Authors: Debbie Johnson
I should say something. Hold her hand. Be of some bloody use. If this was the last time I’d ever see her, it should mean something. But how do you condense a lifetime of shared history into a few moments? Especially when the shared history isn’t exactly the stuff of Enid Blyton stories.
I focused, screwed up my eyes to help me blank out the background noises, and took hold of her hand. It was cold, freezing, despite the warmth of the room and the blankets she was wrapped in. Her skin felt like crinkled paper, wrapped loosely around the fragile bones of her fingers.
There was no jolt of energy, no fizzing behind my eyes. No vision of her future. Although I could guess what her future was already – it was only a matter of how quickly it came.
I gripped her tiny hand, and felt tears spill on to my cheeks. I’d never even felt them coming, and was almost shocked at how emotional I felt.
‘Hi, Coleen,’ I said. ‘It’s me, Lily. We’re here in the hospital.’
I paused, trying to think of what else to say. In movies, they always show these moments as so perfect: the deathbed confessions of love and regret; the apologies and reunions and emotional highs. In reality, it felt odd – slightly embarrassing, even – having a one-way conversation with someone I knew probably couldn’t hear me. If this really was my last chance to tell her how I felt, I was blowing it.
‘I’m so sorry about all this, Coleen. And I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were so ill. Why didn’t you? I would have been there for you. I would have helped; you know I would. We’ve had our ups and downs, but you’ve been my only family for … well, most of my life. And you did your best, I’m sure.’
That sounded lame, even to my ears. But a heart-rending monologue seemed beyond my imagination, and it was all I could come up with. I stopped again, wondering how to phrase my next words, how to say goodbye, how to express how much I’d miss her.
Just as I was about to launch into my next line of platitudes, she grabbed my hand back, the tight, firm grip I knew so well. I was so shocked that I almost fell off my chair. Where did that come from? She was supposed to be unconscious. Was it some kind of muscle reflex, or could she actually hear me?
The grip tightened, and her blue-veined eyelids suddenly snapped open. I may have made a sound like ‘eek’, because scarily it looked like something from a horror film. She stared up at me, the shine of her eyes glazed over with lack of oxygen.
‘S’all right, girl,’ she murmured, her voice low, gravelly, fighting to escape her chapped lips. ‘I know you would. Didn’t want to be here any more. Had enough of this bleeding world.’
She was talking in abbreviated sentences, rationing her energy. She paused, and I stared, wondering if she was going to black out again. She was taking so long between gasps of breath I started to think she was actually dead.
‘Coleen?’ I said. ‘Nan?’
‘Still here, love. Just about. Not long now. Wanted to see you first. Wanted to tell you something.’
‘What was that, Nan?’ I replied, stroking the parchment skin of her hand, trying to warm it up. Again that long pause as she rallied.
‘Love you,’ she said, dragging her other hand across the bedspread and placing it on top of mine.
I closed my eyes. The tears were pouring now, pooling in the hollow at the base of my neck. A sob started to work its way through me, so strong it jerked my whole body.
She loved me. The words I’d been desperate to hear my whole life. The words nobody had spoken to me since I was six years old. The words that had now reduced me to a mound of jelly on a plastic chair.
Why now? Why not earlier? Why not when I needed it? How different would our lives have been if she’d been able to express that when we’d first met? When I was lying alone and scared in the dark, telling myself fairy tales and imagining my daddy coming to the rescue? I’d cast Coleen as the evil witch in those, and she’s always seemed happy to play the part.
Fuck. I didn’t know what to say. I was so stunned, so moved.
In the end I went with the basics.
‘I love you too, Nan,’ I said, my words now as shuddery as hers. I had so many questions, so much I wanted to know from her, and there wouldn’t be time. I knew there wouldn’t.
‘You’ll be all right, girl,’ she said. ‘You were all right when you were Maura. You coped when you were Lily. You’ll be all right now. Strong. You’re strong. Better than me.’
I shook away tears and leaned forward to get closer. Her words were quiet now, barely scraping out loud enough for me to hear.
‘But I need you, Coleen – I don’t know what’s going to happen! I don’t know what to do … what to choose.’
‘You’ll … do right. Always do. Sorry, Lily. Sorry. I was scared. Of them. The others. You. Didn’t give you a chance.’ Her grip tightened so much it actually hurt my fingers, and her eyes rolled wildly. I didn’t know where she was getting the strength, but I suspected it was her last. ‘Forgive me?’ she wheezed.
‘Yes!’ I said quickly, in case she popped off before she heard it. ‘I do. And everything’s going to be OK.’
I don’t know why I said that. It probably wasn’t, and certainly not for her. But what did I really know? She could be headed for choirs of celestial angels, or an eternity sipping nectar from tulip cups. It might be OK. It could be.
She nodded, a barely there gesture from an exhausted body.
‘Don’t let them put me on those bloody machines,’ she rasped. ‘Let me go. Time to go now.’
I nodded back, unable to speak for the sobs and tears and snot. I was a mess, and absolutely no help to the dying woman in front of me. I felt desperate, and useless, like I wanted to climb into that bed with her and keep her warm and safe and alive. To share what life I had, and keep her with me.
There was a bang on the door, and a sliding noise as though something had scraped across it. I looked up, through the glass panel. Saw the crow, beating its wings against the pane.
‘Let it in,’ said Coleen. ‘It’s for me.’
I frowned at that one. Why would she want to let some crazed bird inside the room with us? Oxygen deprivation?
‘Do it, Lily,’ she urged in that ragged whisper. I did it. Deathbed détente or not, I was still conditioned to do what Coleen said, and when. As I pulled open the door, the crow swooped in, spread its iridescent black wings, and perched on top of the drip stand. Once there it seemed perfectly content, and started preening itself with its beak. It looked at me once, seemed to nod, and then ignored us both.
‘I’m off now, girl,’ said Coleen. ‘Have a cuppa for me. Don’t remember me bad, love. I’m sorry.’
She tried to smile, but the expression had never come easily to her. Her facial muscles had mainly been used for shouting and smoking, and it looked strained to see her try to form a proper grin. Especially under the circumstances.
‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘I love you, Nan. I wish you weren’t leaving me.’
‘Well, life’s crap sometimes, Lil. You just need to gerra grip.’
And with that, she closed her eyes, and loosened her hold on my hand. She took one deep, rattling breath, sent it juddering through her body. The crow cawed over her, the sound magnified in the small, hushed room. The heart machine bleeped and blinked. The oxygen hissed, unneeded.
She was gone.
Afterwards, I walked. For miles. I had paperwork shoved in my backpack, and a million things to do. Next of kin meant responsibility. It meant organising a funeral, and registering the death, and speaking to utility companies. It meant clearing a house and taking clothes to the charity shop and throwing the junk that made up a human life into a skip. It meant too much.
So I walked. I stuck my iPod earphones in and walked, listening to the sad, soulful wailing of Jeff Buckley as I made my way through Liverpool town centre. It was late, or early, depending on your point of view, and the clubs were spilling their contents on to the damp city streets. It was the Saturday before Halloween, a massive party night in Scouseland: men were in Zorro masks with vampire teeth, girls were wearing flashing devil horns and not a lot else, despite the plunging temperatures. They all seemed drunk, happy, angry, spoiling for a fight or searching for sex. Alive, and hopeful, and full of energy beneath their fake blood and witch hats.
It was me who looked like the freak in this crowd, in my ordinary clothes and my boots, shoulders down, automatically trying to avoid contact as I passed through the jostling throngs.
Without even realising it, I’d made my way to the waterfront at the back of a south city dock. I knew it would be quiet there. Apart from some new-build flats, a handful of offices and a kids’ play centre, there wasn’t much around. Not at night, at least. Nobody in their right mind came down here at night, which made it just about perfect for me.
I perched on the stone wall along the edge of the river, legs dangling through the wrought-iron railing. The water was flat and vast and black, swallowing up the tepid pools of light cast by the lamps along the prom. There was a slow drizzle seeping into my hair – and presumably the rest of me – but I was too cold and too numb to feel it.
Across the water I could see the lights from houses built close to the riverbank; imagined the people inside, living their normal lives. Tried to imagine what it would be like to worry about work and the next gas bill and what I’d be wearing to town on a Saturday night. I couldn’t. My life had been so far removed from that for so long, I couldn’t even connect with it any more.
I knew I should phone Carmel, let her know I was all right. But that was one more thing I couldn’t do right now. She’d be upset, sad, for me. She’d sympathise, but she wouldn’t understand. Coleen was gone, and she for one would probably think the world a better place for it. But for me, it was everything. A glimmer of love, of how things could have been, then nothing. Just emptiness, and one old lady left to bury. I’d never felt so alone in my entire life.
Very few people would miss Coleen, and that saddened me as much as anything. Her whole life had passed by without any meaningful relationships other than the messed-up one we’d shared. And suddenly, now that she was gone, my head was filled with questions: what had her life been like before I arrived and took it over? Why had she never married? How did she get mixed up in all this in the first place? So many questions – and no way to ask her. I wasn’t clear on the whole Otherworld thing, and how it related to the heaven and hell I’d grown up being told about, but somehow I couldn’t imagine Coleen lounging in a cherry orchard sipping nectar. Not unless it came in nicotine flavour. She was gone, and I felt the finality of it like an anchor weighing me down.
Fionnula had told me I could change what I saw in my visions, that I could intercede, but this was one instance where I felt sure I couldn’t have done anything differently. Even if I’d spilled, told her everything, she’d have just shrugged those bony shoulders of hers, lit up another Silk Cut, and said something like, ‘We’ve all gorra go sometime, girl,’ in her thick Liverpudlian twang.
No, I couldn’t have changed a thing. Couldn’t have saved her. Some goddess I was turning out to be.
The tune on my iPod came to an end, and I switched it off. Next up was some crazy-ass Irish rock that one of Carmel’s brothers had put on there for me, and I wasn’t really in a getting-jiggy-with-it kind of mood.
As I pulled the buds from my ears and started to wind up the wires, I sensed, rather than heard, somebody approaching me. I tensed up, realising how vulnerable I was. Sitting on the edge of a river, alone, in the dark, when a host of villains was out to get me. No weapons, no black belt in karate, no Champion. None of the cast members of
Finian’s Rainbow
. Way to go, Lily.
I rooted round in my parka pocket and discovered my house keys. Hardly a thousand-watt taser, but all I had. I clenched them between my fisted fingers, like Coleen had always taught me to do when I was walking out after dark. I could always try to poke an eye out with them, and if that failed, throw the whole bunch at their head.
I stayed still, trying not to show that I’d heard them. Sensed them, whatever. Maybe, if they tried to sneak up, I’d at least have the element of surprise with my cunning eye-stab-key-throwing plan.
‘It’s only me, Lily, no need to worry.’
I knew the voice, but I’d never heard it out loud before. Usually, it was tugging away in the inner recesses of my mind, making me look like a mental patient as I tried not to respond in public. It was Fintan.
I looked up, couldn’t make him out in the shadows and the rain. He scrambled down to my level and adopted the same pose, legs poking through the fence. Very short legs, I noticed.
He was dressed in an old-fashioned great coat, with dark-coloured velvet trim on the collar. The kind spivs used to wear in movies about World War II. His hair was slicked back, a glint of Brylcreem glistening in the moonlight, and he wore small, round, wire-framed specs. I’d seen him before. I knew I had.
I stayed silent as the computer in my brain whirred away, trying to match up this face with another one I’d come across. It was recent, I knew … but where had I seen him?
‘Want a clue?’ he asked, smiling across at me like we were chatting at a party, instead of hanging over the edge of a river that would kill us both if we slipped. Me, at least. He probably had wings, or a button he could press that turned his shoes into a speedboat. I’d just go splat and spend eternity with the fishes and an assortment of shopping trolleys.
I nodded. Yes, I wanted a clue. Maybe he could act it out like a game of charades; after all, we were having such jolly fun.
‘Ireland’s finest,’ he said, making a sipping gesture with a pretend cup he ‘held’ in small, delicate hands. As he mimed drinking, it finally clicked into place: Bewley’s. The morning after the night before.
‘You’re the man who said hello to me in the coffee shop,’ I said. ‘The one that Gabriel shunted me away from. The one that made him go all big.’
‘Yes! How clever of you to remember, Lily. I’m – hush! – in disguise! Your Gabriel didn’t quite recognise me – he’s not as all-powerful as he likes to think he is – but he sensed something, didn’t he? Created quite the scene, I seem to remember. He never did have much control, that one. Too lazy to learn; all instinct and no work ethic.’