‘Yes,’ I say, tugging at my collar. It’s so stuffy in here. ‘I can’t remember when I last ate.’
‘Please,’ the man says.
Please what?I think.
Emma tells me lunch is ready, so I allow her to take me by the arm and help me up. But I feel exhausted: I can barely put one foot in front of the other. I’d really like a lie-down, or maybe to eat lunch from a tray on my lap. Is that really too much to ask?
Suddenly I feel the familiar sensation of beginning to topple. Emma gasps, and I hear a man’s voice saying, ‘Oh, easy, easy—’ and then there are hands beneath my armpits, and everything goes dark.
The next thing I know, I feel as though I’m underwater. I can hear people saying my name but I can’t open my eyes. I’ve wanted to shut them for a long time, I think. It actually feels quite nice.
Because I am so tired. Of everything. But mostly of trying to remember.
My husband drifts into my head again, though I can’t fully picture his face. Never mind. I’m sure someone will call him. I’m sure that when I wake up, he will be here.
85.
Josh
December 2036
We’ve gone easy on the Christmas decorations this year, not wanting to add to Rachel’s confusion. There’s a tree, lightly decked with baubles and a single string of silver bulbs. We keep the fire lit, because she likes that, even though she can no longer be left alone with naked flames, obviously. And that’s about it. But I putThe Holidayon for her yesterday, the volume turned low, and she seemed captivated. From time to time, when I looked up, her eyes were dancing, as if she was remembering how it feels to be enchanted.
The night before Christmas Eve, Emma comes into the kitchen with her partner, Kai. He’s a barristers’ clerk – though not from Emma’s chambers – and is just about the most straightforward and uncomplicated guy I have ever met. They’ve been dating a couple of years now, and I am gutted that Rachel will never truly get to know him. Because all she ever wanted was for Emma to be happy.
I’ve been cooking all day, attempting to recreate Rachel’s favourite kind of everything for the festive period. It’s doubtful she’ll eat much, but I can’t not try. So the kitchen right now is a fug of simmering bread sauce, cranberries stewing in sugar, cheese straws fresh from the oven.
‘Taste these,’ I say to Emma and Kai, holding out a plate of mince pies.
Emma peers at them, wrinkles her nose. ‘Are they—’
‘Chocolate and chili. They’re Rupert What’s-his-name’s.’ (A sort of Heston disciple, who releases strange recipes each December for things like reindeer milk ice cream and quinoa Christmas puddings.)
Emma and Kai both laugh and back away slightly, as though the whole point of Christmas isn’t to stuff your face with food that has a fifty-fifty chance of making you retch.
Then Emma says, ‘Josh, Kai and I have something to tell you.’
I suspected a few weeks ago, once Emma started turning down wine at dinner and sleeping in past five a.m. But I said nothing, not wanting to pre-empt the announcement I felt sure was coming.
Now, I see the wild joy on her face – she is usually so self-contained, so composed – and feel happiness blaze through me like a firework. Her blue eyes are burning with excitement, cheeks plump with a smile she can’t hold back. ‘We’re expecting twins.’
We rarely hug, Emma and I. She’s just not really tactile like that. But today she makes an exception. ‘Congratulations, both of you,’ I say, as we put our arms around each other. Over her shoulder, I nod at Kai. Eyes sparkling, he nods right back. ‘When are you due?’
‘Six months,’ she says, the timbre of her voice dipping slightly. Because we both know what that means. That maybe six months will be too late.
I try never to let my mind go there. Even during the awfulness of last summer, when Giles passed away after his cancer recurred, I refused to picture it. What Rachel’s death will look like. How it will feel to be forced to absorb the fact of it. I resist – as I have always done – imagining her funeral, or saying goodbye, or the shape our lives will take without her.
It was weird, when Giles died. Even at his funeral, I couldn’t cry. I think a big part of me simply couldn’t accept he was gone.Maybe I had convinced myself, deep down, that somehow he might have found a way to live forever, too. That in five hundred years’ time, he would still be by my side.
When Rachel first became ill, I was afraid I would eventually forget the person she used to be. But I see glimmers of the old her all the time. The way her eyes follow Emma around the room, bright and hopeful, as they have her whole life. The kind of food she loves to eat – Tunnock’s Teacakes still a winner, as is pasta with obscene amounts of cheese. How she tries to scan even the direst situations for humour. That she cares if she makes a mess, because someone else will be cleaning it up. That, when she’s trying to think, her eyes always stray to the nearest window – though what’s going through her head now is anyone’s guess. And that when Polly and Lo come over, or Ingrid dials in, her mood never fails to lift, and she always ends up laughing.
Tonight, though, once I’m back home, I find myself swamped with sadness. Rachel loves her daughter so deeply, and it kills me that she will never get to share in Emma’s excitement about the babies. Her illness has robbed Rachel of the only thing she would ever have wanted – to hold and love and dote upon her grandchildren with her whole heart. So perhaps it is best that this all happened so quickly, before she knew anything about the part which would have broken her the most.
She is still here though, and still herself. She is simply an alternative version. And maybe that’s true of us, too. We are changing every day, just as Rachel is. Doing life differently, trying our best to see the world through her eyes. None of us is the person we were before all this happened.
I no longer correct Rachel’s mistakes, unless there’s an imminent risk to life, obviously. I feel bad, now, for all the times I did. How much it must have confused her.
So when she asks me, occasionally, if we’re still going to Aruba, I always say yes. And it’s not wholly a lie. I tell her I’m looking forward to the moment we can finally watch that Caribbean sunset together, her hand in mine, sand between our toes.
