Olivia
‘Oh God,’ she moaned, feeling the bitter taste of bile rise up in the back of her throat.
‘Oh God, please no.’ She clutched her stomach.
It writhed and rolled at her touch, the contents swirling.
She needed to move, but the thought of standing made her queasiness triple in intensity.
Her head was swimming, and the room began to spin.
You’re not going to be sick.
It will pass.
Just lie still and breathe.
Olivia’s entire body contracted.
‘I’m going to be sick,’ she whimpered, hauling herself out of bed and into the bathroom.
Fortunately, she made it in time for the best curry in Jaipur to make its way back up and out into the toilet. Olivia sobbed as her body ejected every last morsel and more. Her stomach ached with the effort and her throat burnt from the
acid. How could she have been so stupid? She’d known the moment her plate of greying, insipid food arrived that something wasn’t right. But had she left? No. Anger flooded her, causing her chilled skin to burn red hot and her palms to drip with sweat.
Thankfully the ordeal was over in moments, but Olivia, who had now cried herself into exhaustion, couldn’t bear to move.
Instead, she curled herself around the toilet and laid her head on the floor, her knees tucked up to her chin, her body folding in on itself.
As she closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep, she felt her mind fill with thoughts of her baby sister.
The nights she’d found her in this very same position, whimpering into piles of towels she’d fashioned around herself in a little cocoon.
The poison that was being pumped into her veins killing not just the cancer but every bit of goodness inside her too.
‘You need to tell someone when you feel this bad, Leah,’ Olivia would say, dropping to her sister’s side and placing a cooling hand on her forehead.
‘Why? There’s nothing anyone can do. It’s just part and parcel of the cancer life.’ She’d sigh, trying her best to joke even in the darkest of times, with sick in her wispy hair and tears streaming down her face.
‘Well, you don’t have to do it alone.’ Olivia would grab a blanket from her bedroom and coil herself around her sister, throwing the cover over them both and holding her tight until their mum would discover them in the morning.
‘Oh, Leah,’ Olivia cried, the reality of her sister’s absence cutting through her. The pain flooded her, pushing any remaining swirls of nausea aside.
My darling, brave baby sister …
After an hour on the floor, Olivia’s body had accepted that
there was nothing left inside her to give. Her head was pounding, and her mouth tasted faintly of spices and strongly of bile. She needed water and she needed proper rest.
Slowly, and very carefully, she made her way back to bed, wrapping her tender body in her still-damp sheets. Olivia glanced down at her hair; it lay in dirty tangles, clumped together with sweat and sick. What a mess she was. The infallible Olivia Jackson reduced to this.
I want to go home. I need to go home.
But it wasn’t her home in London that she craved.
It wasn’t the pocket of solitude and tranquillity she’d so carefully crafted for herself that her body longed for.
No, it was her childhood home. The place she hadn’t yearned for ever since she left it at eighteen.
It was such an unexpected urge that, before she knew what was happening, Olivia’s chest had started to heave and a deep, guttural howl ripped from her mouth.
Oh, how it hurt to want to be held. To see the images of her parents flash before her, reaching out to her but unable to grasp hold.
She buried her head deeper into the soaked pillows and bawled, allowing her feelings to fully take over.
Not since she was young had she cried like this.
Leah’s diagnosis had put a stopper in any thought or desire to do so; Olivia knew full well that whatever she was experiencing was nothing in comparison to her sister. But now … now it was just her.
Call them.
The thought was so small, yet powerful enough for Olivia to reach for her phone and turn it over in her clammy palms.
And say what?
Reality sobered her. As much as her childish longing wanted to, she knew she wouldn’t be able to speak to her parents in this state. Pride was a powerful armour that was hard to remove after decades of wearing. Instead, she wiped
her tears and took a deep breath in, allowing her fingers to find the only other number she could think of calling.
After three rings he answered.
‘Big Sis! I was wondering if I was ever going to hear from you …’
‘Kyle?’ Her voice cracked immediately, its pitch too high and too constricted to pass as normal.
‘Jesus Christ, are you OK? You sound … I don’t know.’ He paused, as though unable to compute the words Olivia knew he was going to say. ‘You sound like you’re crying.’
‘That’s because …’ Her throat tightened and her breath grew shallow. ‘That’s because I am.’
‘Holy shit. Hold on, I’m going outside and I’ll FaceTime you, OK? Do not go anywhere.’ Notes of fear were audible underneath his serious tone. ‘Do you hear me, Liv? Do not go anywhere.’
*
After an hour on FaceTime with her brother, Olivia felt much more herself. Her body was still sore and her hair rancid with vomit, but her mood had lifted significantly. Hearing Kyle’s updates on life back home, and the drama that seemed to occur daily at his work, was respite for her sorry self.
‘Now, what are you going to do with yourself for the rest of the day? Apart from shower – because let’s face it, you look like you stink.’
‘Of course I’ll be showering, thank you very much, and then …’ She shrugged. What was she meant to be doing today? Probably looking round a thousand and one tourist sites. ‘Not sure.’
‘Why don’t you meet a friend and grab some food?’
Because I don’t have any friends.
The thought stung a little more than she expected.
‘Hmm no, I’m not hungry.’
‘Not now you’re not, but you’ll have to eat at some point.’
‘Maybe.’
‘No, not maybe. You need to eat something.’
‘Wow, OK. Since when did you become so sensible?’
‘Maybe since I stopped being a little boy and grew up.’
‘That’s news to me,’ she joked, but she soon saw that Kyle wasn’t laughing. ‘Oh, come on, I’m only messing around.’
‘I know you all find it so hard to believe, but I’m not a totally incapable idiot. I can look after myself.’
‘I know you can. Of course you can!’
An awkward silence wedged itself between them, and Olivia knew she was going to have to be the one to break it.
‘Speaking of food, I was thinking: do you remember when Leah used to get sick, how she would always want mashed banana and milk to soothe her stomach?’
‘Yeah,’ Kyle replied reluctantly, his scowl softening ever so slightly at the mention of Leah.
‘And Mum used to refuse, and make her drink litres of electrolytes and eat dry toast.’
‘God, those drinks used to make me want to gag just looking at them.’ He softened even more.
‘I know! I felt so bad for her, until I found out that you
would sneak upstairs afterwards and bring her a bowl of the banana stuff!’
‘What can I say? I was always the rule breaker.’ Another flicker of sadness darkened Kyle’s expression. ‘And I couldn’t stand to see her so unhappy. I just wanted to make her smile.’
Olivia’s heart grew heavy. The void that had carved itself into the very centre of her being after Leah passed seemed to grow wider and emptier. It was the absence of something, a
missing part, a hole through her very core. An endless chasm of nothing, which she knew would never be filled by anything again.
‘Kyle?’
‘Olivia.’
‘Do you …’ She dropped her gaze from the screen. ‘Do you think I was ever too hard on you both growing up?’
The question had been lingering on the fringes of her mind for a while, and now, in her moment of weakness, it had made its bid for freedom from her brain and out of her mouth.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. I sometimes worry that maybe we didn’t have a lot of fun together.’
A lump in her throat and a throbbing in the absent space made Olivia’s eyes brim with tears.
‘Hey, don’t you worry about that. I brought enough fun for all of us.’
Normally she would have welcomed Kyle’s attempt at distraction, but not today.
‘You know what I mean.’
He looked at her hard; his big, brown eyes were a complete contrast to hers, but still as piercing in their gaze.
‘I do know what you mean, and yeah, if I’m honest, sometimes it felt like I had three parents at home instead of two. But
now I know that you were just trying to take care of everyone, because nobody seemed to be able to take care of themselves.
Leah became the priority, and you filled in the gaps.
’ He looked away from the screen, a slight colour in his cheeks.
‘And in all honesty, I don’t know what we’d have done without you, Liv. ’
She let the nickname slide as her own cheeks blushed with affection.
‘Saying all that’ – Kyle returned his focus to her – ‘I do think you’re too hard on Mum and Dad.’
The affection vanished and she felt herself prickle defensively.
‘How?’
‘Firstly, you never speak to them! The number of messages I’ve got since you’ve been away, asking where you are and how you’re doing. I’ve had to promise to give them a weekly update for the rest of your trip.’
Olivia scoffed at the ridiculousness of this statement.
‘They don’t want to know that much about me.’
‘They do! And when you do talk to them, you’re fussing or telling them off or treating them like they’re kids.’
‘Because they aren’t doing anything to help themselves.’
‘No, they’re grieving. And trying to make sense of a world without their baby daughter.’
His words were like punches to the gut, each landing harder than the last.