We Are All Made of Stars (12 page)

‘Are you in pain?' I ask her.

‘No.' She shakes her head, but I suspect she is lying. Patients do that; they don't want you to know how much pain they are in, in case it means something. When you are here, facing the very end of your life, no one wants anything to mean anything.

‘I'll get the on-call doctor to have a look at your meds, just to make sure.'

‘I'm fine.'

‘Did your family come in today?'

She sips the water. ‘No, I don't have any family. Well, I did once, years ago. But I lost them.'

‘But so many friends, though,' I say. ‘Lots of people who love you. Just look at all the flowers and cards – it smells like summer in here. You know, you don't have to have all these visitors? If you find it too much, just say. Sometimes people don't really think what it can be like for you, having to keep on being brave.'

‘No, I want them to come. I want them all to come, to keep me busy. I don't like it when it's quiet, when I can think and dream.' She rests her head back against the pillow, and I take the cup from her.

‘Do you want to try and get in touch with your family again?' I ask her. ‘I'm sure the day team told you, we can find people for you, track them down. It's at times like this when we often find that we want to reach out, resolve silly arguments, things that don't seem to matter all that much any more. We can try and get in touch with any one you like.'

‘There's no one.' She leans back into the pillows, closing her eyes. ‘Thankless job, the night shift.'

‘I like it,' I say. ‘It's peaceful, really.'

‘When I was a young woman, I used to stay up all night, even after I was married. Stay up and go out dancing and drinking. Not all the time. Just sometimes. I got restless, you know. So I'd just grab my bag and head out the door. I loved dancing, and loud music and short skirts. The arguments we used to have, poor man. I was an alcoholic, you see. Addict is a better word. Addicted to feeling high, feeling excited. Couldn't bear normal life.'

‘What happened to your husband?' I ask her.

‘We didn't last, weren't likely to.' She smiles faintly. ‘Oh, but he was the love of my life. Well, one of them, anyway.'

I smile. ‘It's always the things you don't do that you regret,' I say.

‘Never regret love,' she says. ‘That's my motto. I don't ever regret having loved someone too much, only not loving someone enough.'

For a moment I think of the tears that came unbidden and unwelcome in the kitchen with Hope. Tears that came from love, but I'm not sure which kind. Do I love Vincent too much, or not enough?

‘Rest,' I say. ‘I'll be back soon.'

‘I heard about you,' Grace says, before I can leave. ‘Earlier today, from one of the day nurses. You write letters, don't you?'

I hesitate but she smiles sadly and says, ‘Tell me more; I want to hear all about them.'

Her accent is pure north London, broad and flat, from the time before a kind of American slang slipped into usage. She sounds like my nan used to, and my mum too – before she and Dad sold up and retired.

‘There's not much more to tell,' I say. ‘I just write the words down, for people too tired or frail to write their own letters for their loved ones they're leaving behind. Things that people feel are important to say: ideas, thoughts, messages …'

‘And post them when? Afterwards?' Grace watches me intently. Her hair is coarsely textured, still blonde at its tips and a wiry grey everywhere else. I recognise something urgent in her dark grey eyes. There's something she has to do, and it will keep her alive until it's done. We've all seen it: patients will keep going when everything medical and scientific says they should be gone; they will live until the person they are waiting for arrives, or until they've completed some task, or said something to someone that they must. To families it often feels like some kind of miracle, except that miracles never really happen, not in here. Or at least they're only temporary. And yet a nurse doesn't have to be religious to believe with total certainty in the human spirit. We see it, fighting until the very last, burning brightly in the eyes of people who are already dying. And after the moment, we honour it; it's rare to meet a nurse who doesn't open a window in the room of the recently deceased to help speed them, their soul, on their way.

‘Yes,' I tell her. ‘I make a promise to always post them after a patient has gone.'

‘I've got a son,' Grace says suddenly. ‘That husband I told you about, we had a child. He's thirty-five now. I'd like you to write to him for me, and you – you'll post the letter after I'm gone?'

‘You've got a son, but …?'

Grace lowers her eyes. ‘I haven't seen him for years … He'd not thank me now for getting in touch.'

I take her hand, between mine, leaning forward a little.

‘Look, family feuds, falling out, it happens. People make bad decisions and tiny little spats turn sour. They get blown up out of all proportion and, before you know it, years have gone by. But I'm sure if he knew that you were here, that you were this ill, he'd want to come. I'm sure he would. For his sake as much as yours.'

Grace closes her eyes. Some unnamed pain closes down her face for a moment.

‘It's not that simple, it's … What I did to him is something that cannot be undone. I don't deserve the chance to even try, I just … I want to make sure that he knows everything. I want to go knowing that I've told him the truth, because that's better, isn't it? To live with the truth. Would you write the letter to him, and promise not to post it until afterwards?' she repeats.

‘Yes,' I say. ‘If you are sure that's what you want?'

‘And you never tell, you never tell anyone what's in it?'

No one has ever asked me that question before, and I take a moment to think. It's true, I never talk about what's in the letters, not to anyone.

‘Well, as long as you're not confessing to a murder,' I say, with a small smile.

‘Right, well, I need some time,' Grace says, and I can see sleep is washing over her once again. ‘I need to think about it, think about what I want to say, and get it exactly right, because … well, because some would say that confessing to a murder is exactly what I'm doing.'

My darlings,

The first thing and the last thing I want to say to you is that I am so sorry. Everything you read in this letter should be all the things I tell you as you grow up. I should be explaining why the sky turns black at night, telling you not to climb trees, or to look both ways when you cross the road. I should be telling you that those boys aren't worth the bother, and asking you what time you think this is – but I won't be there. I'm so sorry, my darlings, I won't be there.

My life has been so happy, but you two, you were the happiest part of it, and I know Daddy won't mind me saying that because he feels the same. Daddy and I love each other very much, and when we had you two that love was doubled.

There is so much I want to tell you, but these are the things that I can think of now. Be kind to people, just be kind. You never know what other people are going through, so whenever you can, however you can, be kind. Be true to yourself. When I say that, I mean just live life the best way that you can, honestly, decently. You won't be perfect; you'll make mistakes, maybe hurt people, and people will hurt you. But that's okay as long as you can know that everything you did, you did with the right intentions.

Don't wait to start your life. I know what I said about boys, but later on, a good few years from now, don't decide you are too young to fall in love, or settle down, or have children, or travel around the world, or become a rock star, or discover the cure for the common cold. Don't wait for anything – just do it. There is never a right time, except for now. The right time is always now.

Be kind to Daddy. After three years or so (not before), let him fall in love again. And if you have a stepmother, be nice to her, as long as she is nice to you.

But, my darlings, you are only one and three years old, my Milly, my Lucy. Don't forget me, please. Remember how I held you, how I kissed you, how I poured my love into you, into every pore, hoping that it would stick. Remember that, and feel it. Every day, for all the days that come, remember my love and feel it.

I will always be there.

Your Mummy

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I turn the key in the lock and open the front door very slowly. I know at once that Vincent is awake; I can feel it in the air, somehow it crackles with his energy.

Cold, invisible rain has soaked me through to the skin. In the dark, I felt it gathering force in my hair and dripping down the back of my neck. I am too wet for a five-minute walk from the bus stop, and I don't want to explain why. For a moment I don't know what to do, except he's heard the key in the lock now and I have to go in. I don't even know why I keep my running a secret from him, except that it used to be his, then it was ours, now it is mine. Even though he's started running again, even though quite soon he will be almost as strong and as fast as he was before, it will never be quite the same for him. The joy that he took from it, the addiction that he passed on to me, will never quite be his again, not the way it was. So I keep it secret.

‘You're here,' he calls out from the living room.

‘Where else would I be?' By the time I've hung up my coat, and slung my bag over the end of the bannister, he's in the kitchen, cooking eggs. He has a high-protein diet to help with his training. He looks good: washed, shaved. Perhaps last night he got some proper sleep. I reach for his face, and go to kiss him. Shuddering, he pulls away.

‘You're freezing!'

There's a laugh in his voice and I smile, putting my cold hands on the back of his neck. He grabs me and pulls me into his arms. A spontaneous, familiar moment, an echo from a past where we were lovers, but then we remember who we are now, watching each other, like strangers who have somehow found themselves in a thigh-to-thigh embrace.

He's wearing his most basic leg – the model he uses for getting round the house – and shorts. If I look down I'll see a metal rod ending in a training shoe, but I don't look down; I know he doesn't like me to notice his differences. When he sees me watching him, something tenses in him, as if me looking reminds him of everything that has happened. And so I simply try not to look too closely.

‘Good shift?' he asks me. He hasn't let me go yet, and I take that as a good sign. I hold my breath, heart racing, alert to his every movement, like some small mammal that happens to find itself in the path of Shadow's stalk. I nod and smile, carefully. Those beautiful blue eyes look clear and calm. Here, right now, in this close-cut frame, everything is the same as it was.

‘Pretty good.' I think about Issy and Grace, but I don't say anything. I never talk about work.

‘I dreamed about you,' he adds, almost talking to himself. ‘It was nice.'

‘If you dreamed, then you slept?'

‘Same as usual,' he says. And just behind the scent of toothpaste, there is something else: his minty breath has a slight tang of alcohol. He was drinking quite recently. Perhaps that's why his eyes are bright and his smile is so relaxed. It doesn't matter, I tell myself. It doesn't matter how the smile comes, as long as it does.

‘You look nice,' he adds. ‘All wet and flushed. It must have really rained on you between the bus stop and here.'

‘No umbrella again.' I roll my eyes, theatrically. ‘I must have a dozen in the cupboard under the stairs, and yet never take one out with me. I don't feel pretty. I feel rank. I should have a shower …'

‘Don't go … It's been a long time since we stood like this, hasn't it? I …' He shrugs. ‘I miss it.'

I falter; he is trying. I think he is trying, or at least the last drink he had has melted away some of his reserve. This is new, at least in recent times. He is reaching for me, holding me, and, whatever the cause, I like it. I want it. It would be better if my heart would stop beating so furiously for a moment so that I can think, so I can take my time discovering the best way to react, but instead it insists on swelling with hope, because that's what we humans do.

Never have I been this nervous in the arms of a man, especially Vincent. I wasn't even this nervous before he kissed me for the first time. I didn't have time to be; we were so caught up in the maelstrom of our lust for each other. Perhaps it's that – the knowing that, once, everything physical was so easy for us – that terrifies me now. And there's something else: for Vincent to want me like this, he has to see me, and when Vincent sees me something inevitably happens that makes him angry. With every second that he draws me nearer, his hands travelling slowly over my ribs and hips, I'm waiting for that reaction to happen – for him to pull me close, only to let me go, as if touching me might scald him. We might still want each other, but we resist each other too. Two magnets pushing against the laws of attraction.