Chapter 19
NINETEEN
LAUREL
It looked like a meal prepared for a poorly child.
On the tray was a boiled egg with a crocheted egg cosy covering it, a plate of toast buttered and sliced into strips, an orange cut into pyramids, a glass of milk and three chocolate Hobnobs.
There was also a tiny glass vase – actually, I saw when I looked more closely at it, it was an empty tonic-water bottle – holding a single, perfect red rose.
When I’d arrived at the house a few minutes earlier, I’d seen a profusion of identical roses blooming in the beds in the garden square. Anna must have been out and picked it, perhaps after she put the egg on to boil and pressed the lever on the toaster.
‘You may as well take this up for him,’ she said dismissively, as if I was the hired help. ‘He won’t eat much.’
She looked shattered. Her hair was unwashed, scraped back from her face with a scrunchie in the same dark red as Lulu’s school uniform. There were dark hollows under her eyes and her jeans hung loosely on her hips.
‘Of course.’ I picked up the tray, doing my best to smile encouragingly. ‘Boiled egg and soldiers – if that doesn’t tempt him, nothing will. You should make one for yourself – sit down for a bit.’
Anna looked at the open box of eggs on the kitchen counter as if she’d only just realised it was there. ‘I’m not hungry. And I really don’t need self-care tips from you, thank you.’
Her words stung, and I had to bite back a sarcastic retort.
There was no point in rising to her anger – not only would it get me nowhere (except possibly slung out into the street without having seen Gray), but her feelings were totally understandable.
She was furious – with me, with the world, no doubt with Gray himself – and I couldn’t blame her for it.
‘Did he have a bad night?’ I asked gently.
She sat down on one of the stools by the counter, as suddenly as if she was a puppet whose strings had been cut. ‘They’re mostly bad now. The carers come and get him ready for bed, then again in the morning, but it’s the time in between.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s not easy.’
‘It’s like when the kids were babies.’ She pulled a square of paper towel off the roll and looked at it the same way she’d looked at the eggs, then folded it in half and blew her nose. ‘Except I’m twelve years older, I don’t have a husband to help me, and…’
I waited. It was almost as if she had forgotten it was me she was talking to.
‘And with babies everyone tells you it’ll get better, but this won’t. At least, not until…’ She trailed off, not wanting to say the words that were on her mind as they were on mine.
I felt emotion welling up inside me, sweeping away my careful veneer of composure.
I was angry too. I was hurting too. And I was full of self-loathing because, in spite of all Anna was going through, I envied her.
I was jealous as all hell of the time she was getting to spend with Gray when I wasn’t – jealous in a way I’d never been before I knew the hours and days he had left were finite in number.
I put down the tray, pulled a tissue out of my pocket and dabbed my eyes. Anna watched me coldly, as if by my display of weakness I was trying to detract from her own pain.
‘You should take that up before it gets cold,’ she said.
‘Anna – let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help. Please.’
Her lips tightened and she shook her head. She wasn’t letting me in – wasn’t granting any more privileges than she already had. ‘You can let yourself out and leave the tray in the hallway.’
I said, ‘Okay,’ again, turned away and set off up the stairs.
Gray was awake, sitting in an armchair by the window, next to the bed.
The curtains were open and the morning light fell across his face.
It had only been a week since I last saw him, but the change in him was noticeable – shocking, even.
His cheeks were hollow, and the veins on his hands stood out like twisted strings.
I could see his abdomen swollen with ascites, pushing against the fabric of his pyjamas.
The skin on his feet above his slippers was bone white.
But when he saw me, he managed a smile.
‘Room service,’ I announced, stepping through the door. ‘Would you like this on your lap?’
‘Stick it on the bed for now,’ he said, ‘and come here.’
I did as he asked, squatting down next to him so he could fold me in his arms. There was still strength in him, as if all the power from his wasted muscles had been absorbed, concentrated into bone and sinew.
When he kissed me I could smell his familiar aftershave and toothpaste alongside the other smell – the smell of acetone or pear drops on his breath, which was familiar too, in a different way.
We held each other for a long time, until my Achilles tendons were screaming from squatting.
‘You should eat your breakfast,’ I said at last.
He looked at the tray. ‘I can smell those roses through the window. I wonder if Anna will ever be able to enjoy them again.’
I didn’t know the answer to that, but I didn’t need to respond because his train of thought had already moved on.
As I settled the tray on his legs, removing the speckled brown egg from its woolly hat and carefully slicing off the top, he went on, ‘I thought we’d be able to sleep together again. Well – not sleep, but…’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘Just a couple of weeks ago, I was lying here with a massive hard-on, imagining you walking in and taking your clothes off. But you didn’t come that day.’
‘I must’ve been working. Damn – I missed out on the fun.’
He dipped a piece of toast in his egg and ate it, then took another. ‘I suppose that ship has sailed. And we wouldn’t have done it anyway.’
‘We couldn’t have. Not with Anna here. Not even if she wasn’t. It wouldn’t be right.’
‘I know. I wouldn’t have expected you to. Funny – that night at Eldercombe Manor was the last time, and we had no idea.’
My heart twisted with sadness. ‘And the time before that – in my room at Mel’s flat.’
‘The penultimate time. And before that…’
‘The Premier Inn. Scene of our most passionate moments.’
He smiled and ate half another toast finger. ‘Shame I left it so late to level up the romance.’
‘You didn’t.’ I leaned forward from my perch on the bed so our knees were touching. ‘It all felt pretty damn romantic to me. Even the Premier Inn.’
‘Even the time in my car by the McDonald’s Drive-Through in Barking?’
‘Especially that,’ I teased. ‘I’ll never feel the same way about a Philly Cheese Stack again.’
He laughed, pushing the tray away. ‘I’m done here. Eat some orange, if you can, so Anna won’t feel hurt.’
I put the tray back on the bed and took a piece, holding my hand under my chin to catch the juice as I bit into it.
Gray said, ‘Laurel.’
I reached for his hand and held it, feeling the stickiness transfer from my fingers to his, waiting for him to say what he needed to say.
‘That’s not going to happen now. You and me having a final shag. Is it?’
‘I don’t think so.’
He nodded. ‘I think it’s time for me to move to a hospice, don’t you?’
I took a breath, trying to steady myself and find the right words. ‘It’s time whenever you want it to be. Or not at all, if you’d rather stay here.’
‘The kids are struggling.’ He spoke as if it was an effort to admit it.
‘I see Lulu’s face when she walks in here to see me, and it kills me.
I hear Barney stop outside the door and not come in, because he can’t face seeing me.
And it’s too much for Anna. She thinks she’s coping but she’s breaking.
I can tell. She’s only holding it together for them. ’
I could tell too. ‘There’s more help available if you need it. She can speak to the district nurse. There’s Hospice at Home, or even just a respite stay.’
‘Except it wouldn’t be a respite, would it?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, Gray. Prognostics is tricky, your oncologist will have told you that. No one knows.’
‘Could be weeks, could be days,’ he said.
‘I’d be surprised if it was days,’ I said gently. ‘But…’
‘Not months, either.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not months.’
‘Then it’s time,’ he said. ‘Best to get it done when… Before there’s some kind of crisis. I don’t want the kids…’
He stopped, pressing a hand over his eyes.
‘I get it,’ I said. ‘This’ll be their home for a while yet.’
‘That’s right. I want Lulu to bring a boyfriend home from uni for Christmas and not have to be like, “And this here’s the room where Dad carked it.” I don’t want Barney having nightmares. I want this house to be somewhere they’ll always remember feeling safe.’
‘You must do whatever feels right. It’s totally, one hundred per cent your decision.’
‘I don’t want…’ He paused, taking a breath that I could hear was unsteady. ‘I don’t want it to hurt, Laurel. I’m fucking terrified of that. It’s bad already, sometimes, but what happens later, if I can’t tell people it’s hurting?’
God. I’d given this reassurance to many people before – the families of patients, mostly, occasionally friends whose loved ones were dying and thought that I was somehow the fount of all knowledge on the subject. But giving it to Gray was harder than almost anything I’d ever done before.
‘Palliative care is really good.’ I hated the way those words sounded – bland and professional, with nothing of the sick, churning sadness I was feeling inside. ‘You’ll have all the pain relief you need.’
‘Does that mean I’ll be off my tits on morphine?’
I laughed. ‘Yeah, basically.’
‘Laurel…’ He hesitated, turning over my hand and tracing a pattern on it, a simple right angle, like the letter L, down and to the right then to the left and up again. ‘Do people… in your experience, when they’re dying and on morphine, do they say things without meaning to?’
‘I guess…’ I spoke slowly, weighing each word, wanting to be as truthful as I could but also not knowing the full truth; wanting to reassure him but also not wanting to lie to him.
‘I guess sometimes they do. But the thing is, by that stage, most people aren’t very lucid.
It’s like when you talk in your sleep, or you’ve just woken from a dream and you’re not sure what’s real. It doesn’t always make a lot of sense.’
He sighed. ‘I think I’ve decided. And I’ll have a nap now. Can you…’
‘Give you a hand getting back to bed? Sure. Let me put this out of the way.’
I picked up the tray, put it down on the floor by the door and turned back the covers. I helped Gray to his feet and on to the bed, although he was so light I could have lifted him easily. I plumped his pillows and made sure the pyjama top was smooth under his back.
Then I sat down next to him again, cleaned the orange juice off both our fingers with a wet wipe, and took his hand in mine.
‘Laurel.’ He looked at me, his eyes fathomless with fear. ‘Will you be with me when I die? Will you hold my hand like this?’
I wondered if he knew how badly I wanted to promise him anything, even if I wouldn’t be able to keep my promise.
‘But Anna…’
‘She’s doing so much for me,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell her it’s not enough. I can’t tell her how scared I am. I can’t tell her I know she’s not coping.’
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. I’m here. I’ve got you. I love you.’
‘I love you,’ he murmured, his eyes closing.
I waited until he was asleep, then got up, took the tray and left the room, full of dread for the conversation I was about to have with Anna.
As I descended the stairs, I thought, What is it you don’t want anyone to hear you saying, Gray?