Jenny Downham: Before I Die aka Now is Good

I was twelve when she left him. She sent postcards for a while from places I’d never heard of – Skegness, Grimsby, Hull. One of them had a picture of a hotel on the front. This is where I work now , she wrote. I’m learning how to be a pastry chef and I’m getting very fat!

‘Good!’ Dad said. ‘I hope she bloody bursts!’

I put her postcards on my bedroom wall – Carlisle, Melrose, Dornoch.

We’re living in a croft like shepherds , she wrote. Did you know that they use the windpipe, lungs, heart and liver of a sheep to make haggis?

I didn’t, and I didn’t know who she meant by ‘we’, but I liked looking at the picture of John o’Groats with its vast sky stretching across the Firth.

Then winter came and I got my diagnosis. I’m not sure she believed it at first, because it took her a while to turn round and make her way back. I was thirteen when she finally knocked on our door.

‘You look lovely!’ she told me when I answered it. ‘Why does your father always make everything sound so much worse than it is?’

‘Are you coming back to live with us?’ I asked.

‘Not quite.’

And that’s when she moved into her flat.

It’s always the same. Maybe it’s lack of money, or perhaps she wants to make sure I don’t over-exert myself, but we always end up watching videos or playing board games. Today, Cal chooses the Game of Life. It’s rubbish, and I’m crap at it. I end up with a husband, two children and a job in a travel agent’s. I forget to buy house insurance, and when a storm comes, I lose all my money. Cal, however, gets to be a pop star with a cottage by the sea, and Mum’s an artist with a huge income and a stately home to live in. When I retire, which happens early because I keep spinning tens, I don’t even bother counting what’s left of my cash.

Cal wants to show Mum his new magic trick next. He goes to get a coin from her purse, and while we’re waiting, I drag the blanket off the back of the sofa and Mum helps me pull it over my knees.

‘I’ve got the hospital next week,’ I tell her. ‘Will you come?’

‘Isn’t Dad going?’

‘You could both come.’

She looks awkward for a moment. ‘What’s it for?’

‘I’ve been getting headaches again. They want to do a lumbar puncture.’

She leans over and kisses me, her breath warm on my face. ‘You’ll be fine, don’t worry. I know you’ll be fine.’

Cal comes back in with a pound coin. ‘Watch very carefully, ladies,’ he says.

But I don’t want to. I’m bored of watching things disappear.

In Mum’s bedroom, I hitch my T-shirt up in front of the wardrobe mirror. I used to look like an ugly dwarf. My skin was grey and if I poked my tummy it felt like an over-risen lump of bread dough and my finger disappeared into its softness. Steroids did that. High-dosage prednisolone and dexamethasone. They’re both poisons and they make you fat, ugly and bad-tempered.

Since I stopped taking them I’ve started to shrink. Today, my hips are sharp and my ribs shine through my skin. I’m retreating, ghost-like, away from myself.

I sit on Mum’s bed and phone Zoey.

‘Sex,’ I ask her. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Poor you,’ she says. ‘You really did get a crap shag, didn’t you?’

‘I just don’t understand why I feel so strange.’

‘Strange how?’

‘Lonely, and my stomach hurts.’

‘Oh, yeah!’ she says. ‘I remember that. Like you’ve been opened up inside?’

‘A bit.’

‘That’ll go away.’

‘Why do I feel as if I’m about to cry all the time?’

‘You’re taking it too seriously, Tess. Sex is a way of being with someone, that’s all. It’s just a way of keeping warm and feeling attractive.’

She sounds odd, as if she’s smiling.

‘Are you stoned again, Zoey?’

‘No!’

‘Where are you?’

‘Listen, I have to go in a minute. Tell me what’s next on your list and we’ll make a plan.’

‘I’ve cancelled the list. It was stupid.’

‘It was fun! Don’t give up on it. You were doing something with your life at last.’

When I hang up, I count to fifty-seven inside my head. Then I dial 999.

A woman says, ‘Emergency services. Which service do you require?’

I don’t say anything.

The woman says, ‘Is there an emergency?’

I say, ‘No.’

She says, ‘Can you confirm that there is no emergency? Can you confirm your address?’

I tell her where Mum lives. I confirm there’s no emergency. I wonder if Mum’ll get sent some kind of bill. I hope so.

I dial directory enquiries and get the number for the Samaritans. I dial it very slowly.

A woman says, ‘Hello.’ She has a soft voice, maybe Irish. ‘Hello,’ she says again.

Because I feel sorry for wasting her time, I say, ‘Everything’s a pile of crap.’

And she makes a little ‘Uh-huh’ sound in the back of her throat, which makes me think of Dad. He made exactly that sound six weeks ago, when the consultant at the hospital asked if we understood the implications of what he was telling us. I remember thinking how Dad couldn’t possibly have understood, because he was crying too much to listen.

‘I’m still here,’ the woman says.

I want to tell her. I press the receiver to my ear, because to talk about something as important as this you have to be hunched up close.

But I can’t find words that are good enough.

‘Are you still there?’ she says.

‘No,’ I say, and I put the phone down.

Dad takes my hand. ‘Give me the pain,’ he says.

I’m lying on the edge of a hospital bed, in a knee-chest position with my head on a pillow. My spine is parallel to the side of the bed.

There are two doctors and a nurse in the room, although I can’t see them because they’re behind me. One of the doctors is a student. She doesn’t say much, but I guess she’s watching as the other one finds the right place on my spine and marks the spot with a pen. He prepares my skin with antiseptic solution. It’s very cold. He starts at the place where he’s going to put the needle in and works outwards in concentric circles, then he drapes towels across my back and puts sterile gloves on.

‘I’ll be using a twenty-five-gauge needle,’ he tells the student. ‘And a five-millilitre syringe.’

On the wall behind Dad’s shoulder is a painting. They change the paintings in the hospital a lot, and I’ve never seen this one before. I stare at it very hard. I’ve learned all sorts of distraction techniques in the last four years.

In the painting, it’s late afternoon in some English field and the sun is low in the sky. A man struggles with the weight of a plough. Birds swoop and dive.

Dad turns in his plastic chair to see what I’m looking at, lets go of my hand and gets up to inspect the picture.

Down at the bottom of the field, a woman runs. She holds her skirt with one hand so that she can run faster.

‘ The Great Plague Reaches Eyam ,’ Dad announces. ‘A cheery little picture for a hospital!’

The doctor chuckles. ‘Did you know,’ he says, ‘there are still over three thousand cases of bubonic plague a year?’

‘No,’ Dad says, ‘I didn’t.’

‘Thank goodness for antibiotics, eh?’

Dad sits down and scoops my hand back into his. ‘Thank goodness.’

The woman scatters chickens as she runs, and it’s only now that I notice her eyes reaching out in panic towards the man.

The plague, the great fire and the war with the Dutch all happened in 1666. I remember it from school. Millions were hauled off in carts, bodies swept into lime pits and nameless graves. Over three hundred and forty years later, everyone who lived through it is gone. Of all the things in the picture, only the sun remains. And the earth. That thought makes me feel very small.