The Rest of Me
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Synopsis
Can one act of love break a family apart? Alex believes that she can overcome anything. So when her partner Sam needs her help in the most unexpected of ways, she doesn't hesitate to offer it to him - even when it means making a huge sacrifice of her own. But what neither of them can foresee is that this one act of love will reverse their roles within the family...leaving Alex reeling, and isolated from Sam and their two children. How far will you go to save someone you love? As the threads which hold her life together start to unravel, can she stop it all falling apart?
Release date: June 14, 2018
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Print pages: 400
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The Rest of Me
Katie Marsh
Wendy, the babysitter from down the road, thinks I’m in my room now, playing with the set of sparkly unicorns she bought me because Mum and Dad are having their operations this week. Wendy wants me to style their horrible fake unicorn hair, or something. ‘Give them some plaits,’ she said, ‘you’ll have a great time.’ Then she gave me a packet of Maltesers, poured a glass of red wine and got out her laptop and started to type. She says she’s writing a novel, but Mum says that after three years she should have a bit more to show for it than a tiny Word document and a whole lot of hot air.
Just because Wendy spends hours and hours getting her hair done every Saturday, she thinks everyone else believes doing hair is fun too. I heard Mum telling Dad once that if Wendy ever gave up caring what she looked like she would have time to get an actual proper job and wouldn’t still be living with her parents at thirty-one. That’s so old. I’ll be living in a mansion in America by then. Aim high, that’s what Mum says.
Anyway, I don’t know why Wendy got me unicorns. They make me yawn. Sparkles are the worst. There’s only one thing I want to do. The best thing in the whole world. So it’s just as well Wendy has no idea about the drainpipe I’ve learnt to climb down. She probably thinks that girls don’t know how to do things like that. She keeps giving me fairy costumes for Christmas, and I always have to put them on because Mum says it would be rude not to. They are so scratchy. Worse than when I had chicken pox last summer and we ran out of calamine lotion and Mum was away working so Dad had to sleep on the floor next to me on one of his really bad days. I had to poke him to check he wasn’t dead in the morning.
I actually only wear the fairy costumes while Mum and Dad are arguing over who’s cooking the turkey. When there are one or two wine bottles in the recycling then I know I can change back into my tracksuit again and head outside. On dressing up days the other girls in my class come in as Elsa from boring Frozen and prance around the classroom pretending to turn people like me to ice. I mean, they’re nine. They should know by now that princesses are lame. But instead they giggle at me when I come in as the person I want to be when I grow up. Nudging and pointing. All that stuff. But I don’t care. I’m going to be the best I can be, just like Mum is.
Wendy’s probably starting to watch EastEnders now. I feel a bit bad, not telling her where I’m going, but she’d never let me out by myself and there’s no way she’ll notice I’m not at home. I did a test yesterday night – to see if she’d come upstairs – and she didn’t check on me once, even though I was reading Tracy Beaker under my duvet until 10.30. The new torch my dad gave me is so cool.
I’ve got everything I need in my bag. Boots and an apple and a piece of cheese and money for my bus ticket. I’ve been saving up for ages, so I can go every single week. I’ve waited so long for this chance and I’m not going to mess it up. Not like Quinn, who kept saying she wanted to star in Matilda and then broke her wrist at the audition. She made out she was doing some amazing cartwheel at the time, but I bet she was just walking across the stage and hit it as she fell flat on her face.
Once she’d have come over to my house and I’d have made her feel better, like she did for me when Dad got really sick. We’d have sat on the grass having hot chocolate and soon she’d have been laughing. We laughed a lot once, but I’ve put all the photos of us having fun away now. I ended up being off school for two weeks with chicken pox, and when I got back Quinn said she was bored of football and dens and that she wasn’t my friend any more. Now she’s besties with Elsie Roberts and they call everything ‘amaze’ and keep painting each other’s nails and wearing stupid BFF necklaces.
Anyway, when she broke her wrist she had just spent the whole term calling me ‘Dizzy’ instead of Izzy, so I didn’t join in when everyone else gathered round to say how sorry they were. I don’t like lying. Our teacher, Miss Harper, told me off for that and I had to duck my head down so I didn’t smell her breath. It’s like rotten pears. She said I should be more kind. I told her I’m only kind if someone’s kind to me. I said I give as good as I get, just like my Mum and Dad do at home when they don’t agree about something. I think Miss Harper must have called my parents after that, because for a week they were so nice to each other it was like we were in that programme Our Family that I used to watch on CBeebies.
It’s starting to rain, but I don’t care. It’s nice to be out here on my own. Wherever I go, grown-ups keep asking me if I’m OK. It’s really annoying. They say what a brave little fighter I am with my dad so ill, and wave tissues in my face like they think I’m about to cry. I’m never going to do that. Dad’s been ill for years, I’m used to it. But that doesn’t stop the grown-ups. Today Miss Harper called me over when I was about to get my turn on the climbing wall at lunchtime. She asked me why I wasn’t playing with my friends, so I told her I didn’t have any. Even though she’s at school all the time she really doesn’t notice much.
I turned round to get on the wall quickly before Leo from my class took my place. He always does that. But Miss Harper stopped me again, even though it was only five minutes till lessons started. I was really cross. Then she got down on her clicky old knee, and I could see the hairy mole on her face and wondered why she didn’t just cut the hair off. She said she was always there for me to talk to, and that things must be really tough at home, with my parents both having their operations at the same time.
But home is just home and there’s no point talking about it. So I just pretend-smiled at her and said thank you, because I really wanted to climb, but then she started waffling on about how sad she had been when her dad had his gall bladder out when she was seven, and how she cried every night because she was so scared.
I don’t think she was ever really seven. I think she was born the age she is now, hairy mole and everything. Then the school bell went and I’d missed my turn on the wall. School sucks. It really does.
But tonight doesn’t suck. Tonight is for me. Some extra training with Coach Jackson to get me ready for the Arsenal Academy trials in just over three months’ time. I’m just round the corner from the bus stop now and I know that this walk is the beginning of the rest of my life. I’m going to make everything better and tonight’s the first step.
I see the bus in the distance and I start to run.
‘Alex.’
Must. Sleep. More.
‘Alex.’
Zzzzzz.
‘ALEX.’
I know that voice. I had heard it just before I went in. I had kissed the lips that were now saying my name. I remember staring into the eyes above them as we told each other not to worry and laughed at my sexy compression stockings. I remember the grip of his hand on mine as we promised each other that everything would be OK.
I try to open my eyes but the lids remain shut. I start to panic. They can’t have damaged my vision – that wasn’t part of the deal. Blindness wasn’t one of the many terrifying risks that had been explained to me over and over again when I was being prodded and tested and was signing all those forms before coming in here. Death – check. Hernia – understood. Possible organ failure – got it. But not this.
I attempt to breathe deeply, but my lungs are apparently joining in with the general strike. My ribs feel like they have been set in concrete.
I try opening my eyes again and this time I see a chink of light that is so bright it hurts.
‘Ow.’ I close them again.
‘Charming.’
It’s him.
Apparently he is still alive too.
Thank God.
Relief surges through me and I pat my hand around, trying to find his fingers. When I came round earlier or yesterday or whatever day it was, he had been in surgery, receiving the kidney that had been cut out of me only hours before.
And now here he is. Living. Breathing.
It has all been worth it.
‘Hi.’ It comes out so quietly I can barely hear myself. Against all the beeping and murmuring around me, my whisper doesn’t stand a chance.
He hears me though.
‘Hi.’ He gently kisses my forehead as my eyes flicker open again.
And there he is. Sam Rossi. My Sam, at the end of my bed. Brown hair. A beard, peppered with grey. Green eyes. And a smile I haven’t seen for months.
Despite the slicing light and the feeling that I have recently been dragged along a motorway, I can’t help but try to smile back. I turn my head towards him, but I have something clipped to my ear and the wire tugs me back.
‘Bloody accessories.’ I look at him sideways. ‘How are you doing?’
‘The best.’ Oh, that smile. As infectious as the pop of a champagne cork on a summer day. Beneath the grating layers of pain, I feel a glimmer of joy.
He takes my hand.
‘Guess what, Foxy?’ He has always called me this, ever since he first met me at a ‘Headlines of the 20th century’ Y2K millennium party and saw my surname on my debit card. I never changed it when we got married. Being called Foxy was too much a part of me by then. It was quite the party. Sam came as Bill Clinton. I was Monica Lewinsky. It was destiny.
‘What?’ Nausea is starting to churn.
‘I’ve practically got wee coming out of my ears.’
‘I bloody hope not. They’re not built for that.’ My mouth is as dry as the Sahara.
‘Look!’ Before I can stop him he points to the plastic catheter-bag attached to his tall silver drip-stand, and I can see the bright yellow liquid inside. And there was me thinking that giving birth to Jenna in a lay-by would be the least sexy moment of our marriage.
‘That’s great. What a lovely – erm – colour.’ This view isn’t helping the sickness that is building inside me.
‘Lovely? It’s beautiful!’ He looks like he might skip, if only he wasn’t attached to a drain and a drip. ‘We’ve hit the jackpot. Your kidney’s making itself right at home. It’s urine central.’
In the rare moments I’d had time to think about what it might be like after the operation, talking about wee wasn’t exactly the chat I’d had in mind. I was more thinking along the lines of: ‘You’ve saved my life.’ (Insert adoring gaze.) ‘How many expensive presents can I buy you to say thank you?’ It is clearly time to start leaving the Jo Malone catalogue out again.
‘What day is it?’
‘It’s Wednesday morning.’
Wednesday. There is something that is meant to happen today. I can’t quite pinpoint it – my mind can’t settle on anything except the state of my body. Sam absently runs his hand up and down his drip-stand. He has three tubes branching at his neck, but beneath them I can see that his skin is pink. Beautifully, humanly pink.
I think of that night last week. Another night in the long list of nights on which he has truly looked as if he might be about to die. The grey of his cheeks. The pain on his face.
We have done it. We have got him back, twelve years after a doctor found blood in his urine during a routine medical. He eventually had a kidney biopsy and was diagnosed with IgA nephropathy, an auto-immune condition that leads to renal failure in only ten per cent of cases.
At first we thought we were going to be the lucky ones – he was asymptomatic for the first seven years. But then his kidney function started to decline quickly, bringing with it exhaustion, anxiety and depression. Toxins built up in his body. He had to spend more time in bed and less time looking after our daughters. No more cooking. No more running behind bikes. No more pushing them high on the swings at the local park. Then came the time when even he realised he had to go part-time. By then, he had stopped being Sam.
The week before his operation his kidney function was only twelve per cent. By the look of him today it must have shot back up already. Despite the drip and the catheter, he hasn’t looked this lively in years.
He pats my hand. ‘I can’t wait to get off this ward and go home.’
‘Thank God it worked. I’m so relieved.’
And I am. He is the reason why I’m lying here. He is the reason I took my healthy body and put it into an NHS bed. I’m not a perfect tissue match for him, but as a blood-type match, I could still donate. I gritted my teeth through the six months of work-up in which they tested every part of me and then a few other bits besides. CT scans, X-rays, kidney function tests, BMI, blood pressure, urine, weight, psychological state – nothing was left unexamined. Passing all the tests with flying colours enabled me to be wheeled into a room full of staff in scrubs and masks, to recite my name and date of birth on repeat, and to hold a nurse’s hand as I counted down from ten.
It allowed me to save my husband.
So Sam is the reason why I’m here rather than at work, checking over the final details of my quarterly round-up for the Board today. That’s what was nibbling at the corner of my mind – I remember now. I haven’t missed one since they made me a director a year ago. I feel a fizzle of nerves. I’ll check in with the team tomorrow – I’m bound to feel a lot better by then. The surgeon said I would need five days in hospital, but I know that I’ll be out in four.
‘And you?’ He strokes my fingers. ‘How are you feeling?’
For a moment I consider asking him to get a sick bowl, but I’m sure this nausea is only a blip. I just need to tough it out. ‘Fine.’ I clamp my mouth shut. Maybe another sleep will help.
Sam seems in far better shape than me. ‘God, there’s so much we can do when we get out of here. Shall we go to the seaside? On Saturday? Take the kids?’
His optimism has clearly made a comeback too. I swallow. If only there was some fresh air in here. ‘Mmmmmm.’
‘Or we could go to see a film? Or head to Legoland?’
‘Maybe.’ He appears to have forgotten the weeks of recuperation we are supposed to need. Time at home, with regular clinic visits for him, to check that his body doesn’t reject my kidney. To check that this hasn’t all been for nothing.
I am going to be sick. Any minute now. Distant memories of having my appendix out aged eight, and puking solidly for forty-eight hours. Me and general anaesthetics have never got on.
He touches my cheek. ‘Thank you so much, Alex. There just aren’t enough words to tell you how grateful I am.’
Try.
Shut up, subconscious.
‘My pleasure.’ I really need a bowl, but instead I press the magic button they’ve given me and dose myself with morphine. My entire body is screaming now. This time five days ago I had just run 10k. Now I can’t even lift my head off the pillow.
I force myself to speak. ‘You owe me a trip to Paris.’
Sam laughs. ‘Of course! And I think it’s safe to say you’re going to choose what we watch on TV for the rest of our lives.’
‘Thank God for that. No more bloody Saturday Kitchen.’ I can feel the saliva rushing to my mouth. ‘Can you …?’
He isn’t listening. ‘Look, Alex, I know I’m not looking my best, and I know this scenario might not be what you’ve dreamt of …’
‘Sam, I—’ Here it comes. There’s nothing I can do. I put my hand over my mouth.
‘But you’re amazing. I’m so lucky to be with you.’
I stare at him, hand still pressed to my mouth. Seventeen years together, two kids, five house moves, numerous trips to places infinitely more congenial than this – the local kebab shop for instance – and this is the time he chooses to tell me how lucky he is to have me.
A tiny voice in my head asks why he isn’t saying how much he loves me.
I tell it to be quiet and force out a reply. ‘You’re amazing too, Sam.’ He lowers his head to kiss me but my stomach has other ideas. I stick my head over the side of the bed and seal our mutual appreciation by vomiting on the floor.
We may have got his kidney sorted out, but I think it’s safe to say that getting romance right is still pretty high up on our To Do list.
‘You should take at least two months off after giving someone a kidney.’ The smiling donor nurse said this to me with an entirely straight face, and looked puzzled when I snorted into my cup of tepid NHS water. Two months off? Even two days is a push in my job, especially now, with a higher fundraising target and a new CEO to impress.
Currently it’s Day Five post op and I have managed to stop being sick long enough to be allowed to go home. The doctors are still monitoring Sam intensively as my kidney adjusts to its new home, so he has to carry on enjoying the delights of the ward and the company of the man opposite him, whose conversation is only marginally less terrifying than his tattoos. Hopefully he’ll come home on Monday so I can keep an eye on him. It’s been my job for so long that I feel nervous about him being away from me.
The nurse actually wagged her finger at me when I was discharged, and told me to be careful – no lifting, no housework, no going to the office, just lots and lots of rest. However, I’m focusing on what the surgeon said instead: ‘If you’re doing a desk job, you could potentially make it back to work within two to three weeks.’ He might as well have thrown a gauntlet down at my feet.
I have sorted out some help though, even though I’m sure I won’t need it for long. My best friend Tasia is away on holiday, so I took a deep breath and asked my sister Lucy to help us out instead. She doesn’t have a job any more – too busy being the world’s most perfect mum – and despite exuding disapproval whenever she sees me, she and her husband Rik chose to move from Wandsworth to Highbury when they had children so we could ‘spend more time together’. They live ten minutes away, but no matter how many Saturday afternoons we share, we still talk more about the children than about ourselves. Too much has happened. Too many mistakes have been made.
Despite this, I have never been happier to see my big sister than when she collected me from the ward today, especially when I saw she had her gorgeous twins in tow. Tallulah, all pigtails and Octonauts stickers, had made me a card saying, slightly randomly, ‘Hapy Bthdai’, while Bear attempted to rugby tackle me in his usual style and I nearly ripped open my stitches trying to protect myself. His sticky kisses were worth it though. They made up for Lucy’s fussing and the fact she insisted on leading me by the hand as if I was ninety-five and senile, rather than thirty-seven and recovering from surgery.
I can’t remember when I was last at home on a Friday afternoon. It’s 3.30 and I’m sitting in an armchair with my feet up while Steve Wright chats in the background. Izzy and Jenna are on their way back, whereas normally they would be heading to after-school clubs until I can race home from work to pick them up. Jenna recently claimed that she can look after herself at home now she’s turned fourteen, but just afterwards she smashed her iPhone by dropping it on the kitchen floor, which slightly reduced the impact of her announcement. Seamlessly, she executed one of her finest door-slamming exits and probably thought she’d won that particular argument.
I can’t wait until they get back. We didn’t want them seeing us with all the hospital tubes and wires attached to us, so I haven’t set eyes on them since the operation, relying on a combination of Lucy and Wendy from down the road to see them through. I thought about them all the time though – imagining their faces as their dad finally came home. A proper dad at last. The old Sam. Back for good.
More imminently, I hope Lucy’s managed to repair the damage I did when I got back home this morning. As I shuffled in I tripped on one of Jenna’s gold Converse, and ended up grabbing hold of the ‘Welcome Home’ banner the girls had made for support. I felt horrible when it ripped right down the middle. I was going to text to warn them in advance, until I discovered that Lucy has decided to hide my mobile phone from me ‘for your own good’. I’ve got to find it and get in touch with work to see how the presentation went down on Wednesday. Just as soon as I can lever myself out of this chair.
Lucy walks in, followed by Tallulah who is proudly bearing a cupcake out of which she has clearly taken an enormous bite.
‘For you, Tanty.’ She still uses the nickname she made up for me when she was two.
‘Thanks, Lulu.’ I take the cake gingerly, wondering what the green smudge on the top of the white icing might be. I still have no appetite, so I put it on the low table that has been placed next to my chair. Lucy may have her faults, but her TV medical-drama addiction is standing her in good stead here. I have a stool for my feet and a jug of water. The only thing missing are my painkillers, which I hope are going to make an appearance soon.
Lucy holds out a mug and I take it. The liquid inside is an unappetising colour, to say the least. I blow across the top to cool it and even that feels like too much effort. ‘Is that …?’
‘Peppermint tea.’
‘Ugh.’ I hold it out to her. ‘No thanks. Coffee please.’
My sister takes this opportunity to give me one of her hardest stares. Suddenly I am thirteen again and she is telling me that there’s no way I’m getting my hands on her new Rimmel lipstick or her CD Walkman. She padlocked her jewellery box once. Not one of those feeble little ones with a key. Hers had an actual code.
Not a sharer, my sister. Unless you’re in need of strong opinions, in which case your ship has come in whenever she enters the room.
She places my mug on a coaster next to me and puts her hands on her hips, the silver locket at her throat glinting as she does so. As ever she is in her uniform of blue jeans and one of her endless collection of patterned blouses. Once she scoured thrift shops for vintage tea-dresses, which she wore with stacked heels or Uggs, but since she finally became a mum after three rounds of IVF it’s like she’s stopped caring about her clothes, and only thinks about her children’s. Something in her has changed. Her twins are so precious, it’s as though she has been submerged by them. As if she matters less than they do. Sometimes I catch Rik staring at her, as if wondering who she has become.
She shakes her head. ‘You know you’re not allowed caffeine at the moment, Al.’
I hate the way she calls me Al. When I was twelve I tried to take back control by calling myself Alexandra and she openly mocked me wherever we met, doing fake curtseys and pretending to doff her cap. At least we talked then. Before it all went wrong.
‘My name is Alex.’
‘Oh, please.’ Her eyebrow rises so high it reaches the bottom of her thick auburn fringe.
‘You know, your nursing skills need a bit of work, Lucy. Sympathy? Empathy? The patient is always right?’
‘Don’t criticise the woman who has your painkillers.’
For a moment we smile at each other, and it’s midnight on Christmas Eve and Dad is still alive and we are cutting huge lumps off the Christmas cake with a blunt knife and giggling together. Conspiratorial. Close.
My childhood was full of the whisper of her voice in my ear, and the hugs she gave me when Dad died. No matter how much we see each other now, it’s as if there’s a shadow between us. Sometimes a word penetrates. Sometimes a look. Hope asserts itself for a moment. But then we both remember what happened and we pull apart again.
‘How are you really doing, Al?’ Her voice is soft.
I’ve missed that voice. It used to tell me stories when Mum was out working, or sing along to Radio 1 as Lucy put our tea on the table, overheating spaghetti hoops on the hob as the toast popped up.
‘I’m fine.’ I ignore the pain in my side.
Frustration flickers across her face. ‘Great.’ She turns away, and I hate the part of me that cares. I used to tell her everything and now I have no idea where I would even start.
I begin to open the cluster of cards that Lucy has put on the arm of my chair. I twist a little too far and pull my stitches, feeling such a sharp stab that I let out a gasp. Lucy swivels towards me quickly, concerned, so I force myself to talk. To convince her I’m OK.
‘I think this one’s from Tasia.’ I pull the card out of the envelope. She felt so bad about not being here for my Superhero day (as she called it) that I had a feeling she would put something in the post. Despite affectionately being known as The Maniac at the charity we both work for, largely due to her inability to talk at less than one hundred words per minute, she is utterly reliable. She never forgets a birthday. Never misses a party. Never lets me down.
I examine the card. It has a cream background, with my head stuck onto a body that is most definitely Superwoman’s, complete with billowing red cape, blue catsuit and an absolutely tiny waist. I flip the card open.
Don’t go getting any ideas. We all know you’re average at best. Hugs, Tasia x. PS – well bloody done, babes.
My laugh turns into a wince as I shift in my chair and tug again at my stitches. When I staggered to the loo just now I noticed that they look puffier than they were before.
I dismiss the thought. It’s probably nothing to worry about. I have so many drugs to take I’m sure one of them will sort it out.
I hope so, anyway.
I watch Lucy as she sits on our sofa and cuddles Bear, who is the eldest of the twins by ‘ten minutes and thirty-two seconds’ (yes, she’s the kind of mum who times everything and manages to record it in her personalised Tallulah and Bear photo albums). He rests back against her and I feel a physical ache for my girls. I imagine them running towards the front door. Throwing themselves at me. Giving me all the cuddles I hadn’t realised I missed until I was lying in the anaesthetic room wondering if I’d ever see them again.
I look at Lucy – all wonder and smiles and love.
I hold up the card as she tickles Bear under his armpits. ‘Good, isn’t it?’
She glances up. ‘Superwoman. That’s funny.’ Her voice is flat. She’s consistent, I’ll give her that. She told me she thought I was mad to give Sam a kidney and she has stuck firmly to that view ever since. She thought I was taking on too much. That my body couldn’t handle it. That I would crack under the pressure.
But I never crack. And besides, I had no choice. My girls needed their dad back and there he was, lying in bed, thinking he was going to die at any moment. Looking like it too. Of course I had to donate.
Lucy rocks Bear from side to side. He giggles and her face lights up. ‘Look, I’m glad you’re OK, Al. It was just all so risky. I was worried.’
She never has faith in me. Not any more. Not since Mum died and the two of us drifted apart. I put the card down. ‘Of course I’m fine. The doctors said I would be.’ I sip my horrible tea. ‘Can’t I just have a tiny cup of coffee?’ I know I’m whining, but honestly, I’ve just spent days shuffling around a ward with disposable hospital undies on. I’m not asking for much. I’ve just given a dying man a kidney, for God’s sake.
‘No. I’ve just explained that.’ Lucy smiles down at Tallulah, who is on her knees by the coffee table. She is the one child in the world you can trust with a paintbrush in a living room. You can also actually see what she’s painting, which wasn’t the case with my two and their works of art. Neither of them would ever stay still long enough to finish anything anyway. I have no idea how Lucy gets her kids to sit still and stay quiet, but frankly I have my suspicions that she puts Calpol in the milk that they consume in their matching gender-neutral yellow cups every night.
Tallulah looks up at me and smiles. ‘Superwoman Tanty!’
I smile back. It’s impossible not to. The grin. The frizz of dark hair with a yellow bow clipped in at the front. The damp bunny tucked into the pocket of her stripy dress. I adore everything about this girl.. . .
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