‘You think? Surely it’s more likely that someone from the clinic leaked it.’
‘They’d have known a lot more, though,’ Scarlett said. It was a good point, one that I hadn’t considered. ‘I hate that I don’t even have control over my own terminal bloody illness. I wanted to have a little bit of dignity about the whole thing.
Not this bloody circus. I can’t help thinking those fuckers created the stress that made me ill in the first place. Vultures. Can’t wait to cash in.’ She managed another tired smile. ‘If anybody’s going to make a bob or two out of me dying, it should be me, not some bloody hack or some Judas that works for Simon.’
It might sound strange that Scarlett was thinking about the cash implications of her announcement. But at that point, I thought I understood where she was coming from. Scarlett’s working capital was her fame. Now it had a strictly limited shelf life. The swimathon might outlive her. But her fragrances and her endorsements would likely die with her. Unlike authors and musicians whose work carries on earning after their death, a celebrity’s earning power dies with them. And Scarlett had a child she needed to provide for, as well as a charitable foundation whose work she presumably wanted to maintain. Of course she had half an eye on the bottom line.
She leaned into me. ‘Are you up for another book? The last will and testament? The diary of a dignified death? It would be a bit classier than another pile of celebrity bollocks. Every - body’s talking about going to Switzerland to that Dignitas place, whether we should be allowed to choose how we die. We could do a book about how I manage it.’ Her enthusiasm might have seemed bizarre to an outsider. But to us it made perfect sense.
‘Why not? If Biba wants it, we’ll give it to her.’
When we couldn’t stand the heat any longer, we moved to the pool. Scarlett lowered herself gingerly into the water. Already I could see the changes in the way she moved – normally she launched herself at the water in a running dive and broke the surface with a powerful overarm stroke. But today, a slow breast stroke was all she was up for. She seemed to be ageing in front of my eyes.
And that was only the start of it. Her decline was frightening. The weight seemed to fall off her. By the time Jimmy and Marina came back a few days later, I reckoned she’d already lost half a stone. She had no interest in food. ‘It all tastes grey,’ she said. And when she could bring herself to eat, she couldn’t keep it down for long.
Leanne turned up the day after the news broke. I looked at her with new eyes thanks to Scarlett’s revelations, but there seemed to be nothing artificial about her grief. That first night, after Scarlett had gone to bed, we sat up late in the kitchen, drinking brandy and railing against the injustice of it all. When we ran out of rant, I asked her how it was going in Spain. ‘I like it,’ she said. ‘The weather’s lovely and the people are friendly. It’s quite nice to go to a place where nobody’s made their mind up about you before you get there. It’s like a clean slate.’
‘I think we all fancy that sometimes. Ditch the past and start from scratch.’
‘What? Even you, Steph? With your lovely life?’
I stuck my tongue out at her. ‘Even me. It’s not all loveliness. Remember all that hassle with Pete?’
‘Yeah, but that’s history now.’
I thought back to Joshu’s funeral. ‘I think so. I hope so. And business? How’s that working out?’
Her smile was so open I couldn’t believe it was anything other than the whole truth. ‘Pretty good, actually. I’m starting to build up a nice little clientele. There wasn’t any real competition. Before I set up, you had to go down Fuengirola or Benalmadena to get your nails done by somebody English. And let’s face it, they all prefer somebody English. Bunch of racists, most of them. They act like the Spanish are trained monkeys.’ She chuckled. ‘Mind you, there’s a lot of the Spanish play up to that. They’ve got the Manuel act off to a T.’
I was glad to see Leanne back at the hacienda. She had a sense of fun and she lightened the atmosphere. And if I’m honest, I was glad to have someone to share Scarlett’s final journey with. It would have been a heavy burden to carry alone.
Leanne wasn’t the only one picking up a share of the weight. The only doctor Scarlett wanted near her was Simon Graham. She trusted him, she said. And she needed someone medical that she could trust now the end was getting near. She insisted he take a leave of absence from the clinic, and he more or less went along with her demands. He generally went in to the clinic for a couple of hours in the late morning two or three times a week. But other than that, he was at the hacienda. He moved a single bed into her dressing room and spent the nights there, in case she needed help. She didn’t want a stranger nursing her either. So Marina added nurse to her list of household jobs whenever Simon needed a hand.
Simon and Marina became part of the late-night kitchen set. It was an odd group, brought together for the saddest of reasons. We started playing poker to pass the time and often we’d play for hours, trying to take our minds off the dying woman and the sleeping child upstairs. Simon bought a set of proper poker chips and we sat around the table trying to figure each other out. I’d learned to play poker with Pete and his musician buddies, and I’d found it an interesting way to gain an insight into people’s personalities. Simon always took his time, weighing the odds (he claimed), before finally betting conservatively. Of all of us, he made the best decisions about when to fold. A man who would always cut his losses and come out even.
Leanne was more reckless, often playing no-hope hands down to the bitter end because she couldn’t bear to be too far from the action. I could generally tell when she had something worth betting because she would shut up and follow the field. When she went out on a limb, I knew she had nothing worth a damn.
Marina was hardest to read. There was no tell when she looked at her cards. She always hung back on the first round but then there was no pattern to how she bet. As a result, she generally managed to out-bluff the rest of us. If we’d been playing for money instead of ceramic chips, she’d have fleeced us all.
Me, I bet my hand. I always bet my hand and I suspect that makes me pretty easy to read. I don’t think my face gives me away; it’s my inability to bet counter to the cards I’m looking at in my hand and on the table. I’m not good at bluffing – or lying, as I like to think of it.
Most mornings, I spent an hour or two with Scarlett in her bedroom that smelled of Scarlett Smile and antiseptic. Those were the gentlest interviews I’ve ever done. I’d suggest an avenue to explore and she’d talk for as long as she had strength. We covered all sorts of things – motherhood from both sides, coping with losing a parent, the double grief of her marriage ending followed by Joshu’s death, putting her house in order for her own death. She shied away from nothing, openly talking of mistakes, regrets and missed opportunities. She did tire easily but she wasn’t losing weight so rapidly now and she assured me that Simon was keeping her pain-free. ‘It’s bloody lovely, that bit of it,’ she said. ‘Morphine just makes me float. Only drug I ever took to.’
One morning, as I settled myself in the chair and laid out my recorder and notebook, she pointed to the machine. ‘Leave that off a minute,’ she said. ‘I need to talk to you woman to woman. Not for publication.’
Wondering what was coming, I nodded. ‘No problem. What’s on your mind?’
She went straight to the point. Now she knew she was dying, there was no time wasted with small talk. ‘You weren’t keen on being Jimmy’s godmother, I know that.’
I had a cold, sinking feeling in my stomach. I knew what was coming and I didn’t know how to resist. ‘You know I never wanted kids,’ I reminded her. I had a horrible feeling I was wasting my breath.
‘I know. But you’ve done a great job. You’ve got to know him, you’ve played with him and read to him and taken him out for the day. You buy thoughtful presents for him and you don’t overindulge him. I couldn’t have asked for a better godmother.’
‘Thanks.’ I gave a half-shrug. ‘I tried to do what was best for him.’
‘Exactly. When we talked about this before, neither of us really believed push would come to shove. I was convinced deep down I was going to beat this fucking disease. And I think you were too. So it wasn’t real, what we agreed.’
For one wonderful moment I thought I was going to get a reprieve. Scarlett had finally come to her senses and she was going to leave Jimmy in Leanne’s care. Keep it in the family. But no such luck. ‘This time it is real,’ she said. ‘We both know I’m dying. So I’m going to say again what I said the last time. You’re the person I want to take care of Jimmy. It’s in the will.’ She managed the ghost of a smile. ‘You can’t get out of it, Steph. I need to know that he’s in safe hands, and that’s you.’
‘Leanne would be—’
‘A disaster,’ she said, slapping her hand softly on the duvet to make her point. ‘You know that. I’ve not got the strength to argue with you, Steph. I need to know my boy’s sorted. Promise me you’ll look after him.’
What else could I say? ‘I promise. I’ll take as much care of him as I would if he was my own.’
And that was that. My life transformed in the space of quarter of an hour. Of course, I assumed there would be an inheritance for Jimmy. Not that I was in it for the money. Oddly enough, I was thinking of Jimmy. Thinking
