‘Ro, Ro! Wake up!’
If it wasn’t for the fact my throat is still incredibly sore and incapable of volume unless warmed up and well lubricated, I would have screamed. As it is, the best I’m able to manage is a sort of squeak, a bit like a mouse in distress.
‘Oh, shit, sorry!’ Tanvi says, her face centimetres away from mine. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’
Her breath is warm and sweet and smells of Lucozade.
‘What time is it?’ I rasp, struggling to prop myself up on my pillows. The rest of the ward is still.
‘I dunno,’ Tanvi replies. ‘Two? Three?’
I reach for a glass of water, gulping it down. ‘How did you know I was here?’ I ask, setting down my empty beaker. I’m still not entirely convinced I’m actually awake and Tanvi Shah is actually sitting in a wheelchair next to my bed wearing a furry dressing gown with teddy bear ears stitched onto the hood.
‘OK,’ Tanvi says in a noisy whisper. ‘So last night, Devin told me that you and Emerson had come round and that you’d asked him to tell me that you were sorry. Which he did. Anyway, I asked to borrow his phone – mine is broken cos when I collapsed the other day, I managed to drop it in my bath water and no one realized until the next day – duh! So, I tried calling you, but you didn’t answer, so I wrote you a note – old school, huh? – and asked Devin to drop it through your door. Which he tried to do this morning and couldn’t because your house is all cordoned off at the moment. So he put two and two together and asked the nurses if you were here, and they said yes and that you were going to be OK, and basically, I would have come sooner but he literally only told me this afternoon.’
Tanvi says all of this very quickly, barely pausing to take a breath.
‘Which is why,’ she continues, panting slightly, ‘I hijacked this baby from the kid in the bed next to mine.’ She thumps the arms of her wheelchair.
‘You stole someone’s wheelchair?’ I say.
‘No!’ Tanvi gasps in mock outrage. ‘I borrowed someone’s wheelchair.’
‘Where is your ward anyway?’
‘Literally next door.’
‘What if the nurses realize your bed is empty?’
‘Not to worry. I’ve left them a very comprehensive note.’
‘But should you even be out of bed? Aren’t you really ill? You collapsed!’
Tanvi pauses. ‘OK, I’m perhaps not feeling one hundred per cent right now, but I’m basically fine. They’re just being uber-careful because of my history.’
‘Did you get poorly because of me?’ I ask. It’s the question that’s been haunting me ever since I spoke to Devin.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I made you sit outside.’
‘When?’
‘On Saturday,’ I say, wincing at the memory of Tanvi perched on the edge of Bonnie’s sunlounger in the back garden.
‘Don’t be a ninny! I was already ill by then. Don’t you remember me coughing and sneezing at the party?’
I nod uncertainly.
‘Is that what you were sorry for?’ Tanvi asks.
I bite my lip. ‘Not just that.’ I want to expand, but as usual I don’t know where to start.
‘Anyway,’ Tanvi says breaking the silence, ‘enough about me and my boring old pneumonia. How on earth are you?’
‘Oh, I’m OK, I think. My throat feels kind of shredded from the smoke inhalation, but they reckon there’ll be no long-lasting damage.’
‘So you’ll still be able to sing?’
Oh God, that hadn’t even crossed my mind.
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Oh, that’s such good news!’
The child in the next bed stirs. Tanvi pulls a ‘whoops’ face and lowers her voice back down to a whisper.
‘Fancy a li’l field trip?’ she asks.
*
‘OK, in here,’ Tanvi says, prodding me through a door.
We haven’t ventured all that far from the ward, but the journey was far from straightforward – dodging members of staff and hiding behind pillars and vending machines in order to escape detection.
My eyes adjust to the darkness a little. We’re standing in the entrance to what looks like a miniature soft-play centre.
‘Follow me,’ Tanvi says, abandoning her wheelchair by the door and wading into the darkness.
I do as I’m told.
The dirty white moon spills light through the windows, illuminating a pile of plastic-coated beanbags in the far corner of the space. Tanvi flops onto one and indicates I should do the same.
‘This used to be my favourite spot,’ she says, turning on her back and stretching out her legs. She glances across at me. ‘What’s up? You’ve gone all quiet.’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I just didn’t properly twig until now.’
‘Twig what?’
‘That this was the hospital where you were treated for your cancer. You must know it inside out.’
‘You could say that, yeah.’
We sit in silence for a little while, our breathing slowing down until we’re in sync with one another.
‘I’m really glad you’re OK, Ro,’ Tanvi says.
‘Why are you being so nice to me?’ I ask.
‘Nice?’ she asks, tilting her head to one side.
‘Yeah. When I last saw you, you said you didn’t want to talk to me ever again.’
She frowns. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Yeah you did. You said that you couldn’t “do this any more”.’
‘And you interpreted that as me never wanting to talk to you ever again?’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘When I said I couldn’t do this, I meant I couldn’t keep having that conversation.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m not going to lie, the stuff you said about Anna really upset me, but once I’d calmed down a bit, all I wanted to do was come straight back and talk to you about it properly. Alas, my stupid pneumonia had other ideas …’
I feel really stupid.
‘Did you honestly think I was going to be that easy to shake off?’ she adds, laughing.
‘Good point,’ I admit.
She reaches across and punches me on the arm.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I say.
‘I know. I’m sorry too.’
‘What are you sorry for?’
‘Not telling you straightaway when I found out where you lived. And not saying anything about Anna.’
‘Don’t be stupid. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.’
‘That’s the thing though – I almost told you about her loads of time. But every time I stopped myself because I knew I’d only get upset if I did.’
‘What would be wrong with that?’
‘I didn’t want you to see me like that.’
‘Why not?’
Tanvi takes a deep breath. ‘OK, so for three years, pretty much every single person I met automatically felt sorry for me. When I came back to school, I was determined not to have people see me that way, like a victim, or someone to be pitied. And you didn’t. That was a big part of why I liked you straightaway. You didn’t wrap me up in cotton wool, you just treated me like a normal human being.’
‘I don’t know. I think I was probably pretty rude.’
‘I liked that though!’
‘Weirdo.’
She grins and sticks out her tongue. ‘I know you don’t like loads of people,’ she adds. ‘But you’d have liked her, I think. Anna, I mean.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What was she like?’
Tanvi shifts on her beanbag so she’s lying on it sideways. I do the same so our bodies are facing each other.
‘She was … the best,’ Tanvi says, her face softening. A single tear escapes and trickles down her cheek. ‘See!’ she says. ‘Instant tears!’
‘We don’t have to talk about her,’ I say quickly.
‘No, no. I want to,’ she says. ‘It feels like the right time.’
So I lie back and let her talk.
She tells me everything – meeting Anna in chemo where they bonded over their shared crush on a hot nurse called Lachlan; the silly games they made up together; their midnight excursions to the vending machine; the slow painful acknowledgment that as Tanvi was getting better, Anna was only getting worse; the multiple goodbyes, never knowing for sure which one was going to be the actual one – the definitive goodbye.
The entire time, tears roll down Tanvi’s cheeks.
After she finishes describing Anna’s funeral in January, we lapse into silence. For a few seconds I think Tanvi has fallen asleep, until she says, ‘I’ve just thought of another thing I’m sorry about.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The folder. That was dumb of me. Of course you’d looked into all that stuff before.’
‘That’s OK,’ I say. ‘You were just trying to help. And to be fair, I haven’t tried any of that stuff in a while.’
‘Has your mum always, you know, kept things?’
I swallow hard before answering her question. ‘Pretty much,’ I say. ‘Even though it’s a lot worse now, the house has never looked normal. Well, apart from this one time, when I was seven. Bonnie went away for the weekend and while she was gone, my dad got a cleaning team in.’
There were six of them, all dressed in white overalls. For two days straight they trooped in and out of the house, removing bag after bag of rubbish. When they left, I remember walking from room to room, marvelling over corners and skirting boards and power sockets I never knew existed.
‘I was so sure she would be pleased, but she went mad, shouting and screaming and crying,’ I say.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘She couldn’t even explain it. She just started filling the place up all over again. By Christmas it looked exactly the same as it did before.’
‘Wow,’ Tanvi says softly.
With gentle prompting, I tell her more about life at 48 Arcadia Avenue – the Christmas dinners eaten in empty Chinese restaurants; the Saturday nights spent sitting in the wings of dingy social clubs, eating endless bags of Mini Cheddars as Bonnie performed on stage; the terrible audition in London; Halloween; this afternoon’s visit from Social Services.
‘What do you think will happen?’ Tanvi asks.
After speaking to Bonnie, the two social workers came to talk to me. The first thing they did was reassure me they would do their best to keep Bonnie and I under the same roof.
‘Our principal aim is to keep families together,’ the woman, Carina, explained. ‘Not tear them apart.’
At the same time, Carina made it clear that Bonnie had some work to do before she and her team would be happy for me to return to Arcadia Avenue.
As she spoke, I couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened if I’d known this sooner. How would my life have looked? I quickly realized there was no point. I’m tired of looking back. I only want to look forward now.
‘What happens in the meantime?’ Tanvi asks once I’ve explained all this. ‘Where will you stay?’
‘I guess I’ll have to live with my dad.’
I shudder at the thought. We spoke on the phone earlier but he seemed way more upset about the way I spoke to Melanie the day before than the fact I was in hospital.
‘You don’t look too happy about that,’ Tanvi observes.
‘No,’ I admit.
There’s a pause. Then Tanvi sits up suddenly. ‘I’ve just had the most amazing idea,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you come stay at my house?’
‘Your house?’
‘Yeah! We have the space – you can have Anish’s old room. And just think of the fun we’ll have.’
‘You think your parents would be OK with it?’
‘Course they will! They think the sun shines out of your bum!’
‘What about Social Services? Would they let me, do you think?’
‘Well, I don’t know. It’s worth asking though, isn’t it?’
There’s a pause and I’m flooded with gratitude for my pint-sized friend.
‘Thank you, Tanvi,’ I say. ‘That’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s offered to do for me.’
‘Anytime, Ro Snow,’ she replies.
We continue to talk, our voices becoming slow and sleepy as we drift from one subject to another. Tanvi’s hand finds mine in the darkness. For once, I don’t feel the urge to shake her off or wriggle from her grip. Instead, I give it a gentle squeeze and don’t let go until the sun is coming up.