Things I Want My Daughters to Know (5 page)

My Hannah,

This is probably hardest for you. I’ve gone far too soon for you, haven’t I? There is still—however much you deny it!—growing up to do, and I’m going to miss it. You know, in all of this, that is the only thing that makes me mad. It makes me so fucking angry that I . . . well, that I want to write fucking in a letter to my daughter, who isn’t allowed to say the word. Don’t be cross with me, sweetheart. It isn’t my choice.

You were my magical gift. That I should have been able to conceive you, carry you, and give birth to you at forty-five, when I thought that part of my life was over, was a miracle to me. The funny thing was that I never realized you were missing from my family until they put you on my stomach and I looked into your face for the first time. You were red, and angry, and you had that amazing spiky hair sticking out all over your precious head, and I knew straightaway that you’d always been meant to come. You were a present from your wonderful father, and proof of our love for each 30 e l i z a b e t h

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other. (Doubtless a gross thought right now, but if you keep the letter and read it again in a few years, you won’t think so. . . .) You are turning into a confident, beautiful, accomplished, wonderful young woman, Hannah. I have to believe that you and I squeezed more than fifteen years into our time together, and I want you to know that I have faith in your ability to carry on and to thrive and to be joyous, all without me. Not that you’ll ever, ever be without me completely, sweetheart. I’ll always be with you. Look after your dad for me, honey. He’s brave and strong on the outside, but you and I know what’s going on inside, don’t we? And keep talking to him. He’ll listen to whatever you have to say, I know.

I love you, baby girl.

Mum

When she’d finished reading, Hannah put the letter under her pillow. Something was making her feel panic—she suddenly couldn’t take a really deep breath, and her lungs felt tight. Tears ran down her face, dripping onto her arms, crossed firmly across her chest.

Amanda

Amanda awoke to the sound of her sister’s crying. She felt empty. Last night, she’d lain in bed and cried until her head throbbed. The red numbers on the alarm clock projected the time onto the ceiling. 2:30 a.m.

2:45 a.m. 3:00 a.m. She’d staggered to the bathroom, found Tylenol, and swallowed a couple with water from the tap. She’d sat on the stairs, her sore head against the wall, until her nose unblocked, and her breathing had steadied. She didn’t want to be by herself. Which was strange and new and a bit scary. She was very good at being by herself. She hesitated outside Hannah’s door and then opened it, very quietly. When Hannah didn’t stir, she’d found herself climbing into bed beside her, holding herself tense and rigid under the duvet for a minute or two,
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until she was sure she hadn’t woken her. There were no numbers on the ceiling in here, and after a while—she wasn’t sure how long—the pills took hold, and Hannah’s steady, gentle breathing calmed her, and she fell asleep.

Now Hannah was crying. There was no need to ask her why, and there was nothing that she could say that would help. She pulled her sister down into her arms and stroked her hair, feeling her vest get wet with tears and snot, and just held her.

All this pain. All this crying. It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected it.

She had just underestimated it. It felt like a heavy, dark blanket that had been pulled across all of them. She hadn’t known that it would make it difficult to breathe. She hadn’t guessed that it would seem so envelop-ing, and so total, and so permanent.

Jennifer

Which was how Jennifer felt, sitting on the train a few hours later. She felt like she’d escaped. They’d all had breakfast together. Andy had been there, suddenly. No one really had the energy to ask why or how. He’d been sitting on the sofa when she came down, with Lisa’s head on his lap.

Someone had left muffins and croissants yesterday, and Mark had made cafetieres of coffee. All week they’d had the funeral to talk about. Now there was nothing left to say. Last night she had wanted to stay. This morning she just wanted to go. There’d been a bit of a scene—Lisa wanted to drive her. Andy had come in his own car, so they had two—

she could use the company, she’d said. Jennifer had wanted anything but. Everyone else seemed to think that sharing helped. She didn’t.

It was probably a weird place to read a letter like this, but Jennifer felt safer in this environment. More in control. She couldn’t exactly burst into tears on a crowded train, could she? You just didn’t do that sort of thing. Anyone in the carriage watching her might have imagined her to be reading a business letter, or a chatty note from an old friend. She arranged her features into a pleasant innocuous expression and read.

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Darling Jennifer,

You girls only knew me for a part of my life. Children don’t ever seem to realize that. I had a life before you, you know. Hell—you never even met me before I had a stretch mark. The big problem with motherhood of girls, it seems to me, is that we’re both women.

And I know stuff—I’ve learned things—been through some of the same things that I watch my girls go through. The trick is helping without interfering. Guiding without pushing. I don’t know if I’ve always been very good at that. Sometimes I’ve pushed too much, and sometimes stood back too far. And lately I think I’ve gotten it wrong with you. I’ve watched you, these last couple of years, get more and more unhappy, sweetheart. You’re brittle and fragile and hard to reach. And we haven’t been as close as I would have liked because of it. And I’m sorry for that. And if you’re reading this, it’s too late. But know, please, my lovely, complicated little girl, that I loved you, and I always will. You might be interested in this notebook. It’s a diary, I suppose. But it’s also about the things I know that I wish I could make you know—I suppose I would like to save you from some of what I’ve been through. Maybe that’s a stupid idea. Anyway, read it, think of me, and know that I love you, darling. I’ve marked the bit I think you should read first. Let your sisters read it, too, when you’ve finished.

All my love, forever,

Mum

When she had finished reading, she folded the letter neatly, slipped it back inside the untouched folder that had come with it, put both into her handbag, and picked up the copy of the
Times
that the previous incumbent of the seat had left behind.

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Lisa

In the end Lisa left her own car and went home in Andy’s. She’d come back at the weekend, she said, and get it. She didn’t want to be by herself.

She’d slept heavily, at last, when he’d arrived. In the morning, early, she’d rolled toward him and started kissing him without opening her eyes and he’d responded to her touch before he was properly awake.

They’d made love silently, and sadly. Affirming life, she supposed.

Now, she sat in the passenger seat, with her bare feet up on the dash-board of his car.

“Thank you for coming.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m sorry I said I could do it without you.”

He shrugged.

“I couldn’t. Not really. I missed you all day.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does. It was mean of me. I’m sorry.”

He reached over and squeezed her knee. “Shut up, will you?”

She smiled, and put her own hand over his, squeezing back.

“Mum left letters for each of us, you know?”

“Did she?”

“Mmm.”

Andy didn’t ask.

“She said she loved you.”

“That’s nice.”

“She said I was too strong for my own good, and that I should ask you about that sometime.”

“She was a wise old bird, your mum.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“I’m asking you about it. Am I too strong for my own good?”

Andy considered for a moment.

“I don’t think there’s such a thing as too strong. Strong has to be good, 34 e l i z a b e t h

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right? Too independent? Probably. Definitely.” He smiled at her sideways.

“But I wanted you to come.”

“And I came.”

“You came.” Lisa looked out of the window, squinting in the sunshine, and spoke almost to herself. “You came. Lucky me.”

“What shall we do today?”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“I called them this morning. Told them I wasn’t coming in. Family concerns.
My
family. So—what shall we do?” Today seemed suddenly surreal to her. There was absolutely nothing that she needed to be doing.

The craziness of God knows how long before this day had passed. The world looked to her now, from the car window, like a storm had passed.

The air was so clear.

“Let’s find a park, or a field, or a river. Somewhere no one else is.

Let’s lie on a blanket, and look at the sky, and hold hands and not talk.

Can we do that?”

“We can do that.”

Barbara’s Journal

Mum’s Thoughts

I’ve been reading all morning, so now I’m going to do some writing.

I won’t call it a diary. It won’t be that regular a commitment, if I know myself at all. Besides, the entries on lots and lots of days, including the day I started this particular dark chapter in my life, would just be line after line of expletives. All the rude, angry words I can think of. Written repeatedly. Lucidity would, I feel, strike seldom. But a bit of writing. Mark has taken Hannah to the cinema and out for pizza. I didn’t ask him to, but he needs to do something.

Men need to fix problems, and he can’t fix this one, but he can take
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Hannah away and let me rest. Don’t want to rest. Can’t rest, really.

Mind keeps rolling. Sometimes I get so scared, so stomach droppingly, skin crawlingly scared that I can’t keep still. I have to pace up and down. Or read. I have this teetering pile of books from a section of the bookshop I had never ventured into before. Actually, the bookshop is where I had my first taste of the new face the world was going to make at me. I’ve been going there for years—support your local independent shops, as they say. We lost the butcher and the greengrocer, but we’ve kept the bookshop, so far. I wouldn’t mind if it went a bit Waterstone’s, mind you. A sofa would be great, a coffee bar—something like that. Or even just Saturday kids who know how to alphabetize. But I’m a loyal customer, even if I occasionally buy a beach read for £3.97 at Tesco—I always feel guilty when I do. I bought my Enid Blytons there, for you girls.

Then the Penguin Classics, for O levels, and the Letts guides. Got my Teach Yourself language tapes there (money well spent—hear me order lunch in ten different languages and marvel), and the Highway Code, of course, during what I now refer to as the Terror Years, when you lot were learning to drive. Crikey, Hannah—yours are still to come . . . I may be tearing my hair out before it falls out, ha ha! So they know me, and I know them. They knew when I got an Aga, for God’s sake, and had to go in and get a Mary Berry cookbook, because all I could manage to serve up was charcoal sausages. They’d never seen me in the self-help section. And there I was, suddenly intently studying the shelves, and buying these books.

In hardback, at great expense.
Taking Control of Cancer, The Living
with Cancer Cookbook, Challenge Cancer and Win!, The Independent
Consumer’s Guide to the Non-Toxic Treatment and Prevention of Cancer.

And I’m just scratching the surface. There are mountains of them. I don’t think I really expected that I would read them, or indeed, that if I did, they would help. It’s a bit like when you join the gym. You convince yourself that just writing the first check and having your 36 e l i z a b e t h

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tour of the weights room is somehow going to make you fitter.

Well, it doesn’t. And this won’t cure me, or at least if I am to be cured, it won’t be by this. Anyhow, I wish I hadn’t. Because they made the face. The oh-my-God-you’ve-got-cancer-you-poor-cow face. Hate that face already. And I’m not even bald yet.

Hannah’s obsessed with what I will look like without eyebrows and eyelashes. I’m kind of glad, for the first time in my life, to have a relatively sparse and spindly set of both. It would surely be much harder to part with thick, strong, lustrous ones. Someone said your hair can grow back differently—but I liked my hair. I’d like it back just the way it was. I wonder what kind of skull I have. There’s such a thing as a good one and a bad one, when it comes to being bald. I don’t know. I’ve had long hair all my life. Long good hair. Bugger.

Look—there I go with the expletives. Told you. Why does this bit—the hair bit—matter so much?

Anyway, I digress. So I bought the books, but I don’t expect I’ll read them. Haven’t I got a teetering pile of unread must-reads by my bed already? I’m the only person in the world who still hasn’t finished
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
Okay—maybe the only person in the world who admits it. I reckon my mental attitude is doing okay at this point. I’ve got the full lexicon of war-mongering words, and I’m not afraid to use them. Fight. Battle. Overcome. Determination.

Courage. Win. I want to do all of those things. I’m ready to do all those things. I want to live. Simple as that. We all do, don’t we? It’s instinctive. Besides, it’s 2006. They cure cancer these days.

They catch it early, they treat it “aggressively” (that expression makes me think all the oncologists will charge around the ward looking like Mel Gibson in
Braveheart
, but I don’t suppose that’s what they mean. I’d settle for oncologists who look like Mel Gibson, though. Good-looking obstetricians I can live without, but oncologists aren’t excavating around downstairs, as my mother would put it): they cure cancer. Success rates are higher than ever.

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