‘Scott. He said he worked on a stall, but he’s not here.’
‘Stoner Boy? When did he tell you that?’
She looks at me as if I’m completely insane and walks off again. She goes over to a man behind the fruit stall and leans over boxes of bananas to talk to him. He looks at her breasts.
A woman comes up to me. She’s carrying several plastic bags. She looks right at me and I don’t look away.
‘Ten pork chops, three packs of smoked bacon and a boiling chicken,’ she whispers. ‘You want them?’
‘Yes.’
She passes a bag over, then picks at her scabby nose while I find some money. I give her five pounds and she digs around in her pocket and gives me two pounds change. ‘That’s a bargain,’ she says.
Cal looks a little afraid as she walks away. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘Shut up,’ I tell him, because nowhere in the rules does it say I have to be glad about what I do. I wonder, since I only have twelve pounds left, if I’m allowed to change the rules so that I can only say yes to things that are free. The bag drips blood at my feet. I wonder if I have to keep everything I buy.
Zoey comes back, notices the bag and peels it from me. ‘What the hell’s in here?’ She peers inside. ‘It looks like bits of dead dog!’ She chucks the whole lot in a bin, then turns back to me, smiling. ‘I’ve found Scott. He was here after all. Jake’s with him. Come on.’
As we edge our way through the crowd, Zoey tells me that she’s seen Scott a few times since we went round to their house. She doesn’t look at me as she tells me this.
‘Why didn’t you say so?’
‘You’ve been out of action for over four weeks! Anyway, I thought you’d be pissed off.’
It’s quite shocking to see them in daylight, standing behind a stall that sells torches and toasters, clocks and kettles. They look older than I remember.
Zoey goes round the back to talk to Scott. Jake nods at me.
‘All right?’ he says.
‘Yeah.’
‘Doing some shopping?’
He looks different – sweaty and vaguely embarrassed. A woman comes up behind me, and Cal and I have to step out of the way for her to get to the stall. She buys four batteries. They cost a pound. Jake puts them in a plastic bag for her and takes her money. She goes away.
‘Do you want some batteries?’ he asks. He doesn’t quite look me in the eyes. ‘You don’t have to pay.’
There’s something about the way he says it, as if he’s doing me an enormous favour, as if he’s sorry for me and wants to show he’s a decent bloke – it tells me that he knows. Zoey’s told him. I can see the guilt and pity in his eyes. He shagged a dying girl and now he’s afraid. I might be contagious; my illness brushed his shoulder and may lie in wait for him.
‘Do you want some then?’ He picks up a packet of batteries and waves them at me.
‘Yes,’ comes out of my mouth. The disappointment of the word has to be swallowed down hard as I take his stupid batteries and put them in my bag.
Cal nudges me hard in the ribs. ‘Can we go now?’
‘Yes.’
Zoey has her arm round Scott’s waist. ‘No!’ she says. ‘We’re going back to their place. They get a lunch break in half an hour.’
‘I’m taking Cal across town.’
Zoey smiles as she comes over. She looks lovely, as if Scott’s warmed her up. ‘Aren’t you supposed to say yes?’
‘Cal asked first.’
She frowns. ‘They’ve got some ketamine back at their place. It’s all arranged. Bring Cal if you want. They’ll have something for him to do, a PlayStation or something.’
‘You told Jake.’
‘Told him what?’
‘About me.’
‘I didn’t.’
She blushes, and has to chuck her cigarette down and stamp it out so that she doesn’t have to look at me.
I can just imagine how she did it. She went round to their house and made them strap a joint together and she insisted on having first toke, inhaling long and hard as they both watched her. Then she shuffled down next to Scott and said, ‘Hey, do you remember Tessa?’
And then she told them. She might even have cried. I bet Scott put his arm round her. I bet Jake grabbed the joint and inhaled so deeply that he didn’t have to think about it.
I grab Cal’s hand and steer him away. Away from Zoey, away from the market. I pull him down the steps at the back of the stalls and onto the towpath that follows the canal.
‘Where are we going?’ he whines.
‘Shut up.’
‘You’re scaring me.’
I look down at his face and I don’t care.
I have this dream sometimes that I’m walking round at home, just in and out of rooms, and no one in my family recognizes me. I pass Dad on the stairs and he nods at me politely, as if I’ve come to clean the house, or it’s really a hotel. Cal stares at me suspiciously as I go into my bedroom. Inside, all my things have gone and another girl is there instead of me, a girl wearing a flowered dress, with bright lips and cheeks as firm as apples. That’s my parallel life, I think. The one where I’m healthy, where Jake would be glad to have met me.
In real life, I drag my brother along the towpath towards the cafe that overlooks the canal.
‘It’ll be good,’ I tell him. ‘We’re going to have ice cream and hot chocolate and Coke.’
‘You’re not supposed to have sugar. I’m telling Dad.’
I grip his hand even harder. A man is standing on the path a little further up, between us and the cafe. He’s wearing pyjamas and looking at the canal. A cigarette ripens in his mouth.
Cal says, ‘I want to go home.’
But I want to show him the rats on the towpath, the leaves ripped screaming from trees, the way people avoid what’s difficult, the way this man in pyjamas is more real than Zoey, trotting up behind us with her big gob and silly blonde hair.
‘Go away,’ I tell her without even turning round.
She grabs my arm. ‘Why does everything have to be such a big deal with you?’
I push her off. ‘I don’t know, Zoey. Why do you think?’
‘It’s not like it’s a secret. Loads of people know you’re ill. Jake didn’t mind, but now he thinks you’re a complete weirdo.’
‘I
She looks at me with narrowed eyes. ‘I think you like being sick.’
‘You think?’
‘You can’t bear to be normal.’
‘Yeah, you’re right, it’s great. Want to swap?’
‘Everybody dies,’ she says, like it’s something she’s only just thought of and wouldn’t mind for herself.
Cal tugs at my sleeve. ‘Look,’ he says.
The man in pyjamas has waded into the canal. He’s splashing about in the shallows and smacking at the water with his hands. He looks at us blankly, then smiles, showing several gold teeth. I feel my spine tingle.
‘Fancy a swim, ladies?’ he calls. He’s got a Scottish accent. I’ve never been to Scotland.
‘Get in with him,’ Zoey says. ‘Why don’t you?’
‘Are you telling me to?’
She grins at me maliciously. ‘Yes.’
I glance at the tables outside the cafe. People are gazing this way. They’ll think I’m a junkie, a psycho, a head case. I roll up my dress and tuck it in my knickers.
