Allie grins. ‘Nah, I’m all right. I’ve had enough music lessons to last me a lifetime.’ She coughs a couple of times, then wipes her mouth with a tissue. ‘Anyway, how’s Teacake getting on?’
I take my phone out and show her the video that Rani and I took this morning. On the screen, Teacake takes a run-up across the hall’s floor, curving in a slight arch the way high jumpers do before they’re about to make their leap. Her wings beat, the tips meeting before they sweep back to the floor, and she floats towards the ceiling. She makes three wide, neat loops before she has to land on top of the organ.
‘That’s amazing!’ Allie says. ‘Twelve seconds – that’s so much better!’
‘All thanks to you,’ I say. ‘You’re the one who’s worked so hard on her wing.’
We smile at each other. There’s the tiniest hint of pink on her cheeks. But then, on the video, Rani starts to cheer. Allie’s smile vanishes.
‘Whose voice is that?’
‘Um . . .’ Shit. I’d assumed Calum had already told her about Rani following me to McEwan Hall. Allie’s eyes widen as I tell her the story – repeating, before she starts to panic, that Rani has promised to keep our secret and won’t tell my dad. Allie presses her lips together.
‘Well, I guess we’ve got no choice but to trust her.’ She doesn’t look convinced, but I can tell she doesn’t have the energy to argue either. ‘Maybe she’s got some Wingdinger insider info that could help us out.’
There’s still that edge of disdain to her voice. It irks me a bit, her judging my sister without having ever met her, but I can’t really blame her for being suspicious.
‘Yeah, she knows her stuff. She might be able to help us communicate with Teacake,’ I say. ‘Calum and I weren’t having much luck.’
‘That’s his fault. He’s so demanding,’ Allie says. ‘It’s weird – he can stay still for minutes on end, trying to get a good shot of a bird taking off, or waiting for the sun to leak through the leaves at just the right angle, but he’s got no patience with people.’
I remember the way he snapped at me yesterday. ‘Is everything OK with him? He seems a wee bit off lately.’
Allie flaps her hand dismissively. ‘Calum’s always tormented about something or other. Don’t worry about it.’
Her eyes wander to a print on her wall: a large black-and-white photo of her and her parents walking on the beach. Allie’s pushing a lock of hair out of her face and saying something to her dad, who has his arm slung around her shoulder. He’s looking over the top of her head towards her mum, both of them smiling. Behind them, a wave is crashing on to the sand, sending its white spray towards the grey sky; two seagulls are battling against the wind, each one buffeted in a different direction – but the three of them walk on, oblivious.
Allie’s gaze softens. ‘I know it must be hard for him. It’s not easy having a sibling who’s sick,’ she says. ‘I just wish he wouldn’t let it consume him so much.’
I’ve tried to imagine how I’d feel it if was Rani in the photos downstairs. The idea makes me feel nauseous.
‘Allie . . .’ From the way she looks at me, I know she can tell what I’m about to ask. ‘How bad is it?’
There’s a pause, then Allie pats the duvet. I scoot towards her, copying her cross-legged position so our knees are almost touching. My stomach fills with butterflies.
‘Remember I told you I had a double lung transplant?’ she says. ‘Well, now they think I might have something called BOS, bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome. If I do, it means my body’s rejecting the new lungs.’
The bed seems to tilt underneath me. ‘What? How can it do that?’
‘Oh, rejection is really common,’ she says. ‘Everyone experiences it to some degree. I was responding pretty well to the drugs at first, but now they don’t seem to be working as well as the doctors had hoped. BOS is hard to diagnose, though. They’ve upped my anti-rejection meds, so there’s a chance I might start to improve with that. But there’s also a chance that I won’t.’
I swallow. ‘And what if you don’t?’
No answer. Downstairs, the news begins on the TV, and Mrs Scott starts up the Hoover. Allie flops on to her back, her hair falling in chocolate swirls across her pillow.
‘You know, when I was diagnosed, my life expectancy was seven years old.’ She counts the ages on her fingers. ‘Then it was eleven, then fourteen, and now . . . who knows. My whole life has been in the conditional tense, Jaya. I’ve learned to live with it.’
‘What if you don’t improve?’ I ask again, because I haven’t – I haven’t learned how to live with that.
Allie tilts her head to look at me. Her lips are so pale – a bit like the colour of some of Teacake’s feathers, but without the sheen.
‘If the meds don’t work, then maybe I’ll have a few years,’ she says. ‘Maybe one. Maybe five. Maybe less than that. Or maybe they’ll find a cure tomorrow and I’ll live until I’m a hundred! I just don’t know. But neither does anyone else.’
She’s right. Things happen. Cars crash, buildings collapse, terrorists blow themselves up in airports or on street corners. Healthy people die all the time. I, of all people, know that – I’ve seen it happen. But it’s different when those threats have a label and a definition and a time limit. It’s different when the person is only seventeen.
My head is spinning. I feel like I might throw up, but I can’t get any words out. I don’t know what to say. There is nothing to say. Allie coughs, wipes one tissue on her mouth and another over her forehead. She squashes them between her fingers, forming a crumpled white rose just above the one tattooed on her wrist.
‘Why a rose?’ I ask, when I can speak again.
She smiles. ‘Say cystic fibrosis.’
It takes a couple of tries before it clicks. ‘Sixty-five roses?’
‘Exactly. I know, it’s a bit corny. I usually really hate soppy tattoos. Like those couples who get a key and a padlock, or two jigsaw pieces – so cheesy.’
She props herself up on one elbow, so she’s looking down at me, and rests the back of her hand on my hip. The petals look darker in this dim light: smoky blue.
‘But I have to admit, I do kind of like what this represents,’ she says. ‘Roses aren’t any less beautiful because they don’t live long. No one looks at them and thinks, man, what a tragedy they’ll only be around for a little while. You just appreciate them while they’re there. Or, if you don’t, you’re missing the point.’
I trace the outline of the rose on her wrist, feeling the soft bump of the tendons beneath the skin. ‘I like that,’ I say.
A nervous smile flits across her face. ‘I thought all sixty-five would be pushing it. Transplant patients have to be really careful getting tattoos, and the artist obviously knew I wasn’t eighteen. It was hard enough to get him to agree to do even one, but I dragged the oxygen in and coughed a lot. He probably thought it was my dying wish.’ She cackles.
I try to smile, but my lips won’t move. ‘How can you laugh about it?’
‘What do you expect me to do – sit around moping?’ she says. ‘I was so lucky to get my lungs – a lot of the time, people die before they find a match. I’ve been lucky to get those years. I think about my donor all the time. Every day.’
She presses her index fingers to the corners of my lips and pushes them into a smile. I brush her hand away, blinking away the prickling in my eyes.
‘Don’t get me wrong, Jay. There are days when it feels so unfair I can hardly breathe.’ She slides her hand into mine. Her fingers are clammy, but warm. ‘But it’s going to happen one way or another. It just makes me more determined to make the most of the time I do have.’
For a while we’re silent, listening to the muffled sounds of the TV downstairs, the odd hum of a car turning on to her quiet street. I think about Mum. She was only thirty-seven when she died. That’s longer than a lot of people get, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing can convince me that it was enough.