Jacob shrugs and Jasmine shakes her head. “I’ll pass, thanks. Give your family my best.”
Jacob gets to his feet and wraps his arm around Kate. Jasmine hopes she is not going to have to witness them kissing farewell but thankfully they move into the hall, pulling the kitchen door closed behind them. Jasmine leaves them to it. With both of them in the British Army, they probably don’t get to see each other much and Kate’s return to her unit is imminent.
Jasmine opens a cupboard to find some cereal. She has been in this house so many times, she is comfortable helping herself. She knows where to find everything and she does not require she be waited on by her host. She pours a helping of muesli and adds oat milk. Halfway through her breakfast, Kate emerges, her lips looking plump and red. She takes a seat opposite Jasmine and stares down at the table for a minute.
“I can’t thank you enough for this,” Kate says. “I know it's my role you’re taking, that it’s me who should be here. I tried to buy myself out of the army but it’s too much. I don’t have that sort of money.” Jasmine wonders if Kate will ask her for the money. Kate must realise the one benefit of being a Mortimer is the ability to raise cash if needed. But Kate remains silent. Jasmine reflects money is a weird issue, especially for those who don’t have it. Friends will ask you for your time before they ask you for your money, even when both sides would prefer hard cash.
“I could lend it to you,” Jasmine offers, unable to endure the stupidity of it all.
“But I couldn’t take it,” Kate replies softly. “You know I couldn’t.” Jasmine realises she has embarrassed them both, but she cannot understand the kind of pride that would put Kate on the other side of the world, far away from her dying brother, for the sake of a few pounds. Pounds Jasmine doesn’t care about, anyway.
“I’m going to take Petey a cup of tea up. The lazy bones should be awake already.” Kate stands and re-boils the kettle. She pours hot water into a mug for tea. Then she elbows her way out of the kitchen. When she returns, Jasmine has finished her muesli, rinsed her bowl, and loaded everything into the dishwasher. She does not want to be one of those guests who gives more trouble than help.
“He’s downstairs.” Kate nods towards the lounge wall. “Can you keep him company for a bit, while I nip to the shops?”
Jasmine heads into the hall and opens the door to the lounge. On one side is an unfamiliar reclining armchair, the kind used by the elderly. It is positioned in the bay window, to catch the morning light. Petey is lying on the chair. Jasmine sits in the normal armchair beside him.
“How are you today?” she asks.
“Better,” he says, ignoring the elephant. “What about you?”
“Slept like a log.” She cannot believe how stilted conversation between them has become. She needs to do better. She casts around for something to talk about but almost every area feels forbidden. The present is dismal, the future even worse. So she takes recourse in the time that is still safe, the past.
“I was thinking last night,” she lies, “about that time we all went camping on the coast.” It was one of Jasmine’s happiest memories. A group of them from sixth form in two cars. They hadn’t done anything particularly exciting – some bodyboarding, sunbathing, barbies on the beach – but the little adventures of each day would stay bright and clear forever.
When Kate returns an hour later, she finds the two of them still giggling over some practical joke involving a dead crab. She smiles and quietly closes the door, unnoticed by both. It is right for Jasmine to be here. Kate hasn’t heard Petey laugh once in the almost fortnight she has been home. But less than a day around Jasmine and he is as happy as could be hoped. She is not one for praying, but if every day Petey has left could be as good as this one, she would spend an hour on her knees every night.
A Slow Dance with Death
After Kate returns to her unit, Jasmine finds her life coalescing around Petey. The original plan for Gillian to take four days of caring for Petey, doesn’t survive the first fortnight after his daily radiotherapy starts. As Jasmine points out, Gillian is still working long hours on the days when she is not at home with her son. The toll on her is visible. She carries an aura of complete exhaustion. When Gillian’s weary brain makes a mistake with Petey’s medication causing her to panic and call and ambulance, Jasmine sits the older woman down for a heart-to-heart.
“I know you want to do everything for Petey,” she says, “but if you carry on like this, it won’t be long before you can’t do anything. You will end up sick yourself. You need a day to rest. Let me do Wednesdays.”
Fresh from the fear she had poisoned her own child, Gillian nods mutely. And so Jasmine assumes the greater amount of Petey’s care. It cuts the time for her to do her own studying to three days and she is no exception to needing rest too. She tries to use the time when Petey is sleeping during the day to read the required books and texts but the time is fragmented and she often finds herself having to re-read a paper from the start after being interrupted partway through. Once a week, she has a call with her tutor to run through anything she is struggling to understand and he always takes time at the close to see how Jasmine is coping. But Jasmine, never one to admit weakness, is stubborn in her insistence she is managing everything.
In truth, she has little time to dwell on her breakup with Ben or the life she left behind at university. When he does slip into her thoughts, she is quick to push him out of her mind. It is not hard as she is beyond busy. Sometimes, though, he sneaks into her dreams, in X-rated scenes, leaving her to wake in a sea of lust and loss. But mostly, she falls into bed each night drained, sleeps without memorable dreams and rises in the morning, to repeat the previous day. Flora comes around one night and forces her to come out for a drink with their old crowd. But Jasmine spends the evening feeling awkward, sitting with Petey’s friends without Petey himself. Flora senses it, and from then on, the outings she arranges are just the two of them: a trip to the cinema; an evening of facials and pedicures and the most ludicrous of all; a light-hearted night at the bingo.
Jasmine endures all of these with a good nature that would have surprised her own family. While each activity seems more irrelevant than the last, she is touched by Flora’s motivation for doing them. And each evening with Flora is a respite from the ever-present nightmare of living with terminal cancer. The cheerful, uncomplaining optimism that characterised Petey is gone. He seems stunned by his sheer bad luck and struggles to come to terms with it. Jasmine has lost count of the number of times he has expressed some version ofWhy me?. He turns the smallest issues inside out, looking to see if it was something he did or something he didn’t do. Jasmine is not a natural comforter; she has always been more inclined to fix rather than console. But what do you do when there is something you cannot fix?
Alone in Kate’s old bedroom, she searches the internet for the faintest hope of a cure, for some miracle drug or clinical trial offering the slightest chance of survival. But all she finds are the charlatans, proclaiming that doctors don’t want you to know this or promising survival in return for tens of thousands of dollars of dubious treatment. She calls her sister Anna, a final-year medical student in London, but Anna’s bleak pragmatism confirms the myth of sham procedures.
“Sometimes, people get sick for no rhyme or reason. Very, very rarely, a few individuals get better for no rhyme or reason. Parents raise their children from the earliest days with the expectation actions have consequences: “don’t brush your teeth, you’ll need fillings” or “don’t do your homework, no television”. Mostly, it’s true. But a side-effect is, we aren’t good at coping with random and unexpected events. Petey has a tumour on his brain stem. He hasn’t done anything to put it there. He is not at fault. But cause and effect are so strongly wired in our brains, he can’t stop looking for a reason.”
“But what if there is a chance out there? What if I can find something weird and wonderful?”
“The world spends billions of dollars a year looking for cancer treatments. Thousands of doctors and medical researchers have spent their entire lives studying cancers. The moment someone finds even a slightly viable treatment that might only give a couple of extra months of survival, they trumpet it to the skies. You aren’t going to find something hiding in an obscure part of the internet. Put your time and energy into making his life better or your own life better.”
But making Petey's life better is difficult. Jasmine takes him to his radiation therapy and she watches him get sicker and weaker with each trip. Never beefy, Petey’s already slender frame shrinks further until Jasmine wonders how he can still exist. Despite the steroids, his energy levels drop. Jasmine is grateful for the disabled parking badge Gillian had the forethought to apply for, a tip she was given by a colleague.
She is sitting with Petey, waiting for his final radiation treatment when he looks directly at her.
“I don’t think I can do this again,” he says. And Jasmine nods. She doesn’t think he could do it again either. But it is the first time Petey has ever retreated from his insistence he will do everything possible to fight the tumour.
The news from the follow-up scan is not good. While the tumour has not progressed, it has not shrunk. Jasmine can tell Petey is shocked by the news. He had believed with an unwavering intensity the physical toll of the radiation therapy would be matched by its devastating blow to the tumour. He is stunned. She watches as the hope disappears from Petey's grey eyes. Her hand covers his. She moves her head towards him and kisses his cheek. In that moment, she is glad she and Ben are finished. She would not feel free to give Petey the love and support he needs, if every touch, every kiss was stained with guilt and betrayal.
“There is still chemo,” she whispers, but Petey is silent. His hand tightens under hers.
The decision is taken to start chemotherapy. Jasmine texts Gillian the news, so she has time to process her emotions before getting home from work. Both of them need to stay upbeat so Petey doesn’t collapse.
