If I Should Lose You

by Natasha Lester

  She didn’t mind that he’d forgotten to tell her; he was vague about details and arrangements and things that didn’t really matter so there would always be, on some level, things she wouldn’t know. But she didn’t care.

  She took the box and untied the bow and, sitting inside on tissue paper, was a dress, a dress to wear to a black tie party, a long, floor-sweeping dress in dark sapphire blue with an unexpected detail of threaded gold around the hem that would shine in the light as the skirt twirled. It was a dancing dress, a fluid dress, a dress made to move and as she ran the fabric through her hands she looked up at him and said all that she could think to say, which was, ‘Thank you.’

  But he could always say more. ‘If you’re not careful I might fall in love with you.’

  Somehow, after the party, they became a couple. Her name was written on invitations addressed to him, his name appeared on invitations addressed to her and they assumed they were spending at least Friday and Saturday nights together if she wasn’t working. Then he asked if he could meet Camille.

  She supposed it was a reasonable question. She did not have a reasonable answer. Why couldn’t he meet Camille? Because that would be like him meeting Dan.

  When she arrived home that night, she stopped to look in at Camille after Louisa had gone home. She studied her with the eye of a doctor trained to see beneath the skin but she saw what she always did. A red-haired Dan.

  Camille stirred and opened her eyes. ‘Mummy,’ she whispered just before her eyes closed again.

  Alix knelt by her bed and kissed her cheek. ‘Mummy’s here.’ And she felt the world reduce to the size of her and Camille and wondered if it was enough.

  CAMILLE

  FOURTEEN

  It should have been enough. It should have been enough. The words pump like a heartbeat in my head as I drive home from work with Alix’s diary hidden in the boot, as if that could stop the words from escaping the page. What did she decide, I wonder, not for the first time. Yes, I was enough? Or no, I wasn’t?

  I look at the clock. I realise I have a small window of time, half an hour perhaps, before Julie is expecting me. So I do something completely self-indulgent. I stop thinking and go shopping.

  The opening night of the exhibition is fast approaching and I have nothing to wear. I can’t remember the last time I dressed up, had my hair done, painted my nails. I’m not even sure where to go so I text Sarah and she texts back immediately with a couple of suggestions. As luck would have it, the boutiques are just a few minutes away.

  I run my hand over rows of dresses, most of them lovely, but none of them right. I have no idea what I want but I know that they will not do. And then I see a dress that is so like the one Paul bought for me many years ago that I stop and take it off the rack. I step into a change room and try it on.

  In the mirror I see myself in a sheath of draped black silk-jersey that drops right to the floor. It leaves one shoulder revealed, rather than my back, and I like the sense that it is different to that long-ago dress but still somehow the same. There is a slit at the side of the skirt and I catch a glimpse of my leg which is still toned enough, I think, to wear a dress like this. I watch it being packed into a box at the counter and I can’t help but feel excited at the thought of the exhibition and the dress. What Paul might have to say about both.

  As I am walking back to my car, my phone rings. I’ve been expecting a call all day with the results of my work-up. Now, here it is. ‘Am I compatible?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ says the voice on the other end of the phone. ‘But...’

  ‘Yes!’ I repeat the word, shriek it aloud, laugh. I wasn’t wrong to hope because what I’ve hoped has come true. I will call Paul. He will laugh too. He won’t care any more about the logistics.

  ‘But there’s a problem.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re tests also showed that you’re pregnant. You can’t donate your liver.’

  ‘Is Paul compatible,’ I whisper, knowing the answer even before it is given.

  No.

  I hang up the phone. How could I be pregnant? Then I remember the night I cried into Paul’s old T-shirt. How was it possible that a child could come out of such lifeless sex?

  I do not think about being pregnant as I drive home to collect Rosie. I do not want to spoil anything. Because Rosie is so excited that she is allowed to see her sister. She spends the whole time wanting Addie to get out of bed and play. Addie tries her best at peekaboo and other games, but I can see that she is tiring.

  A glance at my watch tells me that Paul will be here soon. I will tell him about the new baby. We will work something out. But I do not know what. How do I abort this baby, kill one child, so that I can help another to live? Which is what I had wanted only a few weeks ago: for a child to die so that Addie might live.

  On cue, my phone rings. It is Paul. ‘I’m not compatible,’ he says and I begin to cry, to tell him that I know, to tell him my news but before I can he says, ‘Before I forget, I can’t look after Addie on the twenty-third. You booked it into my diary but something’s come up.’

  The twenty-third is the opening night of the exhibition.

  The other two children sharing the room with Addie start to cry, one because her mother is leaving for the night, the other because she doesn’t like the cold hospital dinner that has been served to her. I move out of the room and into the hallway. Rosie trails after me, beginning to whinge that she is hungry.

  ‘You have to,’ I say. ‘That’s the exhibition. I sent you a text about it. I booked it in with you.’

  ‘Addie can stay by herself for a few hours. The nurses will be there.’

  ‘She’s three. She needs someone she knows with her. And what if something happens.’ Like last time, I think but don’t say.

  Rosie starts to wail; a trolley is being wheeled down the hall and the sound is scaring her. I can hear Addie calling from the ward, ‘Mummy!’

  ‘I can’t, Camille.’

  ‘Then ring around and find someone who can. What about your mum?’

  ‘I tried her already. She said she’d look after Rosie but I can’t get anyone for Addie.’

  Addie is crying now and Rosie is running away, down the hall, away from the trolley. She falls over and begins to howl.

  Everyone is staring at me; I am the mother who cannot control her unruly children. And that is when I say, ‘I’m pregnant.’

  There is absolute silence on the other end of the phone. So I fill it by saying, ‘And I’m a match.’

  Paul understands straight away what I am not saying. ‘Are you insane?’ he explodes. ‘You’ve got one child who’s dying so you want to kill our baby to save the first?’

  ‘I’ve always said that for Addie to get a liver, someone has to die.’

  ‘Not my child.’

  ‘Look, I never said I wanted to abort the baby. I just want to discuss it with you. But you shut everything down. Why is it all so fucking hard?’

  ‘Because it’s wrong.’

  I have reached Rosie and I pick her up but she kicks and struggles so much that I nearly drop her. ‘I’m coming,’ I shout to Addie, whose cries have become sobs, gulping, breathless sobs and so I snap at Paul, ‘And it’s wrong of you to bail out on me on the twenty-third but you don’t care about that.’

  ‘It’s just an exhibition, Camille.’

  ‘And this is just a marriage, Paul.’

  ‘Is it?’

  Fuck you. Again I want to say it but again I don’t. Because of the children. But we have no backup plan: my daughter will have to play the lottery that is the liver transplant waiting list and I have bought a dress that I will not be able to wear to an exhibition that I want to see, no, that I need to see because I have worked so hard on it and I am proud of it and I want you to be proud of me too.

  ‘If you don’t look after Addie on the twenty-third then we are getting divorced when this is all over.’ I mean the words when they come out and I wonder if I will still mean them
tomorrow.

  Paul’s next words assure me that I will. ‘Fine.’

  That is it. That is all he has to say after seven years of marriage and two and a bit children. It is not fine. But nor is leaving his sick daughter and expecting that I can be with her every day and every night too. I can’t remember the last time I slept. After two night shifts at work in a row on the back of a night shift by Addie’s side I can no longer think of anything except the hatred. Strong enough this time to make me never want to see him again.

  FIFTEEN

  Someone clears their throat behind me and I know that it is Paul’s mother, come to get Rosie. Lorraine is standing just outside the door, always polite, never intruding, which also means she never gets quite close enough to anyone.

  ‘You can come in,’ I say.

  ‘I didn’t want to wake her.’ She nods hello at the mothers of the other children in the room.

  ‘She’s eating her dinner.’

  ‘But so often she’s asleep.’ She stands next to Addie’s bed, leans down, kisses her cheek and says, ‘Are you feeling better?’

  Addie nods with a mouthful of ice-cream.

  ‘Well, I’ll take Rosie home then,’ Lorraine says.

  I pass her Rosie’s bag and say, ‘Just give her some baked beans on toast for dinner. And a cup of milk. She’d like a bubble bath – she’ll show you where the bubbles are. It’d be great if she was in bed by seven o’clock.’

  Lorraine checks her watch. ‘That’s not much time. We’d better go then. Come on Rosie.’

  Rosie’s tears, only just stoppered up, pour out again. ‘Want Mummy. Mummy!’ She pulls away from Lorraine and takes a firm hold of my legs.

  I prise her arms away, bend down and hug her. ‘If you go home with Grandma and are a good girl, you can take this lolly with you and eat it in the car.’ I pull a couple of jelly babies out of my bag and hold them up. I know it is bribery, pure and simple, but I have no energy left to be a good mother. And it works of course. Rosie takes the lollies and follows her grandmother out.

  ‘Can I have a lolly too?’ Addie asks and I am about to shake my head but I stop and say, ‘Why not?’

  She chews the lollies slowly, savouring them as if they are something she will never taste again. Then I get her ready for bed, read her a book and she falls asleep before the last page.

  Soon, the other two children in Addie’s room are asleep too. I tiptoe over to the bathroom and pull the door open quickly so that it doesn’t squeak. If one wakes and cries, they’ll all be awake within a few minutes. And one of the girls has been left by herself for the night so, if she cries, there’ll be no one to soothe her and the other girl had cried from the time her dinner was served until about fifteen minutes ago so I don’t think any of us wants to hear any more crying, especially, as now, the girl and her mother are both sleeping the sleep of the exhausted, mouths open, unmoving, snoring.

  I have a quick shower, a blast of water on and off in a couple of minutes. I clean my teeth. That is it. No cleansing the face, moisturising the legs, pampering the body. I have time only for the bare minimum required to get through each day.

  My recliner chair looks so uninviting with its cold vinyl surface and worn hospital sheets so I sit on the visitors’ chair instead and stare at a wall. Then I hear footsteps behind me but I don’t turn around because I am not expecting anyone and it is probably a nurse. But a voice, a male voice, says my name. It is Jack.

  ‘I know that your life’s all over the place at the moment so I thought it’d be easier if I came to see you,’ he says and I remember his text message, the one I haven’t replied to. He pulls a chair up next to mine. ‘How is she?’ He nods at Addie.

  ‘Okay. As well as she can be.’

  Jack has a folder on his lap and a photograph falls out of it onto the floor. I reach down and pick it up and realise that it is clipping from a magazine. It shows Jack and Alix at the opening night of one of his exhibitions. They are just walking in the doors together and Alix looks like a publicity-shy celebrity caught in the blast of too many camera flashes. Her arm is moving up to her face and her head is lowered; a plummeting red curl and the line of her cheekbone are almost all that is visible. Her hand is in Jack’s but it is not slipped in his palm, it is clenching his fingers.

  ‘More stuff that I found,’ he says. ‘Tell me if you don’t want any of it.’

  ‘Don’t you want to keep it?’

  ‘Photos don’t help me to remember Alix. Reading your notes did.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I whisper and I am touched that I have been able to make him remember a woman I barely know.

  ‘I brought you a copy of the cover for the exhibition catalogue. Sarah said she hadn’t had a chance to send it to you yet.’

  He hands me a shiny piece of paper that is covered all the way to the edges with a reproduction of a painting. I know the painting, I have already written about it but it looks different now. It is Jack’s first painting of my mother. She is seated in a chair, naked and leaning forward, her hand is covering her eyes. Her hand is exhausted, lonely; emotions ordinarily expressed through a face or eyes are clearly shown in her body. Even though I cannot see her face I can see that everything about her has been stripped away, that her skin is a carapace containing almost nothing except a tiny spark that can either be roused or extinguished. I feel for the first time as if I know my mother and I want to step into the painting and sit on the floor by her feet, tucked inside the curtain of her hair. I want her to take her hand away from her face, to have her reach down and touch me.

  ‘Why did it happen?’ I ask Jack.

  He knows what I mean. He is the only person who can give me the why.

  ‘I got cancer.’

  I got cancer. Three words that seem to suddenly change everything. ‘Cancer,’ I say. ‘Like Dan.’

  ‘It wasn’t like Dan. It was an operable melanoma. I had a bit of chemo and then I was fine. But Alix didn’t wait for to me explain any of that. As soon as she heard the word cancer, she ran out of the house. The accident happened later that night. On her way home.’

  When he speaks I hear the ache of guilt in his voice, an ache I am all too familiar with. I understand why his paintings post-Alix have always been described as raw; it is because he paints his anguish, not just at the loss of her but also at the sense that it was his fault, into every stroke.

  I try very hard to remember what Louisa told me about Alix’s accident – an accident with a car, is how Louisa described it but wouldn’t it more ordinarily be described as a car accident? Was Alix not in a car then? Was she on foot and running, running from Jack and his news, running blindly – or running with both eyes open, straight into the path of an ‘accident’?

  Then Addie begins to fidget, to writhe almost, in her sleep and Jack apologises for taking my attention away from my daughter and we both lose the opportunity that neither of us seems to want to take, in any case, to talk more about the accident.

  ‘Thank you for coming here,’ I say to him as he stands. We kiss one another on the cheek before he leaves.

  I turn to Addie and soothe her through something, I am not sure what – a nightmare, pain, it is so hard to tell in a three year old – and then I fall asleep, which is a relief because then I don’t have to think about anything, especially not the past, which, after what Jack has told me, may have suddenly become the most brutal thing of all.

  Louisa turns up at the hospital the next night and orders me home to sleep. ‘Spend some time with Paul, love,’ she says.

  I nod, an automatic movement of the head that means nothing. I watch her organise herself in the chair, moving it so that Addie can see her if she wakes, propping a pillow behind her back so she can rest too. I think about the conversation I had with Jack and wonder again why the accident that killed Alix is the one part of her narrative that has not been turned into story by Louisa. ‘Louisa?’

  She pulls her magazines out of her bag and places them in her lap. All she needs is a blank
et across her knees to become a living picture of comfort. She smiles at me, waiting for me to continue.

  I smile back at her, a guardian angel by my daughter’s bedside, and say, instead of the question I really want to ask, ‘It’ll be good to have Fliss here. Only a couple more days.’

  ‘Someone for you to talk to.’

  ‘I talk to you.’

  ‘Not as much as you should.’

  What I say next does not logically follow but it comes out anyway. ‘I’m pregnant. It means I can’t give Addie my liver.’

  ‘Oh, Camille.’

  ‘And I asked Paul for a divorce.’

  ‘Why, love?’

  ‘Because he’s never here. He’s always at work. He doesn’t give a shit about Addie or about me. Who goes to a meeting instead of coming to sit with their dying child? And he just expects me to say, Okay darling, never mind. He doesn’t care if I sit in here for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Did you say that to him?’

  ‘Yes.’ There are tears on my cheeks and I am trying to keep the crying in my eyes and not in my throat or my mouth because then Louisa will hear it. They are angry tears though; I am not sad about Paul but I am mad, so mad.

  ‘Are you sure you said that?’

  ‘I did.’ My protests make me sound like a child and I feel like a child, like a two year old sitting in Louisa’s lap at midnight asking for stories about her mother, loving Louisa but knowing she was not enough.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Talk to him tomorrow. When you’re not so angry.’

  Another subject change. ‘Jack Darcy came in to talk to me last night. It got me thinking about Alix’s accident. She was driving a car, right?’

  ‘She was in an accident with a car, yes.’

  There it is again, that odd wording. ‘Whose fault was it? The other driver’s? Was Alix tired? Had she been working late?’