Nick sat with Jaden passed out on his shoulder. The poor kid had a rotten cold and couldn’t sleep with his stuffy nose, so Nick had got up and walked him around the apartment until he’d finally dropped off. Little puffs of his breath tickled Nick’s neck, comforting him. He held him close and inhaled his baby smell.
Since Jess had died, Nick hadn’t been able to let go of Jaden. He needed him close all the time. When he cried at night, Nick jumped up to settle him. He liked having a baby to hold and look after. It distracted him, stopped him crying or wanting to punch the wall.
He’d gone back to work a week after the funeral. He was there in body, but not in mind. He had no interest in selling stupid houses to stupid people. When a woman complained that the house he was showing her was a bit small for her taste, he’d wanted to shout, My daughter’s dead, you stupid, shallow bitch.
He spent a lot of time in the bathroom or his car, crying. It was like a tsunami of tears. He couldn’t stop it. The pain of Jess’s death was crushing. On top of that was the rage and hate he felt towards Kate for robbing him of time. Time with Jess was all they’d had. Every second was precious. How could she take that away? How could she? Every time Nick thought about it he wanted to scream. It was eating him up inside.
Jenny had booked him in to see a shrink. She said she was worried about him because he wasn’t sleeping and he was so angry all the time. She didn’t know why – he hadn’t told anyone. How could he tell them that his ex-wife was a murderer? He’d wanted to tell the police. He’d wanted to make her pay. He’d even picked up the phone a few times to report her, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do that to his boys. Their lives were messed up enough as it was.
Careful not to wake his sleeping son, Nick slowly and gently placed him back in his cot and tiptoed out of the room. He went into the kitchen and took out Jess’s letter. He read it for the millionth time. I couldn’t take it any more … too much pain … begged her to do it … I love her for doing this …
I love her for doing this. Nick looked out of the window into the dark night. He remembered Jess’s face on the last day of her short life, how happy she’d been. She knew, he thought. She knew it was all going to be over that night. That was why she’d been so happy.
He thought back to her face when he’d tried to get her to do more chemo. How upset she’d been. Her thin, pale face crumpling and her eyes pleading, ‘No more, Dad.’
But it still came back to Kate robbing him of time. Such precious time. Nick folded the letter and tucked it into the pocket of his suit jacket, which was hanging on the kitchen chair.
The sun would be up soon and he’d have to get dressed, go to work and pretend everything was fine. When he’d first gone back, most of his colleagues had avoided him. Some gave him sad smiles and a few asked him how he was doing. But soon everyone moved on. People began to talk to him about work – houses, rentals, sales, margins, mortgages. He’d sit there listening but not hearing and wonder at their ability to actually give a shit about such trivial nonsense.
My daughter’s dead, was all he could think, over and over in his mind. My daughter’s dead. He wanted to shout it out, he wanted to scream it in their faces. He wanted them to feel pain too. He wanted everyone to feel pain. Why Jess? Why her? Why his beautiful Jess? It wasn’t right or fair or even human.
Jenny had been kind, gentle and caring, but she didn’t get it. The only person who knew how much this hurt, how badly the pain of Jess’s loss cut into his heart, was Kate.
Nick wanted to talk to Kate. He wanted to talk about Jess and tell stories and share memories, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even look at her.
The words came back into his mind – begged her to do it … I love her for doing this …
Could he have done it? Could he have helped Jess put an end to her life? No. Why? Because he loved her too much. But Kate had said she’d done it because she loved her so much.
What was love? What did it mean? If you loved someone, you kept them close. If you loved someone, you didn’t let them go. But what if they begged you? Nick’s head throbbed. He laid it on his arms and closed his eyes. He couldn’t go on like this. He had to see her. He had to speak to her and have it out with her. He had to understand how she could have done something so awful.
He picked up his phone and texted her: Meet me in Café Cos tomorrow 9.30.
She responded immediately: I’ll be there.
Nick sat nursing his Americano, watching the door. He saw her come in. He barely recognized her: she looked old and hunched. Her hair was lank and her coat was too big for her. Her body bent forward, as if the weight of the world was pressing her down. She glanced around the café, then saw him. As she came towards him, he saw the deep black pockets under her eyes. She looks even worse than me, he thought.
Kate sat down opposite him and closed her coat around her, shivering.
‘Coffee?’ he asked.
‘No, thanks, I’m fine. I’ve had three already.’
‘You look terrible,’ Nick said.
Kate shrugged.
‘Guilt will do that to you, I suppose,’ he added.
‘Yes, grief, too,’ she said sadly.
Nick leant in. ‘How could you do it, Kate? How could you?’
Kate’s eyes were full of sorrow. ‘Because she asked me to. I told you, Nick, she begged me. She didn’t want to die alone, choking on her own blood. I was there the night she got the infection and vomited blood. It was horrifying. She was terrified. She was afraid of dying like that, and she didn’t deserve to go that way. She deserved better.’
‘She deserved to live!’ Nick shouted.
The people at the table beside them turned to stare at them.
Kate leant closer. ‘She deserved to choose how she died.’
‘She was twelve,’ Nick hissed. ‘She didn’t get to choose when to die.’
‘She wasn’t a normal twelve-year-old and you know it. She lived ten lives in the last few months. She was more mature than either of us. You said it yourself, Nick, that night in my kitchen. Remember? You said how my mum always called her an old soul, and you said that was right. That she was different from other kids her age, more mature. You know this, Nick, please. Jess knew she was dying before anyone else did. She knew the cancer was back. She was so broken, Nick, so frail and battered, she just couldn’t take it any more.’
Nick gazed at her coldly, his whole body tense. ‘Every day I wake up and feel like puking because the pain of her loss is so bad. Then I want to kill you. I actually want to kill you for what you did. I could have had a few more weeks with her. I could have told her –’
Kate cut across him. ‘Told her what? That you loved her? She knew. She knew how much she meant to you. You know she did. I’m sorry you’re angry, I understand why, but I did it for her, Nick. You have to believe me. I did it for Jess. Whatever you think about me, you know how much I loved her and you know I would have given my life for her.’
Nick looked down at his coffee. ‘I want to know how you did it,’ he said quietly.
Kate squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. ‘I drugged her.’
‘With what?’
‘Twenty-eight Xanax tablets and fourteen dissolvable Tylex.’
Bile rose in his throat. He struggled to keep his emotions in check. ‘Jesus. How did you –’
‘Internet.’
‘You bought the drugs online?’
‘No. I got them from my GP. I pretended they were for me.’
‘Christ, Kate.’
‘I know it sounds completely insane, but it was for Jess. I would have done anything to make her happy.’
‘What was it like? What happened at the end?’ Nick’s voice shook. Part of him wanted to know about Jess’s last hours but another part didn’t.
Kate bit her lip. ‘She went into a deep sleep and then, after about four hours, she stopped breathing. It was very peaceful. Before she drifted into sleep she smiled up at me and said, “I’m happy, Mum, I’m ready to go.”’
Nick cursed under his breath. ‘How could you do it? I could never have done that. It’s not right. You should have talked her out of it.’
‘Nick, I tried, but Jess knew what she wanted. It was something she’d thought about a lot. She was determined to go out on her own terms. I know what I did was wrong and immoral and illegal. But I granted Jess her final wish and that matters more to me than anything.’
Nick ripped up a sugar pack and watched the grains bounce off the table. You have to let me go, Dad. Jess had said that. He could see her gaunt, sad face gazing up at him, her brown eyes pleading with him. She had wanted to go. She had wanted to do it her way.
Nick looked at Kate, who was crying quietly. She was heartbroken. She was a shell of her former self. There was nothing he could do to make her feel worse or to hurt her more. The rage he’d felt since the moment he’d read Jess’s letter slowly began to subside.
‘It’s hell, isn’t it?’ he said.
Kate nodded.
‘It just hurts so fucking much,’ he said.
Kate sobbed into a tissue, unable to speak.
‘People keep saying it’ll get easier with time. I want to shout, “Good to know, because if it gets any harder, I’ll die of pain.”’
Kate smiled. ‘I know. Or the people who say it was God’s will or there’s a reason for everything. Really? What possible reason could there be for a twelve-year-old girl to get cancer and die?’
‘I really hate the people who say she’s in a better place – to hell with you and your better place. With her family is where she should be, right here, right now.’ Nick banged the table with his fist, making the cup jump.
‘She was the core of our family. It’s so quiet and lonely without her.’ Kate was crying again.
Nick wanted to reach out to her but he couldn’t: the anger was still there. ‘I hate that you did what you did,’ he said, ‘but I understand that it was what Jess wanted. I’m going to try to forgive you because the anger is eating me up inside. It’s destroying me and that’s not fair on Jaden and Jenny. I know you acted out of love, but it doesn’t make it right. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it, but I will learn to live with it. And I won’t tell anyone. I owe that to Bobby and Luke. I just wish … I just wish we’d had more time.’ His voice broke.
‘I’m sorry, Nick. If there was any other way of granting Jess her wish, I would have chosen a different path. It was a nightmare. I think about it every single day, but she was happy, I promise you that.’
Nick sighed. ‘She was my little angel.’
‘She really was special, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes.’ Nick wiped away tears. ‘We did something right. We created an exceptional human being.’
‘We did. We really did.’ Kate reached out to touch his arm.
Nick pulled back and stood up. ‘I’m going now. I think I might be able to sleep for the first time in weeks. I’ll text you about taking the boys out.’
Kate got to her feet and they walked towards the door. As she turned to go to her car, she said, ‘I’m glad we talked, and I’m sorry.’
He knew she was. He was sorry too. Sorry that life had thrown them this awful fate. But what did sorry change? What did anger change? Nothing. Jess was gone and she wasn’t coming back.
Nick walked to his car and took out the letter. He read his favourite line: I love you so much and I’m so proud to be your daughter.
Nick pressed the letter to his lips and kissed the words. ‘I love you too, Jess. I hope you know how much,’ he whispered into the silence.