Free A to Z of You and Me by James Hannah Page B

worked too hard. We didn’t have enough time to enjoy ourselves. When we realized what was happening, she wasn’t well enough to enjoy herself. I worked too hard.”
    I want to help this man, but I honestly don’t know what to say.
    His daughter appears at the door with two mugs.
    â€œPapa?” she murmurs in a barely audible undertone. She can see he has been crying and comes over to him. She proffers the mug and looks shyly over at me. I nod and purse my lips, indicating…something.
    He accepts the mug and takes a couple of attempts to get the correct number of fingers through the unfamiliar handle. A teacup man. “Sorry, I was just—” He looks over at me. “This is my daughter, Amber.”
    â€œHello,” I say.
    â€œHiya,” she says.
    She looks brilliant. Rich black hair with a deep blue streak. Eyeliner, in the same way that I remember you wearing it. The swash . I struggle to meet her with the right sort of look. Beautiful, clear, lively eyes. Part Japanese, part not. Striking.
    What am I? Flirting?
    It’s all I know how to do. A reflex action. She’s exactly like you were. Confident. Confident enough to say “hiya,” to look me in the eye.
    She can’t be eighteen. Less than half my age.
    â€œAre you both coping?” I ask. “As much as you can, at least?”
    â€œOnce you know what to expect each day, it’s better,” says Amber, throwing a look at her dad. “You get a routine.”
    â€œYeah. Routines are good. Uncertainty is almost the worst thing,” I say.
    â€œIt’s rubbish,” she says. “But the nurses here…I mean, they’ve been brilliant. We’re so lucky. She could have been in the hospital, and we didn’t want that. This is nicer than the hospital. We trust them with…with my mum.”
    Even from the way she’s standing, I can see she’s the one in charge. Only a teenager, but she’s carrying her dad along with her. As she talks he looks disconsolately out of the window at the tree and the lawn beyond.
    â€œAnyway, you shouldn’t be asking us how we are,” she says. “How are you feeling?”
    â€œOh, it’s much easier to worry about others,” I say. “Every time I see a doctor, my first question is always How are you? I worry that they’re too overworked to see me. I worry about Sheila. Have you met Sheila?”
    â€œI love Sheila,” says Amber. “She’s amazing. Always there. Knows exactly the right thing to say. Things seem to be a bit more cheery after you’ve seen Sheila.”
    For her age, Amber seems so mature. OK, so there’s the blue hair, and her eyes, her beautiful artfully painted eyes, and her clothes hung and slung about her. Statementy. Like any teenager. But a grown woman’s mind.
    I want to say to her, Listen, you’re too young to be in a place like this . But I can’t, can I? You’re too young to lose your mum. Society will decide: You are too young . Society will tut into the silence of the drawing room and say, It’s a crying shame.
    I want to comfort her.
    But she won’t take that from me.
    Let it go.
    Let her go.

E
    Eyes
    â€œWhat are you doing?” says Dad.
    â€œNothing,” I say.
    Even aged four I know not to admit I’m pretending to be car indicators with my eyes.
    Embarrassing.
    â€¢ • •
    I’m holding the bull’s eye with the very tips of my latex-gloved fingers, but I can still feel the refrigerated coolness, the slippery deadness that might somehow come alive. I’m leaning as far away from it as I can, and I’m pressing at it with my scalpel, but it won’t go in , a scalpel , a fucking shitting crappy blunt school scalpel, and it won’t shitting fucking puncture the cold and slippery surface, and Kelvin says give it here, and he takes the scalpel off me and I shrink away as he stabs and it squeakily dodges,