Before She Was Mine (16 page)

I heard her before I saw her. She was singing along to ‘Mirror in the Bathroom’ but imperfectly, just the odd lines she knew. I rounded the top of the stairs and found her holding
Christian’s hands and bobbing about as though she was in a club. She was kitted out in a baggy lumberjack shirt and black leggings and her hair was bound up with an orange chiffon scarf. All
around her stood displaced furniture and junk.

‘Bloody hell, Melody.’

‘What?’

You should be in there helping the others, you’re nearly four months pregnant, that’s someone else’s boyfriend you were dancing with
. ‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘How’s it going?’

‘Brilliant, totally brilliant. Take a look.’

I poked my head round the spare-room door: the room that once, briefly, I might have claimed as mine. There was a plump girl on her knees gloss-painting the skirting boards, an ancient but
fit-looking man up a stepladder, a sixty-something woman with very short hair fixing masking tape round the window sill, and a thin young guy with dreadlocks filling in the centre of the back wall
with a roller. The girl I’d met before, and the white-haired man, but not the others.

Melody was rattling on. ‘Do you like it? I chose blue because I just love that shade, doesn’t matter if the baby turns out to be a girl, newborns can’t even see colour. And
I’m going to stick some decals of clouds under the picture rail, and seagulls, maybe do a mural of a tree or something in the corner. I’ve found these gorgeous curtains with stars on,
plus I’m fitting a blackout blind because of the street light, and I managed to get that lampshade shaped like a balloon. Not thought about a cot yet, but Tanya’s cadged me a cane chair
her dad was chucking out because the cushion needed re-covering. I can drape a throw over it, and it’ll be fine. That can be my feeding chair. And you know, Frey, you can still stay over, any
time. I’ve got that zed bed.’

I took in the scene, trying to summon up the appropriate level of enthusiasm.

‘For God’s sake, cheer up. Go in there and sniff some paint or something. We’re all high on the fumes. Aren’t we, Chris?’ She grinned and rolled her eyes at
him.

‘Well,’ said Chris.

‘Such a shame Liv couldn’t make it.’

‘Liv’s ill,’ I said.

‘She’s not got this flu, has she?’

‘Worse than that. I’ve got something to tell you. Something serious.’

That sobered her slightly. She glanced from me to Chris, and back again, and a little crease appeared between her brows. ‘Oh, OK. Do you want to go in my bedroom, hun?’

She led me in and we shut the door. A string of tiny brass bells rattled as the latch clicked home.

‘Frey?’

‘It’s cancer.’

There was a beat, then Melody mouthed the word after me. ‘Oh fuck.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where?’

‘Her breast. She’s having a mastectomy.’

Melody’s eyes widened with horror. I knew in her world there wasn’t a lot worse than disfigurement. ‘Jesus. Will she lose her hair too?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘That’s something.’

Like it’s a big deal here
, I thought.

‘Will she . . . is it—’

‘We don’t know how it’ll all turn out. I suppose they won’t know till they’ve done the op.’

‘Cancer, though. She must be fucking terrified. I would be. I can’t believe it.’

Melody began to pace about the room.

‘The stats are pretty encouraging,’ I said. ‘I know what counts in the end is the individual case but, overall, treatment’s getting better and better. I think we have to
hang onto that. That’s what Liv says.’

‘Cutting off her boob, though.’

‘They can reconstruct it,’ I said defensively.

‘I’d be, like, mental, if it was me.’

Yes, but this isn’t about you
, I thought. She was on the verge of annoying me.

‘How long has she known?’

‘She found a lump before Christmas.’

‘And kept it to herself?’

I sighed. ‘No, she did tell me and Geraint, only she wanted it kept quiet till she’d had the results.’

‘I count as family here too, Frey.’

Only just
.
Whose cancer is it anyway?
It was bizarre. Of all the reactions I’d been expecting, a battle over ownership was something I hadn’t predicted. ‘So
I’m telling you now.’

Melody sat down on the bed and pulled her scarf away, ruffled her hair free with her fingers. I could have been wrong, but I thought she took a split second to check herself in the mirror.
‘What can I send her?’

‘You mean, like a card?’

‘That and what else? I want to send her a present, let her know I’m rooting for her. Not flowers, though. I know she’s funny about where they’re grown. Does she use
moisturising face masks ever?’

‘I wouldn’t say it’s high on her list of priorities.’

‘How do you know? It might be just the pep she needs. Everyone loves a nice facial.’

I wanted not to be irritated. I knew she was trying. ‘It’s up to you, Melody.’

‘And you, you’re so calm, so grown up about it. I don’t know where you get it from. Not me.’

‘I’ve had time to get used to the idea.’

‘Yeah, I suppose. God, it’s awful isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Later, when the second crowd had arrived and the house was full and hot, I wandered from room to room feeling disconnected and miserable. I wanted to be back home, but the home
it was before Liv got ill, when a rough day meant Ray snapping at me for misplacing a delivery invoice, or Geraint hogging the bathroom for beard maintenance when I was gagging for a shower. You
don’t appreciate ordinariness when you have it.

Nicky caught up with me in the backyard where I was standing alone, watching the sun set over the roofs of Nantwich.

‘You OK, sweetheart?’ She put her arm through mine. ‘Chris told me. I’m so sorry. You must all be reeling.’

‘Yeah. Well, Liv’s not too bad at the moment. She says she wants it over and done with and then she can get on with her life. Geraint’s acting as though nothing’s
happened, but that’s par for the course.’

‘I’m sure it’ll be all right, you know. She’s going to be fine. Trust me.’

Nicky’s face was shining with sympathy, and suddenly I felt furious with her.
How dare you make that claim on Liv’s behalf? This is actually happening
,
it’s not some
schmaltzy TV drama. None of us knows what the future holds and I for one won’t be tempting fate by assuming the best.

I wriggled out of her grip, turned and found myself watching Christian through the window. He was handing round pretzels, charming smiles off everyone he spoke to, the way he does. When he
caught my eye he gave a little wave.

Nicky reached out for me again. ‘You should know, we’re both here for you.’

Oh, go play with your Virtual Wedding Bouquet
.
How can you possibly understand my situation, the way your life is right now?

‘Thanks,’ I said. I think I sounded sincere.

We went back inside the kitchen and I found myself standing next to Melody, who was flirting energetically with the dreadlock man.

‘When’s Michael getting here?’ I asked.

‘He isn’t. He rang me to say he’d had to deal with some problem for Kim and couldn’t make it.’

My last hope crashed. Aside from anything else, Michael was common sense; he always knew the right words to say. I realised how much I’d been depending on seeing him this evening.

‘Hey, I’m sure it’ll work out OK in the end, hun,’ said Melody, grasping my sleeve.

I just about managed a nod.

Then, before anyone else could be kind to me, I moved away quickly and through to the lounge. Without bothering to explain or say goodbye I pushed past the bodies and out to the front door, into
a smarting red sunset.

Case Notes on: Melody Jacqueline Brewster

Meeting Location:
42,
Love Lane, Nantwich

Present: Miss Melody Brewster, Mrs Abby Brewster, Mrs Diane Kozyra

Date:
2.30
p.m.,
22/1/87

Initially Melody wouldn’t speak to me. Mrs Brewster told me her daughter had been tearful all week and also had become convinced her hair was coming out. I asked if
she thought Melody wasn’t perhaps coping as well as we’d hoped. Mrs Brewster said it was hard for everyone and Melody needed to ‘pull herself together’. I suggested that now
Melody had made the decision to relinquish her baby she might be going through a grieving process, and that this was perfectly normal.

Shortly after this exchange, Melody began to examine her hair in the mirror. I said I thought her hair was looking just as full as on my previous visit, and she replied that I should see the
state of her brush or the plughole after she’d used shampoo. She said she felt ‘everything was falling away’. I advised a chat with her G P.
Again assured her I really could detect no obvious hair loss. She seemed slightly calmer by the time I left.

Query: beginnings of depression? Note on follow-up session.

Next visit:
30/1/87

Signed: Diane Kozyra

I’ve always liked April. It feels like the proper start of spring, when the cold weather lets up slightly and you get the first patches of blossom coming in the
hedgerows. Blue tits fly in and out of the nest box, our pipistrelle bat re-appears, the evenings are light again. You can’t help but feel cheered.

More significantly, Liv’s at her best in April, after the long drag of winter. The water-vole reports start coming in and she can begin to map that year’s colonies. Now’s the
season for habitat surveys, before the vegetation gets too mad: groups of earnest adults paddling about by the water’s edge, parting reeds and hunting for burrows and latrines. My job on
survey days is usually to mark the map – a square for feeding signs (‘Think of a square meal,’ Liv says); a circle for a burrow; a star for their little starry footprints etc. We
never glimpse any actual water voles, but sometimes there’s a plop as one dives into the water upstream of where we’re working. I’ve seen kingfishers and any number of dragonflies
and damselflies, woodpeckers and grey squirrels and shrews and frogs and toads. Once I spotted a pike, and it was massive.

Or in this month we go checking dormice, still asleep in their boxes. I’m in charge of the clipboard there as well, because you’re not supposed to handle a dormouse unless
you’re registered, but sometimes Liv’s let me stroke one when it’s needed microchipping and it’s still under anaesthetic.

I also remember April as the month I got to know my birth mother. Our initial meeting on Crewe station had been back in the December, but those first weeks had been cautious and restrained. I
think both of us were on our best behaviour, pretending to be people we weren’t. Then one early spring day she’d driven over and I’d taken her for a walk down by the canal. I
wanted to show her some of the places I used to hang about as a kid.

The first thing I’d spotted was some otter spraint on the kerb under the bridge. I was so excited I forgot to be cool. Took a photo on my phone, got down on my knees and actually sniffed
it, while Melody shrieked with horror. ‘Professor of poo, are you?’ she’d said. And I’d told her Liv had taught me to identify ten different types of wild mammal scat, and
if she thought that was gross, then tough.

‘God, you’re so serious, aren’t you?’ she’d said. ‘Chill out. I can do nature, you know. That’s a heron.’ She’d pointed across the canal to
where one flapped lazily across the field. ‘Well done,’ I’d said. Maybe flushed with success, she’d taken a run at a beech tree and hauled herself up onto the lowest branch,
marking her bleached jeans with mould and wiping cobwebs across her long chenille coat. As I stood there on the towpath she’d scrambled up two, three, four more branches till she hung right
over me, her face triumphant. She rocked back and forth, showering me with spiders and grubs to try and freak me out. But she must have rocked too hard because the next second there was a rushing
noise and a thud and she was on the hard ground in a heap of black chenille. Even before I had a chance to panic she was sitting up and laughing. ‘Call me Kate Humble,’ she’d said
when she got her breath back.

I never told Liv about the episode because I suspected she wouldn’t approve and I was quite protective of Melody in those days; she seemed hardly older than me.

Those were the Aprils of the past, though. This one had seen Liv recovering from having her breast taken away, drains and an implant inserted.

Geraint and I had struggled. The house with only the two of us in it was dire. She was only away five days at the end of March, but our systems began to unravel even in that short space. It
wasn’t as if I couldn’t cope domestically – I’m keener on routine and order than Liv – it’s that I resented looking after Geraint. Where I wouldn’t think
twice about tumbling a basketful of clothes into the washing machine, I couldn’t bring myself to wash just his stuff. I objected to picking up even a single mug or bowl he’d used, and
rather than cook for him, I bought in a load of processed meals-for-one and ate them in my room, leaving him to forage for himself. I watched him cut his toenails one night and thought,
There’s no way I’m hoovering that up
. The upstairs sink was rimed with unswilled beard trimmings, the towels were left on the floor by the side of the bath, the peelings pot sat
on the kitchen worktop crammed and sweltering. As for cleaning the toilets, forget it.

We needed Liv between us.

The result was that the day before she was discharged, both of us had to go round the house in a mad panic to return it to a fit state. To be fair to Geraint, he did as he was told. Because
neither of us had bothered to put the wheelie bin out for collection, we now had surplus bags of rubbish sitting by the back door and it was Geraint who drove them down to the tip. When he came
back he swabbed the kitchen floor (once I’d shown him where the bucket lived, what cleaning agent to put in and to use hot, not cold, water). In between all my jobs, I stood over him while he
changed the sheets on Liv’s bed, and followed him about to make sure he draped wet clothes tidily over the radiators, rather than stuffing multiple socks and underpants in a sodden wodge down
the back.