Chapter 48.
A few days after my conversation with Lara, I drop into Mum’s house after work. The air on my walk over is layered with winter mist, scented by frost and woodsmoke.
Mum is on her sofa, wearing a voluminous kaftan in a geometric print that makes my eyes swim. She’s damp-skinned, hair wrapped in a towelling turban. I’m guessing she’s got a gig tonight, because she’s painting her nails and half singing, half humming to the Michael Bublé Christmas album.
I sit down next to her, scanning the room for booze, because I could really do with something to shear away the edges of what I’m feeling right now. But unusually, I can’t see anything.
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ I say.
‘Right.’ She draws the brush along her thumbnail with a flourish. ‘Okay.’
‘Lara’s dying.’
My mother rarely looks me in the eye. But she does now.
‘She’s got . . . cancer. It’s advanced. They can’t . . . There’s nothing they can do.’
A thick globule of nail polish drips onto Mum’s kaftan. We both look down at it for a couple of moments.
Without saying anything, Mum holds out a hand.
I pass her a tissue.
She attempts to dab the spilt polish, but ends up smearing it into a vast stain instead. Then, seeming to accept it’s ruined, she folds it over to hide the damage and says, ‘How long has she known?’
‘A few months. She wanted us to... sort everything out before she told me.’
‘There’s really nothing they can do?’
‘They’ve offered her chemo, but... it wouldn’t save her. She’s dying.’
To my surprise, she leans over and wraps her arms around me. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’
‘Remember the guy you saw Lara with?’ I say, into her Nivea-scented neck.
‘Oh yes,’ she says, pulling out of the hug. ‘Very suave gentleman.’
I nod. ‘Felix. He lives in America. And she’s... flying out there to be with him. That’s where she wants to be when...’ I trail off. I can’t say the word again, because every time I do, it makes it seem more real.
‘What’s her prognosis?’
‘They said she had a year, back in July.’ I let Mum figure out the rest, because that’s the most painful kind of maths there is.
On the stereo, Bublé starts singing ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’, and everything suddenly feels too much, too cruel.
Next to me, Mum is shaking her head in apparent disbelief. ‘Poor Lara.’
‘She’s having a living funeral next week.’
She brightens slightly. ‘Oh, they’re good, aren’t they?’ she says, like we’ve decided to switch topics to the merits of slow cookers, or that hand car wash she really rates on the Ipswich Road. ‘I know someone who had one.’
‘What did they have?’
She frowns. ‘A string quartet, I think? And a buffet – though a lot of the guests did get food poisoning the next day. There were speeches, too. It was quite similar to a wedding, really.’
I shut my eyes briefly. ‘No, Mum. What did they have, as in, what did they die of?’
‘Oh, they didn’t in the end. False alarm.’
I smile wearily. ‘This wasn’t The Duke, by any chance, was it?’
‘I just call him Duke.’
‘Right.’
‘It wasn’t, actually,’ she says. And then, thoughtfully, ‘Although they do share a lot of the same personality traits.’
My smile fades. ‘Well, Lara’s funeral... definitely isn’t a false alarm.’
‘You know, after your father stopped bothering to keep it in his trousers, I did sometimes worry about how you were faring. But I always knew you’d be okay. Do you know how?’
I shake my head, wondering what she’s on about now, praying she doesn’t mention Jamie, or anything else to do with my dad’s trousers.
‘Because you had Lara.’
I smile softly. ‘Really? That’s nice.’ I shuffle back on the sofa so I can look at her properly, tucking my legs up beneath me. Then I take a breath. ‘Jamie was cheating on me.’
It’s funny how quickly the taste of his name has already altered in my mouth. It’s turned into something oily and unpleasant – and especially today, given my oldest friend is currently having to organise her own death. But a part of me wants to let Mum know she was right. That maybe her maternal instincts weren’t so defective back then after all.
She stares at me for a couple of moments. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Lara. She said he confessed, just before he died. He was going to leave me and move to London with another girl.’
‘Was he indeed,’ she says, murderously, as if she’s already considering a midnight excursion to decant eggs and flour all over his headstone.
‘Did you know?’
‘Did I know what?’
‘That Jamie had it in him... to do that?’
‘Do I have a functioning cheating bastard radar, you mean?’
I think of The Duke, and The Duke’s wife, and smile weakly. ‘Never mind.’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m not at all surprised.’
‘I was.’
‘Well, that’s the way it always goes,’ she says sadly. ‘The first time.’
‘So you did suspect?’
She rolls her eyes faintly. ‘Of course. That boy was a shiny penny, Neve.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘Oh, you do – shiny, perfect, always glinting. They look like treasure, but in fact they’re next to worthless.’
‘Right,’ I say, surprised to realise this makes a strange sort of sense.
‘Yes. So very shiny. But I never quite felt that he was shining for you. Sometimes I’d watch him, and that smile would fall from his face as quickly as it appeared, once your back was turned. Like a curtain on a stage. His behaviour was very... performative.’
‘How come you never warned me?’
‘Would you have listened?’
‘Probably not,’ I admit.
‘Some things you can be told a thousand times by other people, but you can still only ever really discover for yourself.’
‘Well. You were right, anyway.’
‘Gosh, it doesn’t really matter who was right, does it?’
Silence spreads through the space between us. For a moment or two, we just look at each other.
‘But... what if I’d had the baby, Mum, and Jamie had survived? I’d have his child now. An eight-year-old son, or daughter. And Jamie would be... with someone else. Not me.’
Her face draws together. ‘I don’t see that there’s much point in thinking like that.’
‘And that’s exactly what happened to you. You had me, but Dad was cheating on you, and—’
‘I never regretted having you, Neve. Not once. Not ever.’
‘You found it hard, though.’
She smiles. ‘Shall I let you into a secret?’
I consider saying no, because being appraised of my mother’s secrets is usually about as fun as receiving a herpes diagnosis.
‘I found parenting hard because it is bloody hard. But would I have swapped it, or changed it? Never. I know I wasn’t like all the other mums, and I know I let you down, sometimes. But that wasn’t because I didn’t want you, or regretted having you.’
I’m finally wondering whether, in her position, I’d have fared much better. Whether I might have become dysfunctional in the way she so often seemed to me.
I think back to what she said a couple of weeks ago. You’re more like me than you think .
‘Anyway,’ Mum says, ‘I’m a better judge of character now.’
I shoot her a look. ‘No offence, but are you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Er, The Duke?’
‘Well. I’ve actually got some news for you, on that front.’
Oh God. She’s having a baby with The Duke . I’m going to have a half-sibling who’ll be born into endless drama and be given a name that sounds like a pub.
‘I’ve asked Ralph to move in.’
I blink furiously. ‘What?’
‘I’ve asked Ralph to move in with me.’
‘Which Ralph? Our Ralph?’
‘Do you know any others?’
No , I think. Ralph is one of a kind .
‘Remember what I said about very few people being worthy of your heart and devotion?’
‘Y-es,’ I say, uncertainly.
‘Well, I realised... that maybe it was time to take my own advice.’
There is a creak on the floorboard behind me. I turn to see Ralph standing in the doorway, beaming like someone who’s just been let out of prison on good behaviour.
My heart fattens with happiness. I get straight up and pull him into a hug.
‘Well, what is it they say?’ I can hear the smile in his voice. ‘Better late than never.’
I am heartbroken for Lara and boiling with fury at Jamie and buzzing for my mother and Ralph all at once. ‘Congratulations,’ I manage.
‘Daniela and I make a good team,’ he says, which makes me smile, because Mum’s team has for so long been filled with duds and last reserves. But now, finally, it seems she’s picked a winner.
‘Will you do me a favour?’ I say, pulling back from Ralph and looking at them both.
‘Of course,’ says Ralph, while my mother – true to form – waits to see what the favour is first.
‘ Please do something about the state of this place. It won’t take much. I know you’ve got the money, Mum. And I can help. Just please, please, give this beautiful house a bit of TLC... It hurts my heart, okay?’
Mum rolls her eyes. ‘I’m sure I didn’t bring you up to be this affected, but fine – if it bothers you so much.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, exhaling like I’ve just crossed some sort of finish line. ‘ Thank you.’
Later, cocooned in my bedroom back at home, I search online for any shred of hope that Lara’s cancer is curable. Unsurprisingly, I find plenty. Stories of miraculous recoveries, defying the odds, tumours shrinking then vanishing. I search for cancer experts living within any sort of radius of Santa Cruz. I think about contacting Felix, asking if he thinks his bank account might be big enough to save her.
But then a message pings on my phone. It’s from Lara.
Please understand I’m at peace with dying, Neve I know you haven’t had much time to get used to it. But it’s not up to you to save me. I’m not considering other treatments. I just want to make the most of the time I have left Xx
It takes me a long time – maybe more than an hour – to slowly shut down everything I’ve bookmarked. To strike thick black marks through the entries I’ve been making in a notebook.
Okay then, Lar .
This is not my fight, I finally realise. This is Lara’s choice, Lara’s life. Ruining the time she has left by refusing to accept the call she’s made would be the pinnacle of selfishness.
It’s mind-bendingly hard, but I know I have to respect her decision.
Before I close the laptop, I idly type in Heather’s name. I found her on LinkedIn once, years ago. Maybe it’s down to some strange, self-destructive impulse, or maybe I just want a distraction from thinking about Lara.
I find her on Instagram. She’s married, two kids, is a paramedic now. A willowy, ash-blonde beauty, she still looks about twenty, even though she must be in her thirties. When she’s not in uniform, she favours photos of herself wearing pastel colours against pastel backdrops. There are lots of shots of her standing next to flower arches. She lives in a nice part of London, judging by the many images of particularly wide and leafy sections of the Thames.
I stare at her frozen-in-time smile, astonished afresh to remember that Jamie loved her and not me. What did he promise her? What did she believe? What did she know about me? Does she ever think about him?
My fingers hover over my keypad. That tiny, electrical impulse to reconnect to a past life is still sparking somewhere inside me. I could send Heather a message, start a conversation, uncover the truth.
And then I force myself to take a breath, close my eyes, think of Lara.
Grab love with both hands and don’t let go. It’s too late for me, but it isn’t for you. Don’t waste another second.
What the hell am I doing?
I shut the laptop. It’s finally time to stop looking back.
I owe that much to Lara, and to myself.