It took all five of them to get Rose back into bed when every movement, every touch, even the displacement of air against her skin, made her moan.
When Rose had regained some kind of control over her own treacherous body and wasn’t making those awful sounds any more, Jane steeled herself to approach the bed and take Rose’s hands. ‘Darling, you’re all right. Everything’s going to be all right.’
‘I’m not,’ Rose insisted. ‘Do something. Make it go away. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!’
She had to be ready now. So why was she struggling so hard?
‘Give her something,’ Jane barked at the doctor. ‘She shouldn’t be in this much pain.’
Leo came in on the chorus. ‘Yeah. Do it.’
Dr Howard nodded. ‘If you’re sure?’
He was looking straight at Leo, who held his gaze and nodded back. ‘Absolutely sure.’ Then he turned to look at Rose, though her head was lowered and she was chanting, ‘Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!’ under her breath, like a mantra.
Jane watched as the doctor directed Neta to inject something straight into the cannula in the back of Rose’s hand. It seemed to take a long, long time before Rose quietened, then dozed and Neta could rearrange her pillows and pull the covers up around Rose as she slept.
Jane still had this horrid fear that Rose could feel all the pain and torment but was trapped behind a drug-induced haze and couldn’t tell them.
But still they all pretended that Rose was simply sleeping, though Dr Howard said that her kidneys were shutting down now. ‘If there’s any change, call me,’ he murmured before he left. ‘It could be hours, it could be days.’
He’d been saying that for what felt like weeks. Death didn’t keep to a schedule. As soon as he’d padded down the stairs, Leo turned to Jane and she held out her arms so he could fall into them. ‘We will get through this, Leo,’ she told him sharply. ‘Because Rose needs us and we don’t want to let her down.’
‘Don’t go all tough love on me,’ he groused, but he kissed her cheek and at least he was still up to making jokes, even if they weren’t good jokes.
The vigil continued. Neta was banished to the kitchen but came up every hour, along with Lydia who brought tea and sandwiches, or tea and cake, or simply just tea, to check on Rose.
Rose slept on, mouth open as her body tried to release the toxins that her kidneys couldn’t. Her wheezing added to the ambient noise from the bed, the pump and the beeps from the game on Leo’s phone, which was annoying, but Jane couldn’t summon up the energy to tell him that it was annoying. It was exhausting watching someone die.
Eventually, she went downstairs for dinner, then stood shivering outside the kitchen door as she and Lydia shared a glass of wine and Lydia smoked a cigarette, blowing the smoke out of one side of her mouth like a wisecracking heroine from a black and white movie.
Then Jane rushed back upstairs, terrified that Rose would have gone in her absence. That the gasps would have got fewer and fewer, then simply stopped. No deathbed confessions. No final words. That she would just go.
But she still wasn’t ready. Katya had replaced Neta. And Agnieska had replaced Katya. Jane had told Leo to go to bed and catch a few hours’ sleep but he was sprawled in the chair next to hers, breathing heavily, and occasionally he’d drop off long enough to snore so loudly that he woke himself up again with a startled cry of, ‘I wasn’t asleep.’
Each time it happened, Jane laughed. Leo laughed too when he told her that he didn’t want the last thing that Rose ever heard to be Jane crunching her way through a bag of kettle chips.
They took turns to moisten Rose’s lips with the foam lollipops dipped in iced water. They’d even played I-Spy at one point but now Agnieska had been in to do her checks and report that Rose’s blood pressure was low but her pulse was steady and Leo was asleep. Not even snoring now, but curled up as much as he could in the chair and it was only Jane left.
It was very lonely. Jane wondered why the Germans with their strange portmanteau words didn’t have a phrase to describe the bleak mood that settled around you between three and five a.m. when you and the dying were the only ones left awake.
‘Rose?’ she whispered, because Rose’s eyes were open and fixed on her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m ready. Everyone is waiting for me but I can’t go…’
‘Why not?’ Jane wondered if this was a strange dream. She ran a series of checks, even pinched herself, but, no, it was just her luck to still be awake. ‘Darling, we’ve talked about this. You don’t need to stay if you’re ready, you can go.’
‘I can’t.’ It was only because the room was so still that Jane could make out the words. ‘I’m stuck.’
‘Can you see a light? Can you move towards it?’ For God’s sake, what was she talking about? There was no light. No heaven. No hell. Nothing.
‘Help me. I can not go on. No. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!’
‘It’s all right, darling. I’m here.’
‘You said you’d help me when the times comes. Now. It’s now .’
Jane hadn’t realised that that was what she was agreeing to when she’d promised Rose she’d be there at the end. Or maybe she had, because Jane wasn’t agonising over what she should or should not do. She was already glancing around the lamp-lit room to see what she could use to speed Rose on her way. A cushion seemed the best option but what if Rose wasn’t truly ready? What if she struggled? Fought it? So it wouldn’t be helping. It would be something else, something that Jane wasn’t sure that she could do.
But this was what Rose wanted. What she’d planned. ‘The champagne and pills? Do you want that, Rose? Can you swallow?’
‘Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Oh please. Please. Stop it.’
If Rose was stuck then she wasn’t going anywhere and Jane could slip out of the room and creep silently through the house. She smoked one of Lydia’s cigarettes as she calmly selected a bottle of champagne from the huge wine fridge, a 2002 Dom Ruinart, not the most expensive, but probably the nicest. Then she went back to Rose’s room, to the bathroom where the nurses, even Dr Howard, had got sloppy, and took a packet of pills from the green drug safe, which had been left unlocked.
It was to her credit that she did think about fleeing into the night, thought about it again, then walked back into Rose’s room.
‘Where have you been?’ Leo asked hoarsely. He wasn’t meant to be awake. ‘Champagne? Really?’
‘It’s for Rose, isn’t it, darling?’
Rose’s eyes were open but she was muttering indistinctly and looked frightened. She was determined to make this as hard as possible.
‘It’s a nice gesture but if she can’t swallow water, then how is she going to sip champagne?’
Jane had been wondering that too. About how she was going to get three or four, even five or six temazepam into Rose without a struggle. It was the struggle that she was most worried about. But now that Leo was awake, that was something else to worry about too.
One thing at a time. She ignored Leo as she circled the bed, then perched on the other side to him and took Rose’s hand. ‘Darling, do you still want to go?’
There was nothing but muttering, which made no sense. Jane wondered why it was so hard to die, though she already knew the answer, when Rose said very clearly, ‘I want to go. I can’t bear it any more. Help me. Now.’
Leo sucked in a breath. ‘Just close your eyes and go to sleep.’ He was wobbling. Tears not far off. ‘You can go. It’s all right.’
‘Darling, she doesn’t need your permission, she needs help. My help. Rose and I talked about this. I promised her.’
Rose lay there, eyes flickering between them. ‘Do it,’ she said. ‘Help me.’
‘You can’t. She can’t, Rose,’ Leo said pleadingly. ‘It’s wrong.’
‘But you heard what the doctor said the other day about…’ About terminally ill cancer patients being given enough of the good drugs that they didn’t have to suffer through the fin
al ravages. How could she say that with Rose here?
Instead she grabbed Leo by the sleeve of his jumper and yanked him into the corner. ‘Shut up!’ she hissed at him. ‘If I don’t do this, then she’ll spend a day, maybe three or four days, even a week, in pain. In fucking agony, Leo. She’s going to die anyway.’
‘You don’t know that. She could go in the next hour and then you’d have her death on your conscience when it needn’t be.’ He tried to cup her face but Jane wrenched her head back.
She was all right as long as he didn’t touch her. ‘Darling, it’s not like I have that much of a conscience for it to be an issue.’ Jane made her words sound as sharp and as hard as she could. Like a diamond.
It was true, after all. It was why Rose had wanted her to stay. Maybe death dogging your heels gave you clarity, Jane wasn’t sure. All that she knew was that Rose could see beneath all the gloss, all the gilt-edging, all the bullshit , to the sordid truth of what she really was.
If Rose needed an executioner, then Jane was her girl.
‘It’s the right thing to do,’ she told Leo, who wasn’t trying to hold her any more, but looking at her with revulsion, which she deserved. She’d earned it. ‘Rose has lived her life exactly as she wanted to. She gets to choose how and when she’s done with it. You have to respect that.’
‘You don’t even know her!’ Leo said sullenly as he sat and watched her pop the tablets out of the blister pack.
‘But Rose knows me.’ Jane looked at the pills in her hand then at Rose, who was watching her. Not alert, but present. ‘Rose, darling, do you think you could swallow these pills?’
‘Of course she can’t!’ Leo sounded like he was close to exploding. ‘Fucking hell, I’m never going to forgive you for this.’
‘It’s not about you, Leo,’ Jane said distractedly. ‘Rose? Can you take one of the pills?’
She wanted Rose to reach out a hand, take the pills and pop them in her mouth. That way it would be entirely Rose’s doing. It would be her hand. Jane would be one step removed.
‘I can’t. Help me.’
She could mash the pills into powder, mix them with champagne, cradle the back of Rose’s hand and tip the mixture down her throat. Jane could do that. How many times had she done that when she was cajoling Rose into taking some water? ‘I’m going to dissolve them into the champagne and then you just need to have a little drink.’
Leo didn’t say anything, maybe because he was kissing Rose’s forehead, stroking back her limp strands of hair, while they watched Jane attempt to mash four pills between two teaspoons. She did a lousy job of it. Then she opened the champagne with a pop that sounded inappropriately jubilant and poured a little into the tumbler with the crushed pills and stirred it around. Soon the chalky debris soaked up the champagne and turned into a claggy white paste.
She could spoon that into Rose. There was a very thin line between helping someone with their last wish and killing them – even if you were killing them with your kindness.
She had promised Rose but lately Jane had stopped making promises that she couldn’t keep. ‘All right,’ she whispered. She picked up the tumbler and the spoon and took the four steps to the bed. ‘I’m going to put this in your mouth, darling, and then give you a little champagne to wash it down.’
Rose blinked, then nodded. At least, Jane thought it was a nod. Maybe she just wanted it to be. ‘Rose, darling? I have to be certain it’s what you want.’
‘Do it.’ Rose mouthed the words rather than said them out loud. ‘Now. Please.’
‘Are you sure?’ Leo asked. ‘You can’t let go by yourself?’
‘Do it.’
‘Go on, then.’ Leo said and this time, when Jane caught his eye, he nodded.
Jane glanced down at the contents of the tumbler, then scraped some of the paste onto the spoon. It was going to take about five spoonfuls before it was all gone. Five times she had to spoon the mixture into Rose’s mouth. Five times she had to tilt her head and make her drink. Five times. Five times was too many times. Five steps too far – even for Jane.
She turned away; let the spoon drop to the floor. ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t. I just can’t.’
‘It’s OK,’ Leo said. He pressed another kiss to Rose’s furrowed forehead. ‘I can. I’ll do it.’
37
Lullington Bay, 1974
It was a beautiful September evening, summer determined to outstay its welcome. They sat in the garden, which was a glorious riot of colour and scent, though the roses, which they added to every year, had blossomed in June and were now long gone.
Still there were flowers enough that bees fat with pollen could lazily dance among the petals. Birds circled overhead and if Rose listened carefully, she could hear the faint lap of the sea.
On other days, they’d dragged deckchairs through the garden and across the dunes to the beach, but it was all Edward could do to manage the short walk from the house to the little shaded spot in the garden where they liked to sit.
He only had a couple of weeks left, though neither of them knew that. He was scheduled for surgery mid-October – they’d already started planning Christmas in Palm Springs.
But no matter where they were – and by now Rose thought they must have gone round the world at least twice – at six o’clock it was time for a drink.
On birthdays and special occasions they had Bellinis, but this evening it was a gin and tonic. Rose swirled the ice in her glass, glanced around the garden, then at Edward, his face in profile, and felt entirely at peace. She was where she was happiest and with the one person who made her happier still.
‘I do love you, Edward.’ It was the simplest of truths, but she’d never said it before. Hadn’t even realised. Her love for him had crept up on her slowly, permeated right down to her marrow, and she was so used to it living there that she’d never thought to give it a name. ‘I’ve loved you for such a long time and I’ve never once told you.’
He turned his head and smiled at her. She often reminded him that he was a cradle snatcher – ‘you’re much, much older than I am’ – but now it was as if the years and the disease in him had vanished and she could see him as he’d been on the night Rainbow Corner closed. When he’d danced with her at The Savoy and kept apologising for treading on her feet. He still was a dreadful toe-stepper.
‘I love you too, my darling girl,’ he said, as naturally and as easily as if he said it all the time, though he hadn’t, not since that night when she’d thrown his ‘I love you’ back in his face.
Maybe it was also why he’d never asked her to marry him, not that Rose minded. It was a measure of just how much her parents had adored Edward that they’d never held it against him either. Then again, marriage wasn’t something they discussed. Neither were children. Or the exact nature of his war work.
There were so many things unsaid between the two of them, but in the end that didn’t matter. Just that you said what was really important at least once.
‘I’m going to tell you that I love you every day now,’ she decided. ‘Sometimes even twice, or three times.’
‘We are a pair of silly old fools, aren’t we?’ Edward sighed and then Rose got up out of her chair and draped herself very gently across his lap so she could kiss him.
His skin was warm underneath her lips and hands and she sat there with his arms around her, listening to the sound of the sea. She could have happily stayed like that for ever.
38
Leo picked up the spoon from the carpet, took the glass from Jane, and walked to the bathroom, where he washed both of them slowly and carefully.
He didn’t know why Jane had bothered going to all that trouble. There was liquid morphine in handy phials just sitting there. It wasn’t as if Rose was going to toddle in here under her own steam and none of the expensive agency nurses knew about his history with drugs.
Leo took two of the phials, picked up a syringe and tore off its sterile packaging. Then he went back into the bedroom.
/> At first he didn’t see Rose. All he could see was a singed and yellowed limp pale blue dress laid out in front of her, one of her hands resting on the bodice.
And there was Jane, arm around Rose, gently spooning her.
In that moment, Leo loved Jane. He could tell she was scared to get too close to Rose and that sweet-sickly smell of rotting lilies. Scared to touch Rose – not because she didn’t want to hurt her, but because maybe death was catching, but she did it all the same.
Leo sat down on the bed. He plunged the syringe through the plastic seal of the first phial, then the second. Tap, check for air bubbles, release. Some things you never forgot.