Lawrence bristles. He shifts in his seat. He is pushing the chair back now, suddenly aware that he is quite ready to leave if she begins to berate him for the past, but she stops him.
‘I haven’t asked you here for us to argue. I’ve asked you here because I’m hoping that you will hear me out, understand, and ultimately help me.’
She tells him she has cancer.
He is sorry, he says, but she waves his condolences away with her hand. ‘It’s life. And I genuinely mean that. I would like to go on living, but it seems I can’t.’
How long has she known?
‘I will tell you everything,’ she says. ‘And I’m sorry if I’m a little slow or I repeat myself, but it’s becoming harder to focus. My head hurts and I get terribly tired.’
He nods, waiting for her to continue.
‘I went to the doctor about three months ago. I was getting blurred vision and aches,’ she touches her temples. ‘I’ve never suffered from anything like that so I was anxious. They sent me for scans and various tests — it seems I have a brain tumour, the most aggressive kind.’
He is silent as she breathes in.
‘There is only one other person that I have told this to — apart from various doctors, of course. His name is Henry, and he is an old friend. He is helping me too, but more about that later. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not accustomed to speaking about this. It’s far more difficult to voice than I expected.’ She shakes her head slightly, bemused by her failure to rise to the occasion with as much strength as she normally displays. ‘We all know we are going to die. It’s all we know with complete certainty, but it’s still an extraordinary shock when you find that your time has come. Even for me — and by that I mean, it’s not as though this has come to me when I am still young. I’m not very old,’ she smiles, ‘but I’m at an age where death is less of a shock.
‘I had to sit with the news for a while. It’s the kind of person I am. I don’t really want to discuss things — although if Maurie were here, I would have talked to him. In fact, I might even have asked him what I am going to ask of you. Although I’m not sure. He was always so optimistic, it is likely he would have fought me, convinced there was hope.
‘The doctors have told me that there’s not much they can do. It’s inoperable. There’s a new drug that they are trialling, and I could have taken part in the tests. But it was of so little benefit. If you are given it — and you might just be given a placebo — it can make you very ill — vomiting, diarrhoea, there’s even the possibility of internal bleeding — and at best you will get another six months. I simply couldn’t see the point.
‘The time that they’ve given me isn’t long, and I would say that I’m right at the end of the best of it. The headaches will become unbearable. I’ll lose control of my bodily functions, and I’ll be delusional. I’ll go into palliative care, and I will die.’
Lawrence is silent. He does not know what to say in the face of this news, and she’s made it clear that she doesn’t want sympathy.
‘I don’t want to put myself through that kind of misery, and I don’t want to put others through it either.’ She stands now and looks out the window at the rain.
He can see the reflection of her face, fogged in the glass, and for a moment he thinks she is crying, but it’s just raindrops, sliding down the pane. He waits for her to turn to face him, but she doesn’t.
‘I decided early on that I was going to take my own life.’
This is what he has been expecting, and he dreads her telling him the role she wants him to play in this. He coughs awkwardly, and he is aware of sweat on the back of his neck, clammy against his skin.
‘I looked into finding a doctor that could assist me. I even spoke to my own GP about it — sounding her out, I suppose. But it’s so difficult. I don’t want her or any other doctor to have to carry the consequences of my decision. I really don’t.’
Or me, Lawrence wants to add. I don’t want to have to bear the consequences either. To go to court or, worse still, to jail for this.
She has turned around now.
‘Don’t worry.’ She smiles. ‘I’m not going to ask you to kill me.’
Lawrence laughs nervously, and he is too loud in the quiet of the kitchen. ‘I wasn’t thinking you were,’ he lies.
She shakes her head, amused. ‘I might have disliked you a lot over the last few years, but not that much.’
She can’t resist, he thinks. One more go at him. And it won’t be the last. But this time, he says nothing. It doesn’t really matter, not in the face of this news.
Hilary picks up her bag from the floor and comes to sit at the table again. ‘I find it difficult to stay still,’ she apologises. ‘It makes me more aware of the pain.’
She reaches into the zippered central compartment and brings out a bag of white powder, placing it in front of him.
He looks at it and then up at her.
‘It’s heroin,’ she tells him matter-of-factly.
Lifting it in his hands, Lawrence turns the bag over. ‘You know I’ve never tried it,’ he says. ‘In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen heroin. And I know that may seem hard to believe, given my reputation, but it wasn’t a drug I sought out, and it never seemed to come my way.’
She reaches across for the bag. ‘Well, it’s not for you.’ There is a spark, flinty humour, in her eyes. ‘It’s mine.’
He hands the powder over to her.
‘I did my research,’ she continues. ‘And it seems that an overdose is the least painful way to go. But obviously it’s a matter of making sure you have the right dose. That’s where my friend, Henry, came in. He’s had a controlled habit for decades. He bought this for me, he’s shown me what I have to do, and —’
She is silent then, swallowing, the ripple down her throat revealing the difficulty she has in uttering her next words. ‘Now it’s up to me.’
‘Are you sure?’ he eventually asks.
She nods. ‘It’s not like I haven’t thought about this. I’ve thought about little else. The alternative terrifies me to such an extent that —’
She glances out to the studio. ‘I wanted to finish my last film. And I’ve done that. I now have nothing left to distract me. And it is so hard to remain resolute, to hold onto my nerve. It is so hard.’
He takes her hand in his and says nothing. He knows her well enough to recognise that she does not want to cry. Her skin is cool against his, her touch loose, but it is almost as though he can feel her pulse, the determined, desperate life beat, there in the palm of her hand, and he is momentarily overwhelmed by the vastness of what awaits her. But he knows this is not the time or the place. His role is to listen and to find out what she wants. Whether he will be able to do as she asks is another matter.
‘So,’ she removes her hand from his and stands again. He watches as she fills a glass with water from the tap and sips it slowly. ‘Why have I asked you here?’
‘I don’t know,’ he smiles. ‘I would think I’d be one of the last people you’d want around.’ And then he starts to tell her how sorry he is. ‘I shouldn’t have made such a mess. I really shouldn’t. And I wish I’d never caused such hurt. It was terrible. I can only apologise, so deeply and truly.’
She shushes him. ‘I know,’ she says.
The softness in her response almost brings him undone.
‘I need you to deal with finding me.’ She looks straight at him. ‘I don’t want a stranger to find me. I don’t want the girls to find me. I hoped you would be able to do this for me.’
He can’t say anything.
‘And I want you to try and help the girls understand my decision.’
‘You won’t tell them yourself?’
She shakes her head vigorously. ‘There’s a lot I can do. But not that. Not that. If they begged me not to go ahead, I would cave in, completely.
But it’s not what I want. I mean, I don’t want any of this at all — of course I don’t — but I want to at least spare myself and others the indignity of what’s to come. I want to choose how I’m going to go. And I know there is considerable arrogance in that — it’s something I’ve grappled with, I still grapple with — but surely I can take some control?’
He looks down at the table, at the backs of his hands, hairier now in his middle age, liver-coloured spots appearing on his skin. He does not know if he’s up to this.
‘Perhaps it would be easier if I just told you my plan?’
He nods.
‘I am going to go to the river shack tomorrow. I have written letters to Ester and April, explaining what has happened and why. I will have them with me. When I get there, I want to go for a walk and a last swim.’ She looks out the window and grimaces. ‘Although it’s hardly swimming weather. But things can’t be just how we want them, can they? And then I plan to text you and take the overdose. I would like you to come up. I don’t want a stranger to find me. I don’t want the people who have bought the place to find me. Just come up and call the ambulance.’
He has never seen a dead body before. He does not know if he can do this.
‘Why can’t I just call the ambulance from here?’
‘You could,’ she tells him, and he realises she has thought all this through. ‘I suppose I just wanted to know that there would be someone there to check that everything went as it should. I wanted someone who knew and understood what I was doing. I hoped that you could tell the girls that you saw me and that I was peaceful, and that this was what needed to happen. I hoped you could watch over my body until the ambulance came.’ Her gaze is direct and clear.
‘And what happens if you don’t take enough? If I arrive and it hasn’t worked?’ He can hear a slightly shrill panic in his voice, probably audible only to himself.
‘It’s up to you, really. I don’t want to you to put yourself at risk, but if I seem close to gone —’
‘Oh, I can’t kill you,’ he tells her, suddenly struck by how surreal this conversation has become.
‘No, but you could take your time in calling for help. If I seemed peaceful. If it seemed close. But I have to leave that up to you. And I have to assume that Henry is right. The amount is correct. And if you can’t do this, if you can only call the ambulance for me from here, I understand.’
Lawrence rubs at his cheek, the palm of his hand against his skin. He pushes his chair back slightly, also finding it difficult to sit still. He goes to the tap and pours himself a glass of water. He tries to swallow.
‘Why me?’
She is sitting again now, and she turns to where he still stands, at the sink.
‘There’s enough distance and enough closeness. And as I said, I feel that you owe me. But I don’t mean that in an angry, vindictive way. I suppose I saw this as a way of making amends all round.’
‘And you think April and Ester won’t be angry that I didn’t alert them to this, that I didn’t try and change your mind?’
‘They probably will be initially. But then they’ll be glad that you helped me do what I needed to do.’
‘You haven’t given me long to think about this,’ he protests.
‘I couldn’t. I was afraid you’d tell the girls if there was too much time, that after a few days, your doubts would grow and maybe ebb again, only to grow once more, and then, eventually, you would just cave in and tell them everything. I really don’t want them to know. You must promise me that much at least.’
He is silent. The tap drips, and he tightens it. Maurie would have fixed this in the past.
When he eventually speaks, it is to ask a question, his voice feeble at the shame of confessing his potential cowardliness: ‘And what if I can’t do this?’
She looks at him. ‘Then I suppose I just go there and don’t return. When they notice, they will call the police, or maybe someone will find me before then.’ She scratches at the kitchen table, her nails tightly clipped, her fingers fine and square-tipped. ‘I’ll be gone.’
‘And they’ll find your letter, explaining why you did this?’
‘I hope so,’ she tells him.
‘Does it mention me?’
She doesn’t understand what he is asking.
‘Am I woven into this scenario, even if I don’t want to participate?’
She nods. ‘I tell them that I explained my decision to you, and that is why you found me.’
‘And then I have to explain to them that I chose not to help you? That I wasn’t there. And that I didn’t warn them of what you were going to do?’ Lawrence shakes his head, the full ramifications slowly seeping in. ‘And when you don’t come back from the river, I’ll either have to tell them that I know what happened to you, or I’ll have to lie.’
She is standing again, looking out the window at the courtyard; the pattern of wet leaves across the bricks is a patchwork of brown, gold, silver, green, and russet. ‘If you don’t want to do this, I can change my letters. But you need to let me know your decision.’ She looks tired. ‘I can’t talk a lot more about this. It’s up to you, really.’
No matter what he chooses, she has told him of her plans. Even if he says he can’t be part of this, even if she changes her letter, he will see their anxiety when she fails to return from the river, when she doesn’t answer their calls. How can he remain silent then? He sits at the table, hands clasped in front of him and looks up at her, still standing by the window.
If only she hadn’t asked this of him.
‘I wish I could see them grow a little older,’ Hilary says.
Looking out at the rain, he thinks for a moment she is referring to a plant, something she is growing in the courtyard, before he realises that she is, of course, talking of Catherine and Lara.
‘They’ll miss you,’ he says.
‘For a while.’ She smiles. ‘And then life goes on, and I will be someone that they remember occasionally, with fondness, but with no real substance to the recollection. And that’s the way it should be,’ she says. ‘You get a brief time, and it’s so vivid and wonderful and not to be wasted, but of course you only know that when it’s about to be snatched away. And then there’s a fainter imprint left behind, a period in which you are remembered. After that you are gone.’
The rain stops and the silence is sudden, broken by the fall of drops from the gutter. He looks out the window. They are hitting the edge of a metal pail, the sound loud in the new quiet. He is exhausted. For an instant, his mind returns to the mundane, the practicalities of picking up the girls, the weariness he feels at the thought of cooking dinner. They will get takeaway, he thinks. And then, as quickly as he had veered off on a tangent, he is back again, here in the silence of this room, unable to grasp what Hilary has asked of him. He thinks he might cry. And he is appalled. He stands then and walks to the door, opening it so he can smell the sweetness that follows each shower.
‘I’ll help you,’ Lawrence tells her.
‘I knew you would.’ She looks at him. ‘You’re not all bad, you know.’
He unclasps his hands, eyes still fixed on her. ‘If you weren’t dying, I’d tell you that you could thank me.’ He laughs, a strange sound, tugging between tears and anger and frustration and sadness, and then he just shakes his head.
‘Thank you,’ she says to him, and she holds her hand out.
He takes it.
As he holds her in the silence of the kitchen, he is emptied completely, the frailness of her, the impossibility of imagining the line she is preparing to cross so much bigger than his own self, his worries and anxieties.
And then she pulls away, telling him he’d best get going. She is tired now and she needs to be alone.
ESTER’S LAST CLIENT for the day has never had a sexual relationship.
‘Which you think might mean she’s n
ever had any issues either,’ Ester once joked. ‘I was tempted to congratulate her on her wisdom.’
The friend she was with raised an eyebrow, and Ester smiled. ‘Well — imagine how simple life would be.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s probably something I don’t even need to imagine — it may be the life I live from now on.’
She never used names, but there were times when she talked about her clients. How could she not? She was immersed in their lives all day, the intensity sometimes blanching her own of any colour or substance.
Hannah was forty years old. Tiny, dark-haired, pale, she wore all black, her make-up equally dramatic: white powder, dark mascara, and a deep-plum lipstick. Her clothes were expensive, Belgian designer, deconstructed to make them look they hadn’t been stitched properly, with tiny signifiers to let those in the know see that they were the real deal: a white cross on the back of the neck, or a small square near the hem. Ester used to try clothes on like this in Paris. She even bought a coat once, and then felt ashamed at never wearing it. But the truth was, she found the look ugly, hard; or perhaps she just didn’t get the language of high-end designer fashion. What were they trying to say by making them look like they had been roughly made?
She had tried on a few identities during that time, unsure as to who she was, alone in an apartment with the twins while Lawrence went off to an office job each day — both of them unhappy. On the good days, he would assess her with amusement on his return, or when they met for lunch, eyes narrowed as he tried to pinpoint her latest look — ‘It’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s?’ ‘A lesbian golfer?’ ‘An uptight academic?’
She’d feign innocence, shrugging his comments off and denying this loss of self — until he came home late one night, drunk and dishevelled, to find her sitting on the floor, crying. She was lonely. She didn’t know who she was anymore. She wanted to go home.
He’d held her, kissing her softly, sweet and boozy, as he’d told her he would quit, he hated it as well, they would go home, the four of them would live in sharp white light so harsh it hurt; they would wake to salty skies and the lazy drone of insects, perhaps they would buy an inner-city house that would seem spacious and bright and almost bucolic, he laughed. And she might get back to just being Ester.
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