She thinks I’m being a saint. I am not a saint. I am a person who is scared. I am scared of what I’m capable of. I am scared of the memories that are being pieced together from that night. I am not a saint, I am simply scared.
‘I do hate you and I hate what you did,’ I say to her. ‘But I hate the thought of you dying more. It really is that simple.’
She stares at me for a few long, tense seconds. But it isn’t until she disintegrates in tears that I realise that, without even trying, I’ve hurt her more than I thought possible.
‘I do hate you and I hate what you did,’ she says to me. ‘But I hate the thought of you dying more. It really is that simple.’
The thing is, I am meant to pass away peacefully in my sleep from natural causes aged 99. I am meant to be surrounded by my beautiful brood; I am meant to be holding the hand of the man I love, who will pass away within days of me because he can’t contemplate remaining on earth without me. I am meant to be a mother and a grandmother and I am meant to have lived a fabulous, fulfilling life.
They caught it early. I know this. The prognosis is EXCELLENT, (even though there are no certainties in this world). I know this, too. I am almost fully recovered from surgery. I am fit. I am young.
In the grand scheme of things, I am doing well, better than a lot of others with my condition.
In the small scheme of things that is my life, I am sitting in a bed bent so far forwards my forehead is almost making contact with my outstretched knees, my arms around my waist, and I am sobbing. My body is rocking as it is racked with agonised sobs. Five little letters have done this to me. Five letters beginning with D.
That is the first time anyone has used the D word about me in relation to this. They talk around it, they use words like ‘prognosis’ and ‘mortality’ and ‘stages’ and ‘grades’, all to avoid using the range of D words that mean the same final thing. I am dying. My body is attacking itself and I am dying.
I am dying.
I. AM. DYING.
I haven’t accepted that. Why would I when we don’t talk about
it? When we can’t stand up and look that word in the eye. Not in this context. How many times have I disrespected the range of D words by merely throwing it in with a jumble of phrases about something frivolous and unimportant: ‘
I was so embarrassed I could have died.’ ‘I’d die for another piece of cake.’ ‘I looked like death warmed up.’
I never meant it. I never understood it. It was never truly relevant to me. Why would it be when I am young and healthy? When things like
that
, you know, the D stuff, happen to other people. People like me do not get these sort of test results other unfortunates do. They’re the people whose misfortune and misery you absolutely understand and feel for; their pain and hurt churns you inside because you completely understand what they are going through. And, you’re so deeply affected by their plight you keep them in your thoughts; you say a prayer if you’re that way inclined; you cross your fingers and hope that it all works out for them to beat the odds no matter how slim.
BULL SHIT that you understand. You have
no
idea.
I
had no idea.
I had no idea until it happened to me.
And even then,
even then,
the D words were off limits. They were caged away from me, everyone careful not to use them, everyone stopping their sentences rather than utter the ultimate taboo to me. It wasn’t going to happen as long as no one spoke of it.
Now she has spoken it. She has said it. And everything is falling apart.
‘I’m sorry, God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean … I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ I sob.
‘I’m so sorry.’
She’s sobbing now, horrified she has broken the taboo.
‘God,’ she is digging the heels of her hands into her eyes, ‘what is wrong with me? I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’
‘Tami, I ruined your life, please stop saying sorry.’ I can’t bear it, you know? I can’t bear how noble and kind she is. Kindness is
so underrated. She has sacrificed so much of herself to help me out and she still has the decency to be devastated. I can’t bear it.
‘Do you know why you and Scott hurt so much?’ she says suddenly, her sobs subsiding.
I don’t want to talk about Scott, especially not now. Especially when I’ve just realised I. AM. DYING. But do I get to choose what I do and don’t want to talk about? Maybe I would if I hadn’t been such a selfish bitch pretty much my whole life. I shake my head.
‘It,’ she inhales deeply, drawing on her courage, ‘it was because I wondered if you were the type of woman he’s always actually wanted.’ Her tear-stained eyes are heavy and tired. Without warning she stands and then climbs onto the bed, resting her head on the pillow next to me as she curls up and faces me. ‘It made sense that you and him were having an …
affair
. I’ve wondered on and off for years when he was going to find someone else.’ She inhales and exhales deeply again. ‘Scott was never my type. The policeman who’s been investigating what happened to Mirabelle? He’s more my type. But I got swept up with Scott. Not by him. Just with him. I’d known him so long, he was such a good friend. He cared about me, I cared about him. I fell in love with him over time despite him not being my type. I’ve always wondered if it was the same for him.
‘And then you came into our lives. All cool and free and into football and the same music. And white, of course. Like the girls he used to go out with. His family wouldn’t have had an issue with you. Your family wouldn’t have had a problem with him because they wouldn’t know he comes from a family of criminals, like my family knew and had issues with.
‘Me and Scott, we were Romeo and Juliet. Which meant it was always bound to go wrong, no matter how much we believed we could rewrite the ending. So, it made a horrible kind of sense he went with someone he found it easy to be with.’
‘You. Scott. The pair of you obviously chose each other because you wanted to be together,’ I admit.
‘And he chose someone else. You.’
I rest my head back and stare at the ceiling. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since that conversation with Tami in the hospital, since I heard his voice, since he tried to tell Tami he missed her, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I have been deluding myself.
I have been lying to myself that he loved me, that what he felt was anything other than finding another person to fuck because his wife was sick of being used. Please believe me, it didn’t feel like that. Not all the time. Sometimes, yes. But isn’t that what relationships are about? They aren’t always about equality and respect. Or are they? Is that what a good relationship is about
all the time?
Don’t people sometimes behave badly? Don’t you have to sacrifice a little of who you are to make the person you love happy?
I have been in denial, lying to myself so I could believe him. Whether I loved him or not, I accepted his version of their relationship because it suited me to believe him. It made it OK because he wasn’t getting much sex at home, and what he did get was nothing beyond missionary. I often quietly acknowledged that he was probably exaggerating, that in conversations we had she would mention things she’d done in the bedroom, and since she’d been with him so long, she must have tried them with him. His story didn’t work if I examined it too closely, so I was always careful to leave it alone.
Denial.
I have become incredibly well-versed in denial, don’t you think?
That’s why I ignored how tired I felt. The inexplicable weight loss – nothing major – just enough to notice that I wasn’t in good condition.
That’s why I ignored the lentil-sized lump I’d noticed in my breast a long time ago. It was a cyst, it was my imagination, it was nothing to worry about.
Until it’s the size of a large blueberry and mostly visible on my cleavage.
Until it’s cancer.
I’m excellent at denial. And it’s almost cost me my life. It’s
absolutely cost me my best friend. She’s taken the time to get to know me. To understand me. And I …
‘He didn’t choose me,’ I reply. ‘As I said before, he did it because he saw an opportunity and he worked out that I would go along with it.’ He worked out I was a weak person who would put love – or at least the illusion of love – before a friend. ‘I could have been anybody.’
‘That’s a comforting thought.’
Did you notice what she did there? I’ve seen her do it a million times with Cora and Anansy: distract and divert to calm down a tantrum or hysteria. Nine times out of ten it works. Like it’s worked now.
‘You know why I went into a depression?’ I say to her. I want to reach out and trace my fingers over the lines of her face. I want to tell her to take care of herself. That whatever it is that is eating her up is not worth it. Nothing and no one is worth losing your health over.
‘Because Scott called me when he hadn’t called you,’ she says flatly.
‘No, because when he called he sounded nervous. He sounded desperate to speak to you. He said he missed you before I hung up.’ I lick my parched lips, I’ve stopped putting on the lip salve that I’m meant to. I’ve stopped doing a lot of things I’m meant to because I don’t really care any more. It’s not important to look like a woman any more, it’s far more important to feel like a woman, to feel alive. I don’t at the moment. I don’t feel alive. But I don’t feel the other thing, either. ‘I realised what we had wasn’t some big, grand love, it was a grubby little affair. I was a grubby little other woman who thought the scraps of someone else’s husband were all I was worth. Even if that hadn’t been the case, I’d been waiting for the man I was sleeping with to leave his wife. Leave my friend and her children like that was nothing. Those few seconds on the phone made me realise what a terrible person I had become.’ I swallow, my throat sore and dry like my mouth. ‘And then I realised I hadn’t
become that person, I
was
that person. I’ve always been that awful type of woman who would do anything to make someone love me.’
Tami says nothing for a moment or two, digesting what I have said. Then she says, ‘I think we’re all capable of doing terrible things and then telling ourselves it’s OK because it’s for love, me included.’
I turn my head to her. ‘I don’t believe that for a second.’ My smile sends pain shooting through me from the cracks in my lips.
‘Despite what you think, I am not Saint Tami. I have done something terri—I am not Saint Tami.’
‘Now I really don’t believe that.’
She smiles but I can see something is sitting there in her eyes. Something is torturing her and I don’t think it is simply her husband’s affair.
‘Tami, if you ever want to talk about what’s going on with you …’ When she focuses her gaze on me, the distrust she feels for me plain on her face, I look away and stop talking. It’s too late for that. Once upon a time ago, when we were friends, I could have asked her what was hurting her so badly, she could have relied upon me for support. Now … she has to deal with whatever is eating her up on her own. I’m so ashamed about that.
‘I’m dying,’ I say to her after a few minutes.
‘I know,’ she says.
I’ve said those words out loud and it feels OK, actually. Not good, nowhere near the realm of good. Just not bad. Not horrific. I have said those words. I have accepted them for now, because tomorrow I may not be able to handle them. Tomorrow I may be broken by them. Or tomorrow I may be buoyed by them. I may embrace the concept and go about trying to live every single second of my life to its fullest. But in the here and now, I am OK with saying those words to another human being and simply sitting with them.
She reaches out, her fingers briefly touching the edge of the palm of my hand that lies on the bed, before she withdraws again. ‘But we all are in our own ways, so you can be living as hard as
you can at the same time, too. You can try everything you can to get well because it doesn’t have to happen right now.’
‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ she says.
And we spend the next hour in complete silence.
‘Thank you for agreeing to see me.’
I haven’t heard him sound so humble in years; even when he was regretful – apparently – about being caught cheating he still had the edge of Scott The Arrogant about him.
I nod.
‘As I explained to you on the phone, Mrs Challey, your husband wanted to meet you with me here so it would be a safe space for you both to talk.’
My eyes go to the brown-haired man in his fifties sitting in his comfortable chair.
‘You’re free at any time to stop this meeting and to leave,’ he continues. ‘If Scott says anything you don’t agree with or wish to comment upon, feel free to. If you’re not comfortable saying it yourself, you can ask me to mediate for you. If I see that you are showing any signs of upset or distress, I’ll ask you if you want to carry on or I’ll end the proceedings to protect you.’ He pauses, presumably to allow what he has said to sink in. ‘Does that sound acceptable to you, Mrs Challey?’
‘Tami. Call me Tami,’ I say. ‘And, yes, it sounds fine.’ Obviously I’d rather not be here at all, but those aren’t the choices I have, are they? I opened the door to speaking to Scott when I called the other day about Beatrix. I could have shut it again, but not when we have to discuss him seeing the children and money and divorce in detail.
He didn’t pressure me at all, he simply asked if I’d come along and meet his therapist, and allow him to tell me the truth about what he’d done. I’d gone to say, ‘I don’t want to see you ever again,’
and instead, ‘OK,’ came out. And then I was talking to his therapist about what was going to happen.
The room we are in isn’t small, but it is intimate, comfortable, homely. The sort of place Scott would normally have hated being in. He liked everything shiny, new and minimalist. How he must have
hated
our house.
‘If it’s OK with you, Scott would like to start talking,’ the therapist says.
‘Fine,’ I utter. I don’t plan on saying much.
I’m avoiding looking at Scott. Since I arrived I’ve kept my gaze towards the window, slightly to the left of him so his shape is in my line of sight, but I can’t make out any of the details of him. If I see those details, I’ll start reshaping and reforming him in my head, visually sculpting him until he is the person I want him to be, the man I thought I’d married, instead of the person he is. The man I married doesn’t exist any more, I’m still not sure he ever did.