Photos of You (ARC)

by Tammy Robinson

  “Kind of,” James admits. “I think the battery’s flat.”

  “How’d that happen?”

  “Well, we stopped, you see, to, um, to check directions on my phone. Because we thought we might have been lost.”

  “No cell phone coverage here, mate.”

  “No, no, there wasn’t, as we discovered. So, uh, we thought we’d just wait, and have a nap, and see if anyone would come along that we could ask. But I forgot to turn the headlights off, and, well, now here we are. So if you could just give us a jumpstart we’ll be on our—”

  “You had a nap.”

  “Yes.”

  “Both of you.”

  “Yes.”

  “With the headlights on.”

  “Er, yes.”

  “I might be old, mate, but I wasn’t born yesterday.” The farmer walks off back to his truck, chuckling to himself. “A nap.”

  James squints as he thinks. “Do we tell him that what he just said doesn’t actually make any sense?”

  “No, you do not.” I flick my hand at him. “You get out and you help him get this car going again so we can get out of here before you say anything even more embarrassing. Understood?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  The farmer comes back with the jumper leads and he and James busy themselves underneath the bonnet. I slide down in my seat, embarrassed that he knows what we have been up to, and pretend to look at my phone even though he’s quite right and there is no service here. In no time at all James climbs back inside and the two of them start their engines.

  “Oh thank God,” I say as James’s car purrs to life. “Can we get out of here now? Please?”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “I can’t look him in the eye knowing he knows what we were up to,” I say, mortified.

  “Relax, he’s a farmer. He’s probably seen it all before.”

  “Yes, but I hope to God he didn’t see my all.”

  James grins and I smack him lightly on the chest.

  “OK, OK,” he laughs. “I’ll just go help him disconnect and say thanks and we’ll be on our way.”

  “Thank you.”

  We drive the rest of the way home in silence, both seemingly lost in our thoughts. I don’t know about him, but even if I wanted to say something I don’t have the words. These past few days have been like a dream; or like something out of a movie or novel. If he wasn’t sitting in the car beside me I could fool myself into thinking it was.

  He pulls into my driveway and turns the car off. “Headlights off,” he says, exaggerating the movement and I muster a smile.

  “So.”

  “So.”

  “Now what?” he asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  He rubs his eyes and I realize he is tired too.

  “I don’t know where we go from here,” he admits. “All I know is that your time is…limited. And I don’t want to steal any of that time away from your friends and your family, but I can’t bear the thought of missing even a second of whatever we’ll be lucky enough to have.”

  I snort. “Lucky? There’s no luck here. If we were lucky we’d have fifty years to be having this conversation. But we don’t.”

  He looks down at his hands. “No. I’m sorry. Wrong choice of word.”

  I sigh and reach over to place my fingers on his. “No, I’m sorry. It’s just sometimes I let the bitterness get to me.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “But pointless. James, this is a tough conversation to have, and I’m really tired. We both have a lot to process after the weekend. Would you mind if I call you tomorrow?”

  “Of course. That sounds good. No wait, damn.” He slaps his hand against the steering wheel. “I got so caught up in our little bubble I’ve lost track of my days. I have to go away tomorrow, for work. But I’ll be back in a week.”

  “A week?” I feel completely bereft at the thought of not seeing him for that long.

  “I know. Should I cancel?”

  “No.” I shake my head firmly. “Of course not. Your work is important.”

  “So are you.”

  “And I’ll be here waiting when you get back.”

  The front door of Kate’s house opens and she waves. I wave back.

  “You promise?” he asks softly.

  I nod, because I don’t trust my words. And because I don’t like to make promises I might not be able to keep.

  Notes from Ava

  (Women’s Weekly, December 4)

  When I was eight, Brian Thompson gave me a flower. One of those white and yellow daisies that grow willy-nilly along fences and roadsides. Until then he’d never been particularly nice to me, so, suspecting it was some kind of trap, I refused to accept it. He got angry and threw it at me in a huff, storming back across the playground to hide underneath the slide. You couldn’t blame me for being suspicious; until that point Brian was just another hot, sweaty body on the classroom mat, who occasionally pulled my pigtails and called me “Purple Pants,” due to an unfortunate case of indecent exposure when I fell off the swing one day.

  The next day, his best friend, Nick, was given the task of telling me that, in actual fact, Brian was deeply in love with me, and was wondering if I would like to be his girlfriend? (Tick YES on this note if so.) Enthralled by the fact I was the first girl in our class who had been asked to be a “girlfriend” and completely clueless as to exactly what this entailed, I ticked yes. And waited excitedly to see what would happen.

  Nothing happened. He still ignored me on the whole, and called me Purple Pants, but he did let me sit beside him in the back row of the mat, a spot previously reserved for boys only.

  A week later, Nick delivered another note. It wasn’t working out. I was dumped, effective immediately. The note wasn’t in those actual words, of course, but the meaning was the same. Any air of mystique or street cred I had developed was gone, in a puff of childhood innocence. Lisa Ryan was the new girlfriend. I was alone once more.

  I cried. My mother threatened to go around and cave in his kneecaps, but my father convinced her that grievous bodily harm on an eight-year-old was probably not an effective lesson to teach me.

  “You just have to ride the pain out, honey,” he said sadly. “I promise you that you will get over it someday.”

  And I did, of course. After all, I was eight. I bounced back fairly quickly, although I promised myself I would never let another boy into my heart again. Ah, the sweet innocence of youth.

  Love hurts. It really does. When it ends, it has the ability to take you to levels of emotional pain that leave you curled in a ball on the floor, gasping for breath, convinced your heart is about to take its last beat from the sheer agony and sorrow of it. You convince yourself that you will never be the same person ever again, that it has scarred you and altered you through to the very core of your soul. You drink too much, weep, and beg futilely for just one…more…chance.

  But, over time, the pain lessens. It never completely goes away because you were right: it does leave a scar. A song, a smell, a familiar face in the street; all have the power to bring those crushing feelings back. But you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you keep taking that next breath, and eventually you realize you got through a day without crying, then a week. A month. You begin to smile again. Notice the good things in life. In time, you tentatively open yourself up to new people, to the possibility of new love.

  You will never forget a lost love. This inexplicable thing that is love is too powerful for that. But you must never let it make you bitter. Never let it mark you so badly that you close off that part of you. Self-protection might keep your heart safe, but will you truly be alive?

  Love has no past, and no future. Love just is.

  I promise you, when you are on your deathbed, those painful times will no longer have the power to hurt you. You will only remember the good, the beautiful, the spectacular. You will only remember how it felt to be loved, and to love another.

/>   Yes, love hurts.

  But love also heals.

  Xxx

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I sleep all night and most of the next day after my weekend away with James, getting up only when my bladder insists upon it. As I have lost my appetite even for water, this isn’t too often. This is a level of fatigue that is new to me. It’s as if I expended all my energy with James, and now I am depleted, drained. The batteries are well and truly flat.

  Occasionally, I rise close enough to the surface to hear muffled, worried voices outside my door.

  “Do you think she’s OK? Should we call her doctor?”

  “I don’t have his number, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Wait, I know what we should do.”

  “What?”

  “Call her mum.”

  “Good idea. Then it’s out of our hands.”

  “Where do you think James took her that made her so bloody tired?”

  “I’d say it’s more a case of what James did to her, judging by the way she kissed him when he left. She looked like she was stuck permanently to his face, like an octopus. I thought we’d have to get the salt out to try and prise her off. Or does that only work on leeches?”

  “You shouldn’t have been watching,” Kate admonishes.

  “I know, but I don’t think they noticed.”

  Their voices grow fainter as they walk back down the hallway toward the kitchen.

  The last thing I want them to do is call my mother and worry her, but I am too tired to call out in protest. So the next time I wake she is there, on the chair in the corner of the room, reading a book. When I roll over, she tucks her bookmark inside the pages and places the book down on my drawers.

  “Hey, sleepyhead.” Her voice is cheerful, but with some effort behind it. She crosses the room to sit carefully on the side of my bed. “How are you feeling?”

  “Tired.”

  “Any pain?”

  “No,” I lie. My whole body hurts, but there is a pain in my shoulder and lower back that stands out, and I am scared. I knew this was coming; it was always going to get worse. What if I’m not strong enough to cope with it?

  “You’re lying,” she says. “I need to know if it’s worse than usual. You don’t have to put up with pain; they have ways of managing it.”

  I close my eyes. “Good night, Mum.”

  “When you wake up we’re talking about this,” she warns. “The girls have made up a bed for me on the couch. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I wake up, choking and disorientated. Something is in my throat. I am wet, my hair, my face, the bed around me. I try to call out but can only gargle. I’m dying. I always thought I would know when it was my time. But I didn’t know, and I’m not ready. I have only just found James, and I have my wedding to attend. I don’t want to die, not here, not now. With effort, I roll over and push with my legs until I am teetering on the edge of the bed. I can’t breathe. Everything is going black. I fall.

  Blink.

  There’s a bright light above me. It must be the one people speak of, the one I’m supposed to go toward. No one told me how I am supposed to do that, though.

  “Shit, what the hell. Ava! Ava, wake up.”

  Someone, Kate, is cradling my head, slapping my cheek.

  “What’s happening?” Amanda, sleepy.

  “I don’t know. I just heard a thump and came to check. Turned the light on and found her on the floor. She fell out of bed, I think, but something’s wrong, she’s making an awful sound.”

  Blink.

  “What is it? What’s going…Oh no, oh, Ava.” I feel a rush of air as my mother drops to the floor beside me. “She’s choking. Roll her over, into the recovery position. No, like this—grab her leg, her left leg. Straighten it out and hold her. Keep her like that while I call for an ambulance.” My mother’s voice is trembling with her fear. “Don’t you dare do this, girl, not yet.”

  Blink.

  “Fuck, she’s vomited everywhere.”

  “Hello? Ambulance, please, it’s my daughter. Something’s wrong. You have to hurry.”

  “I just fucking stood in it. Oh God, I’m going to be sick.”

  “Shut up, Amanda!”

  “Sorry! Sorry. I’m just scared OK? Is she…dying?”

  “I don’t know. How should I know?”

  “Number 1156, the one with the blue letterbox. There’s a driveway down to the house. Hurry.”

  “She doesn’t look good.”

  “No shit.”

  “Ava?”

  Hands brushing my hair from my face. “That’s it, girl, just keep breathing. Help is coming.”

  “Stay with us, Ava. Please.”

  Blink.

  I know that noise. That steady hiss and click. I’ve heard it enough times. Oxygen. Air. Life. I open my eyes, but everything is blurry. There’s a metallic scraping noise, like a chair being pushed back.

  “She’s awake. Get her mother, quick. She just ducked out to stretch her legs in the corridor. Ava?”

  My father’s shape swims into view, looming. I can’t focus on him, like he’s inside one of those kaleidoscope toys. Changing colors, shapes. Changing faces.

  “You’re in hospital, love. Don’t try to talk; you’re all hooked up to the machine.”

  I close my eyes.

  The slapping sound of my mother’s shoes on the linoleum, her panting.

  “Is she conscious?”

  “She was. For a moment, she looked right at me.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry, love.”

  “It’s OK. She needs her sleep. She’ll wake up again soon.”

  Blink.

  Hiss, click. I don’t like the feel of the oxygen being pushed into my nose so I reach up, fumbling, and pull it out.

  “Oh, no you don’t, miss.” My mother’s firm voice. “That stays in until the doctor says otherwise, understood?” The straps are hooked behind my ears again, the plastic tubes reinserted into my nostrils.

  “Pretty sure you don’t work here,” I mumble weakly.

  “I don’t care,” my mother says. “You’ve given me enough of a scare already. We’re following the doctor’s instructions.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” she sighs. “I knew something wasn’t right. I should have called the doctor.”

  “What’s wrong with me? Apart from the obvious.”

  She looks at Dad. “What did he say it was called, again?”

  “Hypercalcemia. You have too much calcium in your blood.” He clears his throat. “When the cancer spread to your bones it caused them to slowly break apart, releasing calcium into your blood.”

  “Great. This cancer thing just keeps on giving, doesn’t it.” I can’t help the bitterness that seeps through my voice. Sometimes you can only be positive for so long before it slips.

  Mum smiles weakly and reaches up to gently brush the hair off my forehead.

  “So what do we do?” I ask, and watch as they exchange a look. I know that look. It’s the look people have when they have bad news to impart. “Tell me.”

  “There is no fixing it,” my father says resignedly. “All they can do is treat the symptoms.”

  I rub my eyes, wishing I could go to sleep and wake up and have all this be nothing but a bad dream. Have I not been through enough?

  It’s natural, when faced with your own mortality, to question why. Why me? Why? One innocuous word, three letters. Worth a measly score of six points on a Scrabble board.

  I wasn’t raised religious. I’ve stepped foot in a church once, after my diagnosis, curious to see what one looked like. It wasn’t that impressive. I’d been expecting stonemasonry and stained-glass windows. I got wooden bench seats and a bulletin board with a handwritten notice saying Terry the Budgie was missing—had anyone seen him? Any spiritual insights I’d been hoping for were not forthcoming. I left disappointed, but reaffirmed in my belief that what was happening to me was through
no lack of belief on my part.

  Still, I couldn’t help but wonder why. What did I do to deserve it? Why me and not the girl who lived in the flat next door to mine? She seemed a friendly-enough sort; we waved to each other in the driveway and once I fed her cat for her when she went away to Fiji for a week. Why not her? Not that I would wish it on anyone else, because I wouldn’t do that even if I hated someone.

  But who picks? Or is it just some great, big, universal random lottery draw?

  I roll over in bed and pull the rough hospital sheet up over my head, like I did when I was small and scared of the dark. I’m still scared of the dark. Perpetually. Only now it’s an endlessly dark tunnel that looms before me. Infinite darkness.

  “I’m tired,” I mumble.

  “OK, love.” Mum’s voice is tight, strained. This is hard on her, on them both. “You sleep. We’ll pop home and shower and be back later. Do you need anything?”

  “No.”

  Blink.

  When I wake it is with a cry. Disorientated, I was dreaming that I was swimming in the ocean. Pleasant at first, but then I noticed the shore getting further and further away as I drifted out. No matter how hard I swam I couldn’t get back in, until the land was just a tiny sliver of green in the distance. I could sense the incredible depth of the water beneath me, the vast open space of nothing but waves around me. I was nothing, a speck, insignificant. Slipping under.

  “No!” I flail in the bed; the sheet is still over my head and I can’t breathe.

  “Hey, it’s OK. I’m here.” The sheet is ripped off and arms slip around me, pulling me in. A voice makes a shushing sound in my ear. It is soothing like the sound of rain and I feel myself start to calm.

  “James?”

  “Yes. It’s me. I’m so sorry I took so long. I came as quickly as I could.”

  “Who called you?”

  “Amanda.”

  “She shouldn’t have.”

  “I’m glad she did.”