Хилари Боннер - No Reason To Die

She flashed her brightest smile when she saw Kelly on the doorstep. He didn’t know how she could do it. He could see the strain around those hazel eyes, and he was sure her mother could too, but Jennifer was still putting on a front.

‘I... I’m sorry,’ he muttered in greeting.

Jennifer reached up and kissed him lightly on one cheek. She was quite tall, considerably taller than her petite mother, that was for sure, but Kelly, a good six foot two in his stockinged feet, still towered over her.

‘You’re here,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s all that matters.’

‘I did mean to come earlier, Jens...’

‘I know.’

She did know too. Kelly and Jennifer had been friends from the start, from the moment he had first dated her mother. He supposed that even he was something of an improvement on her real father, a middle-class, middle England thug of a man who had systematically beaten his wife throughout their unhappy marriage. According to Moira none of the girls knew about their father’s brutality, but Kelly had never been too sure about that. One way and another, he had come to treasure his relationship with all three of them every bit as much as his relationship with their mother. Perhaps more, if he was honest. Kelly had one son, Nick, now a grown man almost thirty years old, but he had somehow contrived to miss virtually all of Nick’s childhood. Nick had been brought up almost entirely by his mother, not only after she and Kelly had separated but also before, because Kelly had spent so much time away on stories and in the pubs and clubs of Fleet Street that he had only rarely seemed to be at home. More recently, after Nick had actively sought out his father following years of estrangement, the two men had begun to build what Kelly regarded as a very special relationship. But ironically he had seen far more of the growing up of Moira’s girls, as they moved from childhood into young womanhood, particularly Jennifer who had been only nine when her mother and Kelly had got together, than he had of his own son. And over the years they really had become like daughters to him. They had already forgiven him one hell of a lot, too.

Recently, however, he had become slightly embarrassed to be in the company of these girls he adored. He supposed that was just one manifestation of the guilt which seemed to consume his entire being throughout most of his waking hours, right now. The girls accepted him, warts and all, always had done, and had never questioned his congenital inability to deal with their mother’s illness.

Kelly followed Jennifer upstairs to Moira’s bedroom, the pair of them moving almost soundlessly on the thick pile red carpet. He knew that Moira had not been downstairs for more than a week now, although she did still manage, with some difficulty he had been told, to struggle out of bed in order to use the bathroom next to her bedroom.

Moira’s eldest daughter Paula, also a pretty, fair-haired young woman, but a little plumper than either of her sisters, was sitting by her bed. The two women were watching TV. Kelly found himself glancing towards the screen as he entered the room. Anything other than look at Moira. An old episode of The Vicar of Dibley , a programme which had always been one of Moira’s favourites, flickered away on Plus. Kelly had once bought Moira the entire video set of the comedy featuring Dawn French as a village’s first woman vicar as a birthday present, and the two of them had sat up in bed one night and watched virtually the whole lot straight through — something Kelly had, rather to his surprise, found that he had enjoyed every bit as much as Moira. It had been dawn before they had finally fallen asleep, his arm around her shoulders, her head resting on his chest, with the video still running. The memory hurt. Kelly concentrated hard on the flickering screen. In her bed by the window, Moira laughed weakly. She always had had a ready laugh, but it used to be a deep rip-roaring rumble of a laugh, which had always come as something of a surprise from such a small woman. A great hip-shaking eye-watering belter of a laugh. Kelly had teased her that she had the filthiest laugh in Devon, and that had always set her off all the more.

His eyes filled at the thought.

‘Hello, John.’ Moira’s voice was even weaker than her laugh.

Shit, thought Kelly. How could anyone cope with this? What were they all supposed to do? Just sit around and wait for her to die?

Aloud he said: ‘Hello, sweetheart.’

He made himself smile and walked over to the bed where he perched on the edge and took her hand. Moira had always been pretty and all three of her daughters had inherited their mother’s looks. Her fluffy blonde hair still retained its original colour in spite of her age and illness, and she continued to look surprisingly good even though there were dark circles beneath her eyes and her skin was pale to the point of near translucence. In fact, she looked almost beautiful. Her face was drawn, thin skin taut over exposed cheekbones, while previously Moira’s face had been quite plump, and although pretty, never beautiful. Not really. Her illness had added a sculpted look, and in the low light of the bedroom the yellowish tinge, which Kelly knew had been acquired due to liver deficiency, appeared only to give her skin a cream hue. Yes, she really had become quite tragically beautiful.

She had lost a lot of weight, of course, but she exhibited none of the usual signs of a body ravaged by cancer. That was because Moira, an experienced nurse who knew all about the illness she was bearing so gallantly, had, when she had been told the degree and extent of her cancer, opted to decline conventional treatment. Moira had believed that with her kind of cancer and the extent to which it had already destroyed her liver, her life expectancy would be much the same whether she put herself through the rigours of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, or whether she didn’t.

And both Kelly and her daughters had accepted her decision that she would rather live out her last few months without having to cope with the cruelties she knew those treatments could inflict, instead choosing to allow her illness to take its course while striving to enjoy whatever of life was left to her. Her courage so far had been extraordinary, although Kelly was bewildered sometimes by the form it took. It was Moira’s way to barely discuss her illness, and if she did ever mention it, to do so in such a manner that she gave no indication at all that it was terminal. She knew, though. Better than any of them, she knew.

‘How are you doing, darling?’ he muttered, cursing himself as he became aware of what he had said. How was she doing? What a stupid fucking question. Whether she chose to talk about it or not, the woman was dying. His woman was dying. How did he think she was doing, for fuck’s sake. He glanced away, blinking rapidly.

‘Oh, not so bad,’ said Moira.

‘Yes, we thought you were a little better today, Mum, didn’t we?’ interjected Paula.

‘You know, I do believe I was,’ continued Moira. ‘I’ve not had a bad day at all, not at all.’

‘You ate nearly all of that chicken broth I made you this evening, didn’t you, Mum?’

‘I did, dear. And, do you know, I really enjoyed it.’

Kelly felt his shoulders tensing. He wasn’t sure how much of this he could listen to. It was the same every time. The imminence of Moira’s death was never mentioned, and to Kelly the scene around her bed all too often resembled a cross between a Brian Rix farce and something out of Alan Bennett. If it weren’t so fucking tragic, it really would be funny, he thought.

It was as if they all had parts in a play and were acting out their specific roles. Only Kelly wasn’t very good at his. He sometimes thought he might do better if he were allowed to talk properly to Moira about her illness, about the death which was not far away and about how she felt, knowing that she would not be around for much longer. That was what he wanted to do, deep inside, but Moira had made it quite clear that was not her way. And in any case, if she suddenly did start to talk to him in that manner, he suspected he wouldn’t be able to cope with that either. After all, Kelly was just as much of an ostrich as all of them. Worse really, he supposed. He did not even want to be in the same room as poor sick Moira, let alone make inconsequential small talk.