Jenny Downham - Before I Die aka Now is Good

This is what saying yes means.

It’s the pleasure of walking, one foot in front of the other, following the yellow lines painted on the floor of the corridor all the way to reception. It’s the pleasure of revolving doors – going round twice to celebrate the genius of the person who invented them. And the pleasure of the air. The sweet, cool, shocking outside world.

There’s a kiosk at the gate. I buy a Dairy Milk and a packet of Chewits. The woman behind the counter looks at me strangely as I pay her. I think I might glow a bit from all my treatments, and some people are able to see it, like a neon wound that flares as I move.

I walk slowly to the taxi rank, savouring details – the CCTV camera on the lamppost swinging on its axis, the mobile phones chirruping all about me. The hospital seems to retreat as I whisper goodbye, the shade from the plane trees turning all the windows to darkness.

A girl swings past, high heels clicking; there’s a fried-chicken smell about her as she licks her fingers clean. A man holding a wailing child shouts into his phone: ‘No! I can’t bloody carry potatoes as well!’

We make patterns, we share moments. Sometimes I think I’m the only one to see it.

I share my chocolate with the taxi driver as we join the lunchtime traffic. Today he’s on a double shift, he tells me, and there are too many cars on the road for his liking. He waves at them in despair as we crawl through the town centre.

‘Where’s it all going to end?’ he asks.

I offer him a Chewit to cheer him up. Then I text Adam again: U HVE PROMISES 2 KEEP.

The weather’s changed, the sun hidden by cloud. I open the window. Cold April air shocks my lungs.

The driver drums his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. ‘It’s complete gridlock!’

I like it – the stall and shove of traffic, the deep thrum of a bus engine, an urgent siren in the distance. I like creeping so slowly down the High Street that I have time to notice Easter eggs still unbought in the newsagent’s window, the cigarette butts swept into a neat pile outside the Chicken Joint. I see children carrying the strangest things – a polar bear, an octopus. And under the wheels of a buggy outside Mothercare I see my name, faded now, but still weaving the pavement all the way to the bank.

I phone Adam’s mobile. He doesn’t pick up, so I leave another message: I WANT YOU.

Simple.

At the junction, an ambulance stands skewed, its doors open, the blue of its light flashing across the road. The light even flashes onto the clouds, low above us. A woman is lying in the road with a blanket over her.

‘Would you look at that,’ the taxi driver says.

Everyone’s looking – people in other cars, office workers out for their lunchtime sandwich. The woman’s head is covered, but her legs stick out. She’s wearing tights; her shoes are at strange angles. Her blood, dark as rain, pools beside her.

The taxi driver flicks me a glance in his mirror. ‘Makes you realize, doesn’t it?’

Yes. It’s so tangible. Being and not being.

I feel as if I have sap in my toes, running up my ankles and into my shins, as I knock on Adam’s door.

Sally opens it a crack and peeps at me. I feel a surge of love for her.

‘Is Adam in?’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be in hospital?’

‘Not any more.’

She looks confused. ‘He didn’t say they were letting you out.’

‘It’s a surprise.’

‘Another one?’ She sighs, opens the door a bit further and looks at her watch. ‘He won’t be back until five.’

‘Five?’

She frowns at me. ‘Are you all right?’

No. Five’s too late. I might be completely anaemic again by then.

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s gone to Nottingham on the train. They’ve agreed to interview him.’

‘For what?’

‘University. He wants to start in September.’

The garden spins.

‘You look as surprised as I was.’

I fell asleep in his arms in that hospital bed. ‘Touch me,’ I said, and he did. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Don’t you dare tell me I don’t.’ He made me a promise.

It starts to rain as I walk back down the path to the gate. A fine silver rain, like cobwebs falling.

I rip my silk dress from its hanger in the wardrobe and cut a gaping mouth in it just below the waist. These scissors are sharp so it’s easy, like sliding metal through water. My blue wrap-dress gets a diagonal slit across the chest. I lay them side by side on the bed like a couple of sick friends and stroke them.

It doesn’t help.

The stupid jeans I bought with Cal never fitted anyway, so I hack the legs off at the knee. I split the pockets of all my jogging pants, gash holes in my sweatshirts and chuck the lot next to the dresses.

It takes ages to stab my boots. My arms ache and I’m wheezing. But I had a transfusion this morning and other people’s blood runs hot through my veins, so I don’t stop. I slit each boot along its length. Two startling wounds.

I want to be empty. I want to live somewhere uncluttered.

I open the window and throw the boots out. They land on the lawn.

The sky is solid cloud, grey and low. There’s a thin rain falling. The shed’s wet. The grass is wet. The barbecue set is rusting on its wheels.

I haul the rest of my clothes out of the wardrobe. My lungs wheeze, but I’m not stopping. Buttons ping across the room as I slash my coats. I shred my jumpers. I lacerate every pair of trousers. I line my shoes up on the window ledge and cut off their tongues.

It’s good. I feel alive.

I grab the dresses from the bed and push them out with the shoes. They tumble onto the patio together and lie there in the rain.

I check my phone. No messages. No missed calls.

I hate my room. Everything in it reminds me of something else. The little china bowl from St Ives. The brown ceramic jar Mum used to keep biscuits in. The sleeping dog with its silent slipper that belonged on Nanna’s mantelpiece. My green glass apple. They all make it to the lawn except for the dog, which smashes against the fence.

Books fall open as I chuck them. Their pages flap like exotic birds, rip and flutter. CDs and DVDs like Frisbees over next door’s fence. Adam can play them to his new friends at university when I’m dead.

Duvet, sheets, blankets, all out. Medicine bottles and boxes from my bedside table, syringe driver, Diprobase cream, aqueous cream. My jewellery box.

I slash my beanbag, decorate the floor with polystyrene balls and throw the empty sack out into the rain. The garden’s looking very busy. Things will grow. Trouser trees. Book vines. I’ll chuck myself out later and take root in that dark space by the shed.

Still no message from Adam. I throw my phone over his fence.

The TV is heavy as a car. It hurts my back. It makes my legs burn. I drag and heave it across the carpet. I can’t breathe, have to stop. The room tilts. Breathe. Breathe. You can do this. Everything’s got to go.

Onto the ledge with the TV.

And out.

It roars, explodes in a dramatic smash of glass and plastic.

That’s it. Everything gone. Finished.

Dad crashes in. He stands for a moment, still and open-mouthed.

‘You monster,’ he whispers.

I have to cover my ears.

He comes over and takes me by both arms. His breath smells of stale tobacco. ‘Do you want to leave me with nothing?’

‘There was nobody here!’

‘So you thought you’d wreck the place?’

‘Where were you?’

‘I was at the supermarket. Then I went to the hospital to visit you but you weren’t there. We were all frantic.’

‘I don’t give a shit, Dad!’

‘Well, I do! I absolutely give a shit! This will completely exhaust you.’