Ways to Live Forever

by Sally Nicholls

  Mum looked me up and down. Then she said calmly, “I don’t see why not.”

  Ella dropped her spoon into her bowl with a splash.

  “Can I come too?”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Dad. He didn’t look up from his toast. “You’ve got to go to school.”

  Ella scowled at him. She lashed out with her foot and hit the table leg. Dad carried on eating as though she wasn’t there. “That’s so unfair!” Ella wailed.

  “Yes,” Mum said unexpectedly. “It is. Of course you can come, Ella.”

  “No, she can’t.” Dad looked up.

  “Why not?” said Mum. She looked him squarely in the face, but her hand tightened on her spoon. “We might not get snow again this year. It will be good for us to have a day together while . . . while Sam’s well.”

  I glanced quickly at Dad. He looked away. “We can’t just drop everything,” he said. You could see he didn’t like talking like this. He took off his glasses and began polishing them with the tablecloth. “We still have to . . . to . . . I still have to go to work. . .”

  “No, you don’t,” said Mum. Ella and I stared at her. Dad always goes to work. He even went when I was in hospital last year. It’s what he does. To say he didn’t have to was like saying we didn’t have to eat, or wear clothes. “You have staff, don’t you? You don’t need to go in every day. In fact, there’s no reason why you can’t come sledging too.”

  “You are not going sledging!” Dad shouted. He slammed the flat of his hand down on the table. Ella and I flinched. “Sam’s ill, for . . . for God’s sake! You oughtn’t to take him out in this weather, anyway.”

  Ella’s eyes were round and fearful. Mum and Dad hardly ever fight. And when they do, Dad doesn’t shout. Mostly he just says, “We’re not going to talk about this” and walks out of the room. And mostly Mum leaves it at that. I’d never seen her stand him down like this. It was like she was a different person.

  I thought she was going to shout back, but she didn’t. She was watching Dad with an odd look on her face. “Just exactly what difference do you think it’s going to make?” she said. “Tell me that.”

  Dad’s mouth moved but nothing came out. His eyes were darting about the room, from his glasses still on the table, to the family photograph on the wall, to me. They settled on me. He stared at me as if he had never seen me before. I stared back. I didn’t know what to say.

  “You see,” said Mum, very gently.

  “No,” said Dad. He turned to Ella. “Ella, go and get your coat. I’m taking you to school.”

  “No-o-o!” Ella wailed.

  “I’ll take her,” said Mum. She turned and marched out of the room. Ella slid off her chair and ran after her. I stood there awkwardly, watching. Dad finished his toast in silence while Ella and Mum banged about, getting their things together. Then the front door slammed and the house was silent.

  There we were, just the two of us. Dad cleared his throat. I waited.

  “You . . . you’re all right, aren’t you, Sam?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. What else could I say?

  “Of course you are,” said Dad. He patted me clumsily on the shoulder. “Good boy. My good lad.” He went to get his coat.

  When he had gone, I sat at the table and wondered what was going to happen. I was still there when Mum came back. She peered round the door and put her finger to her lips.

  “Has he gone?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” I said. She vanished. I followed, curious. Mum opened the front door. Ella was standing there in her duffle coat, with her school bag over her shoulder.

  “Run and get dressed while I dig out the sledges,” said Mum. She hesitated and then she smiled at me, a wide, sudden smile that I’d almost forgotten she had. It was as if the sun had come out. “And don’t tell your dad.”

  I couldn’t help worrying about Dad, all the way to the park in the taxi. I felt a bit like we’d betrayed him, going out in the snow when he’d said we weren’t to. But I didn’t know what else to do. Mum was right. This might be the last chance we got to go sledging. I couldn’t not go.

  But I still wished Dad had come too.

  There was absolutely no one else on the sledging hill. Not even tiny children too small to go to school. I’d only ever been there before when it was covered in kids, and the emptiness was almost frightening. There was this queer, white, waiting feeling, as if the whole world was holding its breath.

  “Who’s going first?” said Mum. “Or both together?”

  I couldn’t believe she was actually letting me go down the hill. Normally she’d be all worried about me hurting myself or something. But I didn’t argue. Me and Ella have got our own plastic sledge each. We both sat down on them together.

  “One,” said Mum. “Two. Three. Go!”

  I pushed with my feet and jerked my whole body forwards, the way you do on a swing. The sledge wouldn’t go at first and then, all of a sudden, it began to slide. Slowly at first, then faster. I could feel the wind against my cheeks. I could feel the cold through my gloves. I could see the hedge at the bottom of the hill and, beyond it, the long loop of the river. “I have never felt this alive,” I thought. “Never. I want this to last forever.” But then there was the hedge, coming closer and closer, and I stuck my feet out into the snow and the sledge stopped just in time and it was over. Ella slid down beside me. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes shone.

  “Again!” she said.

  We dragged our sledges up the hill again. We went down feet first, face first, on our stomachs, on our backs, with the sky jolting and shaking above us, on one sledge together. We got warmer under our coats, and we took off our hats and scarves and gloves and left them in a pile by Mum. Mum stood at the top of the hill and watched us. She took photographs: me and Ella with our sledges, me and Ella going down the hill, me and Ella together. She even went down herself, on Ella’s sledge, although she said once was enough.

  “I’m too old for this,” she said, laughing.

  “Never!” said Ella and hugged her.

  After a time, I got tired and my bones started hurting again, so I went and stood with Mum at the top of the hill, watching Ella. There were other people about now, a woman with two dogs and a grandad with a little boy on a sledge. Our beautiful white slope was all torn and scarred with sledge-tracks and footprints. I knew we couldn’t help spoiling it, but I still wished we hadn’t. It began to snow again.

  “Ella!” called Mum. “Come on in now!”

  We went to the park café with the glass roof and had hot chocolate, one each, with marshmallows. Ella slurped at hers and got a creamy moustache. I copied her, because she looked so silly. Mum smiled at us both. She got the waitress to take a photograph of the three of us. We sat together, not talking much.

  “Felix would have liked this,” said Ella, suddenly.

  We looked at each other awkwardly.

  “Yes,” said Mum. She didn’t seem to mind Ella talking about him. She smiled at me and squeezed my fingers across the table. “He would.”

  Ella nodded and sipped her hot chocolate.

  After a while, she got up and went to look at the old-fashioned coffee-shop posters behind the counter. Mum went to pay the bill. I stood by the glass wall and looked out over the park. The snow was really falling now, millions and millions of soft, feathery snowflakes swirling around and around, above and before me. I watched them falling. Settling on the sledge scars and the footprint holes. Smoothing out all of our damage and making everything clean and new again.

  WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

  3rd March

  Dad didn’t say anything about sledging when he got home. Neither did Mum. They both acted like the morning hadn’t happened.

  I was curled up on the sofa with my big book about airships. The fire was on. Outside, dusk had settled over the piles of frozen snow on the grass. It was warm and quiet and sleepy.

  Dad came and sat down on the sofa beside me. He didn’t sa
y anything. He opened his paper and stared at it. Then he shut it again.

  “Do you want a game of penalties or something?” he said.

  I stared at him. We haven’t played penalties in ages. It was pitch dark outside and freezing.

  “I don’t really want to right now, Dad,” I said. “I’m really tired.” He nodded once or twice. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. His eyes wandered around the room, the way they had that morning. They settled on my airship book. He cleared his throat. “There – there was something in the paper about an airship they’ve got up in the Lake District. Do you want to hear it?”

  I nodded. He fumbled with the sails of paper, trying to find the page he wanted. “There we are,” he said.

  He smoothed out the page and began to read.

  That night, last night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept having these dreams and waking up and not knowing whether I was asleep or awake. And my bones hurt. I didn’t realize they were hurting at first; it was so muddled up with dreaming and sleeping. But then I woke up again and I was tangled up in my sheets and I was crying and I couldn’t work out why and then my dad was there.

  It’s usually Mum who comes. I didn’t know why it was Dad then. He came right over to my bed and he said “Sam! Sam, are you all right?” but I just kept on crying and twisting about, because I still couldn’t really work out what was happening.

  He put his hand on my arm and I lashed out and knocked his glasses off his nose. He put his hands on my shoulders and he said, “Sam. Sam. Wake up. Wake up. I’m here. Wake up,” and then I did wake up a bit and saw it was him. I stopped crying so much then.

  He said, “What’s the matter? Where does it hurt?” and I said, “Everywhere,” and started crying again.

  He looked sort of panicky then. He pulled open the door of my cabinet and began rummaging through it, looking for my tablets. There’s loads of stuff in there: pills, injections, things I used to take and don’t any more. Dad pulled more and more things out until there was a whole pile by the bed.

  “It’s a box,” I said. “Mum had it before.”

  “I know it’s a box!” Dad swore. I leaned over, out of the bed, and saw it, under some fake spit from when I was ill last time.

  “Dad. Dad. . . ”

  He wasn’t listening, as usual. He was still shuffling through all the bits with his hands. I tugged on his sleeve.

  “Dad. There. . .”

  He saw it. He snatched it up and began fumbling with the lid. The box burst open and all the pills fell out. Dad swore again.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Dad. It’s all right.” He stopped and looked up at me.

  “Look at you,” he said. “How about you be the dad and I’ll be the kid, eh?”

  I rolled back on to my pillow and smiled up at him. He still looked nervy. He said, “I’ll get you some water for this. Don’t go anywhere, eh?”

  I shook my head.

  He sat on my bed and watched me take my pill. When I’d finished, he took the glass back and placed it on the cabinet. I thought he’d go back to bed then, but he just sat there, looking down at me.

  “Was that what all those tears were about, then?” he said.

  I shook my head. “I was dreaming.”

  “Were you?” He reached across me and straightened my duvet. “What about?”

  “Oh. . .” It didn’t seem to matter now. “I can’t remember.”

  “No. . .” He sat there silent.

  “I was dreaming,” he said. “That’s why I woke up.”

  “What were you dreaming about?” I said sleepily.

  He rubbed his chin. I thought he wasn’t going to answer, or hadn’t heard. I was too sleepy to care much. But then – “About you,” he said. I turned my face towards him. He was quiet again. “You,” he said. “Going away. . .”

  I know I must have been half asleep. Because when I looked at him then, there were tears in his eyes.

  “Dad. . .” I said. “Don’t cry.” I reached out my hand and touched his, a little frightened. “Dad.”

  He was crying. There were little snail-trail tear tracks running down his cheeks. I blinked at him, trying to work it out.

  “Dad. . .”

  “Sam,” he said. He grasped my hand. He seemed about to say something else, but my eyes were already closing. I was floating away, back across the shadowy border and into sleep.

  SURPRISES

  4th March

  I slept late again next morning. When I woke up, Dad was there.

  “Dad!” I said.

  “What?” he said. He put on a serious face. “Aren’t I allowed to spend some time with my son?”

  “Of course you are!” I said. I hugged him. He looked surprised, but pleased. He hugged me back. “What do you want to do?” he said.

  We had a great morning. I didn’t want any proper breakfast so we had tinned peaches and ice cream and grapes, in bed. Mum had gone to see Granny, and Ella was at school. Dad had taken a whole day off work just to see me. We played Top Trumps and Risk in Mum and Dad’s bed and I won.

  Mrs Willis didn’t come, but we did school. Dad told me the story of Loki, who stole Sif’s hair in the night and then had to go and ask the dwarfs to make her some more. I’d forgotten how good Dad is at telling stories. He does voices and everything.

  After Dad told his story, I read him the bit from my book about going up the down-escalators. He liked it so much that I read him the bit with the Ouija board as well. And some of the lists.

  “Where did you find all this stuff?” he said.

  “From the Internet,” I said. “And books too. Mrs Willis brings books sometimes.”

  He was pretty impressed, so I showed him my “Things To Do”.

  “I’ve done nearly all of them,” I told him. He looked so surprised that I laughed. I told him all about it. He didn’t get upset. He just sat and listened.

  “So there’s just airships and spaceships left?” he said.

  “And being a scientist,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t that what this is?” he said, tapping my folder.

  I hadn’t thought of my book like that. Did all those arguments with Felix count as being a scientist? I wanted to ask Dad, but then Annie came round. She looked at the games and paper and books and breakfast things all over the bed, with Columbus curled up in the middle of them, and laughed.

  “You look like you’re having a party!” she said.

  She gave Dad some stronger tablets for me to take. It was a shame really because they made me so sleepy that I couldn’t stay awake. Dad didn’t mind. He let me stay in the big bed. I lay and watched him as he cleared away all the mess.

  As he was about to go, I said, “Dad.”

  He turned. “What?”

  I looked at him, standing there in the door, with his book of Norse myths under his arm and his glasses all askew. “Nothing,” I said.

  He looked at me. Then he came over to the bed and hugged me so tight I thought I was going to explode.

  “Sleep well,” he said.

  I did. I slept all afternoon. Except once I woke up and thought I heard Dad talking on the phone.

  “Yes, I knew that. But aren’t there any other options?”

  I thought he was talking to Dr Bill again. Then he said, “I wouldn’t want to interrupt filming.”

  Filming?

  “Yes, a short flight . . . No . . . No, really? Washing powder? . . . Well, it’s worth a try . . . Yes . . . Yes, thank you.”

  He put the phone down. I lay there, wondering sleepily what was going on. Had I been dreaming? But I was so tired, it didn’t seem very important. I closed my eyes and fell asleep again.

  DAD’S AIRSHIP

  Airship: A power-driven aircraft that is lighter than air.

  Concise Oxford Dictionary: Ninth Edition

  AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR

  WASHING POWDER

  5th March

  Next morning, when Mum was
getting Ella ready for school, the phone rang. Mum answered.

  “Hello? . . .Yes . . . Who? . . . He said what?”

  I rolled over in bed and craned round so I could peer through the open bedroom door.

  “Daniel! I’ve got a man from a film company here. Says he talked to you yesterday!”

  “Oh, yes. . .” Dad came through, still clutching a piece of toast. He took the phone from Mum, who gave him a funny look. “Hello? . . . Yes? . . . Yes. Really? That’s wonderful! . . . Hang on . . . four p.m., Legburthwaite . . . Yes . . . Yes. Thank you very much . . . Goodbye, now.”

  He put the phone down. Mum and Ella were staring. So was I.

  “What,” said Mum, “was that about?”

  “Are you going to be in a film?” said Ella.

  Dad laughed. “Of course I’m not going to be in a film,” he said. He rubbed his hands together, like the conjuror about to pull the rabbit out of a hat. “That was a man called Stanley Rhode. He’s doing some work for a company that’s filming an advert up on Helvellyn.”

  “An advert?” said Mum.

  Dad laughed again. “For washing powder,” he said. “Can you believe it? I think they’re going to spray the washing powder out from behind it and make some joke about clothes as clean as clouds.”

  “Daniel!” said Mum. “What are you talking about? Spray washing powder out of what?”

  “Oh.” Dad looked startled. “Didn’t I say? From an airship, of course.”

  “From an airship?” I nearly fell out of bed. “Dad!”

  Mum and Dad turned. “Oh, there you are,” said Dad. “Yes, I rang the British Airship Association yesterday, but they said you’d have to go to Germany or Italy to get passenger flights. So I explained the situation and they gave me this fellow’s number. He’s the pilot, and he says he can take us up today, after they—”

  “Today?”

  I couldn’t believe it. Was it some sort of joke? Dad was beaming round at everyone. Ella was hopping up and down, tugging on Dad’s arm.