He pulls her into his arms and she knows he means to be comforting but Audrey does not want comfort. She frees herself from his embrace, walks over to the back door and looks out onto the garden that is overgrown with weeds after months of neglect. ‘But days, Edward. We can’t let this go on for days, can we? She’s in so much pain, so much distress. We can’t just sit by and do nothing, can we?’
‘We’re not doing nothing. We’re with her. We’re loving her. We’re letting her know she’s not alone.’
Audrey thinks of Zoe upstairs, struggling for breath, and panic knocks inside her chest. ‘Is that true, though? Is that really as much as we can do?’
She turns around to find Edward staring at her, unblinking. ‘What do you mean?’
Audrey hesitates, still unsure whether she has the courage to say the words out loud. ‘Morphine isn’t just for pain relief. It can do more than that …’ Her voice trails off and she isn’t brave enough to chase it back.
She watches Edward’s expression shift – confusion to uncertainty, then a flash of recognition – and he glares at her with a look she has never seen before, something between disbelief and disappointment. ‘If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, then don’t. Don’t even think it, let alone say it. It’s a dreadful thing even to consider.’
There is such incredulity in his voice that Audrey cannot bear to look at him. She feels herself falter but then remembers Zoe upstairs, her breaths shortening, her life ebbing away one inhalation at a time. ‘But she’s in pain, Edward. She’s suffering. How can you bear to see her like that and do nothing?’
‘Because I don’t believe in playing God. Anything could happen – anything. The doctors don’t know everything. She could get better, you just don’t know. Miracles do happen. You hear about them all the time in the papers.’
It is a line Edward has repeated again and again over the past fourteen months and Audrey cannot tell if he actually believes it or whether it is simply a verbal comfort blanket. He has never been a particularly religious man but this belief in miracles – in the possibility of divine intervention against all the scientific and medical odds – has erected itself as an invisible wall between them.
No, Audrey wants to say, miracles don’t happen all the time. The reason you read about them in the papers is because of how rare they are. ‘But you heard what the consultant said, you heard what Grace said. There isn’t going to be an eleventh-hour reprieve. She’s not going to get better, Edward. She’s dying. Our little girl is going to die.’
Her voice splinters, the words she has not dared say aloud before burning in the back of her throat, and there is a moment of terror that voicing them has somehow sealed Zoe’s fate, like a spell in a fairy tale that cannot be undone.
‘Stop it, Audrey, just stop it. You don’t know that. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You might have given up hope but I haven’t. I won’t give up hope until there’s nothing left to hope for. I can’t believe you’re even thinking like this, let alone talking about it. I will never give up on her, never. Now I’m going upstairs to be with Zoe. Don’t follow me – I want to be on my own with her.’
Edward’s cheeks are blotchy as he turns and leaves. Left alone in the kitchen, Audrey sheds tears for the miracle she feels certain will never arrive.
Audrey has not slept all night. She has not wanted to sleep, has not wanted to miss a second of however much time Zoe has left. Instead, she has sat by Zoe’s bed listening to her breathing, her ears attuned to every change, however small, like a bat vigilant to the sound of predators swooping through the darkness.
She knows that, in spite of Edward’s belief in miracles, Grace is right – they have already passed the beginning of the end. She does not know how long the end will be but she can sense its presence. Life is retreating from her daughter, leaving her gasping for air, her body restless and twitching, and there is nothing Audrey can do to make her better.
She runs her fingers along Zoe’s forehead where once her hairline had been. It had been such beautiful hair, so thick and shiny, just like Jess’s. Now all Audrey has left of Zoe’s hair are photographs and the single envelope of locks that she keeps tucked away in a box at the back of her wardrobe, hidden from Edward who thinks it macabre.
She leans over, kisses her daughter’s bare scalp, breathes in a smell that she silently implores to be different: she wants it to be the sweet, fragrant, childlike scent of Zoe’s first ten years, not this sour bitterness which seems to ooze from her pores as if the leukaemia is leaking out through her skin.
From the kitchen two floors below Audrey hears a loud clatter and silently curses the disruption. It is probably Edward organising the girls’ breakfasts or emptying the dishwasher. She and Edward have not spoken since their disagreement yesterday afternoon. Audrey has kept vigil by Zoe’s bed overnight while Edward has assumed the household responsibilities that had, not so long ago, been Audrey’s domain. His belief in miracles has wedged itself between them and neither of them has the strength to close the gap.
She strokes Zoe’s bare head, brushes her fingers across her forehead, over her temple, behind her ear, following the same path again and again, just as she has so many times throughout Zoe’s childhood.
Stroke my hair to sleep, Mummy.
When she was little, Zoe would ask it almost every night as she clambered under the duvet, Jess in the bunk either above or below, the two of them taking it turns each night as to who would sleep on top. Often, in the morning, Audrey would find them curled up in the same bed, their limbs tangled, flesh pressed together as though – even seven, eight, nine years after their birth – their bodies still craved being entwined in a confined space. Audrey would sit or stand by the bed, stroking Jess or Zoe’s hair, and sing to them both – ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, ‘Hush Little Baby’, ‘My Favourite Things’ – until her daughters’ breathing deepened, lengthening into that heavy, satisfied sleep in which they would remain until morning.
Now when Audrey runs her fingers along Zoe’s skin it is arid and unyielding, like writing paper puckered by dried tears.
Zoe’s eyes are closed and Audrey tries to convince herself that her daughter is asleep and dreaming, even though she knows Zoe is in something much deeper than sleep.
Morning creeps around the edge of the curtains, creating a thin shaft of light on the tiny blue hummingbirds that decorate the wallpaper. The silence is punctuated by the short, shallow breaths that rattle through Zoe’s body. They seem to serrate her throat on the way down, get caught somewhere between her lips and her lungs, forcing her to arch her neck as if trying to clear a safe passage for air to pass through. There is an invisible snag somewhere inside Zoe’s windpipe that Audrey can neither see nor cure, but she hears it, feels it as though it is reverberating through her own body.
So many times she has wished she could swap places with Zoe. So many times she has sat by her daughter’s bed, at home or in the hospital, and silently intoned the same incantation: If I could give you my blood, I would. If I could swap your damaged cells for mine, I would do it in an instant.
Now, as she watches the life receding from her daughter’s body, one rasping breath at a time, she knows without a shadow of a doubt that if she were given the chance to swap places with Zoe, she would not hesitate.
If I could give you my life, I would.
Audrey does not know which is worse: watching her little girl writhe in pain and being unable to help or wishing that her suffering would soon be over in spite of what that means.
As Zoe breathes in and the air catches in her throat, her fingers squeeze hard around Audrey’s hand with a strength she did not know Zoe still possessed. For a brief, ephemeral moment, Audrey imagines that perhaps she is being granted the miracle Edward so fervently believes in. But when she looks at her daughter’s face – sees the pinching around her closed eyes, the tensing of the muscles across her forehead, the jaw slack and mouth open – she understands that this is not the beginnings of a miracle.