by Dani Atkins
‘Do you want something to eat before you go?’
‘I think I’d probably throw up.’
He nodded in understanding and began to silently replace Noah’s collection of medication in the kitchen cupboard. So many pills and drugs, and none of them seemed to be working anymore.
‘It’s trial and error,’ the doctors said each time they wrote out yet another new prescription. ‘We just have to keep trying to find the right balance.’
‘These are old people’s pills,’ Pete had declared on the day we’d brought Noah back home, weighed down with a bulging bag from the hospital pharmacy. ‘He’s got pills for high blood pressure, raised cholesterol and God knows what else. They’re what my dad had when he was in his seventies.’
To be fair, initially the cocktail of medications had helped. They got rid of the massive amount of fluid that had built up in Noah’s body, until he finally looked like our little boy once again. They helped his failing kidneys to function. But the last three months had been hard on him. He’d missed more days of school than he had attended and had to give up so many of the things he loved – at least for now. We’d overcompensated, but I defy any parent in the world not to do that when you see your child lost and bewildered in a place he’d never asked to visit.
When Noah wasn’t well enough to take part in the new school show, we’d bought him a piano and arranged for lessons. When he’d had to step down from the five-a-side team, we’d bought him a dog.
‘You do know we’re spoiling him?’ Pete had asked, as we broke all our own rules and allowed Marvel, the three-legged greyhound and the newest addition to the Vaughan household, to sleep in a basket beside Noah’s bed each night.
‘I know, and I don’t care,’ I’d replied, my throat constricting when I remembered how Noah had walked past the cages with the perfectly healthy cute dogs and stopped determinedly in front of the one with the sad-looking creature who was so used to being passed by, he hadn’t even bothered looking up. ‘I want that one,’ he’d said, his eyes huge and pleading in his too-pale face.
‘Noah will have good days, and bad days,’ the doctors had warned us, so often you’d have thought we’d have been much better prepared to deal with the inevitable decline when it came. I’m not sure what we’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this avalanche of new symptoms that made me almost scared to ask Noah how he was feeling.
Pete’s eyes were fixed on Marvel now as he wolfed down a bowl of food, almost as though he couldn’t bear to look at me as he asked his question.
‘So you’re going to do it, then?’
The blue dress had probably told him that I was, but he still deserved an answer.
‘I have to. I thought we were both agreed on this.’
He nodded, and it was only then that I realised how close he was to crying. We alternated, like scales trying to find a balance. Sometimes he was the strong one; other times it was me. On this issue, he was all over the place, but I was titanium strong. I had to be, for Noah.
‘I should go,’ I said.
Another nod, but as I turned to leave, Pete spun around and pulled me into his arms, crushing me almost painfully against him.
‘Good luck,’ he said, his voice gruff with all the things he couldn’t say. It didn’t matter. I already knew them.
35
Beth
The columns of figures on my laptop screen blurred and then came back into focus as I wearily rubbed my eyes. The shop was quiet, and with the rain bouncing like bullets onto the pavement outside, it was likely to stay that way for the rest of the afternoon. It should have been the perfect opportunity to catch up on some paperwork, but somehow I couldn’t seem to concentrate.
I refused to admit Natalie’s parting comment several hours earlier was the reason for my distracted state. ‘Has that tall guy you’re friendly with moved into this area?’ The question had been dropped casually, like a carelessly thrown grenade, as she pulled on her jacket.
‘Not that I know of,’ I replied carefully, without choosing to correct her. There was no need for her to know that I’d not heard from Liam in months.
‘Weird,’ Natalie said, unaware of the unsettling chain reaction her question had triggered. ‘I keep thinking I see him. He must have a double.’ She shrugged, and by the time she’d crossed to the door and left for her afternoon off, she’d probably forgotten all about it.
I wished I could do the same. My attention kept straying from the laptop screen and travelling to Anna’s painting, which still hung on the wall beside the counter. I should probably have taken it down or at least offered to return it to him, because it was certainly a distraction, and not just today. I found it almost impossible to look at it and not think of Liam or the unfortunate way our friendship had petered out.
Even so, I was sure Natalie must be mistaken. Whoever it was she’d seen, it was unlikely to have been Liam. But good sense and logic weren’t enough to stop me from glancing up every time a tall figure walked past the shop window. It was almost as if I was preparing myself; so when a shadowy shape cloaked in a dark raincoat and hidden beneath an enormous golf umbrella stopped in the porch, I think I already knew they weren’t just taking refuge from the downpour, or admiring the window display of pumpkins and orange roses on a crunchy bed of red and gold leaves.
I sat up straighter on the stool I was perched on, my hands unconsciously gripping the edge of the counter as the figure stood on the threshold, shaking droplets from their hooded raincoat and umbrella, before turning around to enter the shop.
My usual smile for greeting customers faltered and then dissolved completely as Izzy Vaughan walked further into Crazy Daisy. She slipped off the dripping raincoat, turning it inside out to protect the floor. The action implied she wasn’t about to rush back into the street and confirmed her appearance here was no random coincidence. She’d known exactly whose shop this was, and I very much doubted she’d come here to buy flowers.
Beneath the coat Izzy was wearing a hyacinth-blue knitted dress, which really suited her colouring. Her hair was smartly styled and she was wearing make-up, which didn’t quite manage to disguise the lines around her eyes she was too young to have, or the twin panda circles beneath them.
One of us had to speak, and as the seconds stretched on, I eventually realised it was going to have to be me.
‘Hello, Izzy.’
‘Beth,’ she responded, as she chewed nervously on her lower lip. She seemed fidgety and kept readjusting her grip on the strap of her bag, which she was holding so tightly I could see the bones of her knuckles outlined through the skin.
I could feel myself paling beneath the tan I’d brought back from Australia as I slid off the stool and stood as tall as I could to face the woman I’d never imagined I would see again.
Izzy’s eyes darted around the shop, but I doubted she was taking in the exotic blooms or the autumnal floral displays. I breathed in deeply, inhaling their fragrance, which usually calmed me, but for once their magic failed to work.
‘Why are you here, Izzy?’ My voice was calm, belying the maelstrom of emotions swirling inside me. ‘Is it about Noah?’ What a stupid question; of course it was about Noah. There was nothing else we had in common.
In answer, Izzy glanced once again around the shop. ‘Is there somewhere private we could go to talk?’
My pulse rate went up a good ten beats a minute, but I hoped my face remained composed. ‘My assistant is out for the afternoon, so I can’t leave the shop.’ Izzy didn’t challenge me, or ask me to close up, which I could easily have done. In truth, I wanted to stay right where we were. The shop was my haven and my sanctuary. Whatever she’d come here to say, I wanted to hear it somewhere familiar, where I felt safe. ‘We can talk here without being disturbed. It’s been a quiet afternoon.’
I emerged from behind the counter and crossed to a small shabby chic bench beneath Anna’s painting. I sat first, and after a moment of hesitation Izzy lowered herself onto the blue-painted sla
ts beside me. Ignoring good manners, I didn’t ask if she wanted anything to drink. Even the two minutes it would take for the kettle to boil were too long to wait. I needed to know why, after all these months, she was here.
Izzy cleared her throat and then closed her eyes for a long moment, as though the words she had come here to say were written on some internal autocue inside her lids.
‘Before I say anything else, I want to thank you for what you did in the summer… for walking away and not putting Noah through a media circus of a court case. I know how hard that must have been for you.’
My gaze was level and steady; unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for my voice. ‘Actually, you have no idea.’
She bowed her head in acknowledgement. There was a composed stillness about her now, but it was her hands that gave her away. They were writhing in her lap, the fingers twisting and contorting as though playing their own game of Twister. They made me uncomfortable, but I couldn’t look away.
‘If we could find a way…’ Izzy began hesitantly, ‘a way that didn’t involve lawyers, judges or courtrooms, for you to be involved in Noah’s future, would you be interested?’
My gasp sounded ridiculously loud, but it was impossible to suppress. ‘Do you even need to ask me that?’
Izzy nodded slowly, as though she had expected no other answer.
I had about a hundred questions that were screaming to be asked, but Izzy silenced them all with her next words.
‘Noah needs you.’
‘Needs me? How?’ I hardly recognised my own voice.
I could tell how hard this was for her, because her words sounded raw, as if they were being hacked from her. ‘Noah needs you to be his mother.’ She took a long steadying breath. Clearly, however much she had rehearsed this speech, it was still much harder to deliver than she’d been expecting.
Wordlessly, I strode to the door, flipped over the ‘Closed’ sign and slid the latch, giving us both a very necessary moment. I leant back against the locked door, as though I could no longer trust that my legs were capable of carrying me across the room.
‘You made it very clear at our previous meeting that Noah needs only one mother. You. So why the sudden change of heart?’
Each word Izzy spoke seemed like a blade being slowly drawn across her skin. ‘Noah needs something I can’t give him. No one else can help him. Only you.’
My heart was pounding so hard, I could feel it beating against my chest as though trying to escape. ‘What is it that you need from me? Is it money?’
She looked almost pityingly at me, as though I’d said something unbelievably stupid.
‘Noah is sick.’
The world seemed to tilt and for a moment it felt as though I was actually falling… falling back into the past, into a consultation room where an oncologist with sad eyes was saying: ‘I’m afraid it’s not good news…’
With jerky steps I walked back to the bench, sitting down at an angle to Izzy, so close that our knees were touching, but there was still a chasm between us.
‘What sort of sick do you mean? What’s wrong with him?’ In my head I could hear nothing except the word ‘cancer’ tolling like a bell.
It was almost a relief when Izzy said, ‘Noah has a kidney condition – quite a rare one. It’s called FSGS.’
I could feel relief washing through me, but Izzy’s eyes were filled with a fearfulness that made the dread come flooding back.
‘Is it… Is it serious?’
She gave one brief, hard nod. And with that everything fell into place. I knew in that moment exactly why she was there. Izzy was busy pulling sheets of paper from her bag; pages and pages downloaded from the internet, filled with diagrams and closely printed text. She was talking about how Noah’s condition had initially been missed, and of the cocktail of drugs he’d been on over the last few months, and the numerous hospital stays. It was all just white noise.
‘He had so many allergies, you see, at first they thought the symptoms were—’
‘Yes.’ My voice was clear and decisive. The word rang out through the shop.
Izzy faltered to a stop, as her carefully structured speech was derailed. Our eyes met and for a moment I heard nothing. Not the cars driving past through the deep puddles, the rumbling of buses, or the pounding of the rain on the roof. There was a new silence in a world full of noise.
‘Yes, Izzy,’ I repeated slowly and carefully, as though talking to a person unfamiliar with English. ‘It’s what you came here to ask, isn’t it?’
She coloured in embarrassment, but what was the point in making her go through whatever it was she had planned to say? The decision was already made. ‘You came to ask me to donate one of my kidneys, didn’t you?’
She’d not planned for us to reach this point in the conversation for quite some time, and it was almost funny to see her mentally fast-forwarding to the right part of her speech, or it would have been if it wasn’t all so deadly serious.
‘Last week the doctors talked about dialysis for the first time. I don’t want him to have to go through that. Not if…not if there’s another way.’
I nodded slowly.
‘I got them to test me almost as soon as he was diagnosed. Pete too. They thought I was being a catastrophist, but I just wanted to know that I could help him when he needed me. Only it turns out I can’t.’ Her voice cracked on the admission. ‘It’s my job to look after him. When he’s ill, I’m supposed to be the one who makes him better. But I’m failing him now.’ Her eyes were twin pools of unfathomable misery. ‘The only person who can make Noah well again is the person who gave him life in the first place. You, Beth.’
If she’d been stabbed I doubt she could have looked in greater pain. Almost of its own volition, my hand reached out for hers. I’m not sure which of us was the most surprised.
‘I can only imagine how hard it must have been for you to come here today and ask me to do this.’
Izzy shook her head fiercely and wiped the back of her free hand roughly across her cheek, banishing any errant tears. ‘Noah is everything. Nothing else is important. I would walk through fire for that boy.’ She took a long shaky sigh. ‘And I’m banking everything I have on the hope that you feel exactly the same way.’
‘I do,’ I said solemnly.
She nodded, and then seemed to pull herself up a little straighter, as though drawing on an inner well of strength. ‘Doing this incredible thing for Noah will obviously change everything. Pete and I both understand that, and we’re prepared to work out a way of bringing you into Noah’s life. He deserves to know what you’re doing for him, and why.’
‘No. Absolutely not.’ Izzy looked momentarily panicked. ‘I’m not doing this to buy his love for me.’
Izzy frowned. ‘It wouldn’t be like that. I just meant that your place in Noah’s life from now on will never be challenged by either Pete or me.’
It felt like we were playing hopscotch on the edge of an emotional minefield, each of us fearful of taking a wrong step and watching everything blow up in our faces.
‘I will do this. I will willingly do this. But I don’t want Noah to be told who I am before the operation.’ I could sense Izzy was poised to disagree, but I talked over her objections before she could voice them. ‘This is non-negotiable. When Noah is better, that’s when we can discuss how much time he will be able to spend with me.’
As much as she believed she was ready for this, Izzy was powerless to disguise an involuntary flinch at the thought of having to share Noah with anyone else but Pete. But there was a core of steel in her that I was only just beginning to understand. It was apparent in her next words.
‘Obviously, you’re going to have to go through a great many tests over the coming months: physical and psychological. They need to make sure you’re a good match, and that you’re healthy enough to be a donor. But I want you to know that if things don’t work out, that if for any reason you can’t give Noah your kidney, this arrangement will still stand. W
e’re still… willing… for you to be a part of Noah’s life.’ ‘Happy’would have been a better word for her to have used, but perhaps that was hoping for too much. Besides, Izzy had made the offer with clear sincerity. I didn’t doubt her for a single moment. From this point on there was no need for lawyers. We were just two mothers quietly working out what was best for our child.
‘We don’t need to worry about not being a match,’ I said with the kind of confidence that would have had the doctors shaking their heads at our folly. ‘I will be. I will give Noah a new kidney, and the rest of it will all fall into place after that.’
Izzy left a short while later, leaving me with the name and contact details of the doctor heading up the transplant team who would begin organising the tests I’d have to undergo. We stood awkwardly by the door. Not friends, but no longer enemies. It was Izzy, not me, who finally closed the space between us, and impulsively threw her arms around me. I could feel she was trembling, or perhaps that was me? It was hard to tell.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered into my hair. ‘Thank you for being his mother.’
‘It was all I ever wanted to be,’ I said softly to myself as I watched her walk back out into the driving rain.
36
Beth
Everyone in the airport seemed to be crying. It reminded me of the scene in Love Actually where loved ones fly like magnets into the arms of their waiting relatives. Except we weren’t in the Arrivals hall, but the Departures one, so I suppose the tears all around us were ones of farewell as people said goodbye to their loved ones for the holidays.
As if that wasn’t poignant enough, a choir of school children were positioned in the middle of the terminal, serenading the bustling passengers with sweetly sung Christmas carols. They were gathering quite a crowd, as everyone suddenly forgot the deep queues waiting at the check-in desks, or last calls for their flights, and stopped to listen. The male teacher conducting the choir was beaming enthusiastically from beneath a pair of reindeer antlers and just for a moment, as my vision blurred, his face disappeared and I saw Tim in his place. With that uncanny empathy that always took me by surprise, my mother’s hand reached over and covered mine where it rested on the bar of their luggage trolley. When I turned to look at her, the memory of her lost son-in-law sparkled in her eyes. It was how he lived on in all of us. And today, of all days, he seemed closer than ever.