Chapter 7
I’m eight years old and my mummy is cross with me, I know that because at breakfast her eyebrows were angry, like when I make a mess or tell a lie. Her eyebrows never do that with Karen because she is always good.
I feel very poorly today and it’s hot in my room.
The window is open but it doesn’t stop the sun burning through to me in my bed.
I want to be outside with my friend Haki, playing hide and seek behind the houses where the trees are close together and it’s sometimes a bit scary.
Karen says I am babyish for playing hide and seek but I like it.
My mummy and daddy are in the kitchen and I can hear every word they are saying.
They don’t think I can, they think the wall is enough to stop the words coming through but it isn’t.
My mummy is whispering at my daddy but it is more of a shouty whisper.
She is talking about me, I know that because she just said my name.
She just said that Penny is too expensive and my daddy said that it will be fine and we will get through it.
I don’t know what he means, but his voice makes me feel better.
I sit up and put my ear closer to the wall. I try not to cough even though a cough is trying to come out of me. My chest is hurting and I want to cry a little bit but I stop the tears because Karen teases me when I cry and says that I am a silly little baby.
‘We’re going to have to go back to England,’ my mummy says.
I have never been to England but I know it’s colder and greyer than here because Mummy says that she would never want to go back because of the weather and the gloomy sky.
I was born here, like my sister, and I don’t want to go away from it. My tummy feels cold.
‘She’ll probably grow out of it,’ my daddy says.
I am growing every day, my daddy measures me sometimes and my mummy sighs and humphs and says that I grow out of all my clothes too quickly, that I am like a weed.
I wish I was like a flower instead but I have to be a weed.
Perhaps that is what Daddy means now, that if I grow out of something we won’t have to go to England. But I don’t know why he says that.
‘The bills are getting too high,’ Mummy says.
‘I know, but—’
‘You tell me where we’ll get the money, then, if you’re so very insistent on staying here. You tell me how we’ll get treatment for her? We haven’t got the NHS here, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
My daddy sighs really loudly.
Mummy lowers her voice, but not much. ‘If only you’d not come home so drunk that time.’
Daddy laughs out loud. ‘You didn’t seem to mind, at the time.’
‘Well, I minded nine months later, didn’t I? And now… our dream life, Martin! It’s going down the drain in front of me. And it’s all because of her.’
Sometimes when my mummy talks about me she says her in a way that makes me feel smaller and like I want to curl up and disappear.
I wonder what she means now, what she said about Daddy being drunk.
Sometimes they both have a lot of wine and they giggle a lot and dance out on the veranda, but I don’t understand what that has to do with me.
‘We’ve no choice,’ Mummy says, and I am sad because her voice is sad.
‘Look, we should wait. I still think it could get better. That… she could get better, and we could stay here.’
‘We have no money, Martin. And she’s not getting better. She has an incurable disease. Stop living in denial. We have to go home, so that we can get doctors for her. Unless you want to leave her to get worse? Is that it?’
‘Of course not. Of course not, Chrissie. Who do you think I am? I want her to get better.’
‘Well, that’s that then.’
There’s a sudden silence and then the sound of a door slamming. My sister has come into the kitchen, I know it’s her because she always slams doors. She is a teenager and teenagers always slam doors, Daddy says, they are always noisy.
‘What’s what then?’ Karen says. ‘What are you two plotting in here?’
‘Shh,’ Daddy says. ‘Keep your voice down, Karen. We’re just talking about Penny’s health.’
‘Oh.’ Karen sounds disappointed, as if my health is a very boring thing to talk about. Which it is, really.
There’s the sound of a chair scraping on the linoleum. ‘Karen,’ my mummy whispers, and I can hear her voice even clearer now because she is closer to the wall, just on the other side of me. ‘We might have to go back. To the UK.’
‘Really?’ My sister sounds eager. Happy, even, maybe. ‘Why?’
‘Because of your sister’s health issues.’
Karen laughs, and it’s that laugh she always uses when I get poorly, it’s a laugh that says she thinks I am being silly and making it all up and pretending I am hurting. It’s like the laugh that Mummy does when Daddy says he has tidied up the kitchen or made the tea.
‘Because of money, really, love,’ Daddy says. His voice is all soft, like it always is for Karen.
‘Can we go soon?’ Karen says.
‘You… want to go?’
‘There’s nothing to do round here. And in England they have discos. And I can get records and tapes easier. And make-up. And, oh, just everything. Can we go soon?’ Karen’s voice is all high, like a buzzy bee all excited as it flies round in the air.
My mummy tells her that yes, we can go soon, and that if she is a good girl they will buy her a new tape at the airport.
Karen says can she have a new Walkman please because hers is old, and Daddy says yes of course she can because she is being so good and understanding and patient and they are so proud of her.
I don’t think I will get a new Walkman, because it is my fault that we have to go to England and be able to take me to the doctor to get my medicine.
And because I am not a good girl like Karen.
I am a naughty girl who keeps on disobeying my parents and also keeps on being poorly which makes life hard work for them.
But I so wish I could have a new Walkman and a new tape to go with it.
???
Somebody is stabbing my arm. Stop it, I want to say, stop it. My mind is shouting but my mouth is pinned closed. Then a wetness, a burning, and I cry out.
‘Shush.’
It’s not a kind shush. It’s a hassled shush, a shush loaded with frustration. I open my eyes and blink at the nurse ramming a syringe into my port. ‘It’ll take one more,’ she mutters.
The pee-stinking liquid is leaking all over my skin and soaking my sheet. Blistering through my vein, collapsing it down until it explodes into a bruise, strewing my forearm with purple blossom. I cry out.
She tuts. ‘Just another minute.’
No. I have to say no. To tell her to stop. It’s my body.
I’ve got nothing. She keeps pushing and I bite down on my lip.
She disconnects the syringe and slams it into the cardboard tray, huffs some more.
‘The day staff’ll have to sort it,’ she says, storming off.
No sorry, no ouch that looks bad, no kind words.
I whip the cannula out myself, ripping off the plaster and grimacing.
It was half out already, the stinging medication congealing in with the fresh blood running from the wound.
I close my eyes and wish I could collapse into nothing, just like my vein. Wish my bruise would blossom so large it would swallow me up, suck me into purple depths.
Something is touching my arm. Pulling me back from clenching blackness.
A light touch, a feather of gentleness and warmth.
‘Penny? Penny? Wake up, lovely. Good morning, darling. My name is Patience. I’m your nurse today.
’ Patience speaks in a gentle, musical lilt and in my semi-comatose daze I’m lulled back to the wide open skies of my early childhood, running free through our village in rural Kenya, where my parents had met as engineers on a water project, and stayed on when Karen came along.
An idyllic childhood, my mother always said, that’s what they wanted for her, that’s why they stayed.
Several years later, I arrived unexpectedly.
I ran in and out of low roofed homes where warm women who called themselves aunties fed me with fresh mangos and avocados, and sat under the great cedar tree in the centre of the village watching the world go by.
My father took me on safari once. I don’t remember many of the animals, but do remember an elephant with her newborn, her trunk wrapped around him, her face a picture of protection and patience.
What I remember most is nights under the sweeping African skies with multitudes of stars like diamonds studding the velvet canvas, the beauty and grandeur of it taking my breath away.
I still have dreams where I am lying out flat, gazing at the sweep of the heavens, the colours of sunset painting the skies in glorious hues.
I want to fall into the colours and stay there forever.
In my dreams the majesty of it all invades my pain and eases it, and I wake up yearning for more.
When we returned to the UK I was lost in a world that was alien to me, that still is alien in a million ways.
My mother became sad and depressed, like the grey skies of England, and my father made bitter comments about how my disease ruined their lives.
My sister was happy, though, in a world she could escape our parents’ expectations and go and have some fun.
She rebelled, sneaking off with unsuitable boys and smoking weed, and that, apparently, was my fault too.
It would never have happened if we’d stayed in Kenya, if I hadn’t been ill, if I hadn’t been born.
‘Penny, wake up,’ Patience says again, touching my shoulder softly.
I open my eyes and focus on her. She’s small and round, dressed in a light blue tunic and flat black hush puppies.
‘I’ll be round with your medication in a while.
I understand you need a new cannula? Your other one is hurting, yes? ’
I show her my battered arm and the discarded cannula detritus on my tray.
‘Oh dear. That looks nasty. I’ll ask the specialist nurse to come and do one for you on your other arm, okay darling?’ She looks closer at me, her eyes filmy pools of empathy. ‘Are you okay?’
I hadn’t realised it, but now I feel it. My cheeks are wet. And I never cry.
‘Are you in pain?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
???
I didn’t only make them come back from Kenya.
I tied them to a life of doctors and hospitals and disappointments.
I failed to strive for a brilliant career like Karen the golden child, the high-achieving solicitor who worked hard for everything she got and so deserves it.
If only I could have put more work in, my mother said.
If only I’d shown some spark about me, some motivation, some passion for something useful, like Karen who excelled at everything, who was captain of the netball team, who brought home the trophies that took pride of place on our mantelpiece.
Thinking of my sister, I drag myself to a sitting position and dig my phone out of the drawer in the cupboard by my bed.
I haven’t picked it up since I was admitted; I couldn’t take the brightness of the screen or of everyone’s lives going on as usual outside.
There’s not much charge, but enough to see I have a pile of messages on WhatsApp and Messenger.
Karen’s name is at the top of them, several messages, let me know how you are, would love to visit but yada yada, Jake keeps us filled in, love you sis, you’ll be out of there before you know it.
I tap out a short response. Thanks, Karen. I’m getting better. Miss you xxx
She messages back immediately. Miss you too. Xxx
And it’s true. I do miss her. Since I left the toxic environment of home we grew closer.
There’s still a wall between us, though, neither of us ever quite strong enough to scramble over the top.
She’s not the one I run to when things are tough.
She breezes through life with a can-do attitude and doesn’t understand why I don’t.
But I wish she would come and visit me, despite her high-powered job and her million-pound home in central London with the full time nanny for her two equally high-attaining daughters.
My parents adore them; they are everything they want in grandchildren, and Jake, like me, knows he somehow doesn’t quite make the grade.
I scroll through all the messages, feeling increasingly guilty about my lack of response. Heard you were in hospital! You ok hun? When you getting out? Can I visit? Hope you’re feeling better xxxx
I don’t have the energy to reply to them all. My head thuds harder, a woodpecker attacking me with its long sharp beak. I go to my Facebook page and update my status: Thank you so much to everyone who has sent me messages. Sorry I’m being rubbish at replying.
Always sorry.