Before I Die aka Now is Good

by Jenny Downham

  ‘Do you have any questions, Tessa?’

  I try to think of all the things I should ask. But I just feel blank and uncomfortable, as if she’s come to see me off at the station and we’re both hoping the train hurries up so we can avoid all the ridiculous small talk.

  It’s time.

  Out there is a bright April morning. The world will roll on without me. I have no choice. I’m full of cancer. Riddled with it. And there’s nothing to be done.

  Philippa says, ‘I’m going downstairs now to talk to your dad. I’ll try and see you again soon.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I know, but I will.’

  Fat, kind Philippa, helping all the people between London and the south coast to die. She reaches down and hugs me. She’s warm and sweaty and smells of lavender.

  After she’s gone I have a dream where I walk into the lounge and everyone’s sitting there. Dad’s making a sound I’ve never heard before.

  ‘Why are you crying?’ I ask. ‘What’s happened?’

  Mum and Cal are next to each other on the sofa. Cal’s dressed in a suit and tie, like a mini snooker player.

  And then it hits me – I’m dead.

  ‘I’m here, right here!’ I yell, but they don’t hear me.

  I saw a film once about the dead – how they never really go away, but live silently amongst us. I want to tell them this. I try to knock a pencil off the table but my hand moves right through it. And through the sofa. I walk through the wall and back again. I dabble my fingers in Dad’s head and he shifts in his chair, perhaps wondering at the thrill of the cold.

  Then I wake up.

  Dad’s sitting on a chair beside the bed. He reaches for my hand. ‘How are you feeling?’

  I think about this, scan my body for signs. ‘I’m not in pain.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I’m a bit tired.’

  He nods. ‘Are you hungry?’

  I want to be. For him. I want to ask for rice and prawns and treacle pudding, but I’d be lying.

  ‘Is there anything I can get you, anything you want?’

  Meet the baby. Finish school. Grow up. Travel the world.

  ‘A cup of tea?’

  Dad looks pleased. ‘Anything else? A biscuit?’

  ‘A pen and paper.’

  He helps me sit up. He plumps pillows behind me, turns on the bedside light and passes me a notepad and pen from the shelf. Then he goes downstairs to put the kettle on.

  Number eleven. A cup of tea.

  Number twelve…

  Instructions for Dad

  I don’t want to go into a fridge at an undertaker’s. I want you to keep me at home until the funeral. Please can someone sit with me in case I get lonely? I promise not to scare you.

  I want to be buried in my butterfly dress, my lilac bra and knicker set and my black zip boots (all still in the suitcase that I packed for Sicily). I also want to wear the bracelet Adam gave me.

  Don’t put make-up on me. It looks stupid on dead people.

  I do NOT want to be cremated. Cremations pollute the atmosphere with dioxins, hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. They also have those spooky curtains in crematoriums.

  I want a bio-degradable willow coffin and a woodland burial. The people at the Natural Death Centre helped me pick a site not far from where we live, and they’ll help you with all the arrangements.

  I want a native tree planted on or near my grave. I’d like an oak, but I don’t mind a sweet chestnut or even a willow. I want a wooden plaque with my name on. I want wild plants and flowers growing on my grave.

  I want the service to be simple. Tell Zoey to bring Lauren (if she’s born by then). Invite Philippa and her husband Andy (if he wants to come), also James from the hospital (though he might be busy).

  I don’t want anyone who doesn’t know me saying anything about me. The Natural Death Centre people will stay with you, but should also stay out of it. I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it’ll be OK. I want you to say honest things. Say I was a monster if you like, say how I made you all run around after me. If you can think of anything good, say that too! Write it down first, because apparently people often forget what they mean to say at funerals.

  Don’t under any circumstances read that poem by Auden. It’s been done to death (ha, ha) and it’s too sad. Get someone to read Sonnet 12 by Shakespeare.

  Music – ‘Blackbird’ by the Beatles. ‘Plainsong’ by the Cure. ‘Live Like You Were Dying’ by Tim McGraw. ‘All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands’ by Sufjan Stevens. There may not be time for all of them, but make sure you play the last one. Zoey helped me choose them and she’s got them all on her iPod (it’s got speakers if you need to borrow it).

  Afterwards, go to a pub for lunch. I’ve got £260 in my savings account and I really want you to use it for that. Really, I mean it – lunch is on me. Make sure you have pudding – sticky toffee, chocolate fudge cake, ice-cream sundae, something really bad for you. Get drunk too if you like (but don’t scare Cal). Spend all the money.

  And after that, when days have gone by, keep an eye out for me. I might write on the steam in the mirror when you’re having a bath, or play with the leaves on the apple tree when you’re out in the garden. I might slip into a dream.

  Visit my grave when you can, but don’t kick yourself if you can’t, or if you move house and it’s suddenly too far away. It looks pretty there in the summer (check out the website). You could bring a picnic and sit with me. I’d like that.

  OK. That’s it.

  I love you.

  Tessa xxx

  Thirty-eight

  ‘I’m going to be the only kid at school with a dead sister.’

  ‘It’ll be cool. You’ll get out of homework for ages, and all the girls will fancy you.’

  Cal thinks about this. ‘Will I still be a brother?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But you won’t know about it.’

  ‘I bloody will.’

  ‘Are you going to haunt me?’

  ‘You want me to?’

  He smiles nervously. ‘I might be scared.’

  ‘I won’t then.’

  He can’t keep still, is pacing the carpet between my bed and the wardrobe. Something has shifted between us since the hospital. Our jokes aren’t as easy.

  ‘Throw the telly out the window if you want, Cal. It made me feel better.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Show me a magic trick then.’

  He runs off to get his stuff, comes back wearing his special jacket, the black one with the hidden pockets.

  ‘Watch very carefully.’

  He ties two silk handkerchiefs together at one corner and pushes them into his fist. He opens his hand finger by finger. It’s empty.

  ‘How did you do that?’

  He shakes his head, taps his nose with his wand. ‘Magicians never give their secrets away.’

  ‘Do it again.’

  Instead, he shuffles and spreads a pack of cards. ‘Choose one, look at it, don’t tell me what it is.’

  I choose the queen of spades, and then replace her in the pack. Cal spreads the cards again, face-up this time. But she’s gone.

  ‘You’re good, Cal!’

  He slumps down on the bed. ‘Not good enough. I wish I could do something bigger, something scary.’

  ‘You can saw me in half if you like.’

  He grins, but almost immediately starts to cry, silently at first, and then great gulping sobs. As far as I know this is only the second time he’s ever cried, so maybe he needs to. We both act as if he can’t help it, like it’s a nosebleed that has nothing to do with how he might be feeling. I pull him close and hold him. He sobs into my shoulder, his tears melt through my pyjamas. I want to lick them. His real, real tears.

  ‘I love you, Cal.’

  It’s easy. Even though it makes him cry ten times harder,
I’m really glad I dared.

  Number thirteen, to hold my brother as dusk settles on the window ledge.

  Adam climbs into bed. He pulls the duvet right up under his chin, as if he’s cold or as if he’s afraid that the ceiling might fall on his head.

  He says, ‘Tomorrow your dad’s going to buy a camp bed and put it on the floor down there for me.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to sleep with me any more?’

  ‘You might not want it, Tess. You might not want to be held.’

  ‘What if I do?’

  ‘Well, then I’ll hold you.’

  But he’s terrified. I see it in his eyes.

  ‘It’s all right, I let you off.’

  ‘Shush.’

  ‘No, really. I free you.’

  ‘I don’t want to be free.’ He leans across and kisses me. ‘Wake me up if you need me.’

  He falls asleep quickly. I lie awake and listen to lights being switched off all over the town. Whispered goodnights. The drowsy creak of bedsprings.

  I find Adam’s hand and hold it tight.

  I’m glad that night porters and nurses and long-distance lorry drivers exist. It comforts me to know that in other countries with different time zones, women are washing clothes in rivers and children are filing to school. Somewhere in the world right now, a boy is listening to the merry chink of a goat’s bell as he walks up a mountain. I’m very glad about that.

  Thirty-nine

  Zoey’s sewing. I didn’t know she could. A lemon-coloured baby suit is draped across her knees. She threads the needle, one eye shut, pulls the thread through and rolls a knot between licked fingers. Who taught her that? For minutes I watch her, and she sews as if this is how it’s always been. Her blonde hair is piled high, her neck at a tender angle. She bites her bottom lip in concentration.

  ‘Live,’ I tell her. ‘You will live, won’t you?’

  She looks up suddenly, sucks bright blood from her finger. ‘Shit!’ she says. ‘I didn’t know you were awake.’

  It makes me chuckle. ‘You’re blooming.’

  ‘I’m fat!’ She heaves herself upright in the chair and thrusts her belly at me to prove it. ‘I’m as big as a bear.’

  I’d love to be that baby deep inside her. To be small and healthy.

  Instructions for Zoey

  Don’t tell your daughter the planet is rotting. Show her lovely things. Be a giant for her, even though your parents couldn’t do it for you. Don’t ever get involved with any boy who doesn’t love you.

  ‘When the baby’s born, do you think you’ll miss the life you had before?’

  Zoey looks at me very solemnly. ‘You should get dressed. It’s not good for you to sit around in your pyjamas all day.’

  I lean back on the pillows and look at the corners of the room. When I was a kid, I always wanted to live on the ceiling – it looked so clean and uncluttered, like the top of a cake. Now it just reminds me of bed sheets.

  ‘I feel like I’ve let you down. I won’t be able to babysit or anything.’

  Zoey says, ‘It’s really nice outside. Shall I ask Adam or your dad to carry you out?’

  Birds joust on the lawn. Ragged clouds fringe a blue sky. This sun lounger is warm, as if it’s been absorbing sunlight for hours.

  Zoey’s reading a magazine. Adam’s stroking my feet through my socks.

  ‘Listen to this,’ Zoey says. ‘This won the funniest joke of the year competition.’

  Number fourteen, a joke.

  ‘A man goes to the doctor’s and says, “I’ve got a strawberry stuck up my bottom.” “Oh,” says the doctor, “I’ve got some cream for that.” ’

  I laugh a lot. I’m a laughing skeleton. To hear us – Adam, Zoey and me – is like being offered a window to climb through. Anything could happen next.

  Zoey shoves her baby into my arms. ‘Her name’s Lauren.’

  She’s fat and sticky and drooling milk. She smells good. She waves her arms at me, snatching at air. Her little fingers with their half-moon nails pluck at my nose.

  ‘Hello, Lauren.’

  I tell her how big and clever she is. I say all the silly things I imagine babies like to hear. And she looks back at me with fathomless eyes and gives a great big yawn. I can see right inside her little pink mouth.

  ‘She likes you,’ Zoey says. ‘She knows who you are.’

  I put Lauren Tessa Walker at my shoulder and swim my hand in circles over her back. I listen to her heart. She sounds careful, determined. She is ferociously warm.

  Under the apple tree, shadows dance. Sunlight sifts through the branches. A lawnmower drones far away. Zoey’s still reading her magazine, slaps it down when she sees I’m awake.

  ‘You’ve been asleep for ages,’ she tells me.

  ‘I dreamed Lauren was born.’

  ‘Was she gorgeous?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Adam looks up and smiles at me. ‘Hey,’ he says.

  Dad walks down the path filming us with his video camera.

  ‘Stop it,’ I tell him. ‘It’s morbid.’

  He takes the camera back into the house, comes out with the recycling box and puts it by the gate. He dead-heads flowers.

  ‘Come and sit with us, Dad.’

  But he can’t keep still. He goes back inside, returns with a bowl of grapes, an assortment of chocolate, glasses of juice.

  ‘Anyone want a sandwich?’

  Zoey shakes her head. ‘I’m all right with these Maltesers thanks.’

  I like the way her mouth puckers as she sucks them.

  Keep-death-away spells.

  Ask your best friend to read out the juicy bits from her magazine – the fashion, the gossip. Encourage her to sit close enough for you to touch her tummy, the amazing expanse of it. And when she has to go home, take a deep breath and tell her you love her. Because it’s true. And when she leans over and whispers it back, hold onto her tight, because these are not words you would normally share.

  Make your brother sit with you when he gets back from school and go through every detail of his day, every lesson, every conversation, even what he had for dinner, until he’s so bored he begs to be allowed to run off and play football with his friends in the park.

  Watch your mum kick off her shoes and massage her feet because her new job in the bookshop means she has to stand up all day and be polite to strangers. Laugh when she gives your dad a book because she gets a discount and can afford to be generous.

  Watch your dad kiss her cheek. Notice them smile. Know that whatever happens, they are your parents.

  Listen to your neighbour pruning her roses as shadows lengthen across the lawn. She’s humming some old song and you’re under a blanket with your boyfriend. Tell him you’re proud of him, because he made that garden grow and encouraged his mother to care about it.

  Study the moon. It’s close and has a pink flare around it. Your boyfriend tells you it’s an optical illusion, that it only seems big because of its angle to the earth.

  Measure yourself against it.

  And, at night, when you’re carried back upstairs and another day is over, refuse to let your boyfriend sleep in the camp bed. Tell him you want to be held and don’t be afraid that he might not want to, because if he says he will, then he loves you and that’s all that matters. Wrap your legs with his. Listen to him sleep, his gentle breathing.

  And when you hear a sound, like the flapping of a kite getting closer, like the sails of a windmill slowly turning, say, ‘Not yet, not yet.’

  Keep breathing. Just keep doing it. It’s easy. In and out.

  Forty

  The light begins to come back. The absolute dark fades at the edges. My mouth’s dry. The grit of last night’s medication lines my throat.

  ‘Hey,’ Adam says.

  He’s got a hard-on, apologizes for it with a shy smile, then opens the curtains and stands at the window looking out. Beyond him, the dull pink clouds of morning.

  ‘You’re going to be here for years with
out me,’ I tell him.

  He says, ‘Shall I make us some breakfast?’

  Like a butler, he brings me things. A lemon ice lolly. A hot-water bottle. Slices of orange cut onto a plate. Another blanket. He puts cinnamon sticks to boil on the oven downstairs, because I want to smell Christmas.

  How did this happen so quickly? How did it really come true?

  please get into bed and climb on top of me with your warmth and wrap me with your arms and make it stop

  ‘Mum’s putting up a trellis,’ he says. ‘First it was a herb garden, then roses, now she wants honeysuckle. I might go out and give her a hand when your dad comes to sit with you. Would that be OK?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You don’t fancy sitting outside again today?’

  ‘No.’

  I can’t be bothered to move. The sun grinds into my brain and everything aches.

  this mad psycho tells everyone to get into a field and says I’m going to pick one of you just one of you out of all of you to die and everyone’s looking around thinking it’s so unlikely to be me because there’s thousands of us so statistically it’s completely unlikely and the psycho walks up and down looking at everyone and when he gets near me he hesitates and he smiles and then he points right at me and says you’re the one and the shock that it’s me and yet of course it’s me why wouldn’t it be I knew all along

  Cal crashes in. ‘Can I go out?’

  Dad sighs. ‘Where?’

  ‘Just out.’

  ‘You need to be a bit more specific.’

  ‘I’ll let you know when I get there.’

  ‘Not good enough.’

  ‘Everyone else is allowed randomly out.’

  ‘I’m not interested in everyone else.’

  Wonderful rage as Cal stomps to the door. The bits of garden in his hair, the filth of his fingernails. His body able to yank the door open and slam it behind him.