Chapter 51.
I am motionless in the doorway of the large conservatory of Lara’s favourite hotel on the North Norfolk coast. I just want to stand still and watch for a little while. To commit to memory the sight of my friend with all her favourite people, for the very last time.
On the drive out here with Mum, I was pensive and quiet, off-kilter with apprehension. I was baffled by the idea of this being the final time I would be in the same space as my oldest friend. How do you prepare for a goodbye like that? What’s the etiquette for the last ever day? It feels so incongruous, so at odds with being human. The best thing about being alive is the illusion it will go on for ever.
But now, standing here, the storm inside me subsides a little. Mum was right before – you could easily mistake this for a wedding reception. The room is adorned with bunches of Lara’s favourite white and blush roses, and the tables are dripping with white linen, sparkling with crystal. There are packets of forget-me-not placeholders. Snippets of laughter waft through the space. The mood is upbeat, no hint of mourning or discussion of impending death. No-one is crying. Not yet, anyway.
It’s three days before New Year’s Eve. And though it’s cold outside, crisp Christmassy sunlight has overpowered the clouds, flooding the conservatory with light. The hotel gardens roll down to the salt marsh and beyond it, the sea. Gulls soar over the glass roof, the tree branches braced against a bolt of wind. Everything seems so vital and alive. Or maybe that’s just how I’ve started to see the world, now that Lara is leaving it.
All of her immediate and extended family are here, and old friends, and friends she’s made in the years since I last knew her. And there is Felix, of course, in whose arms I now know she will pass away.
He is talking to a group – TV people maybe? – and I am struck, not for the first time, by how charming he is. Six foot three of solid-gold charisma, one of those people who talks with his whole body. It comes from years, I guess, of motivational speaking and courting investors, but underneath all that, I know he is wholly and authentically good. Magic and true, all at once. A planet of a person.
Here he is , I think. She has found him. But she can’t stay.
And now I see her, sitting with a couple of her cousins, laughing about something.
She’s wearing the pink jumper I got her for Christmas all those years ago, to replace the one she lost, and she looks beautiful. Her hair makes gold waves around her face, and aside from the slight pallor to her skin, and her laboured movements, you wouldn’t necessarily assume she was ill. She could almost be someone who’s just checked out of hospital, in fact. Got the all-clear. Rung the end-of-treatment bell. Made it to the other side.
Felix is walking towards me now. I am trying not to get too emotional, because today isn’t about me, my grief, my sadness.
We hug. He smells of soap powder and safety, and I am grateful for the warm wall of his body. ‘Thank you for making this all so much easier,’ I whisper.
He shakes his head. ‘The credit’s all hers. She knew what she wanted – I guess I just had the means to help make it happen.’
We draw back from the hug.
‘I hope you don’t think I’m taking her away,’ he says, his brown eyes scanning my face.
‘I’d never think that.’
‘She loves it out there. But for what it’s worth, I did try to persuade her to stay.’
I smile. ‘Once Lara gets an idea in her head—’
‘Oh, yes.’ He smiles too.
‘Well, your place out there looks amazing.’
‘I’d like you to come out,’ he says, sincerely. ‘Perhaps next year, after—’
‘I’d like that,’ I say, quickly, because there’s still a part of me that hopes I will call Lara in January and she will say Felix’s doctor has prescribed her a revolutionary new drug, or that she’s started ingesting some transformative herb, and the cancer has gone, she’s in remission, cured.
‘You should know,’ Felix says, ‘she always spoke very warmly of you. She always loved you, always missed you.’
‘Thank you. That means a lot. I’m just... so broken-hearted for both of you.’
He puts a hand on my arm. ‘I count myself lucky. Truly. I’d choose a few years with the best person in the world over a lifetime with someone who isn’t her, a thousand times over. I’m blessed. I’ve known it from the first moment we met.’
The time disappears too fast. I know Lara doesn’t feel up to more than a few hours. I feel the clock in my stomach tick harder with every passing minute, each time I catch her eye from across the room, and she blows me a kiss. Because I’m not ready to say goodbye. I’m just not. How could I ever be?
Lara invited Mum to sing today, even letting her pick the songs. I try not to cry as Mum, resplendent in dove-grey satin, sings ‘Songbird’, ‘Time After Time’ and ‘Endless Love’. And, incredibly, she gets through it. How? I know I wouldn’t have been able to.
I rarely experience pride when it comes to Mum, an emotion that would be wasted on her anyway. But I feel it roaring at gale force through me now. And not just for today. She’s knocked drinking on the head, apparently, with the help of Ralph and her local AA group. It’s early days – she’s just over a fortnight sober. How the hell she got through Christmas, I’ll never know. But so far, things look promising. I can’t remember a time when she’s gone more than twenty-four hours without a drink in her hand.
As evening arrives and darkness descends, Lara appears by my side and passes me my coat. ‘Shall we?’ She nods towards the door to the garden, and wordlessly, we walk out there together.
We sit down on a bench, facing the faint rumble of the distant sea, half illuminated by the light spilling out from the conservatory.
We don’t say anything for a minute or so, letting our breath mingle and become fog in front of us. The air is rigid with cold, the sky an endless map of galaxies. We are both gazing up at it, because it’s too hard to look at each other.
‘You’re wearing the jumper,’ I say.
‘Well. I used to take it out of the wardrobe from time to time and think, One day, we’ll find each other again .’
I swallow and nod, because it’s all I can do.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘And I don’t just mean for today. Thanks for doing life with me. It wouldn’t have been the same without you.’
Her words are a lump hammer to my heart. I shake my head and put my arms around her, still unable to believe I am feeling the rush of her pulse, the warm press of her cheek to mine, for what I know will be the last time. How can she be dying, when she’s right here, sitting by my side?
The tears start to stream. ‘I don’t know how to say goodbye to you.’
‘Then let’s not,’ she whispers. ‘Okay? Let’s just say, see you later.’
I pull away and look into the fathomless blue of her eyes. Though she’s crying too, she’s still smiling. ‘How are you so brave?’ I ask her, through my tears.
‘I’m not,’ she says. ‘I’m just very, very loved.’
In the car on the way home, I open the envelope she passed to me before we left.
Inside is a postcard of a Californian sunrise. On the reverse, she’s simply scribbled, Make the most of every one x
Mum, who’s driving, asks me what it says. But I can’t answer. In fact, I can’t speak at all. I just stare out of the window as the countryside becomes a motion-blur of tears.