Charlie and Pearl

by Robinson, Tammy

  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Do I take her back home to her parents? To a hospital where they can treat her pain and offer her a little more dignity than I can?

  I need answers and I don’t know where to go or who to turn to for them.

  PEARL

  I woke up this morning and I was bleeding. Like a period, only much heavier. At first I was embarrassed because I had stained the white sheets on the bed that Charlie and I slept on. I hadn’t had a period in a couple of months so I wasn’t prepared, had no tampons or pads.

  I cried. Charlie knew, of course he did. He woke up in the same bed as me; saw the same blood I did. He tried to make light of it, said my body must be feeling better if it was menstruating again.

  But I knew this wasn’t normal menstrual blood. This was something else; the beginning of the end. The blood is not the fresh red blood of life. It’s a dark brown thick blood of death, and its smell is musty, like an old house. My body is failing. It’s so weak and useless and ugly and pathetic and I hate it. I hate it with a passion that makes me want to beat it with my fists, find something sharp and stab it, throw it down the stairs. Why did I have to get a stupid faulty body? Why couldn’t I get one of the normal, healthy tanned specimens I see every day, on people who abuse them with cigarettes and crap food and don’t even seem to realise how lucky they are? If I was given my time again I would literally do what they say and treat my body like a temple. Only feed it the very best, exercise it regularly, wear SPF 30 sun block every day. Would that have made any difference I wonder.

  Charlie drove us to a supermarket and I waited in the motor home while he went in alone, came back with 4 packets of super heavy flow sanitary pads and some baby wipes then drove me round till we found a public toilet where I could change and try to clean myself up a little. It was so, undignified. I rolled my blood stained underwear and pyjama bottoms into a ball and stuffed them in a rubbish bin. It was full of McDonald’s bags and empty V bottles and I had to really push to hide my shameful evidence.

  Cried some more. The bleeding is accompanied by bad cramping, in my lower back, the tops of my thighs and in my groin. I pop four nurofen and squeeze the side of my seat hard until the pain starts to ease.

  “I’m sorry Charlie” I tell him weakly, “I don’t think I can drive anywhere today” and then I cry as he hushes me and tells me not to be silly, that it’s ok, we don’t have to drive anywhere. There’s nowhere we have to be, no time limit for getting there.

  And as we’re lying on the bed, in the position we always favour, his arms around me from behind, his stomach pressed into my back and his legs curled around mine, I realise this is the end of something else too.

  I will never make love again.

  If only I knew the last time Charlie and I made love that it was the last time, I would have made it last forever.

  CHARLIE

  I’m sorry I wasn’t braver. I’m sorry I couldn’t cure you, or kiss all your fears away and promise you that everything would be ok.

  I did promise you that I wouldn’t leave you to die in a hospital or some hospice where you were surrounded by nurses you didn’t know and patients you didn’t care for.

  I promised you I would be with you when it happened and that I would ensure you died with dignity.

  I’m unbelievably thankful that you walked into the shop that day and I got to meet you and love you like I have loved you, and like I will always love you.

  Acknowledgments and a Dedication

  A HUGE thank you to Miriam, my very first reader for her invaluable help and encouragement, even though you swore at me for the ending I chose, and I frustrated the hell out of you with my constant misspelling of the word ‘lounge’.

  I am indebted to my wonderful family for their support over the years, and my parents for encouraging and nurturing my early love of reading.

  And lastly, thanks to my husband Karl for putting up with me, and cooking your own dinners when I was too caught up in the story to stop.

  This book is dedicated to Kathryn Collins, for her beautiful smile, for making me want to be a better person, and for reminding me every day not to sweat the small stuff.