Numbered

by Amy Andrews

  In excellent English, Madam Dubois turned to the few non-French artists and said, ‘Today we welcome a very special subject to our midst. Pop-pee Dee-vine—’

  The accent on Poppy’s name made Julia want to smile and say awww. It sounded so freaking French. Unfortunately, it didn’t override her overwhelming desire to throw up.

  ‘Pop-pee has terminal breast cancer and it is one of her last wishes that she sit for a life-art class.’

  A gasp, similar to the one that had run around the room a minute earlier, rang out. A muscle jumped in Ten’s jaw and he drummed faster.

  ‘So you’ll notice that—’

  Madam Dubois prattled on about the opportunity to draw a different style of body, a ravaged one, and Julia zoned out. She couldn’t bear to listen to Poppy being talked about as a subject.

  Exhibit A – a dying woman, a ravaged woman, with one breast.

  She knew that’s how these classes were approached. That it wasn’t about the giggles or drawing naughty pictures, but about the human body as an art form. About muscles and veins and sinews. That the subject was looked upon as art. It was only the outside that mattered – not the story of the person beneath.

  Behind Madam’s head, Julia could make out the Eiffel Tower through the wooden slats of the window shutter just above the chaise. She suddenly wished they were doing that today and not tomorrow. She wasn’t sure she was ready for Poppy to strip off her clothes and lie there as the subject, while everybody turned their heads from side to side, inspecting her body and the way the light fell across it to find the art without knowing what lived and breathed and pulsed behind the art to make the woman.

  Even though she knew that was exactly why Poppy wanted to do it, why she was more determined to do it now than ever. Last night when Ten had asked her (again) if she was sure, had told her none of them would think less of her if she backed out, she’d simply said, ‘I want to do it.’

  When he’d asked why she’d said, ‘Because people look at me and then look away immediately. I feel like I don’t exist anymore because people don’t know how to cope with me looking like this, with my … mortality hanging over me like a black cloud. I feel invisible. I want to be looked at. I want to be studied not because I’m dying but because I’m living. Because the human body is art – even mine. I want somebody to find the beauty left in my body, not just see cancer and death, or some … failed medical experiment.’

  Julia had felt about a foot high after that. How often had she looked at Poppy these last months and the cancer had been all she’d been able to see? Her friend – Poppy – had got lost amid all the grief and fear.

  ‘If she says ravaged one more fucking time I’m going to deck her,’ Ten growled, all low and rumbly.

  Julia blinked, coming out of her reverie, tuning in to Madam Dubois once again.

  ‘And don’t forget – bodies are beautiful. I usually urge my students to remember to see the pain as well as the beauty, the struggle as well as the spoils. But today I am going to remind you all to see the beauty as well as the pain. Okay?’

  Everyone nodded and Julia thought Ten was going to break a finger or two; he was drumming so fiercely now it could be practically heard reverberating throughout the small studio area. The drumming made her think about Spike and for a crazy second she wished he was here.

  ‘Pop-pee? Pop-pee Dee-vine? We are ready for you now.’ Madam Dubois’ accent and girlish lilt gave Poppy’s name a musical quality that reminded Julia of the kids in India.

  She held her breath as Poppy emerged from another room off to the side, where she’d been waiting for the last fifteen minutes. She was dressed in a silky gown, and although there wasn’t the same gasp as when Madam had announced Poppy’s terminal cancer status, the reaction around the room to Poppy’s bald, tattooed head and slight frame was palpable.

  But Poppy didn’t seem to notice, or at least she pretended not to as she marched straight up to the chaise and smiled at Madam Dubois.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  Poppy nodded. ‘I am.’

  Madam Dubois nodded briskly, too, obviously approving of Poppy’s commitment. ‘Take off the gown and lie back on the chaise.’

  ‘How do you want me to lie on it?’

  ‘However you are most comfortable, ma cherie. You will need to hold the pose for some time.’

  And then with one shrug of her shoulders, Poppy was standing before them all completely naked. ‘Fuck,’ Ten muttered under his breath, his knuckles whitening as his drumming fingers curled into fists by his side.

  Julia knew exactly how he felt. Poppy looked pale and smooth and yes, ravaged, as she arranged herself on the lounge, seemingly oblivious to her audience. Julia wanted to rush down the front, pick up the gown, wrap Poppy up in it and tell everyone to keep their freaking eyes to themselves. She wasn’t some exhibit. Some art.

  She was Poppy and she was theirs.

  Madam Dubois opened the shutters behind Poppy, taking care to leave the glass shut – the studio was wonderfully warm but outside the temperature had barely struggled to double figures despite the cloudless day. The last thing Poppy needed was cold air freezing her bits and pieces. Light flooded in, bathing the chaise and Poppy in bright autumn sunshine.

  Poppy finally came to rest half on her back, half on her side. Her hips were tilted on the side, her buttocks supported by the back of the chaise. Her top arm lay along the length of her body, her elbow lying in the natural dip of her waist, her hand resting on her hip. Her bottom arm was above her head, bent at the elbow, her palm cupping her nape, her paltry bicep forming a slight pillow for her cheek.

  Her right breast, pulled high from her arm position, sat perkily on her chest, the pale mocha nipple erect despite the warmth of the room. The scar where her left breast had been was light pink now.

  ‘Okay, Pop-pee, are you comfortable?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  Madam Dubois nodded approvingly again, then said something in French before saying, ‘You may begin,’ in English to the non-French speakers.

  Scarlett started straightaway, but Julia didn’t know if she could. Neither, apparently, did Ten, who just stood there looking at his wife, misery and pride in every line of his body.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he mouthed to her and she shot him a smile that said a thousand things in one slight uplift of the mouth. I’m fine and I’m alive right now and I love you and I want this, so pick up your damn charcoal already.

  That smile would certainly have given the Mona Lisa a run for her money.

  So they both did as she had asked. They picked up their charcoal and they started drawing as Madam Dubois did her rounds, stopping to make comments with her students, usually in French.

  Despite her flair for style and colour, Julia hadn’t been that enamoured with art at school. She’d been quite good at it but had hated being constrained to what the curriculum required and had basically ditched the subject the second she’d been allowed. It was why paint something had been one of the few items on her bucket list, because she’d known that she had it in her, that deep down there was an artist ready to bust out. She’d just never really found a subject worth painting before.

  Until today.

  And if anybody had ever told her that this day would come and she would be engrossed and absorbed in sketching her naked, not-long-for-this-world best friend, she’d have scoffed in that truly cutting way she’d learned at the feet of her mother.

  As much as part of her rebelled at being a party to this somewhat macabre last-dying-wish thing, the other part of her, the emerging artist, revelled in the challenge. Maybe it was the way the sunlight transformed Poppy, giving her an ethereal glow, or maybe it was because she wasn’t seeing Poppy the subject of a life-art class, or even the cancer; she was seeing Poppy, her best friend stripped bare. All the life and warmth and shared memories stared back at her through Poppy’s lovely brown eyes and satisfied, pensive expression.

  She could see their first day tog
ether at school, their conversations whispered into the night long after lights out.

  The holiday at Byron Bay, climbing the lighthouse and dancing on the beach.

  The day Julia had lost her virginity – to the gardener’s son, who her mother had said would never be any good at anything. She’d been wrong about that: he’d been surprisingly good at some things.

  Poppy’s first kiss. And then two years and countless compatibility tests later, the day she’d lost her virginity.

  The night they’d both got pissed on Julia’s mother’s bottle of cherry schnapps and they’d drunk-dialled the school pretending to be Scarlett and told the headmistress they were all running away to the circus together.

  Poppy walking across the stage at her university graduation.

  Even that day all those months ago now when they’d sat on those hard, awful chairs at the hospital in blissful ignorance of what was to come and could laugh about the horrible decor and the orderly who spoke to Julia’s breasts.

  All of their life experiences – the good, the bad and the downright freaking ugly – flowed through Julia’s fingers to the paper.

  Two hours later, Madam Dubois called everyone to order, urging them to stop, telling them the day’s session was over. She thanked Poppy, who pulled on her gown.

  ‘Jules? Are you okay?’

  Julia looked at Ten, surprised to find their time was up and that her cheeks were wet. She nodded as she used the back of her hand to wipe away the tears. ‘I think it’s … catharsis.’

  Ten nodded, too, understanding as only he could. ‘It’s really good,’ he said, indicating Julia’s easel.

  She looked at it then – as a whole. As a picture. Not as an emotional collage of their combined past or a representation of their friendship and love.

  As a piece of art.

  And Ten was right. It was good. It was really good. It had captured the essence of Poppy. The way she was physically now, her thinness, her bald head, her mutilated chest, but also the spirit of the person she was underneath the prominent bones and the murderous disease desolating her body.

  She glanced at Poppy, and Poppy gave her a dreamy smile. ‘Thank you,’ she mouthed at her friend and Poppy nodded, not needing an explanation, as if she knew that Julia had needed this as much as she did.

  Julia looked back at the drawing and knew that whatever happened and wherever she went in the world, this would always go with her. Her parents owned a Picasso, but it had nothing on this. This was a work of the heart and it would always be her most prized possession.

  Then she looked over at Ten’s sketch. It was wildly different but equally compelling. All long, sweeping lines, more soft focus and utterly feminine – capturing Poppy’s ethereal quality. A portrait of a lover.

  Scarlett’s was more about the details. The intricate pattern of henna on Poppy’s head, the brilliance of her eyes, the smile so perfect and right. A mother cataloguing her love.

  They were all masterpieces, and Julia knew then, as she took them all in, that Poppy had given each of them the most remarkable gift.

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, they sat around their tiny Montmartre apartment admiring their handiwork while Paris bustled about outside. Tomorrow was another big day – getting to the top of the Eifel Tower – but for now they were happy to rest on their laurels.

  ‘I love them all,’ Poppy murmured, beaming at the results as she sat snuggled in Ten’s lap on the couch opposite the wall where the sketches had been placed for easy admiration. ‘You’re all brilliant.’

  ‘We had an easy subject,’ Ten teased.

  ‘I’m so glad I did this.’ Poppy looked at Julia and her mother. ‘That we did this.’

  ‘So am I,’ Julia smiled, reaching out her hand and linking her fingers with Poppy’s.

  It should have been weird all sitting there with Poppy gazing at nude drawings they’d sketched of her, but it wasn’t. Strangely, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

  Poppy dropped Julia’s hand and eased off Ten’s lap and wandered over to the charcoal sketches. She strolled back and forth, taking them all in before stopping in front of Julia’s and crouching. She picked it up and studied it for the longest time and Julia’s heart almost faltered at the constant flicker of emotions across Poppy’s face, like a movie reel from the past.

  She stood slowly and glanced at Julia. Something shifted in her face. She paused like she was weighing something up. Something big.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said, the drawing still in hand. ‘I want you there. At the end.’ She looked at Ten and her mother. ‘I want you all there with all this—’ she stared down at the drawing ‘—love surrounding me.’

  Julia’s gaze flew to Ten, then back to Poppy. She sat forward. ‘Really?’

  Poppy nodded, smiling through eyes glistening with tears. ‘There is so much love here. How can I not want this around me when I’m going to need it most? I was trying to make it easier for you, but … how can I shut you out of this? From the moment we met we’ve shared everything. I’ve shared my whole life with you – it’s right here,’ she pointed at the drawing, ‘in this amazing sketch. And I know it’s not going to be easy to share my death, but … I need you there at the end.’

  Julia held her breath, and she could feel Ten and Scarlett doing the same as they sat beside her on the couch, too afraid to say anything and somehow bugger up their luck.

  ‘I need you all there.’

  Julia and Ten were on their feet at exactly the same time. Ten took three paces and crushed Poppy to him. Julia reached them both a second later.

  ‘Thank you,’ Ten muttered over and over, putting his arm around Julia as she joined them.

  Julia had no words, she just broke down and cried. She’d been invited to witness the most intimate experience of human existence.

  An invitation she had craved and demanded.

  She hated it already.

  * * *

  A commotion woke Julia at five the next morning. Her head felt woolly from crying herself to sleep and her body clock being well and truly screwed from multiple time zones in the last few weeks.

  ‘Help! Julia, for fuck’s sake, get in here now!’

  Julia sat bolt upright at Ten’s insistent bellow, stumbling through the dark apartment on automatic pilot to the room next door, Scarlett’s sudden loud wail spurring her on. The light stabbed into her eyes as she flew into the room and she squinted against it, but she could still see what the problem was.

  Poppy’s frail body shuddered and shook, her arms and legs flailing around in grand, rhythmic movements. Saliva frothed out of her mouth, and a wet patch on her silky pyjamas indicated she’d been incontinent. Ten was trying to cradle her head in his lap as tears streamed down his face.

  ‘Please don’t die now, baby,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the Eiffel Tower to go. You’ve always wanted to see the tower, remember? Please don’t die.’

  ‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ Scarlett said.

  Julia nodded, her heart belting along like a runaway train. She was so frightened she could barely think, but she did know one thing for sure – they wouldn’t be going to the Eiffel Tower today.

  Or any day.

  Poppy was at the end. If she got through this, they were going home.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Two weeks later and back on home turf, nothing made sense like it should. Her organs are shutting down. What did that even mean?

  Things shut down. Things like computers, and shops on public holidays. Not people. Not people who brimmed with life and love and outrage. Not Poppy.

  Quentin ran his finger along the crisp white edge of the sheet, caressing the hem between his thumb and forefinger, the rhythmic motion the only sane thing in his world right now. The sheet, and the sound of Poppy’s oxygen flowing into her nose. Contrived, but comfortingly regular. One of Poppy’s slender, pale hands rested on the edge of the bed near where he was ministering to the sheet. He rubbed h
is long brown thumb across it, wondering if she could feel the callused scraping. His thumb traced one of the green-blue veins of her wrist and followed it up her arm towards the place it creased delicately in the middle.

  As a child, Quentin had hated looking at or thinking about his veins. The idea that his life force rested on those fragile pathways made him nauseous. Even now, he wasn’t wild about injections or blood tests. And it wasn’t because he was scared of blood; it was because he hated coming face to face with evidence of his own precarious mortality.

  But right now those veins looked good to him. They – along with the light pulse that he could feel at Poppy’s wrist when he lay his thumb there – were evidence that Poppy continued to live. She was still in the game.

  Her organs had not shut down yet. But the thought that they would – that they were doing so – made him want to yell with rage; a brittle bellow that prickled in his stomach and clawed its way up to his throat.

  If her organs were shutting down, if the white-coated fuckers knew that, why couldn’t they stop it?

  They had all those machines. The one that tracked her heart rate. The one that monitored her oxygen saturations. Where was the one they really needed – the stopping-the-organs-from-shutting-down machine? The starting-up-the-organs machine?

  Quentin looked at her hand. The palm. The wrist. The arm. Because he couldn’t look at her face. It was so thin now, and the nasal prongs that had done their work for her for the last two days seemed monstrous, distorting the heart-shaped outline of her face. He was scared that he wouldn’t be able to see her the same way again when they took them off, as they had said they would, at the end. After two days of looking at her with those prongs, he feared he would never be able to picture her face without them again.

  He put his face to her palm and breathed in. Even here, in this place of death, she still smelled liked Poppy, somehow magically like chocolate and watermelon, even above all the competing smells of the hospice – disinfectant, medicine, despair.