The lights on the stage flashed twice in quick succession, sending another punch of nerves to hit Lizzie. She scanned the audience in search of Samantha, Jaddi and Ben. Every one of the ten rows of seats was filled. Halfway up, and dead centre, there was a raised platform with a camera on it that made Ben’s camera seem dwarfish in comparison. Two other cameras on wheels sat facing her from either side of the stage.
A movement to the far side of the front row caught her eye. Jaddi, Samantha and Ben waved at her. Jaddi pointed at her outfit before signalling a thumbs up. Lizzie wanted to signal a ‘I can’t breathe in this top’ sign, but didn’t know where to start. Too many people were watching her.
She had a sudden urge to throttle Caroline for talking them into this. Talking her into it. It wasn’t until they’d arrived at the studio and Lizzie had been whisked away from the others, and plonked onto a make-up stool, that she’d realised what was happening. According to the producer the plan had always been for her, and her alone, to talk with Neil. Something Caroline had neglected to mention.
A round of applause erupted from the audience as a man strode onto the stage wearing a mustard-yellow and white floral shirt. He had a mop of white hair and a small beaked nose, which hooked at the end, above a wide, closed mouth smile.
He waved at the crowd before walking over to Lizzie.
‘Hi, Lizzie, I’m Neil Mullon. It’s a real pleasure to meet you.’ He grabbed her hand in a warm grip and pumped it up and down. ‘Thank you for changing your schedule to come on the show.’
‘Thank you for having me,’ she said, willing her voice to stop shaking.
‘I love the Brits!’ he shouted to the audience.
He turned back to Lizzie with eyes that shone of mischief and merriment. ‘Nervous?’
The acrid taste of nausea stung her throat. ‘A bit.’
‘Don’t be.’ He smiled. ‘America loves you.’
The lights on the stage dimmed and brightened once. ‘Oops, that’s my cue.’
He sprung onto the desk beside Lizzie and slid across it before dropping haphazardly into his chair.
‘Welcome, welcome, welcome to The Sunday Night Late Show. I’m your host, Neil Mullon,’ he said, grinning into the camera, ‘and with me tonight is someone who needs no introductions. It’s the beautiful … Lizzie Appleton.’ He motioned his hand towards Lizzie before joining the audience in applause.
‘We’ll get to the travelling and the stupendous popularity of your documentary – The Girl with Three Months to Live – later, Lizzie, but I’ve got to ask this straight off the bat: what was it like having Guy Rawson serenade you with your very own song, on stage, in front of thousands of people?’
‘Oh gosh, there aren’t the words to describe it.’ She smiled, recalling the buzz of the stadium, and standing with her arms stretched around Jaddi and Samantha as Guy had walked onto the stage. ‘We’ve all been huge fans of Guy for so long. Just going to his concert was fantastic. I had no idea he’d written a song about me. It was surreal.’
‘Shall we have a quick look at that moment again?’ he asked, staring into the camera.
A murmur of agreement spread across the audience.
Neil spun his chair around and pointed at the screen behind his desk. The show’s logo disappeared, then a moment later the cheers of the stadium filled the studio.
Guy’s voice echoed through her again. ‘Lizzie, how about coming up here with me?’
Lizzie had a sudden feeling of detachment as she watched her own face contort with emotion. The lyrics twisting and clawing inside her once more. Ninety sunsets, but what happens then?
‘I hope he invited you backstage afterwards,’ Neil said when the footage had stopped.
Lizzie pulled her eyes away from the screen. ‘He certainly did, and I got to meet his sister too.’
‘Guy mentions the sunsets in his song. Watching them seems to have been a special focus for you.’
Lizzie nodded, her nervousness abating. ‘The trip has had a lot more ups and downs than I think any of us expected, but watching the sunsets brings it all back into perspective.’
‘Have you got a favourite sunset?’
‘It’s so hard to choose.’ She frowned and smiled at the same time. ‘Every sunset we’ve watched has been different, and all of them have been spectacular. Yesterday we watched the sunset over the Grand Canyon from a helicopter, which was so different and made even more special because I had my parents and my brother with me. Although, I’m not sure I was supposed to tell you that,’ Lizzie said, glancing at the camera and smiling. ‘Sorry, Caroline.’
‘For me, personally, I thought the sunrise over Angkor Wat in Cambodia looked amazing,’ Neil said.
‘That was really beautiful.’
‘Worth all that time in the truck to get there?’
An image of waking up on the flatbed in the warmth of Ben’s embrace sprung into her head, causing a glow to radiate from her cheeks. ‘Definitely.’ She nodded. ‘Although I’m not sure Ben, our cameraman, would agree with me.’
‘Talking of Ben.’ Neil flicked his eyes to the camera and winked. ‘A little bird whispered in my ear that there might be a romance blossoming there.’
‘Er …’ She shook her head as the glow ignited into flames on her face. ‘We’ve struck up a friendship, that’s all. He’s a great cameraman, and a really nice guy.’
Neil smiled. ‘OK then. I’m not sure I fully believe you there, Lizzie, but as luck would have it, it’s time for a short break.’ He turned to the face the camera. ‘But join us in a few minutes, when we’ll be talking to Lizzie about what is was like to lose her sight, and what’s next for the girls.’
Neil grinned at the camera for a moment before reaching for a bottle of water underneath the desk and taking a short sip. He swirled the liquid around his mouth before swallowing.
‘You’re doing great, Lizzie,’ he said.
Before she could respond the producer skidded onto the stage. A tablet device was gripped in his outstretched hands. He leant over the desk, blocking Neil from Lizzie’s eye line. The two men exchanged a series of hushed words, before the producer glanced at his watch and ran off the stage.
‘Is everything OK?’ she asked.
Neil nodded but the smile had disappeared and his eyes remained fixed on the tablet.
‘Neil?’ Fear churned in her stomach. Something was wrong. What had the producer just whispered in Neil’s ear? Her eyes darted to the fire exit, glowing like a green beacon to the side of the audience. Her hands pushed against the arms of the chair, lifting her body a few inches from the seat. She had to get to out of here.
‘Stay where you are, Lizzie,’ Neil said, his tone no longer jovial, but commanding. He faced the camera. ‘Welcome back to The Sunday Night Late show. I’ve just been handed some shocking information about my guest tonight, Lizzie Appleton. I think you’re going to want to hear it, Lizzie, and I know our audience, and the viewers at home, will too.’
Her heart drummed against the bones of the corset, spreading a chill around her body.
‘A British blog called Inside Scoop has just this minute posted the following story. The headline reads: Lizzie the Liar. Is The Girl with Three Months to Live a hoax?’
Gasps sounded from across the audience. Lizzie had the sudden flailing sensation of falling, as if a trap door on the stage had opened beneath her. She closed her eyes as Neil continued to read.
‘For the past eight weeks the story of Lizzie Appleton in the Channel 6 documentary The Girl with Three Months to Live, has gripped not just the nation, but the entire world. Now, Inside Scoop has evidence to suggest that Lizzie’s brain tumour is nothing more than an elaborate hoax concocted by Lizzie and her two friends, Jaddi Patel and Samantha Jeffrey, to travel the world.
‘A source close to Lizzie’s neurologist has made the following statement: ‘Elizabeth Appleton underwent radiotherapy in the autumn of last year to treat a small tumour in her brainstem. As far as I am aware, no furt
her treatment was scheduled, because the radiotherapy was successful.’
‘Channel 6 producer of the documentary, Caroline Wilks, was unavailable for comment leaving Inside Scoop to question who else is in on it? Is this an elaborate hoax to boost the ratings of a channel in decline?’
Lizzie opened her eyes and tried to speak, but no words would come out.
‘Lizzie, these are some unbelievable allegations, and there really is no other way to ask you this – is it true?’
A silence fell across the theatre. She felt the eyes of the audience drilling into her.
Lizzie’s gaze darted to the front row as she searched for Jaddi, but one of the cameras had moved, blocking her view. Lizzie swallowed and stared down at her feet. ‘No. It’s … it’s not how it sounds,’ she stammered.
Neil leapt from his chair and strode out from his desk to the front of the stage. ‘If it’s not how it sounds, then how is it, Lizzie?’
Lizzie pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down. Tears swam in her eyes. She knew she needed to find her voice, to explain what she’d done, but the words wouldn’t come.
‘Treatment wasn’t scheduled because … because …’
Neil spun to face the camera, raising his hands in the air. ‘I can’t believe it.’ He turned to Lizzie. ‘How many people are involved, Lizzie?’
She shook her head. Panic threatened to overwhelm her thoughts.
‘Is Channel 6 behind it?’
‘No.’ Lizzie shook her head again. ‘It’s got nothing to do with them, or with Jaddi and Samantha. It was me, only me. I just wanted a chance to live my life.’
Neil pounced towards her, grasping the arms of her chair in his hands. The smell of gin filled her nose as he leaned his face close to hers. ‘So what happened? Did you want to go on a jolly with your friends paid for by Channel 6 and generous members of the public, and cooked up this scheme to trick us all? Well, bravo, Lizzie, you certainly did that.’
Lizzie reeled back, as much from his sudden presence over her as his words. A spectacle of colours clustered in her sights. A throbbing drum pounded in her head.
‘It wasn’t a jolly; it’s more complicated than that,’ she managed. ‘I don’t know why someone would say that.’
‘What was the plan at the end?’ Neil started moving again. He paced up and down in front of her, dividing his gaze between her and the camera now positioned in front of them. ‘Were you going to fake your own death, or run away to an island somewhere and live off the donations that have been flooding in?’
‘It wasn’t like that.’ She bit back a sob. ‘I am dying.’ The words were lost beneath Neil’s rising voice.
‘How can I, how can the millions of Americans watching this show, trust a single word that comes out of your mouth. Are you even sorry, Lizzie? My mother, my own mother, donated last week to your website. I told her she didn’t need to. Channel 6 have picked up the tab, but it didn’t stop my eighty-one-year-old mother, just like it hasn’t stopped thousands of innocent people around the world from donating. These are people without much …’
Lizzie blocked out Neil’s words. The inside of her cheeks ached. Her mouth filled with saliva. She tried to breathe, but the corset seemed to be tightening by the second. A pressure began to build inside of her. Her eyes darted again to the fire exit, before moving back to Neil.
‘… did you consider that, Lizzie, when you set out to deceive us all? How, for so many ordinary Americans, every dollar counts—’
The pressure exploded. A ticking bomb that had finally gone off.
‘I lied.’ Her voice echoed across the theatre. Neil stopped in his tracks, his mouth gaping open as his face moved from her, to the camera and back again. Another gasp sounded from the audience, then silence. All of a sudden, her vision cleared, she lifted her head and stared into the lens.
CHAPTER 63
Lizzie
A ragged anger ripped through Lizzie. ‘You don’t know a thing about me,’ she said, sitting forward and digging the tips of her fingers into the soft cushioning of the chair. ‘You don’t know a thing about what I’ve been through.’
The stage seemed to shrink around her. The audience and the cameras disappeared from her periphery. It was just her and the presenter. ‘Do you know what it’s like to wish you were dead?’ she ground out the words. ‘Do you have any idea how many times I wished my doctor had patted me on the shoulder and said, Sorry, there’s nothing more we can do for you. Go live your life, you’ve got six months? Instead of … of all the waiting. That’s what my life has been – waiting for the next brain tumour. Waiting for the symptoms to start, because they do, they always do. Waiting for a brain scan; waiting for the result; waiting for the treatments; waiting for agonising side effects; waiting to be sick, to throw up again and again and again and again; waiting for more scans, waiting to see if the treatment has worked. It’s never over. It just starts again. It isn’t living.
‘Yes, I lied,’ Lizzie stared into the camera as she spoke. ‘I pretended my wish had come true, that there was nothing else my doctor could do for me, so finally, I could live for a little while. The truth is … the truth is that I am dying,’ she said again. ‘I have a brain tumour in my brainstem. Last year, I had a round of radiotherapy and it failed. Whoever told that gossip site that it worked was wrong. My doctor told me I had only months to live—’
‘If that’s the truth then what did you lie about?’ Neil lifted his hands in confusion, looking between the camera and Lizzie. ‘Why—’
‘Because I chose it.’ Lizzie’s voice rang out across the studio.
Neil stepped back and glanced at the camera as a silence fell. He turned to look at her.
‘I chose to live what was left of my life instead of spending it hooked up to machines, throwing up, and watching those I love suffer through it with me. I chose death,’ she said as a weight pulled down on her shoulders. ‘I could have signed up for a clinical trial that currently has no survivors, or one which has left almost every participant in a coma,’ she said, staring into the camera, ‘but I couldn’t do it anymore. Ask yourself, how do you feel about those odds? And now imagine that you’ve been fighting for twenty-nine years, that you’ve never known a normal life; imagine what it feels like to be tortured by hope and disappointed every time.’
The words were tumbling out now, faster and faster as she tried to make Neil, the audience, the people at home, understand.
‘I asked my doctor how long I’d have without any more treatment, and he said six months and I thought, that’s six months where I’m not stuck in a hospital bed being injected with every drug imaginable. Six months where I could live my life how I wanted to. Where my family didn’t have to sacrifice everything to look after me, worry about me, hope with me. Six months. Well, those six months are nearly up and I’m aware that every single moment could be my last. It’s not an exact science – I might go to bed tonight and not wake up. So yes, I could have spent the last few months fighting, and being sick and in pain, and afraid, afraid to hope, afraid to see that hope reflected in the eyes of my friends and family. But instead I have seen the world, I have felt joy and love, and certainty about what is coming next. And I can’t tell you what a relief that has been. I can’t tell you because the truth, the truth is just too difficult to talk about – it’s too difficult to explain and I was worried that no one would ever understand.’
The roar of the sea rushed through her ears, from the relief of unleashing her secret at last, or the ramifications from it, Lizzie didn’t know, but peeling it away left a rawness behind. Tears streamed down her face.
‘I’m sorry I lied, truly I am. I’m sorry for the hurt I’ve caused my friends, my family, and those who’ve supported me. I never meant to make anyone feel duped. You have all saved my life – each day I had, each moment I now have to treasure. Those memories are not just mine, but my friends’, my family’s … I didn’t want to debate what inoperable and untreatable mean when it comes to tumours
, to be judged for my choices. I just wanted to live a little before I die.’
Neil stepped back to the desk and dropped into his chair. ‘And you don’t think the American people deserve the chance to choose for themselves? To know the facts before they give—’
She shook her head. ‘That’s not what I mean,’ she said.
‘I’m not sure I understand, Lizzie.’ He sighed. ‘And I sure as hell don’t think the American people will either.’
Lizzie fought to control her rising voice. ‘Of course you don’t understand what it’s like to be pinned to a table, unable to move, whilst your body is pumped with poison. That’s what the treatment is, you know – poison. Maybe it will destroy some of the tumour, maybe it won’t. Either way, it will make you so sick that at some point, I guarantee, you’ll wish you were dead anyway. It will fill your head with a fog so thick you’ll want to jump off a bridge just to clear it. Puking your guts up, losing the feeling in your arms and legs. Headaches so bad that you have to lie in a pitch-black room for days on end because even the slightest light or movement causes unspeakable pain.
‘So of course you don’t understand. Only someone who has lived through what I’ve lived through could understand.’
Lizzie fell silent. She glared at Neil and waited for his next accusation.
Instead the presenter simply nodded and turned to face the camera. ‘Well, this hasn’t been the show we had planned for you, but that’s all we’ve got time for. Thank you for tuning in to The Sunday Night Late Show, and thank you to our guest, Lizzie Appleton.’
A spattering of applause sounded from the audience.
Everywhere she looked people stood in clusters, whispering and shaking their heads as Lizzie navigated her way back to the dressing room. Natasha, the wardrobe lady, handed Lizzie’s clothes to her without a word before leaving her alone in the room.
One Endless Summer Page 28