Lucy sets her mouth. ‘Fine, then I’m a bitch.’
The injustice of what’s going on here – that Russell can threaten her, menace her, and her father will still prioritise him, and her mother hasn’t tried to change it – is enough to make Lucy want to never speak to them again.
She’s already accepted that she’s on her own. That once she moves out she may never see her parents again. It scares her to feel that alone. But then she remembers that she can make new connections – like Daphne and Christina. They’re interested in her, they like her, so she can’t be a bad person if that’s the case. She can start over.
‘I’ll finish up next week,’ she says, and picks up her bag – already packed with a toothbrush and other things she needs overnight.
‘Lucy …’ Her mother steps closer. ‘Let’s talk about it over dinner.’
‘I’m not coming home,’ Lucy says, stepping back.
‘Where are you going?’ Connie’s voice rises.
‘Somewhere I’m safe.’
Lucy turns away before they can answer. She hears her mother crying, but she can’t pay attention to that. She has to look after herself.
She has to be strong enough to make her own way now. And she will be.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
One never knows when a story will start or when it will end, Daphne thinks, as she sits next to her bed in the bedroom she has occupied all of her married life, holding Hector’s lifeless hand.
This morning when she woke, she couldn’t wake him although he was still breathing.
She called their doctor, who came as quickly as he could.
‘I think he’s had another stroke, Daphne,’ he said gently. ‘Would you like me to call an ambulance?’
He’d looked at her in such a way that she understood he was saying one thing and asking her another with his eyes:Do you really want to prolong this?
No, she did not. Janet and Noel didn’t either.
They had discussed it when Hector started failing and luckily they were all in agreement, not just about Hector but each other: none of them should have to suffer any more than necessary. Life could be prolonged but not at all costs.
Hector had stopped being himself a long time ago. They weren’t able to ask him what he wanted, but they all believed he wouldn’t have wanted to be kept alive when he couldn’t enjoy life. He’d enjoyed food and drink and seeing friends. He had enjoyedbeing capable. What he would not enjoy was being completely reliant on others, and that had already gone on long enough.
So when the doctor gave her the option, Daphne said no, don’t call the ambulance.
‘But is there something you can do for him?’ she asked. ‘To make him more comfortable?’ That innocuous question which, toward the end of a life, can mean so much more.
The doctor said yes, he could make Hector more comfortable, and set about doing it.
Then he stood, put his hand on Daphne’s shoulder and said, ‘Not long now, I think.’
She had nodded.
‘Would you like me to stay?’ he said, and she shook her head.
‘Call me when you need to,’ he added before he left.
Call me when he’s dead, that’s what he meant. So he could come back and pronounce her husband dead. To make it official.
So Janet has made the call and Daphne is holding Hector’s hand while they wait. It seems like the thing to do – to see him out.
She knows he isn’t in his body any more; she saw both of her parents die and thought she could sense the exact moment at which they left. A last breath, a stillness, the air in the room changing. A soul is gone and a body remains.
It is such a strangeness, death, yet so uneventful when it happens like this. Hector the spirit, the energy, the man she knew, is in the ether. This is how his story – and theirs together – ends.