Marianne woke with her nightdress soaked in sweat, conscious that something strange and alarming had happened. Fear, which she thought she had skilfully circumvented, had found her out. Such a dream would have been nothing, except that being awake failed to calm or reassure her. For years now, even before she had ever visited the clinic, Marianne had contemplated her death with relative equanimity. Indeed, she had practised dying. She had lain in bed with her eyes shut ready to flick the switch; she had reviewed her eighty-odd years, marked her conduct, felt gratitude for the good things, sadness at the losses, guilt and shame where she thought she had behaved badly and then slipped into an imagined death with scarcely a moment of regret. Reviewing her ‘death’ with the benefit of hindsight it had seemed easy, welcome even, a friendly companion ready to be called upon whenever she should demand it; or, should it conspire to take her by surprise, she was prepared to go quietly. There would be no rage – and above all, no fear.
And yet she was afraid. And more than afraid; she was in a black hole of lethargy and depression which she had not felt since Izzy’s death nearly fifty years earlier. She spent all morning in bed; she was unable to contemplate food; she was surly to Anna and refused to speak to Dorrie on the telephone. She was hating the world, and most of all hating herself.
Suddenly, she realised, nothing had meaning anymore. I am trapped in a cul-de-sac of solipsism; Callum, the girls, Anna and Dorrie – when I die, they die too. The world that I have known, that I have tried to understand, occasionally hated for its cruelty but more often loved for its magnificence, will end with me. None of it will matter anymore. My own existence is the only reality. My non-existence, which I have contemplated with equanimity for so long, now seems impossible to comprehend.
Anna came into Marianne’s bedroom. ‘I will go now,’ she said, ‘but Dorrie coming to visit you this afternoon.’
Marianne said nothing.
‘Did you hear what I said? Dorrie will come to visit you.’
Marianne kept her face turned away from Anna.
‘I know you’re not well today, Marianne, but please say something.’
‘I told you, I don’t want to see her.’
‘But, Marianne, she worries about you. She is a good friend. You must see her.’
‘I’m really very tired today, Anna.’
‘Is this something to do with the test you have at the hospital? Did they give you some new drug?’
‘No, no new drugs.’
‘And your tests are OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe you have tired yourself out with all this work on the old books?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Anyway, Dorrie say she is worried about you and is coming to visit. She has her own key so she will be able to let herself in.’
Marianne didn’t reply.
‘OK, you are not well today, I think. Say hello to Dorrie for me,’ she added, closing the door behind her. Marianne kept her eyes closed.
Jake woke late on Sunday morning. Leah was lying with her back to him, seeming to hug the far side of the bed; still apparently asleep. He slipped out of bed and went into the bathroom. He tried to focus on the events of the night before but they had a dreamlike quality – dissolving into mist when he tried to interrogate his conduct. Finally he had told someone – though not his parents, as it should have been, nor even Marianne. He stepped into the shower and let the water cascade onto his face. Although the telling had been cathartic, his subsequent behaviour was impossible to explain.
Back in the bedroom he stared at the bed. Was there perhaps some movement? ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ he said, as if to himself.
While he was in the next room he sensed rather than saw Leah disappear into the bathroom. It was a long time before she emerged.
‘Would you like me to cook some eggs?’
She didn’t answer but carried on dressing without looking at him.
He walked over, intending to embrace her until he sensed her body stiffening.
‘I’m really sorry about last night…’
She nodded without looking at him.
‘I think I’ll just go home now,’ she said when she had finished dressing.
‘Please, Leah. Have some coffee and let’s talk.’
She stared at him with eyes which didn’t want to see; a blank stare, stripped of any emotion, naked as glass. The look terrified him.
Her voice came out close to a whisper: ‘I don’t know who I’d be talking to.’
‘Leah…’
‘No doubt we’ll see each other at the office tomorrow.’
She ignored the first knock on the door, and the second. After the second, Dorrie entered her room.
‘Anna tells me you’re not your usual self?’ she said.
‘I’m tired.’
‘Just tired? Or is it something more?’ Dorrie brought a chair up to Marianne’s bed. ‘Anyway, I take this as a good sign. If you’re feeling depressed about your recent visit to the clinic and your idiotic plan to kill yourself, then that’s the best news I’ve heard for a long time. Humans are designed to resist death up to the end. Anything else is unnatural.’
‘Is it?’ Marianne said. ‘Is it natural to resist when every part of me aches?’
‘Cogito, ergo sum, Marianne – have you forgotten that? Your brain is still there and that’s all that matters at your age.’
‘I remembered that boy again last night. But this time I was the one who drowned. Then it all turned into a terrible falling dream.’
‘We’ve talked about this before. It’s not a memory, just your overactive imagination. Your mother’s instinct was right – she should never have told you.’
‘I had the memory before she told me. Just not all the detail. More importantly, I had the feeling – that sick dread that something terrible had happened – and now I know for certain that it did.’
‘Even if what you remember was true, it’s like Siamese twins; sometimes one has to die so the other can live.’
‘But I was a sentient being. I was three years old. Even if I couldn’t help myself in struggling to get out, I could have run to his mother – they might have been able to save him. You know, I’ve read about it – children have been rescued from under the ice after thirty minutes or more; the cold protects their brain…’
‘I am not going to listen to any more of this. I am going to make some tea and I’ll make some for you.’
When Dorrie came back into the room Marianne had turned on her side and lay with her face to the wall. ‘I’ve brought you some tea,’ she said. Marianne gave no response. Dorrie started to talk to her. She told her some gossip from the village. Marianne didn’t respond, so Dorrie talked to her about some things that were going on in her own life. After a while she said, ‘Now it’s your turn to talk to me.’
‘Memories,’ Marianne mumbled into her pillow without turning around.
‘No more about the drowned boy, please.’
‘It’s the way the mind controls them. I’m not thinking of the boy. I’m thinking about the confession I signed in Russia. Somewhere inside me I think I’ve always known that there was something in that document that I shouldn’t have put my name to. That it wasn’t entirely harmless. But I supressed it. Blocked it so successfully that you could say I had forgotten. But at a deeper level I think it’s always been there, waiting to be rediscovered – to be released.’