But Rachel understood all that. We understood each other.
I reached for her hand, rolled her fingers gently between mine. They felt a little cool, in the wintry chill of my mum’s tiled kitchen. ‘I want all that stuff too, you know. In the future. Some day, once I...’ But then I trailed off, not keen to muddy the moment with talk of my fated family tree, or what might happen if I were to have a son.
The sentiment was pure, though: I could see myself doing it all with her. The pull of a future together already felt magnetic to me. As natural as an ocean tide, a planet orbiting stars.
She tilted her head, as if something had just occurred to her. ‘I love that it doesn’t scare you, talking about this stuff.’
I leaned in to kiss her. ‘That’s because it’s you,’ I said.
14.
Josh
May 2000
Seven days after our break at the beach, I wake again in the early hours.
The bed sheets are wet with sweat. My left arm is fizzing with pins and needles. My heart is hammering harder than it ever has before. I can hear my pulse rushing between my ears.
I pull myself into a sitting position. Swing my legs off the mattress, perch on the edge of it. Try to steady my breathing.
It doesn’t work. I feel it building inside me, a low, cold whistle of panic.
Fuck. Is this it?
I leave the bedroom, head into the hall. Grip on to the dado rail with my fingertips like an old man in his nineties. Ironically enough.
The flat is silent and warm. Claustrophobically stuffy. It is a cloudy night, no moonlight.
You have nothing to worry about.
You’ve made it this far.
The deaths are just coincidence.
Every test under the sun shows how healthy you are.
Nothing works. Shockwaves of pain begin to spread through my chest, along with an unbelievable pressure, as though I’ve woken up beneath the rubble of a twenty-storey building.
I know I should call 999. But my overriding instinct is to speak to Rachel. She’s away overnight with work, but I just have to tell her I love her, one last time.
But then my breathing tightens again. I gasp with the pain, and the panic.
I have to do something.
I want to live. I don’t want to die alone, here in this flat without Rachel.
I don’t want to leave her.
I think of my dad, what he would have said. What my mum would say.
Do what you can, Josh. Whatever it takes.
That’s what they’d tell me. I am sure of it.
I can’t catch my breath. The air feels too thin to drink, as though the flat has been drained of oxygen.
If I didn’t before, I know now that I am dying. I am going the same way as every other man in my paternal bloodline.
