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What is it like to die? Is it a drifting away into a dreamless sleep never to awaken, or an arrival, somewhere unimagined, carrying the story of a life like a backpacker… Would it be easier not to know itwas coming? Not to have had the scan and to just have nature take its course, knowing what lies ahead… for me and Lizzie.
With her long, tawny hair and dark brown eyes, she’s as beautiful on the outside as she is inside. There’s a trusting gentleness about her, perhaps a little too trusting I think sometimes. She always expects the best from people, relies on them even, and every so often they let her down. Not that she isn’t capable because she is, but she looks for reassurance, as though she doesn’t quite trust her own judgement.
It’s Lizzie’s future I’m worried about. She needs the wind in her wings, light in her path and dreams to take her wherever her heart desires. She’s forgotten what it is to stand on a beach in a storm and stare in awe as the waves curl over and crash onto the sand, or to laugh and laugh until she cries, or to love so unreservedly you feel it in every cell of your body. What it is to truly feel alive…
There’s an inner strength buried somewhere inside her. When she finds it, it will change her life forever. I wish with all my heart that I was going to be here to see it, but of course here lies the irony: it’s only when I’ve gone that she’ll discover it.
I’m so tired… of this losing battle I’m fighting. Time is running out, and while the rest of the world lies sleeping, I think of Lizzie. Of everything I want for her, firing my one wish into the darkness, breathing the same words in my head.
Hoping someone, somewhere, is listening.
Chapter One
It had been the strangest day. As though fate itself had taken a hand, reaching into Lizzie’s life, bombarding her with annoying trifles and odd coincidences tweaking her thoughts this way and that like some cosmic plaything, until finally it cut to the chase.
Sitting on the floor of her bedroom, she stared at the letter that had just fallen into her lap, a most peculiar feeling coming over her. The handwriting was unmistakeable – how come it had stayed hidden all this time? With fumbling hands she opened it, unable to think of anything else.
The day had begun with the kind of May morning that breathed promise.
But not for everyone. To Lizzie, the world was grey, likeLondon in the rain in January, the worst month, with the sparkle of Christmas over and months before the first hint of spring. She didn’t glance up at the brilliant, azure sky spun with threads of gossamer, or feel the heady warmth on her face – just closed the front door and began that walk she could have done with her eyes closed.
This was how it was – had been – for almost a year, her perceptions dulled by the fog that followed her around and the hole in her life her mother’s death had left, like a gaping wound that refused to heal.
Logically she knew the painful part should be behind her, despatched to that part of her brain which holds even the haziest of memories. She’d read enough about brains to know that most of her life was stored there, a series of snapshots and recordings filed away in the depths of her temporal lobes. It had been a year now, hadn’t it? Long enough surely, for the worst of her grief to have faded into a dull, aching kind of backdrop.
If there was time, she’d slip into Joe’s. After another delay on the tube, she really shouldn’t, but as she walked past, she lingered just long enough for an invisible hand to reach out and pull her in. Just for five minutes, of course… what was the harm in that?
Joe’s was her sanctuary, blasting the sixties guitar music she loved out of oversized speakers – Hendrix and Santana this morning. A whole other world where she could lose herself and today her luck was in. The table in the window was empty and quick as a flash she slipped into the chair, still warm from the large fat man who’d just got up.
Safely cocooned and with a strong dose of caffeine flooding through her veins, Lizzie took a breath and sighed. It came from the heart, that sigh, though she barely knew she was doing it. She had too much on her mind – work, Jamie,her wedding…
It was hard to believe it was three years ago. New Year’s Eve, one of the most romantic nights on the calendar, Lizzie had always thought. Though not when you’d just been dumped, most unceremoniously – and for a surgically enhanced, St-Tropezed nymphomaniac.
She’d had a talent for it – falling for the easy-come easy-go types, who’d leave at the drop of a pair of knickers, floozying from one bed to the next without caring.
Enough was enough, she told herself, as the countdown started. They were history. The second bottle of wine had done it – along with the sparkly lights and the schmaltzy music – and the cheer as Big Ben rang out.Out with the old, in with the new, she’d thought suddenly, gazing at Jamie through rosé-tinted spectacles. Maybe this serious-looking man, quite sexy in his designer suit, might it be he wasthe one?
It was the beginning of three years that changed everything – chiselling away at her, moulding the free spirit into someone grown up and organised. With a proper job and neat skirts and fitted jackets in her wardrobe, instead of her sassy minis of old as she flitted between temping jobs.
Jamie planned – everything. Considered and deliberated over everything. It was contagious too and spendthrift Lizzie who could never resist a bargain had been replaced by a most sensible girl, whose every purchase was calculated.
‘Eliza… Look. It’s frightfully good value, this Jaeger sale… You can save 50 per cent on your suits… You really ought to buy half a dozen now and put them away…’Not getting at all that Lizzie in Jaeger suits would be like dressing your maiden aunt in Vivienne Westwood. Lamb dressed as mutton, she thought, pretending not to hear him.
No longer did Lizzie wish on stars or gaze at the moon the way she used to – those hippy happy days were behind her and friends had drifted away. After all, that old life of riotous nights out with the girls, drinking until they fell over, belonged to a past she’d put behind her.
One person remained from Lizzie’s old life. Katie – who never saidI told youso when the iffiest of Lizzie’s decisions backfired on her. Who’d mopped her tears when her mother died. Who occasionally winkled out the old Lizzie, who’d long gone to ground.
‘Cocktails at the Warehouse, just one or two… Come on! He’ll never know…’she’d added persuasively, and unbeknown to Jamie, they’d snuck off giggling and crawled home pickled after midnight.
It was Katie too who’d egged her on to buy that glorious dress for her thirtieth birthday party. Actually, it was more a dinner than a party – a dull affair, organised by Jamie, who, never one to miss out on a networking opportunity, had invited a bunch of work colleagues.
Wow, Lizzie! You’re a goddess… like Titania out ofA Midsummer Night’s Dream…
A brilliant swirl of green and blue with a beaded halter neck, the dress had somehow clung in all the right places, reminding Lizzie of simpler, more carefree times. On the night, she’d had spent ages fiddling with her hair, pinning it up so that long strands here and there artfully tumbled down. She’d felt gorgeous – for all of five minutes – until Jamie utterly destroyed it.
How frivolous, Eliza… I rather imagined you’d wear that new suit…
It wasn’t the words, more the way he’d spoken them. The disdain and disapproval on his face. It had hurt way beyond vanity. He simply didn’t get it – that this washer,that colour and frivolity and sexy made her feel alive.
