That Girl From Nowhere (41 page)

‘I was just thinking about a conversation I had the other day. I thought I knew what I felt about most things, but in this instance, once the subject was raised, I realised I didn’t have any opinion on it at all. Has that ever happened to you?’

I wonder if I can sound him out in a theoretical sense, if he’ll be able to tell me what I need to hear. Talking to Dad was good, but I’d had no response. I didn’t have him tell me if it was the right or wrong thing to do. I’ll still be doing it, because no matter what my grandmother is like, she does not deserve to live the rest of her life in fear of being trapped, but I need someone else’s opinion.

‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ Tyler says.

‘I mean, let’s say, for example euthanasia or assisted suicide. It came up in conversation the other day, and I realised I can’t even have a proper conversation about it because I don’t have a fully formed opinion.’

‘Ah, but that’s usual. I don’t think anyone knows what they think about something like that until they’re actually touched by it.’

‘What do you think about it, then?’

‘I don’t know.’ He grins down at me and then slowly strokes his thumb over my cheek.

‘You are such a wind-up merchant.’

‘A wind-up coffee merchant, thank you.’ He strokes his thumb over my cheek again. ‘My grandmother, Manma, has been in a wheelchair for a long time. Osteoarthritis that’s particularly bad in her knees and ankles. She can’t be upright for long periods. Her hands, elbows and wrists are bad but not like her knees. It’s been really hard for her over the years.’

‘And she wanted someone to help her die?’

‘No! No way. She’s determined to outlive us all. But other people don’t think she has any quality of life so subtly and sometimes unsubtly they tell her she would be better off dead.’

‘You’re not serious!’ I say that like I haven’t been told all my life subtly and unsubtly, I should be grateful my birth mother didn’t abort me and had me adopted instead.

‘They don’t often say it outright, but you know the pitying looks, the “How can you stand it when you used to be so active?” and “I suppose you live through your children and grandchildren now” comments are all saying the same thing – because she can’t do what they think of as “healthy”, “normal” things, they assume she must feel bad about it, too.

‘And we’ve had some close shaves in the past – Manma will have been ill enough to be hospitalised and more than a few times we’ve had to ask the doctors to speed up or do everything they can to keep her alive. Not all of them, obviously, and not every time, but there’ve been enough who you can see aren’t working as fast as other doctors have. In their minds, I guess, she’s old, she’s had her time, she’s in a wheelchair, her quality of life isn’t up to the standard they’d like to live at so it’s fair enough to let her fade away. It’s really scary, having to stand up to the professionals who you’re trusting to do their best. And for them, their best is to let people like Manma die.

‘After all those times, she’s still around, still being who she is. The thought that someone else would have euthanised her because she didn’t fit their ideal of what they want from life is very upsetting.’

‘But some people want to die. Not like your grandmother, but other people in the same situation as her would rather not be kept alive, they’d rather just go,’ I say.

‘And that’s fair enough. That’s their choice. But someone taking that choice away is just wrong. And putting pressure on people by implying their life isn’t as great as it is for someone young or able-bodied is even more wrong.’

‘But what if they can’t do it themselves and they need help? The person who helps them could get into trouble.’

He focuses on me with such intensity the air in my chest stops.
Does he know? Does he know what I’m waiting to do?

He changes his line of vision to across the park and takes his hand away from my cheek. ‘It’s a pretty complicated subject,’ he says, his words are bathed in frostiness.

‘Where has the sudden drop in temperature come from?’ I ask.

‘Pardon?’ he asks.

‘Why have you gone all funny?’

He is silent for a few moments, although his face reveals plenty: he’s struggling with whether to say what he wants to say or to keep his counsel. When he looks at me again, he’s obviously decided to speak. ‘It feels like I’m being led down the path to agreeing with something I don’t agree with. I mean, you see my grandmother and suddenly you’re asking these questions. I know it’s not popular and people should, if possible, be allowed to decide when they go, but I also think we have a responsibility to others. Not just to people we know, but to people we don’t know. It’s not popular, no, but we should think about other people and how the choices we make impact on them. I don’t want to be led into an argument where I’m forced to agree that if you want to die you should be allowed to. That’s not something I necessarily disagree with. I think if it becomes the norm, though, so the people who “help” don’t get into trouble, it will lead to potentially vulnerable people like Manma being in danger.’ As he speaks his words gather momentum and power and volume. ‘On paper my grandmother hasn’t got this glittering lifestyle where she lives without pain and drugs and a huge loss of what people call “dignity”, but it’s her life. She lives it. I don’t want her, or people like her, to feel that assisted dying is the only option for them, even obliquely, when the rest of us don’t have to deal with those pressures.’

‘I wasn’t leading you anywhere. I was talking – that’s all.’

‘With subjects like that, people don’t often “just talk”, they always have an agenda.’

‘Not always … I don’t have an agenda. And it has nothing to do with seeing your grandmother. I just wanted to … Remember, I said about how you don’t realise you don’t know what you think about a subject until you start to think about it? Well, yeah, that’s what this conversation was about.’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he says. His apology seems genuine, heartfelt. ‘It’s one of those subjects that people have such strong feelings about and I’ve had some humdinger rows. Things get said that can’t be taken back …’

‘I can’t remember ever having a conversation with anyone about it.’

‘Apart from the person the other day, obviously.’

If only you knew what that conversation was really about
, I think. ‘Yes, well, apart from that person. You’ve honestly had more than one conversation about it?’

‘Occupational hazard.’

‘What, people turn up in a coffee shop and start spouting off about euthanasia? It’s all fun and games in your café, ain’t it?’

Tyler kisses me, presses his mouth on to mine and slowly opens me up with his tongue. His hand is on my face and the kiss is delicate but firm, exciting and sensuous. I close my eyes and fall into the moment, tumble right into it and forget. I forget about everything that’s gone before, everything that’s to come. I allow myself to be free and unburdened for just a minute or two. Then it’s all back. All of it, everyone, and what I have to do is at the front of that. I need to tell someone. Mid-kiss I pull away from Tyler.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I, erm, need to go.’

‘Go? Go where?’

I inhale a few times, calm my nerves, prepare myself to upset him. I don’t deserve him anyway. He’s far too nice for me. All that stuff he was saying was right, it’s absolutely what I believe, too, and I couldn’t tell him what I’m going to do. I couldn’t burden him with that when I hardly know him.

‘I need to speak to my ex-husband,’ I say.

‘Are you serious? I kiss you and you have a sudden need to speak to your ex?’ He seems offended and confused in equal measures. ‘Was it that bad a kiss?’

‘No, no! Of course it wasn’t, Tyler. I could sit here kissing you all day. I have something I need to tell him and I need to do it now or I’ll bottle out of it.’

‘Fine,’ he says.

‘It really isn’t anything you’ve done—’

‘Spare me, Clemency. If you’ve got to go, go.’

‘I’ll see you?’ I ask him hopefully.

‘Not if I see you first,’ he replies before he gets up and marches away.

He’s sitting barefoot on my bed, headphones on, book open on his lap, television on in the background. This is how Seth preps himself for a new design project. He immerses himself in all different types of media, blending them together in his mind until he comes up with a new concept.

When he looks up and sees me, he grins. I feel like I’m about to shoot him, if I knew what shooting someone was like. I feel like I am about to damage him in a deep, fundamental way. I need to tell him though. I need to say the words aloud so I can know how bad it is, how final. He’s the only person on Earth that I can tell.

The smile slowly disappears from his face and he pushes the headphones off his head, switches off the television and lays aside the book.

‘Do you want me to leave?’ he asks.

I shake my head. ‘I need to tell you something. And I need you to listen to me. And then I need you to tell me the truth about what you think. I’m still going to do it, but I need you to be completely honest with me about how bad you think it is.’

Frowning, he climbs over the bed, slips off and then sits on the floor, resting his back against the bed. He indicates to the space beside him, which I take. ‘Tell me,’ he says.

‘In ten days’ time, I’m going to have to kill somebody,’ I say.

The relief of being able to say it out loud, the horror of what it means, and the fear of having to do it, cause me to break down and sob in the arms of my husband for the next two hours.

I am standing in my bedroom in front of the huge windows which look down over the promenade, which runs like a thick black marker line under the constantly undulating blue-grey waves of the sea.

Since I moved in here I have been drawn to the windows, to staring out at the sea, to losing myself in the constant motion of the water. Even when the sea is calm it moves, shifts, reshapes itself. I stand here and think about Dad, about life, about my grandmother.

Seth doesn’t want me to do it. I probably shouldn’t have told him, it was selfish to burden him when we are as we are. And the more people who know, the more it will look like premeditated murder, not privately fulfilling her wishes. Even if she leaves a note, it could be argued that I pressurised her into writing it – that I influenced her to reach the decision and then carried it out. It could be argued that since she has not asked anyone else to help her other than me, a relative stranger, I could have made up the whole thing simply to kill her.

These are the things that Seth has been telling me. His fear is that I could go to prison, possibly for the rest of my life. We talk about it constantly, whispering about it behind closed doors, sometimes arguing because he doesn’t want me to do this, so much so he offered to do it instead. I can’t let him do that. She asked me, and I have seen just a small fraction of her suffering and I know she doesn’t want to be here any more.

I have to do it. I’ve said I will. And I will. There are three days left.

To: Jonas Zebila

From: Abi Zebila

Subject: Call me

Monday, 10 August 2015

There’s a sound I love most in the world, more than any other, and it’s the sound of my daughter laughing. It comes out of her in easy waves and spreads throughout the house. That’s always the best part of my day, when I let myself into the house and hear her giggling, loudly and freely.

J, I have something important to tell you and I don’t want to do it by email, but I tried your phone and you’ve changed your number. Call me. It’s important.

Abi

xxxxxxx

I love seeing Abi.

It’s not simply because she is a younger version of me, and after years of not seeing someone who looks like me and often thinks like me, it’s amazing to have that. I like her. She is open and friendly, incredibly welcoming. I have not had many close female friends over the years because from an early age Nancy managed to instil in me a fear of getting too close to anyone, and women in particular, in case she disapproved and told them things that put them off me.

I’m overjoyed when I open the door to my shop after hearing a knock and Abi is standing there. Her face is solemn and her eyes are a scarlet red. Something has happened. She doesn’t have to tell me what, I know. Of course I know. There’s only one thing that would make her turn up here out of the blue with that look on her face.

I’m cold. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I am cold. I can’t feel my fingers, nor my toes, nor any of my limbs. It’s not usual to be aware of them, but I’m now conscious that I can’t feel them because I am so cold.

‘Come in,’ I say to her. I have to make a real effort to move my cold, numb body aside to let her in. I pull the shop door shut behind her, the little brass bell tings. I need to focus on making my hands do what I want them to do when I lock the door again.

That’s what it was like for my grandmother: she had to focus, use incredible strength to do the tiniest things because her body did not always obey the usual commands. Her body did not listen when it was meant to carry out the simplest of tasks. That is why she wanted to go. Her body and soon her mind would not be under her control and she wanted it to be over before that happened totally. She wanted one last chance to assert control. This is only a small moment for me, but it is a reminder of what every-day tasks were like for her. Of why she thought it would be too hard to find out how bad it would really get.

Abi stands near the entrance to my shop. She clutches her black leather satchel to her chest like a child’s comfort blanket while her fingers pick at the stitching.

‘Do you want to come through to my workshop?’ I ask. I am trying to delay the inevitable. When she tells me it’ll be true and I do not want it to be true.