She shifts on her chair, feels awkward as she tries to think of something to say. Thinks about how they always start in the movies, can’t think of anything better. Clears her throat and starts, if only to drown out the bubbling coming from her mother’s lungs. ‘Mum? It’s me. It’s Lisa,’ she says, and starts to stroke the hand again.
This is the last time I shall be Lisa, she thinks. After this, Lisa’s gone for ever.
‘Collette.’
She looks round, realises that she’s drifted away as she held her mother’s hand, that time has passed in the mist and Vesta is standing in the doorway.
‘Hossein told me,’ she says. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Of course,’ says Collette, and feels the tears begin to flow. She lets go of the hand and stands up, and lets Vesta enfold her, hold her, pass her her strength. A kind, kind woman, the help to strangers. Should have been my mum, she thinks. Should have been someone’s mother. If you’d been my mother, I would never have had to have left.
‘Oh, lovey,’ says Vesta, ‘it’s hard, I know. But I’m here now, and I won’t go away.’
A single sob wrenches itself from her chest, and Vesta holds her tighter. Then she lets her go and finds herself a chair.
At two in the morning Collette hears Janine’s breathing change. Her mind’s been wandering for hours. The effort of maintaining her concentration, of staying in the moment, is too great even when she wants to fix the moment for ever. She hadn’t realised that boredom is as much a part of the deathbed experience as grief. The faces of nurses, popping their heads round the door, have come as a welcome distraction.
She’s been off in Peckham, back in her childhood, wandering through the rooms and the rows and the boyfriends. Pulling Janine from the settee and supporting her to her bed. Running down to the corner shop for a packet of Rothmans, because kids could still do that errand in those days, and a KitKat for herself from the change. Feeling the burning shame when Janine staggered on her heels and had to hold herself up on the crossing barrier outside the school gates one afternoon, eating fish finger sandwiches in front of the telly. The table where every now and again Janine would insist that they eat together like a proper family, only she never sat down herself, just stalked up and down the carpet and complained about Lisa’s cutlery technique. The what-you-looking-at exchanges with the Murphys next door. The way she enjoyed the stupid things Lisa bought her with her salary: the widescreen TV, the halogen cooker, the memory foam mattress.
She hears the change and sits up. Blinks and rubs her eyes. Janine’s eyes are flickering, her lips smacking behind the mask. She stares at her intently, squeezes the hand again, to let her know she’s here. Is she coming back? Is she?
Vesta sits up and watches, too. Out in the corridor, someone walks past, the swish-swish-swish of orthopaedic soles. Look, she thinks, she’s not dying. There’s colour in her face, or at least a couple of fever spots on the crowns of her cheeks. You don’t get more colour when you’re dying, do you?
Janine’s eyes open. They blink behind her mask and rove over her surroundings, and her breathing becomes more laboured.
‘It’s okay,’ says Collette. ‘It’s okay, Mum. You’re in hospital.’
There doesn’t seem to be any power in her hand. It lies in Collette’s like a piece of porcelain, cold, unmoving. But slowly her head edges round until her eyes rest upon her face and a burst of mist explodes into the mask.
‘Lisa!’
She is cut off by a cough, then another. Feeble, bubbling coughs with no power behind them, her body too weak to allow her to sit forward. Vesta leaps to her feet, all competence where Collette is frozen. She hustles round to the other side of the bed, grabs a cardboard basin, pulls the mask off and slips her arm behind Janine’s shoulders. Pulls her gently forward until her mouth hangs over the bowl. Rubs gently at the bony back. A great gob of green-brown phlegm appears at Janine’s lips, but the cough is too weak to push it further. Vesta nods at the box of tissues on the bedside table. Collette, unfreezing from her state of shock, grabs them and clears her mother’s mouth. Feels tears begin to prick her eyes. She wiped my bum when I was a baby, she thinks. She’s been here all my life.
The coughing fit subsides and between them they lower her back on to her pillows, put the mask back in place, endeavour to make her comfortable. Janine gazes at Collette’s face while they do it, her eyes wide and adoring. She lies there quietly for a while after she’s settled, her mouth half open, her chest moving visibly up and down. Collette wrings out a cloth with water from the jug, and dabs her grey-white forehead. Oh, Janine, she thinks. I love you. Despite it all, I love you.
The heart monitor has slowed. The beats come so far apart, and so unpredictably, that Collette finds it hard to believe that no one has been in to look. But it’s what they’re expecting, she thinks. Congestive heart failure and pneumonia and a DNR she signed years ago: she’s going to slow all the way down until she stops. The thought brings on another surge of sorrow and she busies herself moving back to her chair, picking up the stranded hand and stroking it until she’s fought it back again.
‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ whispers Janine, and Collette’s heart skips a beat. She leans forward, looks at her mother and sees that her eyes are clear. She knows me, she thinks. She knows me.
‘I wouldn’t stay away,’ she replies. ‘You knew I’d come back eventually.’
The beginnings of a tired smile play around Janine’s lips. ‘It’s nice,’ she says. ‘We’re back together again.’
Collette forces herself to smile, and squeezes her hand.
‘How are you?’ asks Janine.
‘I’m okay,’ she says. ‘I’m fine.’
‘And Tony? How’s Tony?’
She freezes. ‘Who?’
‘Tony. You know. Handsome Tony, from the club.’
Oh, no, Janine, she thinks. Oh, no, you didn’t.
‘Such a nice man,’ she says. ‘Always brought me flowers. Always asking after you. Always losing your phone number, silly goose.’
So now I know, she thinks, and struggles to keep the compassion in her expression. I should have known it all along. Silly woman, always a sucker for a pretty face, and of course, Tony, there to know she was losing her marbles when all I thought from miles away was that it was the drink.
The heart monitor goes silent for three whole seconds, the beep cutting into the atmosphere like a harpy’s shriek. It’s almost the end, she thinks. I won’t tell her. Won’t run the risk of letting her die upset.
‘He’s – he’s coming in a bit,’ she assures her, and feels Vesta shift in her chair. ‘He sends his love.’
Janine’s eyes begin to droop. I’m losing her, she thinks. I need to say it. I need to say goodbye. Tell her I love her, that I forgive her, that it’s okay. I need to do it now. I need…
‘What was that song?’ asks Janine. She blinks, slowly. Each time her eyes reopen, the lids take longer to make their journey.
‘Which song, Mum?’
‘You know. Steve Martin.’
Where does that come from? Steve Martin? On your deathbed?
‘I love that song,’ she says. ‘D’you remember? We used to sing it. When you were little.’
She shakes her head.
‘I’d like to hear it,’ Janine says. ‘It was in South Pacific, too. Loved that film. Don’t you remember? We used to sing it.’
What song? What song? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Janine. I’m here and I’d do anything, and you’re going to make me let you down when you’re dying.
‘“Under the Bamboo Tree?”’ Vesta is standing back by the drip stand, trying to keep her presence low-key. But she sees Collette struggling and steps in to help.
A tiny up-down on the pillow, and Janine manages a smile.