‘You’re going to be here for years without me,’ I tell him.
He says, ‘Shall I make us some breakfast?’
Like a butler, he brings me things. A lemon ice lolly. A hot-water bottle. Slices of orange cut onto a plate. Another blanket. He puts cinnamon sticks to boil on the oven downstairs, because I want to smell Christmas.
How did this happen so quickly? How did it really come true?
please get into bed and climb on top of me with your warmth and wrap me with your arms and make it stop
‘Mum’s putting up a trellis,’ he says. ‘First it was a herb garden, then roses, now she wants honeysuckle. I might go out and give her a hand when your dad comes to sit with you. Would that be OK?’
‘Sure.’
‘You don’t fancy sitting outside again today?’
‘No.’
I can’t be bothered to move. The sun grinds into my brain and everything aches.
this mad psycho tells everyone to get into a field and says I’m going to pick one of you just one of you out of all of you to die and everyone’s looking around thinking it’s so unlikely to be me because there’s thousands of us so statistically it’s completely unlikely and the psycho walks up and down looking at everyone and when he gets near me he hesitates and he smiles and then he points right at me and says you’re the one and the shock that it’s me and yet of course it’s me why wouldn’t it be I knew all along
Cal crashes in. ‘Can I go out?’
Dad sighs. ‘Where?’
‘Just out.’
‘You need to be a bit more specific.’
‘I’ll let you know when I get there.’
‘Not good enough.’
‘Everyone else is allowed randomly out.’
‘I’m not interested in everyone else.’
Wonderful rage as Cal stomps to the door. The bits of garden in his hair, the filth of his fingernails. His body able to yank the door open and slam it behind him.
‘You’re all such bloody bastards!’ he yells as he races down the stairs.
Instructions for Cal
Don’t die young. Don’t get meningitis, or Aids or anything else ever. Be healthy. Don’t fight in any war, or join a cult, or get religion, or lose your heart to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Don’t think you have to be good because you’re the only one left. Be as bad as you like.
I reach for Dad’s hand. His fingers look raw, as if they’ve been through a grater.
‘What have you done?’
He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t even notice.’
Further instructions for Dad – Let Cal be enough for you.
I love you. I love you. I send this message through my fingers and into his, up his arm and into his heart. Hear me. I love you. And I’m sorry to leave you.
I wake up hours later. How did that happen?
Cal’s here again, sitting next to me on the bed propped up with pillows. ‘Sorry I shouted.’
‘Did Dad tell you to say that?’
He nods. The curtains are open and somehow the darkness is back.
‘Are you scared?’ Cal says this very softly, as if it’s something he’s thinking, but didn’t mean to say.
‘I’m scared of falling asleep.’
‘That you won’t wake up?’
‘Yes.’
His eyes shine. ‘But you know it won’t be tonight, don’t you? I mean, you’ll be able to tell, won’t you?’
‘It won’t be tonight.’
He rests his head on my shoulder. ‘I really, really hate this,’ he says.
Forty-one
The bell they gave me is loud in the dark, but I don’t care. Adam comes in, bleary-eyed, in his boxers and T-shirt.
‘You left me.’
‘I just this second went down to make a cup of tea.’
I don’t believe him. And I don’t care about his cup of tea. He can drink tepid water from my jug if he’s desperate.
‘Hold my hand. Don’t let go.’
Every time I close my eyes, I fall. Endlessly falling.
Forty-two
All qualities are the same – the light through the curtains, the faraway hum of traffic, the boiler rush of water. It could be groundhog day, except that my body is more tired, my skin more transparent. I am less than yesterday.
And
Adam is in the camp bed.
I try to sit up, but can’t quite muster the energy. ‘Why did you sleep down there?’
He touches my hand. ‘You were in pain in the night.’
He opens the curtains just like he did yesterday. He stands at the window looking out. Beyond him, the sky is pale and watery.
we made love twenty-seven times and we shared a bed for sixty-two nights and that’s a lot of love
‘Breakfast?’ he says.
I don’t want to be dead.
I haven’t been loved this way for long enough.
Forty-three
My mum was in labour for fourteen hours with me. It was the hottest May on record. So hot I didn’t wear any clothes for the first two weeks of my life.
‘I used to lay you on my tummy and we’d sleep for hours,’ she says. ‘It was too hot to do anything but sleep.’
Like charades, this going over of memories.
‘I used to take you on the bus to meet Dad in his lunch break and you’d sit on my lap and stare at people. You had such an intense look about you. Everyone used to comment on it.’
The light is very bright. A great slab of it falls through the window and lands on the bed. I can rest my hand in sunshine without even moving.
‘Do you remember when we went to Cromer and you lost your charm bracelet on the beach?’
She’s brought photos, holds them up one by one.
A green and white afternoon threading daisies.
The chalk light of winter at the city farm.
Yellow leaves, muddy boots and a proud black bucket.
‘What did you catch, do you remember?’
Philippa said my hearing would be the last thing to go, but she didn’t say I’d see colours when people talk.
Whole sentences arc across the room like rainbows.
I get confused. I’m at the bedside and Mum’s dying instead of me. I pull back the sheets to look at her and she’s naked, a wrinkled old woman with grey pubic hair.
I weep for a dog, hit by a car and buried. We never had a dog. This is not my memory.
I’m Mum on a pony trotting across town to visit Dad. He lives on a council estate, and me and the pony get into the lift and go up to the eighth floor. The pony’s hooves clatter metallically. It makes me laugh.
I’m twelve. I get home from school and Mum’s on the doorstep. She has her coat on and a suitcase at her feet. She gives me an envelope. ‘Give this to your dad when he gets home.’
She kisses me goodbye. I watch her until she reaches the horizon, and at the top of the hill, like a puff of smoke, she disappears.
Forty-four
The light is heart-breaking.
Dad sips tea by the bed. I want to tell him that he’s missing GMTV, but I’m not sure that he is. Not sure of the time.
He’s got a snack as well. Cream crackers with piccalilli sauce and old mature cheddar. I’d like to want that. To be interested in taste – the crumb and dry crackerness of things.
He puts down the plate when he sees me looking and picks up my hand. ‘Beautiful girl,’ he says.
I tell him thanks.
But my lips don’t move and he doesn’t seem to hear me.
Then I say, I was just thinking about that netball post you made me when I got into the school team. Do you remember how you got the measurements wrong and made it too high? I practised so hard with it that I always overshot at school and they chucked me out of the team again.