Sometimes I Lie

She walked over to my bookshelves and I felt really uncomfortable. I said maybe we should go downstairs to see what microwaved delights Mum was planning on poisoning us with, but she just stood there as though she didn’t hear me. I don’t really like people touching my things but I tried to stay calm. Turns out, Taylor reads loads, just like me. She’s read some of the same books and talked about some others that I haven’t even heard of, but sound cool. When Mum called us down for dinner, I was actually quite annoyed, but then we carried on talking about books all the way down the stairs and while we ate our fish fingers and chips. We were still talking about books when Mum gave us a bowl of ice cream each. It had magic chocolate sauce on top, which comes out of the bottle all runny but then dries hard, like blood.

After dinner, Mum said we could watch the big TV, but we went up to my room and talked instead. When Mum came up to my bedroom and said it was time for Taylor to go, it made me feel sad and I asked if she could stay a little longer. Mum raised her invisible eyebrows in that silly way she does. She doesn’t have eyebrows like me because she plucked them off when she was young, so now she draws them on with a pencil and looks like a clown. She asked if Taylor would like to stay the night and Taylor said she would before I had a chance to say anything. So Mum called Taylor’s mum and she said yes too because it was a Friday.

We only have three bedrooms in our house and none of them are spare. Mum and Dad used to share a bedroom in the old house, but now they each have their own. Mum says it’s because Dad snores, but I know that really it’s because they don’t like each other any more. I’m not stupid. Taylor slept in my room with me, in Grandad’s old bed – I don’t think he would have minded.

Once we were in bed, Mum came in and said we had to turn the lamps off in ten minutes. Then she put two plastic glasses of water on the bedside tables. This is yet another thing that Mum never normally does, she seemed very concerned about my thirst all of a sudden. She stood in the doorway before she left, smiled at us both and said the strangest thing:

‘Look at the two of you, like two peas in a pod.’

Then Mum turned off the main light and started to close the door, until I panicked and asked her not to. She propped it back open with Nana’s robin doorstop. Once she was back downstairs, I said sorry to Taylor for her being a bit strange and that I didn’t know what she meant by the ‘peas in a pod’ comment. Taylor laughed and said that she had heard that expression before. She said it just meant that we looked the same. I’ve never seen peas in anything but a plastic bag in the freezer.

We did turn the lamps off after ten minutes, like Mum said, but we talked for way longer than that. Taylor was talking with her eyes closed and then just fell asleep. I don’t think it was because I’m boring. Even though everything was switched off, there was enough light from the moon peeking through the cracks in the curtain to see her face as she slept. I wasn’t sure what Mum was on about at first, I’m a bit shorter than Taylor and she’s very skinny, but she does look a little bit like me I suppose. We both have long brown hair.

There are three things that I have learned that I like about Taylor:

1. She’s actually quite funny.

2. She likes books as much as I do.

3. She has exactly the same birthday as me.

We were born at the same hospital, on the same day, just a few hours apart. If I had been born into Taylor’s family instead, my life would be so much better. I’d be picked up from school in a Volvo for starters and Taylor’s grandparents are still alive. But then my nana wouldn’t have been my nana and that would be sad. I watched Taylor sleep for almost an hour. It was like watching another version of me. I have made a friend. I tried not to, but maybe it will be OK because we’re like two peas in a pod.

Now

Thursday, 29th December 2016

Someone was in my room. He listened to the messages on my phone, deleted them and then told me it was my fault that I’m here in the hospital. It wasn’t a dream. I can’t sleep now, I’m too afraid. Scared of what I know, scared of what I don’t. I’m not sure how long it has been since his visit, but at least he hasn’t come back. Time has stretched into something I can no longer tell. I wish someone would fill in the gaps, there are so many, as though I’m trapped inside the body of someone who lived a life I don’t remember.

‘Here’s an interesting end to our morning rounds. Who can tell me about this case?’ I hear them gather at the end of the bed. The chorus of doctors all sound the same to me. I want to tell them to get out.

Just fix me or go away.

I’m forced to listen while they talk about me as though I’m not here. They take it in turns to share how little they know of what is wrong with me and when I’ll wake up. I have to tell myself when, the thought of it being if isn’t an option I’m willing to consider. As soon as they run out of wrong answers, they evacuate my room.

I must have slept because my parents are here again now. They sit either side of the bed, barely making a sound, as though there is nobody there at all. I wish that they would say something, anything, but instead they seem to be taking extra care to be as quiet as possible, as though they don’t want to wake me. My Mum sits so close to the bed that I can smell her body lotion and the scent triggers a memory of us on a spa break in the Lake District.

Claire had booked it as a girly treat for the three of us, but by the time we went she was quite pregnant with the twins. Her body had changed so much from my own, she was enormous and exhausted and spent most of the weekend in her room, which meant Mum and I had to muddle on without her. On the last day of the trip, when the rain had finally stopped and the sun we never saw had set, Mum and I went down to the restaurant for dinner.

We were seated at a small table, overlooking the vast Lake Windermere. I remember looking out to see the first stars appearing in the night sky above the rippled water and thinking how beautiful it was. I told Mum to take a look, the light was just perfect. She turned to glance briefly over her shoulder, then returned her attention to the wine list without a word. Claire had become the glue that held us together over the years, without her, we had no choice but to fall apart. Mum said she didn’t care what we drank so long as it was alcoholic and passed the menu to me. I ordered the first bottle of red my eyes found on the list, I felt like I needed a drink myself.

We were halfway through the bottle before our starters arrived. Mum drank quickly and I matched her pace, there didn’t seem to be much else to do. Our conversation had all but dried up the night we arrived, so by now the well of words was empty. The wine changed that.

‘How are you feeling, about Claire I mean? And the babies. Are you all right?’ Mum’s words stumbled and landed awkwardly. If she was trying to show that she cared, it still felt like a punch in the stomach. She wanted grandchildren. It wasn’t a secret. I was a disappointment. Again.

When Paul and I first got together, Claire and David were already having IVF. It’s really quite staggering what those three letters can do to a marriage. What they can do to a person is even worse. It changed Claire, not being able to have something she so badly wanted.