PART ONE
The Stage Is Set
Prologue
Andrea
Forty years have passed since my own mother died, and yet I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I can still recall the sounds and the smells and the way her tiny hand felt in mine as she finally gave up the fight, as the light faded from her eyes.
I can remember the hollow feeling inside me as I made my way home to my own children, crying on the bus and ignoring the kindness of strangers as the double-decker trundled across London.
Walking through the door to our flat, overwhelmed with the need to bundle them up and keep them safe and love them so much that no harm would ever come to them. Protect them from the cruel torments of the world.
Four whole decades later, it is still so vivid. When it comes to the people you love, and the people you lose, the passage of time is irrelevant – some things simply stay with you forever.
I’m thinking about this so much more now, because this morning I was told that I am dying. Not in the slow and certain way that we are all dying – but in a two-months-if-you’re-lucky way.
The look of practised sympathy on the consultant’s face as he explained was enough to kick-start my stiff upper lip, and I silenced him with a smile. I’ve been an actress for the whole of my life, and I’ve done many a death scene.
Now, I’ve got to decide how to play my own – and what good can come out of it.
My last diary entry was a reminder to tell my friend Lewis that his ancient dog, Betty, needed a flea treatment, pronto. The one before that seemed to revolve entirely around buying a new hat for our trip to the races.
Funny how quickly things can change.
Now, I have a few weeks left – and I have to make them count. I have to scheme and work and plan like I’ve never schemed and worked and planned before. In those few weeks, God willing, I will be directing my own play – and performing a minor miracle.
Because, of course, I couldn’t actually bundle up my own children for the rest of their lives – no mother can. I couldn’t keep those two girls safe, and I couldn’t protect them from the cruellest torment of all – the way we can hurt the ones we love.
If it’s the very last thing I manage, I am determined that I will make the impossible happen. I will bang my daughters’ heads together, and make them whole. I will do as much as I can to heal them, and their future, as I have time to do.
Because they’re going to need each other, so very much. One day, very soon, they are going to wake up to a world without their mother – and, like I say, I still remember how that feels.
Her tiny hand, holding mine.
Chapter 1
1984 – Farewell to Templeton Peck
Dead goldfish are pretty revolting items, thinks Andrea, as she lovingly wraps up the body of the late, great pet known as Faceman. Once a delightful creature dashing through his fake coral reef and pirate castle, he’s now slippy and cold and far too reminiscent of three-day-old Chinese food that’s starting to disintegrate.
Once he’s enveloped in tissue paper, he is placed in a shoebox, which the girls have decorated in the style of the little Corvette thatThe A-Teamcharacter drives around in. It’s a masterwork of red felt-tip pen and blobby white paint that is barely dry, so some of it has smudged pink.
Patch, their cross-eyed Jack Russell terrier, is yipping and snapping at her ankles, desperate to get at the box. It’s just food to him, and Andrea shoos him away. He disappears to the side of the garden, and starts digging a hole in the flowerbeds.
Poppy is sobbing uncontrollably, her wild dark hair plastered to the tears running down the sides of her cheeks. Seven years old and already a drama queen. Rose is hugging her, making soothing noises to try and calm her down. They’re both barefoot, still in their nighties, and look impossibly small and forlorn as they traipse through the dew-soaked grass of the cottage garden.
It’s easier for Rose to be calm, of course. Her fish, B. A. Baracus, is still happily swimming around in the bowl, calling people ‘fool’ and looking tough. Poor Faceman has lasted less than three months. This is their first encounter with death, and emotions are running high, in the way that they do when little girls are involved.
There is a small hole, which Andrea dug earlier that morning, and a cassette player next to it, running on batteries. Andrea hands the shoebox to Poppy, who drags herself out of her hysteria long enough to accept it with tiny, shaking hands. Andrea reaches out and strokes her face clear of tears. Her skin is clammy and pale and moist, and although at least some of the performance is for effect, Andrea knows her baby girl is genuinely devastated.
Next time, she thinks, I’ll get them a pet with a longer shelf life. Like one of those tortoises that live for a hundred years.
‘Go on, Popcorn,’ she says gently, gesturing to the hole. ‘We need to say goodbye to Faceman now. Would you like to say a little prayer for him?’
‘I c-c-c-an’t!’ she stutters, trembling so much the box starts to shake as well. Andrea has visions of the goldfish making a bid for freedom, flying through the sky and landing on the head of one of their garden gnomes. This, for some reason, amuses her, and she fights to keep her face straight. She can’t laugh. Not now. This is a big, serious thing. The way she plays this will affect their outlook on the Grim Reaper for the rest of their lives. She has to at least try and get it right.
‘I’ll do it,’ says Rose, who is two years older and already displaying the kind of alarming maternal instincts that make Andrea think she might end up as a grandma by the time she’s 40. She’ll have to lock her in the broom cupboard before long, or make her take a bite from an enchanted apple.
