After the Last Dance (36 page)

Leo sucked in a breath. ‘Just close your eyes and go to sleep.' He was wobbling. Tears not far off. ‘You can go. It's all right.'

‘Darling, she doesn't need your permission, she needs help. My help. Rose and I talked about this. I promised her.'

Rose lay there, eyes flickering between them. ‘Do it,' she said. ‘Help me.'

‘You can't. She can't, Rose,' Leo said pleadingly. ‘It's wrong.'

‘But you heard what the doctor said the other day about…' About terminally ill cancer patients being given enough of the good drugs that they didn't have to suffer through the final ravages. How could she say that with Rose here?

Instead she grabbed Leo by the sleeve of his jumper and yanked him into the corner. ‘Shut up!' she hissed at him. ‘If I don't do this, then she'll spend a day, maybe three or four days, even a week, in pain. In fucking agony, Leo. She's going to die anyway.'

‘You don't know that. She could go in the next hour and then you'd have her death on your conscience when it needn't be.' He tried to cup her face but Jane wrenched her head back.

She was all right as long as he didn't touch her. ‘Darling, it's not like I have that much of a conscience for it to be an issue.' Jane made her words sound as sharp and as hard as she could. Like a diamond.

It was true, after all. It was why Rose had wanted her to stay. Maybe death dogging your heels gave you clarity, Jane wasn't sure. All that she knew was that Rose could see beneath all the gloss, all the gilt-edging, all the
bullshit
, to the sordid truth of what she really was.

If Rose needed an executioner, then Jane was her girl.

‘It's the right thing to do,' she told Leo, who wasn't trying to hold her any more, but looking at her with revulsion, which she deserved. She'd earned it. ‘Rose has lived her life exactly as she wanted to. She gets to choose how and when she's done with it. You have to respect that.'

‘You don't even know her!' Leo said sullenly as he sat and watched her pop the tablets out of the blister pack.

‘But Rose knows me.' Jane looked at the pills in her hand then at Rose, who was watching her. Not alert, but present. ‘Rose, darling, do you think you could swallow these pills?'

‘Of course she can't!' Leo sounded like he was close to exploding. ‘Fucking hell, I'm never going to forgive you for this.'

‘It's not about you, Leo,' Jane said distractedly. ‘Rose? Can you take one of the pills?'

She wanted Rose to reach out a hand, take the pills and pop them in her mouth. That way it would be entirely Rose's doing. It would be her hand. Jane would be one step removed.

‘I can't. Help me.'

She could mash the pills into powder, mix them with champagne, cradle the back of Rose's hand and tip the mixture down her throat. Jane could do that. How many times had she done that when she was cajoling Rose into taking some water? ‘I'm going to dissolve them into the champagne and then you just need to have a little drink.'

Leo didn't say anything, maybe because he was kissing Rose's forehead, stroking back her limp strands of hair, while they watched Jane attempt to mash four pills between two teaspoons. She did a lousy job of it. Then she opened the champagne with a pop that sounded inappropriately jubilant and poured a little into the tumbler with the crushed pills and stirred it around. Soon the chalky debris soaked up the champagne and turned into a claggy white paste.

She could spoon that into Rose. There was a very thin line between helping someone with their last wish and killing them – even if you were killing them with your kindness.

She had promised Rose but lately Jane had stopped making promises that she couldn't keep. ‘All right,' she whispered. She picked up the tumbler and the spoon and took the four steps to the bed. ‘I'm going to put this in your mouth, darling, and then give you a little champagne to wash it down.'

Rose blinked, then nodded. At least, Jane thought it was a nod. Maybe she just wanted it to be. ‘Rose, darling? I have to be certain it's what you want.'

‘Do it.' Rose mouthed the words rather than said them out loud. ‘Now. Please.'

‘Are you sure?' Leo asked. ‘You can't let go by yourself?'

‘Do it.'

‘Go on, then.' Leo said and this time, when Jane caught his eye, he nodded.

Jane glanced down at the contents of the tumbler, then scraped some of the paste onto the spoon. It was going to take about five spoonfuls before it was all gone. Five times she had to spoon the mixture into Rose's mouth. Five times she had to tilt her head and make her drink. Five times. Five times was too many times. Five steps too far – even for Jane.

She turned away; let the spoon drop to the floor. ‘I'm so sorry, I can't. I just can't.'

‘It's OK,' Leo said. He pressed another kiss to Rose's furrowed forehead. ‘I can. I'll do it.'

 

It was a beautiful September evening, summer determined to outstay its welcome. They sat in the garden, which was a glorious riot of colour and scent, though the roses, which they added to every year, had blossomed in June and were now long gone.

Still there were flowers enough that bees fat with pollen could lazily dance among the petals. Birds circled overhead and if Rose listened carefully, she could hear the faint lap of the sea.

On other days, they'd dragged deckchairs through the garden and across the dunes to the beach, but it was all Edward could do to manage the short walk from the house to the little shaded spot in the garden where they liked to sit.

He only had a couple of weeks left, though neither of them knew that. He was scheduled for surgery mid-October – they'd already started planning Christmas in Palm Springs.

But no matter where they were – and by now Rose thought they must have gone round the world at least twice – at six o'clock it was time for a drink.

On birthdays and special occasions they had Bellinis, but this evening it was a gin and tonic. Rose swirled the ice in her glass, glanced around the garden, then at Edward, his face in profile, and felt entirely at peace. She was where she was happiest and with the one person who made her happier still.

‘I do love you, Edward.' It was the simplest of truths, but she'd never said it before. Hadn't even realised. Her love for him had crept up on her slowly, permeated right down to her marrow, and she was so used to it living there that she'd never thought to give it a name. ‘I've loved you for such a long time and I've never once told you.'

He turned his head and smiled at her. She often reminded him that he was a cradle snatcher – ‘you're much, much older than I am' – but now it was as if the years and the disease in him had vanished and she could see him as he'd been on the night Rainbow Corner closed. When he'd danced with her at The Savoy and kept apologising for treading on her feet. He still was a dreadful toe-stepper.

‘I love you too, my darling girl,' he said, as naturally and as easily as if he said it all the time, though he hadn't, not since that night when she'd thrown his ‘I love you' back in his face.

Maybe it was also why he'd never asked her to marry him, not that Rose minded. It was a measure of just how much her parents had adored Edward that they'd never held it against him either. Then again, marriage wasn't something they discussed. Neither were children. Or the exact nature of his war work.

There were so many things unsaid between the two of them, but in the end that didn't matter. Just that you said what was really important at least once.

‘I'm going to tell you that I love you every day now,' she decided. ‘Sometimes even twice, or three times.'

‘We are a pair of silly old fools, aren't we?' Edward sighed and then Rose got up out of her chair and draped herself very gently across his lap so she could kiss him.

His skin was warm underneath her lips and hands and she sat there with his arms around her, listening to the sound of the sea. She could have happily stayed like that for ever.

Leo picked up the spoon from the carpet, took the glass from Jane, and walked to the bathroom, where he washed both of them slowly and carefully.

He didn't know why Jane had bothered going to all that trouble. There was liquid morphine in handy phials just sitting there. It wasn't as if Rose was going to toddle in here under her own steam and none of the expensive agency nurses knew about his history with drugs.

Leo took two of the phials, picked up a syringe and tore off its sterile packaging. Then he went back into the bedroom.

At first he didn't see Rose. All he could see was a singed and yellowed limp pale blue dress laid out in front of her, one of her hands resting on the bodice.

And there was Jane, arm around Rose, gently spooning her.

In that moment, Leo loved Jane. He could tell she was scared to get too close to Rose and that sweet-sickly smell of rotting lilies. Scared to touch Rose – not because she didn't want to hurt her, but because maybe death was catching, but she did it all the same.

Leo sat down on the bed. He plunged the syringe through the plastic seal of the first phial, then the second. Tap, check for air bubbles, release. Some things you never forgot.

‘There's no need to be scared, darling,' Jane said and Leo didn't know if she was talking to him or Rose who was so still, only her lips moving as she took in little sips of air.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?' Leo asked.

Rose didn't answer at first. Then her fingers, resting over the heart of the charred dress, lifted. ‘I've had such a lovely time,' she said, and she closed her eyes. ‘It's been wonderful, it really has, but I have to get back to my friends now.'

It was simple, in the end. He lay down so he was facing Rose, but looking at Jane, who looked back at him, steady and sure. Then Leo slid the syringe into the cannula. Rose took two more laboured breaths, breathed in again and then no more.

Leo wished he could say that in that moment he felt Rose's soul leave her body, but he didn't. His hand rested on top of Rose and Jane's hand rested on top of his.

After a while, though Leo couldn't say exactly how long, there was a tap at the door. ‘Can I come in?' asked Agnieska.

‘Just a minute,' Jane called out as Leo curled his fingers round Rose's wrist, her skin cooling, but not cold. Flesh pliable, but also resistant.

‘She's gone,' he said. Rose looked like a blurred copy of herself. She was without animation; that magnificent, restless spirit. Without life. Lifeless. He didn't want this to be the way he remembered her and he pulled his hand free and got off the bed. Walked to the door. Opened it. ‘She's gone,' he said again. ‘Can you go and wake Lydia, then call the doctor?'

‘I'm sorry for your loss.' Agnieska didn't even peer in through the open door but hurriedly walked away.

Leo couldn't look at Jane or at the bed. He went into the bathroom and splashed his face and hands with cold water and by the time he was done, Lydia was there in a lilac dressing gown, face creased, crying.

‘Oh, my dear. My Rose,' Lydia sobbed, her arms tight around her midriff.

Leo wondered if Jane had died too because she was so still but as Agnieska approached the bed, she rolled away from the body and stood up. Lydia walked into her arms and Jane rocked her, shushed her, but refused to look at Leo.

Suddenly Agnieska's mobile rang and when Leo heard the opening bars of
Carmina Burana
blast out, he laughed. He was sure that Rose would have laughed too, though she'd have pretended to be very cross. If there was an afterlife, then it was just the right kind of portentous fanfare to announce Rose's arrival at the Pearly Gates.

Agnieska looked affronted. ‘Dr Howard's on the doorstep and there's no one to let him in,' she said huffily.

Everything went very smoothly after that. Leo waited outside while Agnieska and the doctor did whatever they had to do. Then the door opened and Leo was ready.

‘Can I have a word?' he said and he took Dr Howard into the bathroom and picked up the empty phials. ‘I have to tell you something. I —'

Dr Howard, three-piece-suited and booted though it was barely six in the morning, held up a hand to stop Leo. ‘I've already signed the death certificate. There shouldn't be any need for a post-mortem. Not when I saw her yesterday and, well, this was expected.'

‘But I —'

‘Just be thankful that you were with Rose at the end. I'm sure that was an immense comfort to her.' The doctor shifted his case to the other hand. ‘I've left you a form to hand in when you register the death. The undertakers will be able to assist you with everything else.' He sounded as if he was reciting lines. ‘Please call me if you need to, but as far as I'm concerned it's all in order, Leo.'

It felt as if his world was teetering on the very edge of chaos. ‘But… Don't… Are you sure?'

‘Absolutely sure. I'll see myself out.' Leo watched Dr Howard walk through the other room, past the body, then paused in the doorway. ‘I'm so sorry for your loss. Rose… Ms Beaumont, she really was an incredible woman. I will miss her more than I can say.'

Agnieska came in to pack up the medical equipment and Leo went downstairs to the kitchen where Lydia, still in her dressing gown, still sniffling, was sitting at the breakfast bar. Frank hovered anxiously. ‘I've called the undertakers,' he said. ‘What else can I do?'

There was nothing else to do but drink tea, smoke all of Lydia's cigarettes, though she was still maintaining that she only smoked socially as she had ever since Leo had known her, and then, with heavy sighs and heavy feet, she and Leo went back upstairs.

Neither of them looked at the bed. Lydia marched straight into the dressing room and he followed her blindly.

‘Rose left specific instructions. Didn't want an open casket. There's a dress she wanted to be…' Lydia couldn't get the next word out. Leo rested his hands on her quaking shoulders. ‘No, I'm all right. Do you think I should change her now?'

‘No,' Leo said, because Lydia couldn't manage by herself and he couldn't help her. Rose wouldn't have wanted that. ‘We'll give the dress to the undertakers.'

‘But her hair… she'd hate not to have her hair done.' Lydia turned round and buried her face in Leo's chest and as he closed his arms around her, she shook with the force of her sobs.

‘We'll ask her hairdresser if they can send someone to the funeral parlour. It will be fine, Liddy,' Leo said. Somehow he knew the right things to say without having to think about it.

The undertakers arrived. They parked their black private ambulance outside the front door, because he wasn't having Rose sneaked out round the back. Lydia, Frank and Leo watched the body (covered by a white sheet because he wasn't having Rose zipped into a black body bag either) wheeled out, then driven around the square that she'd loved so much.

It was seven-thirty now. How could it only be seven-thirty? ‘I need to go and register the death,' he said, but it would be another two hours before he could do that, so he wandered back to the kitchen with Frank and Lydia, the three of them in a state of limbo. Not shock but an uncertainty because Rose had gone and she'd dictated the rhythms of their day and without her, they weren't sure what to do.

Lydia put the kettle on but Frank said, ‘No more bloody tea. Let's have a proper drink.'

Leo waited for Jane to say, ‘Champagne, darling. It's what Rose would have wanted,' and it was then he realised Jane wasn't there.

‘Where's Jane?' he asked.

‘Jane? She's around, isn't she?' As Lydia was staring at the tea bags and milk as if she had no earthly clue what to do with them, Leo wasn't surprised that she had no recollection of when she'd last seen Jane.

‘Probably gone back to bed,' Frank said. ‘When my mum passed on, my dad slept for the best part of a week.'

Jane wasn't in any of the downstairs rooms. He didn't go back into Rose's room but stood in the doorway and that was enough to see that Jane wasn't there.

He walked into his room – no,
their
room. It was empty. There was a towel draped over the back of a chair. Her phone and handbag was dumped on the bed, so she couldn't have gone far. But Leo couldn't say exactly where she had gone to until he heard her crying.

He'd never heard crying like it. As if the sobs were being torn out of her against her will. As if she was locked in a battle with her own grief.

‘Jane? Where are you?'

There was a moment of silence and then came another one of those pitiful cries, more dreadful than anything he'd heard from Rose, from under the bed.

He crouched down. She was curled into a ball, hair in her face, hands clutched in her hair.

‘What are you doing under there? Come out.'

Jane didn't say anything and Leo thought about pushing the bed back, but he didn't want to disturb the little cocoon that she'd made so instead he stretched out full length on the floor.

‘I know it's awful about Rose,' he said. ‘I can't even deal with how awful it is, but she was in terrible pain and now she's not. You made the right call.'

‘Shut up,' she said thickly. ‘Shut up. Don't be nice to me. I don't deserve it. I'm disgusting. I'm a monster. The absolute worst.'

‘No, you're not,' Leo said, because she wasn't. She was a lot of things, but she wasn't a bad person. He knew bad people and Jane didn't even come close.

‘Oh, Leo, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'

‘You've got to nothing to be sorry about.'

‘You don't know the half of it.' Her voice was raw from crying for so long in the dark. ‘I was meant to do it. It's why Rose wanted me there at the end. She knew me. She'd been around, she knew everything.'

‘Not everything. Just because she was old didn't make her some great all-seeing, omnipotent being. Alice Neel was her favourite artist. That's not someone who knows everything.'

 

‘She knew what I was really like without me having to say a single word.'

Leo still hadn't shifted the bed, dragged her out and exposed her to the light. He was just lying there, looking at her with concern instead of condemnation. That was about to change.

‘What are you really like?' he asked and God, she couldn't tamp it down any longer. It was leaking out; knocking down the walls she'd so carefully constructed.

‘You've always had a life, Leo. Even if you pretend that you don't care about your parents, your brother, you have a family; you have roots. You have history. You're part of something.

‘But before I came to London, I didn't have a life. Hardly even had a name. I barely existed. I crept round the edges. I was nothing. Less than nothing. And I still feel like… a ghost. There's nothing anchoring me down. I feel like I could blow away.'

Back then, she wasn't aware of things like day and night or what the seasons were. The days had no rhythm.

Sometimes, earlier on, she'd gone to school but only when Nana Jo was alive, and after she'd died she didn't even have the haven of school for a few hours.

She learned quickly that it was better to be ignored, to keep out of sight, even if it meant going hungry. Her brothers and sisters fought for approval, attention, though approval never came and attention rarely led to anything good. How quickly they'd even turn on each other, because there was no honour among thieves, so she'd hidden herself away from them too.

Jane had heard all about the ‘deserving poor'. She'd been at dinner parties with politicians, intellectuals, do-gooders with a rosy view of the decent working classes bettering themselves through education and honest toil, but she'd come from the undeserving poor. An underclass despised and feared by the other families on the estate.

Their part of the estate was where the council had shoved the great unwashed and unwanted. ASBO Alley, they called it, the one desolate road where no one, not even the police, would visit after dark. Sometimes, to get away, she'd walk across the estate to the library. Not to read – it wouldn't have occurred to her that there was anything for her in the tiny black letters that crawled across the pages – but the library was warm and next door was a shop where her family hadn't been banned and she knew the blind spot where she could stuff a sausage roll down her tracksuit top and the lady on the till wouldn't see.

There were lots of bad times. Each time her mother brought home a new man, each one worse than the last. Meaner. Harder. More demanding. Dreadful times when she found herself cornered by one of them but there were worse times even than that. Like just before benefits day when there was nothing to eat, nothing to put on account, no booze, no pills, no puff, no powder and that was when tempers got ugly. There'd be screaming. Things and bones would get broken. One time her mother had taken a swing at one of her sisters, who'd ducked so her mother had ended up putting her fist right through the wall.

Staying tucked away in one of the damp bedrooms was a good way to not get noticed but crawling under the bed was better – scooched right up against the mildewed wall so she couldn't be yanked out unless the bed was lifted up. It had been lifted up that day when her mother had dragged herself upstairs on ulcerated legs.

‘You! Shift your arse to Fat Alan. Get me something on tick.'

The only kindness her mother ever showed her was not sending her off to Fat Alan to get something on tick, unless she'd exhausted every other possibility.

She'd walked the ten minutes to Fat Alan's house on the nicer bit of the estate. It hadn't occurred to her to say no. Saying no was as unimaginable as being invited into one of the nice houses she passed with their cladding and their satellite dishes; some of the really fancy ones even had hanging baskets and flowerbeds.