I carried my cappuccino and sat down in a quiet corner. I lifted the mug to my lips and sipped my coffee and even it tasted tarry and smoky. I took my phone out to check JP’s fundraising page once more. I had been keeping an eye on it since he had made his TV appeal, but I nearly dropped the phone when I saw it was now in excess of €160,000. Just days after his television appearance, he was over halfway there. There were hundreds of comments now and I read through some of the recent ones with tears in my eyes. The kindness of strangers was so touching – despite everything that had happened to me, it was plain to see there was so much goodness in the world, but these people couldn’t save Robyn no matter how well intentioned they were.
I put my phone face down on the table and sighed. I was doing the right thing – I knew I was. And yet, and yet… The whole thing was crazy, but in my weaker moments I wondered if perhaps I was the crazy one? People from all over Ireland, some from abroad too, were supporting JP, but they didn’t see into our home where our daughter was very sick and growing weaker by the day. The strength in her left side had completely gone now and she would tire easily. Her speech could be hard to understand, and sometimes she resorted to pointing with her right hand to tell me what she wanted. She was finding it difficult to swallow too, so I had started puréeing all her food like I had when she was a baby. Instead of moving on and gaining more independence, my daughter was moving backwards through time. The awful thing was that I knew she was frustrated by the changes in her body. Even if I changed my mind, I wasn’t sure she would survive the flight to the US, let alone the gruelling treatment being offered over there.
With ten minutes to go until Harry finished school, I went up to the counter and bought a cookie for him before leaving the café. As I walked around to the old red-brick building, the smell of freshly mowed grass filled my nostrils and the hum of lawnmowers played in the background. Those smells and sounds always reminded me of studying for exams when I was in college. Even now they signalled that summertime was just around the corner. I usually loved the slower pace of life that the school holidays brought – late rising in the mornings, lazy breakfasts followed by a day clear of the usual routines where we could do whatever we wanted. We would jump into the car and head to Portmarnock beach for the day, followed by fish and chips wrapped in newspaper on the way home, or sometimes we would take a picnic to the Phoenix Park, but now I was dreading the shift in time. It was hard to look forward to anything any more. Time was our nemesis.
When I reached the school, I looked around where all the other parents were gathered at the railings. It had been so long since I had been here.
‘Sarah,’ I heard a voice call from behind after a moment.
I turned to see Jennifer, the mother of a little girl in Harry’s class, making her way over to me. I didn’t know her well, but we had met at school concerts and birthday parties over the years. I waited for her to reach me.
‘I haven’t seen you here in ages. How’ve you been?’ She lowered her eyes to the ground. ‘I heard about Robyn – I’m so sorry.’
‘Thanks, Jennifer.’
‘If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.’ She gripped my arm.
‘I appreciate that.’
‘There’s Ava coming now, I’d better go,’ she said. ‘I’m thinking of you, Sarah.’
At a time when I felt the whole world was against me, now more than ever, every gesture of support meant so much.
I soon saw Harry coming towards me in the distance. His face broke into a wide grin when he saw me waiting for him at the railings. It was usually JP or Fiona who collected him these days because I hated leaving Robyn. I felt my heart soar for my firstborn child.
‘How was school?’ I asked, putting my arm around him when he reached me, and I was glad he didn’t bat it away like he usually did.
‘Good. I made this for Robyn…’ He held out a misshapen piece of pottery that I guessed was meant to be a unicorn.
‘Wow, Harry, that’s amazing, she will love that.’ I felt a lump catch in my throat, he adored his little sister. ‘Did you get much homework?’ I asked as we walked back to where I had parked my car.
‘Yeah, loads,’ he groaned.
‘I got you a cookie,’ I said, holding out the brown paper bag for him.
‘Cool! Thanks, Mam,’ he said, taking it from me.
We climbed into the car and put on our seat belts. I had just pulled out into the traffic when I heard Harry call me from the back seat.
‘Mam?’
‘Yes, love?’
‘Does Robyn have cancer?’ he asked through a mouthful of cookie.
I nearly crashed the car. ‘Where did you hear that?’ I tried to keep my voice level.
‘Jamie O’Connor said that Robyn has cancer. His mam saw it on the TV.’
I felt my shoulders climb up to my ears. Bloody JP! I hadn’t even considered that this might be one of the implications of his media campaign. I knew word about Robyn’s condition had got out there, but I didn’t expect the children in school to be talking about it. I would need to have a word with his teacher.
‘Do you know what cancer is, Harry?’ I began.
‘Yeah, it’s what Granny died of,’ he stated matter-of-factly.
I winced. I wasn’t ready yet to have this conversation with him, especially as I was driving along the road. Should I pull over, I wondered? But I knew if I did that then it would alarm him, and he would know it was serious. I felt my anger grow at JP. This was all his fault, and I was left dealing with the consequences.
‘Well, your body is made of good cells, but sometimes bad cells grow there too and when that happens it’s called cancer,’ I explained.
‘So does Robyn have it, Mam?’ he asked, impatient at my long-winded explanation.
I felt as though we were running over ice and I was waiting for a crack. The realisation that his sister was going to die would hit him any minute now and I wasn’t ready for it. My fingers clenched tighter around the steering wheel. ‘Well, the reason she was going into the hospital every day was that they have a special machine there that can zap the bad cells,’ I continued.
‘So, is it like a Nerf gun then?’
‘Well, yeah, I suppose it is.’ I was holding my breath, waiting for whatever he would say next.
‘Cool,’ he said, turning to look out the window. ‘Can I play FIFA when I get home?’
‘Sure,’ I said, breathing out a sigh of relief as my shoulders came back down from my ears. For now, I was glad to have escaped the discussion, but I knew it was looming on the horizon. There was a day coming soon where we would have to tell Harry and destroy his world forever.
24
I silenced the alarm before it even had time to go off. It had nearly become a habit now, as I was awake before it every morning. I slept fitfully these days. I would lie awake feeling so overwhelmed for the future, so terrified by what was coming for me. It felt like a brick was being pushed down upon my chest. I would try to recall Robyn’s face to make sure I could remember every detail of its beauty and sometimes the image wouldn’t come to me and I would feel panicked and sit up gasping for air. I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to remember her exactly the way she was.
I planted a kiss on her silky curls and left her to sleep on while I climbed out of bed to wake Harry for school. Robyn was now sleeping in bed with me every night, for no particular reason other than I wanted to cuddle her close to me for as long as I still could. I wrapped my dressing gown around me and swung my head around the door of Harry’s bedroom. Pieces of Lego, Match Attax cards and dirty socks were strewn around the floor. I would need to tackle it later.
‘Come on, love, it’s time to get up.’
His voice came out muffled beneath the duvet, ‘I don’t want to go to school, Mam.’
‘You know you have to. It won’t be long until the summer holidays, so it’s only for a few more weeks,’ I cajoled. We were now in late May and he only had a little over a month left be
fore the school year was finished.
‘I’m not going!’ He pulled the duvet up over his head.
‘Why not?’ I asked, coming into the room and sitting down onto the edge of his bed. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m not feeling well…’
My breath hitched in my chest. I knew kids got sick all the time but after everything we were going through with Robyn, I couldn’t help but jump to the worst-case scenario. I pulled the duvet down from around his head and placed my hand on his forehead. ‘You don’t seem to have a temperature. Is it your tummy?’
He nodded.
‘Do you feel sick?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay, well, perhaps we’ll keep you at home today and see how you are.’ Maybe he was brewing something or maybe he wasn’t sick at all, but if he really didn’t feel like going into school today, I was happy to let him hang out with us at home. We all needed a day to chill out once in a while.
He quickly got out of bed and bounded down the stairs after me.
‘I thought you were supposed to be sick?’ I said.
‘I am!’ He instantly started to rub his tummy.
‘Hmm.’ I tried to hide a smile. I knew Harry was out of sorts with everything going on with Robyn so he probably wanted some attention, who could blame him? Whereas it once would have been important to me that Harry never miss school unless he was really ill, now I had a new perspective on life. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter if he pulled a sickie now and again. I texted JP to tell him Harry was taking a sick day, so he didn’t need to collect him that morning.
Robyn woke a while later and, after breakfast, I took the king-size duvet off my bed and let the two of them snuggle up on the sofa underneath it while they watched cartoons. I took out my phone and took a photo of them with their faces peeping out from beneath it, smiling up at me with big cheesy grins. These were the moments I treasured the most, things like this, the ordinary, simple joy of seeing my two babies snuggled together as they watched TV. And then I would remember the awfulness that was coming down the tracks and feel a weight pulling me down, almost pushing me through the floor and I didn’t think I could bear the sadness. I felt panicky; a tightness and breathlessness seized my chest whenever I thought about what the future held for us.
I had gone to one counselling session recommended to me by the hospital. As if counselling was going to be able to fix the pain in my heart of losing my daughter. I had gone along anyway, feeling that I ought to at least try it, but I knew after one session I wouldn’t be going back. It seemed like another non-essential item on a to-do list and I was ruthlessly chopping non-essential items from my life. Robyn’s diagnosis had made me greedy with my time. I didn’t want to do anything that took me away from her. The one thing I had taken from the session was that I needed to focus on the everyday joys. The counsellor had told me to stay in the moment and not to let my thoughts race ahead. I was trying hard to focus on the positives, and right now Robyn was here with us and that’s what I needed to remember and take each day as it came.
I took a deep breath inwards right down into my ribcage and exhaled slowly outwards like I had been taught to do. Focus on the now, Sarah, I told myself. And right now, my two most favourite people in the world were curled up together, giggling at the TV screen.
The next morning, when I tried to wake Harry for school, he tried the same trick again, but I knew I had to be firm with him. I didn’t mind a day here and there, but he needed to go to school, it wasn’t going to help anyone if he fell behind. I coaxed him out of bed, made his breakfast and persuaded him to dress himself before JP arrived to collect him.
‘Your dad’s here,’ I called out when the doorbell sounded before nine.
‘Please, Mam, I don’t want to go,’ he begged as I went out to answer the door.
‘What’s got into him?’ JP asked as he came into the kitchen.
‘Beats me,’ I muttered.
Things were still difficult between us. I was keeping an eye on his JustGiving page and I knew he had managed to raise over €250,000 so far – an astronomical amount of money. He was nearly there. As I watched the donations creeping higher, it felt like a countdown, but to what I wasn’t entirely sure. What was he going to do once he reached the target? The question loomed ominously in my mind all the time and I hated that I was spending precious moments that I had left with Robyn worrying about it.
Harry was clinging to my leg. ‘Please, Mam, don’t make me go.’ He hadn’t behaved like this since he was a toddler. Harry was always the child who ran happily into school. Even on day one of Junior Infants, he had waved JP and me off enthusiastically, while other kids cried and begged their parents not to leave them. I had already spoken to his teacher, Ms O’Mara, and told her about Robyn’s diagnosis and she had promised she would keep a very close eye on him, but maybe I needed to talk to her again.
‘Do you want me to take you?’ I offered, thinking he might just need some time alone with me.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to go, Mam, please, can I stay at home with you and Robyn again?’
‘Oh, sweetheart, you have to go.’ I felt guilty for allowing him to stay home the day before. I had thought it was a nice treat for him, but maybe I had given him the wrong message and now he thought he could skip school whenever he wanted to.
‘Come on, son, let’s go.’ JP eventually managed to prise him off my legs.
Harry bent down and gave Robyn a kiss before JP led him out to his car, his head hung as though he had the weight of the world on his young shoulders.
I felt so upset for the rest of the morning as I moved around tidying up the kitchen after breakfast. I carried a basket of laundry into the utility room and began loading it into the machine. I knew all kids had off-days, but it was so unlike Harry. I needed to be more attentive to him, we had all be so focused on Robyn that we had neglected him. Sometimes being a parent felt like you needed to be a chef, taxi driver, nurse, counselling service, acrobatic juggler and a professional mind reader all rolled into one. And even if you managed to pull all of that off, you would still get it wrong.
25
JP and I sat at the kitchen table as we both helped Robyn to twist pipe cleaners together.
‘That’s a great snowman,’ I said.
‘It’s-snot sshnowman, it’s ola bear,’ she corrected. Her speech was becoming increasingly slurred and I found myself straining to make out the words.
‘Of course it’s a polar bear – silly me!’
Things were fraught between JP and me, but for Robyn’s sake, I was glad we had been putting on a united front and pretending that everything was fine whenever she was around. We would sit, one on either side of her, and help her to peel back a sticker or to glue pieces of paper together. JP was still angry that I wouldn’t agree to the treatment in Arizona, however we both knew we needed to be able to put our differences aside whenever Robyn was around, but there was no denying that his JustGiving page was the huge elephant in the room. I was keeping an eye on the fundraising page, which was teetering dangerously close to the target of €300,000 and it felt like time was ticking on a bomb. Although I would never admit it to JP, sometimes when I looked at her, I questioned whether I was doing the right thing at all. Was I making the correct decision for her? But then I thought of the science and the opinions of her medical team. I remembered the fear in her eyes every time she had to go to the hospital and knew that I couldn’t put her through all of that again. I knew I was doing the right thing by Robyn, but yet I couldn’t help but wonder, what if…
‘I’d better go collect Harry,’ JP said, looking at the clock after a while.
While he was gone, I tucked Robyn up in bed for her nap. I came back downstairs and began chopping apples to make a purée for her.
Less than thirty minutes later, I heard the front door slam shut and I silenced the blender. ‘How was your day, sweetheart?’ I called out to Harry. ‘I’m in the kitchen.’
&nb
sp; He appeared a moment later and I knew as soon as I saw him that something was up. His little face was red, and his eyes swollen with tears. Although Harry hadn’t mentioned Robyn’s cancer since our conversation in the car, he did seem to be quite unsettled lately. His tears going to school that morning – something which had never happened before – didn’t sit well with me. I wasn’t sure if it was his way of reacting to the news and he just wasn’t able to verbalise it. Or could he sense that there was more that we weren’t telling him? Maybe he understood more than we were giving him credit for. I didn’t want to push it with him either, in case he wasn’t ready yet for that conversation. Perhaps he needed to come to the realisation in his own time. I exhaled heavily. It was so hard to know the right thing to say or do – there was no parenting manual for what we were going through.
‘Bad,’ he replied.
I looked at JP in bewilderment.
‘Hey, what’s happened?’ I said, bending down to him on my hunkers.
He buried his face into my shoulder and began to sob.
‘Something happened in school today,’ JP began. ‘Ms O’Mara asked to have a word with me when I picked him up.’
My heart fell. It had been on my list to call Ms O’Mara to talk about my concerns for Harry, but I just hadn’t got around to it.
‘What is it, Harry? What happened?’ I asked, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes and began to sob harder.
‘Apparently Harry hit another boy in the class today,’ JP said. ‘Some boy called Jamie O’Connor?’
‘What?’ I was shocked; it was so out of character for him. He wasn’t an aggressive boy. But then I remembered the incident where he had tackled Jamie right here in our living room. I had been stunned by that outburst. Maybe there was something more going on here… ‘Did you do that, Harry?’ I asked.
The Last Days of Us Page 14
