Pandora’s Box. Giselle Green

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СКАЧАТЬ are trapped, basically: Shelley and me and her brother Daniel. I pull vengefully at one long piece of sticky tape that has been wound interminably around the top of the box.

      My mother can’t—or won’t—see that.

      Hell, she doesn’t even really accept the fact that Shelley is dying.

      ‘Hope springs eternal’, as she likes to tell me gaily every time she calls. Well, she is Pandora, so maybe in her world it does. I just wish I could tap into that eternal spring when I get faced with things like Shelley refusing to go to school because it is ‘a waste of the precious little time she has left’. And maybe Shelley is right. What does school matter, for her? She won’t need the exams. She won’t ever be going to university. She won’t live long enough to ever get herself a job.

      It is an unfathomable thought, but it is the stark reality, a truth that winds itself like a steel cord around my heart every time I think about it, threatening to cut me in two.

      I cut the masking tape away from my fingers with the knife and flick open the door under the sink to throw it in the bin. Damn it. Why did things have to work out this way? Nothing matters any more. Things only ever matter when you’ve got hope, and today I don’t have any.

      My daughter might seem fine, but I know she isn’t. Recently her consultant has been keeping an even tighter check on Shelley. Our one-monthly check-ups have become fortnightly. Lately he even offered to make them weekly, even though there has been no real change in her condition for a long while. But there has to be a reason why he is tightening up on her care, doesn’t there? They warned me last year, after her friend Miriam died with the same condition, ‘Shelley doesn’t have long.’ But how long is ‘not long’? How long is a piece of string?

      And how long do I really want to waste this morning, going through all this old junk? I stare at the space behind the little pedal bin. There is just about enough room in there for me to store this old box away without ever having to give it another thought. What do I care about old certificates and photos, anyway?

      ‘Mum? What was that, Mum? What did the postie bring?’

      Shelley can be deadly silent on that wheelchair of hers. She must have oiled the wheels because I didn’t hear her come in at all. She looks wan in the pale morning light, I think, even younger than her fourteen years without all her usual Goth war-paint on.

      ‘Um, just some paperwork your gran sent through. I’ll have to plough through it sometime. Nothing for you to concern yourself with.’

      ‘And you’re putting it in the bin?’ She leans forward in her wheelchair to see what I’ve been up to.

      ‘No. Behind the bin.’

      ‘You don’t usually put stuff there,’ she notes. She knows I’m angry. She can tell, just like I can always tell what she is feeling. We spend too much time in each other’s company for it to be otherwise.

      ‘Are you upset because Granny Panny’s left the country?’ Shelley enquires sagely. ‘She was never really much use to you anyway, even when she was here.’

      ‘Well, what use would you expect her to be? She’s got her own life to live, hasn’t she?’

      Shelley sits back, slender shoulders slumped. She is wearing the same pink pyjamas she wore last summer. She hasn’t grown much in the year when most of the girls in her class have shot up to about six foot, it seems. The rest of them have all begun to blossom out.

      But something in Shelley’s face has definitely changed. There is a different look in her eye that I don’t remember being there before, a certain angle to her jaw that has made her face more defined, another year older, more worn by life.

      And she shouldn’t be worn by life, why should she? She’s never had any fun, never been anywhere, never done anything. She doesn’t know yet what it is like to love or to be loved. How can she be so worn by life when she has never really lived?

      ‘This will cheer you up’ indeed! I shove the pedal bin in front of Pandora’s box with my foot and close the cupboard door. I’ll give the whole lot to Liliana when I see her. She’s into nostalgic memories and memorabilia. It isn’t of any use to me, that’s for sure.

      As far as I’m concerned, the past is dead and buried, and all my hopes were buried years ago, right along with it.

       2 Rachel

      ‘Why can’t I pull it down? I don’t want any “New Year resolutions” hanging up there for me. Daniel can keep his own if he wants to but I don’t see why I have to have any. It’s just plain silly.’ Shelley grimaces at me as I squeeze past her to get milk from the fridge. ‘It is March, after all.’

      ‘No.’ I push the door firmly shut with my elbow and take another look at the list her brother had Blu-Tacked onto the fridge door in January.

       Family New Year’s Resolutions List (by Daniel Wetherby)

       Daniel

      1. Find mate for Hattie.

      2. Ride bike without stabilisers (before I am eleven).

      3. Help mum more.

       Mum

      1. Become famous artist and get rich.

      2. Find cure for Shelley.

      3. Buy the house on Strawberry Crescent.

      4. Have a proper holiday.

       Shelley

      1. Get cured and be healthy and walk.

      2. Get a boyfriend.

      3. Do well at school.

      ‘If it’s March, that still gives us the next nine months of the year, doesn’t it? All we’ve got to do is find you a cure, make me a famous artist, buy that gorgeous property up on Strawberry Crescent and get you a boyfriend.’

      ‘Huh. Granny Panny is the only one of us who’s ever going to get herself a boyfriend, Mum. And the fame, the house and the cure are all non-starters, wouldn’t you say?’ She gives a little laugh. ‘I mean, you, famous? What could you ever be famous for? You don’t actually do anything, do you? Daniel’s mad. And you haven’t done any art since you left art college.’

      ‘He’s just a kid, Shell. You’ve got to let him have his dreams. Don’t you dare take his list down.’ I stay her arm as she reaches out to pull it off.

      I don’t care if there’s no point in you going to school any more, I think suddenly. At least it gave us some respite from each other when you did.

      I should never have given in to her on that point. I should have made her keep on going.

      ‘It doesn’t matter if it’s silly, or if none of it can come true. It matters that СКАЧАТЬ