We Are All Made of Stars (10 page)

Knowing you were there made me feel like a million dollars. I wore my sequins and false lashes with pride. It was the first step on a long journey, and you helped me take it – your love for me never wavered.

You never shied away from telling your friends that you had two mothers now, that one of them used to be your dad. You lifted your chin up high and held my hand, and helped me through. I am so lucky, so, so lucky, that I had you in my life. I don't think I would have lived this long if you hadn't shown me that it was OK to be me.

Prostate cancer – well, it's a laugh, isn't it? The woman with the finest manicure in town is getting taken down by the biology that she never wanted. Bury me in a silver coffin, darling, cover me in glitter from head to foot, play Dean Martin and dance. Make sure you and my grandchildren dance for all you are worth.

And, as for me, don't you feel sad. There cannot be a happier person than me, knowing, as I do, that the same biology that's finished me off is what gave me the chance to create you – the most wonderful woman I know, apart from your darling mother.

Dance, just dance every day. Dance on my grave – I shan't mind a bit.

With love,

Mum

CHAPTER NINE

I'm not entirely sure what I've agreed to, but somehow it's happened, and all in that one hour in the pub. Ben left me at my room door last night, and I haven't been able to stop thinking ever since. Not just normal ‘Oh God, I feel like hell, and I wonder what they are giving us for dinner' thinking, but stupid, crazy, fast-thoughts-type thinking, where you keep on wondering: did that really happen? And, if it did, what was it exactly that drove me to the point of temporary insanity?

‘What about Glastonbury? We should do that. I'll get tickets now – something for you look forward to, when you get out of here,' Ben had said about halfway through our pint – or should I say his pint and my J2O. Beside his drink there was also a vodka chaser. (I don't know why for just a quick drink he felt like he needed an extra shot of spirits. I think it's almost like a badge of honour with him – look at me, with my chaser; I'll be playing the O2 next year, wait and see – me with my edgy lifestyle and my vodka shot.)

‘All the tickets will be sold now,' I'd told him. ‘They'll have been sold out months ago. Besides, I'm not exactly keen on the whole toilet situation, or the mud, or the rain, or the camping.'

‘Don't be stupid, that's what festivals are all about. OK, so if this year is too late, what about next year, then?' he'd said, and I'd looked sceptical. ‘Also, you know, with you on board we might get disabled access.'

I'd given my best withering stare, and he'd shrugged.

‘Seems a bit optimistic to plan that far ahead,' I'd said. ‘Be a shame to spend all the money on something and then I die before I get to go. And I really do hate the rain and the toilets and the camping. We could watch it on telly again.'

‘You're too young to always be the voice of doom, you know,' he'd said. ‘I've become an expert on CF, and when you are well and it's under control, you can do anything, including rock festivals. And it's not a death sentence any more. When you were born, everyone said you'd be lucky to make it to your thirties, and now it's likely you can make it to forty, and who knows what advances next year or the year after will bring?'

‘How do you know all this stuff?' I'd said.

‘I keep up to date with things,' he said. ‘I keep informed. If only you were a bit younger and a bit more terminal,' he'd said, wistfully. ‘We could write to some Make-A-Wish foundation or some shit. The dying kids get all the best deals.'

I'd thought about Issy, and her chirpy headscarf, and how the whites of her eyes are yellow, and how swearing makes her laugh.

‘That isn't exactly true, is it?' I'd said. ‘I mean, they are dying.'

‘I know, I'm sorry,' Ben had said, lowering his eyes, and I knew he was thinking about Issy at that moment too. ‘You know how sometimes my efforts to be flippant tip over the edge into bad taste.'

‘I am familiar with that, yes,' I'd replied. ‘And anyway, you don't have to make it your mission to cheer me up, you know; I'm not your … charity case.'

‘What?' He'd looked hurt and sat back in his chair like my words had shoved him there. He doesn't know I'd meant to say, ‘I'm not your girlfriend,' but had changed tack at the last moment, because … well, just because.

‘What I mean is, well, you are always hanging around being nice to me, but you shouldn't feel obliged. If you thought that, well, maybe we've outgrown each other, I'd get it. I mean, maybe a friendship formed when one of us wet their pants, and it wasn't me, isn't meant to last past, say, the age of ten. Although to be fair that
is
your mental age.'

‘Hope Ellen Kingston.' Ben had looked horrified. ‘We made a deal. We made a scared vow; we pretended to cut our palms and become blood brothers, but with a red biro. We're red-biro relatives. I'm in this for the long haul. You're my best friend; you know everything there is to know about me – I mean everything.' He didn't have to say out loud what he meant; the incident he was alluding to, which had involved me and him, a shatterproof ruler and me taking his … er … exact measurements when we were twelve, is still indelibly printed on both of our minds.

‘I'm just saying,' I'd told him. ‘We made this deal when we were six, at around the same time you also vowed to become a striker for Arsenal and learn to fly,
using your arms
. It's not like some oath. You don't have to be my own personal cheerleader. You can … be free, you know.'

‘That's not why I do it,' he'd said. ‘Because I feel obliged. I do it because chicks really dig that I'm so kind to you. Having a cripple as a best friend gets me laid. And anyway, fate does not break up partnerships like ours; we're like Batman and Robin, or Romeo and Juliet.'

‘You know they both die, Romeo and Juliet, right?' I'd asked him.

‘Shit, I never got to the end. I was looking for the sex scene,' he'd said.

And I had made my usual heavy sigh, mature eye roll, and he'd done his usual schoolboy chuckle, and I'd thought, that's what I am. I'm his best friend, his side-kick, who he has no recollection of kissing. I'm a hanger-on, his best pet groupie, the girl that will always be there, telling him how great he is. I'm his straight (wo)man, and that is exactly the way I want it be, for ever.

And then he'd said, ‘It's Open Mic Night at the Market Tavern every Saturday night, seven till nine. I've got an idea. To help you get back to full fitness, you should give your lungs a work out. Remember? That's why you took singing lessons in the first place – because it helps strengthen the lungs and get oxygen into them, open them up and shit? We were all shocked you could actually sing. Anyway, we'll work up one of your songs, you choose, just you and me. It's about time you started singing again – I can't remember the last time you let me hear you.'

‘Oh, I don't really sing – you know that,' I'd said. ‘Not for an audience.'

‘But you should, you totally should. You have such a lovely voice: clear and pure and strong, and you've got range. Yes, that's what we'll do. You'll start singing and I'll help you, and we'll do a number at open mic night. You start singing next time I visit, I'll bring my guitar and we'll jam one of your songs together and make it really cool. Yeah. Because, you know, I like the band and everything, but they are at bit one-dimensional, with all the heavy rock and eyeliner. I fancy something a bit lighter, and a bit more poppy.'

‘Are you saying that I write pop songs?' I'd asked.

‘I'm saying you write tunes that people hum after they've heard them only once, and that is a good thing.' He'd looked so pleased with himself. ‘Yes! This is brilliant. I'm a genius. And once you're ready to celebrate getting out, we'll go and sing your song at the Market Bar, together. I promise, I will be with you every step of the way, if you say yes. I will be, like, glued to your hip.'

And I'd found myself saying yes.

Shit.

I need a walk. It's quiet in the corridor. The nurses' station is empty, the lighting low. There's a sort of soft murmur – not voices, exactly, or machines, but a background hum, hushed in the darkness. It acts as a kind of reassurance that, despite the stillness, we are not alone: Marie Francis continues to operate all around us. Almost like it is not just a building full of people, but a sentient creature all of its own; this is somehow comforting.

I can hear someone boiling a kettle in the kitchen, and the rustle of a biscuit packet, which makes me think some sugar might be a good way of taking my mind off things. I stop by Issy's door, wondering if she is still up, reading, but the light is off and it's quiet. Her mum is in there with her, sleeping with Issy in her arms – the girl's head resting on her mother's breast. At least I thought they were both asleep but when I pause, Issy's mum opens her eyes and smiles at me. Of course she is constantly on edge and constantly alert to everything that is happening around her daughter, like any mother guarding her young, only now she is trying to defend her child against a foe that cannot be beaten. Even the small glimpse into a little of what she must be feeling is unbearable, and I think of my own mother, who will be at home now, still up but in her dressing gown and slippers, stirring a cup of tea with three sugars in it until it goes cold. I suppose it will be a very long time before Issy's mum sleeps properly again.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?' I whisper.

‘Thank you, that's kind,' she whispers back, afraid to move in case she disturbs her daughter.

I pull the door shut and pad back down the corridor, the tiles feeling smooth and cool under my bare feet. The door to one of the rooms is ajar, and I try not to look inside, but I do, seeing an older lady who looks like there isn't much time left, and seeing her so very close to the end is frightening. I turn my face away and go back to the little kitchen, feeling the tightening in my chest, the pounding in my temples. My life, my body, reminding me how dependent I am on this faulty sack of bones and nerves to exist at all. It doesn't feel right; it doesn't feel fair. It feels like I should be able to fly out of this mass of biology and exist somewhere else, and it's hard, almost impossible, to accept that I can't. For a moment I just want to get away from it all, and I want my mum. My mum, who is standing in our kitchen in her slippers. I want my mum, like a little girl who isn't half as brave as Issy.

The person I find instead is Stella – her eyes closed as she leans against the counter. There are four empty tubes of sugar next to her. The shadows in the hollows under her cheekbones seem denser somehow and her eyes are tightly shut, as if against a bright light. I think she might have fallen asleep standing up.

I cough politely.

‘Hello, night owl,' she says gently, opening her eyes. ‘Come to make a drink?'

‘Yes, and I'm making one for Issy's mum too, only I don't know how she takes her tea. Do you know?'

‘Thea? Yes, decaff, milky and no sugar,' Stella tells me, blinking herself back into action. ‘I'll make it. You can keep me company for a while. Hot chocolate for you, right?'

I nod and feel a bit foolish about my childish choice of drink. I always wanted to be the girl in the beret in the French café drinking
café noir
,
très, très
strong, but I don't like the taste and I don't need anything else to keep me up at night. Coughing my guts up and thinking at one hundred miles per hour does that for me. Mum in her slippers, and hot chocolate with little marshmallows on the top – that's what I need to feel safe again. But all I have to help me chase away the invisible demons that are stalking through the corridors is kind, tired, secretly sad Stella, which is good enough.