by Rosie Fiore
‘Yes, months.’
‘Are you going to open it?’
‘I will. I just…’
‘Do you want me to go away?’
‘Yes, I think so, darling, if that’s all right. I need to read it quietly, by myself.’
‘Will you tell me what it says?’
Her mother’s suicide note? Would she tell Lucie what it said? The letter was addressed just to Esther, she saw with relief. Had it been addressed to them both, Lucie might well have opened it. She hadn’t told Lucie how Laura had died. When they’d been beside the river on the Isle of Wight, Lucie had said she didn’t want to know, and she had never brought it up again. The close friends who had attended the funeral knew, of course, but most other people merely assumed she’d died as a result of illness or old age. So far, no one had said anything awful in front of Lucie, and it had seemed best just to let things lie. If she’d asked, Esther would have told her, but she hadn’t asked. And now here was a letter which would no doubt make the whole thing explicit, in Laura’s own words.
‘I don’t know,’ she said frankly. ‘I don’t know what it says. If it’s private information that Nanny wanted only me to know, then I might not tell you. But if there’s a message in the letter for you, then I will tell you for sure.’
‘Okay,’ said Lucie doubtfully. ‘But it’s not as if she’s here to mind if I read the letter.’
‘Even though Nanny Laura is dead,’ said Esther carefully, ‘we should have the same respect for her privacy as we would have if she were alive. That means only the person to whom she wrote the letter should read it, don’t you think?’
Lucie clearly didn’t think so, but she had no choice but to agree. She missed Laura, Esther knew, and the thought that this communication had come from her, from beyond the grave, must be very tantalizing.
‘I promise if she said anything to you, I will show you,’ said Esther again.
The letter lay on her desk in its scuffed envelope. She had to pick it up and open it. She had to. And yet she could hardly bear to. It would be like ripping open wounds that had scarcely begun to scab over. It seemed so absurd, so utterly awful that a letter as crucial as this had gone astray. And that it had arrived now, just as she was thinking she might survive the mortal blow of Laura’s death. Would it contain answers? Or would it simply leave her feeling worse? She considered ringing Michael, or Sally even, to come over and be with her when she opened it. But she knew that was not the answer. She had to open it alone, and read it.
She poured herself a large glass of wine, gingerly picked up the envelope and went upstairs to her bedroom. She managed to procrastinate for another few minutes by going downstairs to fetch her letter opener. It didn’t seem right to rip the envelope open. She slit it open carefully, and took out the letter. It was many pages long, but she saw with a pang that that was because Laura had managed to get just a few words onto each page. The handwriting was unrecognizable, wobbly and big, rather like Lucie’s first attempts when she was tiny. It was nothing like Laura’s usual firm, forward-sloping script. It was dated, unsurprisingly, the day of Laura’s suicide.
My dearest Esther,
By the time you get this letter, I will be gone. I know you don’t believe, so for you, I will just be gone into the void, but I have faith I will be with my God.
I am making the most selfish decision of my life, and I beg you to forgive me. I am choosing dignity and self-determination over months or years of deterioration and reliance on others. I want to die as me, as I am, as you know me, not as some shuddering, incontinent caricature of myself. I am doing it now, while I still can, even though I am still comparatively well. I don’t want to find myself at a point where I am physically incapable of taking my own life.
Please forgive me.
From here, the writing became even bigger and more wobbly.
This is, predictably, all about me. It is no reflection on you, nor on your love or loyalty. I know you would have done what needed to be done. I could not and would not ask you.
She did not end the letter with love, nor with a message for Lucie. Laura’s name straggled down the last third of the last page, each letter fainter than the one before, the last ‘a’ so unclear it was almost not there – fading, ephemeral, like Laura herself.
CHAPTER THIRTY
She lay on her bed for a long time after she read the letter. She knew she had to go downstairs, reassure Lucie, make dinner, and pick up the threads of normal life. However, for the moment, she just couldn’t. She just needed to lie there, in the twilight, alone for a moment. It wasn’t even as if she was thinking about the letter. She was, for some reason, thinking about the castle birthday cake she’d had for her eleventh birthday.
She was really too old for a castle cake. But she’d been reading the stories of King Arthur, and she was immersed in medieval lore and stirring tales of knights and valour, and when Laura asked her what cake she would like that year, she’d said ‘A castle’ without thinking. She regretted it immediately. Her classmates would think she was babyish. It would look silly, with a dolly princess in an upper window, and everyone would think she was lame. Because she had come to the school so late, there was an almost imperceptible distance between her and the other children, or so it seemed to Esther. They were nice enough, and civil, and no one bullied her, but they had all known each other since nursery, and it was as if they couldn’t be bothered to get to know her properly, especially as, when she’d first arrived, they had just two and a bit years to go before they would all disperse to secondary school.
Other than Isabella, she didn’t really have close friends, although she knew she had enough social clout that people would come to her birthday party. It helped immensely that Isabella had chosen her as her friend. Isabella was effortlessly cool – not conventionally popular, and certainly not friends with everyone, but charismatic and a little mysterious. She was the person everyone wished they could be friends with, but in truth they were a little intimidated by her.
They were all too old for party games in the garden, and even though hers was a summer birthday, they couldn’t count on the weather being decent. So in a break with tradition, she and six friends would be going to the cinema to see Grease, which everyone had been talking about, and then coming back to the house for tea and birthday cake. It seemed like it could be a cool birthday party except for the castle cake, Esther thought.
In years gone by, Laura had involved her in the design of her birthday cakes. Esther had chosen the colours for Barbie’s dress the previous year, and the rainbow sprinkles for the pony cake on her eighth birthday. But this year, Laura was unusually secretive. Esther didn’t really want to ask about the cake anyway, but she did notice that Laura hadn’t shown her any drawings or talked about it. She thought maybe Laura had forgotten, but one day, when she walked into the kitchen, she saw her bent over the counter, pencil in hand. When Laura heard her, she flipped over the drawing and turned quickly to face Esther, moving the piece of paper behind her back. It had to be the cake design.
At that point in their friendship, Esther and Isabella were splitting their time pretty equally between their two houses. However, in the week or so leading up to the birthday party, Esther did notice that whenever she said to Isabella, ‘Where shall we go today then?’ Isabella would always say, ‘Let’s go to yours.’ And then she’d keep disappearing. She’d leave Esther in the bedroom and go off, ostensibly to the loo or to get a drink of water, but then be gone for ages. Esther was clever enough to know whatever it was Isabella was up to was probably birthday-related – she knew people did funny things in the days leading up to your birthday, and if you liked surprises (which she did), it was best to act unconcerned and pretend you hadn’t noticed.
Grease was funny, very American, with lots of great songs, although Esther suspected she hadn’t understood all of the jokes, because there were some things the adults in the cinema seemed to find hilarious that she didn’t get at all. They had gone to an after
noon showing, and it was still light, so they were all allowed to walk back to Esther’s house without an adult. She felt quietly thrilled. The film had definitely been a hit with everyone, and she knew for a fact that Louise and Violet weren’t usually allowed to walk home by themselves but had been given special leave to do so because they were in a big group and it was Esther’s birthday. So this is what it’s like to be cool and popular, she thought. Perhaps this was what it was like to be Isabella. Isabella herself seemed a little antsy. She had been restless through the film, and she seemed to be hurrying them all to get back to Esther’s house. ‘Come on,’ she said, a little impatiently. ‘Stop dawdling, you lot.’
It was a perfect summer evening as they turned into Esther’s gate. Laura’s beautiful garden was heavy with the scent of jasmine and roses, and the house, set back from the trees, gleamed in the late sunlight. Other than Isabella, none of the girls had been here, and there was a collective gasp.
‘It’s beautiful,’ breathed Violet, who lived, Esther knew, in one of the new tower blocks.
‘Come in,’ she said, suddenly proud, and feeling expansive.
There was a crisp white cloth on the dining room table, and plates of delicate finger sandwiches, scones and sausage rolls, everything homemade. Laura had set out the good teapot and china cups. The girls stopped, open-mouthed, in the doorway and stared, except for Isabella, who ducked past them all and went through into the kitchen, shutting the door behind her. Esther urged all the girls to sit down, and Laura, playing the maître-d’, filled teacups and formally offered round the comestibles. Esther tried to get everyone to relax by chattering about the film, but she could see they were somewhat intimidated by the beauty and ceremony of the tea. They were, after all, only eleven-year-old girls from the local junior school. She half-wished they had just put out the splash pool in the garden and had ice lollies. She had tried to be too adult, and now no one was having fun. And Isabella wasn’t there. She hadn’t yet emerged from the kitchen. Esther felt a hot wave of anger. Isabella was ruining her party. If anyone could get everyone to relax and talk, it would be Isabella. Where was she?
Laura went through to the kitchen then and was gone for a few minutes. Then she came back into the dining room and said excitedly, ‘I think it’s time for the cake, don’t you?’ The girls chorused enthusiastic assent. Laura rushed over to the windows and drew the curtains, plunging the bright room into sudden gloom, then she stepped back to the kitchen door and opened it slowly, as if raising a stage curtain. She began to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ in her deep, tuneful voice, and the girls dutifully joined in.
Isabella entered, carrying the cake carefully in front of her, her face illuminated by the blazing birthday candles. She walked slowly and proudly, and placed the cake in front of Esther, who was sitting at the head of the table.
It was a castle all right, but it couldn’t have been further from the boxy, babyish castle of her imagination. It was a tall, crumbling tower, balanced on a rock, which had been iced painstakingly in shades of grey and brown, with each stone of the tower individually carved. The tower was surrounded by a tangle of tiny green ivy leaves made from sugar. A pathway wound its way up the rock towards the castle, and the eleven birthday candles formed torches, lighting the path at regular intervals. But most astonishingly, there was a dragon, with glittering bright red scales (Esther never did find out how the scales were made to glitter), coiled around the roof of the tower. No squared-off battlements, no dolly princess. It was a brooding, dark, medieval castle. Years later, she was able to identify it. It was Childe Rowland’s Dark Tower.
The girls were silent, open-mouthed, awed. They had never seen anything like it. Laura looked around the astonished faces and clapped her hands in glee. ‘Do you like it? Do you all like it?’ The girls could scarcely speak, but they nodded. How would they describe this to their families? This was no bland Victoria sponge; it was a work of art.
Belatedly, Esther remembered to blow out the candles. They had begun to drip wax on the icing pathway. She had to turn the cake slowly to get to all of them. Then Laura whisked open the curtains and went to fetch a knife.
‘You can’t cut it!’ said Louise, horrified. ‘It’s too beautiful!’
‘Nonsense!’ said Laura. ‘It’s a cake! Meant to be enjoyed. If we didn’t eat it, it would go stale and rot.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ sad Violet, softly. ‘So beautiful. You’re so clever, Mrs Hart.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t me,’ said Laura. ‘I just baked the cake and did a bit of the assembly. This is all Isabella’s work. The idea, the design, the icing…. Everything.’
Esther turned to look at Isabella, who was standing off to one side, smiling and hugging herself, her thin arms wrapped tightly around her own waist.
‘Sneaky, huh?’ she said. ‘Been working in secret with your mum for weeks!’
Esther turned back to look at the cake. It was a work of love. Any misgivings she’d had about the day had been wiped out by the cake. No one at school would ever forget this cake, not even people who hadn’t seen it. It made her birthday party unforgettable, unique, special. And it was all because of Isabella. She looked back at her best friend, who had done this astonishing thing, and in that split second she caught the glance that Isabella exchanged with Laura. It was conspiratorial, full of shared understanding and satisfaction at a secret plan successfully carried to completion. Two artists well pleased with their work. And they were so alike – slender, dark, bright-eyed. A casual observer might have thought Isabella was Laura’s daughter, rather than Esther.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It was sunset, and Esther sat in Sally’s kitchen, watching the clouds streak blood-red and violet through the window. Sally had put a cup of tea in front of her, and she had wrapped her hands around its smooth, warm surface, although she could not bring herself to drink any.
Sally stood by the window, looking out. She had been listening to Esther talk for the past half-hour. But Esther wasn’t finished.
‘I’m angry,’ she said, squeezing the cup tightly. ‘I thought I’d finished being angry. That I had obediently gone through all those prescribed stages of grief, but I haven’t. I’m angry again. Just so fucking angry.’
Sally nodded, without turning back from the window.
‘She’s absolutely right, of course,’ said Esther. ‘She was selfish. Always so damned selfish. Living her life entirely for herself. Dying her own death. Not giving a damn about what it would do to me, or Lucie.’
Sally spoke at last. ‘I think everyone’s a bit selfish, really. Especially near the end. I think when you have so little time, you don’t want to waste it on—’
‘Waste it?’ said Esther incredulously. ‘You think she would have been wasting her time, spending it with us?’
‘You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say, you don’t want to waste it on arguing about something you’re not going to change your mind about. Your mum was elderly, and she lived alone. I bet long before she got ill she’d thought about what she would do if she got some debilitating illness. I know I’ve thought about it.’
Esther had come seeking – what? Sympathy? Solace? Sally’s soft sweetness? She had got none of that. Sally had read Laura’s letter and had then looked at her enquiringly. She hadn’t said how sorry she was, or given Esther a hug or held her hand. She’d nodded once, when she had ascertained Esther wasn’t going to speak, and had said, ‘Well, now you know.’
‘Do I?’
‘As much as she was able to tell you. It wasn’t your fault. Not that I ever thought it was. Just her choice.’
And thus the argument had begun. Esther, furious, saying that Laura had robbed her, denied her the right to do her duty as a daughter. Sally, immovable, supporting Laura’s choice. This wasn’t what Esther had expected. Not at all.
Now, for the first time, Sally seemed to be losing her temper a little. ‘So what you wanted was for Laura to suffer, to go through the indignities she feared most of al
l, so you could feel okay about what you had done for her?’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Isn’t it? Why should you get to choose?’
Esther exploded. ‘You got to choose. Isabella pushed everyone away. She pushed me away. But you went in to care for her. You. You saw her die.’
‘I helped her die.’
Esther stopped short. ‘What?’
Sally spoke calmly now. ‘She was in a lot of pain towards the end. She was struggling to breathe, nauseous a lot of the time and if she moved suddenly, she’d haemorrhage. It wasn’t going to get better, only worse. If she’d been older, her body would have given in sooner. But the downside to getting cancer when you’re young is that the bits of your body that aren’t affected are strong. We talked about it, and over a few weeks we decanted a little of each bottle of oral morphine until we had enough. I helped her to sit up and she drank it. Then she went to sleep.’
Esther was silent. What could she say? Sally was admitting to – what? Assisting a suicide? Murder? Was it classified as murder? She had no idea. Was it a criminal offence? Again, she didn’t know.
Sally continued. ‘If we hadn’t done it, she might have lived another week, maybe more. But she’d had enough. And I respected that. I didn’t want her to go. But I didn’t want her to suffer anymore either. We didn’t tell anyone. Not Mum, obviously, and not the doctors. Because she’d been seen recently by medical professionals, there was no post-mortem.’
‘And now you’ve told me.’
‘I can see you’re angry with me because I don’t agree with you about your mum. I wanted you to know why. You’re the only person I have ever told.’
Sally looked out over the fields again. The sky was almost dark now, and her profile was sharply delineated against the window. She had lost even more weight, and Esther could see the line of her jaw, which had for so long been hidden beneath soft flesh. She could see cheekbones too, with small hollows below them. She had often thought that Sally’s baby-doll, childish good looks wouldn’t age well, but now Sally’s bone structure was emerging from the pudge, she could see it was fine-boned, delicate and well made. And she could see that Sally, more than she had ever imagined, was Isabella’s sister.
