For minutes and then hours – long after Edward comes in, long after he has called the doctor, long after the doctor has written out the certificate to finalise a life so short-lived – Audrey lies next to her little girl, holding her tight, determined Zoe should know that Audrey would never leave her.
And for all the time Audrey lies there with Zoe – all the seconds that pass into minutes, and the minutes that pass into hours – the same single thought repeats silently in her mind, somewhere between a prayer and a lamentation.
If I could have given my life for you, I would.
Chapter 58
Audrey
Audrey opened her eyes and blinked her tears into the bright light of the afternoon sun, her head throbbing with remembrance.
She took a moment to get her bearings. A foreign city. Boaters on a lake. Water flanked by trees and buildings. And either side of her, sitting on the bench, two sisters who had been estranged for over two decades because of the secret she had kept from them.
She thought back to the evening of Zoe’s funeral: she and Edward sitting silently on the sofa, only a single table lamp illuminating the darkness, neither of them able to muster the energy to clear the plates of curling sandwiches and lipstick-marked paper cups that guests had left behind. Lily and Jess had been in bed already and Audrey had wished she could not be far behind but had known there was little point because for the ten days since Zoe’s death sleep had been elusive and the only thing Audrey could now be sure of when she climbed under the duvet and shut her eyes was that she would be greeted by the memory of Zoe’s body, encased in her arms, as the life had ebbed out of her.
She remembered glancing across to where Edward was sitting, staring straight ahead. She had felt guilt clawing at her throat like rats in a cellar demanding to be let out, and eventually she had found the courage to tell him what she had done.
He had looked at her – unblinking, disbelieving – but she had seen the realisation spread across his face like the tentative light of an early dawn.
How could you? How could you make that decision and not even tell me? She was our little girl, ours. Not yours. It wasn’t your decision to make. You had no right, Audrey, no right.
His words had brimmed with rage and she had not known what to do to calm the tempest of his fury. But then he had turned to her and his voice, when he had next spoken, had been quiet, barely more than a whisper.
You killed her, Audrey. You killed our little girl.
His eyes had glimmered with anger but there had been something beyond that, something that had made Audrey flinch even though she did not, at first, understand why: he had looked at her not just with disbelief but with contempt.
She had placed a hand on his arm in the hope that they might begin to find their way back to one another but the violence with which he had shaken her off had made her recoil.
Don’t touch me, Audrey. I mean it. I don’t want you near me. How could you? How could you have done that? I will never, ever be able to forgive you.
I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. You know that. The last thing I’d ever want is to hurt you or the girls. You must know that.
He had turned to her then, his eyes stony, his voice wrapped in ice.
Do you know the worst thing? Zoe was bearing that pain – she was strong – but you were weak. You were too weak to bear the pain with her. What kind of mother does that make you? What kind of mother can’t look after their own child when they need them most? I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done. And I’ll never forgive myself for having failed to stop you.
Just over twelve weeks later, when Audrey had run past the parked police cars and into the sitting room to find Jess hysterical and to be told what Edward had done, she had known immediately that she was to blame.
So many times during the intervening years she had spent sleepless nights thinking about how different their lives might have been had she never told Edward the truth, wondering whether he might still be alive, whether they might still be married, happy even. Whenever she had seen a newspaper report or watched a documentary about a child surviving cancer against the odds, she had heard Edward’s allegations resounding in her ears until she had understood that there needed to be only the thinnest sliver of doubt between conviction and uncertainty for the guilt to slip in and consume you every single day of your life.
Sitting now on a bench in Central Park between her daughters, Audrey thought back to that morning in Zoe’s room, administering those doses of morphine in an attempt to alleviate her daughter’s suffering. She remembered how she had sensed a change in the air, a tiny disturbance of light, but had been too preoccupied to turn around and investigate. She thought about Jess’s accusation and her hatred of Lily all these years, Jess’s words hammering in her ears: I saw you coming out of her room. I saw the expression on your face. You were white as a sheet. You barricaded yourself against the door, and I knew – I just knew – something terrible had happened.
And all at once Audrey understood that decades of unspoken stories were like strata of ancient rock: layer upon layer of family secrets impacting on one another until the truth was hidden so far beneath the surface that only the most committed could excavate it.
Audrey looked from left to right, from Lily to Jess.
‘Lily didn’t kill Zoe, Jess. It was me. I was the one who helped Zoe to die.’
She turned to Lily and held her gaze even as she longed to look away. ‘But you already knew that, didn’t you, Lily?’
Chapter 59
Lily
Lily felt the heat of her mum’s understanding, felt a history she had long since buried begin to resurface.
For years she had speculated as to the cause of Jess’s hostility but never once had she imagined that Jess had got the facts so very nearly right but all the key players wrong. All this time she had imagined that it was their dad’s death Jess blamed her for, even though she had never been able to pinpoint why. Only now did Lily understand that Jess had plugged the gap in her knowledge with her own version of the truth. Because sometimes, Lily knew only too well, the only way to make sense of the incomprehensible was to tell yourself a story.
Lily raised her head to look at her mum, at her marbled, tear-stained cheeks and the bones jutting from her skin like mountains rising from the earth. As their eyes locked, she realised that the secret she had kept for almost thirty years was no longer hers alone.
Chapter 60
23 June 1988
Lily is standing outside the door to the spare bedroom, hovering on the cusp of a decision. She has been told not to go inside but before she leaves for school she wants to say goodbye to Zoe. She knows how ill her little sister is, and ever since Zoe came home from the hospital two weeks ago, whenever Lily now leaves the house she fears that Zoe may not be there when she gets home.
Turning the door handle silently, Lily slips into the room, her breath held in her chest so as not to make a sound, fearful of disturbing Zoe should she still be sleeping. She sinks her bare toes noiselessly into the thick pile of the carpet, opens the door only enough for her body to squeeze through, careful not to bring too much light into the room. She knows that light can hurt Zoe’s eyes, does not want to do anything that might unsettle her.
It is dark in the spare bedroom, only the faintest morning light visible around the edges of the closed curtains. She can just make out the shape of the blue hummingbirds that pattern the wallpaper around the window but everything else is in silhouette. The air is still and smells pungent – sharp and slightly sweet – like overripe fruit or an open bottle of vinegar.