How To Be Brave

by Louise Beech

  You’ve found the book.

  But Rose’s logbook demanded my time too. It slowly filled with numbers; twelve-point-two, fourteen-point-three, seventeen, fifteen-point-four. We needed to achieve less than ten but Shelley assured us we were doing well. I’d decorated the logbook cover with a picture of Doctor Who, hoping it might make Rose smile, but she turned away.

  On one of her routine visits Shelley said, ‘No family finds a diabetes diagnosis easy and it must be especially hard that Rose’s dad is away. Are your family nearby? Is there anyone who can come and stay, give you a break for a few days.’

  Rose sat wordlessly between us.

  I shook my head vigorously. ‘My mum lives on the Isle of Wight and I don’t want to disrupt her life when there’s no need. I saw my dad last week, took Rose there for a few hours. I’ve got my friend Vonny. Jake rings when he can and he’ll be home in about seven weeks. I don’t need anyone else. We’re fine.’

  Shelley suggested Rose give us a moment. When she had stomped off, Shelley said, ‘Have you thought about counselling, pet?’

  ‘God, no. She’s only nine. She’d be terrified. She’d never talk to a stranger.’

  ‘I meant for you,’ said Shelley.

  ‘Me? Why would I need it?’

  ‘Natalie, there’s nothing wrong with admitting how hard this is. You’re the only mum I’ve ever visited who didn’t break down and cry.’

  I felt it was a criticism. That she saw me as cold, emotionless. Why must I prove that I had feelings? Indignant, I said, ‘I’ll be sure to weep for you next time.’

  Shelley closed her file. ‘I didn’t mean to … Look, it’ll get easier, pet.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ I sighed, ‘but it’ll get harder first?’

  She left and I tried to rescue Rose with the only lifejacket in my possession; the man in the brown suit. In the shed her face had glowed when she’d talked about him, and we had somehow shared a curious communication with him.

  So I asked, ‘What did he say when he suggested you go to the shed?’

  ‘Can’t remember,’ she shrugged.

  ‘Was it in a dream?’

  Another shrug.

  ‘What did he look like? How did he talk?’

  I was sure I saw light flash in Rose’s eyes for a brief, hopeful moment, but it died as soon as it was born. Then she went upstairs and shut the bedroom door softly and stayed there until her next injection.

  When I dragged Rose to the supermarket later I looked for the man in the brown suit myself – in windows, in faces, in bus passengers. Would I ever see him again the way I had at the hospital? Had Rose and I both conjured him up to come and rescue us, and now find we must save ourselves?

  You’ve found the book.

  I awaited the night, when my fingers continued to work at the ribbons.

  Another day passed. Another prick, pain, blood, prick, pain, blood; another meal or snack eaten quietly while I forced cheery chitchat; another injection in a resistant too-thin thigh or tummy; bleak silence after silence after silence.

  Only the dark was kind to me. At night, because she was half asleep, I managed to sneak in and do Rose’s two nightly blood tests, before she realised and scratched me and cursed.

  In between it all, there was a call from Jake: he mostly talked to Rose about going back to school. He was the only person she would open up to. Though envious that she found words for her dad, I loved hearing her description of why school was rubbish and she shouldn’t have to go. If I closed my eyes and ignored the lancets on the kitchen worktop and the logbook on the table, it could almost be that we had gone back in time.

  When I got five minutes with Jake, he said, ‘She’s quiet, isn’t she?’

  ‘Quiet? That was chatty compared with usual these days.’

  Jake paused. ‘You sound different too,’ he said.

  ‘I am different,’ I said. ‘It’s all different, isn’t it?’

  ‘I wish I was home,’ he said.

  ‘So do I,’ I admitted.

  ‘Why don’t you ask my mum to come and stay a while,’ he suggested. ‘You know she wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t need anyone.’ Jake’s mum Krista was sweet, a little bossy but well meaning. I didn’t want her taking over. ‘If someone helps me it’s only delaying the inevitable – that there’s just me. Just me and Rose. I’d rather face it straight away. Rip off the plaster fast.’

  ‘Time will fly,’ said Jake. ‘I’ll be back before you know it.’

  When I hung up I felt sure for a moment that someone stood behind me. I spun about, expecting Rose. No one. Just a room full of things I had to do and emptiness I had to face.

  You’ve found the book. The thought that later I would continue trying to unravel the knots to get inside it kept me going.

  Rose returned to school and I had no idea how she felt about it. Shelley educated the staff on Rose’s needs and, having arranged to take three months off work, I went into school at lunchtime to do the necessary finger prick and injection.

  We sat in the school office amongst grey files and boxes of footballs and lost PE kits. If a teacher entered, Rose gave me her hand, but never her gaze. Small heads bobbed past the sliding window, some jumping up to peer in and see what we were up to. I realised how different Rose must feel, having to think always about what she should or shouldn’t eat, worrying about not-yet-experienced hypos and bruises and the new pink medical alert bracelet we’d bought.

  One lunchtime I looked for her friends Jade and Hannah in the cloakroom. I wanted to ask how she seemed but Rose saw me first and found the voice she never gave me anymore. ‘Mum, what are you doing here?’

  ‘I was only going to ask your friends if you’re okay,’ I said, wearily. ‘You never tell me anything and I’m just worried.’

  ‘Mum, you can’t,’ she said, distressed. ‘I don’t tell them about diabetes.’ She whispered the D word like something terrible would happen if it reached ears beyond ours. ‘I don’t want them to know.’

  ‘They’ll know,’ I said softly, relishing our conversation, however fraught. ‘Their mums probably told them.’

  The potent smell of socks and plimsolls and floor polish made me feel as though I too were nine again. I recalled how important it was to fit in. How hard I’d tried to laugh at the jokes everyone else did and to do well at games.

  ‘We don’t talk about it.’ Rose closed her eyes as though to make me disappear. ‘We talk about stuff that I want to talk about. Stay away from my friends!’

  ‘They need to know,’ I said. ‘They might have to help you someday – if you collapse or you have one of those hypos.’

  ‘I wish you were dead!’ she screamed, and ran back up the corridor.

  For a moment, so did I. I turned and walked the long way back, not wanting to get home. The sea followed me. The smell was so powerful I wondered if I was losing my mind. Once home, without work or Jake or Rose to fuss over, I hardly knew what to do with myself.

  I went upstairs to get the book.

  Over seven nights I had patiently worked at the black ribbons; releasing each knot gave me the thrill of feeling closer to my prize. I couldn’t bear to cut them. I felt that if such knots had been twisted into it over and over then I should have it not easily. I was supposed to work for it. When I was small I’d often scribbled stories in those five-year diaries that had a tiny silver padlock. Then I’d lose the key and not be able to access the words that I’d strung together. Now I worked to find words that I was sure my grandad, Colin Armitage, had written.

  Rose had eyed the brown book on the bedside table when we did her late blood test one evening. I watched her sneak another glance as I prepared the finger pricker. I smiled privately.

  The next evening I made sure I spent a little longer fiddling with the ribbons, looking up to see if she was watching. Immediately she turned away. Perhaps it was good that something had piqued her interest. But I wasn’t about to offer her, even let her look at what she found s
o intriguing; I didn’t want the appeal to end too soon.

  And so the book took on more weight; maybe Rose’s interest would mean she settled. I shouldn’t have felt so optimistic.

  One morning, she left for school before we’d even done the injection. I lectured her about not having done homework, went into the dining room to get her maths book, came back, and she’d gone, leaving the door open and Bran Flakes strewn like soil on the table. I hurled the bowl at the wall. As abruptly as it came, my frustration went. It slid with the cereal pulp down our lilac wallpaper. I’d no energy to chase her, to go to the school, to do any of it anymore.

  Like a weary soldier home from a long march, I slumped into a chair and put my head in my hands.

  ‘Is it a bad time, pet?’

  I jumped. Shelley stood in the open doorway. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Yes. No. I thought you were coming on Wednesday?’

  ‘It is Wednesday,’ she said, coming into the kitchen.

  ‘Is it?’ I looked at the clock like that might help me. ‘I lose track sometimes. I can stick to the injection schedule but days run away from me.’

  ‘Can I sit down?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is Rose here?’ she asked.

  ‘She went to school without doing her injection.’ I held my hand up, expecting a telling off. ‘Yes, I know, I’m trying! I do everything the way I’m supposed to. It’s been three weeks nearly and still she resists.’

  ‘Shall I talk to her?’ asked Shelley, gently.

  ‘Look what happened last time!’ Rose had sung ‘Baa, Baa Black Sheep’ while Shelley tried patiently to engage her, and I’d yelled that she was a rude madam.

  ‘If it makes you feel any better, this behaviour is normal. Children her age who get diabetes often behave differently. She’s likely depressed, anxious. With you, she’ll get through it though, pet.’ Shelley paused. ‘What does she like?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘What does she enjoy? What hobbies does she have?’

  I looked off towards the book nook in the dining room. The cushions spat dust now when you sat in them and the jackets of most of the books had faded from sitting too long in the same spot, like they had floated adrift in the sun.

  ‘She used to love reading,’ I said, softly. I’d was still trying to recapture her imagination, sneaking paperbacks under her sleeping head. In the morning they’d be upside down in the bin.

  ‘Could you read together while you do her injection?’

  ‘I’ve suggested that,’ I sighed. ‘She’s not interested. And anyway she’s not stupid – she knows it’s just a ruse to get her to do what she doesn’t want.’

  ‘Is there anything at all that she loves?’ asked Shelley. ‘Anything, no matter how small or seemingly silly?’

  For a moment I heard the sea swelling and falling, felt the tickle of its breeze about my bare ankles. Gentle – like the spray in my recent dreams – it swirled around my calves, climbed higher, caressed my knees, as familiar now to me as my own face. But this time it was just leaves near the back door being teased by the wind. I got up and closed it.

  ‘There might be something,’ I said. ‘Someone.’

  ‘Might they come and stay for a while, pet?’

  I knew it would be impossible to explain to Shelley; I hardly understood it myself. So I just said, ‘Yes, maybe.’ Then we looked at Rose’s logbook for a while, discussed upping each dose of insulin a tad, and she said she’d only come now if I requested it. Though her visits sometimes felt intrusive, as I waved her off I felt like I was being abandoned. No more hospital, no more nurses, no more help. Just us. Though I’d told Jake I wanted to face the injury under the plaster full on, I still felt sick.

  You’ve found the book.

  Now, with Rose’s wishing-me-dead words in my head, I sat on the bed with it in both hands. I had thought about telling my dad we’d found it but wasn’t sure how he’d feel. I’d even picked up the phone a few times, but then felt we were meant to read it first. So I wanted to keep it for us; just Rose and me. Maybe the mysterious book would make magic, reignite the gold sparks in her irises.

  My grandad had died long before I was born, but I knew without question that inside these pages he would come to life again. I just had to untie the ribbons and free the words.

  One knot – that was all.

  One knot to undo and it would fall open.

  I pulled on a silky ribbon and the pages parted; another tug and a faint, recognisable smell emanated from the sheets. Where had I smelt it before?

  The two black ribbons dangled like the sails I’d seen in my dream. Though eager to begin, to open the book, I paused. Held it to my chest a moment. It was like when you wait a long time for a baby – you go through two days of labour and when you finally hold her you hardly know what to do.

  I opened the leathery cover to the first page. It was yellowed and the ink upon it had faded to ash grey. Looped words filled the space – graceful, level, high reaching – as though the writer had chewed his pen-end and thought carefully about what to record. They looked like the neat sentences of someone over the worst, someone looking back.

  Am home. But home is not quite like it was before. Because I am not the same. Am home.

  The opening lines. I whispered them aloud, and then read no more. It was enough for now. Instead, I flicked gently through the pages. The draught lifted my hair from my face. A muddle of entries flashed past my eyes, in different pen colours, scribbles and ink stains, changes in flow.

  Inside the front cover, stuck to the page with threadbare tape, were two buttons. One was small and brown, the other brass. I touched the dent they made in the material but didn’t free them.

  What did these tiny things mean? Why had they been kept?

  In the back I found more – newspaper cuttings from 1943, official letters addressed to my grandma, an invitation to Buckingham Palace, a scrap of paper with dates on, and one photograph.

  I put the book down and looked at the black-and-white picture – it was the clearest image I’d ever seen of Grandad Colin. He stood by a flowering bush, the variety of which I couldn’t say without colour, and he wore a thick tie and had his hair slicked to the left and the start of a smile that hadn’t quite reached his eyes. He wore a suit. I didn’t need a colour picture to know its shade. The photograph confirmed all that I’d thought.

  Am home. But home is not quite like it was before. Because I am not the same. Am home.

  Grandad Colin was the man in the brown suit.

  He was the man who’d reassured me at the hospital.

  He was the man who’d invited Rose to the shed.

  It was no surprise at all. I had called him the stranger in the brown suit, but he wasn’t. He was my grandfather.

  And I sensed him then, looking over my shoulder, sad also, knowing my pain. Knowing, somehow, that he was here for me. For us.

  6

  A FAIR RATE OF EXCHANGE

  I don’t think they are looking for us.

  K.C.

  ‘Find something Rose loves,’ Shelley had said.

  So we did. We began trading blood for words. Rose would endure the pain of finger pricking and injections in exchange for a story. But when we made the pact I wondered if my stolen-from-newspapers-and-brown-diary words would be a fair price? Would they distract from finger prick after pierced thigh after finger prick after pierced arm after finger prick after pierced stomach?

  Would it be enough?

  This I often asked of myself when we began our swap. This I wondered each time Rose came into the book nook with her box of lancets and vials of insulin, ready to draw blood, to cut, to read and record numbers in a log like those kept at sea, to hear my story. A logbook full of dates and volumes of liquid is the dullest of stories and I had to make it interesting. So I dropped syllables into its endless ocean.

  We first made our blood for words pact when Rose crept into my room three nights after I’d opened Colin’s diary. I did
n’t mind that she woke me with a brusque shove. While I’d always responded gruffly to such disturbances in the past, now I was glad she’d come to me.

  But I wasn’t glad for long.

  ‘I’ve come to just tell you something,’ she said, carefully and seriously.

  In the darkness her voice reminded me of the wind when it picked up and dropped the worn tarpaulin on the shed roof. Some words fell so softly I had to fill the space with what made sense; others plummeted.

  ‘I’ve decided I’m not doing it anymore,’ she said. ‘I’ve thought and thought about it and I’m not having diabetes any more. I’ve done it for more than a month and that’s enough. I’m sure my pancreas can fix itself. Harry Potter would be able fix himself without bloody injections. So I’m not doing it. Don’t care if I go totally all unconscious again. I’m just going to go and lie in bed from now on and that’s it. Stay there and wait for my long-forever sleep.’

  In the blackness I listened. As my eyes got accustomed to it, her silhouette became more defined, as though she’d not been real earlier and now was. I didn’t move. I could feel the lump of Grandad Colin’s diary under my pillow, kept safe the way Rose used to cherish her books.

  ‘Goodnight, mum,’ Rose said.

  I couldn’t speak. I knew if I let her go back to her bed, I might never get her out of it. She began to head for the door.

  Do something, my mind screamed.

  Then, in the dark, Rose stopped and said, ‘Will you say bye to Dad for me?’

  ‘The thing is,’ – I tried to stop my voice breaking, glad of night’s camouflage – ‘how will I be able to tell you about the man in the brown suit if you go to sleep forever? Don’t you want to know who he is?’

  Silence. I waited for her to speak. What more did I have to say? What lifeline did I have to keep her? I’d played the only card I had straight away, like a novice. If she expressed no interest what else did I have to offer?