There are plenty of trees, all different kinds, deciduous and evergreen. It’s so cold it must be Scotland.
I walk about for a bit, touching the bark, greeting the leaves. I realize that I’m hungry, really, dangerously hungry. If a bear turns up, I’ll wrestle it to the ground and bite off its head. Maybe I should build a fire. I’ll lay traps and dig holes and the next animal that comes by will end up on a spit. I’ll make a shelter with sticks and leaves, and live here for ever. There are no microwaves or pesticides. No fluorescent pyjamas or clocks that glow in the dark. No TV, nothing made of plastic. No hairspray or hair dye or cigarettes. The petrochemical factory is far away. In this wood I’m safe. I laugh quietly to myself. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. This is the secret I came for.
Then I see Adam. He seems smaller and suddenly far away.
‘I’ve discovered something!’ I yell.
‘What are you doing?’ His voice is tiny and perfect.
I don’t answer, because it’s obvious and I don’t want him to look stupid. Why else would I be up here collecting twigs, leaves and so on?
‘Get down!’ he yells.
But the tree wraps its arms about me and begs me not to. I try to explain this to Adam, but I’m not sure he hears me. He’s taking off his coat. He starts to climb.
‘You need to get down!’ he shouts. He looks very religious coming up through the branches, higher and higher, like a sweet monk come to save me. ‘Your dad’s going to kill me if you break anything. Please, Tessa, come down now.’
He’s close, his face reduced to just the light behind his eyes. I bend down to lick the coldness from him. His skin is salty.
‘Please,’ he says.
It doesn’t hurt at all. We sail down together, catching great armfuls of air. At the bottom we sit in a nest of leaves and Adam holds me like a baby.
‘What were you doing?’ he says. ‘What the hell were you doing up there?’
‘Collecting materials for a shelter.’
‘I think your friend was right. I really wish I hadn’t given you so much.’
But he hasn’t given me anything. Apart from his name and the dirt under his fingernails, I barely know him at all. I wonder if I should trust him with my secret.
‘I’m going to tell you something,’ I say. ‘And you have to promise not to tell anyone. OK?’
He nods, though he looks uncertain. I sit up next to him and make sure he’s looking at me before I begin. Colours and lights blaze across him. He’s so luminous I can see his bones, and the world behind his eyes.
‘I’m not sick any more.’ I’m so excited it’s difficult to speak. ‘I need to stay here in this wood. I need to keep away from the modern world and all its gadgets and then I won’t be sick. You can stay with me if you want. We’ll build things, shelters and traps. We’ll grow vegetables.’
Adam’s eyes are full of tears. Looking at him cry is like being pulled from a mountain.
‘Tessa,’ he says.
Above his shoulder there’s a hole in the sky, and through it, a satellite’s static chatter makes my teeth tremble. Then it disappears and there’s only yawning emptiness.
I put my finger on his lips. ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t say anything.’
Fifteen
‘I’m on line,’ Dad says, pointing at his laptop. ‘Do you want to do your restless pacing somewhere else?’
The light from the computer flickers in his glasses. I sit down on the chair opposite him.
‘That’s annoying as well,’ he says, without looking up.
‘Me sitting here?’
‘No.’
‘Me tapping the table?’
‘Listen,’ he says, ‘there’s a doctor here who’s developed a system called bone breathing. Ever heard of that?’
‘No.’
‘You have to imagine your breath as a warm colour, then breathe in through the left foot, up the leg to the hip and then out the same way. Seven times, then the right leg the same. Want to give it a try?’
‘No.’
He takes off his glasses and looks at me. ‘It’s stopped raining. Why don’t you take a blanket and sit in the garden? I’ll let you know when the nurse gets here.’
‘I don’t want to.’
He sighs, puts his glasses back on and goes back to his laptop. I hate him. I know he watches me leave. I hear his small sigh of relief.
All the bedroom doors are shut, so it’s gloomy in the hallway. I go up the stairs on all fours, sit at the top and look down. The gloom has movement to it. Maybe I’m beginning to see things other people can’t. Like atoms. I bump down on my bum and crawl back up again, enjoying the squash of carpet beneath my knees. There are thirteen stairs. Every time I count them it’s the same.
I curl up at the foot of the stairs. This is where the cat sits when she wants to trip people over. I’ve always wanted to be a cat. Warm and domesticated when you want to be, wild when you don’t.
The doorbell rings. I curl myself tighter.
Dad comes out to the hallway. ‘Tessa!’ he says. ‘For Christ’s sake!’
Today’s nurse is new. She’s wearing a tartan skirt and is stout as a ship. Dad looks disappointed.
‘This is Tessa,’ he says, and points at me where I lie on the carpet.
The nurse looks shocked. ‘Did she fall?’
‘No, she’s refused to leave the house for nearly two weeks, and it’s sending her crazy.’
She comes over and looks down at me. Her breasts are huge and wobble as she holds out her hand to pull me up. Her hand’s as big as a tennis racket. ‘I’m Philippa,’ she says, as if that explains anything.
She leads me into the lounge and helps me to a seat, lowers herself squarely down opposite me.
‘So,’ she says, ‘not feeling too good today?’
‘Would you be?’
Dad shoots me a warning glance. I don’t care.
‘Any shortness of breath or nausea?’
‘I’m on anti-emetics. Have you actually read my case file?’
‘Excuse her,’ Dad says. ‘She’s had a bit of leg pain recently, nothing else. The nurse who saw her last week said she was doing well. Sian, I think her name was – she’s aware of the medication regime.’
I snort through my nose. He tries to make it sound casual, but it doesn’t wash with me. Last time Sian was here he offered her supper and made a right idiot of himself.
‘The team tries to provide continuity,’ Philippa says, ‘but it’s not always possible.’ She turns back to me, dismissing Dad and his sorry love life.
‘Tessa, you’ve got quite a bit of bruising on your arms.’
‘I climbed a tree.’
‘It suggests your platelets are low. Have you got any major activities planned for this week?’
‘I don’t need a transfusion!’
‘We’ll do a blood test anyway, to be on the safe side.’
Dad offers her coffee, but she declines. Sian would’ve said yes.
‘My dad can’t cope,’ I tell Philippa as he goes out to the kitchen in a sulk. ‘He does everything wrong.’
She helps me off with my shirt. ‘And how does that make you feel?’
‘It makes me laugh.’
She gets gauze and antiseptic spray from her medical case, puts on sterile gloves and holds my arm up so she can clean around the portacath. We both wait for it to dry.
‘Have you got a boyfriend?’ I ask her.
‘I’ve got a husband.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Andy.’
She looks uncomfortable saying his name out loud. I see different people all the time and they never introduce themselves properly. They like knowing all about me though.
‘Do you believe in God?’ I ask her.
She sits back in her chair and frowns. ‘What a question!’
‘Do you?’
‘Well, I suppose I’d like to.’
‘What about heaven? Do you believe in that
?’
She rips a sterile needle from its package. ‘I think heaven sounds nice.’
‘That doesn’t mean it exists.’
She looks at me sternly. ‘Well, let’s hope it does.’
‘I think it’s a great big lie. When you’re dead, you’re dead.’
I’m beginning to get to her now: she’s looking flustered. ‘And what happens to all that spirit and energy?’
‘It turns to nothing.’
‘You know,’ she says, ‘there are support groups, places you can meet other young people in the same position as you.’
‘No one’s in the same position as me.’
‘Is that how it feels?’
‘That’s how it is.’
I lift my arm so she can draw blood through the portacath. I’m half robot, with plastic and metal embedded under my skin. She draws blood into a syringe and discards it. It’s such a waste, that first syringe tainted with saline. Over the years, nurses must have thrown a body-full of my blood away. She draws a second syringe, transfers it to a bottle and scribbles my name in blue ink on the label.
‘That’s you done,’ she says. ‘I’ll ring in an hour or so and let you know the results. Anything else before I go?’
‘No.’
‘Have you got enough meds? Do you want me to drop into the GP’s and pick up any repeat prescriptions?’
‘I don’t need anything.’
She heaves herself out of the chair and looks down at me solemnly.
‘The community team offer a lot of support that you might not be aware of, Tessa. We can help you get back to school, for instance, even if it’s only part-time, even if it’s only for a few weeks. It might be worth thinking about trying to normalize your situation.’
I laugh right up at her. ‘Would you go to school if you were me?’
‘I might get lonely here by myself all day.’
‘I’m not by myself.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘But it’s tough on your dad.’
She’s a cow. You’re not supposed to say things like that. I stare at her. She gets the message then.
‘Goodbye, Tessa. I’m going to pop into the kitchen and have a word, then I’ll be off.’
Despite the fact that she’s fat already, Dad offers her fruitcake and coffee, and she accepts! The only thing we should be offering guests are plastic bags to wrap around their shoes. We should have a giant X marked on the gate.
I steal a fag from Dad’s jacket and go upstairs and lean out of Cal’s window. I want to see the street. There’s a view through the trees to the road. A car passes. Another car. A person.
I blow smoke out into the air. Every time I inhale I can hear my lungs crackle. Maybe I’ve got TB. I hope so. All the best poets had TB; it’s a mark of sensibility. Cancer’s just humiliating.
Philippa comes out of the front door and stands by the step. I flick ash on her hair, but she doesn’t notice, just says goodbye in that booming voice of hers and waddles off up the path.
I sit on Cal’s bed. Dad’ll come up in a minute. While I wait, I get a pen and write, Parachutes, cocktails, stones, lollipops, buckets, zebras, sheds, cigarettes, cold tap water, on the wallpaper above Cal’s bed. Then I smell my armpits, the skin on my arm, my fingers. I stroke my hair backwards, forwards, like a rug.
Dad’s taking ages. I go for a walk round the room. At the mirror I pull out a single hair. It’s growing back much darker, and strangely curly, like pubic hair. I examine it, let it fall. I like being able to spare one to the carpet.
There’s a map of the world on Cal’s wall. Oceans and deserts. He’s got the solar system staked out on his ceiling. I lie on his bed to look at it properly. It makes me feel tiny.
It’s literally five minutes later when I open my eyes and go downstairs to see what’s keeping Dad. He’s already scarpered, left some stupid note by his laptop.
I phone him. ‘Where are you?’
‘You were asleep, Tess.’
‘But where are you?’
‘I just came out for a quick coffee. I’m in the park.’
‘The park? Why would you go there? We’ve got coffee at home.’
‘Tess! Come on, I just need a bit of space. Turn the TV on if you’re lonely. I’ll be back soon.’
A woman cooks breaded chicken. Three men press a buzzer as they compete for fifty thousand pounds. Two actors argue about a dead cat. One of them makes a joke about stuffing it. I sit hunched. Mute. Stunned by how crap TV is, how little we all have to say.
I text Zoey. WHERE R U? She texts back that she’s at college, but that’s a lie because she doesn’t have classes on Fridays.
I wish I had a mobile number for Adam. I’d text, DID U DIE?
He should be outside digging in manure, peat and rotting vegetation. I looked up November in Dad’s Reader’s Digest Book of Gardening and it suggests that this is the perfect time for conditioning the soil. He should also be thinking about planting a hazel bush, since they provide an attractive addition to any garden. I thought a filbert might be nice. They have large heart-shaped nuts.
He hasn’t been out there for days though.
And he promised me a motorbike ride.
Sixteen
He’s uglier than I remember. It’s as if he warmed up in my memory. I don’t know why that should be. I think how Zoey would snort with derision if she knew I’d come knocking on his door, and that thought makes me want to never let her know. She says ugly people give her a headache.
‘You’re avoiding me,’ I tell him.
He looks surprised for a second, but covers it up pretty quick. ‘I’ve been busy.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So it’s not because you think I’m contagious? Most people start acting as if they can catch cancer from me in the end, or as if I’ve done something to deserve it.’
He looks alarmed. ‘No, no! I don’t think that.’
‘Good. So when are we going out on your bike then?’
He shuffles his feet on the step and looks embarrassed. ‘I haven’t actually got a full licence. You’re not supposed to take passengers without it.’
I can think of a million reasons why going on the back of Adam’s bike might be a bad idea. Because we might crash. Because it might not be as good as I hope. Because what will I tell Zoey? Because it’s what I really want to do more than anything. But I’m not going to let the lack of a full licence be one of them.
‘Have you got a spare helmet?’ I ask him.
That slow smile again. I love that smile! Did I think he was ugly just now? No, his face is transformed.
‘In the shed. I’ve got a spare jacket too.’
I can’t help smiling back. I feel brave and certain. ‘Come on then. Before it rains.’
He shuts the door behind him. ‘It’s not going to rain.’
We go round the side of the house and get the stuff from the shed. But just as he helps me zip into the jacket, just as he tells me his bike is capable of ninety miles per hour and the wind will be cold, the back door opens and a woman steps into the garden. She’s wearing a dressing gown and slippers.
Adam says, ‘Go back inside, Mum, you’ll get cold.’
But she keeps walking down the path towards us. She has the saddest face I’ve ever seen, like she drowned once and the tide left its mark there.
‘Where are you going?’ she says, and she doesn’t look at me at all. ‘You didn’t say you were going anywhere.’
‘I won’t be long.’
She makes a funny little sound in the back of her throat. Adam looks up sharply. ‘Don’t, Mum,’ he says. ‘Go and have your bath and get dressed. I’ll be back before you know it.’
She nods forlornly, begins to walk up the path, then stops as if she remembered something, and turns and looks at me for the first time, a stranger in her garden.
‘Who are you?’ she says.
‘I live next door. I came to see Adam.’
The sadness in he
r eyes deepens. ‘Yes, that’s what I thought.’
Adam goes over to her and grips her gently by the elbows. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘You should go back inside.’
She allows herself to be helped up the path and walked to the back door. She goes up the step and then she turns and looks at me again. She doesn’t say anything, and neither do I. We just look at each other, and then she goes through the door and into her kitchen. I wonder what happens then, what they say to each other.
‘Is she OK?’ I ask as Adam walks back out into the garden.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he says.
It’s not what I imagined, not like cycling fast downhill, or even sticking your head out of a car window on the motorway. It’s more elemental, like being on a beach in the winter when the wind howls in off the sea. The helmets have plastic visors. I’ve got mine down, but Adam’s got his up; he did it very deliberately.
He said, ‘I like to feel the wind in my eyes.’
He told me to lean when we go round corners. He told me that since it was my first time he wouldn’t go top speed. But that could mean anything. Even at half speed, we might take off. We might fly.
We leave the streets and lampposts and houses. We leave the shops and the industrial estate and the wood yard, and we go beyond some kind of boundary where things belong to the town and are understood. Trees, fields, space appears. I shelter behind the curve of his back, and I close my eyes and wonder where he’s taking me. I imagine horses in the engine, their manes flying, their breath steaming, their nostrils flaring as they gallop. I heard a story once about some nymph, snatched by a god and taken somewhere dark and dangerous on the back of a chariot.
Where we end up is somewhere I didn’t expect – a muddy car park off the dual carriageway. There are two large trucks parked here, a couple of cars and a hotdog stand.
Adam turns off the ignition, kicks the stand down with his foot and takes off his helmet.
‘You should get off first,’ he says.
I nod, can barely speak, left my breath behind on the road somewhere. My knees are shaking and it takes a lot of effort to swing my leg over the bike and stand up. The earth feels very still. One of the lorry drivers winks at me out of his cab window. He holds a steaming cup of tea in one hand. Over at the hotdog stand, a girl with her hair in a ponytail passes a bag of chips across the counter to a man with a dog. I’m different from them all. It’s as if we flew here and everyone else is completely ordinary.
Before I Die aka Now is Good Page 8