Before I Die (10 page)

‘Any shortness of breath or nausea?’

‘I’m on anti-emetics. Have you actually read my case file?’

‘Excuse her,’ Dad says. ‘She’s had a bit of leg pain recently, nothing else. The nurse who saw her last week said she was doing well. Sian, I think her name was – she’s aware of the medication regime.’

I snort through my nose. He tries to make it sound casual, but it doesn’t wash with me. Last time Sian was here he offered her supper and made a right idiot of himself.

‘The team tries to provide continuity,’ Philippa says, ‘but it’s not always possible.’ She turns back to me, dismissing Dad and his sorry love life.

‘Tessa, you’ve got quite a bit of bruising on your arms.’

‘I climbed a tree.’

‘It suggests your platelets are low. Have you got any major activities planned for this week?’

‘I don’t need a transfusion!’

‘We’ll do a blood test anyway, to be on the safe side.’

Dad offers her coffee, but she declines. Sian would’ve said yes.

‘My dad can’t cope,’ I tell Philippa as he goes out to the kitchen in a sulk. ‘He does everything wrong.’

She helps me off with my shirt. ‘And how does that make you feel?’

‘It makes me laugh.’

She gets gauze and antiseptic spray from her medical case, puts on sterile gloves and holds my arm up so she can clean around the portacath. We both wait for it to dry.

‘Have you got a boyfriend?’ I ask her.

‘I’ve got a husband.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Andy.’

She looks uncomfortable saying his name out loud. I see different people all the time and they never introduce themselves properly. They like knowing all about me though.

‘Do you believe in God?’ I ask her.

She sits back in her chair and frowns. ‘What a question!’

‘Do you?’

‘Well, I suppose I’d like to.’

‘What about heaven? Do you believe in that?’

She rips a sterile needle from its package. ‘I think heaven sounds nice.’

‘That doesn’t mean it exists.’

She looks at me sternly. ‘Well, let’s hope it does.’

‘I think it’s a great big lie. When you’re dead, you’re dead.’

I’m beginning to get to her now: she’s looking flustered. ‘And what happens to all that spirit and energy?’

‘It turns to nothing.’

‘You know,’ she says, ‘there are support groups, places you can meet other young people in the same position as you.’

‘No one’s in the same position as me.’

‘Is that how it feels?’

‘That’s how it is.’

I lift my arm so she can draw blood through the portacath. I’m half robot, with plastic and metal embedded under my skin. She draws blood into a syringe and discards it. It’s such a waste, that first syringe tainted with saline. Over the years, nurses must have thrown a body-full of my blood away. She draws a second syringe, transfers it to a bottle and scribbles my name in blue ink on the label.

‘That’s you done,’ she says. ‘I’ll ring in an hour or so and let you know the results. Anything else before I go?’

‘No.’

‘Have you got enough meds? Do you want me to drop into the GP’s and pick up any repeat prescriptions?’

‘I don’t need anything.’

She heaves herself out of the chair and looks down at me solemnly.

‘The community team offer a lot of support that you might not be aware of, Tessa. We can help you get back to school, for instance, even if it’s only part-time, even if it’s only for a few weeks. It might be worth thinking about trying to normalize your situation.’

I laugh right up at her. ‘Would you go to school if you were me?’

‘I might get lonely here by myself all day.’

‘I’m not by myself.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘But it’s tough on your dad.’

She’s a cow. You’re not supposed to say things like that. I stare at her. She gets the message then.

‘Goodbye, Tessa. I’m going to pop into the kitchen and have a word, then I’ll be off.’

Despite the fact that she’s fat already, Dad offers her fruitcake and coffee, and she accepts! The only thing we should be offering guests are plastic bags to wrap around their shoes. We should have a giant X marked on the gate.

I steal a fag from Dad’s jacket and go upstairs and lean out of Cal’s window. I want to see the street. There’s a view through the trees to the road. A car passes. Another car. A person.

I blow smoke out into the air. Every time I inhale I can hear my lungs crackle. Maybe I’ve got TB. I hope so. All the best poets had TB; it’s a mark of sensibility. Cancer’s just humiliating.

Philippa comes out of the front door and stands by the step. I flick ash on her hair, but she doesn’t notice, just says goodbye in that booming voice of hers and waddles off up the path.

I sit on Cal’s bed. Dad’ll come up in a minute. While I wait, I get a pen and write,
Parachutes, cocktails, stones, lollipops, buckets, zebras, sheds, cigarettes, cold tap water
, on the wallpaper above Cal’s bed. Then I smell my armpits, the skin on my arm, my fingers. I stroke my hair backwards, forwards, like a rug.

Dad’s taking ages. I go for a walk round the room. At the mirror I pull out a single hair. It’s growing back much darker, and strangely curly, like pubic hair. I examine it, let it fall. I like being able to spare one to the carpet.

There’s a map of the world on Cal’s wall. Oceans and deserts. He’s got the solar system staked out on his ceiling. I lie on his bed to look at it properly. It makes me feel tiny.

It’s literally five minutes later when I open my eyes and go downstairs to see what’s keeping Dad. He’s already scarpered, left some stupid note by his laptop.

I phone him. ‘Where are you?’

‘You were asleep, Tess.’

‘But where are you?’

‘I just came out for a quick coffee. I’m in the park.’

‘The park? Why would you go there? We’ve got coffee at home.’

‘Tess! Come on, I just need a bit of space. Turn the TV on if you’re lonely. I’ll be back soon.’

A woman cooks breaded chicken. Three men press a buzzer as they compete for fifty thousand pounds. Two actors argue about a dead cat. One of them makes a joke about stuffing it. I sit hunched. Mute. Stunned by how crap TV is, how little we all have to say.

I text Zoey.
WHERE R U
? She texts back that she’s at college, but that’s a lie because she doesn’t have classes on Fridays.

I wish I had a mobile number for Adam. I’d text,
DID U DIE?

He should be outside digging in manure, peat and rotting vegetation. I looked up November in Dad’s Reader’s Digest
Book of Gardening
and it suggests that this is the perfect time for conditioning the soil. He should also be thinking about planting a hazel bush, since they provide an attractive addition to any garden. I thought a filbert might be nice. They have large heart-shaped nuts.

He hasn’t been out there for days though.

And he promised me a motorbike ride.

Sixteen

He’s uglier than I remember. It’s as if he warmed up in my memory. I don’t know why that should be. I think how Zoey would snort with derision if she knew I’d come knocking on his door, and that thought makes me want to never let her know. She says ugly people give her a headache.

‘You’re avoiding me,’ I tell him.

He looks surprised for a second, but covers it up pretty quick. ‘I’ve been busy.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So it’s not because you think I’m contagious? Most people start acting as if they can catch cancer from me in the end, or as if I’ve done something to deserve it.’

He looks alarmed. ‘No, no! I don’t think that.’

‘Good. So when are we going out on your bike then?’

He shuffles his feet on the step and looks embarrassed. ‘I haven’t actually got a full licence. You’re not supposed to take passengers without it.’

I can think of a million reasons why going on the back of Adam’s bike might be a bad idea. Because we might crash. Because it might not be as good as I hope. Because what will I tell Zoey? Because it’s what I really want to do more than anything. But I’m not going to let the lack of a full licence be one of them.

‘Have you got a spare helmet?’ I ask him.

That slow smile again. I love that smile! Did I think he was ugly just now? No, his face is transformed.

‘In the shed. I’ve got a spare jacket too.’

I can’t help smiling back. I feel brave and certain. ‘Come on then. Before it rains.’

He shuts the door behind him. ‘It’s not going to rain.’

We go round the side of the house and get the stuff from the shed. But just as he helps me zip into the jacket, just as he tells me his bike is capable of ninety miles per hour and the wind will be cold, the back door opens and a woman steps into the garden. She’s wearing a dressing gown and slippers.

Adam says, ‘Go back inside, Mum, you’ll get cold.’

But she keeps walking down the path towards us. She has the saddest face I’ve ever seen, like she drowned once and the tide left its mark there.

‘Where are you going?’ she says, and she doesn’t look at me at all. ‘You didn’t say you were going anywhere.’

‘I won’t be long.’

She makes a funny little sound in the back of her throat. Adam looks up sharply. ‘Don’t, Mum,’ he says. ‘Go and have your bath and get dressed. I’ll be back before you know it.’

She nods forlornly, begins to walk up the path, then stops as if she remembered something, and turns and looks at me for the first time, a stranger in her garden.

‘Who are you?’ she says.

‘I live next door. I came to see Adam.’

The sadness in her eyes deepens. ‘Yes, that’s what I thought.’

Adam goes over to her and grips her gently by the elbows. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘You should go back inside.’

She allows herself to be helped up the path and walked to the back door. She goes up the step and then she turns and looks at me again. She doesn’t say anything, and neither do I. We just look at each other, and then she goes through the door and into her kitchen. I wonder what happens then, what they say to each other.

‘Is she OK?’ I ask as Adam walks back out into the garden.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ he says.

It’s not what I imagined, not like cycling fast downhill, or even sticking your head out of a car window on the motorway. It’s more elemental, like being on a beach in the winter when the wind howls in off the sea. The helmets have plastic visors. I’ve got mine down, but Adam’s got his up; he did it very deliberately.

He said, ‘I like to feel the wind in my eyes.’

He told me to lean when we go round corners. He told me that since it was my first time he wouldn’t go top speed. But that could mean anything. Even at half speed, we might take off. We might fly.

We leave the streets and lampposts and houses. We leave the shops and the industrial estate and the wood yard, and we go beyond some kind of boundary where things belong to the town and are understood. Trees, fields, space appears. I shelter behind the curve of his back, and I close my eyes and wonder where he’s taking me. I imagine horses in the engine, their manes flying, their breath steaming, their nostrils flaring as they gallop. I heard a story once about some nymph, snatched by a god and taken somewhere dark and dangerous on the back of a chariot.

Where we end up is somewhere I didn’t expect – a muddy car park off the dual carriageway. There are two large trucks parked here, a couple of cars and a hotdog stand.

Adam turns off the ignition, kicks the stand down with his foot and takes off his helmet.

‘You should get off first,’ he says.

I nod, can barely speak, left my breath behind on the road somewhere. My knees are shaking and it takes a lot of effort to swing my leg over the bike and stand up. The earth feels very still. One of the lorry drivers winks at me out of his cab window. He holds a steaming cup of tea in one hand. Over at the hotdog stand, a girl with her hair in a ponytail passes a bag of chips across the counter to a man with a dog. I’m different from them all. It’s as if we flew here and everyone else is completely ordinary.

Adam says, ‘This isn’t the place. Let’s get something to eat, then I’ll show you.’

He seems to understand that I can’t quite talk yet and doesn’t wait for an answer. I walk slowly after him, listen to him order two hotdogs with onion rings. How did he know that would be my idea of a perfect lunch?

We stand and eat. We share a Coke. It seems astonishing to me that I’m here, that the world opened up from the back of a bike, that the sky looked like silk, that I saw the afternoon arrive, not white, not grey, not quite silver, but a combination of all three. Finally, when I’ve thrown my wrapper in the bin and finished the Coke, Adam says, ‘Ready?’

And I follow him through a gate at the back of the hotdog stand, across a ditch and into a thin little wood. A mud path threads through and out to the other side, where space opens up. I hadn’t realized how high we were. It’s amazing, the whole town down there like someone laid it at our feet, and us high up, looking down at it all.

‘Wow!’ I say. ‘I didn’t know this view was here.’

‘Yeah.’

We sit together on a bench, our knees not quite touching. The ground’s hard beneath my feet. The air’s cold, smelling of frost that didn’t quite make it, of winter to come.

‘This is where I come when I need to get away,’ he says. ‘I got the mushrooms from here.’

He gets out his tobacco tin and opens it up, puts tobacco in a paper and rolls it. He has dirty fingernails and I shiver at the thought of those hands touching me.

‘Here,’ he says. ‘This’ll warm you up.’

He passes me the cigarette and I look at it while he rolls himself another one. It looks like a pale slim finger. He offers me a light. We don’t say anything for ages, just blow smoke at the town below.

He says, ‘Anything could be happening down there, but up here you just wouldn’t know it.’

I know what he means. It could be pandemonium in all those little houses, everyone’s dreams in a mess. But up here feels peaceful. Clean.

‘I’m sorry, about earlier with my mum,’ he says. ‘She’s a bit hard to take sometimes.’