Yesterday, Mum let her stay at home because I had a big nosebleed in the middle of the night and woke everyone up. Mrs Willis said she could do lessons with us.
“You don’t want to write a book too, do you?” she said. Ella shook her head.
“I’m going to do pictures for Sam’s book,” she said.
I don't want Ella's babyish pictures in my book, but I didn't say so. Maybe she can have one. She drew a picture yesterday of us all. Mum and Dad were holding hands and me and Ella were waving. There was black spiky grass, and flowers, and a great big sun with great big sun rays wobbling all over the sky.
CLAY BIRDS
29th March
I don’t just sleep a lot. When I’m not asleep, I can’t wake up properly. I’m tired and I ache all over. I can’t write and I can’t think.
When Mrs Willis came today, I said I didn’t want to work. She didn’t make me. Instead, she brought a bucket of clay from her car and we made things. We put newspapers over the coffee table in the living room and spread the clay all over them. Some fell off and got on the carpet, but Mum didn’t fuss. She said it would all come out with soap and water, all come out in the wash, she said, and it did.
The clay was perfect, wet-dark and slippery-smooth. I held it and squeezed it and it oozed out from the bottom of one hand and into the palm of the other. I made it into balls and little aeroplanes and fake fossils to bury in the garden and confuse geologists. I wrote my name in it with the knife. Sam Oliver McQueen. S.O.M. Sam.
Mrs Willis made me a little ship, with a mast and a clay sail but no keel, because it’s a sailing ship and you can’t see the keel under the water. It has a flag at the top of the mast, clay bent to look as if it’s flying.
“Where’s it going?” she said, and I said, “Africa.”
I made a round clay bird for Ella, a blackbird because she has black hair. I made an owl for Dad with round owl glasses like he has and feathers drawn on with a knife. I made Mum a sparrow because of the Bible story about the sparrows who were sold for two-a-penny. Nobody thought they were worth anything, but God knew all of them by name.
Mrs Willis said she would take my birds and my boat and bake them in her friend’s kiln and then they would harden and set forever. She said next time she came, we could paint them properly and I could give them as presents.
I could give them as soon as the paint was dry, she said. Or I could save them and give them later, if I wanted.
PRESENTS
3rd April
Today, Mrs Willis brought my birds back.
The fire of the kiln had hardened the clay and turned it a pale pink. We looked up sparrows and owls and blackbirds in Mum’s big bird book, to get the colours just right. I made Dad an eagle owl, because they’re so big and fierce-looking. They have sticky-up ear tufts, but I just painted those on the top of my owl’s head. Mum’s bird was a hedge sparrow, with a grey belly and little eyes. Hedge sparrows and eagle owls look different but they’re the same colours: brown, with black spots.
“Birds of a feather flock together,” said Mrs Willis and she put them side by side to dry.
Ella’s bird was easy. Shiny black feathers and a yellow beak, although really girl blackbirds aren’t black. The blackbird in the book had his head in the air and a glint in his eye. It looked a bit like Ella, squaring up for a fight.
“Ella’s going to be all right,” I thought, and I painted a smile on her bird. Birds don’t smile, really, but then owls don’t wear glasses either and Dad’s was, so it didn’t matter.
After Mrs Willis had gone, I fell asleep again. When I woke up, I lay on the sofa and thought about her and Granny and Annie. They ought to have presents too, but I didn’t have any more clay and I didn’t know how to make anything else, except cakes. And you can’t keep cakes. I wanted a present that meant they wouldn’t forget me. I mean, I know Granny’s got lots of photographs of me, but Annie and Mrs Willis haven’t.
I got up and went to find Mum. She was sitting at the table looking out at the garden.
“Hello, sweetheart,” she said when I came and sat down by her. She put her arm round me. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” I said. I rested my head against her. “Do you have any photos of me?”
“I think I might have one or two somewhere,” said Mum. “Why?”
“I want to make something for Annie and Granny and Mrs Willis. I thought I could do photo frames, with pictures, only we’ve used up all the clay.”
“I’m sure we can think of something,” said Mum.
We had a good afternoon. Mum found me some old picture frames and we stuck them all over with the little tiles left over from the bathroom. When the glue was dry, we covered all the spaces with grout, so you couldn’t see any of the old frames. Anyone who came to visit, we made help. I fell asleep while they were finishing them. When I woke up, Mum and Mum’s vicar and two old ladies from her church were all sitting there with grouty hands, making picture frames.
SPRING
11th April
When I woke up today, the sun was shining through the windows. I lay on my side and watched the sunlight dancing on the wall. The air was bright and full of light.
I got up and went into the living room. I walked very slowly and carefully. I felt strange and light-headed. The world looked different, kind of the way it does, sometimes, when you realize that you’re a person looking at the world and you suddenly think how weird that is. That’s a sofa, that’s Ella’s old elephant, that’s an IV stand – it’s like you’re looking at them on a TV screen for the first time and you realize how strange it is that you’re in the world, looking at these very bright and here things and how you’re here too, but at the same time you’re kind of not, you’re separate, watching it all from somewhere else.
Maybe you don’t know what I mean. But that’s how I felt.
Ella was sitting on the sofa, watching cartoons in her pyjamas. Mum and Dad and Granny were sharing the big Saturday newspaper on the dining table. They looked up as I came through.
“Look,” said Mum, holding out her hand. “Spring’s come.”
I looked out of the window. The sun was shining, the sky was blue from edge to edge and you could see for the first time where new little leaves were uncurling on the trees.
I sat down by Dad. I still felt strange. Sort of not quite connected to the rest of the world.
“Annie’s coming round in a bit,” said Mum.
“Can we invite Mrs Willis too?” I said. I looked at her meaningfully. She got it straight away.
“Of course. We could all go and sit out in the garden.”
It was a bit cold to sit in the garden, but nobody cared. Mum fussed around for ages making tea and offering people biscuits and I kept going, “Mum. Mu-um,” until finally she put down the teapot and said, “Sam has something for you.”
They liked their presents. Dad liked the eagle owl so much, he said he was going to buy some hair gel and make himself ear tufts to scare all the people who work for him. Mrs Willis said she’d never had a nicer present and it was even better than a kid she’d once taught who’d given her one of his kidney stones. All the grown-ups sat and talked for ages and ages. Ella got bored and went off to play swing-tennis, but I didn’t feel like it. I sat watching them all, trying to hold them tight and safe in my memory, until I fell asleep.
DREAMING
12th April
This time when I fell asleep, I dreamed.
I dreamed I was sleeping in Mum and Dad’s big bed again. Mum and Dad were there too, and Ella. It was very early in the morning. I could see the light coming through the windows and the sky, pale and fragile and still. There were no clouds. I could see everything very sharp and clear. I could see the curtains moving in the breeze from the window. I could see the apple tree in the garden, all covered in new little leaves.
In my dream, we were all asleep. Ella was sleeping on her back, next to me. Her face was pink and I could see the muscles moving under h
er skin, so I knew she was dreaming. Dad had his arm around her. The back of his hand was just brushing against mine. Mum was sleeping on her side. She was curved around me. I could feel her hair against my neck, soft and light.
I was sleeping too, warm there in the middle of my family-nest, but it was as if I was outside myself. I was watching myself sleeping, from above. There were no bright lights. There were no angels. There was just Mum and Dad and Ella, all asleep on the big bed with me there above them, watching as they got smaller and smaller and further and further away.
I woke. I was lying in the big bed, just like in my dream. The room was full of pale light and soft with early morning quiet. Mum was asleep on her side. Dad was lying awake beside me. When he saw me watching, he smiled.
“Hey,” he said, and stretched out his hand. I held it loosely in mine.
“Why am I in your bed?” I said.
“Because you’ve got a temperature,” he said.
I lay there, quiet. I felt very strange. It was as if my body didn’t belong to me any more; as if I were floating just above it. It felt heavy and old and very, very tired.
“I love you,” said Dad suddenly.
He seemed very far away and unimportant.
“I know,” I said.
We lay there, just the two of us, very quiet and still, me holding his fingers between mine. Then I closed my eyes again and drifted back into sleep.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, huge thanks to Julia Green and everyone on the wonderful MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa: Sandra-Lynne Jones, Kellie Jones, Julia Draper, Sian Price, Tara Button, Sarah Oliver, Lucy Staff, Sarah Lee and Liz Kernoghan. Without you this book would never have been written. Thank you for your encouragement, for saying, “No, Sally,” week after week and for all your invaluable suggestions.
Thank you to CLIC nurses at the Royal United Hospital in Bath and to the Children’s Hospice in Bristol for answering all my questions. Particular thanks to Cylla Cole at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children for her enthusiasm and for reading the manuscript before publication. Thanks to Anna James for telling me about platelets (“yellow and squishy”) and children’s oncology wards (“surprisingly cheerful”) and for letting me see her Hickman Line.
Thank you to my dear mum for believing in me and supporting me and to my family for all the bits of real life I borrowed for the book. Thank you to the Republic of Stanley Road for saying, “Of course you should be a writer!” and laughing at me in such an encouraging way. Thank you to Tom Harris for smiling at me lovingly over the top of a laptop. Thank you to Raoul Sullivan for telling me about how great airships are. Thank you to Rosemary Canter for saying yes.
Finally, thank you to Oliviero Muzi-Falconi for being the handwriting of Sam. Thanks to Filippo Muzi-Falconi for drawing Sam's pictures, to Freya Wilson for drawing Ella's, and to Nikalas Catlow for Dad's. Also thanks to Caro Humphries and Tom Harris, for providing handwriting.
Sally Nicholls
London, 2007
WEBSITES
www.clicsargent.org.uk
CLIC Sargent
www.leukaemia.org
Children with Leukaemia
www.macmillan.org.uk
Macmillan Cancer Support
www.helpthehospices.org.uk
National hospice charity
FICTION FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
Two Weeks with the Queen by Morris Gleitzman
Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
Becky Bananas: This Is Your Life! by Jean Ure
Through a Glass, Darkly by Jostein Gaarder
FICTION FOR ADULTS
Oscar and the Lady in Pink by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Spoonface Steinberg a play by Lee Hall
REFERENCE BOOKS
The Private Worlds of Dying Children by Myra
Bluebond-Langner
On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Living with Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Final Gifts: Understanding and Helping the Dying by Maggie
Callanan and Patricia Kelley
Sally Nicholls
was born in Stockton, just after midnight, in a thunderstorm. Her father died when she was two, and she and her brother were brought up by her mother. She has always loved reading, and spent most of her childhood trying to make real life work like it did in books. After school, she worked in Japan for six months and travelled around Australia and New Zealand, then came back and did a degree in Philosophy and Literature at Warwick. In her third year she enrolled in a Masters in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University. It was here, at the age of twenty-two, that she wrote Ways to Live Forever, her first novel. Sally is now living in London where she works part-time and continues to write.
www.sallynicholls.com
www.waystoliveforever.co.uk
1 Ashrita Furman, on 23rd July 1999. Ashrita Furman has broken over sixty world records, including the record for the person to break the most world records.
2 It’s called an IV stand. I’ve got my own IV stand with vampire stickers stuck all over it. They don’t actually tie you to it. It just feels like it.
3 Which was true. Felix’s mum stopped us.
4 In my type, acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, my body makes too many lymphoblasts, which are baby white blood cells. But the result is the same.
5 I go to a special one because chemotherapy does funny things to teeth.
6 Auntie Sarah also gave Ella a whole lot of Sylvanian families stuff, which is good, because otherwise she moans about not getting anything. You get lots of free stuff if you’re sick, but it doesn’t work if you’re just someone sick’s sister.
7 It’s true. Leukaemia was invented by this guy John Hughes Bennett in 1845. The first kid diagnosed with leukaemia was in 1850. Dr Bennett looked at her blood through a microscope and said it was full of “colourless, granular, spheroidal globules”. That was the white blood cells, only he didn’t know it then.
The reason it took so long to diagnose a kid was that they didn’t used to let kids go to hospital because they thought they carried infections. How weird is that?
8 Yes, greetings cards are heavier than pencils. Try weighing them yourself and see.
First published in the UK in 2008 by Marion Lloyd Books
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Marion Lloyd Books
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Text © Sally Nicholls, 2008
Lines from Children and Death reproduced by permission of Routledge Publishing Inc.
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