After the class she’d surprised Charley by inviting her, and another woman who was on her own, Nisha, to go to the pub with her and her mate, Angie. A few weeks later they all wisely decided that the Zumba teacher was a certifiable sadist, and had given up the dance class. But, even more wisely, they had kept the pub sessions.
It was only when Tara’s mum was dying that Charley saw a different, more vulnerable side to her friend. Or maybe the harrowing ordeal of watching her beloved mum dying slowly, in terrible pain, day after day, had changed Tara. Looking back, Charley could remember the moment their acquaintance had deepened into a close friendship. It was when Kim had been moved from the hospital to the hospice to die – for ‘end-of-life care’ as the nurses preferred to call it. Kim hadn’t wanted Monnie to see her grandma that ill, so Tara had left her small daughter with Baz to look after.
It was Charley who had volunteered to take Tara to visit Kim, since Tara was in no fit state to drive, and Charley who had helped her get through her agonising vigil of watching her mum slowly wither away, and so it was Charley, and only Charley, who had known what Tara was going through.
Towards the end, Tara knew she only had a few days left with her mum and that she should cling to every last moment, but inside, too ashamed to admit it, she was longing for Kim to die. Charley was the only person Tara had felt safe to confide in.
‘I just want this to be over. Not for her, for me.’ Then she’d added in a small voice. ‘I just want her to die. That’s terrible, isn’t it?’
‘No. No, it’s not.’ Charley had put her arms round Tara and rocked her while tears of guilt and relief poured down her friend’s face.
Sometimes, very often in fact, it’s the bereaved who suffer the most, who feel the most pain. Charley could have told her that. Three days later, in the middle of long, quiet night, Tara got what she wanted. Heavily sedated, Kim died in her sleep with her daughter holding her hand. It had been just the two of them when Kim had brought Tara into the world, and it was just the two of them when Kim left it. Tara felt her go, felt her lift, and float away.
‘Bye, Mum,’ she had manged to whisper through her choked throat. ‘I love you.’
She’d stayed for a while. The nurses had made her tea and let her leave in her own time. When she was ready, she had called Charley. ‘She’s gone. It’s all over.’
Charley had driven through the dark, empty streets to pick her up.
Too distraught to go home and break the news to Monnie and Baz, Tara had spent the rest of the night on Charley’s sofa, until the cold light of dawn broke and the reality of death had to be faced up to. And now Tara was potentially facing the same, agonising end.
When Charley got home from Tara’s, Pam was there, waiting for her.
‘Why? Why do the people we love have to die?’ Charley wailed at her.
They went through to the kitchen where Pam poured Charley a glass of water and sat down opposite her at the table.
‘One step at a time, Charley. You don’t even know if it is cancer. And even if it is, lots of women survive breast cancer.’
‘And a lot don’t.’ Charley’s eyes welled with new tears. ‘I can’t bear the thought of losing her, too.’
Pam caught a glimpse of the bewildered and heartbroken young woman who had bolted for sanctuary when Josh had died. She hadn’t seen that Charley for a long time and it troubled her to witness her daughter-in-law’s distress again now.
To begin with, after Josh’s car crash, Pam had been terrified something would happen to Luke, too. The thought of him driving anywhere had made her feel physically sick. She’d had to fight the urge to beg him to constantly text her to let her know he was safe. She’d had to force herself to stop thinking like that. And to prohibit herself looking at life through the prism of the past and not to let that painful prism distort her view of the present or the future. She’d had to forbid herself to give in to her morbid, irrational fears. It wasn’t fair to smother Luke in the net of her own grief, she reminded herself, he had to be free to live his life. With effort, she’d made herself let go. It hadn’t been easy, and even now if he arrived later than he said he would, she had to consciously crush the fear rising in her. But she had refused to become a hostage of the past.
Leaning across the table Pam gently took hold of Charley’s hand. ‘We can’t live our lives terrified that we’re going to lose the people we love, sweetheart. We mustn’t spend our lives fearing the worst, we have to hope for the best. We need to hope that everything will be fine.’
But Charley shook her head, ‘Don’t tell me to hope that Tara will be okay. Because she probably won’t be. Hoping for the best isn’t coping. It’s pretending.’
Charley’s statement left Pam at a loss for words.
Chapter Twenty-three
Less than a week later Charley got a text from Tara.
Hosp. appt next Tues 11.15. Still OK to come? T x
Of course. Are you okay? Want to talk?
Can’t. I’m on my way to work.
Want to come round after?
Got to take Monnie to ballet.
Okay. You know where I am if you need me.
Tara replied with an emoji of a smiley face with a halo. Nothing, literally nothing short of an earthquake, would have stopped Charley from taking Tara to her appointment. Not even Pam, although she tried her utmost. She made it plain to
