The Testament of Jessie Lamb (24 page)

I laughed, partly out of relief and partly out of annoyance at myself for stringing it out. ‘What happens when I
am
certain?' I asked.

‘You can ring me.' She passed me a card with her number. ‘Here at the clinic, or on my mobile. You can ring me anytime.'

‘But will you select me then?'

‘If and when you know you really want to do it, then we will be glad to have you on the programme.' I sat there like a lump. I couldn't understand what the resistance was. I had decided. Surely to goodness, I had decided long ago?

‘Tell me exactly what happens, when I come to you and say yes.'

‘Well, we remove your Implanon. And we give you a temperature graph so we can tell when you're ovulating–so we know the best time for your implantation.'

‘Can I do that now?'

She hesitated. ‘Have you got a boyfriend?'

‘No. No. I don't need the Implanon. I'd like you to take it out today.'

‘But why?'

‘Because–because I know I
want
to do it, and I'm driving myself mad. At least if you take the Implanon out I'll know I've taken one step forward. And if–in the end–I can't…'

‘We can always put it back,' she finished. ‘Alright Jessie, if you want.' She made me sit on the hard chair by her desk, and used a little whirring implement on my arm. I felt it for a moment vibrating like a dentist's drill, then there was a sensation of soreness. She swabbed with something cool and put a neat plaster over it. I had a vision of Mandy hacking out her Implanon with a razor. She knew what she wanted.

Dr Nichol gave me a temperature graph and explained how I should use it. We inserted the date of my last period and she counted to where I should begin. When we shook hands and said goodbye there was at least a crumb of comfort in my sore stinging arm, and the graph folded neatly in my bag.

The first person I saw after I left Dr Nichol's office was Rosa. She was sitting outside on the steps. ‘Are you still doing it?' Her face looked a bit funny and I guessed they must have turned her down.

‘Yes. Of course. Are you?'

‘Yes. Within the month,' she said.

‘Oh!' I glanced at her again, and noticed that she was wearing really thick makeup. Something had happened to her face. She got up and walked beside me towards the bus stop. ‘Did you go away and think it over?' I asked her, ‘before you finally decided?'

‘I didn't need to! I've always been one hundred per cent sure.'

‘So next time you come in–'

‘It'll be to stay!'

‘Is your mum really OK with it?'

‘Yeah, I told you. She's making a video.' There was a silence then she said, ‘When she wants to make me mad she says I won't have the guts to go through with it. But I will. I'll show her.'

‘And your boyfriend?'

‘Oh, I've dumped him. Loser.' She laughed. ‘You should see my page on Facebook. I've got hundreds of fans, hundreds of fit men who'd go out with me if they could. All sending me messages about how brave I am and everything. I don't need him. I could pick anyone.'

‘You put it on Facebook? That you're volunteering?'

‘Yeah.'

‘But we're supposed to keep it secret.'

‘Not for much longer. Soon our faces'll be known around the world.'

Surely Dr Nichol could have seen through her? I wished she wasn't volunteering; it tarnished it, as if it was a thing someone flaky might do. Maybe she was lying.

Dad called in at home late that night, he'd been to Mand's and all was peaceful there. He said if I didn't mind, he'd go back and stay with Mum, because he thought Mand might not last the night. I told him I was going to Wales with Lisa. There was no point in telling him anything else. The uncertainty now seemed like a puzzle you have to solve before crossing a threshold. I would do it, I knew I would do it; but something had to unlock my tongue so it could say ‘yes.'

In the morning I took my temperature and put a little x in the right place on the graph. It was quite a novelty, getting my bike out of the garden shed. There were lumps of ancient mud deep in the tread of the tyres. It must have been there since I did the towpath marathon with Sal, a lifetime ago, before MDS. The dried mud spattered to the ground as I wheeled my bike to the gate. I cycled to Ashton station on it wobbling like crazy as I tried to get the gear lever to shift down. It was stuck on high.

I was half-expecting to see Gabe with Lisa at Piccadilly. But she was on her own; he'd told her he didn't want to live some dirty hippy life with no-one but sheep for company. ‘He'll probably change his mind,' she said, but I could see she wasn't happy about it. It crossed my mind that that was why she'd asked me. We swapped news about Wettenhall. Nat had called her from a safe phone saying he was in hiding but nothing more. And I asked what she knew about the airport protest. ‘Well it made it blatantly obvious that airports are prime targets for terrorism. So, a success.' She hadn't heard of anyone from YOFI being arrested.

At Shrewsbury we got onto a smaller, slower, emptier train, where we kept our bikes with us in the compartment. Lisa had a map and showed me where we were going–the farm was eight miles from the nearest station. Through the windows the countryside was empty and rolling, with fields of sheep and the odd huddled farm. In the distance it rose to higher hills. The day had started off misty grey but now the clouds were breaking up. We watched a patch of blue appear.

The place we had to get off was just a platform with a name board, there wasn't even a ticket office. We wheeled our bikes off and we were the only people there. Away to the right was a dark terraced row of houses, with empty gardens running down to the tracks. ‘It's over the level crossing and left.' Lisa swung up onto her bike, and I followed her up the hill at a pace that was slower than walking and twice as much effort. But I managed to stay on till I got to the crest, and then magically, once I was whizzing down, the gears clicked and became usable again.

The air was bright and fresh in my lungs, after the stuffy train, and the pumping of my legs sent oxygen fizzing round my body. Sunshine was rolling across the countryside, between clouds, like a spotlight singling out a stone wall here, a green splash of field there, a silvery copse. The next hill was steeper and Lisa hunched over her handlebars and pedalled furiously to get to the top. When I'd reached halfway I got off and pushed. There was no sound but my own panting and the slight rubbing of my back brake block, and the distant cawing of rooks. The landscape around me felt huge and empty, with just me at the centre of it. Lisa waited for me at the top and we went spinning down together, shrieking at the speed and breathlessness of it. The fields unrolled before us like a carpet.

Eventually there was a smaller lane turning off to the right, and then Lisa stopped by a gate. ‘It's up there.' A track wound away uphill and into bare trees. The gate wasn't locked but the hinges were knackered. We managed to squeeze the bikes through, and pushed them up into the woods. From the top we could see down to a stream in the valley bottom, and a farmhouse with a cluster of outbuildings. The sun came out again, a wash of light flooding the valley. We looked at each other and laughed. Then we parked our bikes against trees and set off down to the house.

There was a stone flagged yard in front, with buildings to three sides–the house, a dilapidated barn, and some wooden sheds that looked like animal pens. A couple of mouldy straw bales lay in front of the barn. Lisa lifted a stone from the farmhouse doorstep and uncovered a big old-fashioned key. She unlocked the door and we went in to the dim kitchen. ‘God,' she said, ‘it's perfect!' There was an old cooking range along one wall, and a big black dresser, cluttered with cups and plates and yellowing papers–bills, junk mail, newspapers. The table was piled with jars and bottles, seed catalogues, a computer and printer, a washing basket full of clothes. There was a pair of cracked boots by the range, and waterproofs dangling from a hook on the door. The place smelt of damp and decay, with a sweetish sickly tinge which I realised was probably a dead mouse or bird.

‘What happened to the people?' I asked. There was a rusty frying pan in the washing up bowl, in a sludge of stagnant water.

‘It's a sad story,' said Lisa. ‘But look! A solid fuel stove, how good is that? We can have heat and cooking and hot water, just by chopping up some wood.' She tried the tap, it spattered briefly then the pipes clanged and it stopped. ‘They've turned it off,' she said. ‘We'll get plastic barrels and catch the rainfall off the roof.'

We went through into the sitting room, where a flowery sofa was pushed up close to the fireplace. Soft white ashes lay in the grate. There was a telly in the corner, and a calculator and pen and handwritten lists of figures lying by the sofa. Through the lounge was a junk room piled high with boxes and broken furniture. ‘What happened, Lisa?'

She told me as we went upstairs and explored the bedrooms. The farm belonged to a young couple who were going to do it up. The woman was pregnant, then came MDS. The husband stayed there on his own until October and then he killed himself. The farm reverted to his parents. Now they were the ones donating it to motherless kids.

‘Did they both die here, in this house?'

‘How should I know? Is that all you're interested in? Can't you see the fantastic potential this place has?'

‘Sorry. Yes.' In the main bedroom the bedclothes lay in a tangled pushed-back heap, as if someone had got out of them that very morning. In the other room a stepladder leant against the wall, and there was a tin of paint with a brush balanced on it. One powder blue wall. There was an attic above the bedrooms. You could see the sky through the roof in a couple of places, and there were leaves and feathers on the floor. ‘I bet there's a nest up there,' I said, but we couldn't see it.

Outside we checked out the other buildings, which were all pretty decrepit, and she launched into her plans. There was donated money in the Kids' House bank account. She was going to buy tools and seed. She'd plant vegetables; potatoes, onions, beans, cabbage, beetroot, sweetcorn, sunflowers. They would have to put proper fencing round the garden to keep out deer and rabbits. She was going to buy a polytunnel and grow tomatoes and strawberries and lettuce in there, and also get chickens and goats. She had read about keeping livestock and reckoned she would be able to milk a goat and make yoghurt and cheese. She was going to buy apple and plum and hazelnut trees and raspberry and blackcurrant canes, and get someone who knew about bees to come and set up a hive and teach her how to look after it. Household waste would be composted with urine and used to fertilise the gardens. They would mend the gates and repair the roof and make the house weatherproof. And if they could get all that done this year, then next year they would plant bigger crops, some grain, maybe an orchard, and start to keep cows.

‘We can convert the barn into more sleeping places,' she said, ‘and we can use the sheds for storage. We can sun-dry things like tomatoes, we can make jam and preserve fruit, and make an underground storage place for root vegetables so they don't get frosted in winter. The stream can supplement our rain water, and there's no reason why we shouldn't fix up our own wind turbine on top of that hill.' She laughed. ‘I'm going to call it Eden!'

I sat on an old bench in the back garden while she went into the house again to make an inventory of tools that were already there. The spring sun was almost warm, and there was bright yellow coltsfoot growing between the paving stones of the path. I imagined Lisa coming here with a bunch of the others, unloading supplies and deciding who'd sleep where, clearing up the kitchen, dragging rubbish out to make a bonfire. They'd stand around the flames as it got dark, laughing and making plans.

The coltsfoot was the first flower of spring. Everything was renewing itself, soon the valley would be full of new green leaves. Lisa came out and called that she was ready. When I went into the yard she was wrestling with the key which wouldn't turn in the lock. She laughed and said it didn't want her to leave. I did it for her and put the key under the stone, and we walked back up to our bikes. Lisa rattled on about how the place could be improved. I wasn't thinking but there was something hissing in my head like static. It went on all the time we were cycling to the station. As we wheeled our bikes onto the platform my head cleared, and I realised I didn't want to go home.

If I could just be on my own for a bit–really on my own, not where other people could get at me–and have some time to think, then I'd be able to get it straight. Eden was the perfect place to stay. This wasn't to do with anyone else any more; not Baz or Iain or Mum or Dad or Lisa or Sal; only me. My life. I needed to let myself expand to fill a space–a room, the house, the valley–to be really, one hundred per cent certain.

I thought for a moment Lisa might decide to stay too, but she wanted to get back to Gabe. I asked her to phone Mum and Dad for me when she got back to somewhere with a signal. When the train came I stood on the platform with my bike and waved her off. I told myself this was the right thing to do if I could cycle all the way back without getting off once, and I managed it, even though I had to stand on the pedals near the top of the second hill, and wobbled all over the road because I was going so slow. I hid my bike in bushes near the gate and everything sounded louder as I walked up the track–the cawing rooks and little chirruping woodland birds, the rustle of my footsteps, the soft wind in the tree tops. Bright green garlicky-smelling leaves were poking through the dead leaves. A startled bird went off in a bomb of song. If the key turns without sticking, I told myself, if I can get the stove to light, then it proves I should be here. The key turned easily at the first try. I explored the house again, seeing different things now I was on my own; the basket of twigs and logs beside the living room fire; the airing cupboard in the bathroom, with neatly folded sheets and pillowcases inside. There was a sack of wizened sprouting potatoes in the pantry, and some tins–tomatoes, tuna, sweetcorn. I could make myself a meal.