The To Do List

Eight

The boy looks surprised when I stick my head over the fence and call

him. He's older than I thought, perhaps eighteen, with dark hair and the

shadow of a beard.

"Yeah?"

"Can I burn some things on your fire?"

He shambles up the path towards me, wiping a hand across his

forehead as if he's hot. His fingernails are dirty and he has bits of leaf in his

hair. He doesn't smile.

I lift up the two shoe boxes so he can see them. Zoey's dress is draped

across my shoulder like a flag.

"What's in them?"

"Paper mostly. Can I bring them round?"

He shrugs as if he doesn't care either way, so I walk through our side

gate and step over the low wall that separates the two houses, across his

front garden and down the side of his house. He's already there, holding

the gate open for me. I hesitate.

"I'm Tessa."

"Adam."

We walk in silence down his garden path. I bet he thinks I've just been

chucked by my boyfriend, that these are love letters. I bet he thinks, No

wonder she got dumped, with that skeleton face and bald head.

The fire is disappointing when we get there, just a smouldering pile of

leaves and twigs, with a few hopeful flames licking at the edges.

"The leaves were damp," he says. "Paper'll get it going again."

I open one of the boxes and tip it upside down.

From the day I noticed the first bruise on my spine, to the day only

two months ago when the hospital officially gave up on me, I kept a diary.

Four years of pathetic optimism burns well – look at it flare! All the get-well

cards I ever received curl at the edges, crisp right up and flake to nothing.

Over four long years you forget people's names.

There was a nurse who used to draw cartoons of the doctors and put

them by the bed to make me laugh. I can't remember her name either.

Was it Louise? She was quite prolific. The fire spits, embers spark away into

the trees.

"I'm unburdening myself," I tell Adam.

But I don't think he's listening. He's dragging a clump of bramble

across the grass towards the fire.

It's the next box I hate the most. Me and Dad used to trawl through it

together, scattering photos over the hospital bed.

"You will get well again," he'd tell me as he ran a finger over my

eleven-year-old image, self-conscious in my school uniform, first day of

secondary school. "Here's one of you in Spain," he'd say. "Do you

remember?"

I looked thin and brown and hopeful. I was in remission for the first