Pandora’s Box
‘Do you really mean that?’ I watch her fasten my necklace around her throat and I feel my heart thudding in my chest. It’s been so long since Shelley expressed any real interest in anything at all. If my daughter could only be interested in something, if she could only have something to live for, then she might live a little longer, a little better. She might have a little more joy in whatever days she has left to her. ‘I would love to take a trip down there with you. Are you sure you don’t want to go when Danny can come too?’
‘No!’ Shelley comes back vehemently. Then she recovers herself and smiles. ‘I just want some special time with you. While we still can, you understand?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘And Dad won’t mind?’
Bill, of course, will have to be consulted. He always likes to be included in whatever plans are made for Shelley, and that’s fair enough. But my ex-husband has his new wife and their young child to think about these days, doesn’t he?
‘I’ll square it with your dad,’ I tell her decisively. And Daniel will have to be managed somehow because he’ll no doubt want to be in on it too. But then Daniel has his scout camp to look forward to, so why shouldn’t Shelley have her special time?
‘Don’t you wonder when it happens?’ Shelley is still thoughtful, looking at the box. ‘When do all those precious things become…just a pile of old junk?’
It happens when we’re not looking, I think. At the same time that those crows’ feet appear, which we tell ourselves will disappear when we get a good night’s sleep. When our dress size creeps up from a ten to a twelve and then a fourteen. When we’re not looking.
‘It happens when we cease to care,’ I tell her.
‘But if you don’t care,’ she whispers, ‘why were you so upset that Granny Panny sent it all on to you?’
‘I’m not…’ I begin, but there is little point in lying to Shelley. I edge over to the kitchen sink and throw the dregs of my coffee away. ‘Maybe you have never heard the story of Pandora’s Box?’ I say to her at last. ‘In Greek myth, Pandora was a beautiful and foolish woman who, out of insatiable curiosity, opened a box that she had been warned she should never open. The minute she opened it, out flew all the spites: Old Age, Sickness, Envy, Disloyalty, Deceit…in short, everything that makes mankind miserable.’ I trail off.
‘Come on, Mum. This isn’t a magical box. It isn’t going to release a load of nasty stuff into the air just because we’ve opened it up to look inside. You don’t really believe that, do you?’
‘Of course not literally,’ I say. A shiver goes through me then. I’m not superstitious. I’m not really going to be opening up the past just because we’ve opened up that box, now, am I? I was never allowed to look inside Pandora’s private box when we were kids, that’s all. Old habits die hard, and all that.
‘I think we should put it away now,’ I say. Shelley opens her mouth to protest but I add, ‘Maybe I’m just scared that there’ll be something in there I don’t want to see.’
My daughter nods wisely. She doesn’t ask me what this thing might be. Instead, she comments, ‘I have heard the story of what was Pandora’s Box, Mum, and you’ve left one of them out.’
‘And what might that be?’ I arch my brows. A ray of sloping sunshine appears for a moment across the kitchen worktop, making long shadows of our coffee cups. Outside, the squally wind is chasing the clouds across the canvas of the sky, opening up small patches of blue.
‘Hope,’ she says simply. ‘You’ve left out Hope.’
3 Shelley
I have decided that when dawn breaks on my fifteenth birthday, that is the last day I will ever spend on this planet.
I am not depressed and I am not angry with my parents.
I am not insane, neither am I frightened of Death.
I am frightened of dying, however, in the way that I inevitably will if I don’t take matters into my own hands. I meant what I said to my mum about hope, though. I do have hope. But it’s for the others who are going to be left behind after me, that’s all.
I have a poster-sized photograph of me and Daniel in my bedroom. It’s one of my favourites of the two of us and it was taken nearly ten years ago because in it I’m five and Daniel is just one. It’s an ‘action’ shot. We’re both in our swimsuits on this huge empty beach in Cornwall. I’m jumping off a rock with my eyes closed and my arms in the air. I love the smile on my face. Whenever I look at that photo I remember what it must have felt like to be free. We called that our ‘jumping rock’. It seemed so huge to me then, but we went back to Summer Bay three years ago and the rock was still there in the same place, same green algae and footholds all over it, jutting out of the sand at the head of the beach and, guess what…it had shrunk!
Well of course it hadn’t really shrunk. The rest of the world—including us—had just got bigger. Daniel kept jumping off it, showing off, because in my photo he’s just a baby sitting on the bottom waiting patiently for me to jump and here was his chance to take on a more active role. I wasn’t completely confined to Bessie—that’s my wheelchair—three years ago, but neither were my legs strong enough to jump. This time I was the one sitting on the sand waiting, so Mum took a photo of that and Daniel’s got it on his wall, and it kind of evens up the balance of power as far as he’s concerned.
He’s like Mum there, see. They both have this immaculate sense of fairness and justice about things. I may only be fourteen but I know damn well that life isn’t fair. Maybe it’s genetic or something, I don’t know, but some people never seem to work that one out. That’s Mum’s fatal flaw; that’s how I’ll get her to come round to my way of thinking in the end. You’ll see.
Anyhow, this photo of the last time I felt really free, it’s given me the idea of how I want it to be on my last day.
I have decided that I will go down to Summer Bay in Cornwall and I will jump off a cliff, and that way, for those last few moments of my life, I’ll be flying. I won’t die in my bed all shrivelled up and cold as my limbs finally atrophy to the completely withered stage. I’ll be flying through the sunshine. It’ll be a hot, peaceful, blue-skied day. We’ll do it in the early morning—I was born at 6 a.m.—so there’ll be no footprints in the sand. The sea will have wiped everything clean from the night before. There will be no marks there before I make my mark.
I’m not bothered about the impact. It will be so quick I just won’t feel it. I’m focusing on just that one moment when I go over the edge. I’ll be like a white bird—a seagull—twinkling in the sunshine. I’ll feel the warm air rushing up through my hair and I’ll be…well, I’ll be released.
I’ve struggled with this whole plan for a while because I was worried that I might be being a bit, well…selfish. Everybody else is going to suffer and I hate the thought of that. Then I think—hell, they are going to suffer anyway. This way we’ll just get it over and done with. A long, protracted death with every vein stuffed with needles, tubes down my throat to aid breathing when the lungs cave in and a tiny bump under the bedsheets where my shrivelled legs should go is even worse.
I haven’t forgotten Miriam. One day she was just like me—she was okay enough, with the same disease, but still okay. Then suddenly…poof! It all went downhill for her. I heard them say she was lucky; that it could have taken much longer, but no, she was lucky. What if I’m not so ‘lucky’?
‘Did they give you an initial diagnosis of MS?’
The first time I ever saw Miriam we were both sitting on the green benches outside Neurology. She had brought crossword puzzles and drinks and things and she seemed to know everyone in the department by name. I, on the other hand, was just sitting on my hands, feeling sick to my stomach with nerves. I remember I couldn’t take my eyes off her wheelchair. I wanted desperately to ask her if she’d always been like that or whether it was this illness that had done it to her but at the same time I really didn’t want to know.
‘Hi,’ she’d started again when I didn’t answer her. ‘I’m Miriam.’
‘Uh, yeah. I’m Shelley. Yeah, they did. They thought it was MS. At first.’
She had taken a thoughtful sip of her juice carton through a straw.
‘And now?’
‘Now they think it might be something called AMS.’
‘Atypical Myoendocal disease.’ Her eyes had beamed at me. ‘Same as me, then. Welcome to the club! We’re very unique, you know. We’re less than one in five million.’
‘I feel honoured,’ I’d muttered under my breath.
‘You should feel honoured,’ she’d laughed, and I remember her blue eyes had been warm and bright with humour. ‘It means you now get the best consultant on the block; the gorgeous Doctor Ganz.’
‘Uh-huh.’ I’d already met him. He seemed kind. I didn’t think there was any danger I would be falling in love with him, though.
‘Just remember that I saw him first,’ she added, but there was a more important possibility rearing itself in my mind just at that moment.
‘Does it mean, if it’s atypical MS, that there’s any chance we could get better?’
That was the one and only time I ever saw a shadow cross Miriam’s face.
‘You don’t get better from this, Shelley,’ she told me. ‘It’s atypical, because it actually…’ she hesitated, ‘look, I guess I’d better let them explain it all to you when you go in. They’ll put it so much better than I ever could. Have you had an MRI done yet?’
‘That thing where you go in the tunnel and they look to see if there’s any nerve damage?’ I’d nodded but she didn’t say any more and I’d guessed, correctly, that she’d just been trying to distract me. Miriam was the one good thing to have come out of all of this. She was the best friend I ever had. She really was one in five million.
But the thing is, it was like she was a friend travelling the same road as me, only she happened to be further up ahead than I was. Every time she got a new symptom, I knew it would be only a matter of maybe six months to a year and then I would get it too. She never had any pain until the end, and neither have I had any yet. Nor do I want to. Dr Ganz kept saying to me that these things were all very individual. Nobody could predict how it would go. Not enough people had been studied to make any hard and fast conclusions. The only hard and fast conclusion that I know of is that the condition is, in the end, fatal. Miriam came to the end of her road. It’s a year later for me. I don’t need anybody to spell out what that means. I guess the thing I detest most about my situation is the inevitability of it. I’m like a fish caught in a net. There is no way out. Apart from the way I have thought up.
Which brings me back to my plan. At least this way I will be drawing my own last breath. And the air I draw will be warm and sweet and full of birdsong and the gentle crash of the waves on the shores of Summer Bay.
I can’t do it by myself. It’s not something I can do alone, and I don’t really want to be alone at the end. Now all I have to do is persuade someone to help me do it.
4 Shelley
SugarShuli has come on MSN just now. She must be having a day off again. Like me, she doesn’t see much point in going to school but her reasons are different to mine. Her parents are bringing a boy over from Pakistan for her and she’s supposed to marry him just as soon as she’s legally allowed.
SugarShuli says: I’m off sick. How are you?
ShelleyPixie says: Okay. What’s up?
SugarShuli says: Nothing really. Just didn’t see much point in going in. What are you doing?
ShelleyPixie says: Right now, talking to you. I’m waiting for Krok to come online so if I go quiet…
SugarShuli says: Krok your bf?
ShelleyPixie says: Sort of. Online thing.
I haven’t actually met Krok of course, not in the flesh, but he’s sent me a picture of him and his mates when they were doing a gig in a pub in Hammersmith. Krok plays the bass but what he really wants to do is produce music. When he grows up, he says. He’s nineteen now, so I’m not sure when that will be.
Krok has got this dream: he’s going to set up his own recording studios one day and bring on a load of new young bands playing real music—real musicians, he says, not just pretty people prancing and miming. He says most real musicians are ugly. He isn’t. He has longish hair and the deepest blue eyes. Irish eyes, he tells me. He’s got a cheeky smile.
SugarShuli says: You two going to meet?
She means him, I suppose. Are we going to meet? I wish, I only wish I could. Don’t know how it would happen, though. I also worry that he might be put right off me if we ever did. It’s better this way. On the other hand, Daniel might be right with his list of resolutions. We don’t get forever. And I’m getting a lot less of forever than most people count on. I keep thinking that if there are things I want to do then I’d better get on and do them.
ShelleyPixie says: Yep. Sometime soon. I’m going to meet him.
SugarShuli says: I’ll be meeting Jallal soon too.
Surinda—that’s her real name—takes all this marrying Jallal business in her stride. She doesn’t seem to mind. It’s all part of her expectations, she tells me. She says it’s much harder for those people who have to go out and find someone and decide who to marry all for themselves. Hmm…
ShelleyPixie says: Good looking?
SugarShuli says: I haven’t seen a picture yet. He comes from a good family and I am assured they have money. That’s what counts, isn’t it?
ShelleyPixie says: Christ.
SugarShuli says: You know how it is.
Hang on a minute, I think Krok has just logged on so she’ll have to shut up for a bit. Krok is more important. I haven’t spoken to him since last Thursday. He’s got a busy schedule at the moment.
Krok says: Hey Pixie.
ShelleyPixie says: Hey Krok. How’s it going? Been missing you.
Krok says: Sorry, Pixie mine. Been following up on your advice so don’t be cross.
ShelleyPixie says: How so?
Krok says: I’ve been trying to get some funds together. My mate Bruno and me, we’re going in for that quiz show you were telling me about.
ShelleyPixie says: You never!
Krok says: We are. Don’t know if we’ll get selected but we’ve been short-listed down to the final fifty so keep everything crossed for us!
ShelleyPixie says: You’re going to be on Beat the Bank! OMG!
Krok says: Well, maybe. We’ll find out in a couple of days. Just wanted to let you know, sweetheart. It was U gave me the idea. What if I win the million pounds? What then?
ShelleyPixie says: You’ll make your dream come true. Yay!
Krok says: Send me a pic.
ShelleyPixie says: I haven’t got any recent ones.
Krok says: Send me one anyway.
ShelleyPixie says: I’ll see.
Krok says: Are you afraid I won’t like what I see?
ShelleyPixie says: No. I’m not that ugly.
Krok says: You have a heart of gold, Pixie. How could you ever be ugly? Marry me?
ShelleyPixie says: Only if you win the million. LOL.
He’s joking, by the way. He knows I’m on this time-limit thing. He knows I’m not going to last all that long. I told him about all that at the beginning. He’s gone quiet now. He’s probably talking to three girls at once. He’s asking them all to marry him. Guys who look like him don’t lack for girlfriends. Oh well. Where’s SugarShuli?
ShelleyPixie says: Still there?
SugarShuli says: Still here. Where’d you go?
ShelleyPixie says: Krok just came on. You wont believe it. He’s been chosen as a finalist on Beat the Bank.
Surinda watches this every Saturday evening. It’s what brought us together in the first place. She’s hooked on it, like me.
SugarShuli says: He never is!
ShelleyPixie says: It’s true.
SugarShuli says: When will he know? OMG. Could he get us tickets to be in the audience do you think?
That’s a thought that hadn’t occurred to me.
ShelleyPixie says: Might do. If he gets in. Would you even be allowed to come? Don’t know if Mum would take us. Actually I don’t even want my mum to take us. Mum always has to be in on everything. I want to do this without her. Maybe Surinda could help me?
SugarShuli says: I’ll tell my parents it’s a school project. I’ll come if your mum can take us.
ShelleyPixie says: No, Mum can’t do it. Can yours? What about we two go alone?
Krok’s back.
Krok says: Sorry, Pixie. Phone call interrupted there. I’m supposed to be working at the moment too.
ShelleyPixie says: Who wants to hire DVDs at this time in the morning?
Krok says: You’d be surprised. Never mind the shop, though, Pix. I’ve got a stint at the recording studio this afternoon.
ShelleyPixie says: Cool. Hope they give you a job.
Krok says: It’s all good experience. They like me helping out. Maybe they’ll hire me eventually!
ShelleyPixie says: They should.
SugarShuli says: Hey, Krok, I’m Surinda.
Hell, where did SHE come from?
ShelleyPixie says: Private conversation, SugarShuli.
I’m going to kill her.
SugarShuli says: Sorry. Good luck with the Beat the Bank thing, man.
Krok says: Thanks.
Krok says: Who’s that?
ShelleyPixie says: Just a friend who wants to come with me when you send me tickets to see the Beat the Bank being recorded.
Krok says: Will do. Got to go now, Pixie.
ShelleyPixie says: Speak soon?
Krok says: Very soon. Bye bye, sweetie.
He’s gone.
SugarShuli says: He’s cute, Shell.
ShelleyPixie says: You’ve been looking in my photos file?
SugarShuli says: Why not? You can look in mine.
ShelleyPixie says: You’ve got nothing in there. Not even Jallal.
SugarShuli says: Are you sure your mum can’t take us? Ask her again.
ShelleyPixie says: Yep, okay, speak later.
Silly cow. She could help me get there. We could take the train.
I shouldn’t complain I suppose. At least Surinda from my form class still keeps in contact with me, which is more than Michelle and the others have done since I stopped going to school. They say they’re really busy. I know some of them are seeing boys and the ones who aren’t are just hanging out hoping to see some boys or else they’re studying. I don’t know why I don’t want to hang out with them any more. I just don’t see the point. Sometimes I just wish I didn’t think so much. Life would be a lot easier.
If Krok sends us the tickets I think I’ll have to make an excuse. I don’t even want him to have a picture of me, much less actually see me in real life. I couldn’t cope with that. It’s not going to happen. I’m not even going to ask Mum so Surinda can forget all about that. I know what she’s like, though, she won’t let it go now.
I wish I’d never told her.
5 Rachel
‘Coo-eee?’ Annie-Jo’s special-edition turquoise Mazda Berkeley MXS just pulled up in the drive. I can hear her Josh and my Daniel clambering out, chasing after one another, laughing. They’ll be round the back in a minute, dark curls crashing against short blond spikes, racing up the new treehouse my old friend Sol has installed in the oak tree for Daniel.
My hands are deep in the earth. I’ve been digging a trench so I can insert a palisade of sticks like a little fort; somewhere we can put Daniel’s tortoise Hattie so she won’t be able to escape. It’s seven thirty and the last rays of the sun are beginning to slope over the rooftops, bright yellow and a bit chilly now, the sky just getting shaded in with patches of grey.
‘You’re back early?’ I scramble to my feet, wiping earthy hands behind my back before hugging my old friend. She is looking far too nice for me to get soil all over her. I take her in a little wistfully: ‘You’ve been out celebrating something today?’ She’s dressed in an elegant skirt and a soft white blouse and she looks…radiant somehow. The thought that she might be pregnant again crosses my mind. She is five years younger than me; it is still possible, after all. Her new husband Bryan has adopted her two but they don’t have any children between them. Not yet.
‘Oh no!’ she laughs dismissively ‘Just been running around town doing errands, you know the sort of thing. Nothing special. We’re going to be “lunching” next week, though. Would you like to come? Say you will. My treat.’ For a moment she smiles at me and I catch a glimpse of the old Annie-Jo; the one who would have come to visit me wearing torn jeans and a faded T-shirt with baby-food stains still on it. That Annie-Jo would have flopped down beside me on the grass and we’d have finished off Hattie’s palisade of sticks together in no time. This Annie-Jo looks like she’s just had her nails done. She isn’t going to be up for any digging.
‘See what day you’re going. I might come. I’d like to.’ I do want to have lunch with Annie-Jo, but probably not with all her new friends. We’d see. ‘I suppose we’d better get you inside then. I can’t have you out here drinking tea in your finery.’
‘Where’s that old garden bench we used to sit on?’ She looks around, frowning.
‘I threw that away two years ago, Annie-Jo!’ I laugh at her, but it surely can’t have been two years since she last came and sat out in the garden with me? When our children were little we practically used to live in this garden. Her daughter Michelle is just a month older than Shelley, and she had Josh pretty much around the same time I had Daniel. In those days Annie-Jo was a single mum, struggling on her own in a bedsit. Now she’s married to Bryan and they live in what I can only describe as a mansion in the better half of town. How times change!
Now that she’s noticed the missing bench, she’s looking around at other things, reluctant to go in, taking in all the modifications that have crept up on this garden over the years.
‘Where’s that orange rose “Maria Tierra” I bought you for your thirtieth?’ she asks suddenly.
Heavens, we are talking about over a decade here; where is it?
‘Bill kicked a football into it repeatedly one summer and it never recovered,’ I recall at last. He broke my rose bush, I think, with an unexpected flash of irritation, and now he isn’t even here to help me with Hattie’s palisade, not to mention the children.
‘You’ve got a vegetable patch,’ she comments, ‘and a herb patch!’ For some reason the enthusiasm in her voice warms me right through. I don’t let on that I only put those in because I thought they might save me a few pennies. ‘I’ve been telling Bryan I want one of those put in, for ages, and you’ve got there before me,’ she accuses.
‘The vegetable patch is something Sol does with Daniel, on and off. The herb patch is mine, I planted it a year ago and I’ve managed to kill off even the mint. You remember I gave you a bunch of mint last summer?’
‘Oh yes,’ Annie-Jo is still looking around as if she’s never been in this garden in her life, ‘so you did. Sol helps Daniel with his vegetable patch, does he? Lucky you.’
‘How so?’
‘He’s a good-looking guy, Rach,’ she grins at me coyly. ‘There are plenty of women I know who wouldn’t mind having your boss around to help out with their gardens…’
I figure I’d better not mention that it was him who installed the treehouse or there might be ‘plenty of women’ putting two and two together and ending up with five.