Before I Die (27 page)

‘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.

But he doesn’t seem to hear that either.

So then I go for it.

Dad, you played rounders with me, even though you hated it and wished I’d take up cricket. You learned how to keep a stamp collection because I wanted to know. For hours you sat in hospitals and never, not once, complained. You brushed my hair like a mother should. You gave up work for me, friends for me, four years of your life for me. You never moaned. Hardly ever. You let me have Adam. You let me have my list. I was outrageous. Wanting, wanting so much. And you never said, ‘That’s enough. Stop now.’

I’ve been wanting to say that for a while

Cal peers down at me. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘How are you?’

I blink at him.

He sits in the chair and studies me. ‘Can’t you actually talk any more?’

I try and tell him that yes, of course I can. Is he stupid, or what?

He sighs, gets up and goes over to the window. He says, ‘Do you think I’m too young to have a girlfriend?’

I tell him yes.

‘Because loads of my friends have got one. They don’t actually go out. Not really. They just text each other.’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘I’m never going to understand love.’

But I think he already does. Better than most people.

Zoey says, ‘Hey, Cal.’

He says, ‘Hey.’

She says, ‘I’ve come to say goodbye. I mean, I know I did already, but I thought I’d say it again.’

‘Why?’ he says. ‘Where are you going?’

I like the weight of Mum’s hand in mine.

She says, ‘If I could swap places with you, I would, you know.’

Then she says, ‘I just wish I could save you from this.’

Maybe she thinks I can’t hear her.

She says, ‘I could write a story for one of those true story magazines, about how hard it was to leave you. I don’t want you thinking it was easy.’

when I was twelve I looked Scotland up on a map and saw that beyond the Firth were the Islands of Orkney and I knew they’d have boats that would take her even further away than that

Instructions for Mum

Don’t give up on Cal. Don’t you ever slide away from him, move back to Scotland or think that any man is more important. I’ll haunt you if you do. I’ll move your furniture around, throw things at you and scare you stupid. Be kind to Dad. Serious. I’m watching you.

She gives me a sip of iced water. She gently places a cold flannel on my forehead.

Then she says, ‘I love you.’

Like three drops of blood falling onto snow.

Forty-five

Adam gets into his camp bed. It creaks. Then it stops.

I remember him sucking my breast. It wasn’t long ago. We were in this room, both in my bed, and I held him in the crook of my arm and he nestled against me and I felt like his mother.

He promised he’d come to the edge. I made him promise. But I didn’t know he’d lie next to me at night like a good boy scout. I didn’t know it would hurt to be touched, that he’d be too scared to hold my hand.

He should be out in the night with some girl with lovely curves and breath like oranges.

Instructions for Adam

Look after no one except yourself. Go to university and make lots of friends and get drunk. Forget your door keys. Laugh. Eat pot-noodles for breakfast. Miss lectures. Be irresponsible.

Adam says, ‘Goodnight, Tessa.’

Goodnight, Adam.

‘I phoned the nurse. She says we should top up the morphine with Oramorph.’

‘Won’t anyone come out?’

‘We can manage.’

‘She was calling for her mum again when you were on the phone.’

I keep thinking of fires of smoke rising of the crazed jangle of bells and the surprised faces of a crowd as if something has been snatched from them

‘I’ll sit with her if you like, Adam. Go down and watch TV, or catch up on some sleep.’

‘I said I wouldn’t leave her.’

It’s like turning off the lights one by one.

rain drizzles gently onto sand and bare legs as Dad puts the finishing touches to the castle and even though it’s raining me and Cal collect sea water in a bucket for the moat and later when the sun comes out we put flags on each tower so they flutter and we get ice cream from the hut at the top of the dunes and later still Dad sits with us as the tide comes in and together we try and push all that water back out so the people in the castle don’t drown

‘Go on, Adam. None of us will be any good to her if we’re exhausted.’

‘No, I’m not leaving.’

when I was four I almost fell down the shaft of a tin mine and when I was five the car rolled over on the motorway and when I was seven we went on holiday and the gas ring blew out in the caravan and nobody noticed

I’ve been dying all my life

‘She’s more peaceful now.’

‘Hmm.’

I hear only the fraction of things. Words fall down crevices, get lost for hours, then fly back up and land on my chest.

‘I’m grateful to you.’

‘For what?’

‘For not backing off. Most lads would’ve run a mile by now.’

‘I love her.’

Forty-six

‘Hey,’ Adam says, ‘you’re awake.’

He leans over and moistens my mouth with a sponge. He dabs my lips dry with a flannel and smears them with Vaseline.

‘Your hands are cold. I’ll hold them for a bit and warm them up, shall I?’

I stink. I smell myself farting. I hear the ugly tick of my body consuming itself. I’m sinking, sinking into the bed.

Fifteen, to get out of bed and go downstairs and it’s all a joke.

Two hundred and nine, to marry Adam.

Thirty, to go to parents’ evening and our child’s a genius. All three of our children in fact – Chester, Merlin and Daisy.

Fifty-one, two, three. To open my eyes. Bastard open them.

I can’t. I’m falling.

Forty-four, to not be falling. I don’t want to fall. I’m afraid.

Forty-five, to not be falling.

Think of something. I won’t die if I’m thinking of Adam’s hot breath between my legs.

But I can’t hold onto anything.

Like a tree losing its leaves.

I forget even the thing I was thinking.

‘Why is she making that noise?’

‘It’s her lungs. Fluid can’t drain away because she’s not moving around.’

‘It sounds horrible.’

‘It sounds worse than it is.’

Is that Cal? I hear the tug of a ring pull, the fizz of a Coke can.

Adam says, ‘What’s your dad up to?’

‘On the phone. He’s telling Mum to come over.’

‘Good.’

What happens, Cal, to dead bodies?

Dust, glitter, rain.

‘You think she can hear us?’

‘Definitely.’

‘ ‘Cos I’ve been telling her stuff.’

‘What kind of stuff?’

‘I’m not telling you!’

the big bang was the origin of the solar system and only then was the earth formed and only then could life appear and after all the rain and fire had gone fish came then insects amphibians dinosaurs mammals birds primates hominids and finally humans

‘Are you sure she should be making that noise?’

‘I think it’s OK.’

‘It’s different from just now.’

‘Shush, I can’t hear.’

‘That’s worse. That sounds like she can’t even breathe.’

‘Shit!’

‘Is she dying?’

‘Get your dad, Cal. Run!’

a little bird moves a mountain of sand one grain at a time it picks up one grain every million years and when the mountain has been moved the bird puts it all back again and that’s how long eternity is and that’s a very long time to be dead for

Maybe I’ll come back as somebody else.

I’ll be the wild-haired girl Adam meets in his first week at university. ‘Hi, are you on the horticultural course as well?’

‘I’m here, Tess. I’m right here, holding your hand. Adam’s here too, he’s sitting on the other side of the bed. And Cal. Mum’s on her way, she’ll just be a minute. We all love you, Tessa. We’re all right here with you.’

‘I hate that noise. It sounds like it’s hurting her.’

‘It’s not, Cal. She’s unconscious. She’s not in pain.’

‘Adam said she could hear us. How can she hear us if she’s unconscious?’

‘It’s like sleeping, except she knows we’re here. Sit with me, Cal, it’s all right. Come and sit on my lap. She’s peaceful, don’t worry.’

‘She doesn’t sound peaceful. She sounds like a broken boiler.’

I turn inwards, their voices the sound of water murmuring.

Moments gather.

Aeroplanes crash into buildings. Bodies sail through the air. Tube trains and buses explode. Radiation seeps from the pavements. The sun turns to the tiniest black spot. The human race dies out and cockroaches rule the world.

Anything could happen next.

Angel Delight on a beach.

A fork whisking against a bowl.

Seagulls. Waves.

‘It’s all right, Tessa, you can go. We love you. You can go now.’

‘Why are you saying that?’

‘She might need permission to die, Cal.’

‘I don’t want her to. She doesn’t have my permission.’

Let’s say yes then. Yes to everything for just one more day.

‘Maybe you should say goodbye, Cal.’

‘No.’

‘It might be important.’

‘It might make her die.’

‘Nothing you say can make her die. She wants to know you love her.’

One more moment. One more. I can manage one more.

A sweet wrapper whips up the path in the wind.

‘Go on, Cal.’

‘I feel stupid.’

‘None of us are listening. Get close and whisper.’

My name encircles a roundabout.

Cuttlefish washed up on a beach.

A dead bird on the lawn.

Millions of maggots stunned by sunlight.

‘Bye, Tess. Haunt me if you like. I don’t mind.’

A duck goes into a chemist’s to buy some lipstick.

A mouse dunked in water and held down with a spoon.

Three tiny air bubbles escaping, one after the other.

Six snowmen made of cotton wool.

Six serviettes folded into origami lilies.

Seven stones, all different colours, bound with a silver chain.

There’s sun in my teacup.

Zoey stares out of the window and I drive out of town. The sky gets darker and darker.

Let them go.

Adam blows smoke at the town below. Says, ‘Anything could be happening down there, but up here you just wouldn’t know it.’

Adam strokes my head, my face, he kisses my tears.

We are blessed.

Let them all go.

The sound of a bird flying low across the garden. Then nothing. Nothing. A cloud passes. Nothing again. Light falls through the window, falls onto me, into me.

Moments.

All gathering towards this one.

Acknowledgements