Page 26 of The Book Swap

“I’m going to end it,” I interrupt before he can say anything more.

He shakes his head, running past the corner I’d normally turn down, and continuing up the hill instead. The hill of the ultimate thigh burn.

“She reckons I don’t commit to anything.”

He laughs. “And you intend to prove her wrong by...ending it?”

I can’t talk for a minute as we reach the steepest section of the park, both of us slowing to a near walk as we round the corner. My throat is burning and my legs are throbbing.

I haven’t told Joel about the book swap and I’m not going to. I can’t think how to explain it without it sounding weird, but it’s on my mind so much, I’m glad he’s brought up Helena, so I don’t just blurt it out. Ever since Wuthering Heights I keep thinking about the comments. About the person behind them and how, through Margins Girl’s gentle observations on each book, and the insight she’s given me into her life, she’s brought a new part of me alive. She’s brought my love of fiction alive, and that’s got me writing again.

“Is it true?” Joel asks, interrupting my thoughts. “That you don’t commit to stuff?”

It’s the same question I’ve asked myself, and I’ve already come up with the answer.

“No,” I say. “There’s loads of stuff I commit to.”

“Go on,” Joel says, as the ground flattens out and we increase our speed slightly with longer strides.

“Mum,” I say. It feels good to vocalize it. “Whenever she needs me, I’m there. I drive her to her appointments. I organize her medication. Do the laundry, clean the house, bring her healthy food so she’ll eat something other than fried chicken.”

“You do,” Joel replies, loyally.

“I committed to Jenny for a bit, at uni. Not for long, it has to be said, but a few months counts.”

Joel’s slightly ahead of me now. He doesn’t reply.

Taking a deep breath of the freshest London air I’ll probably get all day, my mind shifts to Bonnie.

“Bonnie,” I shout.

She’s the reason I try to enjoy these deep breaths—to take notice of them, because she told me, toward the end, how lucky I was to just breathe in and out with ease. How much people take that for granted. How much we take everything for granted.

“I was committed to her.”

He’s too far ahead of me now, unable to commit himself to the word “partner” when it comes to running.

I showed up to take Bonnie to chemo, every time that she needed me, ever since that first time.

Mum had been having a particularly bad day, in the depths of several really bad days, in the early spring almost four years ago. “I don’t want to be here anymore, James. I can’t cope,” she said, squeezing my hand. “Make it stop. Make it stop, or I will.”

“It will get better, Mum,” I said. “It always does. Just a few more days and the medication will kick in.”

“I don’t want to rely on that. I just want it all to end. If I had a knife right now, I’d do it, James. I would.”

I nodded. I ran downstairs, grabbing a bag. I filled it with every single knife I could find in the whole house. Anything that looked remotely like a knife could be used as a weapon. I found Dad in the sitting room, putting Mum’s pills into a day-by-day pillbox. I told him to get upstairs and then I packed all of the knives onto the back seat of the car, and I started driving.

I didn’t know where I was going. Helena was at work, and I needed to go anywhere that wasn’t home. Dad could cover it for a minute. He was good at that bit. He didn’t feel like it was his fault, the way I did.

Rounding the corner on Bath Street, I saw her. Bonnie. At the bus stop outside Westway Cinema. She was always so distinctive, even at school, with her halo of natural hair and her brightly colored clothes. When I realized she was crying, I pulled into the side road, parking right on the zebra crossing, and I ran to her without even thinking. Her pain distracted me from my own, and in that moment, it was all that I wanted.

“Are you okay?” I asked, before remembering she wasn’t Bonnie from school. She was adult Bonnie, who hated me as much as Erin did. Who hadn’t so much as spoken to me since before our GCSEs.

“Depends who’s asking,” she said. “If it’s you, then I’m fine.”

She looked up at the electronic timetable. The next bus going anywhere was in nineteen minutes.

“Fuck,” she muttered, wiping her eyes.

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