The First Last Kiss

by Ali Harris

  ‘Moll-eee,’ he says softly. I lift my head up and smile through my tears without turning round.

  ‘It’s all right!’ I say, as I start to dab furiously again. ‘It’ll come out! And it doesn’t really matter anyway! I never liked the stupid top much!’

  ‘Moll-eee,’ he says again. I turn around and smile brightly at him. ‘Why won’t you shout at me?’ he says disconsolately.

  ‘Because I don’t want to!’ I say cheerfully, refraining from adding the word ‘darling’. I am not a mum.

  I will never be a mum.

  I will never be a mum to our children.

  ‘But I’m being annoying, Molly.’

  ‘No, you’re not!’

  ‘I am. I know you want to write a list. You’re desperate to write a list. Here, let me do it for you.’ I watch silently as he walks across to our kitchen drawer and pulls out a notepad.

  List of Annoying Things Ryan Does

  he writes at the top and underlines it.

  Then he taps the pen against his poor, shorn head and reads aloud as he’s writing, his voice getting more strained with every word he scribbles. He is wired, angry and frustrated. I’m not sure if it’s with me, or the situation. Whatever it is, I hate seeing him like this.

  ‘Annoying thing Number One: doesn’t use a coaster for hot drinks. Or cold. Even though they’re on the coffee table right in front of him!’

  He looks up. ‘There is a mug of hot tea on the coffee table out there. Fact. You did not tell me off. Another fact.’ He looks back down.

  ‘Annoying thing Number Two: channel-hops constantly.’

  He looks up. ‘Hollyoaks, Friends . . . ’ he pauses, ‘A Question of Sport . . . You hate that programme. You didn’t tell me off.

  ‘Number Three . . . ’ He gestures at the floor. ‘Shoes and socks left all over the—’

  ‘Ryan, stop.’ I say. ‘Those things don’t matter . . . ’

  Ryan throws his pen down on the counter and looks at me. ‘But they do matter, they do! They matter because you’re not being normal. I need you to be normal, Molly, please. Tell me off, shout and scream when it’s necessary. Be a bitch, just for me, please!’ He wanders over and tries to weave his arms around me but I push him away furiously.

  ‘But I don’t want you to remember me as a bitch, Ry, don’t you see? I hate that I used to moan about all those stupid things when none of them matter. They don’t fucking matter, OK?’ I shout, snot is pouring out of my nose, spittle flying out of my mouth. I am gesturing wildly with my arms. ‘I don’t care if you sit watching football for the rest of your life, Ry, I wish you would! I want you to do whatever makes you happy. I don’t want to shout or moan. I want you to remember me as a sweet, loving wife . . . ’ I sink to the floor weeping. ‘I don’t want to be a moaning bitch, Ry, I’m so sorry if I have been . . . I’m so sorry . . . ’

  Ryan kneels down and grasps my hands, clasping my neck and pulling my head forward so our foreheads touch. ‘But don’t you see I just want the girl I married? The girl who ain’t afraid to speak her mind, who always knew how to keep me on my toes and put me in my place. I love that you stopped me obsessing about myself. From the moment we met you showed me that I wasn’t perfect, that my life wasn’t perfect, that I could do more, be more, explore more. My life has been so much better because of you! You made my life perfect as soon as you showed me that I wasn’t. No one had done that before. It’s one of the many reasons I fell in love with you, Molly. So don’t stop now, don’t ever stop. I need you to keep on fighting with me to give me the strength to keep on fighting. Do you see, Molly? It’s you that is making me keep on fighting . . . ’ And he begins to cry.

  We sit huddled, crying in the kitchen as ‘A Question of Sport’ blares in the background until I say, ‘Will you turn that shit off?’ and Ryan laughs and kisses me on my head.

  The Ghost Of Kisses Past Kiss

  ‘We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one thing we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.’

  A writer called Charles R. Swindoll wrote this. I like it. It sums up some stuff I’ve been thinking about recently. I can’t change Ryan’s diagnosis but I can control my approach to it. So, from now on I’m going to be positive, positive, positive . . .

  FF>> 19/05/07>

  It is late on Saturday afternoon and I’m pottering around in our kitchen, making a nice, healthy casserole for Ryan’s tea and preparing his medication.

  ‘Hey, Doc,’ Ryan calls sleepily from the couch where he is stretched out, watching the football results. He calls me Doc because since getting rid of my lists I have somehow memorized every single medication – both prescription and the natural ones – by name and dosage. I am a walking prescription pad. ‘Come here, will you?’ he croaks.

  I resist the urge to run to him because I know how much it winds up Ryan. He says it makes him feel like he’s emitting his dying breath, when actually, all he wants is a pee. I lift the lid on the casserole dish, pull a big spoon down from a hook where they hang behind our cooker. I stir it, taste it, make a face and throw in some more seasoning. Not that I think it’s going to help. No matter how much Ryan tries to teach me (he says he’s making it his mission so I don’t starve to death after he’s gone) I’m never going to be any good at this.

  As I look around our kitchen I’m suddenly knocked sideways by a memory of Ryan and me moving all our stuff in here. The units are lined with gadgets and gizmos that Ryan has bought over the years: the pasta maker, blender, an ice-cream maker, fondue set, even a Kitchen Aid. And the juicer. Fat lot of good that thing did. There’s more stuff than space. Even the things that could go in drawers, like the set of chefs knives I bought him one Christmas, are all on display on a metallic strip along the wall. And Ryan insisted on hanging the pots and pans over the breakfast bar, despite my protestations that I kept banging my head on them.

  ‘If you had your way you’d have a microwave and two forks, and that would be it,’ Ryan had grinned. ‘And you’d probably store your shoes in the oven and your make-up in the fridge.’

  I’m suddenly struck in the stomach by an image of me in the future. I rest my head against the cool kitchen tiles and take a deep breath. I don’t think I will ever be able to come into this kitchen again when he’s gone. There is just too much of him in here. They say the kitchen is the heart of the home, well, surely that’s only if there’s someone there who can make the heart beat.

  I wander into the lounge and over to the sofa. ‘I reckon I’m going to catch forty winks,’ Ryan sighs, looking up at me then smiling and closing his eyes. ‘How about you call one of the girls from work and see if they fancy a night out? You could do with it. I’ll be fine here.’

  ‘No thanks,’ I murmur, trying not to get annoyed at yet another veiled attempt by him to make me have a social life. ‘There’s loads of good telly on and I want to do some work.’

  Ryan’s eyes flicker open and he tries to pull himself up. ‘I really think you should go out. It’s been ages since you had fun.’

  ‘I do have fun, with you . . . ’ I say tightly.

  Ryan raises his eyebrow comically at me. ‘Oh yeah, because hanging out with a cancer patient is a right barrel of laughs. You must really love wiping my arse on a Saturday night and changing the sheets because I’ve shat myself again.’ He’s trying to make light of it but I know it devastates Ryan when he doesn’t get to the toilet in time. And it’s happening more often. ‘Come on, Moll,’ he says, planting on a bright smile, ‘you need a break now and then. It’s important, you know, for after . . . ’

  I stand up hastily and turn away from him so he doesn’t see my tears, but I know he can hear them in my voice. I don’t want to think about after. I just want to appreciate him being here now.

  ‘And that’s exactly why I don’t need a break,’ I snap. I
face him again. ‘I’m here because it’s the only place I want to be, Ry, and you can try and tell me to go out and have fun, and if that will make you so much happier I will pretend to, but you need to know that I will be miserable. I will hate being away from you, I’ll hate being out in some bar or club or at the cinema when all I want is to be here with you.’ I turn away and put my hand over my mouth to stifle the sobs that I know are imminent. I take three deep breaths and turn back again, pleading with him to understand. ‘I know what you’re doing, Ryan, I know, but I can’t be away from you. Please don’t make me . . . ’

  ‘OK, OK, shhh,’ Ryan says, gesturing at me to come back to him as I properly start to cry. I sit next to him and rest my head lightly on his chest, and he strokes my hair softly. ‘You can stay, of course you can.’ Pause. ‘But can you do me a massive favour, pleeeease?’

  I close my eyes to savour his touch. ‘Of course, anything!’

  ‘Order me in a pizza?’ I lift my head up and he grins. For the fleeting moment it makes its appearance it’s like the old days. ‘Sorry, Moll, but I’ve got to be honest, I just can’t face eating another one of your “casseroles”. I’ve got this real urge for a Domino’s and I would’ve sneaked one in if I’d convinced you to go out, but no such luck. I should have listened to your mum. What was it she called you? “Molly Molly Quite Controlling”?’

  ‘Contrary,’ I laugh at his deliberate mistake and he wipes away my tears.

  ‘Sounds right. I’ve never got you to do anything I say so far, Moll, I dunno what made me think you might start now . . . ’

  ‘Too right, Cooper!’ I kiss him on the lips and narrow my eyes as if considering his request. ‘OK, seeing as you’ve got cancer and everything, pizza it is!’

  Ryan raises his hands to the ceiling in mock prayer. ‘Thank you, God, I knew there’d be an upside to this disease!’

  I laugh, but only to cover up the lump that is still in my throat.

  Five minutes later and with the pizza all ordered, I walk back into the room with a glass of wine for me and a Becks for him. He’s not allowed to drink a lot, but he likes to have an occasional beer, it makes him feel normal.

  Ryan is asleep, still exhausted after the treatment. I stand watching him for a moment, counting his breaths as his chest rises up and down, up and down, hypnotically. I’m counting because I am scared they might stop. I know sleeping means Ryan isn’t in any pain but a part of me hates it because I am always scared he’s not going to wake up. But at the same time I love having some time to myself. I’m still with him but I like that while he’s dozing I can just be his wife, not his nurse.

  I take a sip of wine, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Every time I do I’m transported back to our honeymoon. I tell myself that’s why I’m drinking at least two glasses a night, every night (one for me, one for him). It is a comfort, not a crutch. As is my blog. Although I do find myself looking at it an awful lot, I can’t help it. Reading all the comments is so uplifting, more helpful than talking to my actual friends and family somehow.

  I open my laptop and click open my email, gazing at an inbox that’s full of new messages from people I don’t know but who are sharing this journey with me. Strangers who feel as familiar to me as my own friends because they’re so supportive and willing to open up about their own experiences of love and loss.

  I open an email titled ‘Remember this?’ and smile as I realize it’s from Jo, my old picture editor when I first started at Viva, who weirdly, now works with Mia. We’ve stayed in touch over the years and I saw her when I went out to stay with Mia.

  Dear Moll,

  How are you? How’s Ryan? Silly questions I know, but it’s hard not to open with those . . . I hope he’s doing OK and that you’re getting lots of support. I can’t imagine what you must be going through. I, well, I just wish I could help somehow. I’m sure you hear that a lot.

  Anyway, life here is good. Mia talks about you all the time. I know she wishes she were closer, so she could help you more.

  I just wanted to say that I’ve been following your blog and I realized that I’m pretty sure I have those pictures I took of you and Ryan, do you remember? Back when you first officially started at Viva and he turned up outside work with that bunch of flowers? It was so romantic, you guys couldn’t keep your hands off each other! Anyway, I thought maybe they’d make a nice addition to your blog. Another kiss to add to your collection . . .

  Take care Moll, thinking of you heaps

  Jo xx

  I open the jpegs that Jo has attached, desperate to see new images of my husband and of me in happier times. There are four consecutive ones, taken seconds after each other. I squeal with delight as each image fills my screen. Ryan is wearing the bloody ridiculous red body warmer he used to live in – even in hot weather – and you can see by my expression that he has just floored me with his kiss in the middle of Covent Garden. In the first picture I look shocked and mildly horrified as his lips approach, then disbelieving, then comes the acquiescence, then the pure, unadulterated enjoyment. ‘Proper pashing’ I seem to recall that’s how Jo had described it at the time, and now I can see what she meant. I save the pictures to my desktop and open up my work blog programme.

  I write ‘The Surrendered Kiss’ at the top of the post and then attach all four pictures. My fingers hover over the keyboard to post it, but suddenly I find them moving, almost without me thinking about it.

  The Surrendered Kiss

  You may not believe this (and frankly, nor will Tom Cruise) but before I got together with Ryan I was the girl who hated public displays of affection, or indeed any displays of any sort.

  Even as a child I was never the girl to hold hands or link arms with my best friend round the school playground. I’d never spontaneously pull my mum into a quick hug and whisper, ‘I love you’, before I went to sleep. A stilted kiss and a ‘me too’ was all I was willing to give – to anyone. And then came Ryan, with his unaffected, unashamed, puppy-dog affection. I remember being astonished at how he wore his heart on his sleeve for everyone to see. He wasn’t ashamed to kiss his best mate on the cheek, or hug his dad in the middle of the street, or tell his mum he loves her in front of his mates, or kiss me in front of my new colleagues – and the whole of Covent Garden.

  As you can probably tell, I’ve been doing a lot of looking back recently. Cancer does that to you, you know. It makes you examine everything; it’s like having an emotional CT scan of your life at the same time as the physical one that your loved one is having. Anyway, now I wonder what I’d been so scared of and I realize that I didn’t want anyone else to look at me and think that they knew how I felt. I didn’t want them to be a witness to my emotions. The less people saw, the less they could hurt me. But in doing so it meant I never really let anyone in. I kept everyone – even my best friend – at arm’s-length, always keeping my counsel when it came to my real emotions and feelings (apart from in my typically angsty teenage diary).

  But Ryan changed that. And I’m glad he’s changed me because in letting him in, I realized that he was what I was looking for all along. Somewhere warm, inviting, a place where I felt instantly comfortable. He was the home I’d been looking for my whole life. Somewhere that embraced me without expectation. He opened his heart to me and in doing so, opened the door to my heart.

  Because of him I let his wonderful family in, and my own family who I’d shut down from a long time before. I became closer to my friends and I have grown to adore his. And now I’m glad because I need everyone to know how I feel now. I am scared, no, I’m fucking petrified, every single day, of what horrors it may bring. I am also desperately sad (but trying so hard not to seem so!) and I’m achingly lonely. Ryan is still with me, but I know that really I am in this thing alone. He’s only here for the short haul and I need to know how to live when he’s gone. And honestly, I’m not sure I can. So right now I need to be able to cry to my best friends, to have my mum soothe me with kind words and cuddles, I need to tell my colleague
s when I feel shit, when I am in pieces because my husband is dying of cancer. Yes, dying. I need to say that. Over and over sometimes so that it feels real. I need to cry uncontrollably and laugh hysterically whenever I want to, in whatever situation and at whatever time. I need to be able to do this and for people to understand and not judge me for letting my feelings out – no matter how they come and how ugly they are, because living with someone with terminal cancer is ugly. It can’t be covered with frosted icing and sprinkles. It can’t be dressed up in a LBD and a pair of heels and dragged out for a night on the town. It can’t be glossed over with a smile. It needs to cry in a room and be comforted. It needs for people not to be scared when it looks them in the eye. It needs to not feel like it should wear a mask in order to protect everyone – including the cancer itself. It needs to go public.

  But the irony is, now that I need these public displays of affection, no one seems able to give them to me. I feel like I’m being punished for my approach pre-Ryan. Because everyone is so fucking controlled around me. Can I use the F word here, Ed? Sorry if not. It just seems the only appropriate one to use. It feels appropriate to be inappropriate, if you like. Because every word that is spoken to me, every facial expression that my friends and family expose me to, or conversation they know I’ll hear, is sharply regulated. It’s like when I edit photos from a shoot, to only show the best possible picture. The only people who don’t do this are Ryan’s doctors, and Ryan. And actually, come to think of it, probably not even him.

  Because I have no idea how much Ryan is controlling in all of this. I’m sure he hides the worst from me, even though we swore on the day that he was diagnosed that we’d be honest with each other. But the truth is, we love each other too much to be completely honest. So we laugh and joke, and we pretend everything is OK, in order to make it better for other person. But we know that, ultimately, we can’t take away each other’s pain because we’re travelling in different directions. Going on different journeys. He is facing no future and I am . . . facing a future without him.