Before I Die (26 page)

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Show me a magic trick then.’

He runs off to get his stuff, comes back wearing his special jacket, the black one with the hidden pockets.

‘Watch very carefully.’

He ties two silk handkerchiefs together at one corner and pushes them into his fist. He opens his hand finger by finger. It’s empty.

‘How did you do that?’

He shakes his head, taps his nose with his wand. ‘Magicians never give their secrets away.’

‘Do it again.’

Instead, he shuffles and spreads a pack of cards. ‘Choose one, look at it, don’t tell me what it is.’

I choose the queen of spades, and then replace her in the pack. Cal spreads the cards again, face-up this time. But she’s gone.

‘You’re good, Cal!’

He slumps down on the bed. ‘Not good enough. I wish I could do something bigger, something scary.’

‘You can saw me in half if you like.’

He grins, but almost immediately starts to cry, silently at first, and then great gulping sobs. As far as I know this is only the second time he’s ever cried, so maybe he needs to. We both act as if he can’t help it, like it’s a nosebleed that has nothing to do with how he might be feeling. I pull him close and hold him. He sobs into my shoulder, his tears melt through my pyjamas. I want to lick them. His real, real tears.

‘I love you, Cal.’

It’s easy. Even though it makes him cry ten times harder, I’m really glad I dared.

Number thirteen, to hold my brother as dusk settles on the window ledge.

Adam climbs into bed. He pulls the duvet right up under his chin, as if he’s cold or as if he’s afraid that the ceiling might fall on his head.

He says, ‘Tomorrow your dad’s going to buy a camp bed and put it on the floor down there for me.’

‘Aren’t you going to sleep with me any more?’

‘You might not want it, Tess. You might not want to be held.’

‘What if I do?’

‘Well, then I’ll hold you.’

But he’s terrified. I see it in his eyes.

‘It’s all right, I let you off.’

‘Shush.’

‘No, really. I free you.’

‘I don’t want to be free.’ He leans across and kisses me. ‘Wake me up if you need me.’

He falls asleep quickly. I lie awake and listen to lights being switched off all over the town. Whispered goodnights. The drowsy creak of bedsprings.

I find Adam’s hand and hold it tight.

I’m glad that night porters and nurses and long-distance lorry drivers exist. It comforts me to know that in other countries with different time zones, women are washing clothes in rivers and children are filing to school. Somewhere in the world right now, a boy is listening to the merry chink of a goat’s bell as he walks up a mountain. I’m very glad about that.

Thirty-nine

Zoey’s sewing. I didn’t know she could. A lemon-coloured baby suit is draped across her knees. She threads the needle, one eye shut, pulls the thread through and rolls a knot between licked fingers. Who taught her that? For minutes I watch her, and she sews as if this is how it’s always been. Her blonde hair is piled high, her neck at a tender angle. She bites her bottom lip in concentration.

‘Live,’ I tell her. ‘You will live, won’t you?’

She looks up suddenly, sucks bright blood from her finger. ‘Shit!’ she says. ‘I didn’t know you were awake.’

It makes me chuckle. ‘You’re blooming.’

‘I’m fat!’ She heaves herself upright in the chair and thrusts her belly at me to prove it. ‘I’m as big as a bear.’

I’d love to be that baby deep inside her. To be small and healthy.

Instructions for Zoey

Don’t tell your daughter the planet is rotting. Show her lovely things. Be a giant for her, even though your parents couldn’t do it for you. Don’t ever get involved with any boy who doesn’t love you.

‘When the baby’s born, do you think you’ll miss the life you had before?’

Zoey looks at me very solemnly. ‘You should get dressed. It’s not good for you to sit around in your pyjamas all day.’

I lean back on the pillows and look at the corners of the room. When I was a kid, I always wanted to live on the ceiling – it looked so clean and uncluttered, like the top of a cake. Now it just reminds me of bed sheets.

‘I feel like I’ve let you down. I won’t be able to babysit or anything.’

Zoey says, ‘It’s really nice outside. Shall I ask Adam or your dad to carry you out?’

Birds joust on the lawn. Ragged clouds fringe a blue sky. This sun lounger is warm, as if it’s been absorbing sunlight for hours.

Zoey’s reading a magazine. Adam’s stroking my feet through my socks.

‘Listen to this,’ Zoey says. ‘This won the funniest joke of the year competition.’

Number fourteen, a joke.

‘
A man goes to the doctor’s and says, “I’ve got a strawberry stuck up my bottom.” “Oh,” says the doctor, “I’ve got some cream for that.”
’

I laugh a lot. I’m a laughing skeleton. To hear us – Adam, Zoey and me – is like being offered a window to climb through. Anything could happen next.

Zoey shoves her baby into my arms. ‘Her name’s Lauren.’

She’s fat and sticky and drooling milk. She smells good. She waves her arms at me, snatching at air. Her little fingers with their half-moon nails pluck at my nose.

‘Hello, Lauren.’

I tell her how big and clever she is. I say all the silly things I imagine babies like to hear. And she looks back at me with fathomless eyes and gives a great big yawn. I can see right inside her little pink mouth.

‘She likes you,’ Zoey says. ‘She knows who you are.’

I put Lauren Tessa Walker at my shoulder and swim my hand in circles over her back. I listen to her heart. She sounds careful, determined. She is ferociously warm.

Under the apple tree, shadows dance. Sunlight sifts through the branches. A lawnmower drones far away. Zoey’s still reading her magazine, slaps it down when she sees I’m awake.

‘You’ve been asleep for ages,’ she tells me.

‘I dreamed Lauren was born.’

‘Was she gorgeous?’

‘Of course.’

Adam looks up and smiles at me. ‘Hey,’ he says.

Dad walks down the path filming us with his video camera.

‘Stop it,’ I tell him. ‘It’s morbid.’

He takes the camera back into the house, comes out with the recycling box and puts it by the gate. He dead-heads flowers.

‘Come and sit with us, Dad.’

But he can’t keep still. He goes back inside, returns with a bowl of grapes, an assortment of chocolate, glasses of juice.

‘Anyone want a sandwich?’

Zoey shakes her head. ‘I’m all right with these Maltesers thanks.’

I like the way her mouth puckers as she sucks them.

Keep-death-away spells.

Ask your best friend to read out the juicy bits from her magazine – the fashion, the gossip. Encourage her to sit close enough for you to touch her tummy, the amazing expanse of it. And when she has to go home, take a deep breath and tell her you love her. Because it’s true. And when she leans over and whispers it back, hold onto her tight, because these are not words you would normally share.

Make your brother sit with you when he gets back from school and go through every detail of his day, every lesson, every conversation, even what he had for dinner, until he’s so bored he begs to be allowed to run off and play football with his friends in the park.

Watch your mum kick off her shoes and massage her feet because her new job in the bookshop means she has to stand up all day and be polite to strangers. Laugh when she gives your dad a book because she gets a discount and can afford to be generous.

Watch your dad kiss her cheek. Notice them smile. Know that whatever happens, they are your parents.

Listen to your neighbour pruning her roses as shadows lengthen across the lawn. She’s humming some old song and you’re under a blanket with your boyfriend. Tell him you’re proud of him, because he made that garden grow and encouraged his mother to care about it.

Study the moon. It’s close and has a pink flare around it. Your boyfriend tells you it’s an optical illusion, that it only seems big because of its angle to the earth.

Measure yourself against it.

And, at night, when you’re carried back upstairs and another day is over, refuse to let your boyfriend sleep in the camp bed. Tell him you want to be held and don’t be afraid that he might not want to, because if he says he will, then he loves you and that’s all that matters. Wrap your legs with his. Listen to him sleep, his gentle breathing.

And when you hear a sound, like the flapping of a kite getting closer, like the sails of a windmill slowly turning, say, ‘Not yet, not yet.’

Keep breathing. Just keep doing it. It’s easy. In and out.

Forty

The light begins to come back. The absolute dark fades at the edges. My mouth’s dry. The grit of last night’s medication lines my throat.

‘Hey,’ Adam says.

He’s got a hard-on, apologizes for it with a shy smile, then opens the curtains and stands at the window looking out. Beyond him, the dull pink clouds of morning.

‘You’re going to be here for years without me,’ I tell him.

He says, ‘Shall I make us some breakfast?’

Like a butler, he brings me things. A lemon ice lolly. A hot-water bottle. Slices of orange cut onto a plate. Another blanket. He puts cinnamon sticks to boil on the oven downstairs, because I want to smell Christmas.

How did this happen so quickly? How did it really come true?

please get into bed and climb on top of me with your warmth and wrap me with your arms and make it stop

‘Mum’s putting up a trellis,’ he says. ‘First it was a herb garden, then roses, now she wants honeysuckle. I might go out and give her a hand when your dad comes to sit with you. Would that be OK?’

‘Sure.’

‘You don’t fancy sitting outside again today?’

‘No.’

I can’t be bothered to move. The sun grinds into my brain and everything aches.

this mad psycho tells everyone to get into a field and says I’m going to pick one of you just one of you out of all of you to die and everyone’s looking around thinking it’s so unlikely to be me because there’s thousands of us so statistically it’s completely unlikely and the psycho walks up and down looking at everyone and when he gets near me he hesitates and he smiles and then he points right at me and says you’re the one and the shock that it’s me and yet of course it’s me why wouldn’t it be I knew all along

Cal crashes in. ‘Can I go out?’

Dad sighs. ‘Where?’

‘Just out.’

‘You need to be a bit more specific.’

‘I’ll let you know when I get there.’

‘Not good enough.’

‘Everyone else is allowed randomly out.’

‘I’m not interested in everyone else.’

Wonderful rage as Cal stomps to the door. The bits of garden in his hair, the filth of his fingernails. His body able to yank the door open and slam it behind him.

‘You’re all such bloody bastards!’ he yells as he races down the stairs.

Instructions for Cal

Don’t die young. Don’t get meningitis, or Aids or anything else ever. Be healthy. Don’t fight in any war, or join a cult, or get religion, or lose your heart to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Don’t think you have to be good because you’re the only one left. Be as bad as you like.

I reach for Dad’s hand. His fingers look raw, as if they’ve been through a grater.

‘What have you done?’

He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t even notice.’

Further instructions for Dad – Let Cal be enough for you.

I love you. I love you. I send this message through my fingers and into his, up his arm and into his heart. Hear me. I love you. And I’m sorry to leave you.

I wake up hours later. How did that happen?

Cal’s here again, sitting next to me on the bed propped up with pillows. ‘Sorry I shouted.’

‘Did Dad tell you to say that?’

He nods. The curtains are open and somehow the darkness is back.

‘Are you scared?’ Cal says this very softly, as if it’s something he’s thinking, but didn’t mean to say.

‘I’m scared of falling asleep.’

‘That you won’t wake up?’

‘Yes.’

His eyes shine. ‘But you know it won’t be tonight, don’t you? I mean, you’ll be able to tell, won’t you?’

‘It won’t be tonight.’

He rests his head on my shoulder. ‘I really, really hate this,’ he says.

Forty-one

The bell they gave me is loud in the dark, but I don’t care. Adam comes in, bleary-eyed, in his boxers and T-shirt.

‘You left me.’

‘I just this second went down to make a cup of tea.’

I don’t believe him. And I don’t care about his cup of tea. He can drink tepid water from my jug if he’s desperate.

‘Hold my hand. Don’t let go.’

Every time I close my eyes, I fall. Endlessly falling.

Forty-two

All qualities are the same – the light through the curtains, the faraway hum of traffic, the boiler rush of water. It could be groundhog day, except that my body is more tired, my skin more transparent. I am less than yesterday.

And

Adam is in the camp bed.

I try to sit up, but can’t quite muster the energy. ‘Why did you sleep down there?’

He touches my hand. ‘You were in pain in the night.’

He opens the curtains just like he did yesterday. He stands at the window looking out. Beyond him, the sky is pale and watery.

we made love twenty-seven times and we shared a bed for sixty-two nights and that’s a lot of love

‘Breakfast?’ he says.

I don’t want to be dead.

I haven’t been loved this way for long enough.

Forty-three

My mum was in labour for fourteen hours with me. It was the hottest May on record. So hot I didn’t wear any clothes for the first two weeks of my life.