‘You got me juggling clubs!’ he announces. He stands in front of Adam looking utterly amazed. ‘How did you know I wanted them? They’re so cool! Look, I can nearly do it already.’
He’s useless. Clubs spin across the lounge in all directions. Adam laughs, picks them up, and then has a go himself. He’s surprisingly good, managing seventeen catches before dropping them.
‘You reckon you could do it with knives?’ Cal asks him. ‘Because I saw this man once who juggled with an apple and three knives. He peeled the apple and ate it while he juggled. Could you teach me to do that before I’m twelve?’
‘I’ll help you practise.’
How easy they are with each other as they flip the clubs between them. How easy it is for them to talk about the future.
Adam’s mum comes in and sits next to me on the sofa. We shake hands, which is slightly weird. Her hands are small and dry. She looks tired, as if she’s been travelling for days.
‘I’m Sally,’ she says. ‘We’ve got a present for you too.’
She hands over a carrier bag. Inside is a box of chocolates. It’s not even wrapped up. I get it out and turn it over on my lap.
Cal passes her the juggling clubs. ‘Want to have a go?’ She looks doubtful, but stands up anyway. ‘I’ll show you what to do,’ he says.
Adam sits in her place next to me on the sofa. He leans in close and says, ‘I’m not freaked out.’
He smiles. I smile back. I want to touch him but I can’t, because Dad comes in, sherry bottle in one hand, carving knife in the other, and announces that dinner is served.
There’s mountains of food. Dad’s cooked turkey, roast and mashed potatoes, five different kinds of vegetables, stuffing and gravy. He’s put his Bing Crosby CD on, and antique music about sleigh bells and snow drift over us as we eat.
I thought the adults would sit around discussing mortgages and being generally boring. But because Mum and Dad are a bit pissed, they’re gently silly with each other and it’s not awkward at all.
Even Sally can’t help smiling as Mum tells the story of how her parents thought Dad was too working-class and banned her from seeing him. She talks of private schools and coming-out parties, of how she regularly stole her sister’s pony and rode across town to the council estate to visit Dad at night.
He laughs at the memory. ‘It was only a little market town, but I lived right on the other side. That poor pony was so knackered on a Saturday, it never won a gymkhana again.’
Mum tops up Sally’s wineglass. Cal does a magic trick with the butter knife and his napkin.
Perhaps Sally’s medication allows her to touch alternative realities, because it’s really obvious how Cal’s making the napkin move, but she looks at him in awe.
‘Can you do anything else?’ she asks.
He’s delighted. ‘Loads. I’ll show you later.’
Adam’s sitting opposite me. My foot’s touching his under the table. Every bit of me is aware of this. I watch him eat. When he takes a sip of wine, I think of how his kisses might taste.
‘Upstairs,’ I tell him with my eyes. ‘Upstairs now. Let’s escape.’
What would they do? What could they do? We could undress, get into my bed.
‘Crackers!’ Mum cries. ‘We forgot to pull the crackers!’
We cross arms and link up, a Christmas cracker chain round the table. Hats and jokes and plastic toys fly through the air as we pull.
Cal reads his joke out. ‘What do you call Batman and Robin after they’ve been run over by a steamroller?’ Nobody knows. ‘Flatman and Ribbon!’ he cries.
Everyone laughs, except for Sally. Maybe she’s thinking about her dead husband. My joke’s rubbish, about a man going into a bar, but it’s an iron bar and he gets a headache. Adam’s isn’t even a joke, but an observation that if the universe had appeared today, all of recorded history would have happened in the last ten seconds.
‘That’s true,’ Cal says. ‘Human beings are really trivial compared to the solar system.’
‘I think I might try to get a job in a cracker factory,’ Mum says. ‘Imagine making up jokes all year round, wouldn’t that be fun?’
‘I could put the bangers in,’ Dad says, and he winks at her. They really have drunk way too much.
Sally touches her hair. ‘Shall I read mine out?’
We all shush each other. Her eyes are sad as she reads. ‘A duck goes into a chemist’s to buy some lipstick. The chemist says, “That’s fifty-nine pence.” The duck says, “Thank you, could you put it on my bill please?” ’
Cal explodes with laughter. He throws himself off his chair onto the floor and waves his legs about. Sally’s pleased, reads the joke out again. It is funny. It starts as a ripple in my belly, then moves up to my mouth. Sally laughs too, a great gulping sound. She looks surprised to make such a noise, which makes Mum, Dad and Adam start to chuckle. It’s such a relief. Such a bloody relief. I can’t remember the last time I laughed out loud. Tears roll down my cheeks. Adam passes me his napkin across the table.
‘Here.’ His fingers brush mine.
I wipe my eyes. Upstairs, upstairs. I want to run my hands along you. And I’m just about to say it out loud, just about to say, ‘I’ve got something for you, Adam, but it’s in my bedroom, so you’ll have to come and get it,’ when there’s a rap on the window.
It’s Zoey, her face pressed against the glass, like Mary in the Christmas story. She wasn’t supposed to be here until tea time, and her parents were meant to be coming with her.
She brings in the cold. She stamps her feet on the carpet in front of us all. ‘Merry Christmas, everyone,’ she says.
Dad raises his glass to her and wishes her the same. Mum gets up and gives her a hug.
Zoey says, ‘Thank you.’ Then she bursts into tears.
Mum gets her a chair and some tissues. From somewhere two mince pies appear with a large dollop of brandy butter. Zoey shouldn’t really have alcohol, but maybe the butter doesn’t count.
‘When I looked through the window,’ she sniffs, ‘it looked like something from an advert. I nearly went home.’
Dad says, ‘What’s going on, Zoey?’
She stuffs a spoonful of pie and brandy butter into her mouth, chews quickly, then swallows it down. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Whatever you want to tell us.’
‘Well, my nose is stuffed up and I feel like crap. Do you want to know about that?’
‘That’s caused by an increase in HCG,’ I tell her. ‘It’s the pregnancy hormone.’ There’s a moment’s silence around the table as everyone looks at me. ‘I read it in the Reader’s Digest.’
I’m not sure I should have said this out loud. I forgot that Adam, Cal and Sally don’t even know Zoey’s pregnant. None of them say anything though, and Zoey doesn’t seem to mind, just shoves another load of pie into her mouth.
Dad says, ‘Has something happened at home, Zoey?’
She carefully reloads her spoon. ‘I’ve told my parents.’
‘You told them today?’ He sounds surprised.
She wipes her mouth with her sleeve. ‘It may have been bad timing.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They said a million things, all of them terrible. They hate me. Everyone hates me in fact. Except for the baby.’
Cal grins. ‘You’re having a baby?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I bet it’s a boy.’
She shakes her head at him. ‘I don’t want a boy.’
Dad says, ‘But you do want a baby?’ He says this very gently.
Zoey hesitates, as if she’s thinking about this for the very first time. Then she smiles at him, her eyes watery and amazed. I’ve never seen such a look on her face before. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I really think I do. I’m going to call her Lauren.’
She’s nineteen weeks pregnant, her baby is fully formed and weighs roughly two hundred and forty grammes. If it were born now, it would fit into the palm of my hand. Its stomach woul
d be pink-veined and transparent. If I spoke, it would hear me.
I say, ‘I’ve put your baby on my list.’ I probably shouldn’t have said this out loud either. I didn’t really mean to. Once again, everyone stares at me.
Dad reaches out a hand and touches mine across the table. ‘Tessa,’ he says.
I hate that. I shrug him off. ‘I want to be there.’
Zoey says, ‘It’s another five months, Tess.’
‘So? That’s only a hundred and sixty days. But if you don’t want me there, I can sit outside and maybe come in afterwards. I want to be one of the first people in the world to ever hold her.’
She stands up and walks round the table. She wraps her arms around me. She feels different. Her tummy’s gone all hard and she’s very hot.
‘Tessa,’ she says, ‘I want you to be there.’
Twenty-seven
The afternoon goes quickly. The table’s cleared and the TV’s turned on. We all listen to the Queen’s speech, then Cal does a few magic tricks.
Zoey spends the afternoon on the sofa with Sally and Mum, going through every detail of her doomed love affair with Scott. She even asks for their advice on childbirth. ‘Tell me,’ she says, ‘does it hurt as much as they say?’
Dad’s engrossed in his new book, Eating Organic. He occasionally reads out statistics about chemicals and pesticides to anyone who’s interested.
Adam mostly talks to Cal. He shows him how to spin the clubs; he teaches him a new coin trick. I keep changing my mind about him. Not if I fancy him or not, but if he likes me. Every now and then his eyes catch mine across the room, but he always looks away before I do.
‘He wants you,’ Zoey mouths at me at one point. But if it’s true, I don’t know how to make it happen.
I’ve spent the afternoon flicking through the book Cal got me, A Hundred Weird Ways to Meet Your Maker. It’s quite funny, but it doesn’t stop me feeling as if there’s a space inside me that’s shrinking. I’ve sat in this chair in the corner for two hours, and I’ve separated myself. I know I do it and I know it isn’t right, but I don’t know how else to be.
By four o’clock it’s dark and Dad’s switched on all the lights. He brings out bowls of sweets and nuts. Mum suggests a game of cards. I sidle out to the hallway while they rearrange the chairs. I’ve had enough of stagnant walls and bookshelves. I’ve had enough of central heating and party games. I get my coat from its hook and go out into the garden.
The cold is shocking. It ignites my lungs, turns my breath to smoke. I put my hood up, pull the drawstring tight under my chin and wait.
Slowly, as if arriving out of mist, everything in the garden comes into focus – the holly bush scratching the shed, a bird on the fence post, its feathers fluffing in the wind.
Indoors they’ll be dealing out the cards and passing round the peanuts, but out here, each blade of grass glistens, spiked by frost. Out here, the sky’s packed full of stars, like something from a fairytale. Even the moon looks stunned.
I squash windfalls under my boots on my way to the apple tree. I touch the twists in the trunk, trying to feel its bruised slate colour through my fingers. A few leaves hang damply in the branches. A handful of withered apples turn to rust.
Cal says that humans are made from the nuclear ash of dead stars. He says that when I die, I’ll return to dust, glitter, rain. If that’s true, I want to be buried right here under this tree. Its roots will reach into the soft mess of my body and suck me dry. I’ll be reformed as apple blossom. I’ll drift down in the spring like confetti and cling to my family’s shoes. They’ll carry me in their pockets, scatter the subtle silk of me across their pillows to help them sleep. What dreams will they have then?
In the summer they’ll eat me. Adam will climb over the fence to steal me, maddened by my scent, by my roundness, the shine and health of me. He’ll get his mum to cook me up in a crumble or a strudel and then he’ll gorge on me.
I lie on the ground and try to imagine it. Really, really. I’m dead. I’m turning into an apple tree. It’s a bit difficult though. I wonder about the bird I saw earlier, if it’s flown away. I wonder what they’re doing indoors, if they miss me yet.
I turn over and press my face right into the grass; it pushes coldly back at me. I rake my hands through it, bring up my fingers to smell the earth. It smells of leaf mould, worm breath.
‘What are you doing?’
I turn round very slowly. Adam’s face is upside down. ‘I thought I’d come and look for you. Are you all right?’
I sit up and brush the dirt from my trousers. ‘I’m fine. I was hot.’
He nods, as if this explains why I have wet leaves stuck to my coat. I look like an idiot, I know I do. I also have my hood tied under my chin like an old woman. I undo it quickly.
His jacket creaks as he sits down next to me. ‘Want a rollie?’
I take the cigarette he offers and let him light it. He lights his own and we blow silent smoke across the garden. I can feel him watching me. My thoughts are so clear that I wouldn’t be surprised if he could see them blazing above my head like a neon sign outside a fish and chip shop. I fancy you. I fancy you. Flash. Flash. Flash. With a neon red heart glowing beside the words.
I lie back on the grass to get away from his gaze. Cold seeps through my trousers like water.
He lies down next to me, right next to me. It hurts and hurts to have him this close. I feel sick with it.
‘That’s Orion’s Belt,’ he says.
‘What is?’
He points up to the sky. ‘See those three stars in a line? Mintaka, Alnilam, Alnitak.’ They bloom at the end of his finger as he names them.
‘How do you know that?’
‘When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me stories about the constellations. If you point binoculars below Orion, you’ll see a giant gas cloud where all new stars are born.’
‘New stars? I thought the universe was dying.’
‘It depends which way you look at it. It’s also expanding.’ He rolls over onto his side and props himself up with one elbow. ‘I’ve been hearing from your brother about you being famous.’
‘And did he tell you it was a complete disaster?’
He laughs. ‘No, but now you have to.’
I like making him laugh. He has a beautiful mouth and it gives me the chance to look at him. So I tell him about the whole radio station ridiculousness and I make it much funnier than it really was. I sound heroic, an anarchist of the airwaves. Then, because it’s going so well, I tell him about taking Dad’s car and driving Zoey to the hotel. We lie on the damp grass with the sky massive above us, the moon low and bright, and I tell him about the wardrobe, and how my name has gone from the world. I even tell him about my habit of writing on walls. It’s easy to talk in the dark – I never knew that before.
When I’ve finished, he says, ‘You shouldn’t worry about being forgotten, Tess.’ Then he says, ‘Do you reckon they’ll miss us if we go next door for ten minutes?’
We both smile.
Flash, flash, goes the sign above my head.
As we go through the broken bit of fence and up the path to his back door, his arm brushes mine. We hardly touch at all, but it’s startling.
I follow him into the kitchen. ‘I’ll just be a minute,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a present for you,’ and he disappears into the hallway and runs up the stairs.
I miss him as soon as he goes. When he isn’t with me, I think I made him up.
‘Adam?’ It’s the first time I’ve ever called his name. It sounds strange on my tongue, and powerful, as if something will happen if I say it often enough. I go into the hallway and look up the stairs. ‘Adam?’
‘Up here. Come up if you want.’
So I do.
His room’s the same as mine, but backwards. He’s sitting on his bed. He looks different, awkward. He has a small silver parcel in his hand.
‘I don’t even know if you’re going to like this.’
I sit ne
xt to him. Every night we sleep with only a wall between us. I’m going to knock a hole in the wall behind my wardrobe and make a secret entrance to his world.
‘Here,’ he says. ‘I suppose you better open it.’
Inside the wrapping paper is a bag. Inside the bag is a box. Inside the box is a bracelet – seven stones, all different colours, bound with a silver chain.
‘I know you’re trying not to acquire new things, but I thought you might like it.’
I’m so startled I can’t speak.
He says, ‘Shall I help you put it on?’
I hold out my hand and he wraps the chain around my wrist and does up the clasp. Then he threads his fingers with mine. We look down at our hands, together on the bed between us. Mine look different, entangled with his, the new bracelet on my wrist. And his hands are completely new to me.
‘Tessa?’ he says.
This is his room. With only a wall between my bed and his. We’re holding hands. He bought me a bracelet.
‘Tessa?’ he says again.
When I look at him, it feels like fear. His eyes are green and full of shadows. His mouth is beautiful. He leans towards me and I know. I know.
It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s going to.
Number eight is love.
Twenty-eight
My heart stumbles. ‘I can do that.’
‘No,’ Adam says. ‘Let me.’
Each buckle gets his absolute attention, then he slides my boots off and places them side by side on the floor.
I join him on the rug. I undo his laces, put each of his feet on my lap in turn and pull off his trainers. I stroke his ankles, my hand running under his trousers and up his calves. I’m touching him. I’m touching the soft hair on his legs. I never knew I could be so brave.
We make it a game, like strip poker, but without the cards or dice. I unzip his jacket and let it fall to the floor. He undoes my coat and slides it off my shoulders. He finds a leaf from the garden in my hair. I touch his dark curls, twine their strength through my fingers.
Nothing seems small with him watching, so I take my time with the buttons on his shirt. This last one condenses into a planet under our gaze – milky white and perfectly round.
Before I Die Page 15