James Hannah - The A to Z of You and Me

‘Well,’ he says with a great sniff and a sigh, ‘whatever you need me to do, just let me know. If there’s anything not taken care of. Getting your effects in order, like.’

I smile at him.

We sit and watch as a maroon work van crawls along the driveway at the required five miles an hour. NRG Electrical painted on the side in yellow. I can hear the pneumatics in its suspension as it creeps over the too-high speed bumps. They are here about the security light, no doubt. I could talk about that with Kelvin, steer clear of tricky subjects. I could tell him about that. But I feel too heavy on the inside.

‘I–I saw Laura yesterday,’ says Kelvin, his voice a little husky.

‘Oh yeah?’ I say, naturally.

‘Yeah. She’s thinking of you. She asked me to send you her love. She’s really concerned, obviously. Concerned that you’re all right.’

‘All right.’

‘She told me she’d been wondering about coming over to make sure you’re settled in. But, you know, she doesn’t want to upset you.’

The van disappears off behind the wall.

I can sense Kelvin fortifying himself.

‘OK, I’m just going to say this. I know it’s not something you want to talk about, but it needs talking about, right?’

‘Go on.’ I know what’s coming.

‘Well, how long is it since she’s been in touch? Five years?’

‘Seven.’

‘Seven years. And it’s pretty obvious why that is, I reckon.’

‘Is it?’

‘Oh, come on, mate.’

‘I want to know. Why does she think she hasn’t been in touch?’

‘Well, I think she’s scared to. I think she thinks that you won’t want to hear from her.’

‘I see.’

‘But the thing is, she really does want to come and see you.’

‘Right.’

‘So — would you be up for that?’

I shrug.

Now he doesn’t know what to do. Kelvin’s never known what to do. I could keep him dangling all day.

You’d be telling me to choose to be nice. Be nice. You’re right, I know. This is not a sport. I should probably give him something to go on. God knows what, though.

‘Why does she want to see me?’

He exhales a quiet little laugh. ‘Because you’re her brother, I imagine, and because you’re in a hospice, and she’s worried — she’s worried she’s going to lose you without—’

‘Without what?’

‘Well, without—’

‘Having eased her conscience?’

‘If you like.’

I laugh. ‘Tell her not to worry about it. Tell her it’s fine.’

Kelvin falls quiet a moment as he thinks through this solution.

‘I–I don’t think that’s going to be enough, mate.’

‘Listen, Kelv, isn’t it enough that I have to forget about everything just to make her feel better? I mean, she hasn’t even got the guts to come here herself, has she? She’s sent you, hasn’t she? Do you think that’s good enough? Do you think I should see her?’

‘I think you should see her, yes.’

‘Look, when it really mattered to me, when she should have chosen to stick by me, she didn’t, did she?’

‘No, she didn’t.’

‘Her instinct was to stick with Mal. So that’s that. And if she wants to know if that’s fine, then fine, that’s fine. I accept that she did that. You can tell her she doesn’t have to worry about it any more. She did it, and there it is. But don’t pretend she didn’t.’

‘There’s more to it than that, mate.’

‘What more? The last time I saw her was seven years ago, and that was only because it was Mum’s funeral. That’s a lot of time to show there’s more to it than that. Sometimes these things are simple. You don’t need to make it more complicated.’

Kelvin sighs a deep and defeated sigh.

‘It’s just — it’s breaking people up. Even now. It’s breaking Laura up, it’s breaking Mal’s mum and dad up. And yeah, you know, it’s breaking Mal up as well. And you’re the one who can sort all that out. If you can find your way to just talk to her. You know it’s not a normal situation.’

‘It’s not me that made it not normal, Kelv. Ask anyone you like. What he did—’

‘No one’s ignoring what he did. No one. But if you can just talk to her, it would help.’

I do my best to draw in a deep breath.

‘I don’t know why you’re running around after her, Kelv.’

‘I’m not,’ he says.

‘She’ll have you wrapped round her little finger if you’re not careful.’

‘All I’m doing is saying what needs to be said, OK?’

‘Listen,’ I say. ‘I don’t have a problem with you. You know this isn’t easy to talk about.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Totally. But you wouldn’t want me to lie to you, would you? I can tell you this stuff. You know I’m straight with you.’

‘To be honest, mate, I think I’d prefer it if you lied.’

Fuck, fuck. This is bad, this is getting bad.

I can’t. I can’t breathe. I–

I can’t — make my chest go out enough. I can’t breathe in enough.

Chest

Breathe in, chest out. Breathe out, chest in.

Come on, now. Keep it calm, keep it easy.

Chest goes out. Chest goes in.

And now it’s me, conscious, as I breathe.

Out in out in outinoutin …

My pounding heart.

I just want to — just want to heave a sigh.

Is it too much to ask? To heave a great and heavy sigh?

Mini, now. Mini, mini, mini-breaths.

Is it — is it bad enough to—?

To push the button? Call Sheila in?

No visitors, I should have no visitors. All just fucking complication.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that all this shit would stop at some point. You’d think that there would be a point when the fucking past would leave you alone.

I don’t have to forgive anyone anything any more.

This is me.

I can’t believe they thought it would be OK. I can’t believe Kelvin thought it would be fine to swan in here and ask me if I’d meet up with her. What does he know about it? He knows nothing. He’s just trying to get in Laura’s knickers like he always did, and he never will.

They don’t know me at all, do they? They don’t know me at all. I could tell, the way Kelvin was saying it. None of them understand what I’ve been through. Every day I’ve had to live with this. Every day. Ten years. Putting my life back together. Losing Mum, too, dealing with all that on my own. Fucking dialysis three times a week. That’s something, isn’t it, calling a dialysis machine your best friend, old buddy.

No one can just waltz up and suddenly fix all that. And it’s not me they want to fix, is it? It’s not me they care about. It’s themselves.

Creatinine

That’s it — if I’m going to do a real A to Z, then I’ll need to include all the things I’ve got but I don’t even know about. The things I never paid attention to in Biology at school.

That must mean pretty much everything in my entire body.

My body is not my own. I don’t understand it.

I don’t know how the fucking thing works.

When Dr Sood turned round and started talking to me about creatinine levels and dialysis and–

I didn’t know what a dialysis machine was. I mean, I’d collected for a dialysis machine they had an appeal for on some children’s TV show. Probably 1984. I got it into my head that a dialysis machine had flashing lights and numbers, but I think I was mixing up the dialysis machine with the totalizer they had on the show. Every time they reached a new landmark, a whole load of bulbs would light up, and the number would get higher.

My dialysis machine was dreary off-white. Perhaps I was given exactly the one I collected for, thirty years before. It looked like it was made in 1984.