Jenny Downham Before I Die

Twenty- seven

The afternoon goes quickly. The table’s cleared and the TV’s turned on. We all listen to the Queen’s speech, then Cal does a few magic tricks.

Zoey spends the afternoon on the sofa with Sally and Mum, going through every detail of her doomed love affair with Scott. She even asks for their advice on childbirth. ‘Tell me,’ she says, ‘does it hurt as much as they say?’

Dad’s engrossed in his new book, Eating Organic. He occasionally reads out statistics about chemicals and pesticides to anyone who’s interested.

Adam mostly talks to Cal. He shows him how to spin the clubs; he teaches him a new coin trick. I keep changing my mind about him. Not if I fancy him or not, but if he likes me. Every now and then his eyes catch mine across the room, but he always looks away before I do.

‘He wants you,’ Zoey mouths at me at one point. But if it’s true, I don’t know how to make it happen.

I’ve spent the afternoon flicking through the book Cal got me, A Hundred Weird Ways to Meet Your Maker. It’s quite funny, but it doesn’t stop me feeling as if there’s a space inside me that’s shrinking. I’ve sat in this chair in the corner for two hours, and I’ve separated myself. I know I do it and I know it isn’t right, but I don’t know how else to be.

By four o’clock it’s dark and Dad’s switched on all the lights. He brings out bowls of sweets and nuts. Mum suggests a game of cards. I sidle out to the hallway while they rearrange the chairs. I’ve had enough of stagnant walls and bookshelves. I’ve had enough of central heating and party games. I get my coat from its hook and go out into the garden.

The cold is shocking. It ignites my lungs, turns my breath to smoke. I put my hood up, pull the drawstring tight under my chin and wait.

Slowly, as if arriving out of mist, everything in the garden comes into focus – the holly bush scratching the shed, a bird on the fence post, its feathers fluffing in the wind.

Indoors they’ll be dealing out the cards and passing round the peanuts, but out here, each blade of grass glistens, spiked by frost. Out here, the sky’s packed full of stars, like something from a fairytale. Even the moon looks stunned.

I squash windfalls under my boots on my way to the apple tree. I touch the twists in the trunk, trying to feel its bruised slate colour through my fingers. A few leaves hang damply in the branches. A handful of withered apples turn to rust.

Cal says that humans are made from the nuclear ash of dead stars. He says that when I die, I’ll return to dust, glitter, rain. If that’s true, I want to be buried right here under this tree. Its roots will reach into the soft mess of my body and suck me dry. I’ll be reformed as apple blossom. I’ll drift down in the spring like confetti and cling to my family’s shoes. They’ll carry me in their pockets, scatter the subtle silk of me across their pillows to help them sleep. What dreams will they have then?

In the summer they’ll eat me. Adam will climb over the fence to steal me, maddened by my scent, by my roundness, the shine and health of me. He’ll get his mum to cook me up in a crumble or a strudel and then he’ll gorge on me.

I lie on the ground and try to imagine it. Really, really. I’m dead. I’m turning into an apple tree. It’s a bit difficult though. I wonder about the bird I saw earlier, if it’s flown away. I wonder what they’re doing indoors, if they miss me yet.

I turn over and press my face right into the grass; it pushes coldly back at me. I rake my hands through it, bring up my fingers to smell the earth. It smells of leaf mould, worm breath.

‘What are you doing?’

I turn round very slowly. Adam’s face is upside down. ‘I thought I’d come and look for you. Are you all right?’