Page 37 of Things We Never Said
‘She’s smoking hot,’ Sean had mumbled.
‘Hmm,’ Andy had said, laughing. ‘You regretting that wedding, mate? Already?’
Troubled by Andy’s comment as well as his own inability to drag his eyes from Princess Leah, Sean had gone in search of Catherine, who had vanished.
He had found her in the back garden, vomiting into a dustbin. Half walking, half carrying her home had saved him from his indisputable attraction to Princess Leah of Sweden.
It had been one of those moments when he had imagined that it might just be worth risking everything for a fling, for a simple moment with someone that beautiful. He had realised that physical attraction could be so powerful that one could become stupid enough to throw everything important down the drain. He had never, thank God, bumped into her again.
Cassette #11
Hello Sean.
It’s eleven o’clock on Friday morning and I’ve just seen the oncologist. He gave me the results of yesterday’s CAT scan and the results aren’t great, I’m afraid. I’m a bit in shock, I think, and trying to take my mind off it by doing another one of these tapes.
That crazily expensive drug I’ve been on, the gem-city-din or whatever it’s called, the one which has been making me so ill that I can’t walk, hasn’t been working at all, it turns out. The doc wants to schedule a meeting with both of us to discuss what he called ‘remaining options’, but, to be honest, I’m not hopeful. I don’t think that any of the remaining options are going to be much fun.
The good news is that they stopped giving me that rubbish immediately, so I should be able to come home for the weekend. I think that I’ll leave it until Monday morning to tell you the bad news. I’ll have to make something up, I suppose. I’m desperate for a normal weekend with you, that’s the thing. I’m desperate for a weekend where we can talk about something other than my desire to vomit or the survival rates of different types of cancers.
Anyway, I had a little cry after he told me, but I’m all right again now. I’m ready to talk about the next photo. This little project is really helping me get through all of this.
It’s funny, because I realised that these tapes are turning into a whole different thing.
At the beginning, I just wanted to tell you some things you didn’t know about me. I just wanted to share some secrets. But it’s becoming more like the complete story of us. It’s becoming more and more like that novel I always said I’d write. Perhaps you can get it typed up and publish it one day. Anyway, I hope you’re not bored yet. You were, after all, there for most of this.
I had thought there would be more photos like this one. There were so many parties, after all. But I suppose we were too busy getting drunk to take pictures.
I think the only reason we have a picture of this one is because Theresa was going through her photography phase. She had set up a darkroom in our dusty cellar with an enlarger and everything. This black-and-white one will definitely be one of hers. I may even have helped develop it.
I don’t think her photography thing lasted for more than six months, but it was fun for a while. All of her mates from the photography society used to traipse through the house, and they were all pretty nice people. They used to fawn over April, I remember. We had lots of black-and-white photos of her at one stage, but they all seem to have vanished. Perhaps they’re in that other box in the loft.
We were the strangest students, weren’t we? Especially me, of course, because I wasn’t a student at all. We were a married couple with a toddler, and yet you were also a budding architect. And even if I spent my days looking after April, I felt like a student as well. A student of life, perhaps.
I’ve always thought that at least half of what you learn through being at college is life stuff, rather than the proper stuff you learn in lessons. It’s why I was so determined that April should go to college. It was learning how to live in a shared house and arguing until three in the morning about washing up and God and politics, and electricity bills, that made us who we ended up being. Learning to love and have friendships and let go of them when people got to the end of their courses, too. And the incredible thing for me was that I got to participate in all of that by proxy. So despite being basically a chavvy bird from a council estate, I still got to do the whole student thing. I got exposed to feminism and socialism and Buddhism, and a hundred different isms. And I made some really great friends.
And when we weren’t putting the world to rights, we were partying. We never needed much of an excuse, did we? A few bottles of homebrew and a record player and we were away. That’s me in the photo, as I’m sure you realised. I had just smoked my second ever joint, but hadn’t thrown up yet.
I’m not sure that you’ll remember this, but you found me out in the garden, being sick, and I lied and said I’d just had too much to drink. But it was Alistair’s joint that had pushed me over the edge. That’s when I decided that joints really weren’t for me.
I owned up to you the next morning, and you said you’d tried it too and had also been sick. Neither of us really liked smoking grass, which was probably a blessing. The people who did like the stuff were the ones who got kicked off their courses. It isn’t, I don’t think, the most motivational drug!
I can’t remember who was babysitting April that night, but it wasn’t us and it wasn’t Alistair, and it can’t have been Theresa either if she took the photo. I expect it must have been Annie or Steve, or Green Donna. Actually, Donna wasn’t green yet, was she? She was still plain old Donna back then. The ‘Green’ thing came later.
But even before Donna moved in, we never had any shortage of babysitters, did we? Everyone loved April. I don’t think many kids out there have had quite so much love thrown at them.
It is Saturday morning and Sean is busy vacuuming the lounge. Because of the noise of the Dyson, he fails to hear the doorbell and visibly jumps when he turns to face the lounge window. Maggie, beyond the pane, is hopping up and down, waving her arms.
Sean kicks the off button on the vacuum cleaner and strides to the front door.
‘Finally!’ Maggie says. ‘I’ve been jumping up and down like a loon out here. Plus it’s freezing.’
She kisses Sean on the cheek and steps past him into the hallway.
‘It is cold,’ Sean says, peering out into the crisp, sunny day.
‘It’s air coming down from Iceland or something,’ Maggie says, moving into the lounge.
Sean closes the front door and follows her. He’s glad of the visit but simultaneously regretful for his vacuuming. It had taken him so long to pluck up the courage that he wonders if he’ll ever manage to get motivated again.
