Seven Lies (ARC)
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But I did begin to feel afraid. I knew in that moment that something
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bad had happened.
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I went back downstairs and found the security guard. He’d been
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hired to patrol the area after a young man had been stabbed in the
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nearby car park. He was perched on a low brick wall and I interrupted
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the film he was watching indiscreetly on his phone to ask for help. He
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sighed loudly and said that there was nothing he could do, that I needed
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to come back with the police.
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I called them immediately and spoke loudly, explaining that my
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sister was vulnerable, hospitalized only a few months earlier, virtually
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housebound, and that I couldn’t get through to her at all. I stood there
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in front of the security guard, pacing, interrupting him further, while
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waiting for the police to arrive.
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I felt sort of ridiculous, because while I was absolutely sure that
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something was terribly wrong, I couldn’t shake the fear— the hope,
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too— that I was unnecessarily making a fuss.
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The police arrived and I think that they knew, too, that she was dead.
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At their insistence, the security guard contacted the maintenance
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man, who accompanied us up to the flat.
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“You want to wait here?” asked the policewoman. “We can go in first.”
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I shook my head. “It’s fine,” I said. “I want to be there.”
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I knew that my little floret of hope was wrong, that she was dead,
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and I didn’t want to be a coward this time, to look away because I was
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afraid.
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They opened the door and I stepped inside and then I smelled it,
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and I walked in and she was lying on the sofa, swollen thicker than
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she’d ever been before, her skin mottled and gray, her eyes wide open,
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flies swarming and one sitting just above her eyelid.
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I stood and stared, and the policewoman rushed past me to feel for
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a pulse but we all knew then that there wasn’t one. The maintenance
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man retched behind me and I heard him rush back onto the balcony.
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I had known for years that she was going to die.
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That sounds morbid, and perhaps it is, but she was terminally ill.
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She had a disease from which she would never recover. There was only
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one outcome.
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The policewoman stood up and shook her head and then walked
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toward me and put her arm around my waist and turned me around
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and led me back toward the staircase.
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I wasn’t afraid. I knew what to expect. I had experienced grief and I
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was ready.
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“Is there anyone I can call for you?” she asked me.
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This time there was no one at all.
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05
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Here are some of the things that you have when you have others,
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things that I no longer have: the steady, reassuring, harmonious hum of
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someone somewhere who cares; the reflex that reaches toward the
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story, the retelling, when something goes laughably wrong; the some-
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one you’d call from the side of the road, the hospital, the back of a po-
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lice car; the knowledge that you’ll never lie dead in your bed unfound
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for long because someone somewhere is searching.
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What is it to live without these things? Without love and laughter
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and friendship and hope?
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I don’t want to know.
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I don’t want to live that life.
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I’m making a choice— that sounds bold; it feels bold— to recapture
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those things, whatever it takes, to make this life something worth living.
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I won’t live like this anymore.
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Which means that things are going to have to change.
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01
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The
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Seventh Lie
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Chapter Thirty- Nine
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k
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E
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mma died a week ago.
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That’s not very long, is it?
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I’m still in shock. I must be.
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And yet, at the same time, I think that I’ve already reached that
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theoretical final stage of grief. I know that she has gone; I can accept
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that she has gone.
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I had always known, I suppose, that she would never grow old. I
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never assumed that she would become one of those ghoulish women
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with crepe paper skin lying on a hospital gurney. It just never felt likely.
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Perhaps because she was already, in so many ways, like those old women
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tucked down hospital corridors.
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She spent so much
time alone. I had never before seen her as weak
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as she’d been in these last few weeks. Her bones seemed so frail. Her
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back ached and her knuckles were swollen and arthritic. She struggled
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to climb the stairs to her flat. It was her hips, she said. She suffered
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from such a complex menagerie of ailments that most of her adult life
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was spent balancing precariously at the boundary between life and
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death.
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And so I had known for a very long time that this was coming. I
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could see it there in the stars every night, shining the truth, a moment
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waiting to be decreed. It is not the worst way to lose a loved one.
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Those deaths that appear unexpectedly— the bolts of light against a
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dark night sky— are far worse. You glance out the window and suddenly
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it’s there in front of you, brighter than any of the other stars and falling 04
fast. There’s no time to prepare or to ground yourself before the earth
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shifts beneath your feet.
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Those are the deaths that you cannot accept. They are the fiercest
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and they land the hardest, destroying other lives and other futures and
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trailing devastation. Because you feel it all at once, in just one moment, 09
as a life glides through the cracks in the earth like liquid through
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clasped fingers.
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I returned home immediately after discovering her. I cried, but only
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a little. And then I fell asleep.
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I woke up early— too early— and I felt horribly imbalanced, as
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though all the pieces that had made up my life before that moment had
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shifted position overnight. I pulled on my jeans and a jumper and went
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out into the street to remind myself that the trees were not shaking and
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that their roots weren’t quivering underground and that the pavement
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wasn’t being slowly peeled away from the surface of the earth. I wanted
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to remind myself that this was not the worst, that I had already sur-
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vived far worse.
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I saw that the sky was black, lit only by the moon shining overhead
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and the sharp, warm glow of streetlamps. I marched through the city,
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into the small squares of suburb hidden within. Parked cars were lined
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up along the curb, their wheels snug against the lip of the sidewalk. I
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walked past the curry house with its neon sign sparking fiercely against
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the night, the supermarket, its door chained closed and a single flores-
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cent bulb flickering within. I passed two real estate agents, three hair-
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dressers, and saw that the city was unchanged.
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I returned to my flat and I saw flecks of dust floating in my bedroom
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and in the kitchen and I started to clean. Because life doesn’t recognize 31S
small, individual losses. The dust still gathers. I had a shower and put on 32N
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the bathroom and to refill my wineglass and to make a few slices of
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toast. I told myself to be patient, to persevere, that this, too, would pass.
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The following evening, I dragged a dining chair into my bedroom and 05
stood it against my open wardrobe and clambered up, looking for the
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old photograph albums created by my mother decades earlier, when we
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were still a family. I found them there: thick and dusty and bound in
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red leather.
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I sat on my bed and leafed through the pages, trying to find photo-
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graphs of Emma and me together. There were dozens. There was one of
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me in denim dungarees and pink sandals nestled into the corner of an
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armchair, holding her in my arms and across my thighs. She must have
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been only a few weeks old, because there were still tubes bent into her
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nose and curled across her cheeks.
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One was taken against a brick wall, the two of us hand in hand in
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matching school uniforms. She was standing beside me, her head at my
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chest. There was a lovely one of us sitting in a field, sausage rolls and 18
sandwiches and biscuits laid out between us on a tartan blanket, a Fris-
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bee in her fist, and cows standing sturdy in the background. There was
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one of us in matching orange swimsuits at a waterpark with monstrous
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slides twisting behind us. Then, her little body was a miniature replica
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of mine: the same straight thighs, the same square shoulders. There
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were two festive photographs toward the back of the album. In the first
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we were sitting side by side in our pajamas, presents piled around us in
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colored paper, the tree glittering behind us, and these bright, excited
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grins on our faces. In the second we were in matching duffel coats and
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Wellington boots beside a snowman with a carrot for a nose and twigs
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for arms. And, at the very end of the last album, one of us in front of
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our final family home, on the day we moved in, standing between our
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parents.
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I knew that I needed to tell my mother.
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It was a Wednesday. I had never visited her on a Wednesday before,
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but I knew that I shouldn’t wait until Saturday. I went to the station and 03
I boarded the train, and I saw my own face in the window and that my
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eyes were red and swollen and my skin puffy and gray. I rubbed at my
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cheeks to revive them. I tried not to cry on the journey in the hope that 06
they might look a little better by the time I arrived.
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I pressed the buzzer at the desk, and the receptionist approached
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me and sighed loudly when I said that I needed to speak to my mother
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and that it wa
s an urgent matter.
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“We weren’t expecting you today,” she said.
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“As I said,” I repeated, “it’s urgent.”
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“She might be in the dayroom— ”
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“She won’t be.”
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“We have allocated visiting hours . . .”
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She trailed off as I turned and walked down the corridor toward my
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mother’s room.
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She didn’t seem surprised to see me. She smiled as I sat down at the
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end of her bed; she probably thought it was the weekend. She was wear-
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ing that blue cardigan again, the sleeves rolled up around her elbows,
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and it seemed as though she still had her pajamas on underneath.
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“I need to talk to you,” I said.
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She nodded.
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“It’s not good news,” I said.
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She nodded again.
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“Mum,” I said, “it’s really bad news— the worst.”
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I hadn’t called her “Mum” in years. The word always felt unnatural 27
in my mouth, as though it didn’t belong to the woman in front of me.
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She tilted her head to the left. She nodded again, more vigorously
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this time, urging me to say it, to tell her, to stop this unnecessary
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stalling.
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“It’s about Emma.”
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She stared at me. I continued.
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“I went to see her,” I said. “Like I said I would, to check that she was
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okay. She hadn’t been answering her phone. And when I turned up,
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she didn’t answer her door. I had to call the police eventually because
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no one would let me into the flat, and then they arrived. They opened
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the door.”
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I wanted her to say something, but she sat silent, and so I continued
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to tell her what had happened, reeling through the moments that hap-
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pened next, my thoughts, my fears, all the ways this might have ended
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differently. I knew that she was bewildered, but I couldn’t slow down.
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I told her that her daughter was dead in words I’d never used before,
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words that were waiting within me but that I’d hoped would stay there
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always.
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“Mum,” I said, “she’s gone. They think it was her heart.”
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I think that then she finally understood, because she gasped and her
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eyes took on this wild, startled stare. She opened and closed her mouth,