Jenny Downham - Before I Die aka Now is Good

I stare at them. My mother. My father. His face is in shadow, the edges of her hair are tipped with light. I keep really still. Cal, next to me, keeps really still too.

‘Wow!’ he whispers.

It hurts more than I could ever have imagined.

In the kitchen, I swill my mouth out with water at the sink and spit it out. My spit looks slimy, is pulled so slowly towards the plug-hole that I have to chase it down with more water from the tap. The sink is cold against my skin.

I turn off the light and watch my family through the window. They stand together on the lawn, sorting through the last of the fireworks. Dad holds each one up and shines the torch at it. They choose one, shut the box, and all three of them walk away down the garden.

Perhaps I’m dead. Perhaps this is all it will be. The living will carry on in their world – touching, walking. And I’ll continue in this empty world, tapping soundlessly on the glass between us.

I go out of the front door, shut it behind me and sit on the step. The undergrowth rustles, as if some night creature is trying to hide itself from me, but I don’t freak out, don’t even move. As my eyes adjust, I can see the fence and the bushes that line it. I can see the street beyond the gate quite clearly, lamplight splashing across the pavement, slanting across other people’s cars, reflected back from other people’s blank windows.

I can smell onions. Kebabs. If my life was different, I’d be out with Zoey. We’d have chips. We’d be standing on some street corner, licking salty fingers, waiting for action. But instead, I’m here. Dead on the doorstep.

I hear Adam before I see him, the guttural roar of his bike. As he gets closer, the noise vibrates the air, so that the trees seem to dance. He stops outside his gate, switches off the engine and turns off the lights. Silence and darkness descend again as he unclips his helmet, threads it through the handlebars and pushes the bike up the drive.

I mostly believe in chaos. If wishes came true, my bones wouldn’t ache as if all the space inside them is used up. There wouldn’t be a mist in front of my eyes that I can’t brush away.

But watching Adam walk up the path feels like a choice. The universe might be random, but I can make something different happen.

I step over the low wall that separates our front gardens. He’s locking the bike to the gate at the side of his house. He doesn’t see me. I walk up behind him. I feel very powerful and certain.

‘Adam?’

He turns round, startled. ‘Shit! I thought you were a ghost!’ There’s a cold-washed smell to him, as if he’s an animal come out of the night. I take a step closer.

‘What are you doing?’ he says.

‘We said we’d be friends.’

He looks confused. ‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t want to be.’

There’s space between us, and in that space there’s darkness. I take another step, so close that we share a breath. The same one. In and out.

‘Tessa,’ he says. I know it’s a warning, but I don’t care.

‘What’s the worst thing that can happen?’

‘It’ll hurt,’ he says.

‘It already hurts.’

He nods very slowly. And it’s like there’s a hole in time, as if everything stops and this one minute, where we look at each other so close, is spread out between us. As he leans towards me, I feel a strange warmth filtering through me. I forget that my brain is full of every sad face at every window I’ve ever passed. As he leans closer, I feel only the warmth of his breath on my skin. We kiss very gently. Hardly at all, like we’re not sure. Our lips are the only place where we touch.

We stand back and look at each other. What words are there for the look that passes from me to him and back again? Around us all the night things gather and stare. The lost things found again.

‘Shit, Tess!’

‘It’s all right,’ I tell him. ‘I won’t break.’

And to prove it, I push him back against the wall of his house and keep him there. And this time it’s not about tenderness. My tongue is in his mouth, searching, meeting his. His arms wrap me warm. His hand is on the back of my neck. I melt there. My hand slides down his back. I press myself closer, but it’s not close enough. I want to climb inside him. Live in him. Be him. It’s all tongue and longing. I lick him, take small bites on the edges of his lips.

I never realized I was this hungry.

He pulls away. ‘Shit,’ he says. ‘Shit!’ And he runs his hand through his hair; it gleams wet, animal dark. The streetlights blaze in his eyes. ‘What’s happening to us?’

‘I want you,’ I tell him.

My heart’s thumping. I feel absolutely alive.

Zoey shouldn’t’ve asked me to come. I haven’t been able to stop counting since we got through the door. We’ve been here seven minutes. Her appointment’s in six minutes. She got pregnant ninety-five days ago.

I try to think of random numbers, but they all seem to add up to something. Eight – the number of discrete windows across the far wall. One – the equally discreet receptionist. Five hundred – the number of pounds it’s costing Scott to get rid of the baby.

Zoey flicks me a nervous smile across the top of her magazine. ‘I bet you don’t get anything like this on the NHS.’

You don’t. The seats are leather, there’s a big square coffee table stacked with glossy magazines, and it’s so warm that I’ve had to take my coat off. I thought it’d be full of girls clutching hankies and looking forlorn, but me and Zoey are the only ones here. She’s scraped her hair back into a ponytail and she’s wearing her baggy sweat pants again. She looks tired and pale.

‘Do you want to know which symptoms I’ll be most glad to get rid of?’ She rests her magazine on her lap and counts them off on her fingers. ‘My breasts look like some freaky map, all covered in blue veins. I feel heavy – even my fingers are heavy. I keep throwing up. I’ve got a constant headache. And my eyes are sore.’

‘Anything good?’

She thinks about this for a moment. ‘I smell different. I smell quite nice.’

I lean across the coffee table and breathe her in. She smells of smoke, perfume, chewing gum. And something else.

‘Fecund,’ I tell her.

‘What?’

‘It means you’re fertile.’

She shakes her head at me as if I’m nuts. ‘Did your boyfriend teach you that?’

When I don’t reply, she goes back to her magazine. Twenty-two pages of hot new gadgets. How to write a perfect love song. Will space travel ever be accessible?

‘I saw this film once,’ I tell her, ‘about a girl who died. When she got to heaven, her sister’s still-born baby was already there, and she looked after it until they were all reunited.’

Zoey pretends she hasn’t heard. She turns the page as if she’s read it.

‘That might happen to me, Zoey.’

‘It won’t.’

‘Your baby’s so small I could keep it in my pocket.’

‘Shut up, Tessa!’

‘You were looking at clothes for it the other day.’

Zoey slumps back in her chair and closes her eyes. Her mouth goes slack, as if she’s been unplugged. ‘Please,’ she says. ‘Please shut up. You shouldn’t’ve come if you’re going to disapprove.’

She’s right. I knew it last night when I couldn’t sleep. Across the landing, the shower was dripping and something – a cockroach? a spider? – scuttled across the bedroom carpet.

I got up and went downstairs in my dressing gown. I was planning a cup of hot chocolate, maybe some late-night TV. But there, right in the middle of the kitchen, was a mouse stuck to one of Dad’s cockroach traps. The only bit of it that wasn’t glued to the cardboard was one of its back legs, which it used like a paddle to try and get away from me. It was in agony. I knew I’d have to kill it, but I couldn’t think how to do it without causing it more pain. A carving knife? A pair of scissors? A pencil through the back of the head? I could only think of awful endings.