Chapter 28
BEFORE
Dear Lexie,
I will never forget that terrible afternoon.
A Saturday. I came back from setting up a wedding.
The curtains were closed and I went through the house, opening them all, before putting on the kettle.
Later, I traced those moments back; counted the seconds.
If I’d gone straight up to you, could I have saved you?
By the time I got to your room, you were still sleeping. I went to open your curtains. ‘Lex! I’ve brought you a cup of tea. It’s the middle of the afternoon.’ But as rays of daylight touched your face, I saw your colour. Froze for a millisecond as my brain took in the impossible.
Holding my breath, I went over to you. Breath I would have given you, a hundred million times over if only I could have. But as I felt your cheek, it told me what I already knew in my bones.
You had gone.
It was as though time itself had stopped. If only love could have brought you back, Lexie. But the unfairness of this world had taken you from me. I sank to the floor next to your bed, held your hand in both of mine. Told you I loved you a hundred times. Soaked the sheets with my tears.
My beautiful child. I brought you into this world. But I failed you.
I put off doing what I knew I had to, so it was dark by the time I called the emergency services.
Then I called Ollie. Sitting with you, I waited, in those moments, telling you how proud I was of you, living through all the things we’d done together, then those we’d never get to do, staying with you until I heard a car pull up outside.
I let the doctor in and followed him up the stairs. He stayed until the undertakers arrived. All I remember is begging them to be gentle with you.
It was an accident, I kept telling myself. Either that or you had a heart attack. Unlikely in someone of your age, I knew that. But it wasn’t impossible.
‘What else could it have been?’ I sobbed to Ollie. But later that evening, he found the note you’d left, the bottles that had held the pills you’d taken, an empty vodka bottle.
Sorry, Mum. I love you so much. I love Ollie too. I’m just sorry I was never enough. Love Lexie xxxx
There were other notes – to us, to yourself, telling yourself not to give up. That you had to go on. And you had. Until the day came you couldn’t.
I saw you as a light that had burned out.
When you and Ollie are all that ever really mattered in my life, I’d never imagined being without you.
A mother doesn’t. There is no way to describe how the loss of your child feels.
How instinctively wrong it is. How it shatters not just your heart, but the natural order of everything you’ve always believed in.
After, I cried, raged, grieved, a storm that eventually passed, leaving me stranded somewhere I didn’t want to be.
Then I berated myself for being selfish when this wasn’t about me.
It was about you.