We Are All Made of Stars (3 page)

Dear Maeve,

Kip and me, we always promised we'd write to the other's wife if it came to it. And well, Maeve, it came to it, didn't it? I am only sorry that it's taken me this long to write the letter I never wanted you to have to read. I wish, I wish I was good with words, that I knew how to say what I have to say. I wish I'd never made this promise to Kip, but I did. And he was the closest thing to a brother I ever had.

We did it all together. We were green new recruits together. Trained together. Kip was the worst recruit the sergeant had ever seen. But we all loved him. He knew how to make us laugh on days when everything could have been so dark. By the time we went on our first tour in Afghanistan, Kip was the best soldier.

He talked about you and little Casey all the time. You were the lights of his life. We used to hear what Casey had been up to, how she is more beautiful, funny, clever than any other kids, all day long. Kip was a soldier, but he was a family man first. I know he tried to be the best husband and dad he could be.

The day it happened started out like any other day. Routine patrol, defending the province against the Taliban. No intel or chatter to suggest we had anything more to worry about than normal. Not that normal wasn't enough to worry about. We all knew it wouldn't be long before we were allowed home on leave, but command told us: ears and eyes, stay alert, right up until the last second of our tour, and we knew that.

When the missile hit, it was …

CHAPTER TWO

Whenever there is a moment of quiet, of stillness, I stop and I listen, and I wait for it to pass. It's hardly ever silent at Marie Francis Hospice and Rehabilitation Centre, even at night. Quiet chat, murmurs in the half-dark, laughter sometimes, sometimes singing. Sometimes a dream lived out loud. But it's hardly ever quiet. So I listen in those moments, and I wait for the noise again. And then I breathe out.

I feel a warm body wind itself around my legs and look down to see that Shadow, the very unofficial hospice cat, has emerged out of nowhere again. Pitch black with no markings and huge emerald-green eyes. No one knows where he comes from, or when he will come; he just appears when he pleases, knowing that when he does, he will be made a huge fuss of by everyone who meets him. He's large, clearly looked after by someone – someone who probably has no idea of the humanitarian mission he goes on through the day. He's young, I think, and kittenish still, despite his size. He sees a shadow from a flickering light and pounces on it, twisting and turning 180 degrees with every lunge in a bid to catch his prey. I reach out to him, and he bats at my hand playfully until I catch behind his ears with my nails and scratch. Suddenly mesmerised, and softly lambent, he lets me lift him onto my lap and hold him for a moment. I feel his small heart rapidly beating against my skin, and the rise and fall of his chest. This is the reason that the administration turns a blind eye to Shadow, and lets us keep a pack of Dreamies in the nurse's station drawer for him, because it's well known that contact with animals is therapeutic, soothing, comforting. And Shadow can do what most of our doctors, and us nurses and Albie, our chaplain's daft Labrador, can't, which is take himself from room to room, always seeming to know which patient needs his attention the most. Smiling, I smooth down his black silky fur in the long firm strokes that he likes, listening to the satisfying rattle of his purr. Lucky me, to have a few moments of his attention tonight.

‘Tea, Stella?' Thea nods at my empty mug. ‘You're due a break, surely – Shadow seems to think so. He was sitting with Issy till she dropped off.'

‘No, I'm full to the brim,' I tell her. ‘I've got my obs to do, and I've promised to sit with Maggie for a bit. She likes a chat and I said I'd write her a letter.'

‘She could chat for England, that one,' Thea says, but without malice. There's a sort of inevitable closeness amongst the patients and their families here, a solidarity. It eases the journey, I think, for them just to know they aren't in this alone.

‘How are you doing?' I ask her. Thea's answering smile is small and almost worn through, but steady. It's an expression I've become familiar with, a kind of all-defying hope in the face of certain disappointment. I've known Thea for eighteen months now. A single mother, she's been bringing her fourteen-year-old daughter Issy to the hospice since she was first diagnosed with a final stage case of a rare bone cancer, Ewing's sarcoma. At first it was for a brief burst of respite care, to allow Thea to have a little more time for her younger daughter, and for herself, but now after years of treatment, it's because it is almost time.

We aren't supposed to form bonds, or relationships, with the families that we care for, but sometimes it's impossible not to. Not when they are here every day, when they are living out the defining moments of their lives right in front of you, looking to you for reassurance and certainty where there is none. So she and I have become not friends exactly but companions in the midst of an endless succession of sleepless nights. And Thea keeps smiling, keeps hoping. If there's one thing I've learned while I've been working the night shift at Marie Francis it's that this is the one thing that sets us apart from other animals, the one thing that makes us human. Hope.

‘I'm OK,' Thea says. ‘Issy is smiling in her sleep. I like to try and guess what she's dreaming about. There was this holiday a couple of years back – we went to a water park with a huge great big slide. She shrieked like a banshee all the way down and then went back for more. Maybe she's dreaming about that.'

‘I'll be in after I've seen Maggie,' I promise her.

On an average night here, there are maybe fourteen patients at any one time, plus two nurses, three health-care assistants and one doctor sleeping in the on-call room – all of us engaged in this kind of ballet, this dance that is something like a rain dance. Except, if we get it right, we're not calling down the rain but keeping pain at bay. This world, this night world, is the one we small crew inhabit alone, in between the busy, sunny days of outpatients, and counselling, therapy groups, music, dances and fundraisers. Family time, healing time, breathing time. Here during the night, no more than twenty of us are negotiating the path that at some point each of us will have to travel. But never alone if we can help it, that's the promise we make on the night watch. Although we can't come with you, you will never be alone when you take that final step.

And I always work the night shift. I asked if I could when I was offered the job. After some hesitation they let me, as long as I take enough days off in between, because no board ever wants their nurses only to work the difficult night-shift slots, even someone as experienced as me. No one ever asks me why I only do the night shift – because it's not like I have childcare to worry about. But, anyway, I only half understand the reason myself. I think it was a gradual thing. I think so, although it may have happened all at once. In the months since Vincent left the army, it's been hard to get a clear sense of anything very much, except that somehow the strands of our lives that were so closely woven together began unravelling into two separate threads – quickly enough for it to feel like I have no control over it. Perhaps taking the night shifts has been about holding up a white flag and declaring surrender, because if our house is the battlefield, then it's easier, less painful, less dangerous, if only one of us is in it at a time. It's my house during the day, and at night it belongs to Vincent.

Thea hesitates still, and I sense there is something she wants to ask me.

‘How's Vincent doing?' she asks, and Shadow, suddenly tired of my affection, leaps onto the desk and nudges her hand up from where it is resting and onto his head. He has trained us all very well.

‘Great.' I smile, nodding. ‘He's doing really great. Never still since he got the new prosthetic fitted. State of the art it is, apparently. He got back from the sponsored bicycle ride last week, and he's already talking about training for the Marathon … He's doing great. He's barely ever still.'

‘OK, good.' She stands there for a moment, and takes a breath. ‘So you're writing a letter for Maggie?'

I nod.

I began it one night for a patient who could no longer hold a pen, and who wanted to make sure her husband would know how to work the washing machine after she'd gone. That's when the letter writing started, and it grew from there – each letter another story, another life, another legacy. Not every patient wants to put their final thoughts on paper, not every patient has to, but there is something comforting about leaving a physical relic of your mind in this world, something reassuring.

‘Do they ask you, just before, you know … Is it like they know? They know it's time for a letter?'

And suddenly I know what it is that is terrifying her, what it is that she can't quite bring herself to articulate.

‘Issy hasn't asked me to write a letter,' I say.

‘Well.' She nods, dropping her gaze from mine as she holds up her empty mug. ‘OK, I'd better get back to her.'

It seems like Shadow agrees: he drops down from the high desk with easy grace and trots off towards Issy's room, his tail high and purposeful.

‘I'll be in soon,' I reassure Thea, with a smile. And I watch her go back to Issy's room, thoughts of a cup of tea forgotten as she quietly shuts the door behind her.

I take my pad of plain writing paper out of the desk drawer, and root around in my bag for my favourite pen: blue ink, ballpoint, smooth flow, looks like it could be a fountain pen, but doesn't smudge. I love the feel of it, gliding over the slight texture of the paper, filling it with swirls and loops that always, no matter what words they go towards forming, mean so much more than simply what they say.

Dear Franco,

I don't suppose you remember me. Why would you? It's sixty years since we met, and we didn't know each other for long. I have no idea if you still live in Monte Bernardi or if you are even still alive, though those spread adverts on the telly seem to say that Italians lives for ever, so I hope so.

It was 1954. I was twenty years old, and me and Margaret Harris from the bank where I worked had a day trip to Brighton. Down on the train, best dresses and hats. Mine was primrose yellow and had flowers embroidered on the pockets.

We were walking along the front when we saw you, although you didn't notice us. We thought you had to be a movie star or something: the way you stood there, with your sunglasses on – hair all slicked back, black T-shirt, white trousers. We went round the corner to peep at you, and then we put on some lipstick and walked past you again, swinging our skirts and giggling like we were ever so fascinating. You said hello in Italian. We ran away, screaming with laughter; what a pair we were.

I didn't see you for the rest of the day, not until the dance at the end of the pier. And there you were, in a pale blue suit. When you came over to talk to me I thought I might die, maybe from the excitement. Your English wasn't very good; my Italian was non-existent. But, oh, your accent.

We kissed all night, never stopped for a breather, or a drink. You whispered strange words in my ear, might have been a shopping list, for all I knew. I didn't care, because it sounded like music.

That's when I found out that Margaret had got the last train home without me – in a pique, I expect, because it was me you had eyes for. You walked me back to your bedsit and snuck me up the stairs without the landlady noticing. I'd never been with a boy before – I thought something dreadful would happen, that I'd get pregnant or catch some disease, but I was stupid and young and it didn't seem to matter more than that moment.

The next morning, you wrote your address in pencil in my address book and kissed me goodbye. I never heard from you again. I didn't catch anything or get pregnant. I wasn't brave enough to write. I married a good man a few years later, and I've been happy. It's been a good life. But every time I've changed address books, I've copied your address into the new one, once again. Monte Bernardi; a reminder of one night when I risked it all for a little excitement. So it would seem an awful shame not to use it just once.

Thank you for the dance,

Susan Wilks

CHAPTER THREE