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The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

Information about the book
Life is short. No-one knows that better than seventeen-year-old Lenni living on the terminal ward. But as she is about to learn, it's not only what you make of life that matters, but who you share it with.
 
Dodging doctor's orders, she joins an art class where she bumps into fellow patient Margot, a rebel-hearted eight-three-year-old from the next ward. Their bond is instant as they realize that together they have lived an astonishing one hundred years.
 
To celebrate their shared century, they decide to paint their life stories: of growing old and staying young, of giving joy, of receiving kindness, of losing love, of finding the person who is everything.
 
As their extraordinary friendship deepens, it becomes vividly clear that life is not done with Lenni and Margot yet.
 
Fiercely alive, disarmingly funny and brimming with tenderness, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot  unwraps the extraordinary gift of life even when it is about to be taken away, and revels in our infinite capacity for friendship and love when we need them most.
 
 
 
 
 
 
EXTRACT:
 
Part One
 
Lenni
 
When people say ‘terminal’, I think of the airport.
I picture a wide check-in 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?’
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.
I took my drip tube, which was attached to my drip wheelie
thing, and walked towards him.
‘I’ll be back in an hour,’ the new nurse told me, and then
she said something else, but I wasn’t listening. Instead, I was
staring up, where the light shone in and the glow of every
shade of pink and purple imaginable was striking my irises.
‘Do you like the window?’ he asked.
A cross of brown glass behind the altar was illuminating
the whole chapel. Radiating from around the cross were jagged
pieces of glass in violet, plum, fuchsia and rose.
The whole window seemed like it was on fire. The light
scattered over the carpet and the pews and across our
bodies.
He waited patiently beside me, until I was ready to turn
to him.
‘It’s nice to meet you, Lenni,’ he said. ‘I’m Arthur.’ He
shook my hand, and to his credit he didn’t wince when his
fingers touched the part where the drip burrows into my skin.
‘Would you like to sit?’ he asked, gesturing to the rows of
empty pews. ‘It’s very nice to meet you.’
‘You said.’
‘Did I? Sorry.’
I wheeled my drip behind me and as I reached the pew, I
tied my dressing gown more tightly around my waist. ‘Can
you tell God I’m sorry about my pyjamas?’ I asked as I sat.
‘You just told him. He’s always listening,’ Father Arthur
said as he sat beside me. I looked up at the cross.
‘So tell me, Lenni, what brings you to the chapel today?’
‘I’m thinking about buying a second-hand BMW.’
He didn’t know what to do with that, so he picked up the
Bible from the pew beside him, thumbed through it without
looking at the pages, and put it down again.
‘I see you . . . er, you like the window.’
I nodded.
There was a pause.
‘Do you get a lunch break?’
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s just, I was wondering whether you have to lock up the
chapel and go to the canteen with everyone else, or if you can
have your break in here?’
‘I, um—’
‘Only, it seems a bit cheeky to clock out for lunch if your
whole day is basically clocked out.’
‘Clocked out?’
‘Well, sitting in an empty church is hardly a nose-to-the-grindstone
job, is it?’
‘It’s not always this quiet, Lenni.’
I looked at him to check I hadn’t hurt his feelings, but I
couldn’t tell.
‘We have Mass on Saturdays and Sundays, we have Bible
readings for the children on Wednesday afternoons, and I get
more visitors than you might imagine. Hospitals are scary
places; it’s nice to be in a space where there are no doctors or
nurses.’
I went back to studying the stained glass window.
‘So, Lenni, is there a reason for your visit today?’
‘Hospitals are scary places,’ I said. ‘It’s nice to be in a space
where there aren’t any doctors or nurses.’
I think I heard him laugh.
‘Would you like to be left alone?’ he asked, but he didn’t
sound hurt.
‘Not particularly.’
‘Would you like to talk about anything specific?’
‘Not particularly.’
Father Arthur sighed. ‘Would you like to know about my
lunch break?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘I take it at one until twenty past. I have egg and cress
on white bread cut into small triangles, made for me by my
housekeeper. I have a study through that door’ – he pointed
– ‘and I take fifteen minutes to eat my sandwich and five to
drink my tea. Then I come back out. But the chapel is always
open, even when I’m in my study.’
‘Do they pay you for that?’
‘Nobody pays me.’
‘Then how do you afford all the egg and cress sandwiches?’
Father Arthur laughed.
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Lenni and Margot          
 
by Marianne Cronin
 
 
 
 
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