“Amen,” muttered George. Annie was staring at the screen, openmouthed.
“So go on. Do it. Seize life. And that’s me done. In more ways than one. Everyone, please don’t say I lost my battle with cancer. I didn’t lose anything. Truth is, there are some things you just can’t fight, no matter what you throw at it. Dr. Max did his best to save me, and no one could have tried harder, but it didn’t work. That’s just life. It can’t all be positive. After you dance in a fountain you have to dry your feet. After you ride the roller coaster you might have to be sick in a bin. It’s all a balance. And please don’t worry about me—I’m really okay. I was so desperate to be remembered, but in the last few weeks I’ve realized I will be, no matter what. That you’ll think of me when you hear a certain song on the radio, or smile at a joke I told you, or drink a coffee in the sun, or wear your favorite outfit. I know I’ll be remembered, and that means I won’t be gone from you. Not really.” She made an ironic V-sign. “And so...peace out, dudes.” And the screen went blank.
“Annie?” She turned, hearing his voice. Dr. Max was standing in the doorway, his tie loose and sleeves rolled up. “Did you put her up to this?”
“No! I had no idea. I swear!”
“Because I won’t be pushed around by you two. All these mixed messages, getting close, then pulling away. I won’t have it, Annie.” And he turned and went out the front door, slamming it behind him so panes of glass rattled in the windows.
She stood for a moment, frozen. “Run after him!” shouted Costas. “You have not seen any rom-com movie, ever?”
So she ran. She huffed up the street after his rapidly retreating back. He was pulling his coat on as he strode, the sleeves all tangled up. “Dr. Max! Wait!”
“What do you want, Annie?”
“Er, your coat’s all...” He had the wrong arm in his sleeve. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I knew nothing about this, I promise. But I do know...she was right. About us. For me, anyway.”
He was shaking his head. “It’s too late. I’m just done, okay? I’ve given that hospital everything I have for the past ten years. My personal life. Any hope of cardiovascular fitness. Most of my friends, three relationships. And a large chunk of my hair. And what do I get back? Patients who die on me, over and over, who I can do nothing to help. Management who cut corners, and treat us like garbage, and families who threaten to sue us and moan and complain about everything we do, read Google and come in demanding second opinions. I’m done. I haven’t been able to help Polly, and I sure as hell can’t help you. She’s gone now. You’ll have to drag yourself out of the pit this time, Annie. We all do, in the end.”
“But...but...” What could she say? He was wrong? He wasn’t wrong. And the walls of her pit suddenly felt higher and slippier than ever.
He turned away again, disappearing over the hill, shouting back, “Tell Polly’s parents I’m sorry.” And he was gone.
DAY 89
Read old letters
Annie let herself into her mother’s house, feeling how still and humid the air was. Motes of dust drifted in the sunlight from the smeary window, and the panes rattled each time a bus went by on the main road. This was the house she’d grown up in, spent her whole life in until she’d met and moved in with Mike. If Annie closed her eyes she could conjure up her mother as she used to be. Dependable, if interfering at times. Always there when Annie fell over and cut her knee, or had a fight with Jane, or left Mike and ran away. Until, suddenly, she hadn’t been. Annie knew now that nobody would always be there.
“You were right, Mum,” she whispered. “There’s no such thing as a perfect life. But there is such a thing as a happy life. Maybe.”
It was so familiar—the china figurines on the mantelpiece, now in need of a good dusting. The sagging armchair where her mother had sat doing crosswords, watching TV, reading her books. The worn patterned carpet that had been there since Annie was a child. They’d never replaced anything. We can’t afford it, her mother would say. We’re not made of money. Because of your father.
And now she knew that her father had tried, at least at the end. It was too easy to imagine things being different. Eyes closed, she’d spent weekends and holidays with her father, got to know him; they’d been close and she’d felt loved. She’d had a sister. Eyes open, she was back in the noisy living room, and her father was dead. And she knew her mother would not be back here again. Annie would have to find her somewhere else to live. This house, with all its sad memories, would have to be sold.
She found the letter in the bottom drawer of her mother’s bedside table, inside a shoe box that had once held sensible flat shoes from Clarks. Annie laid her hand on it, breath held. Then, as if Polly was over her shoulder chivvying her on, she took it out of its envelope. Standard blue notepaper, scrawled writing. This was her father’s handwriting. Dear Annie. I hope your mother will pass this letter on to you... Annie’s eyes blurred, and she tucked the paper away carefully. Something to read later, maybe, when she felt stronger, when she could process all of this.
There was something else in the box, too—a scrap of fabric, the color of gone-off salmon. A fragment of the prom dress her mother had made so carefully, and Annie had rejected. The one she’d thought meant her mother didn’t care, not seeing that it really meant the opposite. Annie fished something else out. A tiny bracelet of plastic, so small she could barely fit two fingers through it. Anne Maureen Clarke. Her hospital tag as a baby. Kept all this time, just as she’d saved Jacob’s.
Burning tears choked her again, and the contents of the box began to blur. Annie sat on the pink shag carpet of her mother’s room, choked with the smell of Ana?s Ana?s and damp, and she cried for everything she’d lost, and everything she’d never had to begin with.
DAY 90
Visit a grave
The grave was like an open wound in the ground, the soil churned up, the wreaths on top already starting to look bedraggled and rotten. “You’d hate this, wouldn’t you? So unchic,” Annie said out loud. Silence. “I suppose I better start coming more often. Keep you tidied up. You’re in the same graveyard as Jacob, you know. I can visit you both.”