Afterwards

I pass the chapel door and hear a low, animal keening sound. I go in.

She’s kneeling at the front of the church. Her crying is the sound of despair; a scream fragmenting into tears.

Every nerve in me jangles into a run to her. I put my arms around her.

‘I didn’t want to be with him, Mum.’

‘But he loves you. I saw that. He’s only left you now so that he could go to the MRI suite, because Dad was with me. He hasn’t rejected you, if that’s what you-’

‘I know he loves me. I’ve always known that.’

She turns to me and I can hardly bear to look at the anguish on her face. As bad as looking at her burnt face. Blistering with pain in front of me.

‘I knew that if I saw him I’d want to live too much.’

‘Jenny-wren-’

‘I don’t want to die,’ she shouts; and her shout echoes around the chapel until it’s a sonic boom of emotion that breaks bones.

‘I don’t want to die!’

‘Jen, listen-’

Her face is starting to shimmer. She’s getting too bright to look at. When this happened before her heart had stopped.

This can’t happen. Not now. Please.

This can’t happen.

And I’m running to the MRI suite, down corridors, through swing doors, passing too many people, their faces so harsh in the barred overhead lights.

She needs a heart. Right now. Right this moment. The surgeons need to be taking her old damaged one out and putting in one that will keep her alive.

I race to the lifts and get in as the doors close.

But Miss Logan had told you, rammed it home, that she had to be stable first. Not dying. Not this.

I think of that awful sound in the chapel.

She’s been so frightened as she faced death. Terrified. But all along standing tall and sheltering me with her humour.

Sheltering me.

I’d discovered she’d grown up, but I hadn’t seen her courage.

The lift is going too slowly. Too bloody slowly.

I think about the red paint. ‘She said her parents would be so upset, she didn’t want to worry them…’ But I hadn’t paused to hear her words.

How long has she been protecting us? And I called her immature.

I remember Sarah hadn’t looked surprised.

The lift stops, stops! People politely waiting to get in. I run to the stairs.

I think of the gravel cutting into her feet and the sun scorching her as she made herself remember back to the fire, to help Adam. Because she loves him and is courageous in her love for him.

I reach the ground floor, and hurry to the MRI suite.

I think of the times that I’ve been tactless and insensitive and patronising and she’s just teased me; her generosity of spirit.

Nearly there. Nearly there.

Why haven’t I seen this before? Seen Jenny? The extraordinary person that she has grown into.

No longer a child; an astonishing adult.

‘But your daughter, yes. Always.’

There’s a cubicle and medical staff are hurrying towards it.

I go in.

Doctors surround her and their machinery makes inhuman noises and you are there and I think of the river Styx and Jenny being rowed towards the underworld. But the doctors are trying to reach her, throwing ropes with grappling hooks over the side of the boat, and they’re pulling it, pulling her, back to the land of the living.

You are staring at the monitor.

It has a trace.

It has a trace!

I feel euphoric.

‘Her physical condition has drastically deteriorated,’ Miss Logan tells you and Sarah at Jenny’s bedside. ‘We can keep her stable for two, maybe three, days.’

‘And then…?’ you ask.

‘We’ve run out of options. I have to tell you that the chance of finding a donor heart in the time frame left to her is non-existent.’

I feel your exhaustion. The boulder of love you’ve been carrying up that mountain has slipped all the way down to the bottom. And you have to start that Herculean task all over again.

‘You’ve got it wrong, Mum!’ Addie told me. ‘The boulder wasn’t Hercules. Hercules had to kill loads of monsters, the really awful ones, you know, like Cerberus? Although he did have to clean out a cow-shed too.’

‘That sounds easier.’

‘No, cos the cattle were special god-cattle and they made huge amounts of poo and he had to divert a river. It was Sisyphus who had to push the boulder.’

‘Poor Sisyphus.’

‘I’d rather push a boulder than fight a monster.’

Mohsin arrives in the ward.

‘I’m sorry, but I thought you ought to know straight away. It was deliberate. Just now, while she was in the MRI suite, someone disconnected her respirator.’

In the parched garden, I sit with Jenny.

‘They’ll give you proper protection now,’ I say. ‘Apparently Baker’s sending half of Chiswick police station down here. And Penny’s already started taking statements.’

‘Bolting the stable door and all that…’

‘Yes.’

Then we talk, properly; privately.

It wouldn’t be right to tell you our conversation, that’s up to Jenny – one day; if she can remember. But I can tell you I apologise to her. And that I’m now going to tell her my shoe analogy because I think she’ll like it.

She looks at me with amusement.

‘So I was soft little bootees until one day I was boots striding away from you?’

‘Sort of. Actually I was quite proud of the analogy. Thought it said quite a lot – size getting bigger, with the subtlety of width fittings; supervised shopping versus independence.’

She smiles at me.

‘Really,’ I say. ‘It’s a sad day when there’s no longer width fitting. A milestone.’

It makes her smile more.

‘You bought me the sparkly sandals, didn’t you, Mum?’ she says.

‘Yes.’

‘I love them.’

Maybe I shouldn’t get so hung up on growing up as a loss.

I expect my nanny voice to say something cutting. She usually does when I venture a new thought. Nothing.

Maybe I’ve grown up too and finally managed to evict her.

‘When will the transplant happen?’ Jenny asks.

‘Tomorrow morning. First thing.’

Penny is in the small institutional office where Baker once accused Adam. With her is an ashen-faced doctor.