Chapter Four:

Love (In the Time of Chemo)

The following few days were a little rough. Mr Raj came to see me the day after my hysterical outburst, said I looked better and seemed like he meant it. He told me they would be reducing my medication steadily over the next few days and that I should be able to go home a week on Friday, but coming off such high doses of medicine would take a temporary toll on my already weakened body. He mentioned nausea, headaches and aching joints, but I assured him I would be fine – Anything to get me out of the hospital for a while.

It had been decided that I would stay with my grandparents while in respite from treatment. I was getting increasingly distant towards my mother, and every time something went wrong I found a way to blame her. This was hardly fair, but I was tired and emotional, and I wanted to be in my grandma’s cosy home with the big oak table, the wood burner, and those delicious smells enticing everyone to the kitchen. Even Lillian had to agree I would hardly regain my appetite over her offerings of microwave meals and endless rounds of toast with various toppings.

Izzy was more than a bit put out, but she had to be at school anyway, so she gave in on the condition that she could come up to visit every evening. So now I had to get through the next few days and I would be free again. Free from the drugs, the drip-stand that followed me everywhere, the probing staff, and the sleepless nights.

***

It was so much easier said than done. I spent the following day drifting in and out of consciousness, going from being hot and feverish to so cold that my bones themselves felt frozen. I finally found sleep in the early hours, but it was panicky, edgy, rather than restful.

I woke up to see a rather tall, incredibly bald man standing in front of me, not looking at all well. He looked old and frail but could not have been much more than twenty.

I couldn’t manage words. My mind felt like cotton wool and I couldn’t work out where I was or what was going on. I fought the urge to laugh at him. When I used to get stoned with a friend from our village it felt a lot like this. My thoughts were floating in front of me, but when I tried to grab them they slipped away.

I may have grunted at him.

‘I’m Michael.’ He was rearranging the contents of my bedside table. ‘I walked past and heard you knock these over. Just thought I’d check someone hadn’t hurt themselves.’

I had no idea what he was talking about. I vaguely remembered that I was in hospital, that something was very wrong, but I could not string anything together to make sense.

I tried to bring this man into focus. No hair. No eyebrows. He looked like he was very unfortunate indeed. I recognised my illness in his drawn and weary features, but there was something strange about the way he was making me feel as I stared harder. He was coming closer, sitting down beside me. Why was he straightening my blankets?

Cancer leaves a recognisable imprint, but it had failed to steal the sparkle from his eyes. He had intense grey-blue eyes in a handsome face with a chiselled jawline Michelangelo may have masterminded. The way he was looking at me was making me nervous. My head ached and I felt weak and wretched. But here was this stranger making me flustered under the cold cotton sheets. ‘Michael.’

‘I’m here.’

My hands flew to my head and I realised I was not wearing my head scarf.

‘Get out of here!’

It came out louder than I intended and he looked taken aback.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’ He started to back away, but before he left he turned for a second and said, ‘I know how this feels.’

I think I fell asleep again. I couldn’t remember what it was like to control when and how I sleep. Something so simple that people take for granted and there I was, one minute thinking and talking, the next fast asleep.

As I opened my eyes it had become dark outside once more and I actually felt (just a tiny bit) better. I felt rested and although my head was still tender and sore, it was not the same pain that made me want to jump from a twelfth-storey window. The painkillers dolefully handed out that morning had offered a welcome reprieve.

In the absence of pain, my first thought was of Michael. God, I’d been rude. Maybe it would have been nice to talk to him for a while.

I realized I had never spoken to another young person who’d had chemo or cancer. Only elderly people, where although it was still cruel and unjust that they were being slowly taken by an illness, people would at least be able to say, ‘Well, he had a good innings,’ or ‘He didn’t want to fight any more, he lived a long and happy life, that’s all that mattered.’ Their funerals would be celebrations of a life filled with love and family, who would tell funny stories of the good old days with a drink in their hand and a tear in their eye.

No one would say that for the young victims. We were meant to be just getting started; we should have had our whole lives ahead of us. No cares in the world until at least our mid-thirties, when we might consider coming home at a reasonable hour, contemplate the thought of marrying the person we share a flat with, hear the tick of the biological clock (or at the very least, get a dog).

It seemed suddenly important that I speak to Michael and apologise. I might have been too self-absorbed to stop myself being incredibly rude to a stranger, but not all strangers have mesmerizingly intense eyes, and no one has ever unnerved me so pleasantly before.

I got up, without too much difficulty I was delighted to realise, and headed for the bathroom to splash water over my face. I got the fright of my life seeing Gollum staring back at me. (Since Dr Braby had made me over I’d asked Isabel to replace the mirror.)

Undeterred, I reached for the Ted Baker bag and repeated her magic as best as I could. I even applied some lip gloss and by the time I fastened the headscarf the way she taught me, I felt a little like Anna again.

A clean pair of white linen pyjamas plus a baby blue ballet cardigan and I was ready to try and make a new friend. I was so used to trailing up and down the corridor with a drip stand attached to me it felt strange to be leaving it behind. But there it was, redundant and lonely in the corner of the room.

I did not have to look very far for Michael because he was sitting on the bed in the side room opposite mine. He was wearing a beige cowboy hat and playing a guitar. Perhaps I was still dreaming.

***

I tap quietly on the door. ‘Hello?’

He looks up at me and before he looks quickly away again, I catch it in his eyes. He is pleased to see me.

‘Hi.’ He shrugs casually.

‘I wanted to say I’m sorry for shouting. I’m not quite myself these days. Well, I can be a bit moody but honestly, I don’t normally bite strangers’ heads off like that. But you said you know what it feels like so I just thought …’ I feel I’m rambling and my voice starts to trail off. I don’t have a blonde mane to flick flirtatiously over my shoulder as I usually would and I feel somewhat at a loss. ‘So … sorry,’ I turn to go but his voice stops me.

‘It’s OK, I do know. I’ve heard you yelling at most of your visitors these last few weeks. I should’ve been more prepared.’

I look at him, horrified, until he starts smiling. I reach out my hand to him.

‘I’m Anna.’

‘Michael.’

He tries to shake my outstretched hand but his IV won’t pull that far. I step awkwardly round his things and find myself plonked in his visitors’ chair – How forward. We finally shake hands.

We talk for a little while. I find out he likes country music, that he had been born in America and now runs an American-style riding centre north of Northampton with his father. He likes everything to do with being outdoors and has a dog called Lincoln. (I naturally wonder if he has a thirty-something wife.) I tell him I like dogs and horses, which is true, but I neglect to mention the fact I hate doing anything with my spare time other than lazing around with Jules watching trashy television shows. We had barely left the house at weekends since she’d had Sky installed, unless a Saturday night out beckoned and we recorded everything for a further laze fest on the Sunday.

I do not want him judging me for some reason. I am not normally one to care a great deal for what people think of me and could often be found boasting about the weekend we watched thirty-four back-to-back episodes of Geordie Shore. I want Michael to think I have more depth. He does look a little older than me; it is quite hard to tell because this illness (I’m sick of the C word) makes everyone look so much older. I wouldn’t lie to him exactly, but if he asks how I spend my spare time I will have to think of something more worthwhile than endless parties and duvet days.

‘How long did you live in America?’ I ask, feeling it might be better to keep the spotlight over there for now.

‘Like I say, I was born there, but my mom left when I was young.’ He pauses for a second and looks down at his hands. ‘She left after my little brother died and my dad raised me alone.’

‘I’m so sorry, Michael.’

I want to put my hand over his, but he moves them before I have the chance and the moment passes.

‘We had our own riding centre where tourists would come out and ride round Western-style. A taste of being a cowboy, they loved it.’

‘So you had a Dude Ranch, that’s so cool.’

He looks impressed. ‘Exactly, a Dude Ranch. Anyway, a few years later one of the tourists caught Pops’ eye and they fell in love. My stepmom, Caroline, didn’t want to leave her family in England so we sold up and moved over here. I was only ten and we didn’t have much family to leave behind, so we set up the business and it’s been doing pretty good since. They got married nearly ten years ago and spend most of the time travelling; they wanted to retire, so I was running things; ready to take over ‘til I got sick.’

It is the first time either of us has mentioned being ill, and it hangs in the air between us. I’m not ready for it yet. I love listening to him; he is so open and confident. Maybe I do worry too much about what other people think, but I am terrified he will find me transparent and boring while I find him so original. Let’s face facts, I do not exactly have my looks to fall back on.

‘So you’re, like, twenty?’

‘Nineteen. And you?’

‘I might look a hundred and eight but I’m actually seventeen. And a half,’ I add quickly, in case he thinks I am too young. ‘Seventeen and a half.’

He smiles but it’s more like a little laugh and he starts strumming on the guitar in his hands, singing jauntily ‘She might look one hundred but she’s only seventeen.’

‘And a half!’ I try to say crossly, but I’m laughing too.

The night goes on like that, we laugh and share stories and I thank God I feel OK. I’m not rushing to the bathroom to throw up every five minutes. I just feel young and happy for the first time in a long time.

‘Your scarf looks pretty.’

I blush furiously, feeling horribly self-conscious. ‘Two months ago I had blonde hair.’

‘Like a Palomino.’ He’s doing that half-smile, half-laugh thing again. It makes me disintegrate.

‘What’s a Palomino?’ I ask him, holding his gaze.

‘I might tell you one day.’

I smile at Michael, delighted at the thought that we might have another day, but I can see he suddenly looks tired.

‘Are you OK?’ I ask, and help him set his guitar down so he can lie back on the bed.

‘I will be. They came round this morning and said the treatment’s worked. I felt like that alone would kill me but the tumour’s small enough to remove.’

‘Where is it?’

‘At the bottom of my back, near my spine. A dangerous place and it was too risky to operate, but now I’m all set for Wednesday. Prospects look good considering a while ago they thought I might not be able to walk again.’

He catches the look of fear that flickers across my face for only a second.

‘Anna.’

‘Michael, I’m happy you’re going to be OK, I really am. But I should go. It’s getting late and Nurse Ratched will have a ding dong if she finds me in here.’ I mimic her raspy voice, ‘“Visiting hours are eleven ‘til one, and six ‘til eight. Not a minute before or after. Patients need rest.”’ I wagged my finger at him. ‘“Rest. Rest. Rest.”’

‘Anna,’ he says gently.

I shrug and wrap my ballet cardy tightly around me, self-conscious once more. ‘My chemo didn’t work. They have to operate anyway, but it’ll be a much higher risk. They never really put you in the picture properly but I forced them to. The tumour is growing too fast for the chemo to touch. It will, without a doubt, kill me very soon, so they may as well have a go at the operation. I’m going home to rest for a few weeks then I’ll be back to face the music. I suppose I’m really going home to spend some quality time with the people I love before I die. It’s got to beat living the rest of my life in this place, I guess. Mr Raj is trying to keep me positive, and even though I’m definitely quite stupid, I’m not stupid enough to believe he can pull it off and my life will go back to normal.’

***

There. I’d said it. I had told another person that I knew I was going to die. I had known it from the day I sat in the Alice in Wonderland chair and the black cloud appeared to loom patiently above me.

It felt good to share with him, but it pretty much put an end to any romantic thoughts I may have had. Before, we were simply Michael and Anna, holding one another’s gaze for beautiful drawn-out moments. Now he was just another patient, except he would get better and I wouldn’t.

‘Come here.’

He moves across the bed and holds his arms out to me. It feels like the most natural thing in the world to lie down beside him. This man I have known for a few hours holds me in his arms and tells me everything will be OK. And d’you know something? For the next hour and half everything is perfectly fine.

Sometime later I wake in my own bed, having crept back across the corridor in the very early hours of the morning; I can hear the nurses chatting quietly at the night station but no one seems to have noticed me. I still have butterflies in my stomach. Michael has changed everything, and all I can think of is him.

Does your mind ever race ahead of itself and create scenarios for the future? I had envisaged a thousand different roles. How we will both overcome our illnesses and spend our lives together riding horses and wearing cowboy hats.

Now the early morning light is creeping through my side room window, I am beginning to have my doubts. I feel sick again – Emotionally and physically drained. I reach for my diary and see it is Sunday already. I am going home in a little over a week.

So how can anything ever happen for us? We will be miles apart. Michael will recover from his operation and I have yet to face mine. I am truly disheartened and manage to convince myself that he will not care either way; he will focus on getting well again and finding a girlfriend with hair. I find this more depressing than my current life expectancy.

I close my eyes and relax my mind until I consciously will myself to fall asleep. It isn’t too hard, I don’t feel I have much to stay awake for. Maybe I imagined this connection with Michael to distract myself from the awful things I should have been trying to face. I have to contemplate what is left of my life, concentrate on how things should be handled with my family. Here I am thinking of how it will feel to be with a man I barely know, when something deep down tells me I am probably the farthest thing from his mind.

At least I have been honest, I think sadly. He can feel free to feel sorry for the poor girl he shared a few hours with once. I can see him in the pub with his friends in years to come, telling them about the girl in the room opposite his who didn’t make it. They tell him he was one of the lucky ones and he smiles and goes back to chatting up the barmaid.

A nurse with those damn stomach injections brings me round again, but she looks really young and nervous so I don’t shout at her. I even nearly smile a little.

‘Sorry, Anna,’ she says. ‘I’m Rebecca. This is to help prevent blood clots when you’re lying down so much. They told me to try and let you sleep.’

‘Did they say I was scary?’

She just laughs. ‘I’d shout at people too if they kept coming at me with needles.’

‘Have I had any visitors?’ I try to sound casual.

‘Yes, your mum and sister were here at little while ago, but you were fast asleep so they’re coming back in an hour.’

‘No-one else?’

‘I don’t think so. Were you expecting somebody?’

‘Not really, I just sleep so much I barely know where I am or who’s been to see me.’

She picked up my headscarf from where it had fallen by the bed.

‘You like horses then?’

I must have looked confused because she pointed to the scarf again. ‘Horseshoes, and the picture by your bed.’

I look to where she is pointing and my eyes fall on a picture of a pale blonde horse, with a flowing mane that shines like 24-carat gold, propped against my bedside lamp. I try to contain myself until she’s left the room, then fall off the bed in my haste to reach it. The picture shows an orangey red sky and a majestic horse reared defiantly up towards it, as though she knows even the sunset cannot compete against her beauty. It is called ‘The Palomino’. I look at it for a few moments then turn the card.

Meet me in Day Room One when you wake up, my beautiful Anna.

X

That is the moment I fall in love with Michael Torino.

***

We spent what was left of Sunday (six hours and forty-five minutes) sitting alone together in the day room – And every day for the next eight days. We talked about our childhoods. Though he didn’t want to talk much about his brother, he did say he was called Benjamin, or Benji.

‘I think he hated being called Benji, but it sort of stuck.’

He paused and took a sip of water.

‘What’s your sister like?’

He was nearly an expert subject changer as me.

‘Is she as charming as you?’ He gave the little laugh again.

‘Isabel is far more charming than I am and she hates her real name too. Everyone calls her Izzy.’ I look up and see two people walking towards us. ‘Actually, judge for yourself.’

As Isabel walked in with my mother, my heart crashed to the floor. She looked gorgeous in her irritatingly understated manner and much older than her almost fourteen years. She wore skinny jeans, ballet pumps and a T-shirt that shows off her slender brown arms and an unintentional touch of bare midriff. Her chestnut hair was tied back in a tight ponytail (I knew she was being sensitive because she never wears her hair up – it’s always cascading down her back and over her shoulders like mine used to be.) For weeks I’ve seen nothing but this damn ponytail and it annoyed the hell out of me. Maybe I want as many reasons for anger as possible, and her trying to take some of them away from me is making things worse. I forgot about trying to be nice in front of Michael and snapped at her.

‘That’s my T-shirt. It’s far too small for you.’

Izzy was having none of it. She ignored me and held her hand out to Michael.

‘So you’re the reason she’s cheered up.’

He started to laugh as he shook her hand but stopped abruptly when he saw my fuming face.

‘Well, you do have a reputation on the ward as a bit of a grump, darling.’

Darling. He called me darling like we had been married for twenty-five years. The sky was blue again and for all I cared, Izzy could have walked through the ward wearing nothing but nipple tassels.

‘This is Michael,’ I say ever so sweetly, ‘and this is Isabel, my sister, and Lilly, my mother.’

‘Lillian,’ she corrected, looking horrified, to my greatest satisfaction. My grandparents had been nineteen when they found out they were expecting. At that time they lived in a caravan as part of a travelling community. Lillian was born a blonde-haired little angel and they doted on her. For years, they told us the story of how they found her under a lily pad when she was a tiny baby and decided to bring her home. My mother cringes whenever she hears it. I suppose it suited her when she was little, wearing only a smile and daisy chain. Now she dresses in Jaeger and Donna Karan, and the smile has been replaced with a dissatisfied frown.

‘Nice to meet you both.’ Michael was oblivious to the chip on her shoulder pad.

‘How are you? They say you can come home soon.’ Izzy looked at me warily, prepared for another attack. My mood swings have become so erratic and she looked quite scared.

‘I feel OK, apart from the headaches and knocking over or dropping everything I touch.’

There was an awkward silence which Michael took as his cue to leave.

‘I’ll come see you after visiting hours; I’ll get some chocolate from the canteen.’

He kissed my hand like it was the most natural thing in the world and I couldn’t help smiling as he left the three of us alone.

‘God, he’s gorgeous, Anna!’

My smile disappeared and I glared daggers at Izzy.

‘Oh, great sis, fancy him, do you? I’m sure you’ll get your claws into him when I’m dead.’

I spat out the last word and she looked close to crying, but straightened her shoulders and said with perhaps more conviction than she felt, ‘Stop. Stop pushing everyone away. This is hard for us too, you know.’

I snorted derisively, doubting she would want to swap places. My sister and silent mother seemed to have sucked what little life was left out of the room. Or maybe it had just left with Michael.

‘Do you think I want the two of you staring at me with cow eyes? Full of pity! I can’t stand it any more. Please, just leave me alone.’ I looked up at my sister through streaming tears and saw the flush of colour in her cheeks where mine were now gaunt and sallow. Her hair is thick and shiny, full of the life I am losing. Looking at her just reminded me that the harder I tried to hold on, the faster I seemed to be falling.

Mum reached towards me with such utter uncertainty that I lost control once again. Why did she find it so hard to comfort me? What had I ever done to feel this alone?

‘Get away from me!’ I yelled. My face and neck were wet with tears. I tried to throw Isabel off but she was too strong now and wrapped her arms around me so I couldn’t move. As we sat in the same chair rocking and crying together, I glanced up for a second to see my mother’s back as she left the room, and I grabbed on to Izzy as though my life depended on it.

***

About an hour later we are still squashed in the same recliner, but now we have acquired a blanket and a cup of sweet tea each from a concerned auxiliary nurse. I even manage to share a KitKat with Iz for the pleasure and normality of dunking it into our tea like we used to.

‘Do you remember that time you fell off Starlight?’ she asks.

I nod against her shoulder.

We had been riding in the meadow and I was showing off as usual, trying to get Star to jump a fallen log. I cantered her determinedly up to it but instead of jumping, she stuck her hooves in the ground suddenly and I flew over her head. When you fall from a height like that, you don’t feel yourself going down; it is more like the ground is coming up – and at an alarmingly fast rate. Recently, I have found the simplest of things difficult to recall, but I can see that bumpy ground coming towards me like it was yesterday. Afterwards there was nothing until I opened my eyes to see my mother beside me in the meadow as Izzy had run to get her. She was crying. Why was she the one crying when I had been the human catapult? Mother kept asking over and over was I all right and what on earth had I been thinking, and I recall closing my eyes to try and shut her out.

A doctor visited a little while later and said I would be fine, that I just had a very mild concussion and that Lillian should keep an eye on me for the next few hours.

Izzy had tried to cheer me up by doing impressions of what I had looked like flying through the air, and while I laughed uproariously as she flung herself off the settee, she proceeded to bang her head on the coffee table, which of course ended up being my fault as well.

When Father walked in we were watching cartoons with matching egg-shaped bumps on our foreheads. He gave us a little iced bun each he’d brought back from the deli and planted a kiss on our noses, making us laugh again – he always would kiss our forehead, but wanted to avoid the two bruised bumps.

Dad was furious with our mother, and we looked at each other with widened eyes as he asked her to go upstairs so they could ‘Discuss this privately.’

I heard a lot of banging and imagined her throwing things and shouting. My father never lost his temper so I knew it was her – Always making things miserable.

‘I don’t remember Dad even being there,’ says Izzy, as I remember his annoyance that our mother hadn’t taken better care of us. ‘I hardly remember him at all. He was always working when we were little. I just remember Mum.’

‘Yes, working all hours because she was spending his money on that stupid bloody house. It’s not even a home, it’s like a museum.’

‘Not our special room though, that was always a tip! God, I haven’t been up there for years, not since we left primary school.’

The room Izzy is talking about is the attic which Mother had converted into a playroom for us when we were young. It was full of toys and a rocking horse, and it was certainly very pretty with its flowery wallpaper. But what no one, certainly not Izzy, remembers is that the mother she tries to defend used to lock us in that beautiful room and leave us there.

***

Michael came to my room a little while later, with chocolate as promised. I eyed the Twix nervously, as the half a KitKat I’d eaten earlier was like an eight-course banquet these days. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful but I didn’t want to throw up in front of him either. So I nibbled the piece he gave me and sighed gratefully as he bit into the second biscuit himself.

‘I came back ages ago but you and your sister looked like you needed to be alone.’

He looked a little concerned, so I smile bravely and told him, ‘Thank you. Izzy always makes me feel better. I mean she drives me around the bend and back, but, you know …’

‘You love her?’

I shrug, a little embarrassed as I am not exactly in touch with my emotional side.

‘Yes, I do,’ I replied. Then, just in case he thought he might love her also, I added, ‘When she’s not being immature she’s OK, I suppose. Bit childish, really. She still picks her nose.’

Michael did his funny half laugh and I felt like he was laughing at me, so I nibbled at the Twix a little more seductively. I considered fluttering my eyelashes before I remembered I had none.

My old friend self-doubt stopped by for a visit, and I started to wonder why he was being so nice to me. He knew I was a goner, did he just feel sorry for me? I can’t stand being pitied, so I pushed the thought away with a more comforting replacement. ‘Of course!’ I told myself. ‘He just wants to have sex with me. He has a thing for invalids because we are desperate and needy. He thinks I will be so grateful for some attention in my current state that he can just push me on the bed and have his way with me!’

God, if only. Until now he had been a perfect gentleman, possibly because a matter of days ago he had undergone an eight-hour surgery to remove the tumour by his spine. I’d spent as much time in his room while he was in recovery as possible. And during those simple days, I had started to feel a little better too.

In my determination to make Michael eat, I sat an example by making the effort myself, and even Mr Raj said I had a little colour in my cheeks. He said this with a twinkle in his eye, and I think most of the staff thought that the chance of love blossoming on the oncology ward was a welcome if surprising occurrence.

Not that they had dared to say so. My mood swings were still unpredictable, although looking after Michael, however briefly, made me forget my own plight for a while. One night I kissed his forehead and actually went back to my own room smiling. I was walking on air and if anyone had seen me sailing through ward five in the silent hours before dawn they would have thought I’d change places with no one.

So feelings were certainly growing between us. Yet here he was, sitting a respectable distance away from me in his wheelchair, absentmindedly eating half a Twix. I hoped he was secretly wondering what colour my underwear was.

He may have read my mind as I blushed and he smiled at me again. ‘So, this is weird.’

‘What is?’ My heart was beating suddenly fast.

‘Well, you know.’ He looked a little awkward. ‘We haven’t exactly met in the usual circumstances. We’re both ill and stuck in this place … and you’re leaving tomorrow. I like you so much, Anna. I don’t want this to be the last time we see each other.’

It would have taken me days, perhaps weeks, to think of a way to say those same words to Michael. He just said what he thought, and I wished I could be like that instead of considering all angles: whether or not opening up would work in my favour, or if I’d be rejected. I followed his lead instead.

‘I like you too – A lot, actually. It just feels doomed; beginnings should be movie dates and romantic strolls, not brain tumours and imminent death.’

‘I saw your mum in the canteen,’ he said eagerly. ‘She said you can get through this. In fact, she’s sure that you will. I really like her, Anna; she has such a good way of looking at things and cares about you so much.’

I said the next words very slowly, as though I couldn’t quite believe them. ‘You’ve been talking to my mother?’

He missed my tone and carried on, blissfully unaware of the tornado picking up ferocious momentum.

‘Yes, we had a coffee while you and Izzy were talking. She looked very upset so I joined her and we had a really nice conversation. She told me about you when you were little, how strong-minded you are. She’s so sure you’ll get through this it really inspired me. After what you told me I thought there was no hope, but Lillian says Mr Raj is brilliant … and perhaps you were being a bit pessimistic about your prognosis.’

His voice trailed off uncertainly as he saw the look on my face. Michael looked distinctly worried.

‘So you both think I’m lying?’ I gave a laugh that sounded very ugly. ‘Mother of the Year is telling everyone her daughter is exaggerating her illness. Did she tell you about the time I used her red lipstick to dot my face with chicken pox because I didn’t want to be in the nativity play? Or when I feigned feeling sick to avoid a family day out? This is priceless! Now she’s telling everyone I’m pretending to have a brain tumour. Look!’

I pulled off the headscarf I had so carefully placed earlier that day.

‘I’ve even shaved my hair off to go along with the charade! This is how it all started, you know –Me not wanting to go to sixth form, being sent to a real doctor. It was all an elaborate ploy!’

I was absorbed in my rage. How could she try and turn Michael against me? I hadn’t noticed him reach for me, and when I looked up his face is so close to mine I can see the grey flecks in his eyes.

‘No!’ He sounded distraught but I no longer cared. My dream was spoiled and sullied. ‘Anna, please, it was nothing like that. Of course she knows how dangerous it is, she believes you’re a fighter, that you’re stronger than she’s ever been. She has to believe you’ll be OK because she can’t face the alternative – Like I can’t.’

I could barely hear him as I shook with rage. I reached past him and pressed for the nurse. ‘I have a terrible headache,’ I said coldly and with a calmness I didn’t feel. ‘Please leave me alone. Despite what my mother has told you I am too ill to deal with all of this. So what if we like each other? I just want to get out of here tomorrow and forget about this place, that’s all I can think about right now.’

‘Do you want to forget about me?’

I met his eyes and my heart dissolved like ice in fire.

‘Yes, Michael. That is exactly what I want.’

***

When the nurse arrives, I grossly exaggerate the extent of my headache. I have done that a few times in here because the drugs are so good. A few excruciating minutes after swallowing the little capsules and I am drifting away on a euphoric cloud. The razor-sharp pain in my chest that told me I had blown it with Michael ebbs away as I fall deeper under the sedative spell. I am anaesthetized once more, not by wine or Father’s port, but by some pills I can’t pronounce the name of but have every intention of becoming very familiar with.

I wake up with a dry mouth and a cloudy head. Mother is packing my things and I can hear Izzy saying, ‘She’s waking up, I think. God, what did they give her?’

I open my eyes another painful crack and see her concerned face. She pulls me up to a sitting position and holds some juice with a straw to my lips. I ask her where my father is, the same question I have asked every day since he last visited.

‘He’s still in New Zealand.’ The voice of doom from Lillian, who must love to be the bearer of bad news. ‘He decided to stay out there and finish his appraisal when he found out you were being sent home. You’ll see him on Sunday.’

‘I knew he’d be back soon,’ I say smugly, and she makes a noise I cannot quite decipher. She is holding the palomino picture Michael gave me and I snatch it from her.

‘I was going to put it in your suitcase, Anna. We need to get going; you were discharged hours ago.’

I swing myself stiffly from the bed and try to walk with nonchalance to the bathroom. But my head is spinning and as I wobble Izzy looks away quickly. She knows when to offer help and when to let me get on with it.

I let them sort out my room and sit on the bathroom floor with the door closed. Silent tears flow as I remember the way I treated Michael. It was hardly his fault that my mother was evil and wanted everyone to hate me as much as she did. I was still holding the picture he had left me, what seemed like eons ago. Under his original note was a number that hadn’t been there before, and I realized he must have come back to my room while I was sleeping. I took a moment to cringe a little. I’ve never been the prettiest of sleepers, so Lord knows what I must’ve looked like last night – Red, puffy eyes from crying, possibly drooling, and comatose with knock-out painkillers. Still, he had given me his mobile number and written in very small letters under it, ‘Don’t just leave me.’

I smile sadly and think of what could have been. How my heart had soared when he asked me to meet him in the day room and called me ‘beautiful’. I could never imagine feeling like that again. There was no room in my new world for such happiness, it just didn’t fit in with everything I was about to face up to: Like painting a rainbow on a torture chamber’s wall.

I allow myself one last look before tearing the golden horse into tiny pieces.