Five Things They Never Told Me (9 page)

The human body is a weird thing. Adults go on and on about healthy eating and doing lots of exercise but they don't tell you that if you really want your body to be happy then you have to keep your head happy too. I'm eating just as healthily as I was when Mum still lived with us (in fact I eat way more fruit because it doesn't have to be cooked, so Dad has given me free rein of the fruit bowl) and I seem to spend most of my
time outside at the moment (and fresh air is supposed to be good for you). But my body feels tired and droopy and like it aches all the time. It never used to feel like that.

It aches most when Mum phones me. When I hang up the phone after yet another stilted, difficult conversation, the ache starts in my chest and spreads along my arms and legs until I feel like I can't even climb the stairs to bed. I want to ask her about how I can make the pain go away, but I don't. Because it's all her fault in the first place. She doesn't get to be the solution.

I felt especially tired after Beatrice spoke to me a few days ago. I'd gone to find her to ask if I could have another chance with Martha. We didn't talk about the fall, but she must know that something went wrong. She didn't answer me immediately; instead she stared at me until I thought she must be seeing into my soul, or something. Then she told me that Martha was fragile and needed looking after. She told me about the stroke.

I just can't figure out why it happens. How can getting ill mean that just one side of the body stops working? It makes no sense. Beatrice told me that Martha can't move the right side of her
body and she can't talk. That's why she only uses her left hand and writes everything down – and it's why her writing is such a state. She said that it was a terrible thing for a woman like Martha to lose her independence and freedom. I can totally sympathize with how THAT must feel.

But I've been given another chance and I'm determined not to mess up this time. Martha has agreed to meet up with me so we're back in our usual spot and I'm reading aloud from a book that Beatrice has given me. I'm not even sure that it's a book that Martha is enjoying but it's good to have something to do and anything is better than sitting in silence. I'm seeing Frog Boy again later on and I think how good it'll be to tell him I've actually done something. I think he's the kind of person who cares about doing the right thing, so he should be totally impressed that I've given some of my time to cheering Martha up. I never knew that doing good deeds could actually make you feel kind of happy inside. Maybe I've got a talent and I'll spend my life travelling around the world, bestowing happiness and harmony wherever I go. My role models will be Mother Theresa and Florence Nightingale and, and … erm … other inspirational women who put the needs of others before their own.

I finish the chapter and stretch out, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my legs. Next to me, I can feel Martha relax in her chair. It's quite nice, sitting here. This week has gone really quickly, between spending the mornings in my hideaway and the afternoons either pretending to garden or with Martha. I can't believe that the holidays are nearly halfway through.

I start wondering about what Lauren and Nat have been up to. I had an email the other day from Nat, asking if my ban had been lifted. She said that Lauren had gone to Cornwall for a week with her parents and that she was bored. And then she told me that they've been planning a barbecue party for next Wednesday and that
surely
my dad will give me the day off – what with it being my
birthday
and everything.

Just remembering this puts me in an instant bad mood. It feels like a cloud has gone in front of the sun but when I look up, the sky is still blue. I sit up straight, feeling fury flooding through me. I've behaved really well for the last few weeks but I'm still going to have the worst birthday ever. It's been Seventy-one Days Without Mum and I still can't get used to the fact that she's on her sunny, happy summer holidays with her new
family and won't be there when I wake up in the morning.

‘It's so completely unfair,' I mutter. Beside me, Martha lifts her head and looks questioningly at me. ‘My parents must really hate me,' I tell her.

Martha frowns and tilts her head to one side, which I take as encouragement to continue.

‘It's my birthday next week and my mum is on some stupid holiday with her new, perfect family. She wanted me to go with them – said that she's never been away from me on my birthday before. That's not my fault, is it? And my friends are organizing a party for me and there's no way that Dad will let me go so there's no point in even asking him. I don't see why I'm even bothering to be good, it's not like anybody notices.'

I'm warming up to my theme now and it feels good to be talking about it. ‘Dad isn't interested in discussing soppy stuff like feelings and I'm not going to speak to Mum – she doesn't deserve to know how I'm feeling. I might as well have had a stroke like you – except nobody would actually notice if I didn't speak because nobody actually listens to me in the first place.'

Martha jerks her head and her eyebrows squeeze together – I think she's trying to tell me that I'm wrong.

‘It's
true,
' I tell her. ‘You don't know my parents so you can't understand. They haven't even asked me what I want for my birthday. How heartless is that? I'll probably be lucky to get a card. Maybe Mum will bring me a lame straw donkey back from Spain. Ooh, lucky me.'

I get up and start pacing the ground in front of Martha's wheelchair. ‘I've done everything that they've asked of me – right down to spending my holidays in this stupid place.' I look over at Martha. ‘No offence.'

She shrugs at me and I imagine her voice in my head, agreeing that Oak Hill is indeed a stupid place. I don't think Martha wants to be here any more than I do.

‘I never get anything that I actually want,' I tell her. ‘Not even when it's free and wouldn't cost them a penny.'

I slump back on to the bench and Martha slowly uses her left hand to turn her chair so that she's right next to me. She pats my knee and I look up into her face. The young Martha's eyes are gazing at me and if I ignore the wrinkly skin
then I could be talking to one of my friends. And actually, it's so nice to have someone actually listening to me without constantly interrupting that I don't care about the wrinkles and the loose skin over her cheekbones.

?

scrawls Martha on her notepad. And if it was anyone else I wouldn't say, but the fact that she won't repeat my secrets and the way that she's looking at me as if she really cares, makes me suddenly long to say the words.

I look into her eyes and everything just comes tumbling out of my mouth.

‘I just want my mum and dad back together again. I want to be a family – the three of us and Picasso, my dog. I want to wake up on Saturday mornings and smell Mum making waffles for breakfast. I want to go to sleep listening to the sounds of the television while Mum and Dad watch a film. I want to have them both come to watch my school concert on the same night, not planning it to make sure they don't meet up. I want Dad to smile again and Mum to tell me off for not washing up my cereal bowl after breakfast.'

I stop, partly because I'm out of breath and partly because I can feel tears prickling in the backs of my eyes. I didn't even know that I was bothered about some of this stuff.

Martha is waiting, watching my face.

‘I want us all to live happily ever after,' I whisper, so quietly that I can barely hear myself, and as I speak the words I know that they are true. I'm not stupid – I know that life doesn't always turn out the way you want it to. I just didn't know that my family would end up like this – spoilt and a bit rubbish. Like the shininess has rubbed off.

Martha picks up her notepad, a frown on her face. It's a long message and it takes her a minute or so to write the words with her left hand. When she's done she rips the page out and thrusts it across to where I'm sitting on the bench. I read it and then it's my turn to frown.

Forget happy endings. Better to look for a new beginning

I think about what she's written. Forget happy endings? How am I supposed to do that? I mean, I know that ‘happy ever after' doesn't always
work out, but surely I can hope that
some
things will end up OK? If Martha thinks that I should just accept my rubbish life then she doesn't know me very well.

‘Are you telling me that I should just give up?' I ask her, my voice betraying how hurt I feel.

I should have known better than to think that she would understand.

Martha shakes her head.

‘Then what
are
you saying?' I'm trying not to sound cross but it's so frustrating. I just want her to tell me. I can't be bothered to second-guess what she's thinking. I read the note again and feel anger rising in me.

‘Forget happy endings? That's not a very grown-up thing to say, is it? And I should just look for a new beginning? How does that help? That's exactly what Mum's done but it isn't a new beginning for me, is it? Or Dad. We're left with the old, miserable ending while she starts again with a brand new
once upon a time
. I don't want a new beginning! I want my old story back.'

I stand up, stuffing the note in my pocket. Martha is looking at me and I can see that she's upset – her left arm is reaching out for me and her right hand is jerking free of the blanket that tucks
it by her side. I need to leave; she can't help me right now if she hasn't got words to make it better.

But I can't go. I can't make the same mistake twice. I've been given a second chance to start afresh with Martha, I can't get it wrong again. Mother Theresa wouldn't walk away right now. I sink back on to the bench and stare at the water fountain, Martha's words rolling around my brain. I think about Dad and how unhappy he's been. It'd be much better for him if he could have a new beginning. But how many times are you allowed to start again? You can't just keep on reinventing your life every time it doesn't go the way you want it to.

‘Surely you have to commit to seeing something through to the end eventually?' I mutter. ‘Everyone must get to have at least one happy ending?'

Martha makes a small noise in her throat and I look over at her. She hunches one shoulder in a kind of half-shrug and looks down at herself, her eyebrows raised. Then she does her weird smile and nods at me, and her eyes are telling me things that she can't say with words.

And I sort of get it. Maybe it's OK to look for as many new beginnings as you need to, because when the end finally arrives, when your time is up
and you're old and tired, there is absolutely no stopping it. Although I'm not sure that it can accurately be called a
happy
ending. There's nothing happy about being ancient, is there?

New beginnings. I suppose it isn't the worst idea I've ever heard. Beginnings sound a lot more exciting than endings, that's for sure. Less final.

I reach across for Martha's hand at the same time that she reaches for mine and we sit together until Beatrice comes back. When Martha has gone I miss the feel of her hand holding mine and making me feel like there's at least one person in the world who understands.

When I was a girl I spent hours planning my life. How I would marry Tommy and we would have two children – one boy and one girl. We would live in a cottage in the country and grow vegetables and I would collect eggs from our own chickens. I would grow old with Tommy beside me.

Those hours were a waste of time. Happy endings only happen in fairy stories. Real life is about starting over, again and again, and hoping each time that maybe this will be the fresh beginning you were waiting for.

But I am a hypocrite. It is not a fresh beginning if you continue to make the same mistakes. I left Tommy in the woods that day when we were children and three years later I would do it again, all the time believing that I was searching out a new beginning.

It was the spring of 1945 and I was sixteen years old. Tommy and I had been courting for three years and I thought we had a whole lifetime ahead of us. He had already secretly proposed to me and I had accepted. We decided not to tell our parents until he turned eighteen in the autumn of that year but there was no doubt in my mind that Tommy was the love of my life and that I was the love of his. He bought me a wedding ring (I'm not sure how he got his hands on it and I thought it best not to ask) and it was tucked away at the bottom of my gas-mask box, ready for the day I would wear it with pride.

I remember that I had packed a picnic. It was Tommy's suggestion that we cycle out to the woods and it was a warm day for early April. I was wearing a dress that I had made out of an old pair of curtains. We used to do that kind of thing back then. We saw possibility and opportunity in everything. I was very fond of that dress – I thought the cut of the material showed off my slim waist rather well. It wasn't the most practical item of clothing for a cycle ride but I was far too vain to worry about tiny details like that.

The woods were beautiful. I'd packed a picnic rug and when I threw it on to the ground it all
seemed so perfect. My hair was auburn in those days and the sunlight streaming through the branches caught the red highlights and made me look like a film star. So I told myself, anyway. Tommy settled himself down next to me and I was just reaching for the picnic hamper when he ruined it all.

It was his duty, he told me. He was needed on the front and it was his duty to go. I laughed at first and told him that there would be plenty of time for fighting when he was a man. I wasn't particularly worried. The war made life difficult but other than the occasional nightmare about my German pilot I hadn't felt its effect on my life. Not really. This was a war about other people, not Tommy and I.

I stopped laughing when Tommy stood up. He had a quiet determination about him that day that I had not seen before and it made me uneasy. I told him to sit back down and stop being a fool and did he want a ham roll? ‘I'm going,' he said to me. ‘I'm going to help win this war.'

I started to feel angry then. Looking back now I can tell that I was scared but at the time I just felt cross. He'd never be allowed to fight without his parents' permission, I told him. And his
mother would rather fight the Nazis with her rolling pin than let him out of her sight. That was when he told me his plan. He was leaving today. Our trip to the woods was a goodbye picnic. He would lie about his age, he said, and I knew they'd believe him. Tommy was strong and broad but he was just a boy. A boy who had no right to be fighting with grown men.

I stood up too and faced him. ‘Don't do this,' I told him. He tried to take my hand but I snatched it away. ‘If you leave now then you leave me,' I said. ‘I won't wait for you while you go off to be killed.'

The look on his face nearly broke me but I meant every word. And I thought it would be enough to make him stay. But it was not.

‘I promise I'll come home,' he told me but I had heard enough. Abandoning the picnic rug and hamper I stormed out of the wood and across the field to where we had left our bicycles. I turned just once and saw Tommy standing beneath the trees at the edge of the wood. He raised his hand at me and waved but I ignored him. I left him there, all alone, and the whole way home I told myself that I was doing the right thing. That I refused to be made a war widow before I was even married.

Tommy broke his promise but it wasn't really his fault. I don't blame him anyway. He didn't even make it as far as the front line. They said the bomb killed him instantly, as if there was supposed to be some comfort in that fact. For myself, I would have preferred to know that he had one last moment of knowing. Knowing that he had been; that he had happened.

Those children that I dreamt of never arrived but if they had I wouldn't have read them bedtime stories of
happily ever after
. I would have told them that if they couldn't find a happy ending, then they needed to put in some effort and search for a new beginning. As many times as necessary. Because you have to write your own story and it might not be a fairy tale.