I’m Tessa.
I’m Adam.
It’s utterly beautiful not to know my own edges.
The feel of us under our fingers. The taste of us on our tongues.
And always we watch each other, check with each other, like music, like a dance. Eye to eye.
It builds, this ache between us, changing and swelling. I want him. I want him closer. I can’t get near enough. I wrap my legs round his, sweep his back with my hands, trying to pull him further into me.
It’s as if my heart springs up and marries my soul, as my whole body implodes. Like a stone falling in a pond, circles and circles of love ripple through me.
Adam shouts for joy.
I gather him and hold him close. I’m amazed at him. At us. This gift.
He strokes my head, my face, he kisses my tears.
I’m alive, blessed to be with him on this earth, at this very moment.
Twenty-nine
Blood spills from my nose. I stand in front of the hall mirror and watch it pour down my chin and through my fingers until my hands are slippery with it. It drips onto the floor and spreads into the weave of the carpet.
‘Please,’ I whisper. ‘Not now. Not tonight.’
But it doesn’t stop.
Upstairs, I hear Mum say goodnight to Cal. She closes his bedroom door and goes into the bathroom. I wait, listening to her pee, then the flush of the toilet. I imagine her washing her hands at the sink, drying them on the towel. Perhaps she looks at herself in the mirror, just as I’m doing down here. I wonder if she feels as far away as I do, as dazed by her own reflection.
She closes the bathroom door and comes down the stairs. I step into her path as she appears on the bottom step.
‘Oh my God!’
‘I’ve got a nosebleed.’
‘It’s pumping out of you!’ She flaps her arms at me. ‘In here, quick!’ She pushes me into the lounge. Heavy, dull drops splash the carpet as I walk. Poppies blooming at my feet.
‘Sit down,’ she commands. ‘Lean back and pinch your nose.’
This is the opposite of what you’re supposed to do, so I ignore her. Adam’ll be here in ten minutes and we’re going dancing. Mum stands watching me for a moment, then rushes out of the room. I think maybe she’s gone to throw up, but she comes back with a tea towel and thrusts it at me.
‘Lean back. Press this against your nose.’
Since my way’s not working, I do as she says. Blood leaks down my throat. I swallow as much as I can, but loads of it goes in my mouth and I can’t really breathe. I sit forward and spit onto the tea towel. A big clot glistens back at me, alien dark. It’s definitely not something that’s supposed to be outside my body.
‘Give that to me,’ Mum says.
I hand it over and she looks at it closely before wrapping it up. Her hands, like mine, are smeared with blood now.
‘What am I going to do, Mum? He’ll be here soon.’
‘It’ll stop in a minute.’
‘Look at my clothes!’
She shakes her head at me in despair. ‘You better lie down.’
This is also the wrong thing to do, but it’s not stopping, so everything’s ruined anyway. Mum sits on the edge of the sofa. I lie back and watch shapes brighten and dissolve. I imagine I’m on a sinking ship. A shadow flaps its wings at me.
Mum says, ‘Does that feel any better?’
‘Much.’
I don’t think she believes me, because she goes out to the kitchen and comes back with the ice-cube tray. She squats next to the sofa and empties it onto her lap. Ice cubes skate off her jeans and onto the carpet. She picks one up, wipes the fluff off and hands it to me.
‘Hold this on your nose.’
‘Frozen peas would be better, Mum.’
She thinks about this for a second, then rushes off again, returning with a packet of sweetcorn.
‘Will this do? There weren’t any peas.’
It makes me laugh, which I guess is something.
‘What?’ she says. ‘What’s so funny?’
Her mascara is smeared, her hair flyaway. I reach for her arm and she helps me sit up. I feel ancient. I swing my legs onto the floor and pinch the top of my nose between two fingers like they showed me at the hospital. My pulse is pounding against my head.
‘It’s not stopping, is it? I’m going to call Dad.’
‘He’ll think you can’t cope.’
‘Let him.’
She dials his number quickly. She gets it wrong, re-dials.
‘Come on, come on,’ she says under her breath.
The room is very pale. All the ornaments on the mantelpiece bleached as bones.
‘He’s not answering. Why isn’t he answering? How noisy can it be at a bowling alley?’
‘It’s his first night out for weeks, Mum. Leave him. We’ll manage.’
Her face crashes. She hasn’t dealt with a single transfusion or lumbar puncture. She wasn’t allowed near me for the bone-marrow transplant, but she could have been there for any number of diagnoses, and wasn’t. Even her promises to visit more often have faded away with Christmas. It’s her turn to taste some reality.
‘You have to take me to hospital, Mum.’
She looks horrified. ‘Dad’s got the car.’
‘Call a cab.’
‘What about Cal?’
‘He’s asleep, isn’t he?’
She nods forlornly, the logistics beyond her.
‘Write him a note.’
‘We can’t leave him on his own!’
‘He’s eleven, Mum, practically a grown-up.’
She hesitates only briefly, then scrolls through her address book to dial a cab. I watch her face, but my focus won’t really hold. All I get is an impression of fear and bewilderment. I close my eyes and think of a mother I saw in a film once. She lived on a mountain with a gun and lots of children. She was sure and certain. I stick this mother on top of mine, like plaster on a wound.
When I open my eyes again, she’s clutching armfuls of towels and tugging at my coat. ‘You probably shouldn’t go to sleep,’ she says. ‘Come on, let’s get you up. That was the door.’
I feel dazed and hot, as if everything might be a dream. She hauls me up and we shuffle out to the hallway together. I can hear whispering coming from the wall.
But it’s not the cab, it’s Adam, all dressed up for our date. I try and hide, try and stumble back into the lounge, but he sees me.
‘Tess,’ he says. ‘Oh my God! What’s happened?’
‘Nosebleed,’ Mum tells him. ‘We thought you were the cab.’
‘You’re going to the hospital? I’ll take you in my dad’s car.’
He steps into the hallway and tries to put his arm around me as if we’re all just going to walk to his car and get in. As if he’s going to drive and I’m going to bleed all over the upholstery and none of it matters. I look like road kill. Doesn’t he understand that he really shouldn’t be seeing me like this?
I shove him off. ‘Go home, Adam.’
‘I’m taking you to the hospital,’ he says again, as if perhaps I didn’t hear him the first time, or maybe the blood has made me stupid.
Mum takes his arm and gently leads him back out of the door. ‘We’ll manage,’ she says. ‘It’s all right. Anyway, look, the cab’s here now.’
‘I want to be with her.’
‘I know,’ she tells him. ‘I’m sorry.’
He touches my hand as I walk past him up the path. ‘Tess,’ he says.
I don’t answer. I don’t even look at him, because his voice is so clear that if I look I might change my mind. To find love just as I go and have to give it up – it’s such a bad joke. But I have to. For him and for me. Before it starts hurting even more than this.
Mum spreads towels across the back seat of the cab, makes sure we’re belted up, then encourages the driver to do a very dramatic U-turn outside the gate.
‘That’s it,’ Mum tells him. ‘Put your foot down.’ She sounds as if she’s in a movie.
Adam watches from the gate. He waves. He gets smaller and smaller as we drive away.
Mum says, ‘That was kind of him.’
I close my eyes. I feel as if I’m falling even though I’m sitting down.