My Best Friend's Girl (7 page)

I still hate myself for ruining what they had.

chapter 8

D
uped.

Hoodwinked. Conned. Duped. Whatever you called it, it had been done to me. I hadn’t realized it, it didn’t even occur to me that it was possible until this morning when Tegan and I had shown up at the hospital.

I’d opened the door to Del’s hospital room and as Tegan ran in and scrambled up onto the bed, Del smiled at me in a way that said she knew my answer was yes. That I was going to take on her child.

But, apparently, Del had always known the answer was going to be in the affirmative because the cheeky minx had already had the legal documents drawn up, naming me as Tegan’s legal guardian. She’d also sent off for the relevant forms so I could get the ball rolling to adopt Tegan. These papers were stashed in the wooden locker by her bed, waiting for me to put my moniker to them. While Tegan was gabbling on at her mother and kissing her face, Del pointed me in the direction of the papers. When I opened the locker I found she’d rather thoughtfully put a pen in there.

“You might as well sign them now,” she said with a grin.

“Yeah, I might as well,” I replied. I hadn’t said a word about what I’d found in Guildford. Nor a word about what I planned to do next. Come to think of it, I hadn’t even said hello.

I’d read through the sheets in a cursory fashion, knowing there was no other way in which Adele could screw me over more than she already had, then resisted the urge to sign “World Class Mug” instead of Kamryn Matika by the Xs on the various pages.

Even now, sitting in the corridor, holding onto a plastic cup of vending machine tea, I seethed a little. But only a little. All right, it was more than a little. I was scared. Confused. Majorly pissed off. This decision had been thrust upon me and I was feeling…What was I feeling? I’d spent most of the night galloping, jogging, walking, limping and crawling through a range of emotions and I’d finally ended up at a place called acceptance. Which felt a lot like resignation. I’d been chased down until I was trapped: I couldn’t take Tegan back to Guildford; I couldn’t leave her to grow up in foster care or in a children’s home. I had no other choice; no way out.

So, no matter what conflicting emotions were battling inside me, I had to do this. This was my little Tiga, after all. I’d held her minutes after she was born. I’d helped name her. I’d been there when she took her first steps. I’d almost cried when she pointed at me and said, “Win take me,” when Adele had asked her if she wanted to go see Father Christmas one year. I had to do this. How could I not? This was Tiga. How could I not want to take her on?

Very easily, actually
, the thought popped into my head before I could stop it.
You are a bad person,
I chastised myself.
A bad, bad person.

A transformation had come over Tegan when we’d arrived. She didn’t seem to notice the tubes and machines around her mother and had practically leapt onto the bed, throwing her arms around her mother’s neck and covering her cheek in kisses. Having hardly said anything to me since Guildford, she was like a clockwork toy that had been wound up after weeks of idleness and was wearing herself down by chatting at super speed, pausing constantly to kiss her mother’s cheek.

I’d slipped out to give them time alone together. I’d forgotten about the bond between them. They were best mates, couldn’t bear to be parted. Weren’t whole without each other. How the hell was Tegan going to cope when…

I cracked another split in the rim of the plastic cup.

What if Del got better?

What if she made a recovery? Went into remission?
I seized that thought, clung to it like a life buoy in the sea of despair and self-pity I was currently drowning in. Del would live.

Where was it written that she had to die of this? Had she tried everything? I mean,
everything
? Every treatment available? And I’m sure it wasn’t my imagination that she was looking better. Brighter. Less gray and mottled and tired. That was probably Tegan’s influence. Having her around obviously made Del feel a million times better, so we could build on that. She and Tegan would spend lots of time together. Her strength would improve and she would live.

About half an hour later Nancy the nurse took Tegan for a walk to the canteen so Del and I could talk.

“You could get well again,” I blurted at her the second the door shut behind Nancy and Tegan. I still hadn’t mastered the tact-in-front-of-an-ill-person thing. “I mean, you could get better.”

Del shook her head slightly. “No.”

“You don’t know that,” I said.

“Yes, I do.”

“Come on, Del, you can’t give up. You can still beat this thing, I know you can. You’re one of, no, you’re
the
strongest person I know. Look how much shit you’ve had to overcome in the past, course you can—”

“Kam, it’s too late,” Del cut in.

I wasn’t going to be deterred. “You’ve got to fight this. You
can
beat this,” I said. “There are lots of new treatments, alternative therapies. Have you tried acupuncture, or—”

“Kam.” Her voice was stern enough to halt my wild chatter. “I’ve come to accept this, you will too.”

“But you’ve got to fight,” I whispered.

“I have been fighting. That’s why I’m still here.”

“I can’t believe you’ve given up so easily.”

“Kam, you don’t understand…” Her voice trailed off and she inhaled deeply. “I want to live.
God
I want to live. I want to see my daughter grow up. I want to have all those teenage fights with Tegan that I was preparing myself for. I want to find cigarettes in her bedroom and have big stand-up rows with her about it. I want to wave her off to university. I want to be the one who gives her away at her wedding. I want to get married myself one day because, you know, I still believe in love.

“I want to have the time to sort out our problems. I thought we had all the time in the world. I thought I had all the time in the world. And now I know that I don’t, I’ve got to accept it. I’ve got to…” Del paused, inhaled again. “I want to live. But I’m not going to. I have to accept that or I’ll be frozen. And I have to be active. I have to make as many plans as I can for Tegan. Do everything I can to make sure her life is sorted. And being with you is the start of that.”

I sniffed back my tears but still they broke free, tumbled down my face. I wiped at my eyes with the palms of my hands, then dried them on my jeans.

“I’ve written her a load of letters,” Del was saying.

“Gotten twenty birthday cards. Twenty Christmas cards. I’ve written them all. It’s amazing how much there is to say, even when you’re writing them for the future. But the letters, they’re for things like her eighteenth birthday. And her twenty-first. And when she’s deciding whether to go to uni; some are just for those times when we’d have a chat. You know, well, you’ll find out how much she likes to chat. Do you remember how she was like that? You’ll find out.”

I bit down on my lower lip and dipped my head as she talked. She wasn’t going to be here in a few years. In twenty years. In five years. Even in a year. That was a horrifying thought, knowing someone you loved wouldn’t see the future. Wouldn’t know how gray her hair would turn, how many wrinkles her face would be invaded by, how saggy her body would become. Wouldn’t be around to see what type of person her daughter became. My chest contracted; fresh tears escaped my eyes and drizzled down my face.

I might not be here in twenty years, in five years, in a year, but I didn’t know it. I didn’t have that clock ticking away so loudly in the foreground it drowned out everything. Del was going to die.

“I didn’t want to make a video. I don’t want her to forever think of me like this. I want her to remember me as the healthy woman in the pictures, not someone who looks so gray and old and tired. So, the letters will help. I hope. I hope.” Del’s eyes reddened.

“You’ve got to love her. Promise me. Even when she’s really bad, or says something horrible, you’ve got to love her. Promise me. Please promise me.”

I brushed brusquely at my tears. Who did she think I was?
What
did she think I was? Of course I’d love Tegan; if I didn’t I wouldn’t even be considering this. “Del, just because I stopped talking to you doesn’t mean I didn’t still care about you both.”

“I’m scared she won’t have unconditional love. And that’s all a mother wants for her daughter. For her to know there’ll always be someone there who loves her no matter what. Promise me that’s what you’ll give her—unconditional love.”

I nodded. “I’ve always loved her. Why do you think I sent her presents? And look—” I scrambled about in my bag, pulled out the red leather wallet, opened it and showed it to her.

As she took it, I noticed her hands were covered in skin that was paper thin, the veins underneath blue and green like wires in a cable leading up to the plug of her fingers. They were scarred with marks from where the drips had been. I glanced away.

Del opened my wallet and saw a picture of Tegan. I’d taken it on her third birthday, just weeks before I left London. I’d plaited her hair into two cornrows with a center parting and she was wearing a pink pinafore with a white top underneath. She was grinning at the camera, holding her chin forward, her eyes squeezed shut.

“You’ve always carried this?” Del whispered. “Even after…”

“Yep,” I cut in. I’d put that picture in there when I moved to Leeds and I realized I wouldn’t be seeing Tegan again. It was the only photo I had of her that didn’t instantly give away who her father was.

I wanted, no, needed a reminder of her because in all of it, in all my hurt and anger and shock, there was one truth that was clear to me. One truth that was never blurred in my mind: it wasn’t her fault. Tegan wasn’t responsible for my fiancé and my best friend screwing things up. Besides, “I’ve always adored Tiga. You know that, you said it yourself the other day. I couldn’t stop loving her just like that.”

Del’s body relaxed, as though one of her concerns, one of the things on her list of things to worry about had been dealt with. “One more thing you must promise me,” Del said, still staring down at the picture.

“What’s that, then?”

I felt her eyes staring hard at me until I raised my eyes to her. “When you adopt her you’ll change her name to yours, won’t you?”

“Probably. To be honest I haven’t thought about it in that much detail. I’ve only had twenty-four hours to make the decision, so I’ll need a bit more time to refine the details.”

“But once you’ve done all that, you’ll change her surname to yours, won’t you?” Del asked again.

“I suppose,” I said with a shrug. “Probably.”

“All right. Then you’ve got to let her call you Mummy, if she wants to.”

“You what?” I shrank back in my seat, stricken. “Come on, Del, that’s…No. No. I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not.”

“You’re not her aunt but you let her call you Auntie.”

“That’s completely different! You know that’s completely different.”

“I want her to feel as though she’s got another mother, that she’s got someone who’ll do all the mummy things with her.”

“She will have. But it’s not right, her calling me Mum. It’s not…It’s not natural!”

“That’s the best argument you’ve got?” Del raised what would have been her left eyebrow as she mocked me.

Rather shamefully, it was. What I was trying to say was, you couldn’t replace a human being that easily and it wasn’t right to try. Tegan had known her mother, she’d remember her. What was it going to do to her mind, asking her to think of me as a new version of the woman she called Mummy? Tegan might love me, but she could never love me like she did her mother. Asking her to try would be wrong. It’d tear her apart, it’d confuse her in ways that we couldn’t even begin to understand. I wasn’t going to be responsible for screwing her up.

“You know that’s not all I’m trying to say,” I replied.

“Come on, Kam, what do you think adoption means? It means you’re becoming her mother, you’re adopting a role. You’re taking over from where I left off. I want her to think of you as her mother. And I want you to think of her as your daughter.”

“I will.”

“Not if you won’t let her call you Mum.” Del stopped talking suddenly, rested her frail body and her scarf-covered head against the white pillows. I watched her inhale a few times, her skin paling with each breath. Her eyes slipped shut. “If someone calls you beautiful often enough you believe it.” Her voice was as thin and fragile as tissue paper, the slightest interruption would tear it apart. She slowly opened her eyes. “If someone…If they tell you something often enough you believe it. Self-fulfilling prophecy. I want that to happen to you and Tegan. If she calls you Mummy often enough you’ll believe it. She’ll be a part of you that you’ll never…you’ll never want to let go. She’ll become your daughter.”

“She will be. You know that saying, ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet?’ She can still call me Auntie and I’ll be like her mother. I can’t ever be her mother because she’s got one, you. But I’ll be the next best thing. I’ll be the rose and still smell as sweet.”

“Please. Just think about it.”

“OK. I’ll think about it. Only think though. I’m not promising anything.”

Silence came to us. Silence that she broke with, “Kam, about Nate—”

“Del, please, don’t,” I interrupted. “I’m barely coping with all this. I can’t handle talking about that as well. OK? Please. We’ll sort it out another time.”

“Another time,” she echoed. “Time’s funny like that. Infinite. Forever. We aren’t.”

“You say that, but no one has actually proved that time is infinite.”

Adele smiled. “You’re so obnoxious.”

“I try.” I smiled back at her. Then I verbalized what I’d been thinking through while I’d been waiting in the corridor. “Look, you said you had a few months…I’m going to get time off work. If the doctors agree, I’ll find a place to rent for the three of us and you can come home. I’ll learn how to take care of you and you can come home. You know, till…Till…” I couldn’t say it. I’d thought the word, considered what it meant, but I hadn’t said it. Wouldn’t say it. “I want to be there with you at…” I swallowed. “I want to be with you.”