Prologue
The bell announcing the end of visiting hours had long since been rung. I’d ignored it. I almost wished someone would come and challenge me about it, because I was spoiling for a fight. I was filled with red-hot rage, the kind that keeps threatening to erupt like lava from an unstable volcano.
‘I hate you for this,’ I told a God I didn’t believe in, just in case – against all odds – he happened to be lurking on the other side of the water-marked mirror in the ladies’ toilets.
He chose not to reply, and all I saw in the mirror was a woman who looked about a decade older than the thirty years on her birth certificate. I looked even worse than my passport photograph, which I’d always thought was physically impossible.
My eyes were no longer red-rimmed because there comes a point when you’ve cried yourself dry. All I could see in them was an aching sadness for something that hadn’t even happened yet.
But it would tonight.
My hair was freshly washed, not because I cared how I looked, but because Adam had always liked to burrow his face in the long chestnut strands and inhale my apple-scented shampoo. We could at least still do that, although it had been weeks since he’d been able to pull me into his arms and kiss me until I was breathless, andeven longer since he’d been able to lift me off my feet and carry me to our bedroom and lay me down on the cool crisp sheets and—
‘Enough,’ I told my reflection fiercely. ‘Donotgo there, Lily.’
The door behind me swung open and I immediately dropped my eyes when I recognised another regular visitor at the hospice. The woman was older than me, and we were on nodding terms in the lift or in the corridor, two refugees in a country we’d never wanted to visit. I didn’t imagine I’d ever see her again after today.
I grabbed a handful of paper towels, in too much of a hurry to squander the twenty seconds or so the Dyson fan needed to dry my hands. As I slipped back into Adam’s room my eyes automatically went to the clock on the wall. I’d been gone for six minutes. Six minutes I’d never be able to claw back.
Adam’s eyes were closed, but they flickered open when he heard the scrape of my chair as I pulled it closer to the bed. He turned his head slowly towards me, as though the bones were fragile and the sinews rusty. When he winced, I felt the pain as though it was mine.
‘Hey, beautiful,’ he said in a voice that sounded about a hundred years old.
I smiled sadly. ‘Only in your eyes.’
He swallowed uncomfortably and I was on my feet in an instant, reaching for the water glass and straw. I slipped my hand beneath his neck and lifted his head from the pillow because he no longer had the strength to do it himself. He’d carried an eight-foot Christmas tree up three flights of stairs to our flat just three months ago, and today something as simple as raising his head to sip from a damn plastic beaker was beyond him.
I turned to look out of the window for a moment, because I didn’t want him to see the anger in my eyes. Adam was the best person I’d ever met – the best person anyone who knew him had ever met – and the fact that no one was going to get the chance toknow just how totally incredible he was after today was nothing less than an outrage.
His eyes told me he’d drunk enough, and I lowered him back on the pillows.
‘Are you in pain? Shall I get someone?’ My hand was already hovering by the Call button.
He shook his head. The drugs made him drowsy, and over the last few days, since we were told that the sand in the hourglass was finally running out, he’d refused to take them at all.
‘I’m not wasting a single second being spaced out. If this is all the time we have—’I’d sobbed then, I couldn’t help it, and he’d taken hold of my hand before continuing.‘If this is it, then I want to be here in the moment with you, right up until I draw my very last breath.’
‘You’re going to be with me for longer than that. We said forever, remember? We wrote it into our vows. You don’t get to wriggle out of it now, buster.’
‘I’m not sure dying is wriggling out of it,’he’d said gently.‘But I am reneging on our deal. And I’m so, so sorry to do that to you, Lily. I think perhaps you should sue.’
That was Adam, determined to make me smile even when my heart was literally being torn in two.
‘Is Fletcher still here?’ he asked unexpectedly.
I swallowed uncomfortably before answering. Adam’s short-term memory had begun to waver, like a radio signal that kept slipping off station into a different frequency.
‘No, hon. Raegan took him back to her place a few hours ago. Remember?’
I watched as the man I loved, with a Mensa-level IQ, tried to gather up the fragments of his fractured memory and piece it back together.
Fletcher was Adam’s dog. He’d been in Adam’s life even longer than I had, and I really didn’t know what I would have done if the hospice had denied my request to bring him in for a final visit.
The nurse I’d asked had drawn in her breath before replying, and I was ready to launch in with every persuasive argument I’d spent most of the previous night compiling.
‘Yes, of course you can,’she’d said.‘I think maybe you should bring him in tomorrow.’And instead of thanking her for her kindness I’d immediately burst into tears, because I knew what the concession meant. The clock ticking away the time we had left suddenly got a little louder.
Fletcher was not a particularly intelligent border collie, with a tendency to eat slippers, incoming mail, and even the occasional sock. I’d had no idea how he’d react in an alien environment with so many unfamiliar sounds and smells.
