‘Bye, Rach,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll be back soon.’
They sell DNA analysis kits in supermarkets these days. It’ll take a week or so for the results to come through, once we’ve sent off the samples. But they sit right alongside the pregnancy tests.
I grab one, and then another for luck. My heart strobes painfully, in time with the supermarket strip-lighting.
But when I get back to Rachel’s house, Emma is sitting on the front step.
She is crying, her face contorted.
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
‘She’s gone.’ Her voice is shattered by sobs. ‘Ten minutes ago. She’s gone. I’m so sorry, Josh.’
Dropping the tests, I sink to my knees, right where I am in the middle of the drive.
I put my head in my hands, let everything go.
95.
Josh
June 2037
Terminal lucidity, the doctor said. It’s a thing, apparently. As dementia patients near the end, they can occasionally sit up and begin to converse clearly. Almost return to their old selves.
This lucidity can last from a couple of hours to several days. But, even after decades of research, the medical profession is no closer to figuring out exactly what brings it on.
I wish I’d known it was even a possibility. That way, I could have set my shock aside, and just enjoyed Rachel coming back to us, one last time. Exactly as she always was.
It’s been six days since she died. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Emma’s waters broke early the next morning. She’s still in hospital now.
It is almost impossible, I have discovered, to digest grief and joy at the same time. Swallowed together, they are too big, too hot, too raw. So I just do laps of my flat, the park, the river, trying to sweat the feelings out of me.
It never works. They don’t go anywhere. The heartburn rages on.
I can’t stop replaying the last thing Rachel whispered to me, on the day she died. ‘I told you once that I didn’t want to be ninety and still thinking about you, Josh. But it wasn’t true. You were my favourite thing to think about. Always.’
Emma has given birth to a girl and a boy. The first time I called, she told me they had named the girl Florence Rachel Carmichael.
‘Beautiful. And the boy?’ I asked.
‘Ezra Josh Carmichael.’
‘Oh, Emma.’
‘I think Mum would have approved, don’t you?’
As it happens, I do.
We took the DNA test just hours after Rachel passed away. In that moment, everything felt surreal, the world jumbled up. An optical illusion, making origami of our brains.
When I expressed this to Emma, she just said, ‘Shut up and swab your damn mouth, will you?’
At this, despite everything, I had to laugh.
She calls the day after she and the twins are out of hospital. ‘I’ve got the email. I haven’t opened it yet.’
