The Last Days of Us

by Caroline Finnerty

  I looked at JP.

  ‘Can I?’ he asked.

  ‘Work away.’

  JP and Harry disappeared upstairs while I began cleaning up after the takeaway, folding down the pizza boxes and squashing them into the recycling bin. When I was finished, I poured myself a glass of cool white wine. My shoulders were burning with knots and, as I took a sip of the wine, I tried to massage them with one hand.

  ‘Did he go off all right?’ I asked as JP returned back downstairs about ten minutes later.

  ‘He was out like a light.’ He paused. ‘Thanks for this evening, Sarah, I hadn’t realised how much I had missed this – I want you to know that I really appreciate it, especially after everything that has happened over the last while…’

  I had to admit, despite everything that had taken place that day, it had been a lovely evening. It brought me back to happier times when we would all sit around together on a Saturday night. I had once taken that simple joy of family movie nights for granted without realising that one day it would be snatched away from me. I didn’t know then that they were my best days, but now, as I realised they were finite, I appreciated every second of them.

  ‘Well, it does the kids good to spend time with you, they love having you here,’ I mumbled, taken aback by his admission. ‘I’ve just opened a bottle of wine. Do you want a glass, or do you need to get back to Megan?’

  ‘I’d murder one,’ he said.

  I poured him a glass and we went back into the living room and sat down.

  JP fell quiet and I got the impression that there was more he wanted to say. He rubbed his thumb down through the condensation on the outside of the glass and then back up along the track again.

  ‘I just wanted to say that I’m sorry, Sarah,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m going to call my solicitor first thing tomorrow morning and stop the proceedings. I’m sorry for putting you through it all, but I was desperate. I wasn’t ready to let her go without a fight – I’m still not…’ His voice wavered.

  I felt relief flood through me. I had no more energy left to fight. Thank God, he had finally seen sense and accepted that we were not going to win this battle no matter how much we wished we could. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered. ‘Although I didn’t agree with what you were doing, JP, I loved that you weren’t willing to let her go without a fight…’

  ‘Why are we being put through this?’ He held his head in his hands. ‘I know I’ve made mistakes, but why should Robyn be paying for what I’ve done? I should be the one dying, not a four-year-old!’ He looked up at me, his eyes were still red and his face raw and blotchy from all the tears earlier on.

  ‘You think this is your fault?’ I was intrigued by his logic.

  ‘Well, isn’t it? Isn’t it all down to karma or something…?’

  ‘That’s not how it works – there’s no man in the sky with justice scales, saying because JP left his family, his daughter is going to die.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m just trying to make sense of it all and I can’t – I don’t understand why this is happening to us – I still can’t believe it…’

  ‘Life dealt us a really shitty hand, but we need to cherish each day we have left and take it all in. Yes, she is dying – but right now she is living. She is alive, there is air in her lungs and, believe it or not, as hard as it may be to accept it, these are our best days – these are the days that we are going to look back on when our hearts are sore and broken, the days when she was still with us. The days when us meant four people and not three. These are the ones we will yearn for when grief seems too much to bear, when we long for her touch, the smell of her skin fresh from sleep, the feeling of her pudgy arms around our necks.’

  ‘How are you able to think like that? Like you can see the bigger picture and I can just see blackness.’

  ‘I’ve had my fair share of black days too, but that’s when I have to remind myself of what we have right now. I’m taking it day by day. Every day she is here is a good one in my book and I’m not looking beyond that because, to be honest, it’s terrifying if I allow my head to go there. We’ve an awful journey ahead of us and we’re going to need to be able to lean on one another. There will be days when I don’t have the strength and I will need you to lead the way and there will be days when I’ll have to keep the ship afloat.’

  He nodded. ‘You always know the right thing to say. You always did…’

  I felt my face flush at the reference to our past. We were interrupted by his phone ringing, jolting us out of the moment. He picked it up off the sofa, checked the screen before pressing the end-call button and sighing.

  ‘Look, JP, let’s not waste any more time being angry with one another, the past is in the past, deal?’

  He nodded. ‘You’re right. As usual. I’m done fighting,’ he sighed.

  His phone started to ring again and this time he picked up. I could hear Megan’s voice screeching and shouting down the line to him before he had even had time to say hello.

  He hung up on her and rubbed his hands down over his face. ‘I’d better head off,’ he said, standing up abruptly. He had only taken a few sips of his wine, so I knew he would be okay to drive.

  ‘Yeah, of course.’ I got up too and walked him out to the hall. I didn’t enquire what was going on between them, it wasn’t my business.

  He opened the front door. The cool night air rushed inside and made me shiver. He stood on the step and turned back around to me.

  ‘Thanks for tonight, I really appreciate you listening to me like that – you’re the only other person who gets how awful this is…’ He paused and his eyes fell to the floor. ‘I was wondering… what are we going to tell Robyn?’

  ‘Do we need to tell her?’ I asked.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be preparing her for what lies ahead?’

  ‘She’s four years old.’ I shook my head at the cruelty of it all. ‘She doesn’t understand death, let alone her own.’ In my darker moments, I wondered what was going on inside her head. It broke my heart to think she might be scared or worried but unable to verbalise it to us.

  ‘So we should say nothing?’ His tone wasn’t accusatory, just curious.

  ‘I don’t think she needs a big explanation. I hate the idea of her being frightened by what’s ahead, but let’s just take each day as it comes.’

  He nodded. ‘We’ll have to tell Harry though; we can’t hide it from him any more.’

  I nodded in agreement, feeling my heart tear at the pain that lay ahead for him. As an adult it was awful to endure, but watching my child try to come to terms with it too, knowing that I couldn’t fix his pain, was going to unbearable. ‘What are we meant to say? How are we going to explain it? How do you tell a nine-year-old that his sister is going to die?’ I said, feeling desperate.

  ‘Who’s going to die?’ we heard Harry’s small voice ask from behind.

  35

  JP and I swung around immediately. Neither of us had heard Harry come back downstairs. He must have heard us talking on the doorstep. I looked at JP and JP looked at me. The air around us seemed to change as if we could smell fear. The moment we had both been dreading had arrived.

  ‘What’s going on, Mam and Dad?’ he demanded, looking at me first, then at JP and back to me again. Then the realisation hit him. ‘Is Robyn going to die?’ His eyes were wide and fearful and his teeth bit into his bottom lip.

  We both knew the time had come to tell him. ‘Let’s go inside and sit down,’ I said.

  The three of us went back into the house and into the living room.

  JP’s phone rang again, cutting through the moment. ‘For God’s sake!’ he groaned impatiently as he fumbled to turn it off.

  My heart was pounding, and blood pulsed through my ears. I had known this moment was coming, but I still didn’t feel ready for it. The truth was I didn’t think I’d ever be ready for it. No matter how much I had thought about it or researched it, I still didn’t know the right way to say these words. Whatever I said next w
as going to be a defining moment in Harry’s life forever. He would carry this moment around with him like a scar upon his heart for the rest of his life.

  I waited until he was sitting down on the sofa next to JP, then I took a deep breath before beginning to say the words I had been putting off for so long.

  ‘Harry, love, you know the way Robyn has bad cells growing inside her head and we were going into the hospital to zap them?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well, the zapping machine can’t keep up with the bad cells – they keep coming back,’ I said.

  ‘Is the machine broken?’ he asked with all of the innocence of a nine-year-old.

  ‘No, it’s just the bad cells are too strong.’ I paused.

  ‘Robyn is very sick, Harry,’ JP said, taking up my lead.

  ‘Well, can’t the doctors just give her different medicine?’ he asked.

  ‘Sometimes they can, but unfortunately the doctors have no medicine that can fix Robyn…’

  ‘So, she’s going to die?’ Tears pooled in his blue eyes and I wanted to take back my words and take away his sadness and fix everything like I usually did, but this time I couldn’t.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, confirming his worst fears.

  I watched his eyes flicker as he tried to process what we were telling him. I could see his brain working hard to understand, but he was too young. He was nine years old; the concept of death hadn’t formed properly in his mind, so how on earth was he supposed to make sense of any of this?

  ‘But where will she go when she dies?’

  ‘Remember when Granny died, and she went to heaven and Grandad was going to mind her for us?’ My mother had died just three years ago and although Robyn had no memories of her grandmother, Harry did. When she had passed away, we had explained to Harry that Granny was going to meet Grandad in heaven.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he nodded.

  ‘Well, it’ll be the same for Robyn. She’ll go to heaven with Grandad and Granny and they’re both going to mind her there for us.’ I felt my voice choke up with tears.

  JP reached across to the armchair where I was sitting and rubbed my shoulder with his thumb. I knew he was finding this conversation just as hard as I was.

  ‘But she’ll always be with us right here,’ I said, placing my palm over my heart.

  ‘But what will we do without Robyn? Our family will be all wrong! Who will I play with?’ His little eyes were locked on mine, begging me for reassurance.

  It was the simplicity of his question that summed up everything for me. Life without her was unimaginable. And that was when I came undone, I had tried my best to hold it together in front of Harry, but tears flooded down my face and landed onto my grey marl T-shirt in dark stains.

  JP started sobbing too, his shoulders heaved up and down as the grief wrung him out and then we were all crying. We were in each other’s arms, holding on to one another tightly as the three of us cried together, broken-hearted.

  Harry lifted his head from my chest after a while. ‘Mam?’ he asked in a small voice.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is it my fault because I was giving out about you always being in the hospital? I didn’t mean it. I’m really sorry.’ His eyes were red from tears.

  I reached out and gripped him on either side of his shoulders. ‘Harry, love, it’s not your fault that this is happening, do you hear me? This is nobody’s fault, it’s just one of those bad things in life that sometimes happen, do you understand me?’ This was everything I didn’t want; I didn’t want him carrying guilt for his sister’s death – something like that could destroy a person. He was too young to understand the fragility of life and I needed it to be clear that it was nothing to do with his behaviour. It was outside of all our control.

  ‘I’m scared, Mam,’ he whispered. His eyes were wide and round, and I hated that for the first time in his life I couldn’t fix this for him. Every piece of advice I had read had said it was important to be honest with your feelings when breaking bad news to children, it was okay not to have all the answers.

  I squeezed his hand hard. ‘I’m scared too, Harry, and so is your dad.’ JP nodded in agreement. ‘This is going to be the hardest thing we’ve ever faced, but the three of us are going to help each other through this,’ I continued.

  ‘We need to make a pact that we’ll be honest with one another,’ JP said. ‘If me or your mam are having a bad day, you’ll help us, and if you’re having a bad day, we’ll help you. Deal?’ He clenched his hand to make a fist bump.

  Harry nodded. ‘Deal,’ he said as he bumped his small fist against JP’s.

  ‘From now on, we need to make every day special for her,’ JP said, leaning in towards Harry. ‘So your mam and I are going to need your help, little man.’

  ‘Do you think we can get Santa to come early this year because it’s not fair if Robyn misses Christmas?’ His face grew animated as his mind began to run with his idea. ‘I could write a letter to him and tell him all about Robyn and that she has bad things growing in her brain and even though the doctors ran out of medicine, she is so brave because she is always getting needles in the hospital. And I’ll tell him that I know he can’t come twice in one year because that’s not fair on all the other boys and girls, but it’s okay if he doesn’t come to our family again at the real Christmastime this year because I just want to have our family together for one last time.’

  ‘Do you know what, Harry?’ I said as I wiped tears away with the back of my hand. ‘I think that’s a great idea.’

  Harry

  I never saw Dad cry before, but today I did because Robyn is going to die. Even though we sometimes fight, and she can be kinda annoying when she takes my stuff, I don’t want her to die because I’ll miss her. When you die it’s forever and that’s a really long time. I only know one other person who died and that was Granny, but she was really old so even though it was kinda sad that was okay. Dad said she would be going to live in heaven, and I asked if we can go there to see her, but he said, we’re not even able to visit Robyn for a day and I said ‘can we go even for five seconds?’ and he said ‘no, not even for five seconds’.

  It’s going to be really weird if Robyn isn’t in our family any more. It’s going to be so boring. What will I do without Robyn? Who will I play with? Mam said ‘she will always be a part of our family’, but I told her if she lives in heaven then she can’t be, can she? I remember from Granny that dead people are really cold, and I asked Dad if Robyn would be cold too and he said we could put a blanket on her to keep her warm. I told him that her Frozen one is her favourite. I asked Dad if they have lights in heaven because Robyn is scared of the dark and she always has to sleep with her night light on and he said ‘of course they do’, but I don’t know how he knows because he’s never been there and nobody that has gone there has ever come back again because you’re not allowed to visit heaven, so I asked Dad how did he really know that and he just said ‘I just do’. But that’s not really a good answer. If teacher asked me a question in school and I said that answer she would give me a big red X in my copy. Then I asked him what they eat in heaven and he said he wasn’t sure, ‘maybe the same things that we eat here’, and I said ‘but without all the horrible things like broccoli and fish?’

  ‘Yes, I think you’re probably right, son,’ Dad said.

  And I said Robyn is soooo lucky she never has to eat fish pie ever again, but then he looked like he was going to cry and even though I have loads more questions about heaven I didn’t ask any more.

  36

  We stood in the garden under a blistering blue sky streaked white with filmy plane vapours. Wispy clouds hung lazily above us as if dithering which way to go and the sun was warm on our skin. JP smiled at me and I smiled back at him.

  A few days before, Geraldine had called me to let me know that the proceedings had been withdrawn by JP’s legal team and she had seemed surprised when I admitted to her that I already knew. I explained about our last meeting with Dr Sh
arma and JP’s realisation that Robyn hadn’t long left to live. She wished us well on the rest of our journey and I thanked her for all her help. The media seemed to have lost interest in the story too, and I was glad to have that awful chapter behind us.

  ‘One, two, three – are you ready?’ Harry asked, just before he flicked the switch on the outdoor Christmas lights.

  ‘Happy Chrissssstmaaaas!’ we roared in unison.

  Robyn smiled in my arms as she looked around at the fairy lights that JP had draped from tree to tree all around the garden and along the front of the house. The lights were muted under the bright sunlight, but I knew once night-time came it would be transformed into a magical scene.

  After Harry had the idea to write to Santa, I decided that if Robyn couldn’t be here for Christmas, although it was only June, I was going to bring Christmas forward to make sure we had one last one together and I wanted it to be the best one yet. Harry had been excitedly helping us to get ready to make it extra special for his sister. Even though Christmas had always been my favourite time of year, now I was terrified to face it. I was afraid of the emotions it might unleash in me. I was petrified that something wild and feral might break free from my heart and, once it did, I wouldn’t be able to reel it back in again, but I desperately needed to hold it together, if I fell apart now, I would ruin our last Christmas with one another.

  ‘The neighbours will think we’re crazy,’ JP laughed, looking around at the twinkling lights as the sound of a strimmer filtered through the air and the meaty smell of our neighbours’ barbeques drifted over walls and fences.

  ‘Let them! Come on, let’s go back inside,’ I said as I put my free arm around Harry’s shoulder and we returned into the house to continue decorating.

  The piney smell from the noble fir tree which we had picked up that morning had already begun to scent the whole house. Because it was the middle of summer, I thought we would have to resort to an artificial tree, but JP had managed to track down a Christmas-tree farmer in Wicklow who could give us a real one. Every year since the kids had been born, it had been a family tradition that we would all choose the tree together and then buy a hot chocolate afterwards, so, after much debating between JP and I about whether Robyn was up for the trip to collect it, we had made her as comfortable as we could, before we all piled into the car. JP had made a playlist of all the songs she used to dance to, like Pharrell Williams’ ‘Happy’, but also the nursery rhymes that she had loved as a baby like ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ were on there too and we had it playing as we drove along. There was a time when that song was like a screwdriver through my brain, but now, I could listen to it all day long as I remembered Robyn as a toddler doing all the actions in the mother and toddler group we used to go to. Sometimes a memory would assail me from nowhere and be so painful and a cruel reminder of everything that I was losing. We all sang along as we drove across the impossibly narrow roads that clung to the mountainside. The landscape, dotted with marigold-coloured furze and mauve sprigs of heather, seemed to stretch out forever as we drove through the depths of the Wicklow countryside. We’d rounded a bend and had to swerve to avoid a herd of horned sheep grazing at the side of the road. As we had continued on with pounding hearts from the fright, the sheep had just stared at us with idle curiosity. Finally, we had begun to descend into a tree-clad valley and arrived at the farm.