I place my phone down on the side table, and the music starts. The haunting, melancholic voice of the late, great David fills the room. Time, he tells us, is waiting in the wings …
Chapter 61
Andrea: T is for Time
Ihope you’re listening to the song, girls – poor David! When this album came out, I was just a girl really. I was so in love with him, and all his weirdness – he was like the ultimate misfit king. I couldn’t believe it when he died, and so young. Now I find myself – even younger – facing the same situation, and listening to these old tunes to try and take the edge off.
First of all, apologies – I know my writing is getting terrible. I’m struggling to hold the pen now, and struggling to stay awake for long periods of time, and struggling with the whole death thing, to be honest.
I’ve tried to keep this A–Z as upbeat as I possibly can, but I find that tonight, I’m running out of steam, and I’ve most definitely misplaced my smile. Perhaps it’s down the side of the sofa? Anyway, U is up next, and I couldn’t dredge up any enthusiasm for a long lecture about Understanding, or how Unbearable it’s been to see you two tear each other apart. So I’m making it U for Upping Sticks – because tomorrow, girls, I am leaving the cottage to go to the hospital, and realistically speaking, I know I won’t be back.
I have just packed my bags, and it was very tricky. How on earth do you plan an outfit for the end of the world as you know it? And how can it be that I will end my life with just a few odds and sods thrown into a wheelie case – how can I reduce everything I will need to a few random possessions? It makes me feel so small, so insignificant – like all the work, all the striving, all the battles I’ve fought, come down to nothing at all.
Anyway, I’ve tied up as many loose ends as I can, and hopefully not left anything embarrassing around the house to shock you with. I know Lewis will help me through the rest of this project, and I know he’ll look after my blue tits, and I know he’ll be with me through everything that I have left to face. He is my loyal and wonderful friend, and the day I met him was probably the luckiest day of my life. He’s like my guardian angel in tweed, and I know he’ll take care of me.
But still. Still, I find myself almost intolerably sad right now. I’ve missed my evening painkillers, because I want to be fully conscious for my last night here, in this place where I’ve built so many memories. I’ve sent Lewis home, because I want to be alone with those memories – to say my goodbyes. I suppose I had some drama-queen image of myself floating around the cottage looking ethereal, reliving past glories, making my peace with my future.
But for once, my drama queen has let me down. It’s hard to look ethereal when you’re tied up in knots with pain, and I simply can’t make my peace with it. I can’t say goodbye with any sense of justice, or fairness, or calm. I don’t want to go, girls. I don’t want to leave. I’d like to cling on here, to just go to sleep on the sofa and never wake up. If I was brave enough, perhaps I’d do just that.
They’ve offered to set me up at home, those lovely Macmillan ladies, but I can’t face that either. This cottage has seen its share of sadness, but I don’t want to turn it into a hospital ward. I want to leave it for you two, as a refuge, a safe haven. A reminder of what we all once had together. I don’t want it smelling of death and disinfectant; that would soil all that it has been to us.
So, I’ve wandered around the bedrooms, and had the longest bath, and now I’m sitting here, alone, in my dressing gown, listening to David and feeling about three hundred years old. Three hundred years old, and yet still a child – because my time has run out, and I have no idea what happens next, and for once, I am scared.
I’m scared and I’m in all kinds of pain, and I feel so very lonely. I know it’s not fair to say that to you, but I’m not feeling very fair right now. I’m starting to wonder if this whole A–Z – this Grand Dame nobility of mine – hasn’t just been a folly. The foolish conceit of a dying old woman, who still thinks she can control the world. In reality, I can’t even control my own body – and perhaps, I think, I have made a mistake. Perhaps I should have told you.
Perhaps I should have sent for you both, and had you here with me now, for one last goodbye. One last hug. Even one last argument – anything, to get another chance to see your smiles; hold your hands; hear your laughter. Stroke the soft skin of your faces, just as I did when you were tiny children, and the world was a simple place.
If I close my eyes, and let my mind drift, I can almost hear your childish laughter echoing around the room, listen to the sound of your feet running around upstairs playing a game. Hear one of you counting while the other one hides. I know they’re just ghosts – ghosts of all those carefree days when we were whole.
It’s selfish, but I miss you both so much – my precious girls. I wish you were here with me, now, holding my hand and looking after me and telling me it’ll all be all right, even though we know it won’t. I don’t want to be alone, and yet I am.
But perhaps I’ll feel differently tomorrow. I don’t know. I’m consumed by a fit of the black dog and can’t seem to shake it. This cottage has been my home – our home – for so long that it has become part of me. Leaving it tomorrow will feel like I’m accepting the inevitable, and it is breaking my heart. The unimaginable is starting to become real, and I feel weak and old and useless.
I’d give anything to have more time. More time here, more time in my garden. More time with you girls. More time with Lewis. More time on this beautiful, beautiful earth. I feel like my whole life has been so insignificant, so meaningless, and I don’t have any more time left to change that.
So, my darlings, please don’t make that depressing thought come true. Give it some meaning. Make the most of your time – because, before you know it, it will all have slipped through your fingers.
I love you both, more than I could ever put into words,
Mum xxx
Chapter 62
Lewis
Ididn’t intend to be here, at Andrea’s cottage. I didn’t intend to be standing outside, like a Peeping Tom, watching those two young women go through their own personal hell.
I didn’t intend any of it. It just happened. I was out walking with Betty, a sad and solitary affair without Andrea, and my feet seemed to bring me here of their own accord. It’s happened a few times now – it’s as though I enter some kind of fugue state, and when I emerge, I find that I am here, outside her front door. Looking through the windows at a life that is no more. At a home that has lost its heart.
Betty, as she is doing now, knows that this is a special place – a place where her human friend will open the door and give her a cool bowl of water and, just possibly, a nice sausage as well. She is whining and scrabbling at the gravel in the driveway, keen to get inside and curl up on Andrea’s sofa. Much like myself, Betty hasn’t yet quite come to terms with the fact that Andrea is no longer here.
At first, I’m not quite sure what has happened to provoke the anguish I can see through the window, until I catch the mournful sound of that David Bowie song she loved so much. And then I know. They are on T, and that heartbreaking letter she scrawled to them the night before she left the cottage for the last time.
She’d wanted to take it out the next day, replace it with something more cheerful – ‘T for Tom Cruise, darling, they could watchCocktailand throw drinks around the kitchen! That would be so much more fun!’
But I’d insisted she leave it in, and did my Firm Lawyer face until she finally agreed. I felt it was important. That they needed to know – to know how much she was suffering, and to understand how hard all of this was for her. They needed to know that it wasn’t all about their own pain – but about hers, as well.
Now, as I gaze nervously through the glass, I see the end result of that knowledge. The two girls – grown women, I know, but always girls to me – are huddled together on the sofa, their arms wrapped around each other like small children cuddling, weeping uncontrollably. Their misery, their distress, is so tangible you could practically reach out and touch it. I am a voyeur, intruding on their private pain, a spectator of their agony, and I cannot quite tear myself away.
