“I see.” It was the statement of someone who didn’t know what to say, who still hadn’t fully processed what she was being told.
Laura caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. The anguish it showed on her face was real. Her heart was hammering; she just wanted it to be over.
“When’s the funeral?”
Laura felt her chest tighten in apprehension. “We’ve already had it. It was family only.”
If she could’ve seen Cherry’s face at that moment, she might have given herself away with guilt. The ultimate banishment from Daniel’s life had hurt Cherry badly.
When she put the phone down, she felt empty. No relief, no gleeful triumph at having got Cherry off her back. But she also felt a kind of peace. Now she could go and say good-bye to Daniel. The doctors didn’t know when his last moment might be, and she didn’t want it to take them by surprise, before she’d said all she wanted to say to him.
She took a moment to compose herself and splashed some cold water on her face. Then she opened the bathroom door and went back into his room, where he lay on the bed in the same position he’d been in the last few months. She was alone with him for a couple of hours, as Howard had gone home to get some fresh clothes.
She pulled up a chair and, looking out the window, saw that it was one of those early-spring days that was a kindness from nature, an unexpected gift. She suddenly wanted Daniel to have it too and she opened the window. The air that came in was fresh, but not cold, full of life, and she could hear birds singing. She sat back down again and held his hand.
“It’s a lovely day.” She couldn’t manage any more and stroked his hair to give herself a moment, thinking she had to do better than this or she’d ruin it. Now was not the time to fall apart. She tried again. “Just in case I don’t get the chance to say this to youlater, in case—” She stopped abruptly. She’d been about to say,“in case you have to leave suddenly,”but something had stopped her, some maternal protective mechanism. She’d thought long and hard over the last few months about whether Daniel could hear what was being said to him and she thought—hoped—he did. She’d been about to tell him about all their memories, everything that she loved about him, but knew now that she couldn’t. What if he didn’t know he was dying, but could hear everything she said? Laura shuddered in horror. He’d be stuck, listening to the end of his life being pronounced, but not able to communicate, to ask for comfort. It would be like being buried alive.
She climbed awkwardly onto his bed and gently laid her cheek next to his, being careful not to dislodge any of the plastic tubes taped to various parts of him. Then she took his hand. In her head, she relived two memories. One was of a baby girl, a perfect little person with blue eyes and fair hair who’d died in her arms, just a few days after she’d been born. The other was of an equally perfect little boy, who when he was small would wake and climb into her bed with his toy monkey, snuggling up to her and sharing one of the monkey’s ears, the softest, most treasured part of the toy with her. They would lie there, warm and close, whispering secrets to one another.
“Daniel, I hope you’re not scared, not of anything, because you don’t need to be. I’m here, I always will be, no matter what. And I’m staying now until . . . until . . . I’m staying.”
28
CHERRY HUNG UP AND LET THE PHONE REST ON THE SOFA NEXT TOher. Daniel was dead. She couldn’t take it in: He’ddied;he had vanished; he was no more. While she was on holiday! She suddenly realized she hadn’t even asked Laura the exact day. What had she been doing on that day? Lying lazily on a sunbed on the beach? Wandering around Chichen Itza? Or maybe even having dinner with Elliot. It had been a fleeting thing, that much she’d made clear, but she’d needed the relief spending time with him had given her. He’d approached her in their hotel bar and found that they were both traveling alone and their holidays overlapped by four days. They ended up spending pretty much all of those four days—and nights—together. Cherry didn’t feel guilty, she saw it more as a necessary healing balm for the last few months. Then he left and she got on with the rest of her trip.
It disturbed her that she didn’t know when Daniel had died, that she couldn’t match an event of such magnitude to a moment in her own life. She almost called Laura back, there and then, but as soon as she had the phone in her hand, she dropped it. She didn’t feel up to asking questions yet; it was all still so unreal. A movement at the window caught her eye, people walking past, going about their lives oblivious to what was going on inside her flat. She jumped up suddenly, went to make a cup of tea. As she was holding the kettle under the tap, it hit her. She burst into tears, great wracking sobs, and dumped the kettle in the sink;then suddenly she remembered that the next-door neighbors could see in if their back door was open and the flat above them could see in if they looked down at a certain angle. She recoiled, hating her flat, Tooting,poor man’s London,and the way people all lived on top of each other. Instead she went into the bedroom, which was a little more private, and lay down, fully clothed, on the bed.
Daniel was dead. She thought she’d felt lonely, cast adrift when he was ill, but she realized that was nothing compared to now. She’d always believed he’d recover; she had read numerous accounts, reports on the Internet, studied it in books and journals, until she felt she could pass as a doctor herself. But instead he’d left her. And her new life, the one she’d planned, had disintegrated. She couldn’t even say good-bye. She shrank inside remembering Laura’s words,“Family only.”She wasn’t included. Was she not good enough? Not worthy? Not rich enough? Yet again, she’d been slighted. It was like Nicolas, all over again. Neither Laura nor Howard recognized her as a proper girlfriend, as someone who had meant anything to Daniel. Where was he buried? Or had he been cremated? Where were his ashes? She didn’t know the answers to any of these questions and was left in a vacuum of ignorance.
She felt a sudden, violent anger toward Laura for keeping everything to herself. Laura had cut her from his life. And she, Cherry, was stuck in a dead-end job that she was growing to hate, with no escape on the horizon. She couldn’t go through it all again. She realized that Daniel had made the job palatable, not just because he would eventually lead her out of it, but because he was what she looked forward to at the end of the day. Talking to him, exchanging stories about the people they’d each had to deal with, he as a trainee doctor at the hospital and she as a real estate agent. The way he’d held her and kissed her had made her feel good, feel as if she had value. Now that was all gone. She was a nobody again. The people she’d aspired to be like had unceremoniously kicked the door in her face. In the end, Laura had won.
29
LAURA DIDN’T LEAVE THE HOSPITAL, FEARING THAT IF SHE DID, Daniel would die when she wasn’t there. She called Mrs. Moore to put aside some clean clothes and sent a cab to pick them up. At night, she slept on a temporary bed next to his that the nurses had put up for her. Howard came as much as he could, but his work meant that he had to spend at least a couple of hours in the office every day. The nurses said that often they could tell when a patient “didn’t have very long” and would tell Laura so she could call her husband if that time came. Four days in, she noticed that some of the flowers were dying. It depressed her that they should mirror what was going on in the bed and she plucked them out with distaste. She didn’t even want them in the bin in the room and took them outside to dispose of elsewhere. As she closed the door behind her and started to walk down the corridor, she heard something, a deviation from the rhythm of the beeps that had become as familiar to her as her own heartbeat.
A nurse rushed past her.Jesus,thought Laura,he’s died! He’s died as soon as I left the room.She let out an anguished wail and ran back in, rushing up to the bed, desperate to hold him, for it not to be too late. Dr. Bell had come in a split second after her. “Mrs. Cavendish, if you could just give us some room,” he said, and the nurse firmly took her by the elbow and moved her aside as he ran his eyes over Daniel and the monitors.
“He’s trying to breathe.”
Laura stared incredulously. “He’s what?”
“Breathe. On his own.” Dr. Bell smiled and looked at the readouts. “Three breaths in the last minute. Well, well, well.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“He’s breathing independently. Some of the time. It’s good news,” he said cautiously. “I think we’ll trial him with the ventilator, change it so it reduces the amount of work it has to do. Let’s see if he can take on more.”
“Oh, my God.”
“He’ll be carefully monitored over the next twenty-four hours as we see how much his lungs want to take on.”
“Then what?”
“Let’s just deal with the next few hours first,” said Dr. Bell kindly.
* * *
Laura was ecstatic—for a few minutes—and then she’d swing back to despair again. It was just a cruel trick, medicine playing with her emotions, offering a strange grasp at life before Daniel left her for good. She stayed glued to his bedside, watching him, staring at his chest, her eyes willing on every breath that he seemed to take. She asked the nurse exactly what each of the numbers on the machine meant, which were related to his lungs, and got obsessed with willing it to register another breath. She barely slept that night, lying close to him on her makeshift bed, getting up every hour or so just to check the monitors.
