Chapter 43

JADE

Just over a week into Jade’s Australia adventure and Kevin’s health was deteriorating quickly.

He was losing his appetite and spending more and more time sleeping in his bedroom. Despite the thirty-five-degree temperature outside, Kevin often complained he was cold and layered himself in baggy clothing. He swallowed so many tablets each day that sometimes, when she listened closely, she swore she could hear him rattle.

Jade was resentful that their time together was slipping through her fingers and she wasn’t prepared for it to come to an end. So while he was awake, she did all she could to engage him in conversation and spend time being with him. They spent much of their days talking about their lives before she left England and before he was diagnosed with cancer. Hours passed as they lay sprawled across the sofa in his bedroom watching classic 1980s Brat Pack films on Netflix, and they grew so comfortable with each other that there were times when Jade forgot her moments with Kevin came with a time limit. When she was reminded of it, she couldn’t help but imagine how her life would change when he wasn’t around anymore, and she felt herself becoming sullen.

In the beginning of their relationship, when Jade lived in blissful ignorance of Kevin’s condition, talking to him had become an integral part of her everyday routine, and she planned her mornings and evenings around it. She’d set her alarm so she could wake up earlier than necessary and talk to him as they ate together – her, breakfast and him, supper. And she’d always record anything on TV that was broadcast after 10pm to watch later, so they had more time of an evening.

Jade was used to her heart fluttering when he texted her or when her phone lit up with his call. And she knew that when the unavoidable came, she would miss that. But what she had yet to figure out was if it was Kevin she’d miss or the knowledge there was someone in the world who was made for her.

As Kevin slept, Jade would lie beside him with her head on his stomach as it rose and fell with shallow breaths. And during the long periods when Kevin was out of action, she’d offer to help his parents Susan and Dan around the house, or drive into town to run errands for them. They taught her how a dairy and sheep farm operated, taking her out in the truck to help round up the sheep, or teaching her how to affix the milking equipment to the cows. It was a whole world away from the one she’d been stagnating in in Sunderland. But she now saw that the city wasn’t the problem, it was her. Something about the quiet farming life agreed with her, and she felt like she could finally relax into who she was.

Jade was astonished at how close she could feel to people she had only met two weeks ago, and she desperately wished there was a way that she could remove the pain they felt as they watched their son struggle. The more time she spent around them, the more she felt that they were sanding away her rough edges.

It also made her think of her own parents, and the sadness and frustration she’d put them through in recent years. She had spent so long harbouring this unnecessary animosity towards them for making her move back home after she left university, and only now did she understand it was for her own benefit. They were good, solid, working-class Northerners – her father a mechanic on a car factory assembly line and her mother a baker – and she had repaid their pride and values with brattish behaviour. She felt ashamed of herself.

Like Kevin’s cancer and Susan and Dan’s pain, there was something of her own she wished she could remove too, but it wasn’t something she could ever share with her new adoptive family.

However, as each day passed, her affection became all the more consuming.