CHAPTER 2
Samantha
Samantha’s mobile buzzed in her hand, almost slipping out of her grip as it vibrated against the layer of sweat forming on her palms.
Jaddi mumbled a reply to her question, but Samantha didn’t hear the words. The dressing room and her friends fell away as her concentration fixed on the incom ing message and its sender.
My flat. 1pm. We’re all set xxx
The words so simple, so normal, but there was nothing normal about it.
‘Sam? Are you OK?’ Lizzie said, tugging Samantha’s thoughts back. ‘You look sort of pale, honey. Maybe you should sit down.’ Lizzie pulled out a stool from under the make-up counter and motioned for Samantha to sit.
Samantha stared at her friends as they waited for her response. She wanted to tell them everything, but how could she? How could she tell them what David, the love of her life, and the only man that had ever made her feel smart and beautiful, had planned for her later that day, when she couldn’t contemplate it herself? She forced David and his message to the back of her mind. There were so many other things to worry about before 1pm.
‘Why am I the only one being sick?’ Samantha asked instead. ‘This is national television.’ She turned to the mirror, raking her fingers through her limp, blonde hair and pulling a face at her reflection. No amount of make-up could mask the grey sheen that seeped out from every pore. She didn’t like having her photo taken let alone being filmed for a documentary for the next three months. And before she even got to that, she had to take part in a television interview, which had an average of 950,000 viewers every day. She’d looked it up at 4am when she’d been unable to sleep. Almost a million people would be watching her, listening to her, judging her. Nausea burnt at the back of her throat. This is their dream, Samantha reminded herself, willing the sickness to pass.
‘Hey, don’t worry,’ Jaddi said, her face appearing behind Samantha’s in the mirror. ‘It will be over before you know it, and we’ll be right there next to you. We’re in this together, remember?’
Samantha nodded and fiddled with the fabric clinging to the curve of her hips. ‘I should have gone for the green dress,’ she said, trying to block the reflection of Jaddi’s figure from view. Comparing her curves and wobbly bingo wings to Jaddi’s beauty, not to mention Jaddi’s svelte figure, was the quickest way into a pit of misery and crash dieting.
Samantha sighed. ‘How did I not realise that my dress is the exact same colour as the sofa? No one will see me. I’ll be a floating head.’
Lizzie’s smiling face appeared behind her in the mirror. ‘When,’ Lizzie asked, resting her head on Samantha’s shoulder, ‘are you going to see how gorgeous you are? Not to mention intelligent. You will not be a floating head, you’ll be perfect.’
Samantha smiled at Lizzie’s pale face and the dark smudges under her eyes. The unfairness of it all washed over her just like the nausea had done an hour ago. Why did it have to be Lizzie? Of all the millions of people in the world who smoked, took drugs, lived life on the edge, who killed, and hurt others, the millions of people that, without question, deserved to die, why did it have to be kind, loving Lizzie going through this? It was a question Samantha had asked herself at least once a day for the past few months, more than once on the nights she couldn’t sleep, mulling the question over in her mind with dozens of others she didn’t have the answers to.
Jaddi stepped away from the mirror. ‘So,’ she said, placing her hands on her hips as Samantha and Lizzie turned to face her, ‘you know I love you, don’t you? We’re like family. So you know when I say things, I say them for your own good, right? Well, I need to tell you that the two of you need to pull yourselves together. It’s natural to feel nervous, but this is our chance. We’ve talked about travelling the world since university. I know it’s scary, but we can’t focus on how we got here or why we’re doing it, or it’ll make it too hard. We have to live in the here and now.’
Samantha listened for a quiver in Jaddi’s voice, any sign of the fear and sadness that clouded Samantha’s head, but there wasn’t any. Jaddi sounded just like Caroline, forthright and self-assured in a way that only people confident with their own place in the world could be. No amount of education, elocution, or expensive clothes could make a person that way. It was in the way Jaddi and Lizzie were raised, something middle-class that Samantha tried to emulate, but so often failed.
She’d seen the looks from her peers at the Home Office. They knew just by looking at her that she was different. The first-class degree, the hours she spent at her desk long after everyone else had made their way to a back-street pub or home, how she knew parts of the law inside and out; none of it wiped out her upbringing in their eyes.
‘It was nine years ago that we first planned this trip,’ Jaddi continued. ‘Nine years. That’s almost a decade. And we’re finally doing it.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Samantha said. ‘Having a cameraman tagging along is all well and good when you’re tall, thin and drop-dead gorgeous. I, personally, don’t relish the thought of half of Britain seeing my gigantic bottom climbing up a mountain. Not to mention –’ a lump lodged in Samantha’s throat forcing her voice into a whisper ‘– Lizzie’s tumour.’
Just then, a woman wearing a headset appeared in the doorway. ‘We’ve gone to adverts. Three minutes and you’re on,’ she said before disappearing again.
‘Was she talking to us?’ Samantha turned to Lizzie as wasp-like panic swarmed in her stomach.
‘Who else?’ Jaddi grinned.
‘I … I can’t do this. Lizzie, I’m so, so sorry. I’ve tried to hold it together. I love you so much and I’ve tried to support you through this …’ Samantha could hear the rupture in her voice, but she couldn’t stop now. ‘You’re dying.’
‘We’re all going to die at some point,’ Lizzie shrugged, a weak smile touching her face.
‘But not in three months. We can’t just up and leave as if everything is normal.’ Tears spilled from Samantha’s eyes. ‘Everything is not normal. What about your parents? They’re devastated, we all are. And what if you get ill whilst we’re in the middle of nowhere? Then what? We can’t go, we just can’t.’ A sob escaped Samantha’s mouth.
Silence grew between them. Samantha tried to read Lizzie’s wide-eyed stare, but all she could see was her own fear reflected back in her friend’s face. Then Lizzie’s gaze turned to Jaddi, causing frustration to surge inside Samantha. Sometimes, just sometimes, she hated how they both deferred to Jaddi, as if they were still standing in the kitchen of their houseshare, total strangers on their first day at university. Jaddi had oozed self-assurance. She’d chosen the pubs they’d gone to, the boys they’d spoken to, the clubs they’d joined. Back then it had seemed as if Jaddi had had a magic wand that could alter the course of their destinies.
Samantha let the thought go. This wasn’t another one of Jaddi’s daredevil plans. This trip belonged to all of them. It was a shared dream that had kept them going through exams and dissertations, and long days slugging it at work followed by evenings in the dingy one-bed flat they had shared in East London. Their reasons for travelling might be different – Jaddi wanted adventure; Lizzie wanted new experiences; and Samantha had wanted to escape (or she had once anyway) – but the dream was the same and they’d clung to that. Just not like this.
Jaddi stepped towards Samantha and pulled her into a tight embrace. Part of Samantha wanted to push Jaddi away, but she didn’t. Jaddi’s cool confidence had a way of rubbing off on the people around her, Samantha included. The knots in her stomach began to unravel.
‘I’m scared too, Sam. But Lizzie can’t stay here waiting for it to happen,’ Jaddi said. ‘There is so much she hasn’t seen or done. There is nothing anyone can do for her here. It shouldn’t end like that for anyone, especially not Lizzie.’
Samantha nodded, dabbing her fingers under her eyes in an attempt to wipe away the tears without smearing any more of her make-up. ‘I know. I’m sorry, you’re right.’ She drew in a long breath. ‘I’m panicking about this interview, but I’ll keep it together.’
Lizzie’s arms wrapped around them. ‘I don’t think I’ve said thank you to both of you, for doing this with me,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t do it without you.’
‘You don’t need to say thanks, Lizzie,’ Samantha said. ‘You know we’d follow you anywhere. Except off a cliff, of course.’
‘You two had better not be getting tears on my dress,’ Jaddi said a moment later, making them all laugh in a shaky uncertain sort of way and releasing the sadness that hovered over them.
Jaddi squeezed Samantha a little tighter before letting go and spinning on the points of her heels. ‘Let’s go then.’