‘She’s got breast cancer.’
‘So?’
‘So it’s different.’
‘Running and cycling keep her motivated. How different can it be? She’s lived much longer than anyone thought she would, and she’s really famous.’
‘I hate running!’
Zoey shakes her head at me very solemnly, as if I’m being deliberately difficult. ‘What about Big Brother? They’ve never had anyone like you on that before.’
‘It doesn’t start until next summer.’
‘So?’
‘So think about it!’
And that’s when the nurse comes out of a side room and walks towards us. ‘Zoey Walker? We’re ready for you now.’
Zoey hauls me up. ‘Can my friend come?’
‘I’m sorry, but it’s better if she waits outside. It’s just a discussion today, but it’s not the type of discussion that’s easy to have in front of a friend.’
The nurse sounds very certain of this and Zoey doesn’t seem able to resist. She passes me her coat, says, ‘Look after this for me,’ and goes off with the nurse. The door shuts behind them.
I feel very solid. Not small, but large and beating and alive. It’s so tangible, being and not being. I’m here. Soon I won’t be. Zoey’s baby is here. Its pulse tick-ticking. Soon it won’t be. And when Zoey comes out of that room, having signed on the dotted line, she’ll be different. She’ll understand what I already know – that death surrounds us all.
And it tastes like metal between your teeth.
Twenty-five
‘Where are we going?’
Dad takes one hand off the steering wheel to pat me on the knee. ‘All in good time.’
‘Is it going to be embarrassing?’
‘I hope not.’
‘Are we going to meet someone famous?’
He looks alarmed for a moment. ‘Is that what you meant?’
‘Not really.’
We drive through town and he won’t tell me. We drive past the housing estates and onto the ring road, and my guesses get completely random. I like making him laugh. He doesn’t do it much.
‘Moon landing?’
‘No.’
‘Talent competition?’
‘With your singing voice?’
I phone Zoey and see if she wants to have a guess, but she’s still freaking out about the operation. ‘I have to take a responsible adult with me. Who the hell am I going to ask?’
‘I’ll come.’
‘They mean a proper adult. You know, like a parent.’
‘They can’t make you tell your parents.’
‘I hate this,’ she says. ‘I thought they’d give me a pill and it would just fall out. Why do I need an operation? It’s only the size of a dot.’
She’s wrong about that. Last night I got out the Reader’s Digest Book of Family Medicine and looked up pregnancy. I wanted to know how big babies are in week sixteen. I discovered they’re the length of a dandelion. I couldn’t stop reading. I looked up beestings and hives. Lovely mundane, family illnesses – eczema, tonsillitis, croup.
‘You still there?’ she says.
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, I’m going now. Acid liquid is coming up my throat and into my mouth.’
It’s indigestion. She needs to massage her colon and drink some milk. It will pass. Whatever she decides to do about the baby, all Zoey’s symptoms will pass. I don’t tell her this though. Instead, I press the red button on my phone and concentrate on the road ahead.
‘She’s a very silly girl,’ Dad says. ‘The longer she leaves it, the worse it will be. Terminating a pregnancy isn’t like taking out the rubbish.’
‘She knows that, Dad. Anyway, it’s nothing to do with you – she’s not your daughter.’
‘No,’ he agrees. ‘She’s not.’
I write Adam a text. I write, WHERE THE HELL ARE U? Then I delete it.
Six nights ago his mum stood on the doorstep and cried. She said the fireworks were terrifying. She asked why he’d left her when the world was ending.
‘Give me your mobile number,’ he told me. ‘I’ll call you.’
We swapped numbers. It was erotic. I thought it was a promise.
‘Fame,’ Dad says. ‘Now, what do we mean by fame, eh?’
I mean Shakespeare. That silhouette of him with his perky beard, quill in hand, was on the front of all the copies of his plays at school. He invented tons of new words and everyone knows who he is after hundreds of years. He lived before cars and planes, guns and bombs and pollution. Before pens. Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne when he was writing. She was famous too, not just for being Henry VIII’s daughter, but for potatoes and the Armada and tobacco and for being so clever.
Then there’s Marilyn. Elvis. Even modern icons like Madonna will be remembered. Take That are touring again and sold out in milliseconds. Their eyes are etched with age and Robbie isn’t even singing, but still people want a piece of them. Fame like that is what I mean. I’d like the whole world to stop what it’s doing and personally come and say goodbye to me when I die. What else is there?
‘What do you mean by fame, Dad?’
After a minute’s thought he says, ‘Leaving something of yourself behind, I guess.’
I think of Zoey and her baby. Growing. Growing.
‘OK,’ Dad says. ‘Here we are.’
I’m not sure where ‘here’ is. It looks like a library, one of those square, functional buildings with lots of windows and its own car park with allocated spaces for the director. We pull into a disabled bay.
The woman who answers the intercom wants to know who we’ve come to see. Dad tries to whisper, but she can’t hear, so he has to say it again, louder. ‘Richard Green,’ he says, and he gives me a sideways glance.
‘Richard Green?’
He nods, pleased with himself. ‘One of the accountants I used to work with knows him.’
‘And that’s relevant because…?’
‘He wants to interview you.’
I stall on the step. ‘An interview? On the radio? But everyone’ll hear me!’
‘Isn’t that the idea?’
‘What am I supposed to be interviewed about?’
And that’s when he blushes. That’s when maybe he realizes that this is the worst idea he’s ever had, because the only thing that makes me extraordinary is my sickness. If it wasn’t for that, I’d be in school or bunking. Maybe I’d be at Zoey’s, fetching her Rennies from the bathroom cabinet. Maybe I’d be lying in Adam’s arms.
The receptionist pretends everything’s all right. She asks for our names and gives us both a sticker. We obediently attach these to our coats as she tells us that the producer will be with us soon.
‘Have a seat,’ she says, gesturing to a row of armchairs on the other side of the foyer.
‘You don’t have to speak,’ Dad says as we sit down. ‘I’ll go in by myself if you want, and you can stay out here.’
‘And what would you talk about?’
He shrugs. ‘Paucity of teen cancer units, lack of funding for alternative medicine, your dietary needs not being subsidized by the NHS. I could talk for bloody hours. It’s my specialist subject.’
‘Fundraising? I don’t want to be famous for raising a bit of money! I want to be famous for being amazing. I want the kind of fame that doesn’t need a surname. Iconic fame. Ever heard of that?’
He turns to me, his eyes glistening. ‘And how precisely were we going to manage that?’
The water machine bubbles and drips beside us. I feel sick. I think of Zoey. I think of her baby with all its nails already in place – tiny, tiny dandelion nails.
‘Shall I tell the receptionist to cancel?’ Dad asks. ‘I don’t want you to say I forced you.’
I feel ever so slightly sorry for him as he scuffs his shoes on the floor under his chair like a schoolboy. How many miles we miss each other by.