Page 33 of One Last Thing
‘I hope you’re okay,’ Nico says, tense now.
‘I am, yeah. I’m fine,’ I say with an awkward smile because I’m thinking too much about it to make it a proper one.
‘Good.’
We fall silent, him focusing on driving the boat, me feeling embarrassed about my shitty smile and that I brought up the topic of my failed engagement when I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve talked so much about it that I’m bored of it. Poor Marisa had to suffer me talking about it forweeksafter.
‘This isn’t how it’s meant to go,’ I would whisper to her, my nose running, my face splodgy from crying. ‘It’s not meant to go like this.’
‘I know. I’m so sorry,’ she would say, looking helpless and pained.
I remember there were moments when I didn’t think I’d make it through, but because of Marisa and Dad I felt I had to. I tried to be strong for them until one day I realised I wasn’t trying anymore, I was just . . . okay. I was bruised and achy and had flares of anger, but I could laugh at myself again. I found I could look forward to things like dinner with friends. Work seemed purposeful and interesting again and I didn’t wake up every day with that weight on my heart that I’d grown used to battling against in order to physically get up out of bed. Yes, I realised suddenly, I’d come through the worst of it.
That’s when I bought myself this emerald ring. It would probably be described as a statement ring –big, unique, eye-catching –and that would be accurate. Iammaking a statement by wearing it and the statement is: I got through this and I could do it again. When I look at the ring, I’m reminded that, despite the pain and my initial resistance, this is how it was meant to go all along. I said that to Marisa once and she said, ‘Ah, the power of the ring.’
‘Tolkien may have been on to something,’ I replied drily and she laughed so hard she snorted, even though it wasn’t snort-level funny.
I think she was just relieved I was making jokes even close to snort-level again.
Nico gestures out to the horizon. ‘It’s going to be a beautiful evening,’ he tells me.
‘Looks like it.’
‘Remember when we took the boat out at night?’
‘All the grown-ups would get pissed and we’d go swimming,’ I say, acutely aware that it’s embarrassing for a grown-up to use the term ‘grown-ups’.
‘Swimming?’ He quirks a brow. ‘I remember you’d jump in, scream about the cold and get out again very quickly.’
‘I remember you being too afraid to jump in because it was so dark, so I’d always have to jump first.’
He hesitates. ‘Yes, I remember that, too.’
When he glances at me, I smile. A proper one this time.
12
DAWN
When my consultant told me the diagnosis was late-onset multiple sclerosis, my response was, ‘I thought it might be’.
By then, I’d done so much googling of the symptoms that I’d come to the same conclusion myself. I thought that might lessen the shock of the formal diagnosis. I knew that preparation for these big life changes is key. In the end, his confirmation still struck hard and reverberated through my body in screeching ripples, I simply did well to hide it. I had read that MS is incurable but manageable. Incurable. Damn it.
I kept my composure as he talked me through what it meant and how things might play out from there. I was sure to nod along in the way someone does when they’re listening and taking in all the information, but I wasn’t doing either of those things. He might as well have been white noise. As he spoke, my brain was busy going, ‘Ohfuck’ on repeat and thinking about Megan and this awful book I was in the middle of writing terribly. I couldn’t bear the idea of leaving it in its current sorry state. If someone found it after I was gone, they might do something sentimentally irrational, like publish it in my memory. The idea was unfathomable and distracting.
Whether the doctor could tell I was listening or not, he nobly said all he needed to say, came to his conclusion andthen sent me away with some leaflets that detailed resources and support. I walked home. I was going to take a taxi, but my feet kept going and I didn’t have the energy to challenge them. It was as though my body was determined to prove the doctor wrong:Look at me walking all the way home! I’m fine!On my way, I bought a bunch of budding flowers from a stall I passed, and once home, I cut the stalk ends and popped them in a vase. I stood back and felt disappointed that they didn’t open straight away. The next day, they were still closed. I hadn’t slept well from all the crying and worrying, and I yelled at the flowers for being fucking useless. They had one job.
The day after that, they opened.
I thought they looked lovely. A weight lifted off my chest. They were so bright and colourful and radiant. I apologised for shouting at them and then I phoned Henry.
‘Can we meet for lunch?’ I asked him. ‘I’ve something important to tell you.’
He, being Henry, cancelled whatever else he had on that day and met me as requested.
After a bit of small talk, he tilted his head and said, ‘What did you want to tell me?’
‘Oh, well, recently I’ve had a bit of numbness in my leg,’ I told him with a dismissive wave of my hand. ‘I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but you know how tired I get and then there were some tremors—’
