by Lisa Jewell
Dean looked down into Isadora’s eyes and found that she was staring straight back into his. And there it was again, that deep-seated intelligence, that sheer blinding confidence that had thrown him off-kilter back in the delivery room. Yet this time it didn’t scare him, this time he could absorb it and hold it inside himself like some kind of wonderful compliment. He looked at her and felt it again, that same jolt of recognition he’d felt when he first met Lydia, that same instantaneous attachment. ‘Yes,’ said a little voice inside his head, ‘yes. It is you. And you are me. And I am you. And we are the same.’ He charted the contours of her face, the fleshy mouth, the wide-set eyes, the downy outline of a heavy brow, and he marvelled at the strength of his donor father’s genes, that had fought their way past the fearsome genetic outposts of the Donnelly clan.
Isadora wriggled slightly in his arms and Dean instinctively sat her upon his lap where she immediately caught sight of the shiny zip hanging from the bottom of his hoodie and grabbed for it greedily. Dean passed it to her and then lowered his head to her crown. She smelled of bed and strawberries and something else; something that sent his consciousness spiralling backwards through the coils of his own life, back to his own infancy – the musty, exotic smell of new life.
‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’ said his mum, watching him tenderly.
He nodded and smiled and then, without thinking about it, he kissed the top of his baby’s head. Her hands were bunched up around the metal zip and his fingers, the whole area a mass of warm drool. He watched her for a moment and then a terrible realisation hit him: she might accidentally bite the zipper off! It might end up untethered in her mouth! She might swallow it! She might die! He gently pulled the zipper from her mouth and squeezed her to him, his precious, precious baby girl.
MAGGIE
Marc greeted Maggie at the door of Daniel’s flat on Friday morning and as much as she had been preparing herself for it, his exact resemblance to his brother still took her breath away. She tried to override the sense of shock she felt and forced a bright smile on to her face. ‘Good morning!’ she said.
‘Good morning, Maggie,’ said Marc, flattening himself against the wall so that she could squeeze past him.
‘Did you sleep well?’ she asked.
‘I slept very well. In the way of twins, my brother appears to own the very same mattress as myself so it was almost like being at home. And I have just eaten my breakfast on the terrace. Thank you so much for the provisions.’
‘Oh,’ she smiled, ‘you’re welcome. I wasn’t sure what you’d want to eat so I got a bit of everything.’
‘So,’ said Marc, ‘I am ready to go. But maybe I could get you a cup of coffee before we leave?’
‘No, honestly, I’m fine. I had one before I left. Well, two, in fact. I didn’t sleep so well last night.’
Marc looked at her sympathetically. ‘Now I feel bad,’ he said. ‘Maybe it is wrong that I slept well.’
‘Of course it’s not wrong!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s good. You need to stay strong.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you are right. Oh, and before we go, some letters arrived this morning. The postman rang on the door. I had to sign for one thing. Here.’ He turned and pulled a pile of mail from the hall table and handed it to her.
As she flicked through the letters, her eye was caught by the postmark of the Donor Sibling Registry and she stared at the envelope for a moment before carefully opening it. She caught her breath as she unfolded the letter and then she let it out through a half-smiling mouth as the words sunk in.
A girl. Robyn Inglis. She lived in North London and she wanted to meet up with Daniel. A giddy laugh escaped Maggie’s mouth. She put her hand to her heart and then she laughed again, more loudly. At last! And just in time! She read on. The girl was studying medicine at a London university and lived with her boyfriend, a novelist, in Holloway. She said she liked clothes and worked part-time in a fashion shop on Oxford Street, that her mum and dad were a secretary in an estate agency and a building services manager respectively, and that she was originally from Essex. ‘But I’m not a stereotypical Essex girl, honestly!’ She’d given a mobile phone number and an e-mail address and seemed absolutely certain about her desire to meet up with Daniel, but the message was quite restrained nonetheless. Maggie read the letter three times before folding it carefully into three and sliding it back into the envelope.
‘It is good news?’ said Marc, who had been watching her, thoughtfully.
‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘It is very good news. I will tell you all about it in the car.’
It was hard for Maggie to stop her expression from giving away the wonderful surprise as she and Marc scurried down the corridor towards Daniel’s room at the hospice an hour later. Her mouth twitched, her eyes sparkled. Daniel had asked her to do something for him, something important, something that would make him happy in these closing chapters of his life. She’d done it, never quite believing that at the end of this strange and impersonal process there might be some real people, never truly believing that she might really be responsible for bringing one of these people into three dimensions and into Daniel’s sunny hospital room. She had assumed that they would write too late, or that they would not write at all. She had assumed that it could not possibly be that easy. And it was not until they were on the very threshold of Daniel’s room that the fear gripped her: what if it was already too late?
The muscles in her face stopped their strange dance and hardened. She had been so busy feeling giddy with relief that it was not too late, that she hadn’t considered the possibility that it might already be too late. That even as she was ripping through the paper of the envelope with her index finger; Daniel could have been fighting to expel his last breath that as she parked her car outside, jiggling and twitching with anticipation, he might have been closing his eyes for the last time. She stopped at the door and she inhaled deeply. Marc threw her a look of encouragement.
‘You are OK?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m fine.’
And then she rearranged her face into its usual innocuous contours and opened the door.
Her heart fell. Daniel looked terrible. He did not turn at the sound of her voice when she whispered, ‘Daniel, it’s me.’ He lay with his head tilted to face the window, eyes half-open, a dry crust at the corner of his slack mouth.
‘Daniel,’ she whispered again. She gently touched his shoulder and he turned his head just a millimetre or two and moaned.
‘How are you?’ she asked, still in a soft whisper.
‘Very tired,’ he replied. He let his head fall back against the pillow and then he closed his eyes.
‘Now, I don’t expect you to say anything, and please don’t try, but I wanted you to know, I’ve had contact. From the girl. The youngest one. Her name’s Robyn. Like the boy’s name but with a Y instead of an I. She sounds very nice, I must say …’
Maggie watched Daniel for some kind of reaction but there was none. She felt her joy beginning to drain away. This was not how she’d imagined the moment would be.
‘I’ll just go and get myself a coffee,’ she said. ‘Marc, will you stay here with him?’
Marc nodded, understandingly. ‘Of course,’ he said, settling himself on the side of Daniel’s bed and taking his brother’s hand in his.
‘I’ll be back in a few minutes,’ she said to Daniel. ‘We can talk about it then. About the girl. OK?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes.’
Maggie left the room quietly and immediately headed for the nurses’ station at the end of the corridor.
‘Hello!’ she said brightly to a small black woman called Cressida.
Cressida looked up from some paperwork and smiled back. ‘Hello,’ she replied. ‘How are you today?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Maggie, brightly, ‘are you busy? Could I talk to you?’
‘No. I’m not at all busy,’ said Cressida. ‘Come in, sit down.’
Maggie sat down
and pulled her chair closer to Cressida’s desk. ‘Now,’ she began, ‘I know you can’t tell me anything for sure, I do understand that, but Daniel … he seems very bad today. He seems the worst he’s been.’
‘Yes,’ said Cressida, ‘he is very quiet. He’s been sleeping a lot.’
‘Yes. But he’s been sleeping a lot for a while now and still been fairly good when he’s awake. Just now, though, he seemed …’ She searched for the right words. ‘He seemed as though the lights had been turned down.’
Cressida smiled sympathetically. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it will seem like that. Things are shutting down now, you see. Bit by bit. It’s like shutting up a house for the season, if you understand what I mean?’
Maggie blinked. She thought of a story she’d read to Matilda at bedtime a few days earlier: Teddy’s had enough now. Teddy has to rest. The words were accompanied by a picture of an elderly and over-loved teddy, patched together, its head hanging by a thread. She’d gulped as the words caught in her throat. Teddy’s had enough now. She thought of her Daniel, his body filled with the poisons of death, his putty-coloured skin and his crusted mouth. Teddy has to rest.
‘I’ve just tracked down his daughter,’ she said, her voice cracking slightly. ‘They haven’t met before. She wants to see him. Do you think … do you think there’s still time?’
Cressida smiled again. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘But in your experience … when a patient looks like that … when they’ve started to shut down? How long does it usually …’
‘In my experience,’ Cressida interrupted, kindly, ‘there is no usually. But I would also say that I have seen people, moments from passing, cling on for hours and even days in order to see a loved one. Does he know his daughter’s coming?’
‘Yes. I think so.’
Cressida nodded, clearly not wanting to say anything that could be construed as a prognosis.
‘There are others, though,’ Maggie found herself saying. ‘Other people who may want to see him. Should I … I mean, do you think they should come soon? Now?’
Cressida sighed. ‘It’s all so hard to say,’ she said. ‘Each situation is unique. Daniel might still be here next week. But equally he could be shutting down faster than we think. For the sake of a few days, it’s probably worth making sure he’s seen everyone he wants to see. Especially if they’ve got a long way to come.’
Maggie nodded. She thought of this lovely girl, this Robyn Inglis, in her flat in North London, wondering how quickly she’d be able to get here. Would she throw on a jacket and head straight up? Or would she have commitments, appointments, arrangements to be honoured? Would it take her hours or would it take her days?
Maggie thanked Cressida for her time and then she got herself a coffee and a banana from the counter in reception and took them both out into the garden. She took a bench by the Koi carp pond and remembered how she had stood here just weeks earlier, being twirled and held by Daniel Blanchard. She stared into the inky depths of the pond, letting her gaze follow the erratic golden dance beneath the surface of the water. How had she ended up here? she wondered. How had her life brought her to this theatrical and tragic dénouement? How had she, Maggie Smith, mum, grandmother, receptionist, ended up taking responsibility for the outcome of so many people’s lives? When she and Peter had divorced all those years ago, she’d felt that it was probably the most dramatic thing she would ever experience. She’d thought it was more than she could bear: the court case, the brutal conversations, the talks with the children, breaking the news to their friends and family. She’d thought that none of it was really her style at all. But she’d weathered it, come through the other side, smiling and with a whole new trendy interior to show for it. Her subsequent relationships with her ex-husband, his girlfriend and both her own children had survived unscathed. Which was, she’d always secretly thought, almost entirely down to her.
But this … this was in another league of human drama entirely.
She unpeeled her banana and found she had no appetite for it. The joy and anticipatory giddiness of half an hour earlier had gone completely. Instead she sipped at her coffee, urgently, as though it might somehow help her cut through the sad fug in her head and decide what to do for the best.
In her handbag was the letter from Robyn. She glanced at her bag, surreptitiously. She glanced at the carp. She glanced back at the bag and then she took out both the letter and her mobile phone and began to compose a message. The message took her half an hour to write. It seemed such a cold and distasteful thing to be saying to a stranger. Eventually she settled for this:
Dear Robyn,
My name is Maggie Smith. I am friends with Daniel Blanchard. He has received your letter and would love to meet up with you but unfortunately his health is not very good at the moment – hence me writing this message. I think, if you would excuse the possibly rather dramatic sense of urgency, that it would be advisable to see him sooner rather than later. If you still want to see him, please reply to this message and I will be able to tell you the name of the hospital in Bury where he is a patient. I look forward to hearing from you.
This, she felt, conveyed the urgency of the matter without any upsetting or possibly off-putting detail. And she’d deliberately used the word ‘hospital’ instead of ‘hospice’, in case the idea of rushing to see a father who might then, potentially, pass away within moments of setting eyes upon her, put Robyn off making the journey. Maggie reread the message for a third time and then, with her eyes closed tight against the enormity of what she was about to do, she pressed send.
Hard, hot tears pushed against the lids of her closed eyes. She could feel the end rushing towards her like a tunnel of fire, and she wasn’t ready for it, not at all.
LYDIA
The following morning Lydia crept from the silent house before the sun was fully risen. She had not slept the night before, her body was too electrified after her experience with Bendiks and her mind was too overrun with new and remarkable things to think about, so she had lain upon her own empty bed – Bendiks had asked to stay with her, but she had needed some space – and watched the moon trail across the sky, reaching its peak of ice-blue illumination at about 2 a.m. and then slowly fading away as the sun emerged as a thick red band on the horizon. Her house, as she tiptoed through it to reach the front door, seemed riven with the essence of what had happened between her and Bendiks yesterday. It seemed to seep through the bricks and trickle down the stairs. It was in the air, pungent as perfume. She and Bendiks had had sex in this house. Not just once but three times. And not just in one place but in a number of places. In the sauna, in her bed, in the shower afterwards. They had scented every corner. And she loved her house for holding on to it. Because it had changed her, what happened yesterday, changed her from the inside out, and she wanted that change to colour everything else, including her big, characterless house. Having sex with Bendiks had given her house a soul.
She hit a long stride as she walked down her front path and out on to the street. She could feel the thin muscles that ran from her groin to her knees singing out in lovely agony with every step she took and she pulled her stride wider and wider, wanting to feel the sensation even more. The soreness was good. It meant she had been doing things that she had been designed to do, and doing them with whole-hearted enthusiasm.
She was not sure where she was headed, but her long strides brought her, within half an hour, to the outskirts of Camden Town. She recognised the strange smell of early morning Camden: the overflowing bins awaiting collection, the sourness of last night’s beer emanating from shuttered pubs. This was the last time she’d been happy, she thought. Right here, in this dirty place, in a scruffy flat with her scruffy friend, running a thriving little business that was just about to make her a millionaire.
She followed the familiar series of lefts and rights until she found herself on the street where she’d once lived, standing beneath the window of the flat she’d shared with Dixie. She gl
anced up and noticed with a start that there was a For Sale sign nailed to the wall. She felt her heart quicken and a sudden wave of nostalgic longing overcome her. The landlord had not rented the flat out again to some North London slackers, but had put it on the market. She could buy it! She could own it! She could possess her past! But even as she thought it, she knew that she no longer needed to possess her past because her present was becoming more and more the place she wanted to be.
She smiled up at the windows and silently said goodbye.
Bendiks was not there when Lydia returned home from her walk. She noted that his hoodie was not hanging from the coat rack and that his gym bag was gone, and deduced that he had gone to work. Slightly deflated, she went to find Juliette to ask her if she had seen him leave. Juliette was not in the kitchen and Lydia eventually found her in the utility room, pulling hot sheets out of the tumble dryer.
‘Erm, hi, Juliette,’ she began, filled with her customary awkwardness at being in the same room as someone doing her dirty work for her. ‘I was just wondering, have you seen Bendiks at all this morning?’
‘No,’ said Juliette, rather brusquely. ‘I have not.’ She turned her back against Lydia and started to fold up fitted sheets, using some scientific approach that had Lydia spellbound for a moment.
‘Oh,’ she said, somewhat taken aback, ‘right.’
She stared at Juliette’s spine and noticed a certain tension in her body language. She considered leaving but went against her own instincts. ‘I just wondered,’ she continued, ‘maybe he went to work? Maybe he might have told you?’
‘I told you,’ snapped Juliette, still facing away from her, ‘I have not seen him. I don’t know where he is.’
Lydia flinched.
Juliette turned suddenly to face her. ‘I want to say something, if it’s OK with you?’
Lydia nodded.
‘I want to say that I think this man, this Bendiks … I don’t like him.’
