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I cut the masking tape away from my fingers with the knife and flick open the door under the sink to throw it in the bin. Damn it. Why did things have to work out this way? Nothing matters any more. Things only ever matter when you’ve got hope, and today I don’t have any.
My daughter might seem fine, but I know she isn’t. Recently her consultant has been keeping an even tighter check on Shelley. Our one-monthly check-ups have become fortnightly. Lately he even offered to make them weekly, even though there has been no real change in her condition for a long while. But there has to be a reason why he is tightening up on her care, doesn’t there? They warned me last year, after her friend Miriam died with the same condition, ‘Shelley doesn’t have long.’ But how long is ‘not long’? How long is a piece of string?
And how long do I really want to waste this morning, going through all this old junk? I stare at the space behind the little pedal bin. There is just about enough room in there for me to store this old box away without ever having to give it another thought. What do I care about old certificates and photos, anyway?
‘Mum? What was that, Mum? What did the postie bring?’
Shelley can be deadly silent on that wheelchair of hers. She must have oiled the wheels because I didn’t hear her come in at all. She looks wan in the pale morning light, I think, even younger than her fourteen years without all her usual Goth war-paint on.
‘Um, just some paperwork your gran sent through. I’ll have to plough through it sometime. Nothing for you to concern yourself with.’
‘And you’re putting it in the bin?’ She leans forward in her wheelchair to see what I’ve been up to.
‘No. Behind the bin.’
‘You don’t usually put stuff there,’ she notes. She knows I’m angry. She can tell, just like I can always tell what she is feeling. We spend too much time in each other’s company for it to be otherwise.
‘Are you upset because Granny Panny’s left the country?’ Shelley enquires sagely. ‘She was never really much use to you anyway, even when she was here.’
‘Well, what use would you expect her to be? She’s got her own life to live, hasn’t she?’
Shelley sits back, slender shoulders slumped. She is wearing the same pink pyjamas she wore last summer. She hasn’t grown much in the year when most of the girls in her class have shot up to about six foot, it seems. The rest of them have all begun to blossom out.
But something in Shelley’s face has definitely changed. There is a different look in her eye that I don’t remember being there before, a certain angle to her jaw that has made her face more defined, another year older, more worn by life.
And she shouldn’t be worn by life, why should she? She’s never had any fun, never been anywhere, never done anything. She doesn’t know yet what it is like to love or to be loved. How can she be so worn by life when she has never really lived?
‘This will cheer you up’ indeed! I shove the pedal bin in front of Pandora’s box with my foot and close the cupboard door. I’ll give the whole lot to Liliana when I see her. She’s into nostalgic memories and memorabilia. It isn’t of any use to me, that’s for sure.
As far as I’m concerned, the past is dead and buried, and all my hopes were buried years ago, right along with it.
2 Rachel (#ulink_083ca9aa-dfa2-5c8a-b446-925bf5838aab)
‘Why can’t I pull it down? I don’t want any “New Year resolutions” hanging up there for me. Daniel can keep his own if he wants to but I don’t see why I have to have any. It’s just plain silly.’ Shelley grimaces at me as I squeeze past her to get milk from the fridge. ‘It is March, after all.’
‘No.’ I push the door firmly shut with my elbow and take another look at the list her brother had Blu-Tacked onto the fridge door in January.
Family New Year’s Resolutions List (by Daniel Wetherby)
Daniel
1. Find mate for Hattie.
2. Ride bike without stabilisers (before I am eleven).
3. Help mum more.
Mum
1. Become famous artist and get rich.
2. Find cure for Shelley.
3. Buy the house on Strawberry Crescent.
4. Have a proper holiday.
Shelley
1. Get cured and be healthy and walk.
2. Get a boyfriend.
3. Do well at school.
‘If it’s March, that still gives us the next nine months of the year, doesn’t it? All we’ve got to do is find you a cure, make me a famous artist, buy that gorgeous property up on Strawberry Crescent and get you a boyfriend.’
‘Huh. Granny Panny is the only one of us who’s ever going to get herself a boyfriend, Mum. And the fame, the house and the cure are all non-starters, wouldn’t you say?’ She gives a little laugh. ‘I mean, you, famous? What could you ever be famous for? You don’t actually do anything, do you? Daniel’s mad. And you haven’t done any art since you left art college.’
‘He’s just a kid, Shell. You’ve got to let him have his dreams. Don’t you dare take his list down.’ I stay her arm as she reaches out to pull it off.
I don’t care if there’s no point in you going to school any more, I think suddenly. At least it gave us some respite from each other when you did.
I should never have given in to her on that point. I should have made her keep on going.
‘It doesn’t matter if it’s silly, or if none of it can come true. It matters that he’s still got things he’s hoping for in his life. That’s all. He wants us to have things to look forward to as well. That’s why he wrote us lists, don’t you see?’ Her comment that I don’t actually do anything is one that I choose to ignore. Oh, I do things all right. She just doesn’t see it because everything I do is invisible. I’m like the invisible thread that holds the whole fabric of our household together—but she’s right, it’s not something I’m ever going to become famous for.
‘Oh don’t worry, Mum.’ Shelley’s voice is suddenly dripping with sarcasm. ‘He can leave it up there if he likes.’ She turns to gaze through the window where a sudden squall has sent a splatter of rain across the glass. Outside, a disused flowerpot is rolling up and down on the patio. We are supposed to be planting seeds this weekend. I don’t suppose we’ll get round to it now.
The kettle boils and I fill up two mugs with some coffee. There is a moment’s silence. A truce.
‘So. Are you going to tell me what’s in the box from Granny then, or what?’ Shelley’s voice is amicable, conciliatory. She seems to have forgotten about the resolutions list already. She feels more like the old Shelley when she’s like this, more like the daughter I remember. When she’s all done up with that black lipstick she favours these days I hardly recognise her.
‘I think I’ll go for “or what”’. I pull a face at her. She should just take the hint that I don’t want to talk about it or accept what I tell her at face value. But teenagers never do.
‘It’s something to do with Aunt Lily, isn’t it?’ Shelley sucks on her lower lip, pensive. ‘Why don’t you two ever meet up? Are you making arrangements to meet up sometime soon?’
‘You’ve been eavesdropping,’ I accuse her.
‘I can’t help it if I occasionally overhear things,’ she counters. ‘This house isn’t exactly massive, is it?’
‘Well no, it isn’t.’ Not as big as the one we lived in before Bill and I split up, which is the subtext to her comment, I know. But there is nothing that can be done about that. ‘However, it would be polite to…move somewhere else in the house if that happens.’
‘If I moved far away enough in this house I’d end up next door,’ she observes. ‘Come on, Mum,’ she adds before I can reply. ‘What’s the big secret? Just tell me what’s in the box? Why are you trying to hide it?’
‘Oh, fine!’ I kick the pedal bin out of the way and heave the box out again. The cardboard sides are soft and a bit mushy and the whole thing smells musty, like the dark secret place at the back of unused cupboards where nobody ever goes and the spiders breed, un molested, for years. You’d think Pandora would have rummaged around for a new box before she posted all this stuff off.
‘Here we go, if it will keep you quiet, madam.’ It isn’t a big secret after all. There is nothing in there that matters; just a load of old dust and memories I’d rather not be dredging up at this moment. But it’s guilt that makes me cave in to her, guilt about the fact that she might not be around to ever see any of it, if I wait too long. ‘It’s just some old keepsakes, photos and things that Granny sent over. Most of it will go to Lily. When we meet up.’
Once the masking tape is all off the side flaps of the box fall open limply, revealing a pile of yellow-stained envelopes. Most of them seem to contain photos. A few hold old birthday cards, flowery and beribboned with ‘to our darling daughter’ on the outside. On the inside of one of them, all embellished in curlicues, are the words ‘from Pandora and Henry’.
‘Who’s this, all dressed up like a dog’s dinner?’ Shelley pulls my attention back to one of the photos. ‘She looks vaguely familiar.’
She’s found a picture of me and Liliana in our dancing outfits. I, as usual, being the taller, slimmer one—albeit two years younger—got to be the ‘male’ partner, dressed up in a tuxedo with my dark red hair cut appropriately short. Thankfully, though, Shelley hasn’t even noticed me. It is Lily she is frowning at; Lily with her long blonde bubbly curls and that frilly dusty-pink dress with all the sparkly sequins sewn into the hem. I take the photo from her for a minute, feeling my fingers trembling, even after so many years, as a gush of unhappy memories comes flooding back.
‘I can’t believe she kept that!’ I make as if to tear it in two and then change my mind because, after all, Lily might still want it.
‘It’s Aunt Lily, isn’t it?’
‘It is. She always got to wear the most beautiful dresses.’
‘Oh, Mum!’ Shelley’s face crumples in mirth. ‘You didn’t really think that dress was beautiful, did you? The only thing she’s got on that’s halfway decent is that string of blue beads around her neck.’
‘Well, actually…’ I do a double-take of Lily’s glammedup version of a ra-ra skirt before dropping the photo back into the box. Shelley is right. How things change! That dress really does look rather hideous. ‘Okay Point taken. It was the kind of thing we thought was beautiful at the time. One of these days you’re going to look back at yourself wearing all that Goth war-paint…’ I stop and catch Shelley’s eye. ‘Oh, Shelley, I’m so sorry. You won’t, will you? I can’t think that way. I just can’t get used to thinking that way, it’s so unnatural.’
‘It’s all right, Mum.’ Shelley’s wide blue eyes are calm and focused. ‘It’s funny how Pandora kept all those things for so long, though, isn’t it? Look, she’s even—she’s even kept that necklace in here. The one that Lily’s wearing.’ Her nimble fingers dive in and pull it out. She holds it up to the light so we can both see. Oh, but I had forgotten that necklace! Its pale blue nuggets of rounded sea-glass are all held individually in place by a tiny filament of gold wire. The central portion of the necklace is a darker blue stone—also sea-glass though you’d never know it—it’s so dark it could be lapis lazuli—and that is framed by the iridescent halo of a cut-out piece of mother of pearl.
‘It looks just like something a mermaid might wear,’ Shelley breathes. Exactly, I think, and her comment makes me smile. I designed it with a mermaid in mind, all those years ago. I collected all those bits of blue glass myself, on solitary walks, trawling along the coast of Cornwall.
‘Can I keep it?’ my daughter begs, and I shrug. Why not? If Lily were here she would claim that it was hers, that she always wore it. But the truth is, I found the glass, I designed it, and I fashioned it up with the limited tools that I had at my disposal. My friend—a lady in the second-hand jewellery shop—had cut the mother of pearl into shape, but she’d shown me how to do everything else. The only thing I wasn’t allowed to do, I realise now, was actually wear it. It so happened that the colours and the theme were a perfect match for the dance outfit that Lily was wearing that season. I had to give it over to her. Oh, I wasn’t exactly forced. It was just the kind of thing we were expected to do, back then.
‘All these things—I mean, they must have been so precious to Pandora once. Maybe to you too?’ Shelley glances at me curiously but I look away. She will never really know the truth about that.
‘The things that matter to us change,’ I say simply. ‘What mattered so much yesterday doesn’t matter so much today. What matters today, we might not give a fig about tomorrow.’
‘When you look at it that way,’ Shelley is scanning Daniel’s list on the fridge again, this time looking quiet and thoughtful, ‘maybe those resolutions aren’t so stupid after all. Maybe it means we should just make the most of things while they’re important to us. For instance, we could still get Daniel the second tortoise, couldn’t we? Hattie could have her mate. And I was thinking…we could still take that holiday. Just you and me. Daniel’s away on scout camp the week of my birthday. I’d really love it if we could go down to Cornwall, back to Summer Bay for one last time. It could be this year’s birthday present for me. That shouldn’t break the bank too much, should it?’
‘Do you really mean that?’ I watch her fasten my necklace around her throat and I feel my heart thudding in my chest. It’s been so long since Shelley expressed any real interest in anything at all. If my daughter could only be interested in something, if she could only have something to live for, then she might live a little longer, a little better. She might have a little more joy in whatever days she has left to her. ‘I would love to take a trip down there with you. Are you sure you don’t want to go when Danny can come too?’
‘No!’ Shelley comes back vehemently. Then she recovers herself and smiles. ‘I just want some special time with you. While we still can, you understand?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘And Dad won’t mind?’
Bill, of course, will have to be consulted. He always likes to be included in whatever plans are made for Shelley, and that’s fair enough. But my ex-husband has his new wife and their young child to think about these days, doesn’t he?
‘I’ll square it with your dad,’ I tell her decisively. And Daniel will have to be managed somehow because he’ll no doubt want to be in on it too. But then Daniel has his scout camp to look forward to, so why shouldn’t Shelley have her special time?
‘Don’t you wonder when it happens?’ Shelley is still thoughtful, looking at the box. ‘When do all those precious things become…just a pile of old junk?’
It happens when we’re not looking, I think. At the same time that those crows’ feet appear, which we tell ourselves will disappear when we get a good night’s sleep. When our dress size creeps up from a ten to a twelve and then a fourteen. When we’re not looking.
‘It happens when we cease to care,’ I tell her.
‘But if you don’t care,’ she whispers, ‘why were you so upset that Granny Panny sent it all on to you?’
‘I’m not…’ I begin, but there is little point in lying to Shelley. I edge over to the kitchen sink and throw the dregs of my coffee away. ‘Maybe you have never heard the story of Pandora’s Box?’ I say to her at last. ‘In Greek myth, Pandora was a beautiful and foolish woman who, out of insatiable curiosity, opened a box that she had been warned she should never open. The minute she opened it, out flew all the spites: Old Age, Sickness, Envy, Disloyalty, Deceit…in short, everything that makes mankind miserable.’ I trail off.
‘Come on, Mum. This isn’t a magical box. It isn’t going to release a load of nasty stuff into the air just because we’ve opened it up to look inside. You don’t really believe that, do you?’
‘Of course not literally,’ I say. A shiver goes through me then. I’m not superstitious. I’m not really going to be opening up the past just because we’ve opened up that box, now, am I? I was never allowed to look inside Pandora’s private box when we were kids, that’s all. Old habits die hard, and all that.
‘I think we should put it away now,’ I say. Shelley opens her mouth to protest but I add, ‘Maybe I’m just scared that there’ll be something in there I don’t want to see.’
My daughter nods wisely. She doesn’t ask me what this thing might be. Instead, she comments, ‘I have heard the story of what was Pandora’s Box, Mum, and you’ve left one of them out.’
‘And what might that be?’ I arch my brows. A ray of sloping sunshine appears for a moment across the kitchen worktop, making long shadows of our coffee cups. Outside, the squally wind is chasing the clouds across the canvas of the sky, opening up small patches of blue.
‘Hope,’ she says simply. ‘You’ve left out Hope.’
3 Shelley (#ulink_b58f3707-e7b8-58a7-af78-29e1b96170fe)
I have decided that when dawn breaks on my fifteenth birthday, that is the last day I will ever spend on this planet.
I am not depressed and I am not angry with my parents.
I am not insane, neither am I frightened of Death.
I am frightened of dying, however, in the way that I inevitably will if I don’t take matters into my own hands. I meant what I said to my mum about hope, though. I do have hope. But it’s for the others who are going to be left behind after me, that’s all.
I have a poster-sized photograph of me and Daniel in my bedroom. It’s one of my favourites of the two of us and it was taken nearly ten years ago because in it I’m five and Daniel is just one. It’s an ‘action’ shot. We’re both in our swimsuits on this huge empty beach in Cornwall. I’m jumping off a rock with my eyes closed and my arms in the air. I love the smile on my face. Whenever I look at that photo I remember what it must have felt like to be free. We called that our ‘jumping rock’. It seemed so huge to me then, but we went back to Summer Bay three years ago and the rock was still there in the same place, same green algae and footholds all over it, jutting out of the sand at the head of the beach and, guess what…it had shrunk!
Well of course it hadn’t really shrunk. The rest of the world—including us—had just got bigger. Daniel kept jumping off it, showing off, because in my photo he’s just a baby sitting on the bottom waiting patiently for me to jump and here was his chance to take on a more active role. I wasn’t completely confined to Bessie—that’s my wheelchair—three years ago, but neither were my legs strong enough to jump. This time I was the one sitting on the sand waiting, so Mum took a photo of that and Daniel’s got it on his wall, and it kind of evens up the balance of power as far as he’s concerned.
He’s like Mum there, see. They both have this immaculate sense of fairness and justice about things. I may only be fourteen but I know damn well that life isn’t fair. Maybe it’s genetic or something, I don’t know, but some people never seem to work that one out. That’s Mum’s fatal flaw; that’s how I’ll get her to come round to my way of thinking in the end. You’ll see.
Anyhow, this photo of the last time I felt really free, it’s given me the idea of how I want it to be on my last day.
I have decided that I will go down to Summer Bay in Cornwall and I will jump off a cliff, and that way, for those last few moments of my life, I’ll be flying. I won’t die in my bed all shrivelled up and cold as my limbs finally atrophy to the completely withered stage. I’ll be flying through the sunshine. It’ll be a hot, peaceful, blue-skied day. We’ll do it in the early morning—I was born at 6 a.m.—so there’ll be no footprints in the sand. The sea will have wiped everything clean from the night before. There will be no marks there before I make my mark.
I’m not bothered about the impact. It will be so quick I just won’t feel it. I’m focusing on just that one moment when I go over the edge. I’ll be like a white bird—a seagull—twinkling in the sunshine. I’ll feel the warm air rushing up through my hair and I’ll be…well, I’ll be released.
I’ve struggled with this whole plan for a while because I was worried that I might be being a bit, well…selfish. Everybody else is going to suffer and I hate the thought of that. Then I think—hell, they are going to suffer anyway. This way we’ll just get it over and done with. A long, protracted death with every vein stuffed with needles, tubes down my throat to aid breathing when the lungs cave in and a tiny bump under the bedsheets where my shrivelled legs should go is even worse.
I haven’t forgotten Miriam. One day she was just like me—she was okay enough, with the same disease, but still okay. Then suddenly…poof! It all went downhill for her. I heard them say she was lucky; that it could have taken much longer, but no, she was lucky. What if I’m not so ‘lucky’?
‘Did they give you an initial diagnosis of MS?’
The first time I ever saw Miriam we were both sitting on the green benches outside Neurology. She had brought crossword puzzles and drinks and things and she seemed to know everyone in the department by name. I, on the other hand, was just sitting on my hands, feeling sick to my stomach with nerves. I remember I couldn’t take my eyes off her wheelchair. I wanted desperately to ask her if she’d always been like that or whether it was this illness that had done it to her but at the same time I really didn’t want to know.
‘Hi,’ she’d started again when I didn’t answer her. ‘I’m Miriam.’
‘Uh, yeah. I’m Shelley. Yeah, they did. They thought it was MS. At first.’
She had taken a thoughtful sip of her juice carton through a straw.
‘And now?’
