I Have No Secrets. Penny Joelson
what Mum is saying about the communications expert. Hopefully our visit really is just about seeing this professor. But I can’t stop thinking that it might be something more. The worry is gnawing at my brain, joining the other worries and the questions I can never ask.
I feel myself withdrawing like a tortoise into a shell. Mum’s still talking, but I’m no longer listening.
When Sarah comes to fetch me for dinner she looks at me for a moment and frowns.
‘What’s up, Jem?’
I don’t know how she can tell that something’s wrong, but she can and I’m glad. Maybe my limbs are even stiffer than usual when she moves me. I certainly feel stiffer. Everything aches.
‘I hope you’re not coming down with something,’ she continues.
She looks into my eyes for clues. I wish they could give her some. She feels my brow, inspects my arms, legs and chest for rashes. Then she gets the ear thermometer and takes my temperature. Hopefully once she’s sussed I’m not ill, she’ll work out how unhappy I am.
Sarah wheels me into the kitchen. Everyone else is already at the table, but the cutlery is missing. Finn has removed it and lined it all up neatly on the floor against the wall – a row of forks, then knives, then spoons.
Dad shakes his head at Finn and sighs as he picks them up, and there is a delay while he washes them in the sink. He isn’t angry. He understands Finn.
‘Something’s wrong with Jemma,’ Sarah tells Mum.
I watch Mum’s face. Will she make the connection and realise that what she said before has got me worried?
‘Are you hungry?’ Mum asks me. ‘Sorry dinner’s a bit late.’
I’m not hungry. And now I feel sick at the thought of eating.
Sarah shakes her head. ‘It’s more than that.’
Mum shrugs rather dismissively, and then I wonder if maybe she doesn’t want Sarah to know about her plans, because Sarah will lose her job if I’m sent away.
Once the cutlery is washed and dried, Sarah spoons food into my mouth. I find it hard to swallow. Olivia knocks her cup over – I’m not sure if it is accidental or on purpose, but water spreads in a pool across the table and Dad’s ‘Oh, Olivia’ is enough to start her wailing theatrically. Dad tells her to calm down, which brings on a full-blown tantrum. My head is pounding now.
Mum and Dad are both fussing over Olivia. I scream inside my head sometimes – making the kind of noise she’s making now, but of course no one ever knows.
Sarah aims another spoonful into my mouth. I cough and splutter. I can’t stop coughing. I need a drink. Sarah is distracted, looking at Olivia, and I start to panic. I feel like I can’t breathe. It is a moment before she sits me forward in my wheelchair and pats me on the back. She holds the straw to my lips and looks from me to Mum as Olivia finally stops shrieking. ‘I told you something was wrong. I think she’s going down with something. I’ll sleep in her room tonight.’
No one understands. When I’m worried and I just want reassurance I have no way of getting it. Then my worries just grow and grow. Mum and Dad assume it’s something physical because it so often is, but all I want is to be able to tell them how I feel . . .
‘Thanks, Sarah,’ says Mum. ‘There’s a nasty fluey bug going round. I hope it isn’t that.’
Later, Sarah’s getting me ready for bed when her mobile rings.
‘It’s Dan. We haven’t spoken all week. I’d better answer,’ she says apologetically, ‘or he might think I’m avoiding him.’
She says hello, and then puts the phone on loudspeaker and leaves it on the bed, crouching to take off my socks. I hear Dan’s voice, as clear as if he’s in the room.
‘How was the film, babe?’
Sarah has taken off one of my socks and started on the other one. She stops, bites her lip and leans towards the phone. ‘Great,’ she chirps.
‘Really? What was so great about it?’ he asks.
‘Why do you care?’ Sarah asks. ‘It’s not your kind of film – you said so yourself.’
‘Just asking,’ he says.
There’s a pause. ‘Sorry,’ says Sarah, ‘I can’t chat now. I’m getting Jemma ready for bed. She’s not too well. I’ll call you later and tell you all about it, OK?’
‘Sure – speak later. Love you, babe!’
Sarah puts her phone in her pocket, then laughs. ‘I’ll have to look up some reviews online,’ she tells me. ‘I don’t even know who’s in it!’
‘Come on, Finn!’ Mum calls cheerfully as we reach the gate of the park.
When I woke up this morning I had this weird floaty feeling, like nothing in my life is real. I am apparently neither ill nor well. It doesn’t surprise me that my body’s behaving weirdly. All these thoughts have got to get out somehow. Sarah and Mum keep taking my temperature. ‘A bit under the weather’ is how Mum described me. We often go to the park on Saturdays and she said some fresh air might do me good.
‘We’ll go and see the ducks first,’ Mum tells Finn and Olivia.
If I could roll my eyes, I would. I liked being taken to see the ducks when I was six, but right now I’ve got other things on my mind. If we have to be here, I was hoping we were going to the park café. It’s at the top of the hill and I know it’s not easy to push me up there, but from the top you get a view right over the park. I like the feeling of being so high – on top of the world, looking down. From my wheelchair I so often feel low down, looking up at things.
Olivia skips ahead, Sarah’s pushing me, and Mum’s cajoling Finn – who is walking slowly, flapping his hand in front of his face. I think he likes the patterns of light it makes. Soon we reach the pond and we stop by the barrier, near a clump of early daffodils. I watch Olivia throw corn at the nearest ducks as if she’s trying to murder one. I’m sure she just said, ‘Yeah! Got it!’
Mum pushes corn into Finn’s hand and helps him aim, but the corn just drops on to the path. He isn’t really interested and starts to pull away towards the playground.
‘OK, Finn, just a minute,’ Mum tells him.
Sarah’s phone beeps. I bet it’s Dan texting her. I see her peeping at it when Mum’s not looking. I wish she’d tell me what he said.
When we’re in the playground, Sarah wheels me on to the wheelchair-accessible roundabout and pushes the bar gently so it begins to move, before she gets on and stands with me.
‘Just a gentle spin today, hey, Jemma?’
This roundabout is here because of my mum; she campaigned for it for years and I was so happy when it arrived. I used to like going fast. It’s not often I get to do anything fast. I’m too old for it now, though, and especially not today when my head is already spinning. At least Sarah moves it slowly.
‘I’ll push!’ Olivia says, running up.
‘Gently, Olivia,’ Sarah tells her. But she’s pushing too fast so I’m whirling even faster than the thoughts in my head. I want to stop. I want to get off. Now.
‘Olivia! Slow down!’ Sarah yells. She leaps off and brings it to a halt.
Olivia rushes away towards the climbing frame.
‘Sorry, Jemma! Are you OK?’ Sarah asks, touching my shoulder as she pulls the wheelchair off. I feel giddy and breathless. I want to go home. Sarah’s phone beeps with another message.
She parks me next to a bench where we can watch Finn on the swing. She turns