This Is How It Ends (28 page)

It didn’t matter. Things had taken on a new dimension now, and the iPod didn’t matter. Somehow, he struggled to his feet again, gasping with the shock and the cold.

He had to get on now, he knew that. He had to focus all of his energies on moving forward. He was so cold, there was a real danger of hypothermia. It was essential that he keep moving. His coat was so heavy, it was weighing him down. With considerable difficulty he managed to pull it off him. Letting it fall back into the water, he struggled on without it.

He lifted his head up and fixed his eyes on the dark outline of the promenade. He held it in his sights like a target. Somebody up there had spotted him. There was somebody standing on the rocks, gesticulating wildly at him, but he couldn’t hear what the person was saying. How embarrassing, he thought, how hideously bloody embarrassing.

The water was shallower now, no question about it. Suddenly he was finding it much easier going.

Up ahead of him he could see a whirling light. A squad car, two reflective jackets making their way steadily to the edge of the promenade.

Hugh trudged onward through the lapping shallows. The water was only up to his ankles now. Only moments ago, his situation had seemed life-threatening. Now it was ridiculous. He was miserable with humiliation, dreading his arrival. He was almost tempted to turn round and go back. As he reached the bottom of the steps one of the Guards was hovering above him. He reached his hand down to help Hugh up.

There was quite a crowd gathered up on the promenade to watch. The dog walkers and the joggers and the kids out playing football, they had all stopped to see the show. Hugh climbed the steps ever so slowly. His wet clothes clung to him like seaweed, his shoes were soggy. He had his head bowed down, praying that he would be allowed to pass in silence.

Behind him on the beach, a gangly sign stood high above the water on rusted stilts. The sign had been there for years and years but Hugh had never once noticed it.

DANGER
, it said.

PERSONS GOING 200 METRES BEYOND THIS NOTICE ARE IN DANGER OF BEING STRANDED BY INCOMING TIDE.

THE GUARDS TRIED TO
persuade him to go to the hospital. He had a job convincing them it wasn’t necessary. He glared at them, trying to muster all his professional command, in spite of the puddle of seawater spreading out at his feet.

“I’m a doctor myself,” he said in a gruff voice. “Take my word for it, Guard, all I need is a hot shower.”

Reluctantly, they let him go. They stood and watched him as he squelched his way across the road. He was still in their sights as he climbed the steps of his house, pausing at the top to pat his hip pockets in vain for his keys. They watched as he bent down to retrieve the spare key from a crack in the stone steps. Only when the door opened did they turn away and head for their car.

As soon as Hugh closed the door behind him, he peeled off his wet clothes. Climbing the stairs stark naked, he dumped the sodden bundle into the bath. He turned on the shower jets full blast and stood on the bathroom mat, waiting for the water to run hot.

And it was only then that he remembered the dog.

T
HE ONE THING THAT
everybody was agreed on was that there was no need to tell Addie.

“Not on your life,” said Della, when Hugh arrived at her door. “Under no circumstances must she be told.”

And Hugh nodded. His big head was lolling on his neck, his eyes desperately locked onto Della’s face. She’d never seen him like this before. It was as if the last piece of stuffing had been knocked out of him. For the first time in her life, Della took pity on him. She brought him in and made him a mug of tea.

“I can’t believe she would drown,” she said. She was thinking out loud. “It doesn’t make any sense. Lola the swimming dog.”

Hugh sat in abject silence, his head hanging down.

“Look, Hugh,” she said, “let’s have a bit of perspective here. It was only a dog.”

And he nodded miserably.

“In the grand scheme of things, it’s probably for the best. The dog would have been pining for Addie. She would have been miserable without her.”

Still Hugh said nothing. He was gray in the face, his expression desolate. He looked old and tired.

“Addie’s so sick now, she won’t even notice that Lola’s gone.”

Hugh was staring down into the mug of tea. He hadn’t even taken a sip of it. Slowly, he brought his head up to look at her.

“Oh, Della,” he said. “How on earth are we going to manage without her?”

THE EVENINGS WERE
brighter now, it was light up until nearly nine o’clock. Springtime, the magnolia tree in Della’s front garden was in full bloom, its pink flowers opening out slowly like big, clawed hands. For the rest of her life Della would take her cue from the magnolia tree. As soon as those cruel pink fists started to unfurl she would know it was time to start counting down the days.

She was finding it harder and harder to sit with Addie now. Bruno found it difficult too. She knew that without him saying it, she noticed him taking breaks. Hugh was the only one who seemed to be able to stay with her endlessly. He seemed to have an infinite capacity to sit in that sad space.

Della would find herself fussing around in the kitchen. She would find herself putting things away in the kitchen cupboards and emptying the dishwasher. Or standing out on the balcony with Bruno, smoking cigarettes, one after the other.

She would have to force herself to go back into the room. When she did go in, she would sit on the far side of the bed so she didn’t have to look at Addie’s face.

“You won’t always have that image of her in your head,” said the nurse. “It’ll fade with time, I promise you. You’ll remember her the way she was before.”

But Della didn’t believe her. She knew she would never get the image of Addie’s emaciated face out of her head. It was horrific to her. She was horrified by how long it was taking. She could never have imagined that it would take this long.

There was a time there, was it only a week ago? When she had prayed for it to last forever. She’d been sitting in the window of Addie’s room, reading to her as the daylight faded. She had been reluctant to turn on the lamp for fear it would break the spell. She couldn’t tell whether Addie was awake or asleep but she kept on reading anyway. And it was then that she wished, she wished it with all her heart, that this time could last forever.

That was only a week ago.

Now Della wanted it to be over. There was a pointlessness to it at this stage. It was like a book you already know the ending of. She felt like skipping the last few pages and going straight to the end.

EVERY SO OFTEN
the nurse would pull a chair up to Addie’s bed. She would sit on the edge of the seat, her forearms draped over her knees, her head cocked slightly to the side. With a faint smile, she would watch Addie’s face, studying her expression for any indication of pain.

“Bruno,” said Addie. “Are you there?”

“She’s awake,” said the nurse, poking her head into the kitchen. “She’s asking for you.”

Bruno came and sat into the nurse’s chair, leaning down with his elbows on the edge of the bed, letting his hand rest on the covers over her thigh.

“Bruno,” said Addie, turning her head on the pillow so she was facing him. “I was just thinking.”

She paused. It was taking her a long time to get the words out. He had to lean in to hear what it was that she was saying.

“I was thinking,” she said.

Her voice trailed off. It seemed to Bruno for a moment that she had forgotten what it was that she was going to say. But then she started again. It was such an effort for her to speak. The words fell out of her with her labored breath. It was hard to listen to.

“I was thinking,” she said. “How rude it is of me.”

She frowned.

“To abandon you here. With my family!”

She shook her head in self-reproach.

“Unforgivably rude.”

Her chest collapsed with the relief of having said it. She closed her eyes. Bruno lowered his head down, letting the side of his face rest on her belly. She moved her arm so it was cradling the back of his head. When the nurse came back in, it looked to her as if Addie was the one who was comforting him.

ADDIE KEPT WAKING
up agitated. It was the same thing on her mind every time, always the same anxiety.

She had to pack. She needed to sort out her things. What she would take with her and what she would leave behind. She would have to clean out the apartment. She should change the sheets. How would she remember to put out the bin? She had to remember to put out the green bin.

She would start working it all through in her mind. Piecing it together slowly, it was painstaking work. The morphine was slowing her down, she was aware of that. It was taking her so long to figure things out.

Hugh leaned over and patted her gently on the hand. His voice sounded strange.

“Don’t be silly, Addie,” he said, “there’s no need for packing.”

And she smiled at him as it dawned on her. It was such a relief every time. There was nothing she had to do, that’s what she had to keep reminding herself. There was nothing left for her to do.

Bruno had given her a box set of
The Blue Planet
for Christmas and it was playing out on a large-screen TV he’d set up in the corner of the bedroom. He had the volume on it turned off. All you could hear was the great heaving breath of the airbed, like a sea swell. The curtains were closed and the room was bathed in shifting blue light. It was for all the world like being underwater.

Addie lay there, surrounded by all those lovely silent fish.

“Remember the mermaid?” she said suddenly. Her voice was surprisingly clear.

Hugh leaned in to her, giving a little snort.

“That bloody mermaid,” he said. “How could I ever forget?”

BRUNO WAS STANDING
out on the balcony, staring up at the sky. He was smoking a cigarette. He knew he shouldn’t, but what the hell.

It was pitch dark, it seemed to be darker than usual tonight. Bruno craned his head back to see if he could find the moon, but there was no sign of it anywhere. There were no stars in the sky either.

He was searching for something up there, looking for some kind of an answer.

“There’s a man up there.” That’s what his father had said to him.

Forty years ago, it must be nearly forty years now, his father had woken him up and brought him out into the garden. A sticky summer night, Bruno can still remember how he lay down flat on his back on the damp grass. He can still sense the large mass of his father’s body lying right next to him.

“Look,” his father had said, pointing straight up at the moon. “Tonight, for the first time in history, there’s a man up there.”

And Bruno had tried to imagine it but he couldn’t. He remembers lying there on the grass and trying and trying and trying to picture it but he just couldn’t.

TIME SEEMED TO BE
moving so slowly.

Like when you’re watching a movie and you keep falling asleep. Every time you open your eyes, it’s the same scene.

Hugh was still sitting beside her in his chair, his book open on his lap, his hand resting between the pages. The door was ajar, slanted back into the corridor, the light out there a patch of yellow. She could hear a tumble of voices. Then they moved away.

Now Hugh was speaking, his voice floating around on the air.

“I’m sorry, Addie,” he was saying. “I’m so very, very sorry.”

And she was confused, she didn’t understand what he was apologizing for.

She knew she should try to ask him. But she couldn’t. It was as if she were in a dream. She couldn’t make herself speak no matter how hard she tried.

WHEN DELLA AND
the girls arrived they found Bruno lying on the balcony deck, staring up into the sky.

“Jesus, Bruno, are you all right?”

Bruno jerked his head up. They were all lined up at the door, Della and the four girls. They were staring down at him in amazement.

“Quick,” he said, “you’re missing it,” and he laid his head back down on the decking.

The girls rushed out onto the balcony, their faces craned back to look up into the sky.

A shaft of ghostly green light pierced the darkness, moving in a wide arc across the sky.

“Wow!”

“Omigod!”

“It’s amazing.”

Bruno’s voice came up out of the ground, the sound of it strangely flattened.

“You can see it better from down here.”

They all scrambled to lie down. There wasn’t much room on the deck, so they had to squash in together like sardines.

“Come on, Della, try it.”

“I can see just grand from here.”

“Come on, Mum, it’s amazing.”

So Della lay down on the ground too. She squeezed herself in beside Tess, making a pillow for herself with her arms.

“Holy God!” she said. “It’s beautiful!”

“What is it?”

“Some kind of light show,” said Della. “It looks like it’s coming from the theater.”

“But what’s it for?”

“It’s not for anything, darling, it’s just for us to enjoy.”

They lay there on the wooden deck, the six of them lined up in a row like an angler’s catch. Through the gaps in the wooden decking you could see the still, dark water of the basin below them. Above them, the sky was seething with shifting green lights, the magic of it reflected in their eyes.

ADDIE COULD HEAR
them all out there. She could hear their voices clearly outside the window.

The northern lights, she heard someone say. It was one of the girls, it sounded like Stella. So that’s what they were watching, they were watching the northern lights. Addie was so glad that Bruno had finally got his wish.

There was silence inside the room but she knew that Hugh was there. He was sitting between her and the window. It was so dark in the room that she couldn’t see him. But she knew he was there.

She could hear Lola’s breathing. She had a sense of her down on the floor beside the bed. She would only have to reach her hand down and she would be able to touch her. She didn’t even have to reach down, she knew that Lola knew she was here.

She had a song running through her head. It occurred to her with interest that it was a song that she’d never even liked. She couldn’t remember all the words, just the one line that kept looping in her head.

Brother Louie, Louie, Louie
.

She couldn’t remember the next bit.

A disco in Majorca. Rope-soled espadrilles on the hard dance floor. Sunburned shoulders.

Brother Louie, Louie, Louie
.

An absurd song. She did not want this song in her head. She tried to listen to the sounds in the room again. She heard Hugh shifting in his chair. She heard his book fall to the floor. She heard the dog breathing out through her nose, a long, deep release of air, a long pause before the next breath.

She had images in her mind as if she were seeing them through the window of a moving car. Pale sky. Birds’ nests in bare trees. A little gloved hand in a big gloved hand.

Sensations.

A shudder of cold water. Breathing out bubbles. A cherry red swimsuit.

Outside, she heard Bruno saying something but she couldn’t make out what it was. She heard the girls laughing.

And it was then that the most extraordinary thing occurred to her. A moment of absolute clarity, she knew it without a shadow of a doubt.

This is how it ends.