The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot
Marianne Cronin
About the Author
Marianne Cronin was born in 1990. She studied English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University, before earning a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham. She now spends most of her time writing, with her newly adopted rescue cat sleeping under her desk. When she’s not writing, Marianne can be found performing improv in the West Midlands, where she lives. Her debut novel The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot is to be published around the world and is being adapted into a feature film by a major Hollywood studio.
PART ONE
Lenni
WHEN PEOPLE SAY ‘terminal’， I think of the airport.
I picture a wide checkin area with a high ceiling and glass walls, the staff in matching uniforms waiting to take my name and flight information, waiting to ask me if I packed my bags myself, if I’m travelling alone.
I imagine the blank faces of passengers checking screens, families hugging one another with promises that this won’t be the last time. And I picture myself among them, my suitcase wheeling behind me so effortlessly on the highly polished floor that I might be floating as I check the screen for my destination.
I have to drag myself out of there and remember that that is not the type of terminal meant for me.
They’ve started to say ‘life-limiting’ instead now. ‘Children and young people with life-limiting conditions …’
The nurse says it gently as she explains that the hospital has started to offer a counselling service for young patients whose conditions are ‘terminal’。 She falters, flushing red. ‘Sorry, I meant life-limiting.’ Would I like to sign up? I could have the counsellor come to my bed, or I could go to the special counselling room for teenagers. They have a TV in there now. The options seem endless, but the term is not new to me. I have spent many days at the airport. Years.
And still, I have not flown away.
I pause, watching the upside-down rubber watch pinned to her breast pocket. It swings as she breathes.
‘Would you like me to put your name down? The counsellor, Dawn, she really is lovely.’
‘Thank you, but no. I have my own form of therapy going on right now.’
She frowns and tilts her head to the side. ‘You do?’
Lenni and the Priest
I WENT TO meet God because it’s one of the only things I can do here. People say that when you die, it’s because God is calling you back to him, so I thought I’d get the introduction over and done with ahead of time. Also, I’d heard that the staff are legally obliged to let you go to the hospital chapel if you have religious beliefs, and I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to see a room I’d not yet been in and meet the Almighty in one go.
A nurse I’d never seen before, who had cherry red hair, linked her arm through mine and walked me down the corridors of the dead and the dying. I devoured every new sight, every new smell, every pair of mismatched pyjamas that passed me.
I suppose you could say that my relationship with God is complicated. As far as I understand it, he’s like a cosmic wishing well. I’ve asked for stuff a couple of times, and some of those times he’s come up with the goods. Other times there’s been silence. Or, as I have begun to think lately, maybe all the times I thought God was being silent, he was quietly depositing more nonsense into my body, a kind of secret ‘F-you’ for daring to challenge him, only to be discovered many years later. Buried treasure for me to find.
When we reached the chapel doors, I was unimpressed. I’d expected an elegant Gothic archway, but instead I came up against a pair of heavy wooden doors with square frosted windows. I wondered why God would need his windows frosted. What’s he up to in there?
Into the silence behind the doors the new nurse and I stumbled.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘hello!’
He must have been about sixty, wearing a black shirt and trousers and a white dog collar. And he looked like he couldn’t have been happier than he was at that moment.
I saluted. ‘Your honour.’
‘This is Lenni … Peters?’ The new nurse turned to me for clarification.
‘Pettersson.’
She let go of my arm and added gently, ‘She’s from the May Ward.’
It was the kindest way for her to say it. I suppose she felt she ought to warn him, because he looked as excited as a child on Christmas morning receiving a train set wrapped in a big bow, when in reality, the gift she was presenting him with was broken. He could get attached if he wanted, but the wheels were already coming off and the whole thing wasn’t likely to see another Christmas.