‘What are you doing?’ he whispers.
I’m going to miss him so much it makes me want to hurt him. It also makes me want to take him home and give him to Dad before I lose us both. But home is dull. I can say yes to anything there, because Dad won’t ask me to do anything real.
The tea warms my belly. The sky changes from dull grey to sunny and back again in a moment. Even the weather can’t decide what to do and is lurching from one ridiculous event to another.
‘Let’s get a bus,’ I say.
I stand up, hold onto the table edge and step back into my shoes. People pretend not to look at me, but I can feel their gaze. It makes me feel alive.
Eleven
‘Is it true?’ Cal asks as we walk to the bus stop. ‘Do you like being ill?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Is that why you jumped in the water?’
I stop and look at him, at his clear blue eyes. They’re flecked with grey like mine. There are photos of him and me at the same age and there isn’t a single difference between us.
‘I jumped because I’ve made a list of things to do. Today I have to say yes to everything.’
He thinks about this, takes a few seconds to work out the implications, then grins broad and wide. ‘So whatever I ask you to do, you have to say yes?’
‘Got it in one.’
We get the first bus that comes. We sit upstairs at the back.
‘OK,’ Cal whispers. ‘Stick your tongue out at that man.’
He’s delighted when I do.
‘Now make a V sign at that woman on the pavement, then blow kisses at those boys.’
‘It’d be more fun if you did it with me.’
We pull faces, wave at everyone, say bogey, bum and willy at the tops of our voices. By the time we ring the bell to get off the bus, we’re alone on the top deck. Everyone hates us, but we don’t care.
‘Where are we going?’ Cal asks.
‘Shopping.’
‘Have you got your credit card? Will you buy me stuff?’
‘Yes.’
First we buy a radio-controlled HoverCopter. It’s capable of midair launch and can fly up to ten metres high. Cal chucks the packaging in the bin outside the shop and makes it fly ahead of us in the street. We walk behind it, dazzled by its multi-coloured lights, all the way to the lingerie shop.
I make Cal sit on a seat inside with all the men waiting for their wives. There’s something so lovely about removing my dress, not for an examination, but for a soft-voiced woman who measures me for a lacy and very expensive bra.
‘Lilac,’ I tell her when she asks about colour. ‘And I want the matching knickers as well.’ After I pay, she presents them to me in a classy bag with silver handles.
I buy Cal a talking moneybox robot next. Then jeans for me. I get the same slim-legged pre-washed pair Zoey has.
Cal gets a PlayStation game. I get a dress. It’s emerald and black silk and is the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought. I blink at myself in the mirror, leave my wet dress behind in the changing room and rejoin Cal.
‘Cool,’ he says when he sees me. ‘Is there any money left for a digital watch?’
I get him an alarm clock as well, one that will project the time three-dimensionally onto his bedroom ceiling.
Boots next. Zipped leather with little heels. And a holdall from the same shop to put all our things in.
After a visit to the magic shop we have to buy a suitcase with wheels to put the holdall in. Cal enjoys steering it, but it crosses my mind that if we buy more stuff, we’ll have to buy a car to carry the suitcase. A truck for the car. A ship for the truck. We’ll buy a harbour, an ocean, a continent.
The headache begins in McDonald’s. It’s like someone suddenly scalps me with a spoon and digs about inside my brain. I feel dizzy and sick as the world presses in. I take some paracetamol, but know it’ll only take the edge off.
Cal says, ‘You OK?’
‘Yes.’
He knows I’m lying. He’s full of food and as satisfied as a king, but his eyes are scared. ‘I want to go home.’
I have to say yes. We both pretend it’s not because of me.
I stand on the pavement and watch him hail a cab, holding onto the wall to keep myself steady. I will not end this day with a transfusion. I will not have their obscene needles in me today.
In the taxi, Cal’s hand is small and friendly and fits neatly into mine. I try to savour the moment. He doesn’t often volunteer to hold my hand.
‘Will we get into trouble?’ he says.
‘What can they do?’
He laughs. ‘So can we have this kind of day again?’
‘Sure.’
‘Can we go ice-skating next time?’
‘All right.’
He babbles on about white-water rafting, says he fancies horse riding, wouldn’t mind having a go at bungee jumping. I look out of the window, my head pounding. Light bounces off walls and faces and comes in at me bright and close. It feels like a hundred fires burning.
Twelve
I know I’m in a hospital as soon as I open my eyes. They all smell the same, and the line hooked into my arm is achingly familiar. I try to sit up in bed, but my head crashes and bile rises in my throat.
A nurse rushes over with a cardboard bowl, but she’s too late. Most of it goes over me and the sheets.
‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘We’ll soon have that cleaned up.’
She wipes my mouth, then helps me roll onto my side so that she can untie my nightgown.
‘Doctor’ll be here soon,’ she says.
Nurses never tell you what they know. They’re hired for their cheeriness and the thickness of their hair. They need to look alive and healthy, to give the patients something to aim for.
She chats as she helps me on with a fresh gown, tells me she used to live near the ocean in South Africa, says, ‘The sun is closer to the earth there, and it’s always hot.’
She whisks the bed sheets from under me and conjures up fresh ones. ‘I get such cold feet in England,’ she says. ‘Now, let’s roll you back again. Ready? That’s it, all done. Ah, and what good timing – the doctor’s here.’
He’s bald and white and middle-aged. He greets me politely and drags a chair over from under the window to sit by the bed. I keep hoping that in some hospital somewhere in this country I’ll bump into the perfect doctor, but none of them are ever right. I want a magician with a cloak and wand, or a knight with a sword, someone fearless. This one is as bland and polite as a salesman.
‘Tessa,’ he says, ‘do you know what hypercalcaemia is?’
‘If I say no, can I have something else?’
He looks bemused, and that’s the trouble – they never quite get the joke. I wish he had an assistant. A jester would be good, someone to tickle him with feathers while he delivers his medical opinion.
He flips through the chart on his lap. ‘Hypercalcaemia is a condition where your calcium levels become very high. We’re giving you bisphosphonates, which will bring those levels down. You should be feeling much less confused and nauseous already.’
‘I’m always confused,’ I tell him.
‘Do you have any questions?’
He looks expectantly at me and I hate to disappoint him, but what could I possibly ask this ordinary little man?
He tells me the nurse will give me something to help me sleep. He stands up and gives a nod goodbye. This is the point where the jester would lay a trail of banana skins to the door, then come and sit with me on the bed. Together we’d laugh at the doctor’s backside as he scurries away.
It’s dark when I wake up and I can’t remember anything. It freaks me out. For maybe ten seconds I struggle with it, kicking against the twisted sheets, convinced I’ve been kidnapped or worse.