Once upon a time Audrey had believed that her life was set on a clear path and that any diversion led to a complete derailment. Only now did she realise that those moments of change were not an ending but a beginning: a chance for a different kind of life, a different kind of journey, a different form of happiness.
She thought about the diary upstairs in her hotel room. All those dreams, all those ambitions. Throughout her adult life, she had packaged her desires into tidy little boxes, parcelled them up and stacked them neatly inside her head, never believing that she deserved any of them to come true. Now the only thing she wished was that she had found a little of her eleventh-hour courage sooner.
Standing in the doorway to the Rose Club in the Plaza Hotel, Audrey realised that nothing she had done over the past few months – not the choir, not the art class, not even the trip to New York – had really been about the fulfilment of those ambitions. They had all been just a framework on which to hang what really mattered: spending time with her family, and finding a way to bring them back together.
As a waiter stopped by her side and asked if he could be of any assistance, Audrey soaked up the sight of her daughters together and thought how strange it was that of all the things she had wished for on her sixteenth birthday, she had not known to include a moment like this.
She shook her head, knowing she needed to speak to Lily and Jess but feeling that theirs was a group she had not yet earned the right to join. She wanted to seek their forgiveness but was not yet ready for the possibility of rejection.
And then, just as she was contemplating going back to her room, rehearsing her apology once more and refining her explanation, giving the girls more time to accustom themselves to their own conversation before she intervened, Jess caught her eye, the two of them locking gazes for what seemed an eternity. She saw Jess turn to Lily, watched her say something, saw them both turn back to look at her in unison. She watched, her heart racing, as they stared at her. And then Lily raised a hand and beckoned her over.
For a moment Audrey’s feet refused to move, as though they weren’t yet ready to trust what her eyes were telling her. But then Lily waved again and Audrey saw on Jess’s face what she thought might have been the most tentative nod in her direction.
Walking towards them, Audrey tried to remember all the things she wanted to say. As she reached the table, both girls held out their hands towards her, and as Audrey took hold of them she felt the first flicker of hope that this might be a new beginning for all of them. Because she was certain now that a person’s story didn’t follow a straight narrative trajectory from birth to death. There were countless beginnings and endings, countless opportunities to start again. There were as many different beginnings to a life as someone was brave and kind enough to allow themselves.
Part Seven
November
Chapter 67
Jess
The sound was like water gurgling down a semi-clogged drain.
Jess sat in the dim light of the bedroom, listening to her mum’s shallow, laboured breaths.
Keep the room dark. Bright light will hurt her head, even behind closed eyes. That was what the nurse had said just over nine hours ago, shortly before Jess had telephoned Lily and suggested she and Phoebe come to Shepherd’s Bush right away.
Behind her, Jess heard someone sniff. She reached out, took Mia’s hand, squeezed gently. There were no words, Jess knew that. This was the moment language failed you.
Another breath rasped inside her mum’s chest, came wheezing out through the small parting of her lips: sharp and sour, like fruit left to ripen too long in a bowl.
Jess glanced across the bed to where Lily and Phoebe were sitting on the far side, Lily’s face pale and watchful as though she didn’t dare blink for fear of missing the moment they all knew to be imminent.
She felt a hand rest on the back of her neck, felt newly familiar fingers stroke gently along her nape, turned and met Ben’s eyes just long enough to see the concern and affection in his expression.
A short, jagged breath made its way into her mum’s lungs. It wouldn’t be long. Jess knew that without needing to be told. And the knowledge caused a wave of panic that had been ebbing and flowing throughout the night to rise into her throat with a need to mark the moment, to make this last sliver of time count for something.
She watched Mia kneel beside her, watched her daughter smooth her fingers across the papery skin of Audrey’s forehead. Glancing sideways, she saw a lone tear trickle down Phoebe’s cheek.
Jess took her mum’s hand, stroked the back of it with the pad of her thumb, wanting her mum to know she was there, that they were all there. Leaning forward she whispered in her mum’s ear, words of tenderness and gratitude that had, for so many years, remained unspoken: a torrent of love she hoped might seep into her mum’s consciousness, to be heard and understood before it was too late.
Jess turned her head, caught Lily’s eye, and nodded.
Chapter 68
Lily
Lily unscrewed the lid, inserted the syringe and drew up the medicine inside. Slowly, carefully, one drop at a time, she dripped the liquid morphine onto her mum’s tongue.
Her mum’s lips closed, as if in slow motion, and then gradually opened again, the sound of her tongue peeling from the dry roof of her mouth echoing around the room.
Lily waited for the next breath to come but her mum lay there, inert, her jaw slack, lips parted, body unmoving.
And just at the point Lily thought the moment had arrived, her mum took in another short, jarring breath, her chest rising and holding on to the air as if her body knew how very precious every last atom was.
She brought her face close to her mum’s, breathed in the sharp acetone odour on her breath as she kissed her forehead, knew from the last time, twenty-eight years ago, what that smell meant.
Lily rested her cheek against the back of her mum’s hand, brought her lips to her mum’s arid skin – skin she had kissed a thousand times before yet never with the significance with which she kissed it now – and felt the first of her tears begin to fall.
As another breath rattled in and out, Lily noticed the tiniest movement in her mum’s mouth: a fractional upending of her lips.
A smile.
Her mum was smiling. Infinitesimal and yet, to Lily, momentous.
Chapter 69
Audrey
There is something bitter on her tongue. Something metallic and bitter as though her mouth is coated in mercury. It is a familiar taste but only recently so.
She manages to close her lips although her bottom jaw feels heavy and her head wants to sink back onto the pillow. But there is something hard underneath her skull. Something is holding her head at a distance higher than the pillow, causing her neck muscles to strain against the effort.
A hand. That’s what it is. A hand.
She feels her tongue make contact with the roof of her mouth. It seems to stick there, spreading the strange flavour across her palate. For a moment she does not think she will be able to pull her tongue free but slowly, there it comes, and with it a loud sticking noise that seems to echo in her ears.
She breathes in and hears something rattle at the back of her throat. It is a noise she knows although she cannot place it. But she does not like it and wishes she was not hearing it. It is a noise that causes images to flash behind her closed eyes. Images of a darkened room, a small figure under a duvet, tiny blue hummingbirds, and waiting: waiting for something she knows will happen but wishes with all her heart would not. It is an image that squeezes something deep inside her yet she does not know whether the feeling belongs to the past or the present.
Somebody is whispering into her ear. Their breath is soft, moist, reassuring, even though the words are slippery, unable to form shapes she recognises. But it is a voice that warms the inside of her head, filling it with something familiar, something she wants more of even though she is not sure exactly what it is.