Before I Die

by Jenny Downham

‘Was he any good?’

  I think of Jake upstairs, his hand trailing the floor. ‘I don’t know.’

  Zoey inhales, regards me curiously, exhales. ‘You have to get used to it. My mum once said that sex was only three minutes of pleasure. I thought, Is that all? It’s going to be more than that for me! And it is. If you let them think they’re great at it, somehow it turns out all right.’

  I stand up, walk to the curtains and open them wider. The streetlights are still on. It’s nowhere near morning.

  Zoey says, ‘Have you just left him up there?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘That’s a bit rude. You should go back and have another go.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Well, we can’t go home yet. I’m wrecked.’

  She stubs the joint out in the ashtray, settles herself back down next to Scott and shuts her eyes. I watch her for ages, the rise and fall of her breathing. A string of lights along the wall casts a gentle glow across the carpet. There’s a rug too, a little oval with splashes of blue and grey, like the sea.

  I go back to the kitchen and put the kettle on. There’s a piece of paper on the counter. On it someone’s written, Cheese, butter, beans, bread. I sit on a stool at the kitchen table and I add, Butterscotch chocolate, six-pack of Creme Eggs. I especially want the Creme Eggs, because I love having those at Easter. It’s two hundred and seventeen days until Easter.

  Perhaps I should be a little more realistic. I cross out the Creme Eggs and write, Chocolate Father Xmas, red and gold foil with a bell round its neck. I might just get that. It’s one hundred and thirteen days until Christmas.

  I turn the little piece of paper over and write, Tessa Scott. A good name of three syllables, my dad always says. If I can fit my name on this piece of paper over fifty times, everything will be all right. I write in very small letters, like a tooth fairy might write to answer a child’s letter. My wrist aches. The kettle whistles. The kitchen fills with steam.

  Five

  Sometimes on a Sunday Dad drives me and Cal to visit Mum. We get the lift up to the eighth floor, and usually there’s a moment when she opens the door and says, ‘Hey, you!’ and includes all three of us in her gaze. Dad usually loiters for a while on the step and they talk.

  But today when she opens the door, Dad’s so desperate to get away from me that he’s already moving back across the hallway towards the lift.

  ‘Watch her,’ he says, jabbing a finger in my direction. ‘She’s not to be trusted.’

  Mum laughs. ‘Why, what did she do?’

  Cal can hardly contain his excitement. ‘Dad told her not to go clubbing.’

  ‘Ah,’ Mum says. ‘That sounds like your father.’

  ‘But she went anyway. She only got home just now. She was out all night.’

  Mum smiles at me fondly. ‘Did you meet a boy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I bet you did. What’s his name?’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  Dad looks furious. ‘Typical,’ he says. ‘Bloody typical. I might’ve known I wouldn’t get any support from you.’

  ‘Oh, shush,’ Mum says. ‘It hasn’t done her any harm, has it?’

  ‘Look at her. She’s completely exhausted.’

  All three of them take a moment to look at me. I hate it. I feel dismal and cold and my stomach aches. It’s been hurting since having sex with Jake. No one told me that would happen.

  ‘I’ll be back at four,’ Dad says as he steps into the lift. ‘She’s refused to have her blood count checked for nearly two weeks, so phone me if anything changes. Can you manage that?’

  ‘Yes, yes, don’t worry.’ She leans over and kisses my forehead. ‘I’ll look after her.’

  Cal and me sit at the kitchen table, and Mum puts the kettle on, finds three cups amongst the dirty ones in the sink and swills them under the tap. She reaches into a cupboard for tea bags, gets milk from the fridge and sniffs it, scatters biscuits on a plate.

  I put a whole Bourbon in my mouth at once. It tastes delicious. Cheap chocolate and the rush of sugar to my brain.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about my first boyfriend?’ Mum says as she plonks the tea on the table. ‘His name was Kevin and he worked in a clock shop. I used to love the way he concentrated with that little eye-piece nudged into his face.’

  Cal helps himself to another biscuit. ‘How many boyfriends have you actually had, Mum?’

  She laughs, pushes her long hair back over one shoulder. ‘Is that an appropriate question?’

  ‘Was Dad the best?’

  ‘Ah, your father!’ she cries, and clutches her heart melodramatically, which makes Cal roar with laughter.

  I once asked Mum what was wrong with Dad. She said, ‘He’s the most sensible man I’ve ever met.’

  I was twelve when she left him. She sent postcards for a while from places I’d never heard of – Skegness, Grimsby, Hull. One of them had a picture of a hotel on the front. This is where I work now, she wrote. I’m learning how to be a pastry chef and I’m getting very fat!

  ‘Good!’ Dad said. ‘I hope she bloody bursts!’

  I put her postcards on my bedroom wall – Carlisle, Melrose, Dornoch.

  We’re living in a croft like shepherds, she wrote. Did you know that they use the windpipe, lungs, heart and liver of a sheep to make haggis?

  I didn’t, and I didn’t know who she meant by ‘we’, but I liked looking at the picture of John o’Groats with its vast sky stretching across the Firth.

  Then winter came and I got my diagnosis. I’m not sure she believed it at first, because it took her a while to turn round and make her way back. I was thirteen when she finally knocked on our door.

  ‘You look lovely!’ she told me when I answered it. ‘Why does your father always make everything sound so much worse than it is?’

  ‘Are you coming back to live with us?’ I asked.

  ‘Not quite.’

  And that’s when she moved into her flat.

  It’s always the same. Maybe it’s lack of money, or perhaps she wants to make sure I don’t over-exert myself, but we always end up watching videos or playing board games. Today, Cal chooses the Game of Life. It’s rubbish, and I’m crap at it. I end up with a husband, two children and a job in a travel agent’s. I forget to buy house insurance, and when a storm comes, I lose all my money. Cal, however, gets to be a pop star with a cottage by the sea, and Mum’s an artist with a huge income and a stately home to live in. When I retire, which happens early because I keep spinning tens, I don’t even bother counting what’s left of my cash.

  Cal wants to show Mum his new magic trick next. He goes to get a coin from her purse, and while we’re waiting, I drag the blanket off the back of the sofa and Mum helps me pull it over my knees.

  ‘I’ve got the hospital next week,’ I tell her. ‘Will you come?’

  ‘Isn’t Dad going?’

  ‘You could both come.’

  She looks awkward for a moment. ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘I’ve been getting headaches again. They want to do a lumbar puncture.’

  She leans over and kisses me, her breath warm on my face. ‘You’ll be fine, don’t worry. I know you’ll be fine.’

  Cal comes back in with a pound coin. ‘Watch very carefully, ladies,’ he says.

  But I don’t want to. I’m bored of watching things disappear.

  In Mum’s bedroom, I hitch my T-shirt up in front of the wardrobe mirror. I used to look like an ugly dwarf. My skin was grey and if I poked my tummy it felt like an over-risen lump of bread dough and my finger disappeared into its softness. Steroids did that. High-dosage prednisolone and dexamethasone. They’re both poisons and they make you fat, ugly and bad-tempered.

  Since I stopped taking them I’ve started to shrink. Today, my hips are sharp and my ribs shine through my skin. I’m retreating, ghost-like, away from myself.

  I sit on Mum’s bed and phone Zoey.

  ‘Sex,’ I ask her. ‘What does it mean?’
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  ‘Poor you,’ she says. ‘You really did get a crap shag, didn’t you?’

  ‘I just don’t understand why I feel so strange.’

  ‘Strange how?’

  ‘Lonely, and my stomach hurts.’

  ‘Oh, yeah!’ she says. ‘I remember that. Like you’ve been opened up inside?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘That’ll go away.’

  ‘Why do I feel as if I’m about to cry all the time?’

  ‘You’re taking it too seriously, Tess. Sex is a way of being with someone, that’s all. It’s just a way of keeping warm and feeling attractive.’

  She sounds odd, as if she’s smiling.

  ‘Are you stoned again, Zoey?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Listen, I have to go in a minute. Tell me what’s next on your list and we’ll make a plan.’

  ‘I’ve cancelled the list. It was stupid.’

  ‘It was fun! Don’t give up on it. You were doing something with your life at last.’

  When I hang up, I count to fifty-seven inside my head. Then I dial 999.

  A woman says, ‘Emergency services. Which service do you require?’

  I don’t say anything.

  The woman says, ‘Is there an emergency?’

  I say, ‘No.’

  She says, ‘Can you confirm that there is no emergency? Can you confirm your address?’

  I tell her where Mum lives. I confirm there’s no emergency. I wonder if Mum’ll get sent some kind of bill. I hope so.

  I dial directory enquiries and get the number for the Samaritans. I dial it very slowly.

  A woman says, ‘Hello.’ She has a soft voice, maybe Irish. ‘Hello,’ she says again.

  Because I feel sorry for wasting her time, I say, ‘Everything’s a pile of crap.’

  And she makes a little ‘Uh-huh’ sound in the back of her throat, which makes me think of Dad. He made exactly that sound six weeks ago, when the consultant at the hospital asked if we understood the implications of what he was telling us. I remember thinking how Dad couldn’t possibly have understood, because he was crying too much to listen.

  ‘I’m still here,’ the woman says.

  I want to tell her. I press the receiver to my ear, because to talk about something as important as this you have to be hunched up close.

  But I can’t find words that are good enough.

  ‘Are you still there?’ she says.

  ‘No,’ I say, and I put the phone down.

  Six

  Dad takes my hand. ‘Give me the pain,’ he says.

  I’m lying on the edge of a hospital bed, in a knee-chest position with my head on a pillow. My spine is parallel to the side of the bed.

  There are two doctors and a nurse in the room, although I can’t see them because they’re behind me. One of the doctors is a student. She doesn’t say much, but I guess she’s watching as the other one finds the right place on my spine and marks the spot with a pen. He prepares my skin with antiseptic solution. It’s very cold. He starts at the place where he’s going to put the needle in and works outwards in concentric circles, then he drapes towels across my back and puts sterile gloves on.

  ‘I’ll be using a twenty-five-gauge needle,’ he tells the student. ‘And a five-millilitre syringe.’

  On the wall behind Dad’s shoulder is a painting. They change the paintings in the hospital a lot, and I’ve never seen this one before. I stare at it very hard. I’ve learned all sorts of distraction techniques in the last four years.

  In the painting, it’s late afternoon in some English field and the sun is low in the sky. A man struggles with the weight of a plough. Birds swoop and dive.

  Dad turns in his plastic chair to see what I’m looking at, lets go of my hand and gets up to inspect the picture.

  Down at the bottom of the field, a woman runs. She holds her skirt with one hand so that she can run faster.

  ‘The Great Plague Reaches Eyam,’ Dad announces. ‘A cheery little picture for a hospital!’

  The doctor chuckles. ‘Did you know,’ he says, ‘there are still over three thousand cases of bubonic plague a year?’

  ‘No,’ Dad says, ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Thank goodness for antibiotics, eh?’

  Dad sits down and scoops my hand back into his. ‘Thank goodness.’

  The woman scatters chickens as she runs, and it’s only now that I notice her eyes reaching out in panic towards the man.

  The plague, the great fire and the war with the Dutch all happened in 1666. I remember it from school. Millions were hauled off in carts, bodies swept into lime pits and nameless graves. Over three hundred and forty years later, everyone who lived through it is gone. Of all the things in the picture, only the sun remains. And the earth. That thought makes me feel very small.

  ‘Brief stinging sensation coming up,’ the doctor says.

  Dad strokes my hand with his thumb as waves of static heat push into my bones. It makes me think of the words ‘for ever’, of how there are more dead than living, of how we’re surrounded by ghosts. This should be comforting, but isn’t.

  ‘Squeeze my hand,’ Dad says.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘When your mother was in labour with you, she held my hand for fourteen hours and didn’t dislocate any fingers! There’s no way you’re going to hurt me, Tess.’

  It’s like electricity, as if my spine got jammed in a toaster and the doctor’s digging it out with a blunt knife.

  ‘What do you reckon Mum’s doing today?’ I ask. My voice sounds different. Held in. Tight.

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘I asked her to come.’

  ‘Did you?’ Dad sounds surprised.

  ‘I thought you could hang out in the café together afterwards.’

  He frowns. ‘That’s a strange thing to think.’

  I close my eyes and imagine I’m a tree drenched in sunlight, that I have no desire beyond the rain. I think of silver water splashing my leaves, soaking my roots, travelling up my veins.

  The doctor reels off statistics to the student. He says, ‘Approximately one in a thousand people who have this test suffer some minor nerve injury. There’s also a slight risk of infection, bleeding, or damage to the cartilage.’ Then he pulls out the needle. ‘Good girl,’ he says. ‘All done.’

  I half expect him to slap me on the rump, as if I’m an obedient horse. He doesn’t. Instead, he waves three sterile tubes at me. ‘Off to the lab with these.’ He doesn’t even say goodbye, just slides quietly out of the room, student in tow. It’s as if he’s suddenly embarrassed that any of this intimacy happened between us.

  But the nurse is lovely. She talks to us as she dresses my back with gauze, then comes round the side of the bed and smiles down at me.

  ‘You need to lie still for a while now, sweetheart.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Been here before, eh?’ She turns to Dad. ‘What’re you going to do with yourself?’

  ‘I’ll sit here and read my book.’

  She nods. ‘I’m right outside. You know what to look for when you get home?’

  He reels it off like a professional. ‘Chill, fever, stiff neck or headache. Drainage or bleeding, any numbness or loss of strength below the puncture site.’

  The nurse is impressed. ‘You’re good!’

  When she goes out, Dad smiles at me. ‘Well done, Tess. All over now, eh?’

  ‘Unless the lab results are bad.’

  ‘They won’t be.’

  ‘I’ll be back to having lumbar punctures every week.’

  ‘Shush! Try and sleep now, baby. It’ll make the time go more quickly.’

  He picks up his book, settles back in his chair.

  Pinpricks of light like fireflies bat against my eyelids. I can hear my own blood coursing, like hooves pounding the street. The grey light outside the hospital window thickens.

  He turns a page.

  Behind his shoul
der, in the painting, smoke innocently rises from a farmhouse chimney and a woman runs – her face tilted upwards in terror.

  Seven

  ‘Get up! Get up!’ Cal shouts. I pull the duvet over my head, but he yanks it straight off again. ‘Dad says if you don’t get up right now, he’s coming upstairs with a wet flannel!’

  I roll over, away from him, but he skips round the bed and stands over me, grinning. ‘Dad says you should get up every morning and do something with yourself.’

  I kick him hard and pull the duvet back over my head. ‘I don’t give a shit, Cal! Now piss off out of my room.’

  I’m surprised at how little I care when he goes.

  Noise invades – the thunder of his feet on the stair, the clatter of dishes from the kitchen as he opens the door and doesn’t shut it behind him. Even the smallest sounds reach me – the slosh of milk onto cereal, a spoon spinning in air. Dad tutting as he wipes Cal’s school shirt with a cloth. The cat lapping the floor.

  The hall closet opens and Dad gets Cal’s coat for him. I hear the zip, the button at the top to keep his neck warm. I hear the kiss, then the sigh – a great wave of despair washing over the house.

  ‘Go and say goodbye,’ Dad says.

  Cal bounds up the stairs, pauses a moment outside my door, then comes in, right over to the bed.

  ‘I hope you die while I’m at school!’ he hisses. ‘And I hope it bloody hurts! And I hope they bury you somewhere horrible like the fish shop or the dentist’s!’

  Goodbye, little brother, I think. Goodbye, goodbye.

  Dad’ll be left in the messy kitchen in his dressing gown and slippers, needing a shave and rubbing his eyes as if surprised to find himself alone. In the last few weeks he’s established a little morning routine. After Cal leaves, he makes himself a coffee, then he tidies the kitchen table, rinses the dishes and puts the washing machine on. This takes approximately twenty minutes. After that he comes and asks me if I slept well, if I’m hungry and what time I’m going to get up. In that order.

  When I tell him, ‘No, no and never,’ he gets dressed, then goes back downstairs to his computer, where he taps away for hours, surfing the web for information to keep me alive. I’ve been told there are five stages of grief, and if that’s true, then he’s stuck in stage one: denial.