‘I just wish I knew what to do.’ I reach out and take his hands. ‘I just wish I knew how to bring you back again.’
‘You can’t bring me back; I’m not here any more,’ he says.
‘But you are here, you are.’ I lean my cheek against his knuckles. ‘I can feel you.’
Vincent removes my hand from his face.
‘I don’t want to be here like this,’ he says. ‘I want to be the man that scooped you up and chucked you over his shoulder and took you upstairs. I want to be the man that was six inches taller than you, that you had to stand on your tiptoes to kiss.’
‘But you still are …’
Vincent turns his face away from me.
‘We can be happy again if we just try,’ I tell him. ‘You’re still alive. We’re both still alive, and we still have so much to be grateful for. We just have to try.’
‘You don’t get it,’ he says. ‘You shouldn’t have to try to be happy.’
‘Just come upstairs with me,’ I say. ‘Come to bed, and let me hold you while I sleep. Please, Vincent, please. If you can’t do anything else for me, do this.’
I get up and hold a hand out to him. After a moment, he takes it and follows me.
Dear You,
It’s hard sometimes not to let it get you all down, not to feel despair. Sometimes you feel like you are trying so hard, that you are always, always walking uphill and you never get to the top. I know you feel that way – you don’t have to tell me. And I know you’ve been trying to keep it from me. You’ve been putting a brave face on for me, but you don’t have to.
I know sometimes days weigh down heavily on your shoulders, and they seem cold and miserable, even in the hottest of summers. I know that sometimes you can’t see the point of getting out of bed, that you only get out of bed for me. Because I need you.
Soon I will be gone, but you have to still keep getting out of bed. You have to. And you have to keep going to the shops, and going to work, and talking on the phone to your mum and taking the dog for a walk. You can’t stop just because I have. You have to go on living. You have to live.
Ask for help. Tell people how you feel, how you are struggling. Say if you feel alone and you don’t know what to do. Don’t hide it if it feels as if just one heartbeat after another is too much to bear.
You love me, so live; that’s the legacy I want most. I want you to live.
Not just to exist through all the days from now to the next time I see you.
But to live, and laugh, and be a thousand times happier than you ever have been, before. Live, my love. Live.
Me x
THE FIFTH NIGHT
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
HOPE
‘Let’s go outside and play,’ Ben says, and for a moment I thought he meant like we used to, when we were kids: inventing complicated games of pretend where he was a Premier League footballer and I was a warrior princess with a dragon. But he means let’s go out in the dark and take our guitars and play them, which is even better. Except, except I don’t feel like I should be happy, not today. A person, a person who I knew a little bit, who I read to, who I liked, is gone. I feel like I should stay inside and miss her.
‘Let’s go outside and play; play to the moon and the stars, for Issy,’ he says.
I had thought he might not come back after yesterday’s awkwardness over the kiss thing, and then the fact that I couldn’t sleep, or stop crying or let go of him. He stayed for a long time, and let me cry. Stayed while I went through my physio, even though physio was the last thing I wanted, and stayed until sometime after I went to sleep. It all got a bit intense, and I know how much he doesn’t like intense. So I thought he might not come back tonight. I thought he might go to the pub, or round a mate’s, instead, and I would haven’t blamed him, but here he was, right after work, still wearing his work shirt and his name badge.
I stare at the reflection of my room in the glass door, trying to picture myself sitting on this bed, trying to get a good look at who I really am. Who is this woman, this nothing person, who’s done nothing, been nowhere, and sooner or later, but most likely sooner, will be in the ground without anything left behind to show for her life? I see myself, for just a moment: the ghost of living me. And I feel so disappointed in myself.
‘It’s November,’ I remind him.
‘It’s warm, though,’ he says. ‘It’s stupid warm – probably global warming or some shit. And last night, after you fell asleep, I couldn’t face going home, so I went for a wander around the garden, and I’ve got something to show you …’
‘That sounds like some sort of threat,’ I say.
He picks up my guitar and throws a scarf at me. ‘Put that on,’ he says. ‘In case there’s suddenly a snowstorm or something. Come on. Something sad has happened; we owe it to Issy to mark the occasion, in the only way two outcast emo kids know how: with maudlin songs and introspection.’
He’s right, of course.
It’s oddly quiet outside as I follow him past the optimistically named patio and down a little path that slopes away towards where the canal is. I follow Ben down what quickly becomes a stony track, disappearing into the thick fringe of woodland that skirts the ground’s borders. I pretend that the light that slants through them is generated by the moon, and not a thousand reflected street lights. Strange shadows give the path a magical feel, and it’s a little surreal; perhaps if I keep following Ben, I will end up in Narnia or Wonderland.
Ben stops, and motions for me to wait. For some reason, we aren’t talking, just absorbing the sounds of the night around us: the wind in the trees, the hum of the market beyond, and beyond that the thunder of the trains, and the greatness of the city, creaking with life. Ben messes about with something ahead, as I stand there waiting, listening, leaning into the quiet, straining to catch a fleeting note of something else. And then, quite suddenly, I see the glow of a lantern sitting on the stump of a tree, and then another and another. Eventually, a small circle of candlelight encompasses us, revealing a congregation of low benches made out of roughly cut logs, converging on a large carved wooden chair. I vaguely remember Stella telling my mum about story-telling events for the sick children at Marie Francis and for the kids who have lost someone close to them. Stories and role playing – ways to help them cope with layers of loss. This must be the special place she was talking about; this is the place where children come to try and understand death. I wonder if Issy came here.
Ben settles on one of the benches and takes out his guitar, easing it onto his knee.
For a moment it feels wrong to be here, in this place, like we are somehow trespassing. Not so much on the place itself, but on the feelings that have been faced here, the realities that have somehow been accepted, by people much smaller and braver than me. And yet I sit myself down and rest my own guitar on my lap. Through the trees I can see the lights of Marie Francis burning bright from the fourteen full-length windows. Issy’s room is still dark tonight; tomorrow the lights will be switched on again.
Trains rattle by on the other side of the canal, and the eternal thud, thud, thud from the market persists. But I don’t listen hard. I withdraw inside this little world and pretend that all there is to the whole existence is the candlelight, something like the moon, the stars and Ben.
He leads the singing again, on the song we are working on – the one I started and he picked up and made brilliant. I listen to his lone voice for a few bars before my fingers begin to move across the strings of my guitar – working, thinking, catching up – to make the song happen. And then, all at once, it comes just as it always does: the moment when I am not thinking about what I am doing any more. I’m just there in the moment, in the music, and it’s part of me, running through my heart and to every nerve ending. Joy and purpose swell in my chest and I feel fit to bursting with certainty. I think of Issy, and how she loved it when Ben sang. And I sing not only for her but to her, because somehow, as foolish as it seems, just for a few moments I think I sense her somewhere nea
r. It’s so rare, it’s so special, and then it’s finished.
The woods are completely empty, except for Ben and me, and these empty children’s chairs.
The background noise of London presses in, and Ben leans forward a little, and it seems to me that he is shouldering the intrusion away.
‘I know you want to know why I kissed you and why I hoped you’d forget that I kissed you,’ Ben says at last. ‘I kissed you because you are very kissable, and I was very drunk – drunk enough to forget that you aren’t on the list of people that it’s OK to make a pass at.’
I open my mouth, but Ben gets there first.
‘It felt like an out-of-body experience: I could see myself, but I couldn’t hear myself telling me not to be a dick. And you were there, so beautiful and sad looking, and I wanted …’
‘To comfort me? Pity snog?’
‘No, I didn’t want to do anything,’ Ben corrects himself. ‘I just wanted. I wanted you. So I kissed you. And I am so sorry. I’m sorry because I know it was wrong. It was a moment that risks all the millions of other moments that mean so much to you and me. It was my loins talking; lust overtook me for a second or two. But then you pushed me off and the only thing I could think was, oh God, what have I done? Have I ruined everything?’
‘It is very hard to know how to process this information,’ I tell him, bowing my head.
‘And then you got really sick and nearly died. Hope, you always think it’s you who follows me, that I’m always the leader, but what you never understand is how much I need you. I need you here, in this world, alive, my friend, because … If it was me, if I made you sick, if I’d killed you, I’d never have forgiven myself. And I need you. Without you I’m just some twat who works in a phone shop.’
We don’t talk for a minute or so. There’s a breeze in the treetops and a siren, signalling some faraway tragedy, wailing in the distance. Somewhere a wind chime clangs.
‘It might not have been you that made me sick,’ I say. ‘And, even if it was, what does it matter? It’s not like it isn’t a game of Russian roulette every time I stick my head out of the front door, is it? I got ill, and Death tried it on, and I told it to fuck off, actually. I thought about secretly blaming you for a bit, because you know how I like to get all doomy. But I don’t blame you; I don’t blame anyone for anything any more. I think I’ve kind of got it, the meaning of life … I think the whole point is that the only person who can make my life any better is me. And, you know, medical science, and charities and doctors and that, but mainly me. Because I can’t cure myself, but I can choose to be happy. Like you can choose not to be some twat who works in a phone shop.’
‘Bit profound, and also not totally sure it’s true – after all, I have only got four GCSEs, and one of them is in theatre studies.’
‘Look, let’s just be us again,’ I say. ‘Ben and Hope, losers in it together. Because you might need me, but I need you too. So, we take the whole kiss debacle off the table. We acknowledged it and now … we forget about it. We are young and alive, right now. We should be doing young person’s stuff; that’s what Issy told me to do. She said, do it all, do it all for me. And you know, I am hopeless at doing anything on my own, so you need to help me do it all for her. We get back to normal, and we never speak of the kiss again.’
‘OK.’ Ben nods. ‘Speak of what?’
I laugh, and we wait for the moment to reset itself to a normality that we recognise.
‘Well, we are going to rule open mic night,’ Ben says finally. ‘That should make your friend Issy proud.’
‘Are we, though? There’s a big difference between doing this, in a forest where no one can hear, and doing it in front of a load of other people who think they rule at open mic night.’
‘So, what are you worried about? Making a fool of yourself?’
‘No, I’m worried about …’ My mouth is full of words, so many troubles waiting to pour out, but I do what I always do and swallow them. ‘Aren’t you afraid of making a fool of yourself in a room full of hipsters?’
‘Hmm.’ Ben makes the noise, soft and low, but I still hear it.
‘What does that mean?’ I ask him.
‘It doesn’t exactly reflect your newfound philosophy of living life to the full,’ he says. ‘Remember when we were little kids? You stomped all over bullies to protect me. And I don’t mean figuratively. You stood up to kids twice your size, this fury in your eyes, like a demon!’ He chuckles, picturing that little girl. ‘Nothing scared you. It was your idea, remember, when we were at primary school, to sneak out of the back garden and go for a picnic in Regent’s Park with two packets of Wotsits and a can of Fanta. And it was you who did stand up at the school talent contest and told a series of terrible jokes. You got booed and hissed at, but you kept going so long that everyone started laughing anyway. What happened to that kid?’
‘I realised what it means to be dead,’ I say, my voice suddenly very small. ‘I realised what it means to gone, to be nothing. To be dust. I started to see other people like me drop off the planet, to stop being present and start being past tense. I stopped thinking of CF as just this thing I had, and started thinking of it as the thing that had me. When you suddenly become aware of the clock ticking, it’s the only thing you can hear. Honestly, I’m afraid of being nothing one day. I’m afraid of being ash and mud … I’m afraid of going out of my front door. I’m afraid of everything … except you.’
I look up to find his eyes, two tiny points of reflected candlelight, focused on me. ‘Look up,’ he says. ‘Look up.’ He repeats it once again, and I comply. ‘Keep looking for a moment, and wait, wait until your eyes adjust. The longer you look, the more you’ll see the stars. If we had all night, and we were in the middle of the countryside, without any light pollution, we might be able to count about five thousand stars – if we were really good at not counting the same one twice. We don’t know, of course, but experts think there are about seventy thousand million, million, million stars in the universe. That’s a fuck of a lot of stars, little suns blazing away out there. When you feel afraid, go outside at night and look up, because when you do that, and you think about all those other stars out there, nothing on this earth is frightening any more. Nothing.’
‘How do you know that stuff?’ I ask him.
‘Discovery Channel,’ he says, smiling slightly. ‘And, you know, my mum has had a steady stream of “dads” coming in and out of my life since I was a little kid. My granddad told me the millions upon millions of stars thing when I was little, before he died. It helped me. And also it’s a great chat-up line with the ladies.’
I smile. That is so like Ben: one moment he is serious, and he’ll show you just a little of what it is that makes him the man he is, and the next it’s gone – hidden in some off-the-cuff remark. Our friends have always thought he plays the fool, and he does, but he’s more than that. If you know him, if you look carefully, you can see the truth of him. Sweet, brave, curious Ben, who wonders how many stars the universe might contain.
‘You know how my mum never goes out?’ he says. ‘She stays in all day and drinks cider or pops pills, and watches telly and cleans the house. She’s afraid. She’s fifty-seven and afraid of her own shadow. That’s how she’ll end, in another ten or twenty years, if she keeps on drinking the way she does. She’s afraid of everything, and she always looks down and never up. She’s going to die looking at her feet.’
‘What are you, a shit motivational speaker?’
He laughs, and I like to see him smile.
‘What I’m saying is that … well, you should be doing everything you can to make your life last as long as it does. Stop skipping your physio because it’s a bit boring, for one thing. Take care of yourself, not just that body but your head and your heart and your soul. You don’t want it to be university all over again.’
‘What the fuck does that mean? I had to come back from uni; I got really sick.’
‘And then you got better, and you never went
back.’
‘It wasn’t the right time. I’m just waiting …’
‘For what?’ he asks me. ‘Seriously, for what? Because I’m the sort of bloke who will probably kick around Camden dressed as a rock star on weekends until I’m at least forty, and we all know I’ll still be working in a phone shop …’
‘Bullshit,’ I say.
‘No, it’s true, and it’s fine. I don’t care. But you … you aren’t that type of person, Hope. You are one of those annoying shiny, special people. People who achieve things, who change things. You’re one of the people who matter. One of the ones that make life better for the rest of us. Not dust or ashes but one of the stars.’
I watch his face for a moment – the shadows constantly moving over his long nose, his eyes almost hidden.
‘You think that about me?’ I say eventually, scoffing so as to cover up the fact that suddenly my heart has swelled in my chest and I think I might want to hug him. ‘No wonder you’ve only got four GCSEs.’
‘Of course,’ he says.
‘Ben, you know the kiss?’ I prise the words out of my mouth, making myself say them before the moment passes.
‘What kiss?’ he says, but his eyes never leave me.
‘The reason I struggled and freaked out was … well, it made me feel things. Emotions and … urges.’
‘Christ,’ Ben says, holding his guitar just a little bit closer. ‘And it wasn’t even a very good kiss: it was all jaw bones and teeth.’
‘And it wasn’t even a good kiss,’ I agree. ‘But I liked it. I liked feeling things, and I think that’s what rattled me so much. I don’t want to be like this, Ben. I want to be well. Not like this, now, but more than I ever have been before. It sort of feels urgent that I get my act together and start to live whatever life I’ve got, but … I am just so scared. I’m shit scared.’
‘Want to have another go – at the kiss, I mean?’ Ben offers. ‘Not out of lust, or anything, just in the interests of experimentation on the old urges front?’
We Are All Made of Stars Page 14
