Lizzie
At some point on the tube journey home a jittering had taken hold of Lizzie’s body. Another symptom or a reaction to the events in Dr Habibi’s office? The latter this time, Lizzie thought. The key in her hand danced and scratched against the lock before finding its place and releasing the catch in the door.
The smell of mildew and mould, and Samantha’s vanilla air diffuser, greeted Lizzie as she stepped into their dim, one-bedroom flat. When had they stopped complaining to the landlord about the smell? When had they stopped talking about moving somewhere nicer? Cleaner? Bigger? Twelve months, they’d said. Twelve months of rotating which one of them slept on the sofa, whilst the other two shared the double bed, and cold showers two days out of three because there was only enough hot water in the mornings for one person. Twelve months and they would have enough money to go travelling. That had been the plan, anyway. The flat in an apartment block with nine others, nestled in between two high-rise council estate towers in All Saints, east London, had been home now for six years.
Lizzie sighed, the breath leaving her body in broken shudders. She dropped her bag on the floor but didn’t bother shrugging off her jacket. The autumn air carried the first hints of winter, and they’d yet to unearth the oil heaters from the back of the hall cupboard.
‘Lizzie?’ Jaddi’s voice carried from the living room.
‘Yeah,’ Lizzie said, stepping into the room and flicking on the light.
‘Oh, that’s better, thanks.’ Jaddi slid the laptop from her lap and placed it on the floor before standing up. ‘How did it go? I thought you were going to text me?’
‘Sorry, I forgot.’ Lizzie flopped onto the sofa and rubbed her hands over her face.
‘What happened?’ Jaddi asked.
Lizzie shook her head underneath her hands.
‘Oh, honey.’ Jaddi stood up and a moment later the sofa cushion shifted and she felt Jaddi’s body beside her. ‘So does that mean more treatment?’
‘I said, no.’
‘What?’
‘He wanted me to sign up for some clinical trial where they have no idea if what they’re pumping into my body will kill me as quickly as the tumour. So I said no.’
‘But—’
‘Please, Jaddi,’ Lizzie snapped, rubbing her hands harder against her face. ‘I’m done explaining myself for one night. The rounds of radiotherapy didn’t work. The tumour is still there, but I can’t go through it again, OK? I’m done.’
‘Do you know how long?’
Lizzie dropped her hands from her face and waited for the emotion to overwhelm her. It didn’t. She felt nothing. ‘Dr Habibi said six months, as a best guess.’
Jaddi didn’t reply. She stood up and stepped to the windowless kitchen area behind the sofa. Lizzie listened to the clinking of bottles in the fridge door and a cupboard open then shut.
‘I got us some fizz,’ Jaddi said, walking back to the sofa with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘Just in case, you know? But what the hell, we should have a drink.’
‘I thought we said no more Prosecco.’ Lizzie pointed to the large world-map poster on the wall, torn and scuffed at the corners from too much blue tack over the years. Next to the map was a line of pink Post-its, each with a number written on it – their savings. The amount had risen steadily at first, as they had tallied what was left from their salaries at the end of every month. Then there had been the wedding of a mutual friend. New outfits, a gift, hotel and travel costs. A month had gone by without a Post-it. Then another, and another. Lizzie couldn’t remember the last time they’d put one up. ‘We’re supposed to be saving again, remember?’
‘Does it matter now?’ Jaddi asked. ‘I’d promise to forgo a couple of cappuccino’s next week to make up for it but …’ Jaddi’s voice trailed off.
‘You can still go without me,’ Lizzie said, taking the bottle from Jaddi and twisting the cork until it popped into her hands. ‘Next year.’ The thought of not travelling the world with Jaddi and Samantha like they’d always planned; the thought of next year – a year she wouldn’t see – caused the colours to return to her eyes and a panic to spin and twirl in her stomach. Lizzie blinked until the colours disappeared. She had to focus on living, on the months she had.
‘Where’s Samantha?’ Lizzie asked.
‘Working late again. She’s staying at David’s tonight, so we’ve got the bed. She thought you might like a decent night’s sleep.’
‘I’d rather have seen her and slept on the sofa,’ Lizzie said, gazing out the window, her eyes following the distant blinking lights of an aeroplane, climbing higher and higher until it disappeared from view.
‘David’s asked Sam to move in with him.’
‘What? When?’
‘Last week. She wanted to wait until you’d had the results back before telling you.’ Jaddi shrugged again before tipping a long mouthful of Prosecco into her mouth.
‘So travelling is out of the question for you guys anyway, then? If we have to split the rent two ways, then one, you’ll never have any money left to save.’ Lizzie’s eyes felt drawn back to the map on the wall, and the red-dot stickers, like an outbreak of chickenpox, that marked the places they wanted to visit.
Lizzie had a sudden urge to rip the map from the wall and scrunch it into a tight ball.
Jaddi topped up her glass. The pale liquid fizzed up and over the lip. Jaddi dipped her head forward and slurped at the foam. ‘I’ll figure something out.’
Lizzie’s head throbbed in rhythm with her heart. Salty tears stung the skin underneath her eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry, Lizzie. This isn’t your fault.’
‘But you really wanted to travel and—’
‘So did you, so did Sam,’ Jaddi said. ‘I wished we’d tried harder to save.’
‘We have a little bit of money, don’t we? I was thinking on the tube home that we could use it to go somewhere, just the three of us. It wouldn’t be all the way around the world, but we could see a little bit of it.’
‘A two-week holiday?’ Jaddi shook her head.
‘I know.’ Lizzie dropped her head against the cushion. ‘But it’s better than nothing.’
An hour later the numbness of alcohol coated Lizzie’s thoughts. She had six months. She could spend time with her mum and dad. She could watch Aaron train. She could travel somewhere with Samantha and Jaddi. OK, so it wasn’t long enough for her to achieve all the things she wanted, and there was no way that their savings would stretch to all the places she’d wanted to see, but it was enough. Enough to know she wouldn’t spend another second in hospital with her head pinned to that table. She wouldn’t spend another moment of her life swimming in the foggy after-effects of the treatments. It had to be enough. She’d make it enough.
‘I’ve got it!’ Jaddi leapt from the sofa.
‘Got what?’ Lizzie raised her eyebrows.
‘It’s perfect.’ Jaddi grabbed her laptop and dropped back to the sofa, her fingers dancing over the keyboard. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.’
‘What?’
‘We have to travel. We have to do it. The three of us. Like we’d planned all along. If we go after Christmas then we’ll have three months to scrape some money together and three months to travel.’
‘Sounds great, but where are we going to get three months worth of travelling money from?’ Lizzie drained the last inch of liquid in her glass. The chill and bubbles had gone, leaving a sickly warm tang to burn her throat.
‘We’ll crowdfund our trip.’ Jaddi lifted her head, a smile stretching across her face as she stared at Lizzie. Her eyes sparked with excitement, with hope.
‘We’ll what?’
‘I read this article a few months ago. This couple in America wanted to have a course of IVF but couldn’t afford it. The man set up a website and pleaded with people to donate a dollar to help him and his wife. He put up some photos of them together and wrote this heartbreaking story about how long they’d been trying to conceive, and how much they longed for a baby. Then he shared it on social media, and it went viral. They made enough for the treatment and had enough left over to set up a charity for other couples in the same boat. All we need is a website and a good story. I can’t believe I’ve only just thought about it.’
Lizzie shook her head. ‘You’re kidding? You want to ask strangers to donate a pound for us to go travelling? We’d never get more than the train fare to the airport.’
‘We would if it went viral like that American one did. Besides, a pound is just a suggestion, people can give us whatever they want.’
‘Yes, but why would anyone give us money? I can see how it worked with the IVF couple, but we can’t expect anyone to give us money because we’re terrible at saving and now I’ve chosen not to have any more treatment. It’s my choice. People won’t understand. They’ll say I’m giving up. That I don’t deserve it. It’s hardly the sympathy vote, is it?’
Jaddi’s fingers paused; her eyes fixed on a point in the distance. A moment later she started typing again.
‘Jaddi?’ Lizzie’s heartbeat quickened as she stared at the determination in Jaddi’s eyes.
‘We’ll spin it. It’s just like any of the PR campaigns I’ve worked on. We just have to find a way to hook people.’
‘Come again?’ Lizzie scooched across the sofa and peered over Jaddi’s shoulder. What looked like a pale-blue webpage filled the screen. There were no words, just a selfie of the three of them from a trip to the beach last summer. A large blinking cursor waited for a title.
Jaddi fixed her gaze on Lizzie. ‘Who else knows that you’re choosing not to have treatment?’
‘My parents and Aaron, and Dr Habibi, but, Jaddi, we can’t lie.’
‘It’s not a lie. There is no treatment for your tumour. Everything else is experimental.’
‘We’d be defrauding people.’
Jaddi shook her head, ‘You said it yourself, there’s no way to know if a clinical trial would work. Your tumour is untreatable; it’s the same thing.’
Lizzie stared at Jaddi and then the blank website and wished she’d not had so much to drink. Her head struggled to keep up with Jaddi’s ‘act now, think later’ mindset at the best of times.
‘It’s lying, Jaddi,’ Lizzie said. ‘Let’s not pretend it’s anything else.’
‘But you’re not saying no.’
‘You know how desperate I am to travel, but not like this.’
‘But what harm will it do?’
Lizzie opened her mouth to reply but she had no response to Jaddi’s question.