Chapter Thirty-Six
The next morning, Anika stifles a yawn as she leans on her kitchen counter listening to her boss on the other end of her phone.
‘OK, thanks, Kate. Yep, I will do, thanks. See you tomorrow.’
She ends the call, pleased that shouting over the music last night has given her just the right rasping timbre for calling in sick this morning.
Yawning in her old Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, she looks at her phone again as a message from Tina pops up on the screen praising the pictures of last night’s dress that she insisted Anika send her as soon as she woke up.
Anika types a message back, letting her friend know she’ll call later for a debrief.
Cannot believe I had to miss it, Tina replies. This ducking job, I swear …
Anika laughs at the autocorrect, sending a duck emoji.
‘Ugh, fucking, fucking, fucking. Which is what I hear you and a certain Mr Asiedu have been up to,’ Tina says in a voice note, emitting an earthy snicker before adding in a sing-song voice, ‘Speak in a bit, hon.’
Anika feels guilty at the way they’ve dropped back into normal correspondence, knowing she owes Tina a proper apology too.
Things were muted in the cab she shared with Shameeka last night, but Anika figured they were both tired and thinking about the week ahead.
Hopefully things will be back to normal – or better – soon.
Especially once they all get used to her new outlook.
Anika hoped that once she called in to work she would feel more ready for a day on the couch recalibrating, but she’s not sure where to start.
Her brain feels like it’s on a rollercoaster.
Actually, she’s had this same lightheaded feeling on and off for a while now.
Probably a blood-sugar thing that will be resolved by a cup of tea and something delicious to eat.
Setting about figuring out breakfast, Anika remembers another voice note – one she received from Cam at an ungodly hour last night.
She pauses in putting a teabag into her cup to listen to the message again.
Music still thumps in the background and she can tell he’s holding the phone’s microphone close to his mouth.
‘Anika Lapo … thanks for coming tonight, and smashing your set … Proud’a you …
And thanks for looking so fucking sexy that I’m jealous of your bedsheets right now …
hmm … Anyway, I’m gonna hit you up tomorrow …
Fuck, I’ve got work in four hours! Whose stupid idea was that?
Man’s gonna be twisted on the radio …’ He gives a throaty laugh and then the message ends.
Cam clearly took her ‘soak it all in’ advice to heart in all senses.
He manages to sound both deliberately composed yet three sheets to the wind, and it makes her smile goofily as she goes back to making her drink.
She put her phone on ‘do not disturb’ once she finally crashed into bed last night so managed some uninterrupted sleep, but listening to his message this morning, warmth floods her.
She’s just about to hit replay on Cam’s message when her phone starts to ring in her hand.
It’s a number that she hasn’t saved, but she recognises it.
The hospital. Anika frowns at her screen as she lets it ring out.
The rollercoaster of feeling gooey over Cam’s message, then swooping down into irritation – or maybe concern?
– isn’t what she forecast for today in the diary.
She slices up a mango for her breakfast, then strides purposefully through to the living room to locate the diary on the side table.
The mango delicately prickles her tongue with its sweetness and she feels better, flicking to today’s entry as she flops onto the sofa.
She scans the page but doesn’t see anything that might cause a slip-up.
The usual list of affirmations and failsafes were all there, and it’s not like the hospital call took her by surprise exactly.
She even made sure to indicate that she’d give Cam a little breathing room to make sure she didn’t give away just how caught up she’s feeling.
As though to test it, she switches on the TV and scrolls through until she finds the digital radio stations.
Cam’s breakfast show is on, and as the tail end of a bouncy house tune plays out before Cam’s usual J Dilla instrumental bed kicks back in, his typically good-humoured chatter is notched down by tiredness and what is, undoubtedly, a giant hangover.
‘Mate. That was an energetic-arse song. That is not on my level whatsoever this morning,’ he quips hoarsely, then banters with his producer about how many minutes they have left of the show.
’Twenty-three minutes? Come on, we can do this, crew!
’ he shouts, trying to gee himself up, to much laughter from within the studio.
Cam reads some more texts out from listeners who are ribbing him for the state he’s in, their excitement over seeing the film palpable as well as their love for the host. Anika pulls up the long list of her anonymous texts to the radio station on her phone and fires off another message, grinning at her screen.
That gravelly voice is getting me hot, Mr Asiedu. Maybe some 2009 Maxwell will soothe you? I hear nostalgia’s all the rage. A. L., SE LDN
As Cam reads through the texts coming in for shout-outs, she can hear a pause as he reaches hers, referencing the playlist from back when they were kids in that laundry room.
‘Er. Rah, A. L. from south-east London …’ The realisation in his voice makes her laugh, and he does on the air too.
‘What can I say. Thank you for your message, and er … Yeah, absolutely. Hmm, let me … Yes. Let’s get some Maxwell on, throwing it back to 2009 and slowing things down with “Pretty Wings”. This one’s for you.’
He remembered the song from that night? After a moment, the beautiful track from the soul singer comes through her speakers and Anika sighs softly. Then she smiles, seeing a message directly from Cam pop up on her phone screen.
No fuckin way that’s been you this whole time, Ms Lapo! SMH. I’ll need to be all up in your aura soon. But true say I am absolutely finished. I need to sleep for a week. X
Anika fights the urge to suggest that he come and spend the day sleeping it off – and working it off – in her bed. To be fair, he hasn’t suggested it and Anika tries not to be disappointed. It’s what the diary has dictated, after all.
‘Calm it down, Neeks,’ she says to the empty room, sipping her tea.
The caffeine tugs at her brain and she puts the cup down, her fingers starting to flip the diary’s pages backwards.
Instinctively she seeks out an old entry, from the chunk of her life she recorded from 2005–2009.
She’s glad that her teenage yearnings for Cam began just after that period, though it feels almost cosmically strange to almost be picking up right where she left off …
Turning the pages, she finds a date in August that matches today’s, near the end of her teenage years within the diary.
As she begins to read the old entry, Anika’s face falls.
She reads on anyway, her fingers caressing the words as if she could reach out to her former self.
As if to prepare that young girl for what was to come.
August 6th 2008
Dear Diary
Today was weird. Like, I really don’t know how to feel about it.
I might be overthinking, like always … I got the train to meet Dad on my own, even tho Mum was still all jittery about it.
She’s always on at me about being careful when I go up to London now, as if we didn’t live there my whole life till she dragged me down here.
We dodged tourists through Leicester Square, and when we got to HMV it was like …
just breathing in, you can feel all that music surrounding you in a space that big!
I always forget. Dad’s face lights up in there, too.
The minute we walked through the doors, he grinned massively at me.
It sounds stupid but that’s always my favourite part when we go there – and the way I can tell that I look the same.
I can’t help wondering if he does that with Kwesi, too.
I know he’s only a little kid, but it still pisses me off to think about them being together way more and stuff.
I almost asked about it again today, but it was later in the restaurant and that was when Dad told me all the other shit, so it didn’t seem like a good time to bring it up.
Generally, Dad always makes his eyebrows all tight when I even mention Kwesi, even tho he always says ‘your brother’, as if I actually know him.
I sometimes wonder if he even talks about me with them …
I just really hope he doesn’t go music shopping with Kwesi.
That’s all. I want that to just be ours.
Anyway, it felt like I flicked through every single rack in the shop!
By the time me and Dad met up again by the tills, I could see he had maybe three CDs in his hand and I’ve got this massive pile!
I got some older albums including an Aretha Franklin one called Hey Now Hey.
Dad was reeeeally pleased about that selection!
(I put that one on as soon as I got home and WOW).
Dad did not even flinch at how many I brought!
He took all our stuff up to the counter and paid, it was amazing!
BUT, after that was when it got awkward.
We went to Bella Italia or whatever it’s called, and I was joking with the waiter about how much of the garlic bread Dad’s going to eat.
But when he brought it to the table Dad only picked at the bread, and then I was like ‘OK, there’s definitely something up’.
It feels so weird even writing it down but … Dad says he has cancer.
Well, what he actually said was, ‘They say I’m going to need some treatment,’ and then I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Well they found something,’ and he sort of waved a hand around his chest, and then he said, ‘They’ve been doing tests.
’ I wasn’t sure what to say. There was ages of us just sitting in silence biting little chunks of the garlic bread.
It tasted weird to me after Dad saying that.
But then eventually I managed to ask him.
I was like, ‘Dad, do you mean you have cancer?’ and he just shrugged.
But I think that’s what it is. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
I want to ask Mum about it, but if she doesn’t know …
Would Dad tell her? I don’t know. All they seem to do is argue.
The waiter brought out mains and then Dad just moved on to talking about the albums we’d bought that day.
But cancer? That’s really bad. Like, I remember Toni’s aunty had breast cancer and they only gave her three months to live.
I’m really fucking scared. I tried to just carry on like he was, but it was hard, man.
Am I going to lose my dad? I don’t know what I’ll do.
All the times I’ve been pissed off with him for letting me down …
Dad’s not really been around, but he’s always been there. I never imagined he wouldn’t be.
Shit. I shouldn’t think that way.
He’s going to be fine.
He’s going to be fine.
He’s going to be fine.
MY DAD IS GOING TO BE FINE.
Anika swallows, blinking back tears as she’s catapulted back to those feelings from fifteen years earlier. It’s so strange to read, knowing everything she knows now. She looks at the words He’s going to be fine, angry that her old attempts at manifestation in these pages had been fruitless.
It’s different now, though. She has no doubt that it’s working.
The diary has become not only a document of her life, but a way of creating it – of creating who she is, and where she wants to be.
‘It’s different now,’ Anika repeats out loud to herself.
She’s convinced of it. She just has to keep going a day at a time to build her vision for the future, writing the words and cementing it.
She wished for ‘fine’ back then, and lived in the idea of everything just being ‘fine’ for so long.
That wasn’t enough to save her father’s life, or to get her what she wanted out of her own.
So one thing she would no longer settle for was ‘fine’.