Things I Want My Daughters to Know (6 page)

The disease has bad PR, that’s for sure. It makes people make the face. But they cure it. And they will cure me.

If I wrote a book (ha, ha), I know what picture I would put on the front cover. I have this fridge magnet—you bought it for me, Lisa, a long time ago. I can’t remember exactly what it says and I can’t be bothered to go downstairs and see, but it’s this black-and-white photo of some Edwardian-type women sitting at a table, and it says something about the ladies on the
Titanic
who waved away the dessert cart. Makes me laugh every time I remember to notice it. I’d call my book something like
Life’s Short: Eat Pudding First.

Could be a Christmas bestseller, that could.

You can’t just do that when you get ill, girls. (Maternal lesson alert!) You have to do it all the time. Do it always. Life is short. Even if you don’t get cancer. Even if you die an old lady in your bed. It’s still a blink-and-you-miss-it, ever-increasing-speed, white-knuckle ride.

I’ve been pretty good at that. Not always. I’m not perfect. But not bad. I’ve lived a life. Even had a Shirley Valentine moment, but if you think reading on will reveal the secrets of that to you, you’re much mistaken—you don’t need to know everything . . . ! (That’s called a teaser.) If this goes the way I want it to, I will have died an old lady in my bed. I’m just covering myself. In case.

But if you think I’m going to start drinking wheatgrass, you’re very much mistaken. Make mine a G&T, ice, and a slice. . . .

�

October

“Happy Birthday, Hannah!” They were celebrating in a restaurant.
Everyone was here, except Stephen, who was working. They’d always done family birthdays at home, but this year the local bistro seemed safer. This was the first birthday. In her head, Hannah called it BD and AD. Before death and after. This was her first birthday AD. So far so okay. She’d woken up, been to school, come home, and changed to come here, and she still hadn’t cried today.

“Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know the look. And I’m not seeing it.”

Hannah pressed her lips into a Marilynesque pout, blew a kiss at Lisa, and grabbed her last unopened present. She knew it was Amanda’s not so much by process of elimination, but because it wasn’t actually wrapped, just shoved in a bag. An ethnic shop type of bag that smelled of sandalwood and still contained a receipt. No card. Occasionally, while she was traveling, Amanda would send a card in lieu of a present—always in a foreign language, always containing some joke no one understood, since it was in Croatian, or Malaysian. In attendance this year, she saw no need for a card to say in writing what she could very well say in person. Mum would have been terribly disapproving. Jennifer’s gift had been a big bottle of Stella McCartney, wrapped in thick lilac paper that
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matched the perfume bottle and tied with a silver chiffon ribbon. Lisa had given her a Whistles voucher, with a card attached saying the condition was that she be present when it was spent. Mark had upgraded her far too childish Shuffle to an iPod that played films and music videos.

He’d had the back engraved with her name, and even downloaded some concerts onto it. The presents made her feel quite grown-up.

“I’ve got something for everyone now.” They’d finished dinner, and the waiters had brought a chocolate mousse cake with candles in it from the kitchen, and all the diners, much to Hannah’s excruciating embarrassment, had sung “Happy Birthday” to her. They were drinking coffee. “I hope Hannah doesn’t mind me doing this here,” Jennifer was continuing, “but we aren’t all together all that often, and I wanted us to be all together for this.”

She’s pregnant,
Mark thought.

She’s left Stephen,
Lisa thought.

Jennifer pulled out a thick sheaf of papers from a tote bag she’d kept beside her at the table. The pages were all neatly bound with plastic edges. Amanda thought, not for the first time, what a good but scary teacher her sister would have made.

She’s not pregnant.

She hasn’t left Stephen.
Mark and Lisa independently wondered whether their disappointment could be heard.

“Mum left us . . . left me something, when she died. She left me this.” She held up a colorful folder. “It’s a journal, really. Things she wrote. Things she wanted her daughters to know. When she was ill, and when she knew . . . when she knew she was dying. She left it for me first because”—she paused; she didn’t want to say why—“because my life is such a mess. . . . But she obviously wanted the rest of you to read it, too. I can’t give it to everyone all at once, so I’ve made some copies. . . .”

She handed them around as though she were giving a seminar.

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“I know it’s not so personal as the actual thing; you know, the paper she wrote on. You can all have a turn with that—I’m not hogging it. I just thought . . . I just thought we should all have a copy we could keep . . .” Her voice trailed away a little.

The image of Jennifer standing by the photocopier at the office feeding bits of their mum’s diary into a machine made Amanda want to laugh.

It was so efficient, and . . . so Jennifer. Mum would have loved it!

Hannah opened her copy, saw her mother’s handwriting, and closed it again. Not tonight.

Lisa and Andy gave Jennifer a lift home. Amanda was staying the night. She and Hannah put clean linen on the bed in the guest room, giggling as they both fought to be the fastest to pull the elasticated bottom sheet over the corners. Once they’d secured it, Amanda threw herself back onto the mattress, and Hannah lay down, too, from the other side, so that their heads met in the middle. They both stared at the ceiling.

“I’ve had too much to drink.”

“Disgusting.”

“I know. I’m a lush. Did you have a nice time, baby?”

“You’re going to have to stop calling me baby soon. I’m sixteen now.

Besides, it’s very
Dirty Dancing.
”

“Okay. No more baby. Did you have a nice time,
Hannah
?” Amanda turned her head too fast to look at her sister.

“I did.” Amanda was still looking at her. Or squinting, in a sort of unfocused way.

“I really did. I mean, I was afraid, a bit, that I’d be all sad. But I was okay.”

“You were cool.”

That felt nice.

“And now I’m going to go to sleep.” Amanda closed her eyes.

“You’re still dressed. And you haven’t brushed your teeth.”

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Amanda laughed, but she didn’t open her eyes. “What are you, the personal hygiene police?”

Downstairs, Mark was waiting for Hannah.

“I’ve got something for you.”

“More? Even I think I’m spoiled now. . . .”

He held out a card and a small, beautifully wrapped box. Hannah knew immediately.

“It’s from Mum.”

Mark nodded. “She told me to give it to you today.”

“Oh.”

She opened the box first. It was a pair of very small, but nonetheless very sparkly, diamond stud earrings. Hannah put the box down very carefully, leaving the lid open. The card wasn’t really a birthday card. It was white, and it had big black letters on the front. go confidently in the direction of your dreams, it said. She was still at it—issuing instructions from beyond the grave. Hannah smiled.

Inside, Barbara had written, “No sadness today, my birthday girl.

Some bling from me. Wear them and dazzle. Your first, and, I hope, your smallest diamonds! Love you, Mum.” She’d signed it with crosses and hearts, like she always had done.

�

Mid-December

Hannah

Hannah had wanted
Now That’s What I Call Christmas.
Mark had favored the
King’s College Choir
. So they had settled on
The Jackson Five Christmas Album.
Robin was currently rocking, well and truly. The tree had been chosen, netted, driven home, and dragged in, leaving a trail of needles that they would still be vacuuming up in March. It was huge. “What the hell!”

Mark had said. “Let’s get a whopper.” It nearly reached the ceiling.

They’d decided, the two of them, the night before, over a pizza, to buy new decorations. Neither of them was ready to get the big box up from the cellar. Full of handmade ornaments, and cherished mementos, it was too much. They had both learned, over the last few months, not to wallow. If they’d opened the box, they’d have been opening the door, and, for now, they chose to leave it closed. Instead, they’d driven into town on their way to get the tree and bought new lights, and new glass balls, and new tinsel for their new Christmas.

They decided a lot more together since . . . well, lately. Hannah liked it. Before, she’d been an add-on. Important, but not . . . not at the center of things. She ate dinner with her parents, of course. But no one ever said to her—“What d’you fancy for supper tonight, Hannah?” She’d sat and watched TV with them, but no one ever asked her what she wanted to watch. If she didn’t like the same thing as them, there was
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always the television in the study, or the one upstairs in the oak cupboard at the end of their big bed. Now, Dad consulted her about everything. It made her feel grown-up. Hence the pizza, and the fabulously colorful tree, and the Jackson Five.

Dad was more interested in her—that was how it felt. He talked to her about the news. He watched the programs she liked, with her, and got her to tell him about the characters and the plots. He’d never done that. She’d come home with all this careers stuff, and he’d read it with her, asking her lots of questions—about her A levels, and applications, and universities. She sat in the front seat of the car now, when they went somewhere.

Dad had always been the cook. Mum used to say if there was a pill you could take that meant you got all the calories and nutrition you needed, she wouldn’t bother to eat. Mind you, she used to eat what Dad prepared. Hannah didn’t think it was the actual eating, so much as the shopping and preparing and cleaning up that Mum hadn’t been so keen on. Dad was different. He loved it. When Mum was alive, she would sit, in the evening, with a bulbous glass of red wine, on one of the stools at the breakfast bar, and watch him slice and tenderize and whisk. She used to say she’d really won the lottery when she found him. Since she’d died—before that, really—since she’d been really ill, Hannah had helped him. He’d shown her how to cut vegetables, pivoting the knife up and down against the chopping board so that you could go really quickly, and how to mash garlic with the side of the blade, adding a little salt as you went, and how to make a smooth roux. They’d never talked about this shift of habit. One evening she had come to him, and started to chop something, and he had silently tied one of the oversize denim aprons that hung on the kitchen door around her neck and her waist, and then quietly told her what he was doing.

And now they cooked together almost every night. They’d started making desserts. And dips. Now when Hannah stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom and stared at her naked reflection, her stomach 44 e l i z a b e t h

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was rounder. You could no longer see the hard muscles beneath the surface, and, sideways, there was a curve. She quite liked it.

She wanted to get her belly button pierced. Dad would never let her.

She’d have stood more chance if Mum was alive. Mum would probably have said yes. She’d have said she should enjoy her flat stomach while she still had it. She’d have said piercing was better than tattooing, because you could always take a piercing out. She’d have said anywhere except the face.

She especially hated those rods people had put through their chins and their eyebrows. But she’d have been okay about the tummy button. She could probably get away with it now, if she wanted to. She wouldn’t have to tell Dad. They didn’t do that naked thing anymore. He wouldn’t see it until next summer. It would be too late then to throw a wobbly. Maybe she would do it. . . .

Life’s too short, after all, isn’t it? Not to do the things you want—the things that make you happy? Hannah had been thinking that quite a lot lately.

Mum had gotten really, really thin. This new little belly felt like health, and like life. And the cooking, she knew, felt a little like therapy.

Dad let her have a little glass of wine, too, sometimes. He once said that he felt better when there were two glasses.

Tonight they were making mince pies. From scratch. They’d made the mincemeat a few weeks earlier, when they’d made the cake and the Christmas pudding. That had been a real Martha Stewart day, and the kitchen had been full of the strange smells of candied peel and boozy currants. Now, in the glow of the Christmas tree, to the sound of the Jacksons singing “Rocking Robin,” they were rolling pastry on the gray marble slab, cutting out ivy leaves and stars to top their pies.

Everyone was coming. Hannah had insisted. When they’d all been together for her birthday at the beginning of October, she’d made them commit, marking it off in their diaries. She’d told Amanda that she absolutely could not leave the country until January. Lisa was coming with Andy. Jennifer had agreed to see Stephen’s parents the weekend before
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so that she could be there. Day to day, it was fine, it just being the two of them. Not all the days were the same. Not all good. When one of them was having a bad one, that was okay. When it was both . . . well, those were the duvet days. And she wasn’t going to risk a duvet day on Christmas Day. There would be music, and mince pies, and Pictionary. Mum would have liked that.

Lisa

It was the perfect party. Okay—it was the office Christmas party, though the office (Andy’s) had had a really good year and splashed out on a pretty impressive venue. But it was perfect. Hers, the day before, had been at a ghastly Mexican restaurant down the road, and a classic exam-ple of the wrong kind of cliché office Christmas party. Where private parts were photocopied late at night, and people from accounts woke up next to the postroom guy, who they didn’t even speak to on the other 364 days of the year, unless they needed to FedEx their sister’s birthday present on company funds. She’d left really early, before the ladies’