Before I Die aka Now is Good

by Jenny Downham

  ‘How’s it going?’ Fiona says. Beth nods, as if she agrees entirely with this question. ‘Are you still having all that treatment?’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘So you’re better?’

  ‘No.’

  I watch them understand. It starts in their eyes and spreads down their cheeks to their mouths. It’s all so predictable. They won’t ask any more questions, because there are no polite ones left. I want to give them permission to leave, but I don’t know how to.

  ‘I’m here with Zoey,’ I say, because the silence goes on for too long. ‘Zoey Walker. She was in the year above us.’

  ‘Really?’ Fiona nudges her friend. ‘That’s weird. She’s the one I was telling you about.’

  Beth brightens at this, relieved that normal communication has resumed. ‘Is she helping you shop?’ She sounds as if she’s talking to a four-year-old.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Hey, look!’ Fiona says. ‘There she is. Do you know who I mean now?’

  Beth nods. ‘Oh, her!’

  I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t said anything. I’ve got a horrible feeling about this. But it’s too late now.

  Zoey doesn’t look at all pleased to see them. ‘What’re you doing here?’

  ‘Talking to Tessa.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘This and that.’

  Zoey looks at me suspiciously. ‘Are you ready to go?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Before you do’ – Fiona touches Zoey’s sleeve – ‘is it true you’ve been seeing Scott Redmond?’

  Zoey hesitates. ‘What’s it to you? You know him?’

  Fiona snorts, a soft noise with her nose. ‘Everyone knows him,’ and she rolls her eyes at Beth. ‘I mean everyone.’

  Beth laughs. ‘Yeah, he went out with my sister for about half an hour.’

  Zoey’s eyes glitter. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Hey, listen,’ I say. ‘Fascinating as this is, we’ve got to go now. I have to collect the invites for my funeral.’

  That shuts them up. Fiona looks astonished. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I grab Zoey’s arm. ‘It’s a shame I can’t be there myself – I like parties. Text me if you think of any good hymns!’

  We leave them looking completely bewildered. Me and Zoey go round the corner and stand in the kitchenware section, surrounded by cutlery and stainless steel.

  ‘They’re just idiots, Zoey. They don’t know anything.’

  She feigns interest in a pair of sugar tongs. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Let’s do something wild to cheer ourselves up. Let’s do as many illegal things as we can in an hour!’

  Zoey smiles reluctantly. ‘We could burn Scott’s house down.’

  ‘You shouldn’t believe what they say, Zoey.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you know him better than they do.’

  I’ve never seen Zoey cry, not ever. Not when she got her GCSE results, not even when I told her my terminal diagnosis. I always thought she was incapable, like a Vulcan. But she’s crying now. In the supermarket. She’s trying to hide it, swinging her hair to cover her face.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘I have to go and find him,’ she says.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  It feels very cold watching her cry, like how could she like Scott so much? She’s only known him a few weeks.

  ‘We haven’t finished breaking the law yet.’

  She nods; tears slip down her face. ‘Just dump the basket and walk out when you’re done. I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I have to go.’

  I’ve been here before with exactly this view. Her retreating back, her hair swinging gold as she gets further and further away from me.

  Maybe I’ll burn her house down instead.

  It’s no fun without her though, so I put the basket down in a ‘I can’t believe I forgot my purse’ kind of way and stand scratching my head for a moment, before walking towards the doors. But just before I get there I’m grabbed by the wrist.

  I thought Zoey said store detectives would be easy to spot. I thought they’d be dressed badly in a suit and tie, that they wouldn’t wear a coat because they’re inside all day.

  This man’s wearing a denim jacket and has close-cropped hair. He says, ‘Are you going to pay for the items inside your jacket?’ He says, ‘I have reason to believe you have concealed items from aisles five and seven about your person. This was witnessed by a member of our staff.’

  I take the nail varnish from my pocket and hold it out to him. ‘You can have it back.’

  ‘You need to come with me now.’

  Heat spreads from my neck to my face to my eyes. ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘You intended to leave the store without paying,’ he says, and he pulls me by the arm.

  We walk down an aisle towards the back of the shop. Everyone can see me and their gaze burns. I’m not sure he’s allowed to pull me like this. He might not be a store detective at all: he could be trying to get me somewhere lonely and quiet. I dig my heels in and grab hold of a shelf. It’s difficult to breathe.

  He hesitates. ‘Are you OK? Do you have asthma or something?’

  I shut my eyes. ‘No, I’m… I don’t want…’

  I can’t finish. Too many words falling off my tongue.

  He frowns at me, gets out his pager and asks for assistance. Two little kids sitting in a trolley stare at me as they’re wheeled past. A girl my age saunters by, saunters back again smirking.

  The woman who scurries up is wearing a name badge. Her name’s Shirley and she frowns at me. ‘I’ll take it from here,’ she says to the man and waves him away. ‘Come on.’

  Behind the fish counter is a secret office. You wouldn’t know it was there if you were ordinary. Shirley shuts the door behind us. It’s the kind of room you get in police dramas on TV – small and airless, with a table and two chairs, lit by a fluorescent strip that flickers from the ceiling.

  ‘Sit down,’ Shirley says. ‘Empty your pockets.’

  I do as she tells me. The things I stole look shabby and cheap on the table between us.

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I’d call that evidence, wouldn’t you?’

  I try crying, but she doesn’t fall for it. She passes me a tissue, though she can barely be bothered. She waits for me to blow my nose and points out the bin when I’ve finished.

  ‘I need to ask you some questions,’ she says. ‘Starting with your name.’

  It takes ages. She wants all the details – age, address, Dad’s phone number. She even wants to know Mum’s name, though I don’t see why that’s of any importance.

  ‘You have a choice,’ she says. ‘We can call your father, or we can call the police.’

  I decide to do something desperate. I take off Adam’s jacket and begin to undo my shirt. Shirley merely blinks. ‘I’m not very well,’ I tell her. I slip my shirt off one shoulder and raise my arm to show her the metal disc under my armpit. ‘It’s a portacath, an access disc for medical treatments.’

  ‘Please put your shirt back on.’

  ‘I want you to believe me.’

  ‘I do believe you.’

  ‘I’ve got acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. You can phone up the hospital and ask them.’

  ‘Please put your shirt back on.’

  ‘Do you even know what acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘It’s cancer.’

  But the c-word doesn’t scare her and she calls my dad anyway.

  There’s a place under our fridge at home where there’s always a puddle of fetid water. Every morning Dad wipes it up with antiseptic household cleaning wipes. Over the course of the day, the water creeps back. The wooden boards are beginning to buckle with damp. One night, when I couldn’t sleep, I saw three cockroaches scuttle for cover as I flicked on the light. The next day Dad bought glue traps and baited them with
banana. We’ve never caught a single cockroach though. Dad says I’m seeing things.

  Even when I was a really little kid, I recognized the signs – the butterflies that crisped up in jam jars, Cal’s rabbit eating its own babies.

  There was a girl at my school who was crushed falling off her pony. Then the boy from the fruit shop collided with a taxi. Then my uncle Bill got a brain tumour. At his funeral, all the sandwiches curled at the edges. For days afterwards, the grave earth wouldn’t come off my shoes.

  When I noticed the bruises on my spine, Dad took me to a doctor. The doctor said I shouldn’t be this tired. The doctor said lots of things. At night, the trees bang on my window like they’re trying to get in. I’m surrounded. I know it.

  When Dad turns up, he crouches next to my chair, cups my chin in his hands and makes me look right at him. He looks sadder than I’ve ever seen him.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  He means medically, so I nod. I don’t tell him about the spiders blooming on the window ledge.

  He stands up then and eyes Shirley behind her desk. ‘My daughter’s not well.’

  ‘She mentioned it.’

  ‘And doesn’t that make any difference? Are you people so insensitive?’

  Shirley sighs. ‘Your daughter was found to be concealing items with the intention of leaving the shop without paying.’

  ‘How do you know she wasn’t going to pay?’

  ‘The items were hidden about her person.’

  ‘But she didn’t leave.’

  ‘Intention to steal is a crime. At this stage we have the option of giving your daughter a warning. We’ve had no dealings with her before, and I’m not obliged to call the police if I hand her back into your care. I do need to be very certain, however, that you will deal with the matter most seriously.’

  Dad looks at her as if he’s been asked a very difficult question and needs to think about the answer.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’ll do that.’ Then he helps me to stand up.

  Shirley stands up too. ‘Do we have an understanding then?’

  He looks confused. ‘I’m sorry. Do I need to give you money or something?’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘For the things she took?’

  ‘No, no, you don’t.’

  ‘So I can take her home?’

  ‘You will relay to her the seriousness of this matter?’

  Dad turns to me. He speaks slowly, as if I’m suddenly stupid. ‘Put your coat on, Tessa. It’s cold outside.’

  He hardly even waits for me to get out of the car before shoving me up the path and through the front door. He pushes me into the lounge. ‘Sit down,’ he says. ‘Go on.’

  I sit on the sofa and he sits opposite me in the armchair. The journey home seems to have wound him up. He looks mad and breathless, as if he hasn’t slept for weeks and is capable of anything.

  ‘What the hell are you doing, Tessa?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You call shoplifting nothing? You disappear all afternoon, you don’t leave me a note or anything, and you think it doesn’t matter?’

  He wraps his arms about himself as if he’s cold and we sit like this for a bit. I can hear the clock ticking. On the coffee table next to me is one of Dad’s car magazines. I fiddle with one corner, folding and unfolding it into a triangle as I wait for what’s going to happen next.

  When he speaks, he does it very carefully, as if he wants to get the words just right. ‘There are some things you’re entitled to,’ he says. ‘There are some rules we can stretch for you, but there are some things that you can want all you like and you’re still not having.’

  When I laugh, it sounds like glass falling from somewhere very high. It surprises me. It’s also surprising to find myself folding Dad’s magazine in half and tearing out the front page – the red car, the pretty girl with white teeth. I scrunch it up and throw it on the floor. I rip page after page, slamming them onto the coffee table one after the other, until the whole magazine is spread out between us.

  We stare at the torn pages together, and I’m heaving for breath and I want so much for something to happen, something huge like a volcano exploding in the garden. But all that happens is that Dad hugs himself closer, which is what he always does when he gets upset: you just get this kind of blank from him, as if he turns into some kind of nothing.

  And then he says, ‘What happens if anger takes you over, Tessa? Who will you be then? What will be left of you?’

  And I say nothing, just look at the lamplight slanting across the sofa and splashing the carpet to congeal at my feet.

  Nineteen

  There’s a dead bird on the lawn, its legs thin as cocktail sticks. I’m sitting in the deck chair under the apple tree watching it.

  ‘It definitely moved,’ I tell Cal.

  He stops juggling and comes over to look. ‘Maggots,’ he says. ‘It can get so hot inside a dead body that the ones in the middle have to move to the edges to cool down.’

  ‘How the hell do you know that?’

  He shrugs. ‘Internet.’

  He nudges the bird with his shoe until its stomach splits. Hundreds of maggots spill onto the grass and writhe there, stunned by sunlight.

  ‘See?’ Cal says, and he squats down and pokes at them with a stick. ‘A dead body is its own eco-system. Under certain conditions it only takes nine days for a human to rot down to the bones.’ He looks at me thoughtfully. ‘That won’t happen to you though.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It’s more when people are murdered and left outside.’

  ‘What will happen to me, Cal?’

  I have a feeling that whatever he says will be right, like he’s some grand magician touched by cosmic truth. But he only shrugs and says, ‘I’ll find out and let you know.’

  He goes off to the shed to get a spade. ‘Guard the bird,’ he says.

  Its feathers ruffle in the breeze. It’s very beautiful, black with a sheen of blue, like oil on the sea. The maggots are rather beautiful too. They panic on the grass; searching for the bird, for each other.

  And that’s when Adam walks across the lawn.

  ‘Hi,’ he says. ‘How are you?’

  I sit up in my deckchair. ‘Did you just climb over the fence?’

  He shakes his head. ‘It’s broken down the bottom.’

  He’s wearing jeans, boots, a leather jacket. He’s got something behind his back. ‘Here,’ he says. He holds out a bunch of wild green leaves to me. Amongst them are bright orange flowers. They look like lanterns or baby pumpkins.

  ‘For me?’

  ‘For you.’

  My heart hurts. ‘I’m trying not to acquire new things.’

  He frowns. ‘Perhaps living things don’t count.’

  ‘I think they might count more.’

  He sits down on the grass next to my chair and puts the flowers between us. The ground is wet. It will seep into him. It will make him cold. I don’t tell him this. I don’t tell him about the maggots either. I want them to creep into his pockets.

  Cal comes back with a gardening trowel.

  ‘You planting something?’ Adam asks him.

  ‘Dead bird,’ he says, and he points to the place where it lies.

  Adam leans over. ‘That’s a rook. Did your cat get it?’

  ‘Don’t know. I’m going to bury it though.’

  Cal walks over to the back fence, finds a spot in the flowerbed and starts to dig. The earth is wet as cake mix. Where the spade meets little stones, it sounds like shoes on gravel.

  Adam plucks bits of grass and sieves them between his fingers. ‘I’m sorry about what I said the other day.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘It didn’t come out right.’

  ‘Really, it’s OK. We don’t have to talk about it.’

  He nods very seriously, still threading grass, still not looking at me. ‘You are worth bothering with.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Yeah.’

&nbs
p; ‘So you want to be friends?’

  He looks up. ‘If you do.’

  ‘And you’re sure there’s a point to it?’

  I enjoy watching him blush, the confusion in his eyes. Maybe Dad’s right and I’m turning to anger.

  ‘I think there’s a point,’ he says.

  ‘Then you’re forgiven.’

  I hold my hand out and we shake on it. His hand is warm.

  Cal comes over, smeared in dirt, spade in hand. He looks like a demented boy undertaker. ‘The grave’s ready,’ he says.

  Adam helps him roll the rook onto the spade. It’s stiff and looks heavy. Its injury is obvious – a red gash at the back of its neck. Its head lolls drunkenly as they carry it between them over to the hole. Cal talks to it as they walk. ‘Poor bird,’ he says. ‘Come on, time to rest.’

  I wrap my blanket round my shoulders and follow them across the grass to watch them tip it in. One eye shines up at us. It looks peaceful, even grateful. Its feathers are darker now.

  ‘Should we say something?’ Cal asks.

  ‘Goodbye, bird?’ I suggest.

  He nods. ‘Goodbye, bird. Thank you for coming. And good luck.’

  He scoops mud over it, but leaves the head uncovered, as if the bird might like to take a last look around. ‘What about the maggots?’ he says.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Won’t they suffocate?’

  ‘Leave an air hole,’ I tell him.

  He seems happy with this suggestion, crumbles earth over the bird’s head and pats it down. He makes a hole for the maggots with a stick.

  ‘Get some stones, Tess, then we can decorate it.’

  I do as I’m told and wander off to look. Adam stays with Cal. He tells him that rooks are very sociable, that this rook will have many friends, and they’ll be grateful to Cal for burying it with so much care.

  I think he’s trying to impress me.

  These two white stones are almost perfectly round. Here is a snail’s shell, a red leaf. A soft grey feather. I hold them in my hand. They’re so lovely that I have to lean against the shed and close my eyes.

  It’s a mistake. It’s like falling into darkness.

  There’s earth on my head. I’m cold. Worms burrow. Termites and woodlice come.