Twenty-five years earlier
“Mum,” I say, my voice offbeat with nerves. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
I have no idea how I’m going to say it. How she’s going to react. Once it’s said, it’s said. As irreversible as what I did to Nick.
She’s still doubled over after her fit of crying. When she raises her chin, I’m startled to see blood leaking from her nose. “Oh, Mum! You’re having a nosebleed!”
She blinks and raises a hand to her nostrils. The blood ribbons over her fingers, across her chin, onto the collar of her gray T-shirt.
I dash to the bathroom for a wad of toilet paper. She tries to stem the bleeding, then tips back her head and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Damn,” she murmurs in a way that makes me think this isn’t the first time she’s had a nosebleed this bad. She doesn’t seem surprised, just annoyed, frustrated.
But I’m scared to see her losing so much blood. Disturbed by the puddle of red on the front of her top. Uneasy, as I remember a different top, a similar stain. Scarlet against pale blue.
“You okay, Mum?” I ask when the bleeding’s stopped. She’s slumped in the armchair, burrowing her feet beneath our scruffy flowery rug.
“Oh, Kate,” she says in a strangled voice, shutting her eyes. “What are we going to do?”
A tremor passes through me. “What do you mean?”
Her tears brim again, slipping from beneath her closed lids. She opens her eyes but doesn’t wipe them; pearls of water cling to her skin.
“Maybe Nick was right. I should’ve told you months ago.”
“Told me what?”
She massages her cheeks with the heels of her hands. There are clots of dried blood around her nostrils, like little splodges of paint.
“What, Mum?”
“Things are going to be difficult now, love. Nick’s gone. Becca and Rach won’t be coming back here. And it’s going to be hard. Even harder than it would’ve been if I didn’t . . . if I wasn’t . . .” She leans forward, grasping my hands. “I’m ill, Kate.”
Everything freezes. I feel a door swing shut in my brain as though it’s rejecting this information, refusing it entry.
“It’s called MDS, love. Myelodysplastic syndrome. It’s a kind of cancer.”
Her words fall through me but still I can’t speak. It’s like my mouth is anesthetized.
“I didn’t want to upset you, love. Didn’t want to jeopardize your exams, I thought it was best . . .”
No, no, no. I would have known. My eyes roam her face, searching for some chink in her act. All I see is her white skin and jutting bones. She is sick. Cancer. Fear wells from my chest, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. “Are you going to die?”
“The doctors are doing everything they can to help me.”
I don’t like her answer. I didn’t hear the word no. My face collapses and she pulls me into a hug. “It’s okay, Kate. We’re going to stick together. Get through this.”
“When did . . . ?”
“I was diagnosed at the beginning of April. Nick was the only one who knew, and I wanted to keep it that way as long as possible.”
“You should have told me!”
She says nothing and I feel horrible for shouting at her. I want to yell at someone, though. Want to hit something solid and knuckle-crushing.
“You’re going to get better, aren’t you?”
“I’m on drugs to slow the progress of the disease.” There it is once more: the non-answer. Some distant part of me is gathering up all these non-answers and rearranging them into what I want to hear. “If they don’t work, I might have to have some chemo. Possibly a stem-cell transplant. I’m staying positive, Kate, and you should too.”
I hug her tighter, craving the lily smell of the perfume Auntie Rach bought her, even the cling of cigarettes. Then I pull back, blinking at her stained T-shirt. Déjà vu returning.
She follows my gaze. “Sorry if the nosebleed alarmed you, love. I’m getting used to them now. The illness makes me bleed and bruise really easily. And this crappy tiredness . . . It’s a relief to tell you, really. I don’t know how much longer I could’ve covered it up, especially now Nick’s gone.”
My heart batters my ribs. Realizations are stirring, half forming.
Mum studies me as if she can see what I’m thinking. “I know you picked up on the tense atmosphere sometimes,” she says. “It’s been so tough, dealing with the symptoms, the appointments, the decisions about treatment . . . I wouldn’t have blamed Nick if he’d backed away completely, but he never did . . . and he respected my decision not to tell you, even though he felt pretty strongly you ought to know. We argued about it a lot. And maybe he was right after all.”
I press my hands to my mouth, tasting salt on my skin.
All this time she was being attacked by something I couldn’t save her from. And I still can’t.
As we fall quiet, listening to the buzz of the fridge that still threatens to clap out any moment, more realizations move through me. I can’t fend them off now: They just keep coming, like waves of heat and ice.
He wasn’t hurting her, was he? He was helping her keep the secret. I killed the one person she relied on. Killed him for no reason at all.