5 January 2000
‘Have I got toothpaste on my face?’
Tim checks me over as we cross the playground. ‘You look fine.’
‘Then why is everyone staring at us?’
As he looks round, one of the year 9s is actually pointing at me, as though I’ve grown an extra head.
‘You’re right. How . . .’ he searches for precisely the right word, ‘peculiar.’
This attention is freaking me out. The last thing I want is to be indoors after four days at that stuffy hospital, but we run up the steps to the stinky pre-fab that serves as the Sixth Form Common Room to escape the stares.
The temperature inside is colder than outside, but at least we’re out of sight. I empty the kettle of water that’s sat there since we broke up for Christmas, watch the beige flakes of limescale disappear down the plughole. Could it have been hard water that made Joel’s heart malfunction?
I can’t stop asking myself the same questions over and over again. Why did it happen to him? Why then? Why was I there? And the big one: did I get the CPR wrong? Is that why Joel is consumed by terrifying rages since he woke up – because I failed to get enough oxygen to his brain?
The answers aren’t clear; as the doctors keep saying, all we can do is wait and see.
I focus on spooning coffee granules into two mugs, pouring over boiling water, adding sugar.
As I hold out the coffees, the last drops of water in the kettle come back to the boil. The guttural sound is chillingly familiar. My heart pounds and I close my eyes as I realize what it’s like: Joel, lying on the grass, his mouth opening, gasping for breath, that same agonal gurgling . . .
I hear the mugs smashing before I register scalding coffee splashing against my legs.
‘Watch out, butterfingers!’ Tim calls, but it’s too late; the liquid has soaked through my tights, trapping the heat against my skin.
Despite the pain, I crouch down to pick up the shards of china.
‘Kerry, you’re hurt!’ He’s at the sink, filling the washing-up bowl with water. My shins prickle as blisters begin to form but I keep going.
‘For God’s sake, Kerry, stop doing that.’
I straighten up, holding the broken mugs in my coffee-sticky palms. Without warning, Tim tips the bowl towards me. A wave of icy water splashes over my knees, my legs, down into the new Doc Martens I got for Christmas.
‘What the hell did you do that for?’ My boots are flooded, but my scalds don’t hurt any less.
‘I . . .’ He blinks, as though he’s as mystified by his behaviour as I am. ‘It’s what you’re meant to do with burns. I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing.’
It’s on the tip of my tongue: What, like you did on New Year’s Eve?
We stare at each other.
Should I tell him, finally, how dreadful it was for me? How alone I felt as I pushed and puffed and knew I had someone’s life, literally, in my hands. I want to ask him, too, why he’s taking equal credit for the resuscitation when it was almost all me.
As the liquid puddles on the floor, I decide it has to be said. I see him flinch, as if he knows what’s coming.
‘Tim, about that night—’
‘Please, Kerry. I’ve learned my lesson, it’ll be different next time.’
I stare at him. I have to tread carefully. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. And it doesn’t mean you’re not suited to be a doctor or anything like that. But maybe it’s better we clear it up, especially as we don’t even know if I did it right and whether Joel is going to recover properly—’
His eyes widen. He looks as scared as he did on the Lawns. ‘Mum can’t know,’ he whispers. ‘It’d destroy her if she knew what really happened. That’s the only reason I’ve not explained—’
The bell rings for class.
Like Pavlov’s dogs, we respond as we’ve been trained to. Our conversation can wait.
As we go towards the science block, my wet feet chafe against new leather. After class, I’ll talk to Tim again, before things get even more out of hand. I understand why he doesn’t want people to know. Elaine Palmer isn’t quite the sweet, brave single mother everyone else sees. She will be upset. Angry.
But still, the truth matters more. I did step in. Whether Joel’s rages are permanent or not, if I hadn’t acted, he wouldn’t have stood a chance.
I’ve never seen myself as vain. But perhaps I am, because there’s a part of me that wants people to know it was mousy Kerry who saved the day.
As I squelch into Chemistry, the familiarity of the lab makes me feel normal for the first time in five days. Our classmates are staring at us, but I tell myself it’s because my skirt and legs are drenched.
Mr Sykes emerges from the store cupboard and blinks at us as though he’s spent the last fortnight here guarding the petri dishes and Bunsen burners.
‘Well, here we all are. You will recall that I was sceptical about the idea that the so-called millennium bug would lead to the end of the world. My delight at being proved right is tempered by the fact that rather than picking over a post-Armageddon landscape for scraps, I am fated to spend the morning with you lot, attempting to explain the nucleophilic addition mechanism as it relates to aldehydes.’
He twists his face into something that resembles a smile.
‘However, before we embark on that doomed quest, there is something else.’ He reaches underneath his desk and retrieves an old Marks & Spencer carrier bag: he pulls out a rectangular box and presents it to us as though it’s a momentous breakthrough in organic chemistry. In fact, it’s a battered-looking chocolate yule log.
‘The elephant in the room needs to be addressed. Because two of our number did rather an extraordinary thing on New Year’s Eve, I took the liberty of buying cake – half-price for cosmetic reasons, and now only two days past its sell-by date. I propose we spend twenty minutes dissecting the log and bombarding Mr Palmer and Miss Smith with questions, and then nothing more will be said. Agreed?’
When I look at my six classmates – most of whom have never paid me any attention before – there’s the same hunger I saw in the eyes of the year 7s when I walked across the playground. They want to talk to me.
Is this what school life might have been like if Tim and I had never been neighbours? I wasn’t always the nerdy girl. At primary school, I was invited to parties, even Louise Norman’s seventh birthday at Chessington World of Adventures. I never won a Barbie-lookalike contest – unlike my sister – but I was passably pretty. In year 3, I even got two Valentine’s cards from boys in my class.
But just as my Sylvanian Families phase ended, Tim moved into the bungalow opposite. His dad was still around at first, but he left within a year of moving into Hazelmere Crescent and Tim turned from a shy boy into a mini-adult. At first, I hung round with him because I felt sorry for him, but then we bonded over first aid and chemistry sets, no longer ashamed of being different from our peers and our families.
When people judge Tim, they don’t see what his life is really like. It’s not just the drudgery of constant caring, which involves things no kid should have to do for a parent. It’s also riding the rollercoaster of his mother’s moods.
Her obsession with him becoming a doctor was the reason we joined St John Ambulance together. Though we both love it. He’s hard-working and eager to take medals home, while I like the disaster-movie rehearsals for a compound fracture or a catastrophic bleed.
Mostly I am OK with being weird, though sometimes I wish I was ‘allowed’ to flirt with Ant and Fat Matt and Joel – especially Joel. Or go to a party as Ginger Spice to Louise Norman’s pigtailed Baby.
As Mr Sykes passes out precisely calibrated slices of cake on hospital-green paper towels, the questions begin.
‘How did you know he was dying?’
‘What was it like to kiss Joel Greenaway?’
‘Will you be getting a medal?’
‘One question at a time, you rowdy lot,’ Mr Sykes says, but he really is smiling now. ‘Why don’t you start at the beginning, Miss Smith?’
Tim glances at me nervously. This is my chance to tell the truth: the new version will have travelled around the school by the final bell.
Except his mum has never been prouder of him than she is now. Does telling the truth matter more than their happiness? He might have failed once, but when I think of what he does, day in, day out, he’s the bravest person I know.
I can’t punish him for a few minutes of weakness. So I begin to tell a new version of our story that is not the truth, but is believable. If I focus hard enough, it’ll replace what really happened in my head.
‘We were down on the Lawns, waiting for midnight, with a bunch of people from our old tutor group. And, like always happens when Joel Greenaway is around, there was a kickabout . . .’