Free My Best Friend's Girl by Dorothy Koomson Page B

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