Audrey
As Audrey reached the end of her solo she realized that this was it: this was how it felt to be free.
She sang her final line and then her solo was over and the rest of the choir were joining in. Her head felt light, her legs weak and her palms damp, as though her body was only now recognizing the magnitude of what she’d done. But now that she had, all Audrey could think was that she wanted to do it again. She wanted to turn back the clock sixty seconds to the moment the pianist had struck those first two iconic chords, to relive every single note in the knowledge of how quickly they would pass.
Singing along with the rest of the choir, Audrey looked out into the audience. She could see people smiling in the front rows, could hear a note of optimism reverberate around the hall.
Then the song came to an end and there was a fragment of silence, a splinter of time in which anything seemed possible. And then the silence was shattered by a sound so thunderous Audrey almost clamped her hands over her ears. Not just the noise but the feel of it: an eruption of applause that vibrated through the soles of her feet.
Audrey turned to see Phoebe two rows behind her, flushed and beaming. And then she felt someone taking hold of her hand and she turned to find Ben leading her toward the front of the stage, gesturing for her to stand there, alone.
Hands clasped behind her back, Audrey stood listening to the applause before bending her head in an unrehearsed bow. When she straightened up again, it took her a few seconds to understand why the audience looked different: closer, bigger. They were on their feet, not just clapping but cheering.
She turned around, in need of a cue from Ben as to what she should do next, but when she looked behind her, Ben and the rest of the chorus were applauding her too.
Audrey beamed at the audience, savoring every second.
And in that moment she didn’t think about the fact that her life was going to end so much sooner than she wished. She didn’t think about the grains of sand slipping through the hourglass, nor that she had had to wait so long to experience something like this. What mattered to Audrey as she took her fourth and final bow was the incontrovertible knowledge that even at her age—even this close to the end—life still had the capacity to surprise her.
Chapter 42
Jess
“Did you know Granny could sing like that?”
Jess looked at Mia over the top of her menu. Around them, waiters delivered pizzas, salads, bottles of wine, and jugs of water to neighboring tables, the restaurant noisy with Saturday night concertgoers.
She closed the menu, not feeling hungry. She had known she wouldn’t be at ten o’clock on a Saturday night, but Mia had been so keen for them to have dinner together that they were seated in one of the restaurants inside the Royal Albert Hall, waiting for her mum to join them.
“Not really. Having heard her tonight, I remember her singing to us when I was little, but I don’t think I’ve heard her sing since I was a child.” Jess thought back to all those lonely nights she had lain on the bottom bunk, Zoe having moved into the spare room next door as soon as she’d got ill, listening through the wall to her mum singing “Dream a Little Dream of Me” or “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” On days when Zoe was well enough, in the weeks she was allowed home from the hospital during the fourteen months of her illness, their dad would carry her downstairs and they would make up a bed for her on the sofa. Jess would slip under the far end of the duvet, careful not to take up too much space or sit on her twin’s spindly legs, and together they would watch The Wizard of Oz for the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth time. Zoe would laugh at the Tin Man, shout at the Cowardly Lion, and tell Jess not to be silly when she got scared of the Wicked Witch of the West and her flying monkeys. And no matter how many times the two of them watched it together, the same thought always went through Jess’s mind: that perhaps somewhere at the end of a rainbow was a pot of gold that could make her sister well again.
A thought skittered through Jess’s head, a thought so familiar it ought not to have hurt as much as it did: the question of what Zoe might have done with her life had she lived. And the same answer was waiting for her as it always was: that funny, fearless, spirited Zoe would have achieved so much more than Jess ever had. Sometimes Jess couldn’t help feeling that when the egg had divided in two, the wrong half had been given the faulty cells.
“I can’t wait to watch the whole concert back on TV. I hope they did a close-up of Granny during her solo. They probably did, didn’t they?”
Jess was about to reply when, over Mia’s shoulder, she saw her mum walk through the doorway to the restaurant. She was about to stand and wave when she registered two figures following closely behind, a sight that caused her stomach to twist into knots.
“For God’s sake, what are they doing here? What’s Mum playing at? Mia, get your things, we can’t stay.”
Jess rose to her feet and grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair as her mum, Lily, and Phoebe crossed the room toward them. She turned to Mia in preparation to leave. “Mia, didn’t you hear me? We’re leaving. I can’t believe Mum has done this. What on earth is she thinking?”
Mia stood up. But instead of picking up her bag and edging away from the table, she turned to the trio walking toward them and waved. And all at once Jess realized she’d been duped.
Chapter 43
Lily
It was too late to turn back. Lily glanced at her mum and saw in her face a quiet determination. She looked across the restaurant to where Jess was grabbing her bag from underneath the table, felt time stretch as though it knew, before the next second struck, that she had to make a decision.
She looked again at her mum, saw the naked desire to fix what was broken. And then she was following her mum and Phoebe through the thoroughfare of tables to where Jess was standing with her jacket draped over her arm, her face stony with rage or hatred, Lily wasn’t sure which.
“Why are you doing this, Mum?”
It was strange how one forgot. How time or self-preservation eroded the memory of Jess’s brusqueness: the accusatory tone and the clipped consonants.
Lily looked at Jess, unsure whether she wanted her sister to meet her gaze or not. She remembered all those times after Zoe’s death that Jess had left the room whenever Lily had entered, when her questions had been met with monosyllabic answers. She thought about all the occasions she had apologized to Jess without knowing what she was supposed to have done wrong. All the times she had wished—for their mum’s sake, if no one else’s—that Jess could cast off her anger, like a caterpillar shedding its skin. Mostly what Lily thought as she stood opposite her sister, feeling the heat of Jess’s rage, was that she wished she could turn back the clock twenty-eight years to the morning she had stood on the landing with her hand on the doorknob to the spare bedroom, and choose not to go inside.
“I’m just doing what I should have done years ago, Jess. I’m trying to make things better.”
Chapter 44
Audrey
As she waited to see how Lily and Jess might react, Audrey imagined what the scene might look like now if there were three daughters standing opposite her rather than two. Whether all three might be smiling, rather than one looking thunderous and the other wary. Whether there might be more grandchildren to join Mia and Phoebe, chatting among themselves, rather than looking on anxiously to see how the adults might next choose to make a mess of their family.
So often, in the space where Audrey’s third daughter should have been, was an imagined scene of how life might have been unfolding if Zoe were still alive.
“Mum, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you: this fantasy reconciliation of yours is never going to happen. Why can’t you leave it alone? Why can’t you just be happy with the relationships you’ve got?”
The exasperation in Jess’s voice was sharp, piercing. Audrey glanced between Lily and Jess, wondering whether there was anything she could have done to put an end to this sooner. “I love you
both. You know I do. And I can’t bear to see you estranged like this. Can you imagine what it’s like when the two people you love most in the world refuse to be in the same room?”
She turned to Jess but her daughter looked away, her expression glacial.
Audrey felt her heart bend out of shape. Part of her wanted to retreat, to accept defeat. But even as Jess glared at her, words began to tumble out of her mouth. “For goodness’ sake, Jess, you must understand how this is for me. I’ve got one daughter who refuses to speak to the other and two granddaughters I’m not allowed to see together. And I don’t have time to wait around for a reconciliation. Whatever it is you think Lily’s done, I’m asking you to put an end to it. Please, Jess, I’m begging you. Forgive her, please.”
Chapter 45
Jess
Jess said nothing as her mum sank into a chair and rested her head on her hands. She didn’t move as Mia and Phoebe flanked their grandmother, their arms around her shoulders. All around her people were eating, drinking, and celebrating together, perfect examples of the family her mum wished theirs could be.
A familiar irony drummed inside Jess’s head: that only by incurring her mum’s wrath could she protect her from a story she wouldn’t want to hear.
She looked up to where Lily was gazing at her with an expression of hurt and confusion that made Jess want to scream: What is it you want from me? What more could you possibly want other than my silence?
Seeing that look on Lily’s face made Jess shut her eyes to try to escape it. But it was still there. It was always there.
Whatever it is you think Lily’s done, forgive her, please.
But Jess could never forgive Lily. Jess didn’t want to forgive her. Because if it hadn’t been for Lily, her dad and Zoe would still be alive today.
Chapter 46
June 1988
It is a Thursday afternoon. Years later, Jess will remember this detail because of the dampness of her hair against the back of her neck, the smell of chlorine clinging to her skin, the residue of that afternoon’s swimming lesson still sore in her eyes.
She is supposed to be doing her homework, has promised her mum that she will have it done by the time her parents return, so that the five of them can spend their first evening together in more than two months.
Zoe is coming home from the hospital today. Jess cannot concentrate on her school work, is too distracted by thoughts of all the things she will do with Zoe once she’s home. Her sister has been at Great Ormond Street Hospital for almost nine weeks this time, and Jess cannot wait to have her sleep in the room next door again, cannot wait to watch films beside her, read stories with her, tell jokes to her. She has a conviction—a certainty she has shared with no one—that this will be the last time Zoe will ever have to go to the hospital, that this time she is coming home for good.
She looks down at her exercise book—religious studies, her least favorite subject—and cannot muster the motivation she needs to answer ten questions about the Good Samaritan. At ten years old, homework is the last thing Jess wants to do when she gets home from school. Instead she emerges from her bedroom, thighs sticky with the early June heat, convinced that a chocolate Hobnob cookie—perhaps two—will help provide the enthusiasm she needs.
She hears Lily’s voice before she reaches the top of the stairs, before Lily has a chance to see her. Her sister is on the phone in the hallway to one of her friends, whose identity Jess will never know.
“Yeah, she’s coming home today. Mum and Dad are collecting her now . . . No, neither of them asked—I don’t think they even remembered they were happening.”
Jess crouches behind the banisters on the landing, her breath shallow in her chest.
It is rude to eavesdrop, Jess knows this, but it is a habit she seems unable to break. It is something Lily complains about frequently, causing the ridges across their mum’s forehead to deepen, like a paper napkin folded back and forth in the making of a fan. It is this sight—her mum’s weariness at having to mediate their squabbles—that provokes the feeling Jess has had ever since Zoe first became ill fourteen months ago: the feeling that someone has taken a pin and punctured her lungs so that all the air is slowly escaping.
“Yeah, I know they’re only end-of-year exams, but still . . .” Lily’s voice sounds strange, as though anger and sadness are performing a complicated dance in her mouth. “Sometimes it just feels like they’ve forgotten they’ve still got two other children. It’s like we don’t exist anymore . . . I don’t know, I can’t really explain it . . . No, that’s fine, you get off . . . Yep, I’ll see you tomorrow . . . Bye.”
Jess unpeels her thighs and scrambles to her feet, tiptoeing silently into her bedroom, not daring to close the door for fear that the sound of it scraping against the carpet will betray her. She slips back onto the chair at her desk and resolves to stay there until her parents get home.
Three days later, Jess is walking down the stairs to the basement kitchen when she is stopped by the sound of crying.
It is a quarter to seven on Sunday morning and she has woken earlier than usual, hunger growling in her stomach. She had assumed everyone else in the house would still be asleep, but there are three voices coming from the kitchen and Jess sits silently on the top stair, listening.
“It’s not fair, Mum. Why is this happening to Zoe? Why can’t it happen to someone else instead of her? It’s just not fair.”
Lily is crying: loud, convulsive sobs that make the hairs on Jess’s arms stand on end.
“I know how hard this is, sweetheart. I know it’s . . . horrific.”
Her mum’s voice wavers but Jess can tell she is trying to make herself sound calm.
“We just have to be strong for her, Lily. We just have to make sure she knows we love her and we’re here for her.”
Her dad is speaking now and for a few lonely seconds, Jess feels left out, as though the grown-ups and Lily are deliberately excluding her from a conversation she ought to be a part of. She imagines the three of them creeping down the stairs so as not to wake her or Zoe, imagines them having planned this secret rendezvous down in the farthest reaches of the house where they are unlikely to be heard.
“But she’s in so much pain. It’s horrible. No one should have to be in that much pain. I hate seeing her like this. We can’t just sit by and watch her suffer and do nothing.”
Lily is sobbing and Jess feels a frown pucker her forehead. It is news to her that Zoe is in pain. She has known, since Zoe came home from the hospital three days ago, that her sister is very tired and needs lots of rest. She knows that she needs to be quiet so as not to disturb her, has perfected the art of tiptoeing up the stairs and across the landing as silently as a mouse. But no one has told her that Zoe is in pain. And the revelation makes her feel cold inside, as though someone has packed ice cubes around her heart.
“I’m sorry, Mum. I’m sorry for all those times I was jealous. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of it.”
“Shh, stop that. You’re a lovely sister to Zoe, to both of them. I know it’s always been difficult, that you’ve always felt a bit left out, but you mustn’t start thinking like that.”
Jess rubs her fingers over the bridge of her nose. There is too much new information fighting for space in her head and it is beginning to ache.
“I don’t understand why the doctors can’t do more for her. It’s inhumane. For goodness’ sake, people do more for sick pets than they do for people. There must be something we can do. Please, Mum. Please, Dad. Please stop it. You have to. Please.”
Lily is still crying—loud, heaving sobs—and Jess imagines her mum folding Lily into her arms, stroking her hair, kissing her forehead.
“I wish it could all be over.”
“Don’t you dare say that, Lily. Don’t ever let me hear you say that again.” Her dad’s voice is sharp, as though you might cut yourself on it if you dared say more. It is a voice he uses only rarely—not a voice Jess remembers him using at all before Zoe
got ill—and the sound of it reduces Lily’s sobs to a gentle whimper. Jess does not know why but something in Lily’s voice has caused the muscles in her tummy to coil like snakes. She replays Lily’s lines over in her head but cannot make sense of her feelings: Jess also wants Zoe’s illness to be over, wishes more than anything that her sister could get better, yet something about the way Lily said it, and her dad’s furious reply, will not sit comfortably in her head.
And then Jess hears the click of the kitchen door. She jumps to her feet, skitters noiselessly across the hall to the sitting room, and picks up a copy of Anne of Green Gables, ready to pretend she has been reading all along.
She does not yet know it but what she has just heard is a conversation she will remember verbatim for the rest of her life, the words replaying in her head on a never-ending loop.
It is eleven days since Jess overheard Lily crying with her mum and dad, wishing they could do something to stop Zoe’s suffering, wishing it could all be over.
She doesn’t know on this otherwise innocuous Thursday morning—unremarkable except that it is now exactly two weeks since Zoe came home from the hospital—what compels her to walk up the stairs. There is no need for her to do anything except put on her shoes and wait for Lily to come down. She has already brushed her teeth, pulled her hair into some semblance of a ponytail, packed her schoolbag. And yet she continues putting one foot higher than the other, climbing toward a future she cannot possibly predict.
Many years later she will come to believe that somehow she knew, somehow she guessed what was about to happen—what had already happened, too late for an intervention—an inexplicable sisterly intuition compelling her to investigate.
As she reaches the top of the stairs, Lily is coming out of Zoe’s bedroom. Her back is turned to Jess and she closes the door quietly, reverentially almost, her hands clasped around the handle. Jess watches her take in a long, deep breath that she seems to keep in her chest for an impossible length of time, as though perhaps if her lungs hold on to it for long enough, eventually she will be elevated like a balloon and fly away to some happier place.
If Only I Could Tell You Page 19