“Sorry,” MindReader says, after calling me back. “My phone died again.”
“Hm,” I say. “I’m upgrading soon to an IPHONE, you can have my old phone.”
“Thanks,” he says.
“I don’t love you enough to give you my iPhone.”
“No, I know.”
Conversations most spouses have on their way home from work
“And what did you have for lunch?” I say to MindReader on the phone. He is driving home from work to Shrewsbury for the weekend.
“I had a duck wrap,” he says.
“And what did you eat?” I giggle.
MindReader laughs, and then quacks and claps a kind of rap to me which is impossible to type.
“God I’m on handsfree,” he says, “I look insane.”
On speaking entirely in our own language most of the time
“What are you doing?” I say as I come out of the steamy bathroom, wrapped in a towel.
MindReader is wearing jeans, a t shirt, and a tie.
“I’m trying to tie a Windsor knot,” he says, as he wraps the tie around and around a knot.
“I see,” I say. “When I bought that neck scarf I asked youtube how to do it.”
“I tried that this morning,” he says, revealing the extent of his obsession with Windsor knots, “it was way too complicated.”
“I’ll help,” I say. “I’ll go and get Larry.”
Larry is our laptop. It’s probably best not to ask.
A few minutes later I have paused the youtube video 60 times. “Now just go up and under the left knot again – no no, take it under – ooh!”
“Ooh have I done it?” he says.
“I think so?”
He looks at me and Larry for a moment, in his t shirt and tie combination. “We’re getting weirder,” he says.
Illness update
The bus and I became acquainted early last year, when it was always late and always raining.
I waited for it in Spring rains, when I didn’t know what to do about MindReader, and during Summer sunsets, when the world was glittering again.
I got the bus again today, I have sort of missed it 
How well mindreader knows me
“Mmm,” I say, spooning another mouthful of yoghurt, raspberries, chopped banana and sultanas into my mouth.
MadFather raises his eyebrows and resumes watching his film.
“You eating again?!” MindReader says, coming into the front room with the ironing board. It is true we had a roast and pudding about two hours earlier.
“Yep, I’m a growing girl,” I say, pinching the teeny tiny new layer of fat that lies along my belly. “I think sultanas are my favourite fruit.”
“So grapes, then,” he says. He turns to MadFather as my brow wrinkles in confusion. “I think you’ll need to pause your film.”
Sorry for not updating, emailing-readers, I went away!!
That’s the thing about being ill. People find it interesting.
MindReader and I are on our first night out with his friends since December. He is parking the car whilst I totter down an alleyway with his friend.
We have been to three pubs. Three pubs! I am wearing stilettos, and make up and do a pretty good job of impersonating a human for four hours a day.
“You gonna come out with us more now then?” MindReader’s friend says.
“Yep,” I nod, trying to convey 8 months of wanting to in a single gesture.
“Been a bit of a nightmare, has it?” he says, in typical boy fashion.
I nod again.
We are at the bar now. A man brushes past me and tells me I’m “bladdy leggy”, which is strange because I’m not.
I normally tell blokes like this to fuck off. But, you know, I still enjoy getting caught in the rain; it’s been too long.
“Are you glad – in hindsight – that you got ill?” MindReader’s friend says as he passes me my orange juice (yes).
I stir my drink.
Some chronic illness sufferers, or former chronic illness sufferers, smile and glibly say they are glad, because they gained new perspective, because they learned X Y and Z. And so on.
To be fair to it, it’s made me more interesting, less obsessed with what percentage I got in my Geography GCSE, etc. I’ve written half a novel, started to learn Italian, cemented my relationship with the love of my life.
But I missed all of March’s cold rains and May’s blossoms. I was too sick to eat Christmas dinner. It sometimes feels I missed a lifetime of possibilities; of lost handbags and misunderstandings, of tequila and all nighters, of the spray of sprinklers on my legs.
We sit outside, the last of the summer fireflies dancing on the Shrewsbury river. It is a spectacular backdrop.
I learnt what true despair is. Not moping, not wallowing. Of clutching my hair, of not stopping myself falling, of feeling time sweep past and pull me under. I have cried a thousand tears for this illness. And I know there will be more. We have come some of the way, but not all of it.
These lessons – they are not worth that. Was there no easier way to learn them?
Eventually, I snort. “Of course I’m not glad,” I say. “Would you be?”
I suspect he’s deadly serious
“We have got to do something about these lights,” MindReader says to me.
It is midnight and we are spooning in bed. I roll over and see that MindReader has a glowing leaf on his left eye.
The leaf lights are a tacky and treasured addition to our bedroom. I bought them in Portobello market (before I got attacked by glandular fever, obviously) and will haughtily maintain that add an air of ambiance to the bedroom. That is, when they’re not falling off the wall and onto our pillows.
MindReader sits up and picks a leaf off the his pillow.
“Do you like finding leaves in our bed?” I say, smirking.
“What’s weirder is that they’re synthetic leaves,” he says.
We sit up and pull the lights off the pillows. MindReader finds some blutack and we try to stick the leaves back up. For every bit we stick, another bit falls on one of our heads.
“Is this how you imagined living with me?” I say, as an orange leaf drifts down onto my hand.
“You know, it totally is.”
I have just opened CD1 of 5 and am having trouble pronouncing Ciao.
“I’ve had enough,” I say irrationally as MindReader walks in through the door.
He makes an mmming noise and presses his lips to mine.
“I’ve done washing, made meatballs, done ironing and I’m still bored,” I say.
He nods, an arm around my shoulders.
“I’m not having babies. I’ve done my year’s maternity leave. Just – without a baby.”
“Okay,” he says, slightly unnerved. “I know.”
I take a deep breath and ask him about his day. It is getting easier, to hear the familiar legal terms roll off his tongue and not mine. But it is not yet easy.
“Fine,” he says. “I got you this.”
He hands me a red package.
“Because you said – you said you’d like to learn Italian,” he says, “and then maybe we could go there when we’re well and you could show me what you’ve learnt?”
I smile as I unwrap the Take off in Italian! book and CD set.
“Thank you,” I say, unbelievably touched. “This is why I love you.”
And slowly, I feel less left behind, and more – on a different path.
The new shoes help
It has been quite a week. After 3 months of misery and unemployement, MadFather has finally found a job. It’s temporary and it doesn’t quite pay enough, but we’re thinking about that in December.
MindReader moved in (good) and started his job (good. for him.). I conveniently forgot what an effect MindReader becoming a lawyer would have on me. It has, selfishly, only served to remind me that my life is not going in the direction it’s supposed to be going in. Or indeed any direction.
We went out with MadFather last night, to the pub. As we were leaving, MindReader dropped back and got my bag, because I am forgetful. He handed it to me and slipped an arm around my waist.
“You okay?” He said, pulling me towards him in the middle of the pub.
And for a moment, nothing had changed.
According to MindReader it doesn’t taste ‘all that bad’.
“I’m going to bake an apple pie,” I say to MadFather. “And – bake my own pastry.”
“Blimey,” he says, following me into the kitchen.
We do it in three stages, with lying down time for me. And let me tell you, it is very stressful to have to leave a disaster to go and lie down.
But I digress.
The breadcrumbs stage goes okay. If you squeeze the “breadcrumbs” it does become dough but we can’t all be perfect can we?
The adding eggs does not go so well. I do not understand the term gradually, and my chronic illness hasn’t, as I’d hoped, taught me any patience whatsoever. At the end of the egg-adding (which by the way took lots of concentration for me to add the yolk and not the white) the dough is so sticky that when we put it into the fridge to ‘chill’ it sticks to everything and when we get it back out again – oh dear God – out come mustard pots and jars of jam IN THE DOUGH.
Cue rest.
Rolling dough obviously does not go well. Dough that is consistency of chewing gum does not “roll”.
Am supposed to roll out pastry until twice the size of baking tin, drape over and pat down to form a case.
Just like that.
This reminds me of when my year nine art exam said “draw a person and be sure to get the proportions right!”
I got 29%.
Pastry rips whenever we pull at it. Obviously it does not form a sheet. So. We cut out four rectangles and STICK THEM WITH BUTTER onto the insides of the baking tray. Then we make a base.
Cue rest. And deep breathing. And a text to MindReader which reads “PS. If you mention that I attempted to make a pie today I will deny all knowledge.”
The filling stage goes (relatively) well. Soak sultanas in orange juice (?) until plump. Soak them for two hours longer than it said. Sultanas not plump. Nevermind.
Apples which MadFather chopped in advance are VERY brown and resemble CRINKLE CUT CRISPS. Add them anyway.
Time to make a LID for the pastry. Roll out remaining pastry. It is still like chewing gum and does not roll.
I rip up the half-rolled-out “lid” and begin to stick it in lumps and clumps all over the top of the filling.
“What are you doing?” MadFather says.
“I think it is called LOSING MY SHIT.”
