The Last Day

by Claire Dyer

  As she stares at the text she’s just sent she realises that right here, right now, the strongest emotion in her life is guilt: guilt over what she did before she met Boyd, guilt that’s she’s never been brave enough to tell him, guilt that the woman he thinks he loves isn’t the real her, guilt that it seems as if her whole life, her whole fucking life, has been some kind of act and finally, guilt over sending the text telling Reuben to ‘fuck off and die.’ She really shouldn’t have done that.

  How could she have got herself in this situation? She’d always promised she’d travel light, not put down roots, leave before she got found out. It had always been the only way. She’d done it before. And yet here she was, trapped again. Would she never learn? She knows the only solution to this is to leave; only now it’s not an option, it’s an imperative. If she stays, she will end up hurting the people she loves more than if she leaves them before it’s too late.

  The thought of going is heartbreaking and she will have to choose this moment carefully too. She will have to armour herself against the fallout. Already, her arms and legs (even the one in the plaster cast) feel like liquid and a white heat burns behind her eyes. It takes all her energy to swallow.

  The ingredients for the meal she’s going to cook Boyd are laid out on the counter in front of her. She’s leaning up against the counter. It feels like there’s a hand grenade in her chest.

  Boyd

  December’s been wet and warm. After the gin-like clarity and chill of November, the run up to Christmas has been soggy, lacklustre and unseasonal.

  And Belle is still dying, slowly and irrevocably.

  It’s Christmas Eve and Boyd is downstairs putting his gifts for Honey and Vita under the tree. It’s odd, he thinks, how we measure life by significant events like Christmas and birthdays. This Christmas will be his second with Honey. He’s lost count of the number he’s had with Vita. They didn’t even have one with William.

  The lights on the tree are blinking at him; Honey’s idea. He would have preferred static lights, as would Vita, he’s sure. But Honey wanted ‘bling’ as she called it, though now the lights are kind of fuzzy. He rubs his eyes. He has, he realises, been crying.

  ‘Stupid bloody sod,’ he mutters, arranging the presents so that they look more plentiful than they really are. His gift for Vita was an easy choice now they’ve got the TV: the box set of Breaking Bad. He knows she’ll like it; it’ll appeal to her sense of the macabre. But Honey had been more difficult to buy for. He’d thought about a diamond, a designer handbag, a holiday. They’d never actually been away anywhere together, mainly due to money and, with things as they still were, none of the above were really possible. So he’d gone for an iPad. He has no idea whether she’ll like it, but it was easy to buy and easy to wrap.

  If he had unlimited funds and unlimited choice what he’d like most of all would be a place of their own again, for it to be just the two of them once more. He likes living with Vita, of course he does, but it’s not ideal, it can be confusing at times and it shouldn’t be a permanent solution. He feels he is hampering Vita, stopping her from living the kind of life she wants to live. He wonders sometimes if he’s stopping her moving in with Colin, or Colin moving in here. In truth, he wishes he knew more about Vita’s relationship with Colin. She never talks about him. They don’t see one another very much these days either and she’s not stayed out overnight again, not to his knowledge anyway.

  All of them deserve a better solution than this. And he’s worried; at times he feels that he’s carrying an alarm clock around in his pocket and that one day, when he least expects it, it will go off.

  He’s got a long way in saving up for the tax bill, but there’s still a chunk of money to be found from somewhere and because he still doesn’t know in what sort of state his mother’s affairs will be at the end, he can’t – and shouldn’t – depend on anything coming from that direction.

  The wrapping paper on the presents shimmers; there are gifts to him from Honey and Vita and from Vita and Honey to each other. There are also the ones Trixie gave him at work yesterday: one for each of them. He’s given her some perfume, her boys money in an envelope and handed her a bottle of wine for Richard. There’s also a parcel from Colin to Vita and this makes Boyd feel uneasy.

  He switches off the lights and starts to make his way upstairs. Vita’s in her room and Honey’s reading. Her plaster’s due to come off on the 29th and she can’t wait. Neither can he, these last couple of months seem to have gone on for ever.

  ‘All OK downstairs?’ Honey asks as he closes the door behind him. Neither of them bother locking it any more.

  ‘Yes, all set.’

  Vita’s going out for Christmas lunch with Colin and some friends of his. ‘We’re all single, unattached, childless,’ she’d said. ‘Should be a right barrel of laughs!’

  And so he and Honey will be having Christmas Day here. He’s planning on visiting the hospice first thing; he’s bought his mother a set of handkerchiefs with ‘Belle’ embroidered into their corners. He knows she won’t use them and that it’s a waste of money and effort, but some part of him hopes he’ll keep them after she’s gone, as a memento.

  Honey looks tired. She’s been having the dream quite often recently and although he says, ‘You can talk to me about it if you like,’ she always says, ‘It’s OK. It’s nothing.’ And yet it’s not nothing. It’s obviously very much something.

  She is different, more on edge. He’s noticed her stopping in front of the windows at work and scanning the street as if she’s looking for someone. She’s constantly checking her phone and seems to be losing weight. He feels she is slipping through his fingers and it seems there’s nothing he can do to stop her from doing so.

  And then his phone rings.

  ‘Who can that be?’ he says, picking it up and staring at the screen.

  Of course it’s the hospice.

  ‘Boyd?’ the voice at the other end of the line says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Sophie here. I’m afraid she’s taken a turn for the worse. We think it won’t be long now. Can you come?’

  And so they go. They leave the presents by the tree and he, Honey and Vita drive in silence through the Christmas streets. It’s a bit like it was after Honey’s accident with the three of them in the car, but it’s also very different this time.

  He thinks of the households they pass, of the kids tucked up in their beds and the stockings and mince pies left out for Santa. He thinks of the mothers and grandmothers whose job it’ll be to make the lunch, of the fathers making sure they’ve bought batteries to put in the kids’ toys, of the flocks of turkeys sitting ready in fridges and baking trays and of the legions of crackers laid out on tables and the small schooners of sherry and too much pudding and arguments and tears and people saying ‘I love you’ and ‘I hate you’ and ‘I can’t do this’ and ‘You just don’t understand’ and how, at Christmas, everything concertinas into something bright and hard and significant.

  It’s a strange day. We hurtle headlong towards it; we tell ourselves it’ll be all right if only we are together and yet, there will be those for whom the balance isn’t quite right. Like him, for instance: his mother is dying, he never got to know his child and the woman who was his wife is no longer really his wife and is sitting in the back seat of the car plaiting her hair and cleaning her glasses with the hem of her scarf while the woman he loves is sitting in the front, her foot in plaster, her heart full of secrets she won’t trust him with.

  And he thinks of those who love each other but who are separated by people, or places, or principles. And he thinks of those who don’t love each other but who decide to stay together also because of these things.

  As he turns the car into the hospice entrance Boyd realises he’s scared. He’s scared of what he is about to face and what it could mean. He’s never known any other life than this one with his mother in it and there’s some part of him, a small voice tucked deep within his ribs that�
�s saying, ‘From here on in you need to be honest with yourself. Are you really who you want to be? Are you where you want to be, doing what you want to do?’

  Sophie greets them at the door. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she says in an almost whisper. ‘I hope you don’t mind, it is Christmas Eve after all.’

  ‘We’re glad you called,’ Boyd says.

  He’s always felt oversized here but now he feels like a giant walking through the night-quiet corridors. And, whereas he’d felt earlier that the balance between him, Vita and Honey wasn’t exactly right and wasn’t the right solution, now it’s just as it should be. When he’d been with his mother and Vita at the hospital, he’d felt part of a triangle but now, flanked by these two women, he feels more part of a circle. He’s very glad both of them are here.

  And, when they get to his mother’s room, he realises that what Sophie said was obviously true; it won’t be long now. He’d thought his mother had looked bad before, but now her skin had shrunk on to the bones in her face a bit like cling film. It is almost translucent. She’s the size of a sparrow and he can barely make out the rise and fall of her chest.

  The cancers have spread so that there is, according to the nurses, hardly any part of her now that isn’t affected.

  It was when it got to her brain that the decline had started in earnest and it was then that Boyd had started to mourn in earnest too. Not that he really knew how to, it was more a heaviness in the pit of his stomach and as if his legs were weighed down with lead. Filled with part-dread, part-remorse, he’d started to grieve in advance of her death in case he found he was unable to do it properly when the time came.

  Not that he need have worried because, seeing her like this, the grief comes over him like a wave and it is different from how he’d felt after losing William; each grief, he’s come to realise, is a different shape and colour. And, he’d thought he had managed to pack William’s grief away, but here it is sitting alongside the grief he’s feeling for his mother, still pulsing, still vibrant.

  ‘I have to sit down,’ he says to Honey and Vita.

  Vita organises chairs for him and Honey and says, ‘You can prop your foot up on here, Honey,’ as she manoeuvres a footstool in front of Honey’s chair.

  ‘Thank you,’ Honey says in a whisper.

  ‘I’m sure she can’t hear us,’ Boyd says, fidgeting in his seat. ‘What about you?’ he asks Vita. ‘Where will you sit?’

  ‘I’ll wait outside if that’s OK,’ she says. ‘It feels a bit crowded in here.’

  ‘No, you stay, I’ll go.’ Honey tries to stand, but Vita’s already half-way through the door. She closes it quietly behind her.

  ‘I don’t know how to do this.’ Boyd looks over at Honey who’s sitting in a pool of yellow light from the lamp above the bed. It’s like we’re on some strange desert island, he thinks. The rest of the world has faded until it’s no more than a speck in the distance.

  ‘You don’t have to do anything,’ she replies. ‘Just being here is enough, I’m sure.’

  ‘Some part of me thinks she’d rather die alone. She’s always been such a proud person, maybe she doesn’t want me to see her like this.’

  Honey reaches over the bed and touches his hand. ‘They say that, when it actually happens, most people don’t want to be on their own. I’ve heard many stories about people holding on until their loved ones arrive.’

  ‘And I’ve heard as many stories about people waiting until their loved ones leave before they die.’

  She squeezes his hand. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘you can’t know for sure. Not now. The important thing is to do what’s right for you. If you want to be here, then stay.’

  ‘You’re right.’ He disentangles his hand and runs his fingers through his hair. Suddenly he is inordinately tired. ‘I’d never forgive myself if I wasn’t with her at the end.’

  There’s a soft knock at the door. ‘Everything OK?’ Sophie asks.

  ‘We’re fine, thank you.’

  Sophie comes in and studies Belle’s face. ‘She looks peaceful,’ she says. ‘She won’t be in any pain now.’

  Boyd wonders how Sophie can know this, but decides not to question it; it’s better to think that this is so.

  And so they wait and the minutes tick by to Christmas morning.

  If Boyd had expected some kind of revelation or reconciliation at the final moments, he was to be disappointed.

  He and Honey sit mostly in silence. Occasionally Honey limps out of the room to check on Vita. ‘She’s OK,’ she says as she comes back in. ‘She’s reading and chatting to the nurses on the night station.’

  And as they wait, he remembers random things: his mother on a beach building sandcastles, the smell of her cigarette smoke and the shush-shush sound her dress made when she walked. He remembers the string bag she took shopping, how she could never open a tin of corned beef with the little key thing but always said, ‘Here, you do it Boyd. It’s a man’s job.’ And he remembers standing outside her bedroom at night listening to the sound of her gentle weeping when she thought he was asleep. He remembers her disappointments, her lavender perfume, her brittleness, her smile.

  It’s just gone four in the morning when Belle makes a strange kind of noise, one long exhale almost like a laugh. He and Honey look at her and then at one another and they know without saying anything that she’s gone.

  And suddenly nothing matters any more, everything stops. There is only emptiness and silence.

  Then, as if she’s got some kind of sixth sense, Sophie knocks on the door again. ‘You OK?’ she asks, coming into the room.

  ‘I think she’s gone,’ Boyd says.

  ‘Yes, she has.’ Sophie holds one of Belle’s hands as she says this. ‘I’ll get Vita, shall I?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Boyd says as Vita enters. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You have nothing to be sorry for,’ she says.

  ‘I shouldn’t have brought you here.’

  ‘It’s OK. It’s not the same.’

  He stands and moves towards Vita. Something urgent inside of him is telling him to hold her, that maybe sharing this grief will allow them to better share their grief over William. She steps into his arms and rests her head on his chest. It feels good to have her there.

  He knows Honey will understand. He hopes she will.

  * * *

  They leave the hospice around six. What happens next is left in the hands of the staff.

  ‘You go home,’ Sophie tells Boyd. ‘Come back on the 27th. We can sort the paperwork out then. And you can collect her things then too. Don’t worry about it now. Just get some rest, all of you.’ She looks at him, then at Vita and then at Honey, who’s still sitting next to the bed with her foot on the stool.

  Boyd guesses Sophie must have seen it all over the years she’s worked there and so him being there with Vita and Honey isn’t strange, or wrong, or anything in between; it is just how it is.

  When they get back to the house in Albert Terrace, Boyd feels as though something seismic has shifted in his life and in its place is a huge slab of loss and relief and remorse.

  ‘I’d better pop round next door,’ Vita says, picking up her gift to Colin from under the tree as Honey limps into the kitchen to fill the kettle. ‘I can’t face going out for lunch, not now.’

  ‘Don’t blame you.’ Honey is leaning against the counter top.

  Boyd looks at Vita who’s hovering by the front door and then at Honey. ‘I think I’ll go up and try and get some sleep,’ he says.

  And, to his surprise, he does sleep. He doesn’t dream. Instead, his head is full of a dark mass he will later know to be sorrow.

  Vita

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Boyd says. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You have nothing to be sorry for.

  ‘I shouldn’t have brought you here.’

  ‘It’s OK. It’s not the same.’

  Boyd stands and moves towards me. I’m aware of Honey on the other
side of the room but the thought of her bewilders me. I step forward and rest my head on Boyd’s chest. He wraps his arms around me and for a second I let myself believe that nothing’s changed, that Honey isn’t here, that it is years ago and that his mother’s death is about me and him and that no one else matters.

  I imagine that this is a last day before a next day when I will wake and find him beside me.

  I close my eyes and draw in the scent of him; his body is warm and vast and I am, I realise, still exhausted, my bones are heavy, my heart has slowed. If I were allowed to, I could fall asleep here, now. If I were allowed to I could, despite everything – all that lies unspoken and unforgiven between us – let myself love him again, let myself love him still.

  Boyd

  He goes back to the hospice on the 27th but says to Vita and Honey that he wants to go alone.

  The three of them had spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day skirting around one another, watching old films on TV, eating when they felt like it. They’d opened their presents late on Christmas Day evening and had drunk too much whisky and Vita had gone next door for a while and Boyd and Honey had slept without touching, Belle’s death a solid and impenetrable thing between them.

  At the hospice he is given a case of his mother’s things which he takes into the family room and opens. Inside he finds a half-used pot of face cream, a book she never got to finish, her nightdresses, a pair of slippers and the handkerchiefs he’d given her for Christmas, still wrapped in gift paper. He also finds an envelope and inside the envelope is the jewellery she’d been wearing when she was admitted. There are all sorts of other things that had belonged to her, too, all slightly faded and worn and terribly, terribly sad.

  And there’s also a copy of her will in a brown envelope. Someone has written, ‘For Boyd, in the event of Belle’s death’ on the front of it. And there’s a letter in a white envelope with Boyd’s name c/o Belle, and the address of the hospice. He doesn’t recognise the handwriting.

  ‘Shit,’ he says as he lifts both of these documents out of the mêlée of his mother’s things.