Chapter Forty-Seven
The next morning, Anika pauses over the sink with her toothbrush in her hand, playing out the usual post-chemo conundrum – brush her tongue until the fuzzy metallic taste on it dissipates a bit?
Risk igniting her more-sensitive-than-usual gag reflex?
She opts to brush, breathing through the sensation and grateful not to have really had any major vomiting with the regimen.
When she straightens up and looks at herself in the mirror, her eyes drift up to her freshly washed curls.
Her mum had helped her take out her braids and then Anika had washed her hair gingerly, not only due to queasiness, but with caution, ready to feel clumps come away in her hands.
Yet the doctor told her the medication she was on may not cause hair loss at all.
To the world, so far at least, she doesn’t even tick that visual box of a cancer patient.
Or did I just ‘manifest’ a lucky escape in that department?
Anika laughs drily at her reflection. It won’t have been the diary this time, that’s for sure. She’s stopped writing in it.
Walking out of the bathroom, Anika decides it’s early enough to retire back to bed for an hour or so before her friends are due to arrive.
She doesn’t like to be in bed when people come by, but it should be fine.
As she flops back into it, she remembers that the diary is in fact still tucked in the drawer in her bedside table.
She sits up against her pillows and considers for a moment, then decides to find it – something she hasn’t done since putting it in there weeks back.
Jaw tight as she flips the pages, Anika runs a finger along the jagged remains of the page she tore out as soon as she had the chance after she returned home, the day after her collapse, removing the words that Cam read out to her that awful morning.
She betrayed him, in words if not in deeds.
In intention. The first chance she could, Anika tore the page into tiny, rough pieces that matched the way her heart felt.
Holding the diary now, she ponders whether to just start it up again with the benefit of hindsight.
Perhaps it could work if she’s more astute in what she tries to manifest?
The temptation is strong. With the diary, Anika felt able to regain some mastery over her life.
But then it all went haywire in a manner she never would have invited if she really were in charge of everything.
She’s beginning to realise that what she thought was freedom was really just another form of control …
The sound of her door buzzer awakens her and Anika realises she fell asleep with the diary still gripped in her hand. Shoving it into the drawer again, she goes to buzz her friends into the building, rubbing her face vigorously to hopefully look a bit less like …
‘Fuck, did we wake you up, babe?’ Shameeka asks as she reaches the top of the stairs up to her flat and sees Anika open the front door.
Clearing her throat, Anika lies. ‘Nah. Well, I just fell asleep for a sec. I was up.’ When Shameeka is in front of her, her friend folds her into a tight hug.
Anika laughs when Tina reaches the top of the stairs behind Shamz and joins in, moving to clasp her around her back until she’s sandwiched in between her best friends.
It’s almost difficult to quantify how grateful she is that they have forgiven her.
It reminds her of those days after the first time in hospital, when she somehow made lemonade out of lemons.
It was good, for a while there, Anika reasserts to herself.
Then Cam’s words come back to her – about needing to find a balance.
‘I love you both,’ she says with feeling, squeezing one arm around her back and one around her front like an octopus, embracing Shamz and T. They both tell her they love her, too. But she already knows.
Heading inside the flat, Anika attempts to help them sort out the brunch stuff they’ve brought but they shoo her away.
‘How’s your appetite?’ Shameeka asks as Anika hovers in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame. She’s still tired but reminds herself it’s inevitable given all the shit coursing around her veins.
‘It’s there,’ she says with a shrug, and smiles as Shamz inspects her from head to toe. ‘Yes, I will sit down in a sec,’ she adds, before her friend can comment. ‘Bit of nausea occasionally, but I’m still down to eat.’
Tina is bent down low, clanging about in the cupboard to find a frying pan.
Straightening up, she purses her lips as she examines its scratched ‘non-stick’ surface.
‘I know what I’m getting you for Christmas,’ she mutters, then clears her throat.
‘Did you say Wendy’s coming by, too? I like that chick, you know. ’
Anika laughs. ‘Me too. Yeah, she should be here any minute,’ she says, then raises her hands in defeat as her friends usher her out of her kitchen.
She and Wendy have been video-calling, but she hasn’t yet seen her face to face.
Anika chews the inside of her cheek, a slight flutter of nerves skittering across her chest as she remembers everything she said.
She’s avoided any real reckoning on that with Wendy during their calls so far.
She exhales and calls back down the corridor. ‘What we saying, Mad Men rewatch, or—’
‘Real Housewives!’ Shameeka and Tina chime back in unison.
Anika snickers, rolling her eyes as she pads to the living room and burrows into the sofa. Seconds after she’s sat down, the buzzer goes again.
‘Got it,’ she shouts, getting up carefully and shuffling back to the front door to let Wendy in. She opens it to wait for her friend, already grinning as she hears Wendy mumbling to herself about the climb.
‘Bloody hell, darling, I need to do more Pilates or whatever. Christ,’ she says as she looks up and sees Anika leaning down into the stairwell, grinning.
‘I don’t think Pilates is really cardio-based. Plus, if I can manage it in this state, you can, eh?’
Wendy gives an exaggerated puff-and-lean routine on the banister at the top of the stairs, hair in a messy bun and dressed head to toe in what looks like an unassuming black hoodie and leggings, but her clothing winks with a subtle Balenciaga logo, matching her trainers.
She goes over to embrace Anika in a tight hug, growling happily.
‘Look at you, babe! Only you could have chemo and still look this fucking good. I brought champs,’ she adds, gesturing with a bottle.
‘It’s eleven a.m.,’ Anika says, leading her friend inside. Not to mention the queasiness …
‘Yeah, that’s why I got orange juice, too.’ She rustles a blue plastic bag from the corner shop and hands over the champagne.
Anika looks at it and shakes her head. ‘Only you would put Just Juice in Dom Pérignon.’ She glances back to see her friend shrug.
They enter the kitchen to a frenzy of brunch-making – eggs, pancakes, fruit, the whole works.
Anika’s stomach actually rumbles, which is a good sign.
Wendy hugs Shameeka and Tina hello and pours them all some drinks. Anika observes the scene with a smile.
‘Two minutes, then we’ll bring it all through,’ Shamz tells them after she’s clinked glasses with everyone.
Anika returns gratefully to the sofa, taking a tiny sip of her drink – the nutritionist said she can have alcohol, but she plans to err on the side of caution. ‘How’s work?’ she asks Wendy, who has trailed in behind her and kicked off her trainers to fold herself onto the sofa too.
‘Ugh, did I tell you about Wanker Wayne, sweetheart? I swear to the Almighty, that man is constantly in the accessible loos playing with himself. It’s disgusting. If I had proof, it’d be HR hell for that literal tosser …’
Anika listens, laughing loudly at her friend’s anecdotes and bathing in the nostalgia. It feels like a morning they’d have back in Kentish Town, except Wendy has been trying to swear off her vape so there’s not the familiar sweet haze surrounding them.
Wendy reaches out to pat Anika’s knee. ‘Good to see you in the flesh, though, darling,’ she says more quietly.
Anika draws a breath. ‘Yeah, it’s been a while, right?
Not since, um … the dinner.’ Now is as good a time as any to bring it up.
‘Look, I know you said it’s water under the bridge or whatever,’ she says, looking into her friend’s grey eyes.
‘But I went about that all wrong. It was really shit of me and I’m sorry. You know I love you, right?’
‘I love you, too, Neeky.’ She squeezes Anika’s hand. ‘I wish you’d said stuff before. You know I’m a gobshite and a closeted bitch – well, not like that. God, I wish I could give up dick. Sheltered. You know what I mean. I know I must have said stupid stuff a lot. I’ll work on that, OK?’
Anika shakes her head, leaning over to squeeze Wendy into an awkward sofa-hug.
Her friend returns it while expertly keeping her flute of Buck’s Fizz level.
A moment later, Shameeka and Tina start bringing the food through, and they ram the tiny dining table in the living room with plates of the delicious food.
They eat on their laps, laughing and watching vintage episodes of Real Housewives of Atlanta, chanting classic lines along with the ladies on the screen.
After they finish eating and clearing some of the plates away, Anika returns from using the loo carrying a tub of coconut oil, remembering she hadn’t gone over her scalp since washing her hair.
‘Come, let me do that,’ Shameeka says, and Anika goes to sit on a cushion on the floor in between her friend’s knees. Shamz is being notably gentler with her than when Anika’s seen her greasing her son’s scalp. She smiles to herself, fighting sudden tears at her friend’s tenderness.
‘Thanks, you lot,’ she says quietly, and she feels Shamz pause for a moment to pat her shoulder. Tina reaches over to feel Anika’s hair between her fingers.
‘Bit softer, isn’t it?’ Anika says.
‘Yeah,’ Tina says. ‘But it’s looking great.’
‘So far so good.’
Tina nods, reclining back on the sofa. ‘Yeah, man. But if things change, you know I’ve got you.’ She wiggles her head from side to side, making her bone-straight-bob wig swish.
Wendy draws an audible breath, clearly about to ask a question, and they all turn towards her. But then she breaks into a cackle. ‘D’you know what? Never mind!’
They join in with her laughter and Anika throws a cushion at her friend, but, as the chatter flows around her, she can’t help reflecting once again on where she is now, and how far she’s come.
This wasn’t all for nothing, she’s beginning to realise.
Maybe, in fact, it was essential to becoming herself.