‘Actually, Mum, I am the one who can stick my head in the sand,’ I say, staring out of the window. ‘I am the one who can completely ignore what is happening to me, because most of the time I won’t even notice.’
It’s funny: I say the words out loud, and feel the fear, there in the pit of my stomach, but it’s like it isn’t part of me. It really is like it’s happening to someone else, this terror.
‘You don’t mean that, Claire,’ Mum says crossly, as if she really thinks that I mean I don’t care, and not that I’m just saying it to annoy her. ‘What about your daughters?’
I say nothing because my mouth is suddenly thick with words that won’t form properly or mean anything like what I need them to mean. So I stay quiet, looking out of the window, at the houses slipping past, one by one. It’s almost dark already; living-room lamps are switched on, TVs flicker behind curtains. Of course I care. Of course I’ll miss it, this life. Steam-filled kitchens on winter evenings, cooking for my daughters, watching them grow: these are the things I will never experience. I’ll never know whether Esther will always eat her peas one by one, and if she will always be blonde. If Caitlin will travel across Central America, like she plans to, or whether she’ll do something completely different that she hasn’t even dreamed of yet. I won’t ever know what that undreamed wish will be. They’ll never lie to me about where they are going, or come to me with their problems. These are the things I’ll miss, because I’ll be somewhere else and I won’t even know what I’m missing. Of course I bloody care.
‘I suppose they’ll have Greg.’ My mum sounds sceptical as she ploughs on, determined to discuss what the world will be like after I’m no longer in it, even though it shows a quite spectacular lack of tact. ‘That’s if he can hold it together.’
‘He will,’ I say. ‘He will. He’s a brilliant father.’
I am not sure if that is true, though. I’m not sure if he can take what is happening, and I don’t know how to help him. He is such a good man, and a kind one. But lately, ever since the diagnosis, he is becoming a stranger to me day by day. Every time I look at him he is standing further away. It’s not his fault. I can tell he wants to be there, to be stalwart and strong for me, but I think perhaps the enormity of it all, of all this happening when really we’ve only just started out on our life together, is chipping away at him. Soon I won’t recognise him at all; I know I already find it hard to recognise the way I feel about him. I know he is the last great love of my life, but I don’t feel it any more. Somehow Greg is the first thing I am losing. I remember it, our love affair, but it’s as though I’ve dreamed it, like Alice through the looking glass.
‘You, of all people.’ Mum cannot help lecturing me, telling me off for being in possession of the family’s dark secret, like I brought it on myself by being so damned naughty. ‘You, who knew what it was like to grow up without a father. We need to make plans for them, Claire. Your girls are losing their mother and you need to make sure they will be OK when you aren’t capable of looking after them any more!’
She brakes suddenly at a zebra crossing, causing a chorus of horns to sound behind her, as a little girl who looks far too young to be out on her own hurries across the road, huddled against the rain. In the glare of Mum’s headlights I can see she’s carrying a thin blue plastic bag with what looks like four pints of milk inside, bumping against her skinny legs. I hear the break in Mum’s voice, hovering just below the frustration and anger. I hear the hurt.
‘I do know that,’ I say, suddenly exhausted. ‘I do know that I have to make plans, but I was waiting, I was hoping. Hoping I might get to enjoy being married to Greg and grow old with him, hoping that the drugs might slow things down for me. Now I know that . . . well, now that I know there is no hope, I’ll get a lot more organised, I promise. Make a wall chart, keep a rota.’
‘You can’t hide from this, Claire.’ She insists on repeating herself.
‘Don’t you think I know that?’ I shout. Why does she always do that? Why does she always push me until I shout at her, as if she isn’t satisfied I’m really listening until she has made me lose my temper? It’s always been that way between us: love and anger mixed up in almost every moment we have together. ‘Do you think I don’t know what I have done, giving them this shitty life?’
Mum pulls into the drive in front of a house – my house, I realise a second too late – and I feel the tears coming against my will. Slamming out of the car, I don’t go into the house, but instead walk into the rain, dragging the edges of my cardigan around me, heading defiantly up the street.
‘Claire!’ Mum shouts after me. ‘You can’t do this any more!’
‘Watch me,’ I say, but not to her, just into the rain, feeling the tiny droplets on my lips and tongue.
‘Claire, please!’ I just about hear her, but I keep walking. I’ll show her; I’ll show them all, especially the people that won’t let me drive. I can still walk; I can still bloody walk! I haven’t forgotten how to do that yet. I’ll just go to the end of the road, where the other one crosses over it, and then turn back. I’ll be like Hansel following a trail of breadcrumbs. I won’t go far. I just need to do this one thing. Go to the end of the road, turn around and come back. Although it is getting darker now, and the houses round here all look the same: neat, squat 1930s semis. And the end of the road isn’t as near as I thought it was.
I stop for a moment, feeling the rain driving into my head, tiny cold needles of icy water. I turn around. My mum isn’t behind me: she hasn’t followed me. I thought she might, but she hasn’t. The street is empty. Did I reach the end of the road and turn around already? I am not sure. Which direction was I walking in? Am I going to or from, and to where? The houses on either side of the road look exactly the same.I stand very still. I left my home less than two minutes ago, and now I am not sure where it is. A car drives past me, spraying freezing water on to my legs. I didn’t bring my phone, and anyway I can’t always remember how to use it any more. I’ve lost numbers. Although I look at them and know they are numbers, I’ve forgotten which ones are which, and which order they come in. But I can still walk, so I begin to walk in the direction that the car that soaked me was going. Perhaps it’s a sign. I will know my house when I see it because the curtains are bright-red silk and the light shining through them makes them glow. Remember that: I have red glowing curtains at the front of my house that one of my neighbours said made me look ‘loose’. I will remember the red glowing curtains. I’ll be home really soon. Everything will be fine.
The appointment at the hospital hadn’t exactly gone well. Greg had wanted to come but I told him to go and finish the conservatory he was building. I told him that nothing the doctor said would make our mortgage need to be paid any the less, or mean that we don’t have to keep feeding the children. It hurt him that I hadn’t wanted him there, but he didn’t realise that I couldn’t cope with trying to guess what the look on his face meant at the same time as guessing what I felt myself. I knew if I took Mum she would just say everything in her head, which is better. It’s better than hearing really terrible news and wondering if your husband is sorry that he ever set eyes on you, that of all the people in the world he could have chosen, he chose you. So I wasn’t in the best frame of mind – pun intended – when the doctor sat me down to go through the next round of test results. The tests they had given me because everything was happening much faster than they’d thought it would.
I can’t remember the doctor’s name because it’s very long with a great many syllables, which I think is funny. I mentioned this as Mum and I sat there waiting for him to finish looking at the notes on his screen and deliver the bad news, but no one else was amused. There’s a time and a place for gallows humour, it seems.
The rain is driving down faster now, and heavier; I wished I’d flounced off with my coat. After a while all the roads round here start to look the same: 1930s semis, in row after row, either side of the street. I’m looking for curtains, aren’t I? What
colour?
I turn a corner and see a little row of shops, and I stop. I’ve come out for a coffee, then? This is where I come on a Saturday morning with Greg and Esther for a pain au chocolat and a coffee. It’s dark, though, and cold and wet. And I don’t seem to have a coat on, and I check my hand, which is empty of Esther’s, and for a moment I hold on tight to my chest, worrying that I’ve forgotten her. But I didn’t have her when I started. If I’d had her when I started, I’d be carrying her monkey, which she always insists on taking out but never wants to carry herself. So I’ve come here for coffee. I’m having some me time. That’s nice.
I head across the road, grateful for the rush of warm air that greets me as I enter the café. People look up at me as I walk in through the door. I suppose I must look quite a sight with my hair plastered to my face.
I wait at the counter, belatedly realising that I am shivering. I must have forgotten my coat. I wish I could remember why I came out for coffee. Am I meeting someone? Is it Greg? I come here sometimes with Greg and Esther for a pain au chocolat.
‘You all right, love?’ the girl, who’s about Caitlin’s age, asks me. She is smiling, so perhaps I know her. Or perhaps she is just being friendly. A woman sitting with her toddler buggy, just to my left, pushes it a little further away from me. I must look strange, like a lady recently emerged from a lake. Haven’t they ever seen a wet person before?
‘Coffee, please,’ I say. I feel the weight of change in my jeans pocket, and produce it in my fist. I can’t remember how much the coffee is here, and when I look at the board over the counter where I know the information is displayed, I am lost. I hold out the coins in the palm of my hand and offer them up.
The girl wrinkles her nose, as if money I’ve touched might somehow be tainted, and I feel very cold now and very lonely. I want to tell her why I am hesitating, but the words won’t come – not the right ones, anyway. It’s harder to say things out loud than think them in my head. It makes me scared to say anything to anyone I don’t know, in case I say something so ludicrous they just cart me away and lock me up, and by that time I’ve forgotten my name and . . .
I glance towards the door. Where is this café? I went to the hospital with Mum, we saw the consultant, Mr Thingy, I couldn’t remember his name, I thought that was quite funny, and now I am here. But I can’t think why I am here, or even where here is. I shudder, taking the coffee and the brown coins that the girl has left on the counter; and then I go and sit down, very still. I feel like if I move suddenly, I might trip some hidden trap, and that something will harm me or I might fall off something. I feel like I might fall very far. I sit still and concentrate hard on how come I am here and how on earth I will leave. And where I will go. Little pieces come back to me – fragments rushing forward with pieces of information that I must somehow decode. The world is shattered all around me.
I’m not responding to the treatment, that much I know. It was always likely. The odds of the drugs doing anything for me were just the same as flipping a coin and calling heads: fifty-fifty. But everyone hoped that, for me, the treatment would make all the difference. Because I am so young, because I have two daughters, and one of them is only three and one will be left to pick up the pieces. They all hoped it would work for me, and work better than anyone – even the doctor with the long and difficult name – ever thought possible. And I too hoped for the groundbreaking miracle that would change everything. It seemed right that fate or God should allow me, of all people, some special dispensation because of my extenuating circumstances. But fate or God has not done that: whichever one it is that is having a good laugh at my expense has done the opposite. Or perhaps it’s nothing so personal. Perhaps it’s just genealogical accidents stretching back millennia that have brought me to this moment in time when I am the one chosen to bear the consequences. I am deteriorating much faster than anyone thought I would. It’s to do with these little emboli. I can remember that word perfectly well, but I have no idea what the metal stirring thing that came with my coffee is called. But the word emboli is quite beautiful, musical almost, poetic. Tiny little blood clots exploding in my brain. It’s a new feature, not something the experts expected. It makes me almost unique in the world, and everyone at the hospital is very excited about it, even though they try to pretend they are not. All I know is that every time one pops up, some more of me is gone for good – another memory, a face or a word, just lost, like me. I look around me, feeling colder now than before, and realise I feel afraid. I have no idea how to get home. I’m here, and I feel sane, but leaving this place seems impossible.
There are Christmas decorations hanging from the ceiling, which is odd. I don’t remember it being Christmas; I am sure it is not Christmas. But what if I’ve been here for weeks? What if I left home and just walked and walked and didn’t stop, and now I’m miles from anywhere and months have gone by and they all think I am dead? I should call Mum. She’ll be angry with me for running off. She tells me that if I want her to treat me like an adult, I need to behave like an adult. She says it’s all about trust. And I say, well, don’t go through my things, then, bitch. I don’t say the bitch bit out loud.
I’d text her, but she doesn’t have a phone. I keep telling her, this is the twentieth century, Mum, get with the programme. But she doesn’t like them. She doesn’t like the fiddly buttons, she reckons. But I wish Mum were here; I wish she were here to take me home, because I am not sure where I am. I look intently around the café. What if she’s here and I have forgotten what she looks like?
Wait, I am ill. I am not a girl any more. I am ill and I have come out for a coffee and I can’t remember why. My curtains are a colour and they glow. Orange, maybe. Orange rings a bell.
‘Hello.’ I look up. There’s a man. I am not supposed to talk to strangers so I look back down at the table. Perhaps he will go away. He does not. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Well, I’m cold.’
‘Would you mind if I sit here? There’s nowhere else.’ I look around and the café is busy, although I can see other empty chairs. He looks OK, even nice. I like his eyes. I nod. I wonder if I’ll have enough words to be able to talk to him.
‘So you came out without a coat?’ he asks, gesturing at me.
‘Looks like it!’ I say carefully. I smile, so as not to scare him. He smiles in return. I could tell him I am ill. He might help me. But I don’t want to. He has nice eyes. He is talking to me like I’m not about to drop down dead at any second. He doesn’t know anything about me. Neither do I, but that’s beside the point.
‘So what happened?’ He chuckles, looking bemused, amused. I find I want to lean towards him, which I suppose makes him magnetic.
‘I only popped out for a pint of milk,’ I tell him, smiling. ‘And locked myself out. I share a flat with three girls and my . . .’ I stop short of saying my baby. For two reasons. First, because I know that this is now, and that it was years ago when I shared a flat with three girls, and back then I didn’t even have a baby. Secondly, because I don’t want him to know that I’ve got a baby, a baby who is not a baby any more. Caitlin, I have Caitlin, who is not a baby. She will be twenty-one next year and my curtains are ruby red and glow. I remind myself that I am not in a position to flirt: I’m a married mother of two.
‘Can I buy you another coffee?’ He signals to the woman behind the counter, who smiles at him as if she knows him. I find it reassuring that the café woman likes him too. I’m losing the ability to judge people by their expressions, and by those little subtle nuances that let you know what a person is thinking and feeling. He might be looking at me like I am a nutter. All I have to go on is his nice eyes.
‘Thank you.’ He is kind and he is talking to me just like I’m a person. No, not that; I am a person. I am still a person. I mean he’s talking to me like I’m me, and I like it. It’s warming me through, and I feel oddly happy. I miss feeling happy – just happy, without feeling that every moment of joy I experience now must also b
e tinged with sadness.
‘So, you’re locked out. Is someone going to ring you when they get back, or bring you a key?’
I hesitate. ‘There will be someone in, in a bit.’ I have no idea if that’s a lie. ‘I’ll wait a while and then go back.’ That is a lie. I don’t know where I am or how to get to back, wherever that is.
He chuckles, and I look at him sharply. ‘Sorry.’ He smiles. ‘It’s just that you do actually look like a drowned rat, and a very pretty one, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
‘I don’t mind you saying so,’ I say. ‘Say more like that!’
He laughs again.
‘I’m a fool,’ I say, warming to my new not-ill status. It feels good to be just me, and not me with the disease, the thing that now defines me. I’ve found a moment of peace and normality in this maelstrom of uncertainty, and it is such a relief. I could kiss him with gratitude. Instead I talk too much. I’m famous for talking too much; it used to be a thing about me that people enjoyed. ‘I always have been. If something can go wrong, it happens to me. I don’t know why, but it’s like I’m a magnet for mishap. Ha, mishap. There’s a word you don’t hear often enough.’ I rattle on and I don’t really care what I am saying out loud, conscious only that here I am, a girl talking to a boy.
‘I’m a bit like that too,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I will ever grow up.’
‘I know that I won’t,’ I say. ‘I know it for sure.’
The Accidental Wife Page 41
