‘Should we interfere—’ began Lou.
‘No.’ Mim was firm. ‘They have to sort it out themselves. They’re nearly seventeen, Lou. It’s a hard lesson. We can’t learn it for them.’
The girls had figured it out. Kev was history.
And sadly, so too was Mim.
It would soon be two years since she’d died. Two years of no beloved Mim to talk to, to run things by, to relate how her day had been. It had been like having another sister: except that Mim wasn’t high-powered in the way Toni was or constantly on the phone to some important person discussing a movie star’s preferred questions about their new movie/husband/clothing range. It wasn’t that Toni was an absent sister, but she had a big life and, by contrast, Lou felt her own life was small. Mim had been present in Lou’s life on a daily basis in a way that Toni couldn’t be.
Now Mim was gone.
Lou would be facing into her fiftieth birthday alone.
She didn’t mind the age bit. Getting older was an honour Mim had been denied. But sometimes – feeling selfish at even thinking it because Mim’s family had lost her too – Lou wanted her beloved friend with her just for another hour. Just to say ...I feel a bit lost, Mim. Now that Emily’s gone to university, I’m not sure what I am anymore. Who are you when you’re a mother and the person you mother has moved on? I wish you were here and we could be empty-nesters together, worrying about Simone and Emily.
She’d woken early and a litany of sad things had sprung into her brain: her not getting the job; her mother forgetting about her party; the fact that Ned still hadn’t got her a present. If he had, he’d have said something, tapped his pocket endearingly and said, ‘Guess what I’ve got in here!’
But joy superseded the sadness – Emily was coming home that night, which was wonderful. Having Emily at home made Lou feel that her life was almost back to the way it had been.
Emily was seeing a new boy – well, a man, Lou corrected herself. Evan was twenty, the same age as her daughter, and he was someone she knew from Whitehaven. Lou knew Evan and his family and the Barking Dog in her head could come up with no dangerous scenarios with regards to him.
‘Funny to go to Limerick to fall for a guy from round the corner,’ Emily had said happily on the phone the previous night. ‘I’ll introduce you to him tomorrow night, Mum. It’s not that serious,’ Emily had added.
Lou finished her tea, put it down on the veranda rail and picked up the Tibetan worry dolls that hung from the wall. Mim had given two sets to her. One for the veranda and one for beside the bed.
‘You need something to tell your worries to when I’m gone,’ Mim had said.
She and Lou had loved things like worry dolls and little amulets. Between them, they had a store of bracelets and necklaces with Greek evil eye talismans, angel wings, Hands of Fatima, tiny ankhs, triple goddess moons – you name it.
‘All tat,’ Mim would say fondly, when they were shopping and found something else, a spindly bracelet or necklace of metal painted gold, dangling with charms and all set to tarnish in five minutes.
‘But such lovely tat,’ Lou would add, equally happily.
When Mim had died, Martin had found the ones she’d loved best and laid them on her hands in the coffin.
She hadn’t seen him for ages, Lou thought guiltily.
Phone Martinneeded to be on a list, so she grabbed her phone for her list section. The lists were colour coded – house ones for groceries, another house one for things like ‘phone alarm company for inspection’, work ones, personal ones and the over-arching ‘MUST DO!’ one which ravaged her brain at night.
She added Martin’s name to MUST DO! and closed her eyes to say hello to Mim. She was definitely listening. Lou could feel her friend’s presence. There were signs too: a white feather or a butterfly. She rarely said this to anyone because people would think she was bonkers. Sensible Lou believing in all this woo-woo? Fairies, angels, goddess moons? Really? Nobody would believe that she believed in ‘signs’, but then nobody would believe that she suffered from anxiety or took antidepressants, either.
When Mim was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Lou found that she couldn’t sit still in the morning. The Fear hit her whenever she sat down. The diagnosis and subsequent investigations and treatment happened with speed. Mim was in and out of hospital. Her morning five minutes of peace became a phone call.
‘Not as picturesque here as at home,’ Mim said one day, her voice weak but her spirit still sounding strong. The window in her ward’s little TV room, which was quiet in the morning, faced another wing of the hospital. The view, which Lou knew, was concrete accessorised with more concrete and squares of windows.
‘Nature is represented by pigeons shuffling around and the odd seagull dive bombing past my window. The night staff keep dropping in, though, which is lovely. They’ve had a dreadful night with an older gentleman who is going fast. Poor pet. He’s terrified.’
‘You’re so brave,’ said Lou quietly.
Theunfairnessof it all. She was snug in her seat outside her home, her family were safe inside and the chattering birdsong from the two Japanese maples in her garden sounded as if the birds were planning a rave. Her reality was so different from her best friend’s, and that difference seemed vast this morning.
Mim said nothing for a while.
‘I’m not brave, not particularly,’ she said finally. ‘I have no option. This is it, Lou. I’m going to die. I can sob or I can keep going until my body decides it’s over. For Simone, for Martin, for you—’
Lou caught her breath.
‘I should be there for you, not the other way round,’ she finally said, feeling something in her chest that made her think that hearts did, indeed, break.
