The Girl Who Cried Wolf(20)
‘Now then,’ he says. ‘You certainly look better than the sickly ragamuffin I came home to. I’m glad I came back when I did; at least you’ve got a fighting chance to beat this thing. You need all your strength for next week, when they try to remove the er …’
‘Cancer?’ Another silent suggestion.
‘… the problem. As it were.’ He coughs, looking disappointed, and Mother intervenes quickly.
‘Your room is a tip, Anna.’ I’m surprised at her perceptiveness – she knows I prefer to be treated as normally as possible, so I indulge her and tell her to piss off.
A loud cough from Father, who does not understand why Mum and Isabel share a smile.
He witters on about work and says he really ought to be getting back across the pond soon, and I feel worse that it is my fault he is treading the eggshells of our new family life instead of doing the job he loves.
It surprises me to realize that things had been slightly better before he came home. I could not put my finger on it but there was less tension or something. I push the guilty thought to one side and reach for some fruit, winning another smile from the man I dote on.
***
As I lie in bed later that night, alone and in the dark, real fear washes over me. Have you ever been truly afraid? You’ll never forget the feeling. Terror squeezing your heart in tight hands, your panicked response as your pulse quickens and you struggle to breathe. It comes for me now, and there is nowhere to hide.
What if I don’t survive the operation? Somewhere inside me I sense a fantastical truth that I was not going to. Should I be enlightened by now to what life is really about and what we are doing here anyway?
I wish that a sense of peace would replace this unending fear that I am going to fall into darkness. And so too will each of us until no one remembers my ever being here at all.
I want to run out into the night screaming, ‘I’m here! I’m alive, I’m somebody good … I have a place in this world!’
And perhaps if I believed that, I would run out of Elm Tree and dance like a ghost through the meadow. I might stand some sort of chance against fate. Instead, I choose to stay in my familiar gloom, pulling the blankets more tightly around myself, wondering why those words would sound so empty and hollow.
Someone once told me we should forget whatever past we’ve been painting, that the future is a vast blank canvas rolling out in front of us. Empty, untouched, and waiting to be filled with the stories of our lives.
Now my canvas had been torn away in front of me. Before I had even begun to sketch outlines to fill its open spaces, it’s ripped short, taking with it my future.
Do we have to be so close to death to appreciate life? If life is a journey, does there have to be an end?
As I count the days I have left, I hope that death is just a big lie. Perhaps we fall asleep in this world and wake up renewed in the next. Somewhere better, somewhere I belong.
I wish I had explored the world and grasped hold of every opportunity life had thrown at me, run through every newly opened door with a sense of adventure – Believed in myself.
I cry silently into my blankets and wait for the pills to take effect. They don’t. Not even my trusted cloud of oblivion will come for me tonight.
I wonder if I had taken better care of myself and not made so many foolish decisions, would I still be suffering such an illness? Was I being punished? I feel suddenly overwhelmed by an unpleasant memory of a year ago, one I had tried desperately to forget.
I lost my virginity on this bed.
***
My father was rarely at home. He worked away for months on end and Mother had gone out for the evening, dramatically assured that at sixteen I was more than capable of taking care of Izzy for a few hours. The moment she left I swore my sister to secrecy and summoned Daniel, the only boyfriend I’d ever had, to come over.
Despite finding Elm Tree stuffy and oppressive, I loved to see my friends’ expressions as they saw where I lived. The house spoke of wealth and good taste; I would walk a little taller and pull my accent up a few notches as I showed them around.
‘This is Father’s study,’ I had told Daniel grandly, smiling as his eyes widened at the treasures within. An enormous brass eagle commanded my father’s mahogany desk, silently screeching at intruders.
‘Can we go in?’ he whispered, and I snorted with disdain.
‘Of course we can go in! This is my home, Daniel. We can do what we like.’
I refrained from mentioning that the last time Izzy and I had ventured into the private study, Father all but skinned us alive. I swung my legs from his great leather recliner and Daniel tentatively raised the upper half of a huge ceramic globe to reveal the hidden alcohol cache beneath. It had been my turn to look surprised and he grinned at me devilishly. There was a challenging note to his voice that made me regret having been quite so smug. ‘My uncle has one of these. Fancy a tipple?’
Daniel was in the year above me at school. I didn’t particularly like him, but an older boyfriend granted much kudos amongst the girls in my clique and we were forever trying to out-do one another. Danny was older, played football, and smoked.
My heart had begun to pound and an uneasy feeling of guilt washed over me. I suddenly wished I had just watched movies and ate popcorn with Izzy like she had wanted to do, instead of sending her forlornly to her room. I had spent the last few years wishing to be older, to be a grown-up exactly in a scenario like this– with a good-looking boy looking hazily at me and offering me a drink.