We Are All Made of Stars (13 page)

The planes of his cheeks graze mine, and his arms tighten around me. I breathe in the scent of him. My arms stray around his neck, and I feel him shift against me, balancing his weight on his natural leg as he bends to kiss my neck, just below the jaw.

‘Vincent,' I whisper. We are closer than we have been in months. The frozen moment has happened, and still he goes on – his hands finding their way under my clothes, his mouth hot and searching against my neck. Maybe this is it: this is when our life together starts again, when all the stopped clocks start ticking and all the held breaths can be released. This is new, this is better than our first kiss, or any of the kisses after that when I got used to him reaching for me, and he got used to me being there. This is more important than our first kiss as husband and wife; this is our first kiss now, like this, since he came home from Headley Court. And if it's a first, that must mean it's a beginning, and I let the hope soar within me as he slowly breaks the kiss to look into my eyes.

‘I missed this.' I dare to smile, my lips curving against his, pulling back a little to have a look at him. ‘What's brought this on?'

‘Do I need a reason?' he says.

‘No, I just …'

He stops my words with his mouth, and I wonder if it can be this simple after all.

The kiss is a long, delirious, wonderful kiss. He nuzzles my neck. I hear him sigh. I feel his hands cupping my bottom, squeezing it, and dragging off my sweatshirt, and I am annoyed at my scrubs – so shapeless and sexless. I throw them aside and fling my arms around him, pressing my body hard against his, hungry for the feel of him. I'm not thinking about anything except how much I want him. And that's the problem. For one second I allow myself to forget who we are now, forcing him off-kilter. He loses his balance and stumbles, and in a foolish, confused moment, I try to steady him and make things worse, and he goes down, onto the kitchen tiles. His head bangs against the plastic bin with a dull thud.

‘Oh, God, I'm so sorry.' I reach out, but he waves my hand away.

He's smiling, laughing even. A little uncertain, I smile too, kneeling down on the floor next to him. He picks up a carrot peeling from under the fridge and puts it in the bin. There's no anger or shame there – his eyes are bright, glittering almost. They make me feel less afraid to look at him.

‘Well, as we're here,' I say, half smiling. Leaning over I kiss him teasingly.

‘Go have your shower,' he says, and his voice is not cold, or cruel. I realise he just doesn't want me to be here when he gets up off the floor. ‘I'll make you a bacon sandwich to take to bed.'

I hesitate. If I let this joyous, perfect moment go like this, unfulfilled, how do I know that another moment like this will come again, or that this one is even real?

‘The shower can wait.' I smile, trying to remember that I am the girl he once stayed up all night to talk to, the girl that he said was his addiction. My hands run up under his shirt.

His hands close over mine, holding them still.

‘Not now. Hey, you must be so tired,' he says. And his gaze drops from my face, as if something he had forgotten for a moment has suddenly come back to him. ‘I need to get sorted for work. We can pick up where we left off another time.'

‘Vincent …' I try not make his name sound like a plea, and I fail. ‘It's been so long, and … I love you, you know. I don't care about … anything. I just love you. Can't we just … can't we just be us, for a little while, please?'

I hate myself for being so needy, for being so desperate, but I am. I am desperate and my need tumbles around before I can dam it.

He turns his face away from me, but not so fast that I can't see the tears standing in his eyes.

‘I'm sorry.' I say. ‘I don't mean to … crowd you? Rush you? I don't really know what it is that I'm doing wrong, but I do know that I don't mean to do it.'

‘It's not anything that you do, it's …' He hesitates. ‘It's me. I'm trying.'

Putting my arms around him, I press his torso close to mine. ‘It doesn't matter. It's not important. I'm sorry. You were so happy a moment a go. Please, please don't let it be me that makes you sad. I can't bear it if it's me.'

I hear a sob, somewhere deep in his chest, and then, somehow, without either of us really knowing how, we're kissing. I can feel the passion building, the yearning and hunger, and something else too. The tears are still wet on his cheeks and I can feel his anger as he shifts his weight. Lying flat on the floor, he pulls me on top of him. We roll and suddenly it's his weight on me, pressing me into the cold tiles. Closing my eyes, I feel his hand tugging at the straps of my bra, pulling them off my shoulders. I feel his mouth close around my nipple and I want him so much. My fingers rake through his hair, my hips arch up to meet him, and I feel the emotion flowing out of him – the need, the want, the fury. And with my eyes closed I search and search for just a trace, just a glimmer of what is not there. The love.

I tug at the ties of my scrubs trousers, shimmying them off, and he fumbles with the zip of his jeans. His T-shirt, scented with stale alcohol, rubs against my breast as he struggles to find his balance. And then we are joined again. I feel the pleasure and the relief surge through me like a sigh, and, for a moment, I am myself again. I am his, moving beneath him, his fingers gripping my hair in handfuls.

He shudders as he climaxes, relaxing into my neck. Staying there, breathing heavily, I wrap my arms around him and hold him. This is important. This moment means something; it's a beginning after months, almost a year, of polite conversation and false starts. Now we are connected. We have begun again, taken our first step on the road back to each other. It's a victory, it's a chance – a chance I'd thought was long past. It's a start, here on the kitchen floor, with yesterday's or the day before's carrot peelings.

Rolling off me, Vincent rests with his back to me. I watch as he drags his jeans up onto his hips and then with some effort pulls himself into a sitting position, his back against the fridge, rubbing his hands over his face. I get up and sit next to him, leaning my shoulder into his.

‘Cup of tea?' I ask him shyly. Once, long ago, this time – the time after we made love – was the most precious to me. The minutes when I would feel his need for me in every breath and word, in every gesture. The moments when his gaze would pour over me as if I were the most fascinating, wonderful creature that ever existed. He made me feel like being apart from me would be like snuffing out the sun. Now, he can barely look at me, but maybe it doesn't matter. It's a long road, and we've only taken the first step, and first steps are always painful. Perhaps it's taking them that counts.

‘Why don't you leave me?' he says, now. The words are so unexpected that I feel them physically hit me, heavy and sour, pushing me to my feet – my sudden ray of hope gone. ‘Why don't you just go, because you know that I can't? I can't fucking go, I'm stuck here. Why don't you just run away?'

‘Vincent, I love you.' I battle to wipe out those last few words, those last few seconds. ‘I don't want to run away from you, I want to run to you, I always have. You are the end of my journey, my finish, more like. You are home and I love you.'

‘Well, don't,' he says. ‘Don't love me. I don't want you to.'

Dear Janey,

Yes, it was me. It was me in 1978: I took your Tiny Tears doll out of your room when you were out the front playing under the willow tree. I took it and I snuck out the back door, and crossed over the road, and chucked it face down in the canal. I threw stones at it until it sank.

When you came back in from playing, you couldn't find her and you cried and screamed and sobbed great big snotty sobs – do you remember? You said I must have done it, but I said I hadn't, I'd been reading all that time. I let Mum turn the house upside down, and you kept crying and crying until your eyes were like two fat red golf balls. I knew I couldn't admit to it, not even after I started to feel bad about it, because if I did, Dad would whack me into next week. But I did feel bad about it because you'd wanted that doll for such a long time, and they'd saved up to get it for you. And then I felt bad because Mum said that if I'd sworn I hadn't done a thing then she believed me because she trusted me. And she said that she expected the doll would turn up one of these days. Well, it never did. And you never got another doll like it.

I don't know why I did it. I think I was just jealous. You were three years younger than me, and sweeter and pretty. And Mum treated you like the baby instead of me. But I have felt bad about it ever since; even though we grew up to be good friends and you've been the best sister I could ever hope for, especially this last year. You've been like a rock for Lynn and the kids.

So this letter is coming to you with a new doll, a new Tiny Tears doll that the nurse went out and bought for me. This one wees, as well as cries – all the mod cons. Janey, I'm sorry, really sorry that I threw the last one in the canal. You didn't deserve that.

Cheers, sis. Love ya,

Jim xx

CHAPTER TWELVE

They say I need to build up my stamina, so I am pacing up and down the hall, wondering if taking a few steps will ever stop feeling like I'm climbing a mountain. When I pass Issy's room I see that she is alone, gazing out of the window – her pale big eyes full of the dark afternoon sky, her new best friend, the cat they call Shadow, on her lap.

‘Hello,' I say. ‘Mum getting a cup of tea?'

‘She's gone for a shower in the relatives' apartment,' she says. ‘I'm trying not to die till she gets back.'

‘Shit, you won't, you're not going to, are you?'

She shrugs. ‘They all seem to think it will be quite soon, but not so soon that she couldn't go and have a shower. The main thing is that I want to stay awake, which means that I have to feel pain. But I want to stay awake. I mean, I don't want to miss it, when it happens. Does that sound weird?'

I stand on the threshold of her room. There are posters lining the wall, her pink iPod is on the bed next to her and there's a column of books, all of them with cracked spines and pages that look like they've been well thumbed.

‘Honestly?' I say. ‘I don't know. I don't know if that is weird. I thought I was thinking about death every second, but I don't think I can be, because I've never thought about that.'

‘Anyway, I'm just fighting the pain. I don't even mind it – I want to feel it. I want to be in it, right up until that moment when I am not.' She looks suddenly anxious. ‘Don't tell anyone I said that, will you?'

‘No,' I promise her, taking a few steps into the room. ‘Of course not. You can tell me all your batshit-crazy, sick-girl stuff, and I will keep it secret for you. I swear.' I pick up the book I lent her. ‘Did you manage to read any of this?'

‘Mum's reading it to me. I was feeling better, but now that's gone again and it hurts a lot. But I'm afraid to sleep. Afraid not to open my eyes again; afraid of what will happen to Mum and Katy if I don't. I wish there were things I could do, things I could
know
so that I didn't have to worry about them.'

‘What sort of things?' Tentatively, I sit on the edge of her chair, and I am ashamed to admit that I am nervous, frightened about being so close to her. Frightened that with Death so close by – it couldn't help but see me there too. But if it did, I would fight the bastard off again, and for me at least there was a chance I'd win. No such chance for Issy.

‘Well, Mum needs a boyfriend,' she says a little crossly. ‘She says she doesn't, but she does. She's not old at all, and I think a boyfriend would be a good thing. Dad, our dad, left us when we were really little, and she's been alone ever since. She needs to think about herself a bit more. And they should get a dog. I'm a cat person, but Katy's been begging for a dog practically her whole life, and I read somewhere that dogs make you get out the house and meet people. I think Mum could easily meet someone dog walking, and Katy would be happy too. She used to sleep in my bed, before I got sick, if she was scared or something. If she had a dog to sleep in bed with her … If I knew that these things were going to happen, then … I'd really feel more ready. I don't feel ready.'

She stops talking, exhausted, and her eyes close for a long moment, her brow furrowed in concentration as a wave of pain hits her. After a long moment she opens her eyes again.

‘Issy.' I sit down next to her. ‘This fucking sucks.'

I'd hoped the swearing might make her smile again, but her face is set with frustration.

‘It fucking does,' she agrees. ‘But I am glad, for what it's worth. I'm glad that you get to go home. Maybe, would you just keep in touch with Mum? She's spent all of the last few years looking after me and my little sister, and there is no one else. Maybe after I'm gone, you could Facebook her sometimes, ask her how she's doing? I wouldn't ask but … I don't know who else to ask.'