Page 43 of All the Things We Never Knew

‘What about Joel?’ I asked.

‘The operation. Is he okay?’

Then I realised. He must be remembering coming round from the anaesthetic after the surgery to remove his kidney – confused, as patients at the end of their lives sometimes were, slipping back into the past because the present was fading away and there was no future.

‘Joel’s fine,’ I reassured him, stroking the paper-dry skin of his hand. ‘He’s recovering well. You did a wonderful thing, Gray. You’re a brave man.’

‘It was nothing.’ His voice was quite clear. ‘Not compared to…’

Then his words faded away, and soon the pressure of his hand relaxed and he fell asleep.

I must have done too, upright in the uncomfortable chair, Gray’s hand still in mine.

I was still holding it when I woke, roused by the first music of birds in the trees outside. It was still dark; my watch told me it was just after four in the morning.

Apart from the sound of birdsong, everything was quiet. Everything felt peaceful and serene. Only one thing had changed: Gray had stopped breathing. I hadn’t been aware of it; I’d heard nothing. His hand in mine was lifeless, but still warm from my own skin.

Stiffly, I got to my feet. Gray’s face was still, peaceful. I went to the window and opened it. Some of the older nurses in hospitals still did this, to allow the soul of the departed to go free, and it was the last thing I would ever do for Gray.

I felt cool air on my face and heard the dawn chorus more clearly.

He was gone.

TWENTY-FOUR

ANNA

I wasn’t with Gray when he died, because Laurel was.

I had more or less made peace with the idea that I might not be there, and explained as best I could to the children that when they said goodbye to their father in the evenings, it might be for the last time.

Each night, when Gray was in the hospice, I’d sit by their beds and talk to them, sharing memories of their father I’d never told them about before. They listened to the stories and smiled, perhaps realising that I needed to tell them as much as they needed to hear them. Sometimes they added stories of their own: Remember when Dad made brownies for the school bake sale and they were still raw inside and I had to pretend they were a special gourmet recipe? Remember when Augustus was a kitten and got stuck up the tree in Orla’s garden and Dad climbed up to get him and then he was too scared to get back down, and we thought we’d have to call a fire engine to rescue them both?

When I woke up on Wednesday, I didn’t know that it would be the last day. I got the children off to school and drove to the hospice. Gray was in his room, awake; Laurel was nowhere to be seen. Our agreement might be an unspoken one, but we were both abiding by it. She had the nights and snatches of the days when I was with the children; the rest of the time was mine.

But I was almost sure I could detect her presence in the room. I caught a hint of the scent of her shampoo, there was a plate by the bed with toast crumbs on it, the top was off the canister of mints I had bought and the vinyl seat of the chair felt warm when I sat on it.

I put my hand on the sheet where it covered Gray’s knee.

‘Hello, you. You look like you slept well. The kids are at school, but they’ll be along later to see you. They’re starting to wind down for the summer holidays now. We’ve still got those two weeks in Portugal booked – do you remember? We decided not to cancel until we were sure what would happen. I don’t know whether we’ll end up going. The children might need a break, but they might prefer to stay home. I’ll play it by ear, don’t you think?’

I chatted on for a while, but he didn’t respond. I could hear him breathing steadily and evenly. Occasionally his closed eyes flickered, and I wondered if he was dreaming – those wild morphine dreams again. I picked up his phone, found one of his favourite podcasts and began to play it with the volume turned down low.

Watching his sleeping face, I tried to memorise every detail of the man I’d loved for twenty years. There would be a time soon when I would see it and it would no longer be the face of a living, breathing man. Everything that made him Gray – his desires, his memories, his secrets – would be gone.

I was suddenly overwhelmed with the craving for a proper cigarette – not my vape but the real thing. How many times had Gray and I smoked together, guiltily enjoying the pungent, deadly hit of nicotine, the plumes of our exhales mingling together?

Too many times to count – the first of which was the day we met.

It was in the summer of 2003, at my cousin Lucy’s wedding. I was twenty-three, too young for many of my friends to be getting married just yet, so Lucy’s wedding felt like a distraction from my normal social life. She was eight years older than me; I’d be attending with my younger sisters and my mum and dad.

Cathy and Sarah had been jealous, I remembered, because I was a bridesmaid and they weren’t. They watched enviously as I walked up the aisle clutching a corner of Lucy’s train through a sea of flowers and hats. My uncle handed Lucy over to her groom, and I took my seat in the front row. Almost immediately, I felt a tap on my shoulder and heard Cathy whisper, ‘Look at him. Hot.’

I followed her discreetly pointing finger and saw the guy who was filming the wedding video: a stocky blond man, wearing a leather jacket in spite of the heat, moving around the room as swiftly and lithely as a tomcat, so intently focused on his work that he might have been filming on Oscar-contender movie rather than a provincial wedding.

‘I saw him first,’ I whispered back.

Then the ceremony got under way and we couldn’t say anything more until it was over, and after that we were whisked away for photographs and canapés.