by Emma Cooper
I close my eyes: the volcano erupts; Hailey and Ed look at me. A sob catches in my chest.
‘Will you help me? I can’t do it on my own.’
‘Yes, you can. It’s going to be tough at first, Jen . . . but you can do it. I know you can. Get stronger tablets in case Dr Popescu is wrong and this isn’t just complicated grief.’
‘But they make you so ill.’
‘I can take it. You can do this, Jen,’ she repeats. ‘You have to do this.’
‘I know.’
Chapter Sixty-Two
Jennifer
I pull the duvet over my shivering shoulders; the tears won’t stop today. I can’t stop them. I’ve lost count of the days I’ve been here, since I’ve seen my children. I remember Mum mentioning it was August . . . August used to be my favourite time of year, when I had the kids all to myself. My face hurts, my skin is dry and itchy and my mouth tastes stale.
‘Try and take a sip.’ Mum is sitting on my bed, holding a straw that has pierced the cardboard carton of the strawberry-flavoured protein shake.
I shake my head angrily.
‘Jennifer, take a drink or I’ll fetch your father.’
‘Come on, Jen. I will if you will.’ Kerry looks as bad as I feel as she holds her nose and slurps through the straw, a pinched and soured expression on her face, like the time I made her taste peanut butter.
Kerry stretches and puts the carton onto the bedside cabinet. She rolls onto her side, tucks her knees up, pushes her palms together and rests her cheek against them: the same foetal position that she was in at the beginning of her life, as she heads towards the end of it.
I swallow a few sips of the milkshake to please Mum, even though my stomach cramps. I close my eyes and think back to the volcano, to my trip to the doctor’s, where I’d told her that the tablets weren’t strong enough.
‘Mrs Jones, this isn’t an exact science, we don’t even know what we’re treating you for yet.’
‘I want stronger tablets. I would like my sister to leave. No offence.’ I flicked a glance towards Kerry: her fingers were re-plaiting her hair, holding her bobble between her straight teeth.
‘None taken.’
How long ago was that? My eyelids close, Mum leaves, Kerry snores and as I slip into sleep, I see my fingers picking up the capsules, one by one. I see my body shaped in glass, a working sculpture: my heart beating, my lungs expanding, the blood rushing through my veins, through the transparent shell. I watch the fragile glass, fingers reaching for the pills and swallowing them one by one, filling up the inside of the sculpture like a jar: a blue pill, a red one, two white ones, a yellow and black one, a green one. Pill after pill after pill, until there is no room inside the glass for the lungs, and all that is left is a glass body filled with colour.
‘Hey, beautiful.’
I open my eyes to see Ed’s face peering around the corner of the door.
He closes it quietly behind him. ‘Good or bad?’
‘Bad.’ My voice is a crack, a void, sucking out the daylight.
His shoulders drop a little but a smile forms on his face. ‘How are the kids?’
‘Good. Oscar has just got his five-metre badge.’
‘He’s grown five metres?’
‘No, he, um, he swam. Five metres.’
‘I know, Ed, it was a joke.’ I shuffle myself up the bed. ‘Let me take a shower and then shall we order a takeaway?’ I’m amazed that my voice has the energy to stretch into a higher octave, making it sound like I can’t wait to force some food down my gullet.
‘Nah. I’ve already eaten, and I’m knackered, Jen. Why don’t we stay in here, eh? I’ll go and get us a cup of tea and the biscuit tin . . . What do you fancy watching?’
Kerry is coughing again, a dry hacking that she can’t get rid of. I’d suggest Ed runs to the shop and gets some cough medicine for her, but I don’t think it would work, what with her being dead and all. I’m struggling to hear what he is talking about.
‘Sounds good.’
He kisses the top of my head and leaves the room. As I move myself again, I get a waft of body odour.
‘I love the smell of palm oil in the morning.’ I roll my eyes at her. Her film quotes are getting more and more predictable and less and less precise. It takes all of my concentration to coordinate my limbs in order to get myself into the shower.
Kerry coughs again. ‘I’d offer to help you but . . .’ She mimics a throat-slitting action.
I pull myself from the bed. The floor feels bouncy; the room feels like it is tipped onto its side, a rocket ready to launch inside a child’s hand. I reach for the glass of water beside the bed and chuck the water into my face. But it feels warm and doesn’t have the desired effect. Kerry laugh-coughs. I order my feet to shuffle me to the bathroom; I step onto the landing, past the stairwell which looms to my left like an orange lozenge sliding downstairs. I can hear my parents’ voices, hurried and urgent, and Ed’s voice, deep and calming, a never-ending battle like the tides of a sea, pulling and pushing, pulling and pushing. The sea has been doing this since the dawn of time . . . When will it learn that the argument will never be solved?
‘She needs more help than we can give her, Edward.’ Dad’s voice swells and crashes; Ed’s pushes it back.
‘She just needs more time, let’s see how the new prescription helps.’
‘My daughter doesn’t know what day it is half of the time, and no matter which drugs she’s on . . . Kerry doesn’t seem to be moving on. She needs more help than we can give her. She needs specialist care, maybe a hospital—’
‘You want her sectioned?!’
‘We’ve spoken to the doctor. She’s becoming irrational, Ed; if she was admitted into a hospital, she could be monitored. It might be the only way.’
The current takes hold of the conversation, my parents pushing, Ed pulling back as I’m swept away, drowning, no matter how hard I kick.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Ed
I crack open a beer and as Nessa’s face appears on my phone, I sigh and ignore it. I’m not in the mood for a deconstruction of her visit to Jen tonight. Hailey’s bed creaks above me and I take another sip of my beer. I’ve taken away the book that she was reading and her tablet as punishment for swearing. I tried to make amends before she went to sleep, but instead she turned her back on me. Oscar was more amenable, enjoying the extra attention he received instead of his sister. We read through his Lego Batman comic, talked about his day at summer club, and he told me a secret. Hailey has been in trouble there.
‘Two times, Daddy.’ He held up his fingers. ‘One. Two. Promise you won’t tell her I told you?’
‘Promise, now snuggle down.’ I tucked him in and began to leave the room.
‘When is Mummy coming back?’ he asked, just as I was switching off the light.
‘I told you, while Mummy was helping Grandpa, she ate something that made her really poorly in Greece and she has to stay in a special hospital.’
‘But that was ages ago.’
‘Well, she’s getting better so she’ll be back before we know it.’
I go to turn the TV on but can’t find the controller. I start lifting cushions but it’s nowhere to be seen. I stand and start searching the shelves, moving pictures, bowls of potpourri that have lost their pourri. Anger builds up.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ I shout as my hand catches the frame of a photo of the four of us. Kerry had taken this photo. I hold it in my hand and slump back onto the sofa. I have my arm around Jen’s shoulders; her hand rests on my hand in my lap. Oscar is next to me, Hailey next to Jen, looking at each other as if they’re the most important thing in the world. My finger follows the outline of us all. Jen happy, sane, content. Hailey the same; all of her milk teeth are still in her mouth, neat and white. Oscar is slimmer; his face is still rounded but his tummy isn’t spilling over his shorts. And me. I still look the same. I think. I stand and walk towards the mirror above the fireplace and I’m shocked at what s
tares back at me. I’m thinner; flecks of grey are starting to emerge around my temples, the curls unruly and in need of a cut; the skin beneath my eyes is sagging.
Has it really been less than a year?
I replace the photo and sit back down, the controller poking my hip from beneath the arm of the sofa. I replay the conversation earlier . . .
She needs more help than we can give her.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Jennifer
‘Can we talk?’ I turn onto my side and stroke the hair away from Kerry’s face.
‘Sure . . . it’s not like I’m going anywhere.’ She coughs.
‘I know. The tablets aren’t working. They want to admit me into a hospital.’
‘I heard.’
‘If I go in, I may never come back out.’
I think about my family: weekends made up of driving to see their sick mother. I picture Hailey’s face, telling her friend that she can’t go to their birthday party because she has other ‘plans’. I think of Oscar, scared and worried at the doors with codes and patients shouting out.
‘You don’t know it will be like that. You might only be there a little while.’
‘I might be there for ever.’
I walk towards the window and open it, letting a blast of air blow the hair from my face.
‘I don’t want Ed and the kids to have to look after me, visit me. I want to let them get on with their lives.’
Kerry sits up and leans on the bed as I say the words. ‘What do you mean, Jen?’ There is worry in her voice.
‘I mean I have the power to let them be free. I can let them live their lives without this person I have become.’
‘No, Jen. I died so you could live.’
I throw up my hands. ‘You call this living? Sleeping half the day away, not knowing what day of the week it is? Not being able to live my life with my husband and my children?’
‘It won’t come to that, Jen. You just need to find the right tablets, the right help.’
‘What do you think will happen if they can’t find the right combination and I get sectioned? Do you think I’ll ever be able to have control over my life again?’
‘So what exactly are you saying?’
‘You know what I’m saying . . . Maybe they’d be better off without me?’ I pull open a notepad, click the pen and begin writing.
‘Um . . . what are you doing?’ Kerry asks, peering over my shoulder.
‘What does it look like? I’m writing down how I would, um, you know I mean . . . if I don’t get better and I have to—’
‘Overdose? Jen, you’re not serious!’
‘No, you’re right. What if I’m sick, or worse, what if I shit myself? Not quite the final image I want to leave Ed with. Gosh, there aren’t that many choices, are there? Oh! I could always . . .’ My blue pen scratches out my suggestion, cutting into the paper.
‘Jen, this is completely out of the question.’
‘You’re right. I want to leave the least amount of bother for Ed when I go, he’ll have enough to deal with, you have a point. He’ll never get the stains out of the carpet.’
What am I doing? This has got to stop. I turn to Kerry, who is wearing her most superior ‘you’re acting like a child’ look. I sigh, put my hands up in surrender and close the book.
‘OK, OK . . . you’re right.’ I take a deep breath. I need a plan. ‘Right. I’m going to stop the tablets so at least I’m in control of my faculties. I’m going to ignore you. I’m going to give my family good memories of me so that if I don’t get better . . . those will be the things they will be thinking of, not some woman forcing down protein shakes through a straw and talking to air. I’m going to up my sessions with Dr Popescu; I’m going to need his help even more and he offered twice weekly sessions if I wanted them. But I need your help too. You have to help me. You can’t interrupt conversations, you can’t shout for my attention, OK? You have to help me make them think I’m better so I can give them what they need. Can you do that?’
‘If you stop taking those vile tablets, we have a deal.’
We shake hands and for the first time in months, I don’t wake with my dead sister shivering beside me.
‘So far so good,’ Kerry whispers as we sit at the bottom of our parents’ garden. It’s been a week without the tablets and I feel more like my old self.
Nessa arrives as I straighten myself and walk into a hug.
‘You look good today, new meds?’
‘Um yeah. New meds. Dr Popescu thinks we might have cracked it, I see him twice a week now.’
‘So he’s helping?’
I nod.
‘Is she here?’
I shake my head and smile, ignoring the loud crunching sound as Kerry bites into an apple. She stops chewing, her eyes widening and her hand covering her mouth. Kerry swallows a large chunk of apple and mouths ‘Sorry’ to me.
‘Look what your mum found!’ We walk towards the bench and I pull up my collar against the sharp breeze. She places another box of Kerry’s notebooks beside me and passes one into my hand.
‘Kerry Hargreaves 2001 The Bubble Gum Experiment.’ The pages are brittle with time but inside, Kerry’s writing is perfectly preserved.
‘Aw, she was only six. Gosh, she was meticulous, wasn’t she?’
‘Yep. One obsessive quest to another.’ We continue turning pages, returning to the warmth of the kitchen as we go through the next volume.
‘Do tulips prefer Atomic Kitten or Pink?’
I turn the pages: ‘The Best Assault Course Ever’. The page was broken into steps. Step one, decide on the number of activities . . . three activities was too easy, ten too many. Then each activity was broken down into effectiveness in terms of excitement, challenge, etc.
‘You should do that with the kids,’ Mum says, wiping her hands on her pinny as she leans over my shoulder.
‘What, an assault course?’
‘Why not?’ Dad adds, from behind his newspaper. ‘You used to love all of that as much as she did. Just make sure you’re wearing suitable underwear,’ he adds under his breath.
‘Did I?’
I turn the page onto ‘The Perfect Orange Squash’, where a list of measurements and a score of 1–5 is listed.
‘Do you remember the walking on your hands one?’ Mum asks Dad.
They start to giggle. ‘That one took days to practise and when you finally got the right momentum, Kerry caught her feet in the washing line and sent the laundry flying!’ Dad is grinning. ‘We tried to make her go next door and fetch my Y-fronts back, but she refused. Stubborn little monkey. You did it in the end, brought them back into the house dangling from a stick.’ He peers over his half-moon glasses at me and winks.
‘Is she . . . is she here?’ Mum asks. I don’t look over to where I can see her arm stacking plates onto the draining board.
‘No. I haven’t . . .’ I clear my throat. ‘I haven’t seen her for a few days now.’
Mum breathes out a long sigh and gives a short smile in Dad’s direction. ‘Well. That’s great news, love. Isn’t it?’
‘It is.’ He turns the page of the newspaper. ‘It truly is.’
Chapter Sixty-Five
Ed
I want to believe it. I want to believe that she is finally coming back. I’m trying not to let her see how I’m looking for signs of her sister hovering in the background. How every time she laughs, I’m waiting for her to throw a look of shared amusement to thin air. But she hasn’t.
The kids are opening their presents from her, both of them wearing brand new uniforms for the beginning of term, shining shoes, new backpacks. Jen is perched on the edge of the sofa next to me. I want to reach out and hold her knee but I’m afraid I could break the spell. The wrapping paper is discarded onto the floor, shining pink for Hailey, glittering blue for Oscar. Oscar’s face drops, in complete contrast to the rise on his sister’s.
‘It’s a notebook,’ he says as though he’s holding a piece of dog poo.
‘It’s a special notebook. I bought it from a magic shop. A shop so magic that when I went back to get another one for Daddy . . . it had disappeared.’ Their eyes widen, but Hailey’s quickly adjust to the rationality that seems to take away the magic of childhood and replace it with the realism of adulthood.
‘But what are we supposed to do with it?’ He turns it over in his hands and flicks through the blank pages.
‘I thought we could do some more of our own experiments, like Aunty Kerry did when she was little. She would do the most amazing things and write them down. I thought we could do some of her crazy things.’
It comes from nowhere, the image of Jen jumping from Lovers’ Leap, and it takes my breath away.
‘What types of things?’ I ask. There is caution and fear in my voice, but I don’t try to correct myself. Jen has to know that we aren’t all out of the woods yet.
‘Well . . .’ She smiles at me and then each of the kids in turn. ‘She wrote down her secret recipe for getting the biggest bubbles. Kerry said adding Juicy Fruit to bubble gum worked the best. So . . .’ Jen reaches into her bag again and pulls out two small rectangles in glittering paper. Passes two to me, and two each to the kids, then pulls out her own supply. ‘Right, let’s write it into your books then. Daddy will help you with yours, Oscar.’
‘I don’t need help . . . I got my pen licence last week.’
‘Pen licence?’
‘We get a pen licence at school now when we write neatly. Oscar’s is a provisional licence . . . mine is a full one,’ Hailey explains.
‘Well then. Let’s get started.’
Jen shows them Kerry’s pages listing the ingredients at the top, the number of chews before blowing commences. We copy it and then tear the Juicy Fruit in half and begin chewing.
My wife’s eyes meet mine and for the first time in a long time, I can see a glimmer of light behind them, not a shard of euphoria, but real happiness. I begin blowing my bubble; Hailey is in hot pursuit and Jen follows. Hailey begins making ‘uuuuhhhh!’ noises, flapping her arms and pointing to the bubble growing bigger; I mimic her actions as Oscar tries and fails to make his gum into a bubble. Instead, his gum flies out of his mouth and smacks onto the TV screen. My bubble pops as I start laughing. Hailey turns her face towards Jen and they both continue blowing, the bubbles getting bigger and bigger. Oscar comes and sits on my knee, chanting ‘Hail-ey-Hail-ey!’ Jen’s eyes widen, as do our daughter’s, and then with a defeated pop, Jen’s shrinks into a blob of pink covering her nose. Hailey stands and flexes her muscles like she’s Rocky, the bubble bobbing up and down in victory.