Photos of You

by Tammy Robinson

Genres: Contemporary Romance; General Fiction; Romance

Synopsis

When Ava Green turns twenty-eight, she discovers this will be her last birthday. The cancer she thought she’d beaten three years ago is back, only this time it’s terminal – and she’s not going to waste any of the time she has left. She’s been dreaming of her wedding since she was a little girl, but there’s only one problem: there’s no groom. Her friends and family decide they will help her throw the wedding of her dreams, without the vows; and as word spreads, the whole country seizes the story of a woman whose dying dream is simple, uniting to give her a wedding to remember. But when photographer James Gable volunteers to help document the whole event, it becomes painfully clear that it’s never too late to discover the love of your life…

Release date: February 18, 2020

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter One

I stopped listening a few minutes ago, right around the time he uttered the three words I had been most longing not to hear.

I’m so sorry.

I watch as his mouth moves and a few other words filter through, even though I feel like I am underwater or listening to him from inside a vacuum.

Secondary

Bone

Incurable

Limited options

On their own, none of those words are particularly malevolent, but together they paint a grim picture. The cancer is back. And this time it’s not going away. Numbness steals over me like an anesthetic and I feel my whole body settle in cold stillness. This can’t be happening.

I should be listening. As far as speeches go, the one he’s currently giving is right up there in terms of importance. I know I’ll be fielding a million questions later, none of which I will have the answer for if I don’t listen. Except one, if anyone is brave enough to ask it.

Are you dying?

Yes.

“Ava?”

I realize he’s been saying my name and blink.

“Sorry?”

“Do you have any questions?”

“No.”

Yes. Why me?

“I know it’s a lot to take in and you’ll need time to process it all.”

He gets to his feet and comes around the desk, perching on one corner to look down at me sympathetically.

When did doctors stop wearing white coats? They barely even look like doctors anymore. Half the time they look fresh out of high school. Like this guy, Dr. Harrison. Under any other circumstances I would have been flirting with him. He is seriously good-looking in a cultivated, obvious way. I am willing to bet money that he had nurses falling all over him.

“Is there someone I can call? To come and pick you up?” he asks.

I blink again, realizing I am staring at his lips. Wondering what it would be like to kiss them. Inappropriate, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that what one anticipates is an appropriate reaction in a situation like this and what actually happens can be two very different things.

“No, thank you,” I tell him. “I’ll be fine.”

Except I won’t.

“OK. Take a few days to think about what I’ve said and then we’ll discuss options going forward.”

I snort bitterly. Options. Discussing options when the end result is unavoidable feels futile, but I don’t say that. Ironically, I don’t want to hurt him.

The autumnal air outside the hospital doors is crisp and fresh and I inhale a big lungful through my nose, feeling my belly expand like a balloon, the way my mindfulness app on my phone has taught me. I hold it for exactly six seconds before releasing it slowly through my mouth. The balloon deflates.

It doesn’t help the rising sense of panic I feel.

There is a bench seat in a little garden to the right of the hospital car park. I have sat there countless times, though not for a while. I perched there through seasons, like a watchful bird. When the seat was cold and the ground was hard and frozen. I sat there when the trees that hulked above were barren, and the air hazy with the smoke of a thousand chimneys. When the ground softened with the first buds of spring and the air became expectant and giddy with new life.

On this day, I sit there and observe a carpet of color as leaves of purple, orange, and red litter the ground. Occasionally a playful gust of wind swirls through and collects them and they dance away like children, with no reservations.

I’ll never have a child.

I’ll never marry.

One I always assumed would happen. The other I have dreamt of my entire life. The pain hits hard in my belly and I double over, clutching my stomach, my eyes squeezed tightly shut in an effort to block out the world.

“Are you OK?”

The voice is curious, concerned. Feminine but raspy, quivering with age. I refuse to look up. Whoever it is can clearly see they are intruding on a moment.

“Shift over, will you?” the voice says, somewhat petulantly. Resentfully I shuffle over on the seat, still without looking up. I feel the air shift as the woman settles in beside me.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” she asks, already flicking with her thumb at her lighter. Clearly her husky voice isn’t the result of age alone and I find myself judging her before remembering I don’t like to judge anyone, let alone someone I don’t know. On the third flick it lights, and there is silence for a moment apart from the sound of her sucking on the end of her cigarette. Immediately she starts coughing and I finally look up, alarmed. Clad in a dressing gown and slippers, she is clearly a patient of the hospital, escaping on an illicit mission to indulge her frowned-upon habit. Her gray hair is disheveled and wispy, flattened at the back, and she is hacking and spluttering so hard I half expect to see a lung pop out onto the path at her feet.

“Are you OK?” I ask, unsure whether I should be dashing for help.

She holds up a finger, gesturing for me to give her a moment. When she recovers she nods and takes another suck on her cigarette. This time she manages to breathe it out without the dramatic display.

“Oh, yes, that’s better.” She nods. “That first puff always causes a bit of havoc.”

She eyes my face curiously and I realize I still have wet cheeks from the path of my tears. I quickly look back at my feet and wipe them away.

“Bad news?” she asks.

I nod.

“Family member?”

I shake my head.

“Ah.” Suck. “Yourself?”

Nod.

She sucks a few more times. “How bad?”

“About as bad as it gets.”

“Cancer?”

I look at her, surprised. “How did you know?”

She pulls a face. “I’m not psychic, if that’s what you’re thinking. Damn disease is everywhere.”

I notice the sickly pallor of her skin and the fact that the wrists poking out from her dressing gown are thin and sharp. Too thin. The hospital identification bracelet that encircles her left arm dangles loosely.

“You too?”

She sighs. “Yes. Started in my lungs. Now it’s in my bones and pretty much everywhere else.”

I look at my feet. “They just told me it’s in my bones now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. It hurts, doesn’t it?”

“No. Well, not yet. Apart from a few minor niggles.”

“Oh. Then it’s not that bad. Definitely bearable.”

I appreciate her vague attempt at reassurance, even though we both know she’s lying.

Suck.

I watch her inhale the smoke right down into the bottom of her lungs, as far as she physically can, before reluctantly letting it out again between her pouted lips. She angles her pout to one side so that the smoke goes to her right instead of her left, where I am sitting. It makes no difference; the wind blows it back toward me anyway. It has a horrible smell, earthy but bitter, strong and intrusive. I honestly can’t understand the appeal.

She notices me watching.

“Do you want one?” she asks, proffering the packet.

I shake my head. “No. Thanks.”

“Good girl.”

Suck.

“Go ahead,” she says.

“Sorry?”

“You can ask me. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last. But you will get the same answer.”

It sounds like a riddle. I’ve never been particularly good at riddles.

“What question?”

She holds what remains of her cigarette up toward me, the butt pinched tightly between two fingers so the circular shape is now an uneven oval. Ash drops off the tip and lands on my jeans. I brush it off.

“You’re wondering why I’m still smoking,” she says.

“No I wasn’t.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“Oh, right. You have bigger things to worry about. Ignore me. I’ll finish this and be out of your hair.”

I try to ignore her. I sit with my hands under my thighs and the toes of my boots trailing in the dirt, and look out east, over the hills that rim our town. Some people like to people-watch. Me, I’ve always loved cloud-watching and searching for hidden animals or faces. Today is a good day for it. A low bank of clouds stretches above the hills, quite a variety today. Fluffy white ones like snow cones, long, gray, cigar-shaped clouds with wispy ends. The occasional fat, heavy, airship-shaped cloud, its belly swollen with rain.

Normally I’d feel joy at the sight of them. But today all I can think about is that someday soon I’ll drink in my last sight of them, and then that’ll be it. And I think, Will I know? That it’s my last sight? Will I watch them disappear into the sunset one night and know that I’ll take my last breath before the sun rises again and brings forth a fresh batch to be admired? Or will I be completely unaware? Unappreciative, delirious, and most likely unconscious from a cocktail of drugs and disease. The panic starts to rise again, threatening to overwhelm me, and I turn to her, desperate to think of something, anything, else.

“Why do you?” I blurt out, my voice shaky.

“Smoke?”

“Yes.”

She shrugs. “Because I’m addicted.”

“Oh.”

“You were expecting a better answer than that.”

“I don’t know what I was expecting.”

“I know all the reasons to quit, believe me. The biggest reason being the damn lung cancer, of course. But I just can’t.” She eyes the cigarette again ruefully. The yellow-stained filter is all that is left, as she has smoked it down to the last millimeter. “I know it’s not the done thing to admit this,” she says. “But I like it. So help me, I actually enjoy it. I’ve been smoking them so long now I can’t imagine being without them.”

She throws the butt on the ground and grinds it into the dirt with a slippered foot. I notice that her sheepskin slippers are faded and worn, and the toenail on her right big toe has almost poked through in a bid for freedom.

I wonder if she realizes how ridiculous she sounds.

“I know I sound ridiculous,” she says. “But I’m old and I’m tired. I’m not going to start denying myself the only pleasure I have left.”

With some effort, she gets to her feet and stands still, lifting her face to the sky and closing her eyes. “Ironic, isn’t it?” she says after a minute, “that the air always tastes sweeter to me after a cigarette.”

I don’t answer. I don’t really know what to say. She opens her eyes and looks down at me with sympathy. “It’s rotten luck, getting it at your age. It really is. Sometimes the lack of justice in these things really pisses me off, and if there is some old guy in a white robe and dodgy sandals up there he’ll be getting words from me, you better believe it. I have some questions I need answered.”

She pauses to cough a few times, and I notice her hands and fingers are curled with arthritis.

“Listen to me. Don’t make the mistake so many people in our position do,” she says once she’s cleared her chest. “I’ve seen it so many times. People just give up when they get the diagnosis, like their time is already gone.” She looks me up and down speculatively. “You’re young and, from the look of you, still physically capable. Don’t spend your last days here on earth dying. If you have something you want to do, make sure you do it. You hear me?”

I nod.

“Good.” She straightens up as much as her back will allow and shuffles off.

She doesn’t look back.

I look at the sky again. The wind has shifted, coming in from the east, rolling the clouds across the hills like cresting waves. There is one rebellious one, though, larger than the rest. It blooms upward, gloriously white against the sky, billowing out like a meringue.

If you have something you want to do, make sure you do it.

Her words echo in my head as I watch that cloud. I’ve never been a big believer in signs. To me, you can find a reason to do anything if you look hard enough. But on a day when I have been given the worst possible news, I throw reasoning to the wind and I seize it. The cloud like a meringue. Or a dress. It’s a sign.

Do what you want to do.

I want to get married.

Chapter Two

Surprise!”

I feign shock as the lights come on and an assortment of family and friends materializes from behind door frames and up from behind couches.

“What’s this? What’s going on?” I ask, hand on heart theatrically, arranging my features into a quizzical frown.

My mother steps forward and rolls her eyes.

“You can drop the act,” she says. “We know you knew.”

“Sorry? I…What? Oh, fine. What gave me away?”

“Your father confessed that he forgot it was a surprise and phoned to ask you what time you’d be arriving.” She turns to frown at my father, who looks sheepish.

“Sorry,” he says. “But in my defense I should never have been privy to the secret. You know I’m terrible at keeping them.”

“It’s OK, Dad.” I tiptoe to kiss the small patch of cheek that is visible through his huge gray beard. “I’m not very good with surprises, anyway,” I whisper. “So I’m glad you warned me.”

“Phew.” He smiles.

I almost break down at the sight of him, my dad. My lovely, dependable, lovable dad. Wearing his faded, well-worn jeans with the hole in one knee that bugs the hell out of my mother (“They’re comfortable!” he protests when she tells him to get rid of them. “Why would I want to go through the hassle of breaking in a new pair?”). I want to wrap my arms around his generous belly and hold on for dear life. But I can’t. He’d know immediately that something is wrong, and I’ve made the decision not to tell them, not tonight, anyway. I don’t see why I should ruin this day for anyone else.

“I see you still haven’t found your razor,” I say drily, ruffling his whiskers.

“No, and I’m not planning to. These keep my face warm.”

“But you’d look so much younger without them.”

“Why do I need to look young? It’s not like I’m out trying to find a new woman. Your mother is quite enough.”

He looks fondly across the room to where my mother is reveling in the role of hostess, passing around a platter of crackers with Camembert cheese and other toppings she’s no doubt spent a fortune on. My parents are as in love with each other now as they were on their wedding day twenty-nine years ago. Growing up, my friends thought they were cute. I thought they were embarrassing beyond belief, especially when they made out in public. Now I am glad they have each other to lean on. They are going to need that support after I am gone.

“Oh, yes, happy birthday,” my father says. “Your mother has your present waiting in the kitchen.”

“It’s not a stripper, is it?”

He chokes on the mouthful of beer he’s just taken. “No,” he finally manages to splutter out. “No, I think you’re safe.”

My mother has a rather unorthodox approach to gift-giving. For my sixteenth, while my friends were receiving beautiful bespoke pieces of jewelry with their initials engraved on the back, my mother gave me a gift certificate for a tattoo and a packet of condoms.

“Go forth and enjoy,” she said proudly when I unwrapped them. I’ll admit the condoms eventually came in useful, but the gift certificate expired unused.

I spend the next hour working my way around the room, thanking and making small talk with the people who have turned up to help celebrate my twenty-eighth birthday. The lounge is beautifully and tastefully decorated, hung with colorful lanterns and candles in jars. A food table is set up by the kitchen and is heaving under the weight of Mum’s wisdom acquired from many years’ trialing recipes. She has surpassed herself with the guest list, and there are people I haven’t seen in years, including, oddly, my seventh-form geography teacher.

“I ran into him in the supermarket,” Mum explains. “He seemed lonely and asked how you were doing.”

I can feel their love for me: my parents, friends, people who have known me my entire life. It is palpable all around, in every lovingly thought-out detail. Normally a comfort, tonight it feels suffocating. It is too much pressure. I have let them all down.

“Drink?”

My best friend, Kate, is standing beside me holding two glasses of bubbly wine. I nod to her gratefully and take one of the glasses, draining it quickly. Passing it back, I take the other. Her eyes widen.

“It’s not that bad, is it?” she says.

“What’s not?”

For a moment I am worried she knows I am hiding something.

She gestures around the room with the empty glass. “This party.”

“Oh. No, the party’s great.”

“So why have you gone all white? Are you feeling OK?” She has her concerned-doctor face on. Kate is a GP at the local community clinic and finds it hard to shut off when she leaves the office. Especially when it comes to her own family and friends.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a bit overwhelmed.”

“I thought you knew about the party?”

“I did.”

“You confuse me sometimes, Ava.”

“Easily done,” I tease, to show I am my usual self.

“Hey.” She swats at my arm.

“Another drink for the birthday girl?” I ask hopefully, holding up the empty glass.

“Only because it’s your birthday.” I watch as she weaves through partygoers to where the drinks are arranged on the bench. She turns, holding up a bottle of Malibu and pulling a face.

“Oh my God, do you remember that night we drank all your parents’ Malibu?” she asks when she is back at my side again.

I wince, remembering the night she is talking about.

“I’ve never been so sick,” she goes on, poking out her tongue in a mock vomit and shuddering. “I still owe your parents for not telling mine.”

“What are we talking about?”

Amanda, the third corner of our friendship triangle, interrupts. She is holding a paper plate and shoveling butter chicken into her mouth, her expression rapturous.

I squeal at the sight of her and throw my arms around her neck, nearly knocking her plate out of her hands.

“Whoa,” she says. “Careful.”

“When did you get here?”

She shrugs. “Last night.”

“For how long?”

She spoons more food into her mouth and makes an extended Mm noise. “Not sure. We’re in between tours. Supposed to be heading into the studio soon but I don’t have a concrete date.”

I feel ridiculously happy to see her. For as long as we’ve been friends I’ve known she would one day be a star. She’s been singing since she first learned to talk, if you believe her mother, and it’s as natural to her as breathing. She has the most beautiful timbre to her voice, slightly husky but still angelic. She’s not an international star yet, but she’s on the cusp.

“Well, it’s nice you remembered those of us who knew you before you were famous,” Kate jokes.

“Hardly famous,” Amanda snorts. “A pub tour of New Zealand is about as glamorous as it sounds.”

“Well, I’m just happy you could make it,” I say, feeling emotional at the sight of her.

She stops eating long enough to give me an affectionate look. “As if I’d miss your birthday party.”

“You missed my twenty-first.” I pretend to sulk.

“Oh my God, I was out of the country.”

“Yeah, yeah, excuses.”

“Get over it already. Anyway, so? What were you guys talking about when I came over?”

“That night we drank all the Malibu,” Kate answers her. “Seriously, Amanda, you need to take some breaths between mouthfuls. You’ll give yourself indigestion.”

“Can’t. Too delicious. I remember that night,” Amanda says with her mouth full. “I haven’t been able to stand the smell of that stuff since.”

I shudder. “Me neither.”

I watch them talking and feel a wave of love and affection for them. These women feature in most of the memories I have, spanning over half my lifetime. They’ve been there beside me through so much. Boyfriends, heartache, jobs, holidays, and, of course, my cancer. The first time I was sick they were amazing. Sat with me through treatments. Bought me flowers and little gifts when I was at my lowest, to take my mind off things. They helped me bathe when I physically wasn’t up to it, and rubbed my shoulders while I threw up in a toilet from the side effects. How could I tell them I was about to inflict that on them again? Only worse this time, because this time there was no hope.

Chapter Three

Someone clangs on the side of a glass with a fork.

“Excuse me? Can I have your attention, please?” Mum calls out. “Hi,” she says when she has all eyes on her. “I think most of you know who I am, but for those who don’t I’m Gabby, Ava’s mum.” She puts a hand on her chest and pauses, as if waiting for a collective greeting like the drawn-out one kids give teachers every morning—“Good mooooorrrrninnnnnng, Mrs. Greeeeeeen”—and seems disappointed when she is met with a wall of silence and shuffling feet instead.

“Anyway, we—that is, Ava’s dad, Ben, and I—would like to thank you all for coming to help us celebrate our beautiful daughter’s birthday.”

I feel all eyes swivel in my direction and give a nervous wave.

“I think you all know what I mean when I say this day is more special, to us, than just a normal birthday. Ava, why don’t you come and stand beside me.”

“No, it’s OK,” I say, but Kate pushes me forward.

“Go on, humor her,” she says.

I couldn’t feel more like a fraud as I make my way to stand beside my mother. These people are here for me, to celebrate the anniversary of the day I was given life. On the very same day I’ve just been told my life is all but over. Which is a hell of a sick kind of irony, now that I think about it.

“Do we have to do this?” I ask quietly through gritted teeth, smiling like my face has frozen.

“Yes, we do,” she says. “Now smile properly. You look like someone ran over your hamster.”

“I don’t have a hamster.”

“Figure of speech.”

“I don’t think it is, actu—”

She ignores me and turns back to face the room. I look out at a room full of smiling faces and swallow hard. I can’t lose it, not now, not in front of everyone.

“Twenty-eight years ago,” Mum says dramatically, “at three twenty-five in the morning, I was on a hospital bed staring up at the bright light, flat on my back with my legs wide—”

“Mum!”

“What?”

“Too much information. Far, far too much information.”

“I wasn’t going to give them all the details,” she says defensively. “Just the general gist.”

“I think they’ve got. . .