We spent the afternoon lazing on the beach, on loungers under a big blue parasol that flapped in the breeze. Time and again, as I rubbed oil on his back, as we waded into the cool water, as we considered where to eat that evening, the realization that this might be our last holiday together swept over me. Like gusts of wind knocking everything about. Hating myself for the maudlin sentimentality, I struggled to live in the moment. To savour the pleasures we were sharing, not to look ahead. To focus on the details: the scent of coconut from the sun cream mingled with the kick of brine, the particular colour of aquamarine at the end of the bay, the fine dark hairs on Neil’s knuckles, the crisp texture and honey taste of melon bought from the beach vendor, the feel of grit between my toes and the thready whine of a motor-boat on the horizon. But Cassandra had my soul and her talons gripped my head and held my eyes wide, one bony claw pointing to the future. The prospect of death stuffed my ears and nose and throat with dread. Perhaps, I thought, the holiday had been a mistake: stripped of our routines, there was too much time to think.
Neil knew me so well that he likely guessed at my melancholy. We’d had a couple of sessions with a counsellor who worked with terminal patients and their families. The general guidance was not to try to deny or hide the gamut of emotions: the savage embrace of anger and fear and guilt were normal and to be accepted. Neil seemed calm. Why couldn’t I smell his fear? If our roles had been reversed I imagined I’d have been noisy, needy, bitchy. Making the most of my remaining time by having tantrums. But he seemed to find a stoicism within, a steady centre for much of the time. A legacy, perhaps, of his childhood faith – the sweet resignation to God’s will, the certainty of an afterlife of love and grace. Even though he didn’t believe it, or so he told me, might it still be a comfort to him? He had been angry at times, once the initial shock had worn off, turning to me one evening after brushing his teeth, face trembling, eyes ablaze, telling me, ‘I’m so fucking pissed off, so fucking-’ before he broke, a sob deep in his throat. (The books said crying more, or laughing more, was a symptom some people experienced, probably to do with changes in the frontal lobe so that these responses were ratcheted up. I don’t think that happened to Neiclass="underline" his crying was always correctly proportioned to the situation.) His anger seemed to seep away over the next couple of weeks. When I asked him about it, his answer startled me: ‘I’m desolate, there’s no room for anything else, but there’s moments of, I don’t know, euphoria, too.’
‘Euphoria?’ The guy’s dying and he’s getting high on it?
‘Everything’s so intense, and still so ordinary.’ He smiled, shaking his head a little because it sounded weird. ‘It’s amazing.’
‘But desolate?’
‘Oh, yes.’
Any illusion I had that our Barcelona trip was going to be an escape from real life shattered on the second night as we sat on our patio after dinner. My skin had that taut sensation from the sun and the salt, I was tired from the heat and the sea air and the wine and surprised that Neil hadn’t already flaked out. Our books lay on the table. I was too sleepy to read and he’d set his down when he topped up his glass.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I murmured, staring out at the inky night, the sea’s dark pierced by half a dozen fishing-boat lamps, the sky by thousands of stars flickering magnesium white.
‘Can you see Orion?’
I laughed. Neil had taught me some of the constellations, the Greek heroes flung into the night sky for eternity.
‘Yes. And there’s Cassiopeia.’
‘Deborah,’ he said quietly, ‘I want to choose the time.’
My skin contracted. There was the sensation of a blunt blow to my stomach, a blur of rage in the back of my skull. How dare he ruin all this with his unreasonable requests? ‘I don’t-’
‘Listen.’
I sighed and turned to look at him.
‘It’s going to happen, we know that. I don’t want to wait until I’m choking-’
‘It doesn’t have to come-’
‘Just listen,’ he interrupted. ‘I want a good death. For me that means choosing when.’
He paused, inviting me to respond.
‘I won’t stop you.’
‘But will you help me?’
I didn’t speak. A flutter of black swooped past near the roof – a bat. I studied my nails, the ridges and grooves, the cuticles ragged. My mind tangled. ‘You might not need any help,’ I fudged. ‘Look, there are organizations, aren’t there, people who go to Switzerland…?’
‘I don’t want to go to Switzerland. I want to be at home, with you. I want you there with me, Deborah.’ His voice shook with emotion.
A thousand questions skittered in my mind: how would you do it, what would we say, what would I have to do?
I stared up at the stars. They were cold and brilliant. My eyes watered, making each prick of light a pinwheel, the jet sky now full of silver dandelions.
‘We can manage the disease,’ I tried. ‘The association, there are so many things we can do, you won’t be in pain, you won’t choke…’ My words were running on like panic, filling the hiatus.
‘Deborah?’
‘I’ll be there,’ I said slowly.
‘And you’ll help?’
What could I say? No, I’d rather you did it, actually, all by yourself, so my conscience will be clear. Now I’ll just pop down to the shore and wash my hands of you.
‘I don’t think I can.’
‘When you had Adam,’ he said, ‘you wanted to be at home. I thought you were mad.’
‘Your mother didn’t help.’ Veronica was a nurse and firmly toed the line that first babies are best born in hospital. She’d tried to talk us out of it even though Dr Frame and the community midwives were completely at ease with the idea.
‘Maybe not,’ he said, ‘but I trusted you, I went along with it. It was fine, Sophie too, even with the cord, but you chose.’
‘It’s not the same,’ I protested. ‘In fact, it’s the opposite. I wanted home births to avoid intervention, if possible. I wanted it to be as natural as possible. What you’re talking about is not letting nature take its course. It’s interfering.’ I could feel my tears rising.
‘I want it on my terms.’
‘No. I want to keep you here as long as possible, not help you slope off early. I don’t even know whether I want you to die at home – I want the safety of knowing you can go to a hospice where people know the score, where they can help us.’
I began to cry silently. I wasn’t looking for comfort but the anxiety inside was too strong to contain. ‘It’s not fair, you shouldn’t ask me. I don’t want you to die. Why should I make it happen any sooner? I’ll do everything I can to help, Neil, but not that.’
The silence burned between us. I could hear the suck of the sea. I stood up then. Mumbled something about a walk. When I returned Neil was in bed, asleep. And the final day of our holiday, our very last holiday, was brittle with resentment. My throat ached, my stomach cramped. Neil was remote. The beauty of our location, the gorgeous weather only served to highlight our shared misery.
A question swung to and fro in my head like a pendulum. Had I refused because I loved him or because I didn’t love him enough?