Page 52 of The Love of Our Lives

One week to live

‘Like this?’ Adam says, and I pop out of his kitchen to see him up on a chair, surveying the bunting he’s strung down his hallway towards the open terrace door. Soft summer wind drifts down to us, ruffling the material in its wake, which reads, ‘Welcome to the world, Hope’.

I smile widely. ‘That’s perfect, they’ll love it.’

‘Anything else left to do?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I say, as I take the plate of warm sausage rolls into the hallway.

We have lemon cake and strawberry tarts from Dee’s, coffees on order from the Purple Pineapple.

The roof terrace is decorated with more bunting, a few more chairs and a table set with plates and saucers – all we need now is to make sure the sun keeps shining in the sky.

Adam reaches in to kiss me, even as I’m holding the sausage rolls, and I close my eyes and allow myself to melt into this moment, just like I did this morning when we found each other again in the dawn light.

The doorbell rings and reluctantly we pull apart, foreheads still tipped against each other.

‘We can continue this later,’ Adam murmurs and I feel warm all over.

Adam goes to open the door and everyone pours in – William with Ruth on his arm, Charlie and baby Hope.

And at the sight of her, I can’t help thinking again how relieved we all were when we heard that, despite being four weeks premature, Hope would be absolutely fine; a touch of jaundice maybe, but nothing that couldn’t be sorted within a few days.

‘Sven’s just bringing up the nappies we forgot,’ Charlie says, passing Hope to Adam for a cuddle.

Another couple from dancing are next in, one of the girls we met climbing too.

Everyone traipses through the hallway, and we begin the tangled process of hugging each other with bursts of, ‘such a good day for it,’ and ‘thanks so much for having us,’ and just at the end as everyone starts to head up the stairs, William turns to me, clutches my hand, and I swear it’s as if he knows.

‘You coming up?’ Adam says, holding my hand still.

The door to the terrace is open wide to the spring sun, shafts of light dancing on the floor below. From somewhere up above I can hear the notes of Mumford the tiredness.

And any thought I’d had about picking me over her vanished; evaporated entirely, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was going to die. Because this is my clincher.

This is why I was here all along – to keep Emily alive, and then let her keep living.

For her child.

And there in the hospital, I knew exactly what the outcome had to be, because sometimes life is bigger than us and we can’t just think of ourselves.

I will die and Emily will come back to the life I’ve been living in her stead.

People might be a little confused about things for a while, the small differences between the two of us, but eventually that will fade; they will forget that anything odd happened, or that I was here at all.

And I also know that in the remaining few weeks I have, I will live them absolutely and completely – down to the last second.

Adam’s face when I told him in his kitchen that evening.

Just sheer joy and elation.

He picked me up and twirled me around the room, kissed me passionately in front of the kitchen sink. There was no shiny ring and no promises about the future, just the feeling that we were inextricably bound together in this life, in this moment.

And we needed no more than that.

Because the other thing I’ve learned whilst living as Emily is that nothing is black and white, particularly love.

Just because someone stays put or does what you think you need them to, doesn’t always make it the right thing.

You have to meet people half way and get out of your comfort zone too.

And more than that, nothing is permanent anyway – people change and people leave; people die.

But we can’t let that stop us diving in and tasting it all.

Making the very most of whatever time there is.

And when you do that, the black and white fades to grey, and then technicolour, and then we are surrounded by it. Everywhere.

And even though I don’t know for certain what Emily would have chosen right now, I know in my heart, that all of this with Adam is what I want.

For me.

Then, with that thought in my head, I walk up the stairs finally, up and out into the glorious light.