I flip the notebook closed as Polly hops up onto the stool next to me. “Nothing much.” Nothing I can make much sense of.
“Have you seen Mimi since she was discharged?” she asks so airily that I know this isn’t a throwaway line.
I make a vague gesture meant to conveynoas I lift my coffee cup to my mouth.
“It’s such a shame what happened to her.”
“Yep. A shame she didn’t look after herself.”
Polly tilts her head to one side. “That’s a little unfair, and not at all like you.”
“She had a cardiac arrest in my bedroom.”
“I’m so pleased you were there.”
“What if I hadn’t been? What if she’d really died? Gone? I would’ve carried that guilt around with me for my whole bloody life.”
“Well, that’s what you do, Leif.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you feel things deeply. That you take on responsibilities that aren’t yours.”
My expression twists in warning.Dangerous territory, Poll.
“I know you had to when your father died,” she says, stretching out her arm, her hand covering mine. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you. But I’m here now. I’m okay. When those little toe rags cause you any pain, just flick them back my way.”
“It’s become habit now,” I say, staring down into the foam in my cup.
“And they know it. Honestly, I’m sure half the time they’re just trying to you’re your life difficult. Taking the piss. Especially Lavender.” My head jerks up at Polly’s language. She rarely swears. “She just feels like she needs to be seen. If you take a step back, perhaps,” she suggests softly. “I might be able to make some headway with her. And if you did that, you might have more time for Mimi.”
“Stop,” I say softly. “We tried, and it didn’t work out.”
“It’s just so not like you,” she says, frowning. “You never give up.”
“I didn’t give up. I got involved with a woman who wouldn’t let me in.”
“At first, maybe.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Mum. She’s not the person you think she is.”
“She’s not the person you think she is, either,” she retorts sharply. “Take off your blinders. See this for what it really is.”
“And what’s that?” I say, pressing my fist into my hip.
“She didn’t have a death wish, Leif. When the tests came back, the advice from the cardiologist was that she should consider having an ICD fitted. Not that she had to, that death was imminent.”
“If that had happened to me, you would’ve sat on me—kept me in one place until I gave in and said yes to the thing.”
“But that’s what her parents have done her whole life. She’s lived in fear—their fear. And then just think, she couldn’t put their fear down because of the weight heaped on top of it. Not only was she facing her own mortality, but this device, this ICD, would keep her alive, but not without complications, physical and otherwise. Think of the emotional consequences alone.”
“The emotional consequences of staying alive, you mean.”
“To have the operation, to have an ICD fitted meant giving in. Admitting she was at risk. The risk of dying, not just physically but mentally, too. Just like the bomb found near her aunt’s house. She’d live with the threat, device or not, Brugada just ticking away inside her. The device can become faulty and shock a person into a cardiac arrest for no reason. Parts of the device can be recalled; other parts can fail. Batteries need replacing and don’t let your iPhone get anywhere near it, apparently.”
“You’re iPhone?”
“Yes, apparently, it can set it off or something.”
