Page 15 of A Mother’s Last Wish

15

HOLLY

I wasn’t sure whether Lou would come today, and despite organising this event, I wasn’t sure I would either. Holding a fundraising afternoon tea and silent auction in the village hall and gardens of St Martin’s church has become an annual event since I was given the all-clear from breast cancer. I put it on the first year because I wanted to raise funds as a way of showing my gratitude for making it through to the other side and it’s been a great success from the start, with support from Kate and some of the others who are involved with the church. I’ve always donated the funds raised to cancer charities, and the Castlebourne village trust, which helps maintain services for the local community, including the village hall and the church itself. It only seemed fair, given that I couldn’t host the event without accessing the venue, but lately I’ve been questioning more and more what the word ‘fair’ even means. None of what is happening right now is fair. Lou has been such a great supporter of the event ever since it started, and I don’t think it would have happened without her. We’ve raised more than fifteen thousand pounds for cancer charities over the years, but none of that has done anything to help Lou. That can’t be fair, and it’s why I’ve been struggling to find the will to go ahead with it, but that’s not why I thought Lou might give it a miss this year.

She’s been doing her best to keep the cancer quiet, and I assumed she wouldn’t come. It’s only in the last two days that she’s broken the news to the children and our parents. So far, the kids seem okay, but I don’t think they’re anywhere near realising the implications of it yet. It was a different story for our parents. Taking them to Lou’s house felt like I was walking prisoners from death row to the execution chamber, without them having any idea of what was to come.

They’d both been drinking before I picked them up, I could see it in the high colour on their cheeks and their attempts to hide it by crunching on extra strong mints only made it all the more obvious. They weren’t drunk, though. I suspect it takes a lot to do that these days, and they were chatting happily, Mum talking about how glad she was that she was finally getting a chance to see the kids, and how it had been far too long since she’d seen any of us. On a different day I might have responded that it was a two-way street, and she could make more of an effort to visit, but I probably wouldn’t have, even if I hadn’t been trying to keep things light. Lou and I both gave up the battle to try and make our parents see sense years ago. It suits Mum to pretend she can’t understand why we’re not closer than we are, but she knows why, and me reminding her of that just before she got the news about Lou would have been unnecessarily cruel.

I tried to say as little as possible on the journey, worried that I’d blurt it out before we got there, thinking that would make the situation worse, but that wouldn’t have been possible. I knew they’d be upset, because they were when I got my diagnosis, and it was during my treatment that Mum made her last attempt to get sober. She’d wanted to take me to Florence, promised me that she was going to do it when my treatment was over. I’d always wanted to go, ever since an art teacher had told my class about the opportunity to go on a trip to the Galleria dell’Accademia, to see the works of Michelangelo. I’d never been the sort of child to beg my parents for stuff, mostly because I’d known it was futile, but this time I couldn’t help myself.

I tried everything to make it happen, even getting myself a part-time job in the local fish and chip shop, at the grand old age of thirteen, when I’m not sure it was even legal for me to work there. I managed to put a deposit down for the trip, but despite getting covered in burns from splashes of hot oil, I just couldn’t earn enough to cover the whole thing. My teacher approached me, when I said I wouldn’t be going after all, and said, very gently, that there was a hardship fund the school could tap into for pupils whose families couldn’t afford to send them on trips. I should have said yes and begged her to see if I qualified for help, but I couldn’t bear the thought of the school staff talking about why we needed to access a fund like that, when my parents ran a busy pub. They must have known Mum and Dad were drinkers, the whole town did, but they always did a just good enough job of holding it together to avoid the involvement of social services. At least that’s probably how it looked from the outside, but the truth is that Lou and I were the ones who held it together for ourselves and, if we hadn’t had each other, things would have been very different.

Lou always says I’m the one who mothered her, and I tried my best to fill that gap, but she was always there for me too. I cried every day of the week that I should have been in Florence, and Lou would come and sit on my bed and talk about all the trips we were going to take together, when we had wonderful jobs and enough money to go wherever we wanted. We were going to go to Florence, of course, and to Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Rome. After that we’d travel beyond Europe to South America, to trek through the jungle, and up to Alaska and Canada, before heading to Africa on a safari. We were going to go everywhere, and I often wonder if those conversations are what gave Lou the wanderlust that led to her job. Even then, she could paint crystal clear pictures of any location with just her words, and she ended up visiting all of those places and many more. I still haven’t even been to Florence yet.

Predictably, Mum fell off the wagon even before I got the all-clear, according to her because it was just too stressful to attempt to quit while I was ill. Once I got the news that I was cancer free, there were lots of reasons for Mum to celebrate and of course she couldn’t do that without a drink. I should have taken myself off to Florence then, but I didn’t, because I didn’t want to go alone. If I’d asked Lou, she’d have gone with me in a heartbeat and paid for the whole thing knowing her, but I didn’t do that either. I didn’t want to admit to anyone, not even my sister, that my marriage to Jacob was falling apart and that I didn’t think there was any way of saving it.

I should have swallowed my pride and taken the chance to spend that time with Lou. Even without knowing what I do now, I was aware back then that my own cancer might one day come back, and I was terrified that the tests would reveal some kind of gene mutation that would put Lou at risk too. There were plenty of warnings to seize the day, but I didn’t, and the fear that might have driven me to do so was eased with each check-up, which moved further and further apart until I only got seen once a year. The lack of any kind of genetic mutation, and the clear mammogram for Lou, was all the reassurance any of us needed that she was going to escape this dreaded disease, and any thoughts of seizing the day drifted away. Except she didn’t escape it, and now it’s too late for us to have all of those epic adventures we promised we’d have together one day.

I don’t care about the big things, though, it’s all the small, shared moments I’m going to miss, and my heart contracts at the thought of not being able to phone my sister for a chat or send her a silly video I’ve found online. Our lives are so enmeshed. After Jacob left, all I had was a steady, well-paid job that I didn’t really enjoy, and a broken heart. The volunteering helped, and it still does, but it was Lou who mended my heart. She included me in her family as it continued to grow, and if I had to swap being Stan and Flo’s auntie for the chance to have had my own children, I wouldn’t even consider it for a second. I adore them, and being a part of the family Lou has created has brought me so much joy. I don’t want to think about myself in all of this, because it’s Lou who’s losing everything, but I can’t help wondering how things are going to change when she’s not here. She’s the glue that binds me to Tom and the children, and I’ve got no idea how the dynamic will change without her. Will he still want me around to play such a big part in the children’s lives? And what if Lou’s right, and he does meet someone else? Someone who doesn’t want his dead wife’s sister hanging around on the edge of their shiny new life together. A lump lodges in my throat and I hate myself for even thinking about that, when Lou is going through utter hell, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified of having nothing left to live for when she’s gone.

‘Do you think people will be able to tell?’ Lou’s voice jolts me out of my reverie as she looks at me, smoothing her hand over the wig she’s wearing. She’s had it a week, but it’s the first time she’s worn it, because she’s terrified something might happen to suddenly whip it off her head. We’re squashed into the disabled toilet of the village hall together, neither of us actually needing the loo, but neither of us in any hurry to head out to see anyone else either. We left Tom watching Flo and Stan on the inflatable bouncy castle.

‘No, it looks amazing.’ It really does, and when I study the parting it’s hard to believe that it isn’t Lou’s own skin. ‘But does it matter if people do know? Now that Mum and Dad and the kids have been told?’

‘I don’t want to be what everyone is talking about. I’ve told the people I really care about it, and it’ll just be entertainment for people like Billie.’ Lou raises her eyebrows, daring me to say otherwise, but I can’t. It might sound harsh, but it’s true. Billie will be full of sympathy, at least on the surface, but I’m almost certain she’ll get a buzz from gossiping about just how long Lou might have left, once she hears that the cancer is incurable.

‘Okay, you don’t have to tell anyone unless you want to.’ I squeeze Lou’s hand. But now that the children know I suspect it won’t be too long before even that decision is taken away from her. ‘Right, shall we go out and do this?’

‘Uh huh.’ Lou puts a hand on top of her wig one more time, as if giving it a final push to keep it firmly in place. As we face our reflections in the mirror, we paste on matching smiles, and we’ve never looked more identical than we do in that moment, but I’ve never felt more terrified about the prospect of losing my other half either.