‘I’m ready, Simon.’
‘I’m not. Please don’t go without me.’
‘I have to. And we have two wonderful children who need you.’
‘But I need you.’
‘And one day, by God’s good grace, we will find each other again. But for now, let’s enjoy the time we have together, shall we?’
She rose to her feet and moved her hand towards mine. We linked fingers and I wrapped my other arm around her skeletal waist as we swayed together for the last time. And, as if on cue, the band began to play the opening bars of ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’.
CATHERINE
Northampton, two years earlier
9 April
Radiotherapy and chemotherapy had ravaged my looks, sapped my strength and ruined my wardrobe, but thirteen months after my diagnosis, they gave me back my life.
‘The tumorous cells have entered a phase where they’ve stopped growing or multiplying,’ explained Dr Lewis, with a broad smile on his face. He looked like the news was going to change his life, not mine. ‘I’m really pleased, Catherine.’
I slumped down in my chair and nearly screamed with relief. He might have delivered news like that to a thousand patients over the years, but Dr Lewis couldn’t possibly have known just how much it meant for me to hear I was going to live. It meant God had listened when I’d asked him for more time: that now I’d have the chance to see my granddaughter grow up, watch my children get older, and to do all the things I’d never made time to do on my wish list.
‘It doesn’t mean the cells will never appear again,’ he warned, ‘but it could mean the tumour has been destroyed and the area it occupied in the brain is composed of only dead tissue.’
‘So what you’re telling me is I’m brain-dead.’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes. Now you won’t need to come back to see me for another three months.’
I stood up to leave, and was about to thank him for all he had done when I remembered the promise I’d made to myself about taking a gamble.
So instead I asked: ‘Does it have to be that long until I see you again?’
SIMON
Montefalco
9 April
The end came too close to our beginning.
The most gifted Italian specialists money could hire were unable to prevent the cancer from wreaking havoc on her body. The tumours wouldn’t shrink, only the eighteen months we’d hoped for. Once they infected Luciana’s lungs and seeped into her bones, there was very little any clinic could do but send her home so we could make her remaining weeks comfortable. Drugs eased her pain considerably but transformed her into a vacant, slumbering shell.
Our children had already bid farewell to the mother they’d known when a diseased impostor took her place. Hearing and observing her obvious discomfort began to scar them, so I encouraged them to embrace their youth with their friends and shun death’s waiting room. Only when she slept would I allow them into our bedroom to visit.
I employed a round-the-clock staff of nurses to attend to Luciana’s needs, but for the most part, I took care of her myself as best I could. I had not wanted to admit how vulnerable she was, but begrudgingly I accepted that was exactly what she’d become. The emaciated frame that barely dented our bedsheets bore little resemblance to the enigma I’d loved. Her angular bones jutted out of her paper-thin flesh. Her olive skin had greyed and her eyes remained glued tight.
I felt her pain as much as anyone watching a loved one in physical distress could. It didn’t matter what dose of anaesthetic the syringe driver regulated her body with – it simply wasn’t enough.
After one awful night in our crepuscular hole, she clasped my fingers tightly as lucidity made its slight return.
‘You know what to do, Simon,’ she groaned, opening her eyelids to reveal whites pricked with brown flecks. She referred to a conversation we’d never had, yet both understood.
Please don’t ask me to do this, I yearned to reply. But if you truly love someone with every ounce of your being, you’ll die for them, or you’ll help them to die if waiting for the inevitable is too much for them to bear.
‘You’re sure?’ I hardly needed to ask.
She nodded slowly. ‘Tell our children I love them. And promise me that before you join me, you will make things right with God and with Catherine. She must know what you did and that you are sorry.’
She felt my hesitancy and squeezed my fingers again. ‘I hurt too much to live,’ she continued, ‘but I’m terrified to leave in case I never see you again. You must give me your word.’
She stared at me with such expectation that I knew I couldn’t make my last promise to her a lie.
‘You have my word,’ I replied.
The corners of her darkened lips rose very slightly before her eyes closed one last time.
My legs were heavy as I walked from her bed towards the medicine trolley in the bathroom. My hands shook as I followed her nurse’s instructions on how to prep a syringe.
I drew triple the required amount of morphine from the vial and went back to her. It took all the courage left in my heart to place the needle tip into a near-invisible vein in her forearm. Then I reluctantly pushed the plunger until the glass barrel drained.
In less than a minute, her agony made way for sweet relief.
As she lay before me, I climbed onto our bed, placed my head on her chest and listened to the ever-quieting sound of her heartbeat. Its gentle, diminishing rhythm eased me to sleep where I dreamed of the day my own would do the same.
When I awoke, I was alone in the world again.
Northampton, today
6.40 p.m.
It was the first time in twenty-five years either of them had a true understanding of the other’s suffering.
Being with Luciana at her worst allowed him a much clearer impression of what Catherine had been through when she was sick. Maybe God’s wrath hadn’t only been directed at him, but at all those he’d touched, too. He regretted she’d not had a soulmate to take care of her. She’d had the support of their children, but if he and she were anything alike, she would have shielded them from the worst of it and carried her pain alone as best she could.
There had been little about him she could identify with that day. From the gutlessness of his escape to the lives he’d ruined and taken away, sometimes she felt like he was reading extracts from a stranger’s diary.