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Forty-one
The bell they gave me is loud in the dark, but I don’t care. Adam comes in, bleary-eyed, in his
boxers and T-shirt.
‘You left me.’
‘I just this second went down to make a cup of tea.’
I don’t believe him. And I don’t care about his cup of tea. He can drink tepid water from my
jug if he’s desperate.
‘Hold my hand. Don’t let go.’
Every time I close my eyes, I fall. Endlessly falling.
Forty-two
All qualities are the same – the light through the curtains, the faraway hum of traffic, the
boiler rush of water. It could be groundhog day, except that my body is more tired, my skin more
transparent. I am less than yesterday.
And
Adam is in the camp bed.
I try to sit up, but can’t quite muster the energy. ‘Why did you sleep down there?’
He touches my hand. ‘You were in pain in the night.’
He opens the curtains just like he did yesterday. He stands at the window looking out. Beyond
him, the sky is pale and watery.
we made love twenty-seven times and we shared a bed for sixty-two nights and that’s a lot of
love
‘Breakfast?’ he says.
I don’t want to be dead.
I haven’t been loved this way for long enough.
Forty-three
My mum was in labour for fourteen hours with me. It was the hottest May on record. So hot I
didn’t wear any clothes for the first two weeks of my life.
‘I used to lay you on my tummy and we’d sleep for hours,’ she says. ‘It was too hot to do
anything but sleep.’
Like charades, this going over of memories.
‘I used to take you on the bus to meet Dad in his lunch break and you’d sit on my lap and
stare at people. You had such an intense look about you. Everyone used to comment on it.’
The light is very bright. A great slab of it falls through the window and la nds on the bed. I can
rest my hand in sunshine without even moving.
‘Do you remember when we went to Cromer and you lost your charm bracelet on the beach?’
She’s brought photos, holds them up one by one.
A green and white afternoon threading daisies.
The chalk light of winter at the city farm.
Yellow leaves, muddy boots and a proud black bucket.
‘What did you catch, do you remember?’
Philippa said my hearing would be the last thing to go, but she didn’t say I’d see colours when
people talk.
Whole sentences arc across the room like rainbows.
I get confused. I’m at the bedside and Mum’s dying instead of me. I pull back the sheets to
look at her and she’s naked, a wrinkled old woman with grey pubic hair.
I weep for a dog, hit by a car and buried. We never had a dog. This is not my memory.
I’m Mum on a pony trotting across town to visit Dad. He lives on a council estate, and me and
the pony get into the lift and go up to the eighth floor. The pony’s hooves clatter metallically. It
makes me laugh.
I’m twelve. I get home from school and Mum’s on the doorstep. She has her coat on and a
suitcase at her feet. She gives me an envelope. ‘Give this to your dad when he gets home.’
She kisses me goodbye. I watch her until she reaches the horizon, and at the top of the hill,
like a puff of smoke, she disappears.
Forty-four
The light is heart-breaking.
Dad sips tea by the bed. I want to tell him that he’s missing GMTV, but I’m not sure that he
is. Not sure of the time.
He’s got a snack as well. Cream crackers with piccalilli sauce and old mature cheddar. I’d like
to want that. To be interested in taste – the crumb and dry crackerness of things.
He puts down the plate when he sees me looking and picks up my hand. ‘Beautiful girl,’ he
says.
I tell him thanks.
But my lips don’t move and he doesn’t seem to hear me.
Then I say, I was just thinking about that netball post you made me when I got into the school
team. Do you remember how you got the measurements wrong and made it too high? I practised so
hard with it that I always overshot at school and they chucked me out of the team again.
But he doesn’t seem to hear that either.
So then I go for it.
Dad, you played rounders with me, even though you hated it and wished I’d take up cricket.
You learned how to keep a stamp collection because I wanted to know. For hours you sat in
hospitals and never, not once, complained. You brushed my hair like a mother should. You gave up
work for me, friends for me, four years of your life for me. You never moaned. Hardly ever. You let
me have Adam. You let me have my list. I was outrageous. Wanting, wanting so much. And you
never said, ‘That’s enough. Stop now.’
I’ve been wanting to say that for a while
Cal peers down at me. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘How are you?’
I blink at him.
He sits in the chair and studies me. ‘Can’t you actually talk any more?’
I try and tell him that yes, of course I can. Is he stupid, or what?
He sighs, gets up and goes over to the window. He says, ‘Do you think I’m too young to have
a girlfriend?’
I tell him yes.
‘Because loads of my friends have got one. They don’t actually go out. Not really. They just
text each other.’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘I’m never going to understand love.’
But I think he already does. Better than most people.
Zoey says, ‘Hey, Cal.’
He says, ‘Hey.’
She says, ‘I’ve come to say goodbye. I mean, I know I did already, but I thought I’d say it
again.’
‘Why?’ he says. ‘Where are you going?’
I like the weight of Mum’s hand in mine.
She says, ‘If I could swap places with you, I would, you know.’
Then she says, ‘I just wish I could save you from this.’
Maybe she thinks I can’t hear her.
She says, ‘I could write a story for one of those true story magazines, about how hard it was to
leave you. I don’t want you thinking it was easy.’
when I was twelve I looked Scotland up on a map and saw that beyond the Firth were the
Islands of Orkney and I knew they’d have boats that would take her even further away than that
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