Tom dropped the seaweed and briefly covered my hand with his gnarled fingers. ‘You both need to stop trying to swim against the tide. You’ll never get to shore that way.’
I smiled gently. ‘Good advice. If I was a trout, perhaps.’
Tom chuckled, his whole body shaking with mirth.
‘You’ll both find a way through this. I’m sure of it.’
*
It had been four weeks since we learnt that Amelia had FAD and I still felt physically sick every time I thought about it. I’d be standing in the supermarket, trying to decide what kind of pasta we wanted for dinner, and suddenly the realisation would hit me all over again and I’d find myself crying, right there in the middle of the grocery aisle.
Or I’d wake in the night and feel compelled to check on her. I’d tiptoe across the hallway, ease open her bedroom door and stand in the shadows, not moving until I’d seen the steady rise and fall of her chest.
Not surprisingly, she called me out on that one. ‘Will you please stop doing that,’ she said a few mornings ago. ‘You’re really freaking me out. The next thing I know, you’ll be holding a mirror in front of my mouth to check I’m still breathing.’ I swallowed uncomfortably because that idea had already crossed my mind. ‘How would you like it if I crept in on you every night?’
‘It’s noteverynight,’ I retorted, passing her a plate of toast, which she waved away. Her appetite had been slow to put in a reappearance since she’d come out of hospital. ‘You know perfectly well why I’m doing itandwhat you need to do to make me stop.’
Amelia sighed and ran her hands through her hair in frustration. ‘For the hundredth time, Lexi, I’m not having cardiac surgery.’
‘And I’m not having the blood test,’ I countered.
We stared at each other across the kitchen table, like angry halves of a Rorschach test. Somehow, every conversation – even the seemingly innocuous ones – always led us back to this same argument.
‘You’re not thinking about how your decision affects us.’
‘Ditto that,’ she shot back.
‘My decision not to be tested for FAD is hardly the same as you refusing life-saving heart surgery. A treatment that youknowwill extend your life.’
‘Don’t you see, Lexi, that’s exactlywhyI don’t want it,’ Amelia said with passion. ‘I’ve been dealt two really shitty hands. Both have terrible outcomes. All I’m doing is deciding which one I want to play.’
‘You’re not playing, you’re folding,’ I said, continuing with the poker analogy.
‘I’m choosing how I want to spend the time I have left. You were there when the doctors told me what to expect from FAD.’
It felt like she’d stabbed me with the memory. We’d asked them not to pull their punches, and heaven help us, they hadn’t.
‘That is not how I want to end up,’ Amelia said sadly. She cupped my cheek tenderly. ‘I don’t want to look at this face and not know it belongs to the most amazing sister in the world. I don’t want to lose everything I know about you and Mum and everything I know about me.’
‘I just want you to fight like hell to stay with us,’ I said, my lower lip trembling like a two-year-old’s. ‘There could be a cure right around the corner, and you’ll never know because you gave up too soon.’
‘I’m not giving up. I’m still taking my medication, I’m doing the cardio rehab, but I won’t have surgery or go on a transplant list. I’ve decided to let my heart decide what’s best for me and when it’s had enough.’
I had a horrible feeling she meant those words in their most literal sense.
*
‘You certainly went to a lot of trouble creating these.’
I’d left Tom to return to his own cottage and had silently let myself back into Amelia’s. She was sitting at the kitchen table, on to which she’d upended the memory box of photographs. Too many smiling images of Nick were looking up at me.
I strode to the sink but could still feel the warmth of his gaze following me.
I missed the twinkle in his eyes, or the way he’d look at me over the top of his glasses, making something inside me melt. I missed the smell, the sight and the taste of him. It was like all my senses were going through the worst kind of withdrawal.
I thought I’d seen him in the distance on my morning run two days ago and could have qualified for the Olympics with the speed I’d run the other way. It was naïve to imagine our paths wouldn’t cross during my compassionate leave of absence from work. But it was too soon and too raw to see him yet.
‘Why haven’t you told him that you never left Somerset?’
