I hope you don’t mind me writing to you but it’s been on my mind...
I have wondered about whether to air this publicly but have come to the conclusion that it’s in the best interests of the forum.
ChemoForLifer
Admin
“God, this is ridiculous. It doesn’t prove anything. It’s just forum drama. There are always intrigues, arguments between people. And this guy, some anonymous guy who’s part of this other patients’ group, so he’s got an agenda, as well. In fact, nothing about it contradicts Nev’s version. Nothing. He himself has said that Josh was very ill at Sladkovsky’s and then got better. More to the point, Anna, I’ve seen Josh. I have a video, countless photos of him on my laptop.”
Anna threw up her hands. “I knew it, this is pointless. No one can tell you anything, can they, Rob? And not that it matters, but how exactly did you pay for the treatments?”
“I put it on the credit card.”
“Great. And the rest? How were you planning on paying for those?”
“We have options, Anna. I can ask Scott. The pension plan, the savings, there’s plenty...”
“So we’ll just drain everything—everything—to finance a fraud, a cheat?” Anna snorted. “You just act like we don’t need the money.”
“Well, do we?” I said, and I shuddered, started to sob, because I knew now that Jack’s last chance was slipping away. “What do we need the money for now?”
Anna didn’t answer but walked over to the sofa and crouched down next to me. She whispered, almost hissed, to make sure there was no chance that Jack could hear.
“Do you have any idea,” she said, “how much these things cost?”
“What things?”
“Dying, Rob,” she whispered, and I could hear the soft, controlled rage in her voice. “Making Jack as comfortable as possible, however long it takes. Paying for the best private hospice with twenty-four-hour care so he can live his last days in peace. That all costs money, Rob. And that is all I care about now. Nothing else.”
We listened to the wail of a police siren outside.
“I came here for one thing,” she said, “and that’s to take Jack home. When he wakes up, I’m packing our things and taking him on the next flight back to London.”
somewhere over germany
whenever you flew Jack, you were just transfixed, your face glued to the window, and what was wonderful was how unfazed you were by the mechanics of how we got up and how we got down. you just wanted to take photos out of the window and i remember how you held the camera, gripping tightly with both hands, slowly turning it, just like daddy had shown you, making sure you got it all, the clouds, the setting sun, the endless ripples of deep dark blue.
18
It was the day before Christmas Eve, and the three of us were sitting on the sofa watching The Snowman. The living room was pristine, our tree shimmering with lights, Anna’s intricate, woven paper chains decked along the stairs and landing. There had been so many Christmas cards we didn’t have room for them, so Anna strung them up, in the porch, from wall to wall in the living room.
People made the extra effort with their cards this year. Instead of just “Merry Christmas from the Bensons!” they wished us peace and strength and said they were holding us in their hearts. There were no notes about new babies, impending marriages and Duke of Edinburgh awards.
It was Jack’s first time watching The Snowman, and I had never seen him so transfixed, his pale, gaunt face lit up by the snow-glare of the screen. As we watched, I took a small amount of pride that Jack liked the parts that I did as a child. The places where he fidgeted, where he looked across at me and fiddled with his socks, were the parts near the beginning, when the snowman is trying on the clothes, putting in false teeth and climbing inside the glowing freezer. Those scenes had always left me cold, and it was heartening to see that Jack felt the same.
What seemed to captivate Jack were the moments of melancholy: the boredom and impatience that Christmas has not yet arrived; the urgency to get outside in the snow; and then, at the end, the singularly childish sense of loss that comes with the melting of the snow and that first heartbreaking sight of green grass.
It was our seventh and last Christmas. We prepared weeks in advance: the Christmas table, the gifts for Jack’s stocking, the presents under the tree. Anna had her lists, sending me out to buy napkins, the crackers, the orange juice for the Buck’s Fizz. The details weren’t accidental: the sliced brown supermarket loaf, the cheap bingo set from the toy shop, the giant tin of chocolates. She was trying to re-create, for the very last time, the Romford Christmas my dad used to do at home.
I watched Jack closely at the end of The Snowman, when the snow had melted and all that was left was the snowman’s hat and scarf on the ground. He didn’t move a muscle, lost in the blizzard of white, as the camera panned away from the little boy crouched on the ground.
“Where did the snowman go, Daddy?” Jack said later that evening when Anna and I were tucking him into bed.
I didn’t know what to say, because this was it, and I didn’t want to fluff my lines. I thought of the little pile of snow, the scarf and hat lying on the ground.
“He’s gone back to the Arctic, Jack,” I said, “to see the other snowmen.”
Jack thought about what I said and turned his head to the side.
“Is he having a party with the other snowmen?” he said, and I thought about the scene where the snowmen were dancing around the fire.
“Exactly, Jack. They’ll be having so much fun,” Anna said, dimming the light next to his head.
Jack seemed content. He stretched out and started to
