrobe and pack Nana’s belongings neatly away into her soft canvas bag.

There is a knock at the door. It’s Doris with Laila. Doris has been doing a tour of the ward, showing Laila off to all the patients . . . to give Mum a rest.