Jake swipes the screen. His face glows.
We’re sitting on my bedroom floor using his mobile to surf the Internet. His dad gave it to him to make up for never being around.
‘It says you need to work out your BMI,’ he reads from the obesity section of the NHS website.
‘What’s that?’
‘Body Mass Index.’ He taps the screen. ‘Here, there’s a calculator. Your mum’s forty, right?’
‘Forty-two.’
‘And she’s what, five foot two?’
‘Yeah, roughly that.’ We’ve never measured Mum but she’s a bit taller than me and I’m five feet.
‘And her chart at the hospital said she was thirty-seven stone?’
I nod. My stomach churns. I’m not sure I’m ready to have a calculator tell me how overweight Mum is. Though I guess I’ve heard the worst of it from the nurses already.
Jake shakes his head. ‘Wow.’
‘What?’
‘She’s 97.2.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, put it like this: if your BMI is over 40, you’re classified as obese.’
‘Mum’s not obese.’ I’d seen pictures of women who were obese when I was doing research on the Internet the other day. Obese people have massive rolls of fat that hang over each other and tummies that swung between their legs and they have ten thousand wobbling chins and they can’t go on airplanes because they wouldn’t be able to fit on the seats. Mum isn’t like them.
‘I think she is, Feather.’
‘Let me see that.’ I snatch his phone and scroll down. And then I see a paragraph that makes me freeze:
An individual is considered morbidly obese if he or she is 7 stone over his/her ideal body weight, has a BMI of 40 or more, or 35 or more, and experiencing obesity-related health conditions, such as high blood pressure or diabetes.
‘Morbidly…’ I say under my breath. ‘That means dead, right?’
Jake doesn’t answer.
‘Maybe it’s not a good idea to read too much of this stuff,’ Jake says, holding out his hand for his phone.
I grip the phone harder. ‘It means dead – dead-like?’
‘Yeah, but your mum’s going to be fine. We’ll make sure of it.’
I keep looking down the article…
Symptoms of morbid obesity:
• osteoarthritis
• heart disease
• stroke
• diabetes
• sleep apnea (when you periodically stop breathing during sleep)
The list goes on and on.
Jake grabs his phone back and switches it off.
‘We’ll work it out, Feather.’
There’s a creaking on the stairs. We look towards the door.
‘Your dad?’ Jake asks.
I nod. Dad’s been hiding away in his bedroom all evening. The fact that he’s going downstairs can mean only one thing: he’s given in and decided to spend the night in his bed in the lounge next to Mum. My heart does a little jump. Maybe he’s beginning to realise that he has to help her. Maybe he does still love her.
The lounge is just under my bedroom, so I can hear everything that goes on in there. Including Mum’s snoring and, until we put the TV in the garage, her re-runs of Strictly.
I close my eyes and imagine Dad getting into his stripy PJs and slipping into his bed pressed up against Mum’s double bed. I even imagine him curling up to Mum, putting his arm across her – even if he can’t quite reach all the way round.
The backs of my eyes go hot and prickly: he does still love her, I know he does.
A few moments later, I hear banging.
‘What was that?’
We stand up and go to the landing.
More banging comes from the lounge.
I shake my head. ‘I’m an idiot. Dad hasn’t gone to join Mum, he’s gone downstairs to get his bed.’
‘You can’t be sure…’ Jake says.
‘I’m sure.’
The banging goes on for a while and then, when Jake and I go back to my bedroom and squeeze onto my bed and stare up at the ceiling, we hear Dad stomping up and down the stairs as he carries the bed back upstairs, a plank at a time.
And you know the worst of it? He and Mum don’t say a word to each other. Our cottage is so small you can hear everything. And I know it’s not because Mum’s asleep because she doesn’t sleep at night: she has naps in the day in front of the telly. Or she did when she had the telly. And anyway, she’d have been woken up by all his banging.
No, they don’t exchange a single word.
‘Your parents are made for each other,’ Jake says. ‘They’ll work it out.’
I shake my head. ‘Dad’s not going to help me. After everything that’s happened in the last few days, he’s not even going to make an effort to get closer to Mum.’
I don’t know how I’m going to help Mum get better on my own. Even Steph, who usually always makes things better, can’t help because Mum’s blanking her. And Mum won’t help herself because she doesn’t get it, how sick she is.
‘I’m here, Feather,’ Jake says.
I turn to face him. His eyes look glassy in the blue shadows of my bedroom.
‘I’m not going to sit back and risk losing Mum,’ I say.
‘I know. We’re going to work on this together. We’ll do whatever it takes.’
‘You really mean that?’
He nods. ‘I really mean that. It’s going to be okay, Feather. It’s all going to be okay.’
I lean my head on his shoulder and close my eyes and my heartbeat slows and I try really hard to believe him.
